Page 19 (1/2)

9

The Darkness

The energy blosso his body and spreading over the floor like spilledmen and chairs and bottles toward it like a black hole before detonating with a deep, nighth the wall, slalass, wood, metal, eardrums, and men rupture

My boots fail We fly across the street and sla to the ground as the Lost Wee Den shrinks inward like a grape beco dust She exhales a death rattle of fire and ash before sagging to ruin

Beneath s badly burned I vo like the trunk of a young tree after its first hard winter wind I stublood Ears trickling with it Eyeballs throbbing froe ainst the wall and roll the joint back in, quivering out breath as it pops into place The feeling of needles tickles ers I wipe the sick off my hands and wobble finally to my feet I pick up the Jackal and squint into the s of stereocilia Like screahts that dance across my vision Smoke ssto help those trapped They’ll find only death, only ash Sonic booht The Jackal’s support teams roar down from the city above And as they land to take him out of this hell, the sparrows inof fla of the wounded

I stand in front of an abandoned factory, four hundred kilometers from the Citadel, deep in the Old Industrial Sector Newer factories have been built atop this one, burying it beneath a fresh skin of industry like a deep blackhead Grime skins the place Carnivorous ht it a dead end if I didn’t know my quarry so well

The datapad I took from the Red survived the explosion I left the Jackal for his support teams and slipped further down the street, where I stole a Gray police craft After wiping the datapad’s tracking device, I hacked into the datapad coordinates history

I knock hard on the locked door to the factory’stheround, hands behind my head, and wait After a few minutes, the door creaks open Darkness inside Then several figures slip forward They bind , and pushuide me steadily toward the sound of music Brahms’s Piano Concerto no 2, if I ah to glow through the bag’s fabric

"Here, get off him, you brutes," snaps a familiar voice

"Careful, clown," rumbles some Red

"Babble at me all you want, you rusty baboon, he’s worth et out," Evey says softly "Now"

Boots thud away "Can I stop pretending now?" I ask

"By all means," Mickey says