AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

pressure in the room change and he noticed that he was several feet closer to the shattered door’s frame. He headed toward the opening on his own as the ceiling dropped even lower. The pressure forced him completely out the door.
    Yamaguchi’s gun belt finally slipped off the splintered two-by-four as the roof tilted sharply. She slid to the ground, hit her head, and lost consciousness.

Chapter 16
    Yamaguchi woke to the pounding of her pulse. She put her hands to her head to try to stop the rhythmic beat but when her fingertips touched her scalp she felt the warm stickiness of her blood. The lights above the dance floor, now empty, still strobed and in the lightning bright flashes she could see the blood, far too much of it, on her hands.
    A pain in her back helped her realize she was lying on her back on the floor. Looking around, she saw a confused tangle of overturned chairs and tables and smashed glass. Her vision was blurred but she realized it was the blood that had dripped into her eyes and she wiped it away with a sleeve.
    She knew she had to stand up but when she put her right hand on the floor to push herself up she felt more wetness and feared that she had bled enough to cover the floor. Then she saw that her hand was in a puddle from a spilled bottle.
    She stood up, unsteadily, and remained unmoving until equilibrium returned. Her hearing was confused as well and only now did she realize that the music — “What a friend I have in Jesus” to a techno beat — continued after the partiers had left.
    Actually, not everyone had left. She saw a body lying on the ground, covered by debris from the collapsed room trap. She staggered toward the body, but the pain in her back increased. She probed her right side and realized that falling on her phone had bruised her. She removed the phone from its holster on her belt and finally the thought occurred to her that she could call for help. But even before she could dial she saw that the screen of the phone was cracked and that the display made no sense. The display was a puddle of colors. She dialed 911 anyway and put the phone to her ear but she heard nothing. She tried hanging up and dialing again but either the phone or she refused to work. She let the phone drop from her fingers and onto the floor.
    She continued toward the body but realized there was nothing she could do. A cracked two-by-four had speared the chest of a young girl. She was obviously dead.
    “Munroe,” she yelled. “Alex!” She didn’t care who heard. She had had enough. “God damn you, Alex, where are you?”
    She looked around the room and in her confused state she almost expected to see him, which is when she noticed the white plastic of her terminal on the floor. She remembered the kids grabbing her to send her crowd surfing and knew that’s when it was torn off her arm.
    She walked over and bent down to pick it up and a wave of nausea hit and she vomited quickly. She knew it was a concussion, but then wondered how she could so clearly diagnose her situation. Shouldn’t I be unable to think straight with a concussion, she thought to herself as she wiped the spittle from her chin. It was fully half a minute before she realized she hadn’t moved, that the terminal still lay on the floor.
    She picked it up by the ear buds that were still attached. There was something wrong with it. It felt light to her touch. When she turned it over, she realized the back cover was missing along with the battery. She let out a quick sob. She sank to her knees and tried to look on the floor for the missing battery but the flashing strobes made it difficult to identify anything. She put her hands on the floor, hoping to stumble upon the things she sought. Her palm touched something plastic and sharp and she knew she’d found the back cover.
    Munroe watched all this, watched his partner, her hair matted with blood, pawing on the floor for the battery, unable to tell her it was just a few feet away from her, still slightly aglow in his infrared vision.
    He’d found his way free of the fenced corridor after the kids fleeing the dance floor had battered it down and opened the door to the outside, carrying him with them in their wake. He’d reentered the gym, rising above the now trampled chain-link fence and had searched frantically for her. He’d been unable to find her until the crowd had thinned enough, then saw her lying on the floor, unconscious until now.
    Yamaguchi put the terminal and back