At the word “Darrow,” Evey’s composure buckles for a blink. She steps back and I hear her breath pattern change. And when her eyes meet mine, I know she sees through the Obsidian disguise and glimpses the Red underneath all these lies. However, the surprise there means she’s not here for me. She’s here for the Jackal, but why? Is she with the Sons? Or did Mickey finally sell his prize to this Vebonna gangster?
“I don’t do slaves,” Evey says to the Jackal, pointing to my Obsidian sigils.
“You’ll find there’s more to this one than meets the eye.”
“Dominus, I …”
He grabs her hand, twisting her pinky horribly. “Shut up and do as you’re told, girl. Or we’ll take what you won’t give.” He flashes a great smile and releases her. She holds her hand, trembling. It doesn’t take much to wound a Pink.
I stand. “I believe I’ll take it from here, my friend.”
“I’m sure you will!”
I wave the bodyguards away who try to follow me as I stand.
I follow Evey up the handrungs leading to the fourth floor, earning hoots from some of the patrons. My eyes catch one of the holoCans above the bar. Images of a bombing ripple in three dimensions. It looks to be at a café. A Gold café. My eyes widen as the extent of the devastation is shown. Was it the Sons?
Another bombing flashes across a different screen. And another. And another till dozens of bombings flood the screens throughout the tavern. All heads turn to watch, silence yawning through the vast tavern. Evey’s hand tightens around mine, and I know it was the Sons who committed the bombings. They sent her. But why Luna? Why the Jackal? Why haven’t they contacted me?
“Hurry,” she says as we reach the fifteenth floor, pulling me through the pink lights, past the dancers and hungry patrons to the last door at the end of a narrow corridor. I follow her inside the dark room and immediately smell the acrid tang of scorcher oil. Air shifts behind me as a man in a ghostCloak creeps forward. It takes considerable effort to resist the impulse to kill him.
“He’s one of ours,” Evey snaps. She turns on the light. Six Reds in heavy military tech decloak. They wear demonHelms with high-grade optics. “Call in the skimmer.”
“He’s not Adrius au Augustus,” one of them growls.
“He’s a bloody Obsidian.”
“Strange-looking one.” One of the Reds with the optics jumps back, scorcher priming. “Bone density is Gold!”
“Stop!” Evey shouts. “He’s a friend. Harmony has been looking for him.”
Not Ares or Dancer?
“You weren’t here for me,” I say, eyeing their weapons. “You were hunting.”
She turns to me. “I’ll explain later, but we have to go.”
“What did you do?” I ask as one of the Reds pulls out a plasmaTorch and cuts a hole in the wall, opening the room up to the stink of the city. Moist air rushes in and lights flood the room as a small dropship descends, opening its side hatches parallel to the improvised door.
“Darrow, there’s no time.”
I grab her. “Evey, why are you here?”
Her eyes flash with triumph. “Adrius au Augustus has murdered fifteen of our brothers and sisters. I was sent to capture or kill him. I chose the later. In twenty seconds, he’ll be ash.”
I rip one of the Reds’ datapads off his arm and prime my concealed gravBoots. Evey shouts at me. The boots whine mournfully as they lift me into the air. I rip back the way we came, rupturing through the door instead of opening it, flying down the hallway like a bat out of hell. I smash past a dancer, careen over two Orange customers, and turn a razor-tight right angle down over the railing toward the Jackal’s table as he finishes his liquor. His Stained marks me, as do the Grays. Too slow.
On the screens, over the bombings, the static crackles and a blood-red helm burns.
“Reap what you sow,” Ares’s voice growls from a dozen speakers.
The table melts under the Jackal’s hand. Consumed by the bomb Evey planted. The Stained throws the Jackal away from the table like a doll and curls his titanic body around the mushrooming energy. His mouth moves in a death whisper, “Skirnir al fal njir.”
9
The Darkness
The energy blossoms outward from the Stained, liquid to the eye, evaporating his body and spreading over the floor like spilled mercury before darkening, slipping back to the origin, sucking men and chairs and bottles toward it like a black hole before detonating with a deep, nightmare roar. I snag the Jackal up by his jacket and fly through the wall, slamming shoulder first as, behind us, glass, wood, metal, eardrums, and men rupture.
My boots fail. We fly across the street and slam into the building opposite, cracking concrete and falling to the ground as the Lost Wee Den shrinks inward like a grape becoming a raisin becoming dust. She exhales a death rattle of fire and ash before sagging to ruin.
Beneath me, the Jackal’s unconscious, his legs badly burned. I vomit as I try to stand, my skeleton creaking like the trunk of a young tree after its first hard winter wind. I stumble up only to fall back to the ground, emptying my stomach a second time. Pain in my skull. Nose dripping blood. Ears trickling with it. Eyeballs throbbing from the explosion. Shoulder dislocated. I gain my knees, wedge my shoulder against the wall and roll the joint back in, quivering out breath as it pops into place. The feeling of needles tickles my fingers. I wipe the sick off my hands and wobble finally to my feet. I pick up the Jackal and squint into the smoke.
I hear nothing but the wailing of stereocilia. Like screaming sparrows in my inner ear, throbbing. I shake away the lights that dance across my vision. Smoke swallows me. People flow past, water around a rock, rushing to help those trapped. They’ll find only death, only ash. Sonic booms puncture the night. The Jackal’s support teams roar down from the city above. And as they land to take him out of this hell, the sparrows in my ears fade, devoured by the crackling of flames and the crying 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 moss. Rust-filled water. I’d have thought 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’s main level. Nothing. They must be shitting themselves. So I kneel on the ground, hands behind my head, and wait. After a few minutes, the door creaks open. Darkness inside. Then several figures slip forward. They bind my hands, cover my head with a bag, and push me into the factory.
After taking me down an old hydraulic elevator, they guide me steadily toward the sound of music. Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 2, if I am correct. Computers hum. Welding torches flare bright enough 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 more than ten thousand of you inbred rough—”
“Dalo, get out,” Evey says softly. “Now.”
Boots thud away. “Can I stop pretending now?” I ask.
“By all means,” Mickey says.
I snap the cuffs they bound my wrists with behind my back, and strip off the bag that covers my head. The concrete and metal laboratory is clean, quiet but for the soothing music. A faint haze floats in the air from Mickey’s water pipe in the corner. I tower over him and Evey. She can’t contain herself.