Brad could hear the safeties being disengaged on the pistols. This was no idle bluff. His face was shown to these men at the beginning of every duty roster. He was a suspected terrorist. He had escaped custody.
An officer shouted, "Freeze!" in accented English.
Brad couldn't. There was too much at stake. Too much time had been lost playing their game already.
Brad did the first thing that popped into his head. He ran up the hospital wall.
Of course, to put it that way belies the effort required. It was not as if the wall were suddenly horizontal, and he simply ran as he would on normal ground. Nor was it as if he were being lifted into the air by some unseen force and all he had to do was touch the wall occasionally to maintain the illusion.
No. When his foot made contact with the wall, he had to force himself upwards, against gravity. Due to the nature of the angle required, half of his legs' power went into pushing him up, the other pushed him out from the wall. This is what prevents ordinary people running up walls. Only being able to generate upwards force by generating outwards force, they inevitably either achieve too little lift and fall down, or they achieve too much outwards force and fall out - and then down.
In this case, however, the climber had access to another asset. Green electricity arced from his hands and feet, binding him to the wall's surface.
And so he ran up the hospital wall. He did so for some five seconds before the officer issued a sharp, loud command - in French.
Guessing his intent, Brad immediately pushed off the wall, cutting off the emerald bands as he did so.
Dust erupted from the building, ejecta from bullet impacts on the hospital wall. He landed atop the officer, who fell to the ground under the impact. Brad rolled away, and sprang to his feet.
The fallen officer was screaming something. The nearest officer turned his body, the pistol swinging around, sighting on Brad. Brad snap-kicked it out of the officer's hand, twisted, brought his other leg around in a roundhouse, and smashed the gendarme in a heap on the sidewalk.
Brad sprinted towards the nearest standing gendarme. A gunshot went off. Brad didn't feel anything - the officer must have missed. It must have been hard to hit somebody who moved as fast as the Force.
A shoulder ram knocked the officer down. Brad snatched the man's pistol in passing, without breaking stride.
The police had finally recovered from the shock. Their weapons were pointed in Brad's direction.
There was a flurry of gunfire, and it was over.