"Ground floor," Laura gasped. "In the back-glassed in. "

"Okay, we're moving. Go! Go!" Vicious racket as Lu opened up with the gun again. In the enclosed stairwell the hellish noise of it spiked right into her head. Laura felt a sudden burst of sweat drench her from head to foot. Hotchkiss yanked her along, his hand wedged under her armpit. He was crashing down two, three steps at a time, half carrying her. A

big man, unbelievably strong-like being dragged by a gorilla.

The throat-catching sting of smoke. Great bubbling spatters on the cheerful pastel walls: purple dye, or smeared blood.

Rebels down whimpering, some screaming, hands cupped over eyes or ears. Rebels glued to the stair railings, black-faced and gasping in the grip of tangle-tape. She stumbled on the sprawled legs of a boy, unconscious or dead, his face punched open by a jelly-bullet, blood streaming from a ruined eye... .

Then they were down on the first floor, and out the stair- well door. Distant sunlight poured through the smashed-out front of the godown, where the cops and rebels were still in pitched battle, the rebels getting the better of it. Inside the cavernous godown the A-L.P. were frenziedly rallying, machete-slicing tape from some of their tangle-victims, drag- ging captured, handcuffed cops behind a wall of crates.... They looked up in surprise, thirty sweat-drenched, blood-smeared, angry men, backlit by the street.

For a moment they all stood in frozen tableau. "Where's the control room?" Hotchkiss whispered.

"I lied," Laura hissed at him. "It's on the second floor."

"You fucking cow," Hotchkiss marveled.

The A-L.P. were edging forward. Some wore stolen police helmets and almost all had riot shields. One of them suddenly fired a tangle-round, which narrowly missed Officer Aw and writhed on the floor like a molten, spastic tumbleweed.

Laura sat down, heavily. Hotchkiss made a grab at her, thought better of it, and began backing up. Suddenly they broke and ran for the back of the godown.

Then it was maelstrom all around her. Men ran after the retreating SWAT team, shouting. Others dashed up the stairs, where Hotchkiss's stunned and blinded victims were moan- ing, cursing, crying out. Laura drew up her legs, clenched the hands cinched behind her back, tried to make herself small.

Her mind raced wildly. She should go back to the roof, rejoin her people. No---better to help the injured. No-try to escape, to find the police, get arrested. No, she should-

A mustached Malay teenager with a swollen, battered cheek menaced her with a drawn sword. He gestured her up, prodding her with his foot.

"My hands," Laura said.

The boy's eyes widened. He stepped behind her and sawed through the tough plastic strap of her cuffs. Her arms came free with a sudden grating rush of pleasure-pain in her shoulders.

He spat angry Malay at her. She stood up. Suddenly she was a head taller than he was. He backed off a step, hesi- tated, turned to someone else-

A wind and a sibilant hissing filled the godown. A chopper had dropped to street level-it was looking in on them through the hole in the godown's front wall. Expressionless helmets behind the cockpit glass. An explosive huff as a gun-metal canister jumped loose. It hit the godown floor,, rolling, careening, gushing mist

Oh fuck. Tear gas. A sudden parching, virulent wave of it struck and she could feel the acid grip of it on her eyeballs. Panic hit her then. She scrambled on her hands and knees. Tearblur, savage pain of it in her throat. No air. She bounced off people, blinded and pushing wildly, and suddenly she was running.

Running free ...

Tears, in poisoned torrents, drenched her face. Where they touched her lips she felt a stinging tingle and a taste like kerosene. She kept running, shying away from the gray blur of looming buildings on the side of the street. Her throat and lungs felt full of fish hooks.

She reached the end of her adrenaline. She was too shocked to feel her own fatigue, but her knees began to buckle on their own. She headed for a doorway and collapsed into its recess.

Just then the sky opened up, and it began to rain. Another vertical, bursting monsoon. Wave after wave of it pounded the empty street. Laura crouched miserably in the doorway, catch- ing rain in her cupped hands, bathing her face and the exposed skin of her arms. At first the water seemed to make it worse a vicious stinging, as if she'd been breathing Tabasco sauce.

She had two plastic bangles now, over the chafed raw skin of her wrists. Her feet were soaked in their cheap, clammy sandals-not from rain, but from the water-cannon puddles in the street outside the godown.

She had run right through the street battle, blind. No one had even touched her. Except-there was a long strip of tangle-tape on her shin, still wriggling feebly, like the shed tail of a lizard. She picked it off her jeans.

She could recognize the area now-she'd run all the way to the Victoria and Albert Docks, just west of East Lagoon. To the north she saw the high-rise of the Tanjong Pagar public- housing complex-bland, dun-colored government bricks.

She sat, breathing shallowly, coughing, spitting every once in a while. She wished she were back with her people in the godown. But there was no way she could reach them again-it was not a sane option.

She'd meet them in jail anyway. Get the hell out of this battle zone and somehow manage to get arrested. Nice quiet jail. Yeah. Sounded good.

She stood up, wiping her mouth. Three cycle-rickshaws raced past her toward East Lagoon, each one crowded with a clinging mass of drenched, staring rebels. They ignored her,

She made a break for it.

There were two wet, unstable street barricades between her and Tanjong Pagar. She climbed over them in pounding rain.

No one showed to stop her.

The glass doors of the Tanjong housing complex had been smashed out of their aluminum frames. Laura ducked into the place, over crunchy heaps of pebbly safety glass. Air condi- tioning bit into her wet clothes.

She was in a shabby but neat entrance hall. Her foam sandals squelched messily on the scuffed linoleum. The place was deserted, its inhabitants, presumably, respecting the gov- ernment's curfew and keeping to their rooms upstairs. It was all mom-and-pop shops down here, little bicycle repair places, a fish market, a quack fractionation parlor. Cheerfully lit with fluorescents, ready for business, but all deserted.

She heard the distant murmur of voices. Calm, authorita- tive tones. She headed for them.

The sounds came from a glass-fronted television store.

Cheap low-res sets from Brazil and Maphilindonesia, color gone garish. They'd been turned on all over the store, a few showing the Government channel, others flickering over and over with a convulsive, maladjusted look.

Laura eased through the doorway. A string of brass bells jumped and rang-. Inside it reeked of jasmine incense. The shop's walls were papered with smiling, wholesome Singapore pop stars: cool guys in glitter tuxedos and cute babes in straw sun hats and peplums. Laura stepped carefully over a toppled, broken gum machine.

A little old Tamil lady had invaded the place. A wizened granny, white-haired and four feet tall, with a dowager's hump and wrists thin as bird bone. She sat in a canvas director's chair, staring at the empty screens and munching on a mouthful of gum.

"Hello?" Laura said. No response. The old woman looked deaf as a post-senile, even. Laura crept nearer, her shoes squelching moistly. The old woman gave her a sudden star- tled glance and adjusted her sari, draping the shoulder flap modestly over her head.

Laura combed at her hair with her fingers, feeling rainwa- ter trickle down her neck. "Ma'am, do you speak English?"

The old woman smiled shyly. She pointed at a stack of the canvas chairs, folded against the wall.