Daemon

trapdoor. The sofa splashed into a water-filled pit, and then the floor section snapped up, almost hitting Merritt in the face. He heard a latch click, locking the floor in place. It was obviously meant to prevent escape from the pit once a victim fell in.
    Merritt pounded the trapdoor with the butt of his shotgun. The floor seemed firm. He didn’t want to take any chances, so he backed up to get a running start. He sprinted and leaped over the farthest seam of the trapdoor, landing in a tumble he purposely shortened by rolling hard into an armoire the size and height of a squatter’s shack. In a moment he was up and ready with the shotgun.
    He felt the humming sound of the acoustic weapons powering up. He glanced right and left up near the ceiling and found the nearest acoustic pod. A blast from the shotgun took it clean off the wall. He found its twin behind him and blasted that as well. He collected his breath in the resulting silence.
    Suddenly a voice in front of him said, ‘Slap a pair of tits and a ponytail on you, and we’ve got ourselves a game.’
    Merritt just gave Sobol’s voice the finger. Let him talk. Merritt had to conserve ammunition.
    It was time to orient himself. He pulled a laminated floor plan card of Sobol’s house from his chest pocket. It was warped from the heat of the fire but still legible. Merritt found his location and realized he wasn’t far from the cellar door – and the pit that swallowed the bomb disposal robot. Merritt looked up and noticed the silence.
    ‘What’s the matter, Sobol? Run out of things to say?’
    The voice spoke from the same place – right in front of him. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
    ‘I said, cat got your tongue?’
    ‘I didn’t catch that.’
    It couldn’t really understand him. This was all an elaborate technological trick. A logic tree with weaponry.
    ‘Dead retard.’ Merritt pocketed the card and put a shoulder behind the heavy armoire, trying to push it ahead of him. It insisted on being stationary. He took a step back to look at it. He’d seen railroad trestles built with less wood. It looked a century old and its shelves were lined with Talavera plates and wooden carvings of Dia de los Muertos figurines. Merritt smiled humorlessly at the little skeletons cavorting and going about their daily business – apparently unaffected by their demise. Real cute.
    He grabbed a bronze candlestick off the shelf and looked ahead of him. A twenty-foot stretch of barren hall lay before him. After that, he’d be at the doorway opening onto the billiards room – which led to the cellar door.
    He slung the shotgun and got down onto his belly, spreading his weight over the tile floor. He turned back to rap the hollow floor behind him – to get a sense for its sound. Then he rapped the floor under him. Solid. Very different sound. Merritt faced forward again, and he started crawling, cautiously rapping on the floor with the heavy candlestick as he went.
    Merritt was halfway along the open stretch of hall when Sobol’s voice spoke again a foot or so in front of Merritt’s face. ‘I hate to interrupt, but now I have to kill you.’
    Merritt heard something from deep inside the house. It sounded like a sump pump – only many times larger than the one in Merritt’s house. The sound of water coursing through pipes came to his ears, and suddenly water began to silently spread out across the floor from an unseen vent beneath the baseboards. Then Merritt glanced left, right, and back behind him. The water was coming at him from ahead and behind – spreading out from the walls across the tile floor about a half-inch deep. Merritt got up into a crouch, not sure what to do next. He’d never reach the armoire before the water overtook him.
    And what could the water do, anyway? Sobol could never fill this room – there were six or seven doorways leading into it. Merritt started scanning the walls for hidden danger. And he quickly found it.
    Ahead of him, one of the electrical outlets in the wall suddenly extended out and down onto the floor. It was mounted on the end of a curved bar. A
zap
and
pop
were audible as the socket hit the surface of the water – which was now electrified.
    ‘Shit!’ Merritt leaped to his feet and looked around for something to stand on. Nothing. He quickly flipped the shotgun from his back and blasted two holes in the lath and plaster wall near him – one about a foot from the floor, and another at hand-holding height. He let