Impact by Rob Boffard Page A

Where’s the chemical foam?
    A little way past the stompers holding the crowd back, a technician is down on his haunches, doing something to the wall. One of the panels has been removed, and the stomper is messing with the wiring, cursing and swearing. He grabs a hand-held plasma cutter, sparks it to life. That’s when Anna realises what’s happening: the suppression systems really have failed. If they can’t fix them, the fire will rage out of control.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” she says to a man in the crowd.
    â€œElectrical fire,” he answers, not looking at her. “Circuit in the gallery floor just blew up.”
    And this is when Anna realises that there’s nothing she can do to help.
    She can run, and she can shoot. In the past few days, after Outer Earth shrank down to this single, tiny sector, she’s discovered that she’s good with kids, looking after several of those who found their way into Apex, who lost their moms and dads. Right now? None of those things are worth spit. What was she thinking?
    At that moment, Anna feels every single one of her sixteen years. Sure, she could fight through the crowd, use her tracer training to get all the way to the front, but what good would it do? At least it looks like the stompers got everybody out–there should be nothing in the gallery but the escape pods, which won’t do anyone much good anyway. No point escaping if you don’t have enough fuel to de-orbit. Even if you somehow managed it, your pod would incinerate the second it hit the atmosphere.
    She leans against the corridor wall, her eyes closed, fists knotted in frustration.
    Two stompers, clad in black and grey, are trying to push through the crowd. They’re a few feet away from Anna when she sees that one of them has a squat, orange gas canister in her hand. Supplies for the plasma cutters being used to weld the metal across the edge of the door.
    But the crowd isn’t parting. They aren’t letting the stompers through.
    Anna moves without thinking. She snatches the canister away. It’s ice-cold, the pressurised gas inside filming the metal surface with condensation.
    The stomper who was holding it lashes out at her in surprised fury. Anna ignores her. She takes two steps towards the opposite corridor wall, and jumps. She leads with her right foot, planting it squarely halfway up the wall, then uses it to kick her body upwards and outwards. She twists in mid-air, and now she’s high enough to look over the heads of the crowd, all the way to the door.
    Anna used to have a slingshot. She called it One Mile. It was nothing more than crudely welded metal with frayed rubber strips, but in her hand it became something else entirely. She could plant a shiny ball-bearing in a target from fifty yards away, knock grown men off their feet, shatter jaws and break fingers. She was that good.
    One Mile is gone, lost when she and Riley and Aaron Carver were captured by the Earthers. But Anna can still shoot. She can still aim.
    She throws the canister backhanded, sending it flying over the heads of the crowd. One of the technicians is quicker on the uptake than the others: he catches it, taking it in the stomach as he wraps his hands around it. Anna has just enough time to see him turn, handing it off to someone else, and then she crashes to the ground.
    The stompers pick her up, slam her against the corridor wall. She even recognises one of them: Alana Jordan, a heavy-set woman with long black hair and a sour face.
    That’s when she hears the
click-hiss
of the suppression chemicals. The smell of smoke vanishes, replaced by the iodine tang of the foam.
    The crowd is cheering, high-fiving each other, hugging. One of the technicians–maybe even the one who caught the canister–is shouting over the noise. “We got it. It’s contained.”
    Everyone visibly relaxes, shaking their heads and laughing, like all their problems have just been