Read Dark Angel: Skin Game for Free Online

that not only prevented them from moving forward, but cut them off to the left and right as well.
    "End of the line," Logan declared as he braked the van to a stop.
    Sketchy stopped the ambulance next to the van, and the police cars quickly formed a semicircle behind them to keep Max and crew from turning around and making a break for it. The light bars atop the police cars painted the scene red, blue, and shades of purple where the two colors met. Pouring out of their cars, twenty or so officers drew their guns, and Clemente's voice once again came over a

    loudspeaker: "Throw down your weapons and let me see your hands. Now!"
    Mole spun angrily toward Max. "What's your plan now?"
    "Show me your hands" Clemente said over the speaker.
    Looking a little panicked, and sounding like a small boy and not a massive dog of a man, Joshua asked plaintively, "Max ... ?"
    "Throw your weapons out now!"
    Max looked from face to face, seeing defeat, even despair, but she was unwilling to accept either.
    She made her decision. "You heard the man."
    "Well," Mole said, "this sucks."
    Logan dropped his pistol through the open driver's side window and it hit the concrete floor with a dull smack.
    "I fought the law and the law won," Alec said, wry resignation in his voice.
    Moving to the back door and opening it a crack, Max dropped out Alec's weapon and it clattered to the concrete.
    "Step out of the van with your hands up."
    Grumbling the whole time, Mole followed suit, handing his gun to Max, who tossed it outside.
    Clemente's voice came over the speaker again. "Do it-step away from the van, and keep your hands up!"
    Original Cindy, in her SWAT team drag, dropped her gun and Sketchy's gun out the back of the ambulance as well.
    Max came out first, followed by Mole; then came Cindy, without her helmet and goggles; Gem and her new baby; Sketchy—also without his SWAT headgear—and finally young Dalton exited the ambulance.
    As Clemente and his men kept their guns trained on the transgenics, Max kicked a couple of the rifles even farmer away so the cops wouldn't think they were up to something. Joshua helped Alec down, Alec's shoulder still giving him trouble from a bullet he'd taken early in the siege. Logan

    came out the driver's side and marched to the back of the van to join the others.
    "Step away from the vehicles!" Clemente commanded. "On your knees—hands on top of your heads!"
    Sketchy dropped first, as if suddenly taken by the urge to pray, his hands shooting to the top of his head. Slowly, the others fell in line as well—Mole, then Alec, Logan, Original Cindy, Dalton, and Gem—all on their knees in defeat, all of them putting their hands on their heads, except Gem, who held her baby.
    All but Max.
    Max remained standing, her hands dangling at her sides. She kept her face calm, passive, showing neither anger nor deception. And yet her very failure to follow orders made her a pillar of defiance.
    "On your knees," Clemente yelled, no longer on the loudspeaker.
    Instead, Max took two tentative steps forward.
    "Do it, now!"
    Ignoring the instruction, Max walked forward a few more steps, then stopped just a few feet from the police, their headlights bathing her and her friends in bright white light.
    "452?" Clemente asked, frowning. That was what she had told the cop to call her when they'd been negotiating the hostage crisis.
    But why hide any longer?
    She said, "You can call me Max."
    He drew a breath. Then he said, "I think you should get on the ground."
    Max's face remained placid. "I think you should probably
    go"
    Now Clemente's expression hardened. "I'm not going to tell you again."
    She gave him the tiniest of shrugs. "I'm not going to tell you again."

    Luke and Dix—two of the transgenics that had started the settlement within the fences of the dead industrial park that was now Terminal City—stepped out of the shadows, pumping shotguns.
    In front of Max, the officers cocked their own guns and drew beads on the