Servitors

If I’d been half a step slower, I would have died. There was a great crash, and Nothing smashed through the lowest level of the shelving unit, thrusting aside a steel drum and a wooden crate the size of a coffin as if they’d been made of Styrofoam. His fingers missed grabbing onto me by inches.
A second turtleneck beat me to the end of the shelf. I opened up with the P-90, praying that a ricochet wouldn’t kill one of the prisoners, but my target moved with the speed of a striking serpent, bounding forward to plant a foot against the steel wall of the warehouse, six feet off the ground. Using only a single leg, he kicked off into a back-flip that carried him back past the end of the shelf and out of my line of fire.
The damn thing hadn’t been moving fast enough to dodge bullets—but he’d been moving fast enough to dodge me, and I was the one doing the aiming. A round might have clipped one of his legs, but that was all, and Nothing was pounding up behind me, gaining despite his mass. I felt like a squirrel being pursued by a German shepherd; if he caught me, it would end about the same way.


Side Jobs, Aftermath, Page 403