Cloak Games: Rebel Fist by Jonathan Moeller

nobles the way the Elves on Earth do. I think the three heads of the dragon represent liberty, equality, and solidarity. Like all Elves should be free and equal without bowing to the High Queen.”
    “That…that just seems wrong,” said Russell. 
    I suppose he would have a hard time with the concept. He had been raised to revere the High Queen and respect the Elves. I had been raised to steal things without detection, so I took a more cynical view of…well, everything. 
    “I wish you hadn’t had to kill the Elf,” said Russell.
    “What?” I said, looking back at him. “He would have killed me, and then killed you, and anyone else he caught.”
    “It just seems so…elfophobic,” said Russell. “Killing an Elf.” 
    It was too dark for him to see me grimace. “Right.” It had been programmed into him by school. Criticize the High Queen and her nobles, and you would get accused of elfophobia, and someone would make an anonymous call to Homeland Security and the Inquisition. Killing orcs was one thing, but I wondered if some of the people in the Ducal Mall would be paralyzed when the Archons arrived, too conditioned to avoid elfophobia to even fight back. 
    Not that bullets would have worked on an Archon. 
    “If it makes you feel better,” I said, “I don’t think it counts as elfophobia when it’s an Archon.” 
    I opened the door. Beyond I saw the stockroom for the bookstore itself, with boxes stacked in wire shelves, and other shelves holding loose hardbacks and paperbacks. There were no emergency lights, but my AK-47 had a tactical flashlight mounted to it, so I flipped the light on. A harsh white LED light shone from the gun. I swept it back and forth, looking for any sign of the girl.
    “Lydia?” said Russell. “Lydia, it’s Russell Moran. “We’re going to get you out here.” 
    Only silence answered him. I stepped further into the stockroom, moving my flashlight over the walls and floor. I wondered if Russell had been mistaken, if Lydia had fled in another direction. But the only way in and out of the bookstore was the entrance to the mall concourse and the door to the stockroom. She wasn’t in the stockroom and she hadn’t gone to the concourse, which meant…
    A gleam of pale white light caught my eye. I swung the gun around, pointing it at a steel security door in the far wall. It stood open a crack, and beyond I glimpsed a wide, gloomy concrete corridor. We had found the service entrance. A mall the size of the Ducal Mall had a maze of service corridors running behind the shops, letting the employees come and go and deliveries to arrive without disrupting the flow of customer traffic. I pushed the door open a few more inches and peered into the corridor. Rows of metal doors stretched away in either direction, leading to more shops, and the corridor turned a corner perhaps twenty yards away.
    “She went this way,” I said. “Russell, we’re not going to be able to find her. She could have gone anywhere from here. She probably got out of the mall and is running like hell right now. We should follow her example.”
    Russell wanted to argue, but he knew that I was right. He couldn’t call Lydia’s phone, not with the jamming still in operation. We couldn’t wander around the maze of service corridors behind the stores. Sooner or later we would run into another band of orcish soldiers and get killed, or we would be caught in the inevitable counterattack when Homeland Security or Duke Tamirlas came to fight the Archons. Lydia had probably run from the stockroom and to the nearest fire exit the moment the shooting started, which meant that she was smarter than we were. 
    “Right,” I said. “We’ll head back to the concourse and take the emergency exit. And then…”
    A scream rang out from the corridor, loud and shrill. It was a scream of raw, undiluted panic, the scream of a girl encountering mortal danger for the first time in her life. 
    Russell’s eyes widened, and his