Date: 2013-06-17 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Urban Fantasy
Description: Miles is back for another round of hard-boiled pulp action in the two-fisted sequel to The Man Who Crossed Worlds.Freelance Tunneler Miles Franco is having a bad time of it. He's facing a trial that could see him spend the rest of his days in prison. Hallucinations of dead men haunt him day and night. And to top it all off, one of his bandmates has been poisoned by a toxin from another world.Miles doesn't take kindly to people killing his friends. Now he'll have to walk the darkest road he's ever been down. With corrupt corporations on one side and fanatical interdimensional gangsters on the o
Publisher: Cheeky Minion

Miles is back for another round of hardboiled pulp action in the two-fisted sequel to The Man Who Crossed Worlds.

Freelance Tunneler Miles Franco is having a bad time of it. He’s facing a trial that could see him spend the rest of his days in prison. Hallucinations of dead men haunt him day and night. And to top it all off, one of his bandmates has been poisoned by a toxin from another world.

Miles doesn’t take kindly to people killing his friends. Now he’ll have to walk the darkest road he’s ever been down. With corrupt corporations on one side and fanatical interdimensional gangsters on the other, he doesn’t hold out any hope he’ll come out of this alive. But he has a promise to keep.

And Miles will burn every last world to the ground if it gets him answers.

THE MAN WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS

Chris Strange

www.Chris-Strange.com

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SCREWED-UP LIFE OF MILES FRANCO

Skip straight to Chapter One

So here’s how it is. The name’s Miles Franco, and I’m a freelance Tunneler. You see, there’s our world, and then there’s another one, the one some asshole named Heaven. A world of instability and randomness, a cruel parody of our world, populated by a race called the Vei. Sometimes people want to cross worlds or send stuff through without going through the proper channels. That’s where I come in. I open Tunnels and transport people between the worlds, or I can tap into the chaos of Heaven and alter things in our world. I do that, and then I get paid. It’s a living.

Everything was going swell until the cops caught up with me. They didn’t like the way I’d been smuggling Vei to Earth. But luckily for me, they offered me a chance to escape a prison sentence by helping them track down an interdimensional drug smuggler. There was word of a new drug on the way, went by the name of Chroma. Didn’t sound too scary. Until I saw what the drug could do.

For non-Tunnelers, Chroma was just a drug. Fun, crazy, damn addictive. But for Tunnelers it was a whole ’nother story. It took a Tunneler’s ability and cranked it up to eleven. Power you couldn’t imagine.

Of course, there had to be a catch. No one’s mind can handle that much instability, that much pure chaos. If a Tunneler shot up some Chroma, he’d be more powerful than any Tunneler around. And as crazy as a box of doorknobs.

The job went bad. My friends started getting drawn into the mess, pulled into danger. And as the drug hit, the city of Bluegate—my city—began to tear itself apart.

I finally tracked the source of the drug back to a local gangster by the name of John Andrews. But it was just little ol’ me against the big bad gang. My friends, everything I cared about was at stake. So I did something that was wrong, awful, terrible. Because it was what I had to do. I dosed up on Chroma and pointed myself at John Andrews’ gang.

I tore through them, killed them all in the most horrible ways, and I did it screaming like a lunatic. But when I got inside, it wasn’t John Andrews waiting for me. It was his wife, the beautiful redhead Caterina. She’d been orchestrating the Chroma, the gang war, everything, to gain control of the city. She was a Tunneler as well. And she came for me, whacked out on Chroma herself. Except she could control it.

My Chroma dose ran dry. She had me backed into a corner. Nothing in Heaven or Earth could save me. So I went elsewhere. In desperation, I opened a new kind of Tunnel. A Tunnel of rage and animal hunger. And then, bleeding and broken, I defeated Caterina. And changed Tunneling forever.

But I was still a murderer. Dozens of gangsters dead by my hand. The cops couldn’t let that stand. So while I recovered, facing the prison sentence I’d been so desperate to escape in the first place, I waited to see what the hell was in store for me next…

ONE

I slammed the empty shot glass down on the bar, smacked my lips, and waved to the bartender, an unnaturally skinny guy trying his best to hide a receding hairline beneath a thin comb-over. “Give me another. And set a beer next to it this time, will you?”

I leaned back on the bar stool, checked my balance, and thought better of it. The glow of drink was coming over me, but it wasn’t yet enough to put down the demons. It was just making them angrier. The bartender looked me up and down. I tried to hide the beer stain splattered across my shirt and tie.

“You think you really need more?” he asked.

“The hell are you, a goddamn pastor? Gimme the damn drinks.”

He scowled, but started pouring. He probably needed the cash; the place was dead. It should’ve been, seeing as how it wasn’t yet midday.

I squinted up at the TV above the bar, trying to get it to stay still. The familiar jingle of the midday misery broadcast tinkled out, and my gut started sinking before the newscaster even came on the screen. I had a feeling I knew what the top news would be.

The bartender pushed the glasses of beer and whiskey over to me, but I didn’t want them anymore. He frowned and followed my gaze up to the TV. “Hey, ain’t that you on there?”

“You want a gold star?” I said, but I didn’t have the heart to put any venom in it. My ugly mug flashed up on the screen for a second, a shot that’d been taken when my dark hair was caked with grease and my eyes were so sunken you’d need to put on a scuba suit to reach the bottom.

Then the image cut away to a clip of me shoving my way through a crowd of hungry media at the foot of the courthouse steps as I tried to make it to the taxi waiting for me at the curb. I remembered it like it was yesterday, which was probably a bad sign, since it happened only a couple of hours ago. The bruise I’d got shoving aside the Channel 4 cameraman had stopped hurting after the third shot of whiskey.

Or maybe the fourth. It was getting hard to keep count.

I caught the bartender reaching for the remote behind him. “Don’t you dare turn that up,” I warned him.

Fat lot of good that did. The sound crackled to life a second later, loud enough to make me want to smash the beer glass to see if I could cut my own ears off before I passed out. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite that drunk.

“…at Bluegate Courthouse earlier this morning as prosecutors dropped all criminal charges against freelance Tunneler Miles Franco. Franco was facing thirty-seven counts of murder, thirteen counts of grievous bodily harm, and twelve counts of aggravated assault following the so-called ‘Chroma Wars’ that decimated the city last summer.”

The bartender’s eyes bugged out and swiveled toward me like they were on stalks. I flashed a grin at him and downed the whiskey in one. In my mind’s eye, I saw the photos of the charred bodies they presented at the trial. I always saw them, now. Sometimes, at night, they seemed to stand around my bed, never speaking. In a messed up way, they were comforting. I figured going crazy was a pretty easy punishment for what I’d done.

“Franco was convicted of two counts of reckless Tunneling,” the voiceover continued, “for which he was sentenced to time served and had his Tunneling license suspended for sixty days.”

Time served. They made it sound like a cake walk. Bet not one of those dead-eyed reporters had sat inside a cell that small. They put me in a fucking box, like an animal.

I slammed the whiskey glass down harder than I intended. The crack of shattering glass only made the bartender’s expression even more comically fearful. He was so white you’d lose him in a bundle of sheets.

There was something wet on my hand, so I let go of the shattered glass and brought my palm up in front of my face. “Huh,” I said. “I’m bleeding.”

The TV screen cut away to an image of an overweight woman with permed, unnaturally blond hair. “There has been speculation that Bluegate’s new mayor, Juliet White, urged the prosecuting team to drop the charges against Franco in a number of behind-closed-doors meetings. The mayor’s office has so far refused to comment. Mayor White was elected on her promise to wipe out organized crime in Bluegate, and now many are wondering if her dedication to that goal will stretch so far as to include the condoning of vigilante activity. Back to you, Ian.”

Mercifully, the story disappeared from the screen. The newsreaders rolled right on to some story about the spate of unauthorized Limbus Tunnel openings in recent months. I gave my bloody palm another glance and shot the bartender a look. “You gonna give me a napkin or do I have to bleed out on your floor?”

He jumped to attention, scrambled around aimlessly for a few seconds, then thrust his cleaning rag at me. It wasn’t the most hygienic thing I’d ever seen, but I took it anyway and wrapped it around my hand. Tying it up had me stumped, though. I grabbed one end in my teeth and tried to pull it tight.

“Having some trouble, Mr. Franco?”

I swiveled in my chair, rag still in my mouth, to find the source of the voice. Then it was my turn to freak out.

Detective Vivian Reed had given up her usual pantsuit in favor of a slim-fitting button-down shirt and a pair of dark jeans that must’ve been painted on. Her dark hair was trimmed into a practical bob-cut that nicely framed the look of disdain on her face.

And she was drop-dead-and-stand-up-again gorgeous.

I stumbled off my bar stool, sending it skittering across the floor behind me. I made a half-hearted grab for it, missed, and tried to make it look like I’d been meaning for it to fall all along.

“Vivian,” I slurred. “Fancy seeing you here. Get you a drink?”

A flicker of her eyes was the only reaction I got from her dark-skinned face. “We have to talk.”

I nodded a little too quickly. “Yeah. Sit, sit. Barkeep! Liquor us up.”

“Not here,” she said, shooting the bartender a look and a shake of the head that she probably thought I didn’t notice. “There’s been an incident. You have to come down to the station.”

The station. My heart started pounding in a new way. I glanced at the door to the bar. I could’ve made it if I’d been sober. As it was, the tables and chairs in the way looked like a minefield. Still, I wouldn’t go back in a box. I wouldn’t.

“Take it easy, Mr. Franco,” Vivian said. “You’re not in trouble.”

“Easy? I’m easy,” I said, letting my eyes dance around the room. There had to be another exit. I wouldn’t lay a hand on Vivian, but maybe I could distract her. “I’m relaxed as a chimp on Valium.”

“Lady,” the bartender whispered, apparently squeaking out a little courage at last, “be careful. TV says he killed a bunch of people.”

“I know what he did.” She tapped the badge affixed to her belt without taking her eyes off me. “It’s okay. I’m a cop. And all I want is a little help. Something bad’s happened, and Mr. Franco’s going to help me. Aren’t you, Mr. Franco?”

“Not if you don’t stop calling me ‘Mr. Franco’,” I said, but she seemed to have one of those hypnotic voices. My heart rate was slowly coming down to a more reasonable level. “Give me a ‘Miles’ and I’ll come with you.”

I could practically hear her teeth grinding together, but she just sighed and narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Miles. I need you to come downtown with me.”

“What’s the magic word?”

She had me by the jacket collar before I could move. I waved at the bartender as she dragged me away. “See you, boss. I’ll be back to pick up the tab, don’t you worry.”

Vivian shoved me outside into the harsh daylight. Cars barreled past, kicking up smog and heat into a day that was already turning into one of the hottest on record. Summer in Bluegate was usually only distinguishable from winter by the new crop of reality shows that appeared on TV, but today I had enough sweat to make a coat.

She let go of me, and I rearranged my suit jacket on my shoulders. “Manners, Vivian. You heard of them?”

“You’re lucky I didn’t have some uniforms pick you up. They would’ve pulled a taser on you if you’d tried that nonsense with them. Let me look at that hand.”

She grabbed my hand before I could say anything, tossed away the filthy rag, and wrapped a clean bar napkin around the wound.

“Being tasered isn’t so bad,” I said. “Tickles, though. Haven’t seen you since you gave your testimony at the trial.”

“I was working. I’m not your babysitter, Miles.” She jerked her head toward her shiny sedan parked across the road.

“I don’t know what you are anymore,” I said. The drink had done a nice job on my inhibitions, what little I had. “All the shit we went through, and you couldn’t even look at me during the cross examination.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and pursed her lips. “Not now.”

She strode across the road in a break in the traffic, leaving me to catch up.

“Should I write you into my schedule?” I asked. “Only I was hoping we could be adults and talk.”

“We’ll talk about what happened when you’re sober,” she said as she opened the driver’s side door. “For now, we need to ask you a few questions.”

“We?” I said, getting into the back seat. “Who’s we?”

There was an asshole in a sports jacket sitting in the front passenger’s seat. I knew he was an asshole from the way he turned and flashed an immaculately white smile in my direction. He had a jawline that could cut stone, and the sort of perfectly sculpted yet dashingly unkempt blond hair you saw on commercials for men’s perfume. Christ, his chin even had a dimple.

“Detective Gunnar Wade, Special Investigations,” he said, twisting in his seat to offer me his hand. “Good to meet you.”

“The name’s Gofuck,” I said, shaking his hand. “Gofuck Yourself.” I tapped Vivian on the shoulder as she climbed in behind the wheel. “What’s with Pretty Boy?”

Wade’s smile didn’t slip, which just infuriated me more. “I’m Detective Reed’s partner.”

“Yeah? I got her last partner sent to jail. He was a lot bigger than you, as I remember it.”

His grin just got wider.

Vivian started the car. “You two want a pissing contest, do it outside. I just got the upholstery cleaned.”

TWO

I sobered up when the pathologist pulled back the sheet to show me the woman’s face. She was young, blond, and dead. They’d stripped her naked, and now she was lying on a metal table in a room that predated the rest of Bluegate by about thirty years. She didn’t have any goosebumps on her pale skin, even though the room was cold enough to make me shiver. That’s how I knew this was real.

Detective Asshole was somewhere behind me, leaning against the wall next to the double doors. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Vivian watching me, but I never took my eyes off the body. Maybe it was just the light, but the dead woman’s cheeks had a tinge of green in them. That didn’t make sense. She always had cheeks that would make roses feel inadequate.

“You know her?” Vivian asked quietly.

I nodded. “Name’s Claudia. Claudia Hennel.” I ran a hand through my curls. “She’s…she was a singer. Jazz, mostly. Sang with me and my band sometimes. Not for a while, though.”

“How long?” Wade’s voice came from behind me.

I didn’t have the strength to be snarky. “Not since before…before all that stuff with the Chroma.” I tried to work it out. Everything was getting muddled in my head. “A few months before all that.”

“A year ago, then?”

“If you say so.” Jesus, had it been that long? “How’d she buy it?”

The pathologist was a portly man, his lab coat stretching over his pot belly. “Won’t know until we do the autopsy,” he said. “She just came in from Bluegate Hospital this morning. She’d only been there a couple of hours before they called time of death.”

“Murdered?” I asked. The word sounded hollow in my head. I had a sudden urge to vomit, but I swallowed it back.

The pathologist shrugged. “She had a few bruises, but no serious physical trauma. Drug overdose, maybe.”

“No,” I snapped, tearing my eyes from her to glare at the smug-looking bastard. “She was clean. No Ink, no nothing. Didn’t even drink, not once.”

He shrugged again. “We’ll know soon.”

I returned my gaze to the off-color veins snaking up Claudia’s neck. She was German originally. Not much of a beauty, but she had a voice that’d make a gangster cry. She hadn’t hit thirty. She should’ve been healthy.

A sick thought twisted its way into my mind. I balled my hands into fists. “Was she…tell me she wasn’t…”

“Raped?” Vivian asked.

I swallowed back the bile in my throat and nodded.

“We don’t think so,” she said.

“No signs of vaginal or anal trauma,” the pathologist chipped in. “We’ll examine the contents of her stomach for semen—”

I slammed my shoe into the metal frame of the table, making Claudia’s body rock back and forth. The pathologist took a step back, mouth clamping shut.

“Thank you, Stan,” Vivian said, giving him a look she usually reserved for me.

A hand came to rest on my shoulder while I tried to quell the burning in my skull. “Come on, pal,” Wade said. “Let’s go have ourselves a chat.”

“Get your hand off me,” I said, “before I turn it inside out.”

He took his hand back and crossed his arms.

“Miles,” Vivian said. “You might be able to help us. But to do that, you have to talk.”

“Fat lot of good that’ll do,” I said. “I couldn’t do much to help her, could I?”

Vivian silently took my arm and tugged. I held my ground, feet planted wide, fists balled and ready to take a swing at Wade or the pathologist if either of them came too close. But they stayed back, and it was just me and Vivian and Claudia, the only people who mattered right then.

“Miles,” Vivian said again.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I reached out and brushed a stray hair away from Claudia’s face. “See you, kid,” I whispered to her.

Vivian led me away while the pathologist slipped the sheet back over Claudia’s head. He gave a sigh of relief as I left the room.

Wade found us a quiet interview room at the station filled with off-white walls and unpadded furniture. I walked in like a clockwork robot and dropped into the closest seat, the last dregs of alcohol in my system giving the place a dreamy feel.

Claudia’s face swam in front of my eyes. It mingled with the others, with the gangsters I’d killed last winter outside John Andrews’ mansion. I’d been off my head on Chroma at the time, but the photos the prosecution showed at court left no doubt about what I’d done. Burned, crushed, mutilated, human and Vei skulls cracked open, leaking their contents onto tiled floors.

And now Claudia.

“I should have been there,” I whispered.

Wade and Vivian pulled out seats opposite me. “Thought you said you hadn’t seen her in a year,” Wade said.

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“So why you looking so guilty?”

“Bite me, Pretty Boy.”

“What do you know, Franco?”

Vivian raised her hand a little. “Gunnar,” she said warningly. He shot her a look, then shut his yap and settled for giving me the eye.

Vivian reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a little notebook. “You have to cooperate, Miles. You aren’t a suspect. But you knew her, and you might be able to give us something to go on.”

I chewed my lip and knocked on the table with my knuckles. I couldn’t bring myself to meet Vivian’s eye, even now.

“I wasn’t lying, I haven’t seen her in forever. But…but a couple of days ago she called me.”

“Is that strange?”

“For her, it was. She didn’t much care for phones. She was like me that way.”

Wade sat there with a little smirk on his face, but Vivian dutifully scribbled a couple of notes down and nodded. “What did she call about?”

I closed my eyes. Jesus, Claudia. She had no sense, calling a loser like me. “I don’t remember.”

“Ah, enough of this bullshit,” Wade said. “He’s trying to pull a fast one.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ve read your report, Franco. Forgive me if I don’t believe you. Maybe you can call up your pal, the mayor. From what I hear she was all too keen to swallow every line you gave her.”

“Huh, whaddya know.” I cocked my head to the side. “You really are dumber than you look. Fancy that.”

“All right, that’s it.” He stood up and pulled a pair of cuffs from his belt. “Let’s see if you feel like talking after a few hours in a cell.”

“Gunnar,” Vivian said, “it’s okay. Miles is going to talk.”

The asshole shook his head, but he tossed the cuffs down on the table and returned to his seat.

“I don’t remember,” I said, “because I was drunk.” I fixed Wade with a look. “Got it?”

He made a disbelieving noise. “If you were drunk, how do you know she called?”

“I was at home, waiting for the next day of the trial so I could go back in and hear them tear me apart again. I felt like having a bit of a break from it all. So I knocked back half a bottle of bourbon. Nice break, huh?”

“Get on with it, Franco,” Wade said.

“The phone started buzzing, so I stumbled over and picked it up. I was pretty plastered by that time. It was Claudia, of course. She wanted to meet, wanted my help with something, I think. Only then…” I screwed up my eyes.

“Then what?” Vivian said.

“It’s all a blank. Next thing I knew I was waking up on the couch. I’d passed out.” I slammed my hands down on the table and got to my feet. The chair spun, so I picked it up and hurled it against the wall. “I fucking passed out when she needed my help!”

The chair clattered to the ground. My face burned, my eyes burned, every bit of me burned. Christ, I was a screw-up. I’d managed to go my whole goddamn life as one, but it’d never hurt anyone but myself. Now, I couldn’t seem to go two steps without destroying someone’s life, without leaving a trail of bodies behind me.

Wade slammed into me, knocking the rage out of me. He wrenched my arm behind my back and pushed me up against the wall.

“Enough!” Vivian yelled.

The pressure on my arm didn’t ease, and to be honest, I didn’t want it to. I should’ve gone to prison. At least there I couldn’t do as much damage.

“Are you going to be calm?” Wade said into my ear.

“He’ll be calm,” Vivian said. She appeared beside me, close enough I could smell the hint of cinnamon in her perfume. “Right, Miles?”

I took a few deep breaths and nodded. Wade lessened the pressure on my arm, giving me enough room to turn and shove the bastard away by his sports jacket. I half-hoped he’d sock me one, but he just picked up the chair I’d thrown and thumped it down in front of me. “Sit.”

I sat. Vivian rested against the table while Wade folded his arms and leaned menacingly in the corner.

“Tell us about her,” Vivian said.

I nodded and tried to get my thoughts together. “Like I said, she sang with my band sometimes.” Calling it a band was a stretch, to be honest. A trumpet, a double bass, and a keyboard do not a band make. “She first showed up at one of our gigs about two years back, when we sucked even more than we do now.”

I could still remember the white cocktail dress she’d worn, in a biker bar, no less. You couldn’t not notice her. Bubbles, our keyboardist, nearly fell over himself when he saw her sitting there, waiting for us to start playing. I can’t say I was much better. I’ve always been wary of women. But Claudia was something else.

“She can’t have been off the plane for more than a couple of months,” I continued. “Still had an accent thick enough to spread on your toast. But she had a pair of lungs on her, that’s for sure. Salin, our double bassist, convinced her to come sing with us a few nights a month. She didn’t take much convincing, really.”

“Were you two intimate?” Vivian asked.

My face grew hot. Why couldn’t it have been Wade who asked me questions like that? “No, never. She lived alone, I don’t know where. I don’t think she even had a boyfriend. Never once heard her talk about stuff like that. The music was enough for her.”

Vivian scribbled away in her notebook. “And you don’t have any idea what trouble she was in?”

I suppressed the urge to punch things again and settled for shaking my head. “I wish I did. Christ, you have no idea.”

Vivian nodded and gave Wade a look. I couldn’t tell what secret cop signals passed between them, but he just twisted his mouth up and shrugged.

“Okay, that’s great, Miles,” Vivian said. She sounded tired. Had I done that to her? “We’ll get in touch with your bandmates, see if they know anything.”

“What are you going to do with her?”

“We’ll do the autopsy, see what we can find out. Then we’ll return her to her family.”

I nodded. This was a nightmare. Wade opened the interview room door while Vivian stood up. I got to my feet as well, feeling like I was carrying a sack of rocks on my back.

“One thing, before I go,” I said. “I didn’t think you were a murder cop.”

“I’m not.”

“Then what is this to you?”

She shrugged and gave Wade a glance.

“There’s been others, hasn’t there?” I asked.

“We’ll call you if we need to ask you anything else,” Vivian said. She stepped aside and gestured to the door.

I chewed my lip and nodded slowly. “Yeah, all right. You still owe me that talk.” I waved to Wade. “See you round, Pretty Boy.”

He smirked and said nothing. I walked out of the interrogation room alone. The two cops shut the door behind me. A uniform escorted me outside, back into the oppressive heat. He didn’t talk, and neither did I. Everyone was happier that way.

He left me on the footpath, where cars spewed out smog that billowed in the heat. I walked along the block a little way, avoiding all eye contact with the strangers that passed, until I found a cool alley free of homeless people.

I bent over behind a dumpster and heaved my guts into a stormwater drain. Again and again I threw up, acid burning my nose, tears welling in my eyes. I could see Claudia standing in front of me, clear as day, her eyes wide open. I stretched out my hand toward her, but I couldn’t touch her. Enough sanity clung to my mind to tell me she wasn’t really there. That sure as hell didn’t make it less spooky. What the hell was wrong with me? Was it the drink, or the stress of the trial? Or was it something worse? My aching stomach clenched. Had something taken a bite out of my mind? I looked to Claudia for answers, but she wasn’t in a talking mood. Silently, she accused me of failing her. She was right.

When my stomach ran dry, I stumbled back and dropped down onto a flattened cardboard box. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the notebook I’d swiped from Wade’s jacket pocket after my little tantrum.

The cocky son of a bitch had never even noticed. He almost made it too easy.

It was one of those notebooks that flip open at the top, so you could easily hold it with one hand. Wade’s writing was neat, almost girlish. I flipped through until I found the names of the other victims. Other people dead the same way as Claudia.

Steve A. Tyler. Human. Dock worker. Deceased.

Robert Mooney. Vei. Transient. Deceased.

Leslie Croy. Vei. Cleaner (no work permit). Deceased.

Teresa A. Bruening. Human. Transient. Deceased.

Jerry K. McLawhorn. Human. Gang associate. Deceased.

Penny Coleman. Vei. Prostitute. Patient at Mercy of the Eight Hospital.

I read the last entry again. One of them was alive? I read the rest of the page. This Penny Coleman was in intensive care at a private hospital that only treated Vei. I’d ridden past the place a couple of times. It looked expensive. How could a Vei prostitute get treatment there?

And more importantly, what did she know about what’d happened to Claudia?

I read the brief entry a couple more times. It wasn’t far. I could go see her, do some snooping. Maybe find out…

I sighed and closed my eyes. What the hell was I doing? I’d screwed up enough already. I was barely out of court, and it wouldn’t take much to get me back in front of a judge. The cops could do their job. They’d find out what happened to Claudia.

I stood and tossed the notebook into the dumpster. The ghosts of the people I’d killed followed me as I walked back out onto the street, a new one at their head. I hailed a taxi, and Claudia climbed in beside me.

“Where to, chief?” the driver asked.

“Get me to a bar,” I said.

Claudia stared at me, unblinking. I tried not to notice.

THREE

It wasn’t even 9 p.m. when the bartender kicked me out. I’d only polished off half a dozen beers and a whiskey or three, but I was in the mood for self-flagellation. As it turned out, I got someone else to do it for me. Some associate of the Gravediggers gang was trying his moves on a plump girl that couldn’t have been more than twenty, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

By that time I was buzzed enough and angry enough to stick my nose in. I had a small bottle of Kemia in my pocket, and a couple of Pin Holes that would teach the bastard a lesson. Maybe I could even come up with something a bit more original. How well would his harassment work if I turned his underwear into a full-strength chastity belt?

But I never put my hand on the Kemia. As I pictured opening the Pin Hole, the image of a bloodied corpse flashed in front of my eyes. The ghosts had been absent since I drowned them in beer, but even the thought of Tunneling…

So I did it the old-fashioned way. I strode across the room, pulled the maggot off the poor girl, and shoved him up against the bar. “Who taught you your manners?”

If he answered, I didn’t hear, since his pal broke a pool cue over my head. I went down in a heap and took a couple of blows to the ribs before the gruff-looking barkeep broke it up. Wasn’t much of a bar brawl. I took it the wannabe Gravediggers were regulars, because it was me that got put out on my ass after they cleaned out my wallet of the lone twenty.

I wasn’t hurt bad, but I sat out on the corner just the same. A cop car blasted past, sirens blazing. A couple of ghosts watched me from across the road.

The girl who was being accosted stumbled out of the bar a few minutes later. She saw me sitting there and drew up short.

“You okay, kid?” I asked, clambering to my feet. “He didn’t touch you, did he?”

She sniffed and gave me the evil eye. “Fucking weirdo.” She turned on her high heels and clattered away down the street. I didn’t begrudge her it. She didn’t owe me anything.

All right, a goddamn “thank you” would’ve been nice, but I wasn’t bitter or nothing.

It was a warm night, so I slung my jacket over my shoulder and stumbled home with my ghosts in tow. Home, for me, was 2310 Marlowe Street, an apartment building next to a laundromat that I’m pretty sure was a front for a drug house. The apartment building was practically begging to be torn down. When it was windy the building threatened to do the job itself. Still, it was home.

I was deep inside my own head as the building came into sight across the road. I couldn’t get Claudia out of my thoughts. What the hell had she gotten into? Did I really know her as well as I thought I did? Most of our conversations had revolved around simple things. The finer points of Johnny Hodges’ saxophone work in “Don't Get Around Much Anymore”, or whether Stan Kenton’s jazz orchestra was too grandiose. She was normally a pretty quiet girl, but when it came to music, it was a different story.

She wasn’t talking much now, though. She walked beside me, her shoes not making so much as a whisper. Her eyes never left my face. Please, Claudia, I begged, let me be. I can’t go round messing things up anymore. I can’t—

A sensation of fleeting chaos passed through my head.

I stopped dead. That was a Pin Hole. Someone was Tunneling, and they were close.

I cast my eyes around. Light trickled through a crack in the curtains on the ninth floor of my apartment building.

That was my apartment. But who…?

“Tania,” I whispered.

I dashed across the road, earning myself an angry horn blast from a passing motorist. No time to bother with the front door. The fire escape was faster.

I pulled my bottle of Kemia and a small silver coin from my jacket pockets as I ran. I couldn’t afford to be worried about Tunneling now. Blood pounded in my head. I tossed my jacket away and ripped the cork from the bottle. The expensive liquid splashed out as I upended the bottle over the coin. Silvery Kemia flowed into the grooves I’d carved into the coin. A new chaotic awareness pressed behind my eyes.

Kemia was a catalyst. Making a Tunnel or a Pin Hole without one was like trying to cook a steak with a candle. But give your prepared circle a dash of the good stuff, and you had yourself a goddamn bonfire.

I hummed as I ran, more out of habit than anything else, while I matched my thoughts to the chaos fighting for release. Tunneling worked by opening a link between this world and Heaven, a world where the only constant was change, where probability and instability controlled everything.

I balled up my rage and fear and delivered it to the coin in a blow of energy. Chaos exploded inside my mind for a moment before I walled it off. A black spot appeared in the center of the coin and started expanding.

Reality shimmered around me as I tapped into the madness of Heaven and let it expand into our world. Each Pin Hole is crafted for a specific purpose. A special delivery of controlled chaos. This one was new, something I’d only worked out a few months ago. It was powerful, and I’d be a wreck when I was done, but it was worth it. I turned the chaos inward and felt it change me into a reflection of what I could have been, had a few things in history been different.

My ears popped, then I wasn’t me anymore. Still running, I dropped down on all fours, coiled the muscles in my arms and legs, and leaped.

I reached the second floor fire escape platform in a single bound. Huge, simian hands had replaced mine. They snatched at the rusted iron handrail and swung me up. Animal strength surged through me, fueled by fear and adrenaline.

Above me, I could feel the other chaos. I gritted my teeth and leaped again and again, platform to platform.

I hit the ninth floor and wrenched open my bedroom window, nearly taking the thing out of its frame. Light flooded into my room from the living area. The sensation of unreality hit a crescendo.

“Tania!” I yelled as I dived through the window. A scraping sound came from the other room. I released my Pin Hole, allowing my body to snap back to its normal, scrawny self. I staggered out into the living room.

Tania sprang to her feet and nearly tripped over the couch as she backpedaled from me. My landlady’s daughter was a teenager, but she cowered like a toddler. Her hands slid quickly behind her back, but not quick enough.

“The hell you think you’re doing?” I said. “Release the Pin Hole.”

“But—”

“Now, kid.”

She narrowed her eyes and gave me one of her most practiced glares. I wasn’t buying it.

“Release it,” I growled, “or I swear to God I’ll march you downstairs and tell your mother what you’ve been up to.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” She took a step toward me, ponytail bouncing behind her. “Mom would crucify you.”

“Try me.”

The staring contest lasted nearly a minute. She was a petite thing, dressed in a V-neck T-shirt and a pair of shorts, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t look like a beat cop about to administer some street justice.

The sensation of chaos wavered. “You’re losing concentration,” I said. “Drop it.”

Her scowl deepened, and the chaos stabilized for an instant before starting to wobble like a spinning top.

“Kid,” I said.

She huffed and hurled something to the ground. A circular piece of wood not much bigger than a bottle cap rolled away along the carpet, leaving a trail of silvery Kemia behind it. A bouquet of wildflowers hit the ground as well, scattering leaves and petals across the floor. An instant later they disappeared, replaced by a scattering of plant seeds.

“I had it under control until you came barging in,” she said. She put her hands on her narrow hips. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Of course you are.” I picked up the wooden circle and waved it under her nose. “You’re sixteen, for Christ’s sake. Everyone’s stupid at sixteen.”

“I’m seventeen. My birthday was two months ago.” She sniffed and wrinkled up her nose. “You reek, Miles. How much have you had to drink?”

I palmed the wooden circle and slipped it in my pocket. “Don’t go changing subjects on me.” I wiped my sleeve across my face and hoped the drink hadn’t made my nose look like Rudolph’s. “What are you doing here, kid?”

“Practising,” she said. “We were supposed to have a lesson. Four hours ago.”

“We were?”

She narrowed her eyes so much I didn’t believe she could see anything at all.

“All right,” I said, “I got held up. I had court.”

“I’ve seen the news. You were out before midday.”

“I had some other things I had to do as well.”

“Yeah,” she said, disapproval painting her face. “I’m sure you did.”

I massaged my forehead, then brushed past her and collapsed into the couch. “How many times I gotta tell you not to Tunnel without me around, huh? It’s dangerous, going round changing reality.”

“Oh, please,” she said. “It was just a tiny Pin Hole. A bunch of flowers. It’s not like it was a Limbus Tunnel.”

Limbus was what the bozos at Immigration had dubbed the new dimension I'd managed to stumble on last winter. Sounded like a stupid damn name to me, but I guess it fit better that Heaven did.

It was a different sort of place entirely, or at least I guessed it must have been, since as far as I knew no one had actually managed to make it all the way there without being ambushed by any of the bizarre creatures that prowled around. I hadn't told anyone about the Tunnel I opened, but it was powerful enough that any half-decent Tunneler within a quarter mile would have been able to sense it. Some secrets were impossible to keep.

“You can’t go around Tunneling on your own,” I said.

“How else am I supposed to do it when you’re never around? You promised to teach me, Miles. So where have you been?”

I shook my head, trying to keep the anger up in the face of overwhelming guilt. “Never mind me. If I’m not here, you don’t Tunnel. End of story. You're not ready yet, and I'm not cleaning your brains out of the carpet when you fuck up."

Tania stomped away from me and snatched up her school backpack. "Miles, the only fuck-up around here is you."

My gut twisted. "Where are you going?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

"Home." She brushed past me and wrenched open the front door.

“I’m trying to protect you, kid.”

She shook her head. “You just don’t get it, do you?” She turned away, then paused. “By the way, the mayor’s assistant called when you were out.”

I’ll be honest; I was grateful for the change of subject. “Huh? What the hell does she want now?”

“You’re invited to a fundraiser tomorrow night. Address is over there.” She jerked her head toward the phone, then spun away. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It’s an open bar.”

She slammed the door so hard the apartment shook.

I buried my face in my hands. I felt like a skeleton that’d forgotten to lie down. The look on Tania’s face….

I opened my eyes and found Claudia’s ghost standing over me.

“Oh Christ, don’t you give me that look too,” I said.

She didn’t reply. Of course she didn’t. Not even a figment of my imagination wanted to stoop to talking with a loser like me.

I sat there, damn near catatonic with Claudia standing in the corner watching me. Wouldn’t be so bad to just lie there forever. It’d save me from ruining anyone else’s lives.

Tania deserved a real teacher, not some schlub like me. Seventeen, she said she was now. She’d be out of high school soon, then she could go do her training proper. Provided she didn’t get herself killed first. She was headstrong, stubborn. Maybe I could take away her Kemia. I just needed her to be safe. After all she’d been through—all I’d put her through—I couldn’t let her end up another corpse.

When I couldn’t take Claudia’s stares anymore, I hauled myself up and went outside to find my jacket. It was still lying next to the fire escape, right where I’d tossed it. I couldn’t work out which stains were new and which were old. I went back inside, dragged myself back upstairs, and fed my goldfish. Munsey and Frank were swimming around in pointless circles in their bowl by the front door, stirring up light growths of algae on the surface. I could feel them judging me as I scattered the flakes in.

“Sorry, guys. I’ve been busy. I’ll clean it later.”

They munched on their flakes, eyeing me carefully, before swimming away to hide in the fake hollow log at the bottom of their bowl. Even my fish had a lousy opinion of me.

Claudia followed me into the bathroom where I stood in the lukewarm shower for an hour. She followed me back to the kitchen where I tried to find something to eat that didn’t make me want to puke everything up again. She stood over me all night while I sat flicking channels on the TV until the sun began to rise.

I finally clambered into bed at seven in the morning. I felt so thin you could stick a pin right through me. I lay down and closed my eyes. Claudia pulled them open again.

“Please,” I said. “You heard Tania. I can’t even get my own life together.”

She just stood over me, staring.

“I’m sorry, all right? I want to change it. Christ, you got no idea. What do I gotta do to make it up to you?”

Her eyes were blue ice.

“No,” I said. “You know I can’t get involved. Not now. Once I get my life back together, then maybe.”

She never blinked. And she never would again.

I sighed and rubbed my itchy eyes. Slowly, like a suicider taking his last stroll to the bridge, I slid out of bed. “All right. Just tell me this. Did it hurt? Did it hurt when they killed you?”

A smile played on her lips, and she shrugged.

“Figures,” I said. “Gotta find everything out my own damn self.”

I got dressed, grabbed a bottle of Kemia from the fridge, and left the apartment.

FOUR

My old 250cc Yamaha bike hadn’t run so well ever since John Andrews’ gangsters had tuned it up with baseball bats and tire irons. I’d gotten reimbursed by the police department to cover the damage to the gas tank and the frame, which I’m pretty sure had been Vivian’s doing. Still, the engine really needed a complete overhaul. After the amount of back rent I had to pay to keep Tania’s mom from booting me out of the apartment, there hadn’t been much left for luxuries like that.

So I put up with the rattles and the random engine power fluctuations, all the while hoping my teeth didn’t get shaken loose. I rode the miniature monstrosity south along the expressway and took the exit onto Grant Street. The neighborhood breathed Vei culture this far south. I passed entire shopping blocks without seeing a word of English displayed. Must’ve been nearly ninety per cent Vei in the tightly-packed low rises, with a few culturally oversensitive humans to round out the balance. The area ran the whole gamut of expensive red brick townhouses to roads that were more pothole than street. I rode slowly, taking in the scent of unnatural spices and fragrances that seemed to saturate the area. It was comforting in a way.

I didn’t know where Claudia lived, and I figured the cops would’ve been over the place anyway. If it was any other cop I would’ve gone to have a poke around myself, but I trusted Vivian not to miss anything. Still, there were other places I could stick my nose in. Places I might have an advantage over the cops.

The Mercy of the Eight hospital was easy to spot. It was easily the biggest building around, and the only one surrounded by grass and trees. The orange stucco building sat at the back of a long driveway lined with flowers and trees hardy enough to eke out a living amongst the city’s smog. I brought my bike to a halt on the footpath outside and strolled up the driveway on foot.

Claudia was nowhere to be seen. I walked along the unsealed gravel driveway, breathing in the smell of the flowers on either side of me. The morning was warm and quiet, which made the hangover easier to bear. I shoved my hands in my pockets and licked my lips. Being away from the noise of the central city made me shifty. You knew where you stood when you were serenaded each morning by the sound of sirens. I didn’t belong here.

As I reached the main building, a pair of Vei came striding out through the swinging double doors. They were female, one much younger than the other. Unlike the Vei that lived in the city, they’d eschewed human-style clothes and wore tunics woven from enough different colored fabrics to give someone an epileptic fit. The older one was the first to see me, and jerked nearly to a stop. The younger one did the same, her wide mouth dropping open to reveal an array of shark-like teeth.

Vei took a bit of getting used to. They were hairless, pale-skinned, and not generally graced with the sort of looks that had you swooning. Between their round, oversized heads and their bugged out eyes, they attracted their share of attention. In the thirty or so years since they’d started immigrating from Heaven into the twenty-four Bore cities on Earth, they’d been pestered by every biologist and anthropologist who could weasel a grant out of someone.

But in this part of town, I was the one who was out of place. The two Vei women scurried past me, eyeing me furtively. I didn’t take it personal. Folks had shot worse things than glances at me before.

I straightened my jacket and used my tongue to try to wipe away the fuzzy feeling on my teeth, then shouldered my way through the doors. A blast of blessed air-conditioning swooshed onto me. The blood-red walls that lined the main corridor were a bit off-putting. It didn’t help how badly they clashed with the green floors. My hungover brain ached a little at the insult to its aesthetic sensibilities.

The funny looks from Vei continued as I wandered down the hall. A few of the elderly ones shuffled past me on walkers, practically hugging the walls to keep out of my way. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was human or if I just looked like the creature from the Black Lagoon. I tried smiling at one old Vei man, and he started shuffling faster. I could tell I was going to be popular here.

I found the reception desk at the end of the hall. The Vei woman sitting there was by far the chubbiest Vei I’d ever seen. Vei medical systems don’t really work the same as ours, and I’d never been able to work out the ranks of healers and administrators. I figured the closest job title was “nurse”. She glared up at me over a pair of bifocals. I gave my friendly smile another shot.

“I’m looking for a patient, a Vei woman,” I said in my best Vei. The harsh sounds did a number on my throat, but it was enough to get the nurse’s attention. It wasn’t often you found a human who spoke Vei. Outside of the mixed-race gangs, anyway. Came in handy for a Tunneler, though, especially if you had to spend any extended periods of time in Heaven.

The nurse sniffed. “Name?”

“Penny something,” I said. “Um, Collins? Coltrane? Coleman, that’s it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you family?”

And they said Vei didn’t have a sense of humor. “Yeah, can’t you tell? People always said we looked alike.”

Her scowl could’ve turned me to stone. I glanced around the lobby. A tall Vei man in human clothes eyed me from his seat in the corner. I looked away again so he didn’t think I was staring.

Then inspiration hit. I turned back to the nurse. “I’m Detective Johnson with the city. Special Investigations. I think my colleague, Detective Wade, has been to talk to Penny.”

“Ah, yes. He tried,” she said, not letting go of the scowl. From what I’d heard, cops didn’t have many fans in the Vei communities. Lots of Vei wondered what the hell the cops had ever done for them, other than rounding up illegal immigrants. It was a fair question. “Miss Coleman spoke little English, and the policeman spoke even less Vei.”

I nodded, playing it cool. “That’s why I’m here. Translator duty, see?”

The nurse licked her lips, studying me for a moment, then shuffled through a pile of papers. No computer in sight; Vei didn’t take to such things. Neither did I, to be honest. My old pal, Desmond, had been trying to fit me with some fancy smartphone ever since my old cell took on water. Why anyone’d want a phone that was smarter than them was beyond me. My replacement brick suited me just fine.

Eventually, she pulled out a file, sniffed again, then opened it. The patient’s Vei name was scrawled on the admission form, looking as unpronounceable as most Vei names. No wonder they took on human names when they came to Earth.

The chair creaked as she hefted herself up and came around the side of the reception desk. “Follow me.”

“If it’s all the same,” I said, “I’d like to talk to her alone. It’s something of a delicate matter. You understand.”

“I cannot leave you alone with her, Detective.”

“Put someone outside the door to keep an eye on me, then.”

She eyed me a bit more, then slowly nodded. “Very well. I’ll have someone there in a moment. Room thirty-three. End of the corridor.”

I nodded my thanks and tried my smile one last time. When it got no response, I returned my hands to my pockets and strolled down the hallway.

I really hoped I knew what I was doing. Didn’t sound like the cops had much luck. I almost grinned at the thought of Detective Wade trying to communicate without knowing a word of Vei. I bet the pretty bastard didn’t look so smug then.

The thought was so sweet I almost walked right past room thirty-three. It was tucked into a corner at the end of the corridor. The door was closed, and it took me a couple of seconds to translate the sign stuck to it.

Isolation. Great. Whose bright idea had this been?

A metal shelf next to the door held a few packets of face masks and gloves. Both were designed for Vei anatomy; the face mask would probably work, even if it was a bit big, but the narrow fingers of the gloves would be impossible to get on. My escort hadn’t shown up yet. I contemplated turning around and walking right back out. I wasn’t keen on catching whatever the hell this was. I could wind up pushing daisies, or worse, locked up in my own goddamn isolation room. I’d just escaped one prison. Did I really want another?

I turned to find Claudia’s ghost standing at the end of the corridor. She stared at me, emotionless, her head cocked to one side.

“Christ,” I muttered. “Now you’re just getting pushy.”

I fixed a mask to my face, took what I hoped wasn’t my last breath, and shoved open the door to room thirty-three.

Penny Coleman lay sleeping in a stretcher bed, the sole occupant of the narrow room. Sunlight trickled through the window and shone directly on the Vei woman, illuminating the unnatural green tinge of her skin. She made the starving kids on those TV ads look like fatsos.

I crept closer, ignoring the thud in my chest when the door closed behind me. I realized I was holding my breath. The woman was on the wrong side of pretty. Her face was worn, like a pair of jeans put through the wash too many times. Despite everything, she seemed to have painted her face with the kind of garish, overwrought makeup favored by Vei men. Wade’s notebook had said she was a prostitute. I picked her for a streetwalker. The world had been too hard on her for her to come from any high-class joints.

I gave another thought to leaving the room, then kicked that idea aside. I was here now, might as well make the best of it.

“Miss Coleman?” I said in English, then switched to Vei. “I know you’re awake. You’re not breathing right to be asleep.”

Her breathing stilled for a moment, then her eyelids crawled open. Her eyes swiveled to focus on me, but the rest of her stayed completely still. Her face was slack.

“Leave me, human,” Penny said in Vei. Her voice was quiet, raspy. She rolled her head away from me. Greenish veins bulged in her neck, disappearing beneath a white blanket. I remembered the same rivers beneath Claudia’s pale skin back in the morgue. Hell, I could probably see them right now if I cared for another hallucination.

“Soon,” I said. “I’m with the police. Special Investigations. I need to talk.”

She groaned. A spasm clutched at her throat and she doubled over as if to cough, then she cringed and settled back down. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She looked like hell.

Still, I had ghosts to get off my back. “What’s wrong with you? Did someone cause this?”

No response. I clicked my fingers in her face, but she didn’t stir.

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Miss Coleman.”

She rolled her head back toward me. “No help…for me.”

I had to admit, she might’ve had the right of it. Her left arm was lying beside her, being fed by an IV hooked up to a bag behind her. Half a dozen track marks covered the crook of her arm and the veins of her forearm. At least a few of them were stained black. She’d taken Ink recently. The Vei drug was particularly popular among human junkies, but it still had its consumers among the less affluent Vei.

“Maybe you can give me a hand, then,” I said. “Folks are dying, Vei and human. You know anything about that?”

She shook her head slowly.

“You sure? Because they all got what you got.” I thought about something Asshole Wade said. “Did you take a bad hit? Tainted Ink? Drugs? Is that it?”

A shiver ran through her. “Don’t…remember…” Her eyes drifted closed. Goddamn it.

“Hey, wake up,” I said. I took a step forward—contagiousness be damned—and shook her by the shoulder. “We’re not done yet.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice boomed from behind me.

I jumped half-way out of my skin and released Penny. I spun to find the nurse standing in the open doorway, one hand on her hip and the other pointed at me in an accusatory fashion. Another nurse, a Vei male, stood beside her, eyeing me carefully.

Breathing hard, I tried to get my heart rate under control. “Nothing.”

She stomped toward me, and I decided I should come up with a more compelling story.

“Just asking her a few questions,” I said. “My investigation—”

“—is a pile of Kuroth shit.” She grabbed me by the arm and fast-walked me away from Penny. “There’s no Detective Johnson in Bluegate. I checked.”

“Really?” What were the chances of that? I licked my lips.

“You were on the television,” she said. “I saw you. I heard what you did. I think you should leave.”

No. I wasn’t done yet, goddamn it! I tried to pull away, but the woman had a grip like a grizzly bear and a scowl to match.

Claudia watched from the corner. The ghost’s skin started to flake while tears flowed down her green-tinged cheeks.

I cast a final look back at Penny Coleman. She stared up at the ceiling through slitted eyes, her breathing slow and erratic. She had answers, I knew she did. I needed her!

I had my hand around the bottle of Kemia in my jacket pocket before I realized what I was doing. I froze, the glass bottle cool against my palm, and let my breath come hard through my nostrils. Images flowed in my head, images of blood and fire.

I imagined sapping the nurse over the head. She would fall, blood streaking from her forehead, while I sprinted back into the isolation room. I could Tunnel myself a hole in the wall and snatch Penny out of bed. She was sick; she wouldn’t weigh much. I’d put her over the back of my bike and take her somewhere I could get answers. And I would get those answers, whatever it took.

Reality snapped back in front of me. I tasted bile, and sweat poured from my forehead. Jesus Christ, what the hell kind of person was I? A year ago I wouldn’t have hurt a fly if my life depended on it. Now…

I released the Kemia and clutched my hands together, not trusting myself. The nurse dragged my sorry ass back along the corridor, and in every doorway we passed I saw Claudia standing there.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

The nurse gave me a look, but said nothing. The male nurse followed us to the front doors, but he didn’t lay hands on me. I went passively now.

The nurse shoved me out the door with more grace than I deserved. “Don’t even think about coming back,” she said in Vei.

I nodded, shoved my hands in my pockets, and trudged out to the driveway, eyes on my feet. I could feel the nurse’s eyes on my back as I walked away.

Well, Miles, didn’t that go well?

All I could think of was riding to the nearest bar and drinking until I went blind. What the hell was I thinking, taking advice from a ghost? Not even a ghost, just a figment of my imagination.

A footstep crunched on the gravel behind me. I didn’t register it until two pairs of hands grabbed hold of my shoulders.

“Hey, what—?”

Something hard slammed into my gut. My eyes bugged, the air driven out of me. I went down in a heap, pain arcing through my body.

“Get him up,” a male voice said in Vei.

The hands tightened on my shoulders and hauled me to my feet. I jerked my head around, trying to see who’d tagged me. Someone sapped me across the head. The hospital gardens blurred, dimmed.

When the world came back into focus I was being dragged off the driveway and into a clump of trees and low-lying bushes. The scent of pine mingled with my sweat and the body odors of the Vei carrying me. I tried to kick out, get loose, but all I did was twist myself more off-balance.

I panted, head swimming, as the hospital disappeared from view behind a patch of greenery. The men threw me to the ground at the base of a tree, right on top of a root. Another wave of pain shot up my tailbone.

I got my first look at the men, and I wasn’t impressed. All three were Vei, though they dressed in human clothes; button-down shirts for all. I pegged them in their thirties—Vei aged around the same rate as humans—although the tallest one could be a bit older. It took me a second before I remembered the tall Vei from the hospital lobby, the one who’d been eyeing me. The other two I didn’t recognize. They were stockier, not to mention uglier, and I didn’t take kindly to the way they’d treated me so far.

“That,” I said, “was uncalled for.”

One of the stocky ones put his boot into me. I doubled over, retching.

“See if he’s carrying,” the tall one said when my vision returned.

One of them held me still while the other turned out my pockets. He tossed my wallet, cell phone, and my bottle of Kemia to the older one, who studied me with dead eyes. When I was relieved of all my belongings, Stocky the First cuffed me again, then stood and backed away.

I eyed the tall Vei as he crouched down in front of me. Nonchalantly, he pulled a switchblade from his trouser pocket and flicked it open inches from my face.

I gulped.

“Not much to say now, eh?” he said, waving the knife in front of my nose. “Maybe we can change that.”

“Look, buddy, I don’t know who the hell you are—”

“Hold him.”

One Vei grabbed my arms, the other, my head. The tall one pressed the point of the knife against my chin, and a sharp sting followed. I felt a pressing need to keep my trap shut.

“You don’t learn fast, do you?” the tall one said. “Keep quiet. We’ve got questions for you. You understand me, hairball?”

I did, and I tried to convey that without moving my head.

“Good,” the tall one said. “We seen your picture in the papers, Miles Franco. We know you’re not with the police, like you told the nurse in there.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“So tell me this, Mr. Franco,” he said. “Who are you working for?”

The pressure of the knife on my chin lessened enough for me to open my mouth without skewering myself. “I’m working for nobody.”

The knife point returned, harder this time. I cringed and strained against the stocky Vei’s headlock.

“Liar!” the tall Vei said. “Are you with AISOR?”

“Huh?” I said.

“The Collective then? Eh?” I could swear the knife was drawing blood. “Tell me!”

The one holding my arms spoke up. “Aran, be calm.”

Aran didn’t seem too enthralled with that idea, but he stopped baring his teeth at me and let the knife point leave my skin.

“Look, you crazy son of a bitch,” I said, getting off to a good start, “I haven’t got a goddamn clue what you’re talking about. I came to talk to the Coleman girl because I thought she could help me with something.” His arm twitched, and I scowled. “And if you put that knife on me one more time, so help me God, I will tear your nuts off with my teeth.”

He snarled, breathing halitosis breath in my face. I met his stare, forcing myself not to look away. After a minute, he lowered the knife a fraction.

“A friend of mine just punched out,” I said. “Cops think whatever is making the Coleman girl sick killed my friend. I’m inclined to agree.”

Silence passed between us. Not even a bird chirped. Then the Vei holding my arms spoke again. “He could be telling the truth.”

“I am,” I said to the tall one, the one they called Aran. “Scout’s honor. Question is, who or what are these things you’re so concerned about. A-something? The Collective?”

Aran rolled his tongue along his pointed teeth. “If I find out you’re lying, I’ll gut you, Franco.”

“I get that a lot.”

His cheek twitched. “Keep your nose out of this. And don’t come near my sister again.”

“Sister?” I said. “You mean…Penny? The Coleman girl is your sister? What the hell is going on here?”

He bared his teeth. “You just don’t listen. Fucking idiot human.” He glanced at the others. “Keep him still.”

He brought the knife past my face. My heart hammered, my gut clenched.

“Hey, wait, what are you—?”

Pain tore through my left ear. Someone was driving hot pokers into it. My vision spotted, vomit threatened to spill from my throat.

When the pain faded from intense torture to mild agony, I was alone. I lay huddled on the ground, shaking, drenched in sweat.

When I could move, I gingerly touched my ear. A new wave of pain surged through me, and my vision went blurry again. My hand came away streaked with red.

I lay there for a moment, breathing hard. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything except fear and pain. Slowly, ever so slowly, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees.

Claudia watched me as I groped around on the ground. I found my things a few feet away in the grass, tossed carelessly aside. I returned my Kemia and wallet to their respective pockets.

I dialed a number on my brick of a cell phone. I nearly pressed it to my left ear, catching myself just in time.

Desmond picked up after four rings. “You’re calling from your cell. What are you into now, guy?”

“This and that,” I said, dabbing at my bloody ear with my shirt sleeve. “Fancy a drive? I could do with a pick up.”

He sighed. “You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?”

FIVE

“You know,” Desmond said as I stumbled into the passenger seat, “I’m having trouble remembering a time when you didn’t look like shit. What on earth happened to your ear?”

Claudia appeared beside me. I slumped down in the seat and avoided looking at her. “I slipped and fell onto some knife-wielding maniac.”

“Jesus, guy, we gotta get you to a hospital.”

“Nuts to that. I just came from a goddamn hospital. Take me home, driver.”

Desmond frowned at me. He was a good-looking guy, I guess, in a youthful way. He still had the same mussed, sandy hair he’d had back at university, when we did our Tunneling training together, though he’d added a trimmed beard in recent months. He’d got a bit of a pot belly in the last couple of years, ever since he gave up the Tunneling gig. Still, if he had a merit badge for every time he’d dragged my ass out of some scrape or other, he could use them to wallpaper the apartment he and his boyfriend shared.

“What about your bike?” he asked, nodding toward the side of the road where it sat.

I shrugged. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow. If some hoodlum can manage to get the hunk of junk started, he’s welcome to it.”

Desmond nodded, started the car, and peeled away from the curb. He drove a sleek blue convertible. It was something of a miracle in this city that it hadn’t been boosted. Despite the power humming beneath the hood, Desmond kept to the speed limit, driving annoyingly carefully.

“Seriously, guy,” he said after a while, “what’s going on? You look like you’ve been twelve rounds with a kangaroo. I didn’t hear from you after the trial. And Tania called me this morning, saying you went off your nut at her last night.”

Aw, hell. I was going to get another lecture, I could feel it. “She was Tunneling.”

“So?”

“Unsupervised.”

“You’ve been teaching her, haven’t you?”

“She’s not ready yet.”

He grinned. “That so? How old were you when you started Tunneling?”

“You suggesting I’m some kind of suitable role model, Des?”

“I’m just saying, it’s not like you.”

“She needs protecting,” I said. I rummaged through the glove compartment, found some tissues, and pressed a wad to my ear to staunch the bleeding. “She nearly got herself killed last winter.”

“So did you, as I recall. But that doesn’t mean you can rant and rave at her.”

I gave him a sharp look that he didn't see. “I wasn’t ranting. I was just stating my views forcefully, is all.”

He shrugged and pulled onto the expressway going north. The morning was heating up already, making the air above the road shimmer.

“We’re worried about you, guy,” he said after a minute. “You ain’t been the same the last few months. Bluegate’s changing, things are getting better. But I’ve never seen you so miserable.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. The streets of South Bluegate rolled beneath the expressway as we drove. Things were getting better? Hell if I could see it. Over there, to the north, the six-hundred-foot-wide Tunnel called the Bore still sat in the river, glowing with unearthly blue. Every day the Immigrations and Customs officials got their hands greased by gangsters who wanted to ship in Ink and precious metals or smuggle out alcohol to Heaven. Sure, the gang landscape had changed since the Chroma Wars, but I couldn’t see anything getting brighter.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or what?” Desmond said.

I could see Claudia watching me in the rearview mirror. I sighed. “You remember that girl who sang with my band?”

“The blond one?”

“Yeah.”

He frowned, then shot me a look. “She’s not…”

“Yeah,” I said again. “She’s cooling off on a slab downtown.”

“Blood of the Eight,” he said. “Murdered?”

“That’s what I was trying to find out.”

He nodded and took the exit. “What about your new ear piercing?”

“Came afoul of some angry family members who didn’t want me getting cozy with their sister, seems like. Come to think of it, they mentioned a couple of names. You ever heard of the Collective?”

“You haven’t? They’ve been in and out of the news pretty constant these last few months. Where you been, guy?”

“Jail. And when I wasn’t there, I wasn’t too keen to watch the news. Saw myself on it more than I liked.”

“Oh yeah.” He scratched his new beard. “The Collective started taking corners on the east side about four or five months back. Dropped a lot of bodies, and swept away most of the remnants of the Andrews family. I heard a rumor they might be trying to get their hands on whatever Chroma’s left out there, but nothing’s come of it.”

Christ, more Chroma. The city was still rebuilding from the last time it hit.

“Vei?” I asked.

“Mostly, but they got some humans for muscle.”

“Anyone know who’s leading them?” I asked.

“Names get thrown around a fair bit, Daniel this and Clarke that. Aliases, all of them, as far as I know.”

I pulled the wad of tissues from my ear. They came away dark and sticky, soaked all the way to my fingers. I was bleeding like a shivved convict. I hoped I had some bandages at home.

“You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, guy?” Desmond said. “That thing looks like it needs stitches.”

“I’ve had worse,” I said. “Remember that one time, outside Skytown, when those Flaming Aces tried to break my kneecaps?”

He grinned. “And they hit you in the shin instead? Ah, those were the days.”

“So how come you’re the expert on the Collective, huh? They banging in your area?”

“Yeah, moved into town about a month ago, started causing a mess. It took a while, but me and the watch finally got in touch with someone on the inside.”

I blinked. “What?”

“What what?”

“The watch? You mean…”

“The neighborhood watch, yeah. I told you I was getting something together.”

“Let me straighten this out,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “You and your neighborhood watch, your goddamn civilian neighborhood watch, you’re pals with someone inside this gang?”

“More or less.”

“More or less? Well is it fucking more, or is it fucking less?”

“It’s a good source. Anonymous, but close to the top.”

For a moment I forgot about the pain in my ear, the bruises on my ribs, the burning need for a drink deep in the pit of my stomach and the hallucination of my dead friend sitting in the back seat. “Are you shitting me? Tell me you’re shitting me, Des.”

“I shit you not.”

“What the hell were you planning to do with this source of yours?”

He shrugged. “Figured we’d feed our information to the police. I’m not going to let another gang stomp all over my part of town. They’ve ruined enough lives. I tried to get your friend Detective Reed to take a look at the information I’d got. She wasn’t having a bar of it, though. Not official enough for her. She’s a pain in the ass, that one. I don’t know how you managed to make friends with the only straight cop in Bluegate.”

I shook my head. “Jesus Christ, Des. Leave the police work to the goddamn police.”

He turned from the road for a moment and stared at me, one eyebrow raised.

“What?” I asked. “What’s that look for?”

“Are you a civilian, Miles?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And what were you just doing half an hour ago?”

I scowled. “That’s completely…. You’re twisting things to suit your argument.”

He gave me a small, crooked smile and shook his head. “Miles Franco, man of logic.”

I couldn’t think of a good comeback, so I looked out the window instead. It took me a moment to recognize the neighborhood. I settled down in the seat and closed my eyes. Then I thought of something. I sat up quickly, too quickly, and pressed my nose against the glass. "What's the time?"

Des gave me a look then checked the dash. "Nearly midday. Why?"

I pointed to the block of grim-looking shops with a black-windowed pub in the middle. "Pull over. I want to do something."

"Jesus, guy, tell me you don't want a drink."

"Humor me. Stop the damn car."

He sighed, but he did it. It took him a moment to wedge the car into a tiny parallel park. I wadded some more tissues against my ear while he shut off the engine and opened the door. I tried to pretend I didn't need his help unfolding myself and clambering out of the car.

He gave my ear a glance. "Does it hurt?"

"Only when I hear your nasally whine."

I shuffled past the tattoo parlor and the shop selling black market Ink paraphernalia while Des locked the car. He'd already caught up to me by the time I reached the bar.

"You don't really think they're going to let you in looking like that, do you?" he said.

"Quit looking so worried. I'm not going in there. I'm going in there." I pointed to the narrow doorway next to the bar entrance. Inside, a staircase stretched up into the darkness.

"Well," Des said, "that's ominous. Drug dealer?"

"Not quite."

I took hold of the handrail and shuffled up the stairs. The carpet muffled the creaks, but it couldn't hide the way the stairs sagged with every step. Posters lined the walls, half shrouded by the dark: advertisements for local bands printed out by someone's home computer. Faint piano music tinkled down the stairs toward us.

The door at the top of the stairs was open a crack, light spilling out. I took a moment to catch my breath, then I leaned on the door and stepped inside.

It was a good thing neither me or Des were big guys, because there wasn’t much room to stand with the grand piano on one side and the row of electric guitars on the other. As it was I had to duck to get under the cymbals hanging from the ceiling. Brass instruments and Vei-made flesh drums filled every available nook and cranny in the shop. Even the door made a musical hum as it swung closed behind Des.

“You bring me to some weird places, guy,” Des said.

I grinned and walked past a rack of sheet music to the tiny front counter. “Salin!” I called out. “You in here?”

A thunk came from somewhere in the maze, and then a creaking floorboard. Salin stuck his head out from the back room. His eyebrows went up a quarter of an inch on his dark, leathery forehead, but the rest of his face remained completely neutral. That was the most excited I’d ever seen him get.

“You’re hurt,” Salin said. It wasn’t an offer to help, just an observation.

I shrugged. “You remember my friend Des, right?” I turned to Desmond. “This is Salin, from my band.”

Desmond nodded. “Double bassist. The only one of you that had any talent. I remember.”

Salin took the compliment without expression. He came out of the doorway, put down the part of a dismantled trombone he was holding, and wiped his hands on a rag. His polo shirt stretched a little over his belly. A Chewbacca-like carpet of chest hair poked out the collar.

“You heard about Claudia?” I asked.

Salin nodded. “The police, they came to talk to me. I did not believe it.” He carefully folded the rag and placed it on the counter. “I did not want to believe it.”

I clutched the wad of tissues to my ear and stuck my free hand in my pocket. “You know anything?”

“Only what the police told me. They said it might be some kind of drug. Something she took.”

“It wasn’t,” I said.

He nodded again. “I know.”

“The cops are keeping me out in the cold. But she was my friend. I can’t just let it go. So me and Des here are trying to find out what happened to her.”

Desmond gave me a glare that should’ve given me a black eye. “Guy—”

“I hadn’t seen her lately,” I said, bowling over the top of Desmond before he could contradict me. “I’ve been otherwise engaged. But she was always close to you. Has she been acting weird? Scared?”

Salin scratched the corner of his eye while he thought. “Not scared, no. Sad. Do you know she lost her day job?”

“What?” Claudia had worked during the days at an upmarket chain clothing store in the central city. It’d be a stretch to say she enjoyed it, but it brought in a decent paycheck. “No. No one told me. How?”

“The company, it suffered damage during the Chroma Wars.” Was that a glimmer of accusation I saw in Salin’s eyes? “They could not pay everyone,” he continued. “An insurance problem, I think. I wanted to give her a job here, but…” He raised his palms in a gesture of defeat. “…business is not good here either.”

Was that what she’d called me about? She needed money? I wasn’t exactly rolling in it, but I could have helped her.

“She get desperate?” I asked. “Starving?”

“No, no,” Salin said. “It wasn’t that. Her singing, it gave her enough money to live on. The job was for saving.”

And then I understood. I pictured the first time I met Claudia. To this day I don’t know what the hell she saw in us. Salin was pretty good with the double bass, but Bubbles and I were little more than hacks. The bar audiences we played to were usually more interested in knocking back beers than paying attention to us, and it was a rare night we didn’t get at least one bottle hurled at us. But Claudia had showed up for three gigs in a row, following us from bar to bar, always sitting right up near the stage, watching us with a glass of orange juice in her hand and a faint smile on her face. And on that third night, after we’d finished our set, she came and talked to us.

I remember that sparkle in her eyes as she approached our table where we commiserated over how badly we sucked. “May I join you?” she’d asked, her accent thick. We said yes. How could we not?

The first time I heard her singing, I knew she was going to go far. She should’ve been hunting down record deals, not hanging around with low-lifes like us. I asked her once what she was doing in Bluegate, instead of being somewhere—anywhere—else. She told me she didn’t want record deals. She wanted to sing in Heaven. There were enough Vei in Heaven who loved human music that a good musician could travel from town to town, city to city, living entirely off singing. Some Vei even believed that human music helped stabilize parts of their dimension, calming the chaos and allowing their minds to experience peace. Claudia wanted to travel the alternate world, visit Skytown and the Inverse Plains, see the shifting skies, swim the underground rivers, and soar past the floating mountains on an airsnake.

I offered to smuggle her to Heaven, free of charge. Hundreds of people did it, hiring freelancers like me to travel between the worlds. But Claudia was a good kid. She wanted to do it legit, and that meant saving up for a visa from Immigration and going through the Bore. She was still saving when she died, working that damn job until they fired her. She never set foot in Heaven.

I sighed and put it out of my head. I couldn’t get her there now. But I could make some people hurt for what they did.

“You ever hear of a Vei girl called Penny Coleman?” I asked Salin. “A prostitute. Did Claudia ever mention her?”

“No,” Salin said.

“Had she been hanging out with anyone new? New guy, or some homeless people or anything?”

Salin shrugged.

Damn it. I leaned against the counter and plucked a couple of strings on an acoustic guitar hanging by its strap. “The guys who gave me this papercut on my ear, they mentioned two names. The Collective, and AISOR. Set off any bells?”

“Of course, I know the names,” Salin said. “They are on the news. One is the gang, the other is the company. A Tunneling company, yes?”

“Tunneling and lots of other stuff,” Desmond said to me. “They’ve been popping up in the business pages of the paper. They dabble in a bit of everything, manufacturing, mining, rare materials, import/export. The whole shebang.”

“So if there’s money to be made in Tunneling, they’re interested?” I said.

Desmond shrugged. “Sure. Lots of these companies are. The paper says they’re a good bet for any investor. They’ve got offices in half the Bore cities, but they’ve moved their main operations here since the Chroma Wars and your little Limbus experiment.”

I fingered the keys on a shiny silver trumpet, much newer and cleaner than mine. Then I looked at the price tag and quickly let go before I got blood on it and Salin made me pay for it.

“Any dirt on them?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” Desmond said. “They’re still small enough that they haven’t gone full evil corporation.”

“Yet,” I said. “So Claudia didn’t mention them?”

Salin shook his head. “I am sorry. I wish I knew. I keep thinking what I could have done, if I had talked to her more...”

I nodded and turned away. Claudia was there with us, strolling among the instruments, laying her hands on the keys and the strings. But they never made a sound.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Listen, guy,” Desmond said as we went back down the stairs and out onto the street, “I know you mean well. But you’ve only just escaped this whole Chroma Wars thing. You don’t need this right now. You’re not in any condition to go playing detective.”

“Gimme a break.” I tried not to grimace as I got into Desmond’s car.

“Vivian can handle it. She’s a good cop.”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “You said so yourself. Sometimes good’s not good enough. Sometimes you gotta get dirty.”

“I’m not going to change your mind, am I?”

“To be honest, I don’t even know why you still try.”

He sighed and started the engine. We were both quiet for a little while as he drove. I pretended I couldn’t see Claudia out of the corner of my eye, buckled in nice and safe in the backseat.

“All right,” he said finally. “What do you need?”

I glanced at him. His jaw was set.

“No,” I said. “Nuh-uh.”

“What?”

“Not this time. I’m doing this by myself.”

“Like hell,” Des said. “Tania and I are your friends, guy—”

“Tania? You’re volunteering Tania for this shit too? I nearly got her killed last winter. They turned her into a…a…” I shook my head. “No. Not happening.”

“She’s not the same girl she was then. She’s grown up a lot in the last few months. Her Tunneling control is fantastic. You should see the things she can do now.”

The implications of what he just said smacked me in the face like a rotten fish. “You’re teaching her.”

“Someone has to.” He stared out the windshield with eyes like nails.

“Damn it, Des. She’s got you twisted around her finger, doesn’t she? Have you got her involved in your goddamn neighborhood watch as well? How much danger are you putting her in?”

“She’s a smart girl.”

“She’s a goddamn child!”

“You’re the only chi—” He cut himself off and twisted the steering wheel in his hands. He was grinding his teeth so hard he must have been wearing them down to the gums.

We pulled up outside my apartment. I shoved open the car door and clambered out, careful not to brush my ear against the door frame. My apartment building didn’t look any better in the daylight, but at least you knew there weren’t things hiding in the shadows waiting for you.

“Hey, guy,” Desmond said before I could close the door. He was calmer now. Apologetic, almost. “Seriously, I’d drop this thing if I were you. You got lucky last time with the Chroma thing. If you get in trouble with the law, they might not be so easy-going the second time round.”

I sighed and kicked at the curb. “You worry too much. I think I’m going to take me a nice long nap first, anyway. Just for a week or two.”

He smiled, but his eyes didn’t carry it. “Take it easy on the…uh…” He shrugged and glanced away. “Just take it easy, all right, guy?”

I tapped on the door of the car and waved, and he peeled away.

Claudia was waiting for me at the door to my apartment building. She watched as I fumbled with my keys.

“Not now, kid,” I muttered to her. “Not now.”

SIX

The cut went from the highest point of my ear down and backward, maybe an inch long. It had sliced right through the width of my ear. If it was much longer they’d be calling me the Half-Eared Tunneler. I wiggled the outer bit back and forth in front of the bathroom mirror with sick satisfaction, bracing myself against the pain.

Son of a bitch.

It had stopped bleeding, but now it oozed clear fluid. I carefully dabbed at it with a washcloth soaked in antiseptic, cleaning away the dried blood. Maybe going to the doctor wasn’t such a dumb idea after all. The slice seemed to naturally want to spring open, leaving an empty wedge in the top of my ear.

I took a long draw from the bottle of whiskey I’d stashed under the kitchen sink and made a face at myself in the mirror.

I should have known this would happen. Well, maybe not the ear-slicing, exactly, but getting into trouble was something of a specialty. Des was right. This was no place for a guy who let his hallucinations control him. Vivian was good police; she didn’t need some fool bumbling around. Look where that had got me last winter.

At the top of my bathroom cabinet I found a set of bandages from a first aid kit I’d bought a few years back. I’d got good use out of them, and now there were barely any left. Maybe that was a sign of something.

I rolled up some gauze, pressed it against my ear, and tried to bind the slice closed with an adhesive bandage. It wasn’t pretty, but maybe it’d keep until I could find a doctor who didn’t mind working for free.

I grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck and went to my bedroom. Unwashed clothes lay scattered across my bed, so I shoved them onto the floor. I took another slug of whiskey, letting the bitter taste burn all the way down. It didn’t help. Claudia still watched me, and I still felt like shit.

I wondered what Tania would say if she caught me here, sucking on a bottle of booze with half my ear sliced off. I’d never hear the end of it.

In an instant, self-hate spilled out of some dark corner of my soul. Look at me, a sorry excuse for a human being. Too busy blaming Tania for Tunneling on her own to consider that maybe, just maybe, I should have been doing what I promised her. She wouldn’t have to do it herself if I wasn’t so goddamn drunk all the time.

I sneered at the bottle in my hand, but it didn’t react. Why should it? It was just booze. I used to drink a bit when I was a teenager, but I was never an alcoholic, not like a couple of my foster fathers.

What the hell was I doing?

It’s just to get through the worst of it, a little voice inside me insisted. Just to make the nightmares go away.

Well, I was having nightmares during the day, now. Yeah, I’d killed those gangsters, and it hadn’t been pretty. But I still saw them, drunk or sober. I couldn’t hide from what I’d done. Hell, the damn TV seemed to insist on that, showing photos of the devastation I’d caused every time they talked about the Chroma Wars.

But I’d done what I had to do. People I cared about were in danger. Fuck the law, fuck doing the right thing, whatever that was. I never had a family, except the one I made myself. And if I had to sell my soul to protect them, well, it was a damn good deal.

Only, where was I now? Too sloshed to exchange more than a handful of civil words with them. Too goddamn drunk to talk to Claudia when she called. When she needed me.

My knuckles were white around the whiskey bottle. I glanced up at Claudia’s ghost.

“Whaddya reckon?” I asked.

She slowly nodded.

I went to the window, opened it. The sounds of the city washed in, a constant hubbub of noise, sirens, the chatter of humans and Vei. For better or worse, I’d changed Bluegate.

Maybe I could stand to change a little too.

“To you,” I said, holding the bottle up in Claudia’s direction. I brought the bottle to my lips, took one last swig. Then I turned back to the window and upended the bottle. The whiskey splashed through the slits in the fire escape platform and trickled down to the alley below. In a few seconds, it was done. I tossed the empty bottle onto the fire escape and breathed deep.

I was too drunk to help Claudia once. Not again. I needed a clear head for this. Well, as clear a head as a hallucinating madman can manage, I guess.

A small smile crossed Claudia’s face as I got on my knees to dig my trumpet out from under my bed. It was old and heavy with memory. I put it to my lips and started to play.

I hadn’t maintained the instrument in the last few months, not since before the Chroma Wars. I was rusty too. But the music still appeared.

I closed my eyes and let my fingers dance on the valves. It was one of the few songs we’d written ourselves. We called it “Destiny Is No Excuse”. Well, I say we wrote it, but that’s not true. Claudia was always the one with the talent.

In my head, Claudia was singing, as clear as if she’d never left. Her voice always made me shiver.

I brought the song to as clean an end as I could manage, leaving the last note hanging in the air. I opened my eyes, and Claudia was gone. Not for good, I didn’t think.

“Don’t worry, kid,” I said to the air. “I’m too dumb to give up on you.”

“Who are you talking to?” said a voice behind me.

I whirled on the spot and found Tania standing in my bedroom doorway, wearing a black-and-white summer dress and clutching a black trash bag. She frowned, staring at the trumpet in my hands.

“Uh…no one,” I said, shoving the trumpet back into its case. “I mean, you. I was talking to you. Jesus, girl, you ever give knocking a shot? It’s easy, I’ll show you how.”

“I heard you playing,” she said. She chewed on her lip. “It sounded sad.”

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

She frowned and dragged the bag across the floor toward me. “What happened to your ear?”

“Cut myself shaving.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Look, kid, about last night, I…well…you know.”

She quirked an eyebrow.

I sighed. Goddamn apologies. It’d be easier to drag my gallbladder out through my nose. “I’ll try and do better now.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she said, shrugging.

“Hell I don’t, after the trouble I got you into.”

“I can get myself into trouble just fine, Miles.”

“Yeah? Tell that to your mother.” I scratched my head, sighed again, and stuck out my hand. “Pals?”

She grinned and took my hand. “I think you’re finally growing up.”

“Ah, knock it off. What’s in the bag?”

She tossed the bag down and pulled it open. “I have some things for you to try on.”

She pulled out three men’s shirt—pale blue, white, and gray stripes—then delved in again for some sharp-looking trousers and a pinstriped suit jacket.

“They’re my dad’s,” she said. She considered the shirts for a moment before tossing me the blue one. “He left them when Mom kicked him out. I just washed them. I thought maybe you could wear something clean tonight.”

“Tonight? What’s so special about tonight?”

She stared at me like I was an idiot. She always was a good judge of character. “The mayor’s fundraiser?”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. I don’t think I’m in a party mood, kid.”

“You’re going,” she said. “Think of all the big shots you’ll be able to rub elbows with.”

“They can go rub my—” I glanced at Tania and shut my mouth quickly. “I’m not their class of people,” I said instead.

She didn’t seem to have heard me. She clutched the socks she was inspecting to her chest. “I had a look at the organizer’s blog—”

“What the hell’s a blog?”

She rode right over the top of me. “There’s going to be some big names in the Tunneling world there. The deputy chairman of Immigration, the lead Tunneling scientist for the Bore, some people from AISOR—”

“AISOR? The Tunneling company?”

This fundraiser suddenly sounded a lot more interesting. Couldn’t hurt to stick my nose around and see what I could turn up. It wasn’t a big deal if they cut that part of me off as well; I was already a walking carving board. And for Claudia, it was the least I could do. It might even be fun.

Tania reconsidered her choice of shirt and gave me the white one. “There. Classic, and it suits you.” She rummaged through the bag. “I’ve got some ties in here somewhere.”

“I have a tie.”

“I mean one that isn’t ugly.”

I frowned and inspected my tie. What the hell was wrong with it?

“Oh, don’t pout,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. Once we’ve found the right clothes, you can spend the afternoon teaching me. I want to practice directing pre-made probability-skewing Pin Holes.”

“You drive a hard bargain, kid.” I held the shirt against myself and glanced at the mirror. “A hard bargain indeed.”

SEVEN

The mayor sent a car to pick me up at eight. That was something I never thought I’d have cause to say. The silver Audi stood out in my neighborhood like a clown at a funeral. Inside it smelled like leather cleaner. The driver, a bored-looking Vei man, had to direct me to the back seat after I tried to get in the front. I tried not to look embarrassed.

Tania’s dad’s suit was a little loose, but a belt sorted out the pants and it was warm enough for me to ditch the jacket. I had to admit, they were nice digs. The shirt was ironed and everything.

The fundraiser was something about inner-city education, as far as I could tell from the website Tania showed me on her laptop. The car dropped me off outside the Bluegate Grand Hotel, about as far from the inner-city as you could get. By the looks of the pruned and polished folks that swaggered through the front doors, not a one of them had even been within a mile of a public school, let alone attended one.

The driver passed me a slip of thick cream paper through the window. “Your invitation,” he said. I thanked him, shoved it in my pocket, and left the parking bay, careful not to make eye contact with any of the fancy people.

One look at the hotel lobby’s stained wood and vaulted ceilings was enough to make me regret my decision to come. I gave more than a few seconds to thinking of turning and bolting before someone realized I didn’t belong and had me thrown out. Unfortunately, Tania would undoubtedly hear me if I came home early; the girl could hear you thinking if you weren’t careful. But I could always go wander the streets for a few hours. Hell, maybe I could scrounge up enough cash to get a taxi to the Mercy of the Eight Hospital and pick up my bike. It’d be a more productive use of my time.

I cast a look back outside, then screwed up my hands and turned away from the door. I promised the girl I’d go. Both of the girls. A silvered old man strode past me with a woman half his age hanging off his arm. I balled up my courage and fell into step behind them.

They seemed to know where they were going. Some guy in a pompous uniform checked my invitation then pulled open a door with golden handles. I found myself in a ballroom big enough to fit my apartment building laid on its side. The floors were polished wood, the ceiling white and dangling with chandeliers. A hundred circular tables sat arranged in rows throughout the room, and between them were enough penguin suits and colored gowns to fill an Academy Awards ceremony.

All right, this was definitely not my kind of party.

The fashionable crowd was clustered into groups of eight or nine, all staring adoringly at the most useful and prestigious person in the group. Every now and then a penguin would make a break from a huddle, snag a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, and integrate himself into another collection of politely chortling suits. String music drifted from a tuxedo-clad band up on the stage. No one paid them any attention.

I stood dumbly in the doorway for a minute or two, fighting a rising panic. I didn’t count on finding any friends here. If I recalled all my general knowledge, I could pick out a couple of faces that I’d seen on the news. The chubby guy with the red bow tie was some local politician, and the lady with the bird’s nest for a hairstyle was always in the news for owning a chain of banks or something.

I gave careful consideration to each of the groups I could see, trying to find the friendliest face, and then I made my decision.

I went for the bar.

The girl behind the bar was all smiles. “What can I get you, sir?”

Sir. That was rich. Maybe it was because I was at least a good decade older than her. I scratched my head. “Gimme a Coke.”

“Are you sure, sir? It’s an open bar.”

“Nah, Coke’s fine.” I wanted a clear head for once.

I snatched a few tiny sandwiches and pastries from a waiter and shoved them in my mouth while I waited for the girl to pour my drink. Some people sneer at the tiny portions they serve at these places, but not me. Small things are easier to sneak into your pockets.

“Miles Franco,” a voice boomed from behind a group of rich white people.

I choked down a pastry, took my Coke for courage while wishing I’d ordered something stronger after all, and turned to face the oversized woman striding through the crowd toward me.

“Miss Mayor,” I said, putting on a smile. “Nice party, isn’t it?”

Mayor Juliet White could command the room’s presence with her sheer physical dimensions as much as her voice. She was pushing obese, but in the sort of way that made you think of a Mafia Don rather than a couch potato. Her platinum blond hair was pulled into a severe bun tonight. She wore a suit jacket with ’80s-style shoulder pads. The crowd made way for her—mainly because they didn’t have any choice—while a few hangers-on trailed in her wake.

She brought her bulk to a halt in front of me and stuck out her hand. “Good to see you, Franco. I wasn’t sure you’d make it. Thought you might be too jittery, eh?” She slapped me on the shoulder, spilling Coke across my hand. My muscles started aching again. “Good God, man. What happened to your ear?”

“Barber got a bit too eager,” I said.

“I’d get a new one if I were you. I heard the police have been hassling you again.”

“Ain’t nothing,” I said. “They just wanted to see if I could help them with another case.”

“You sure?” she frowned, absent-mindedly taking a glass of red wine presented to her by one of her puppy dogs. “You already had to put up with that farce of a trial. Any fool could see you were only acting in self-defense.”

I dived into my drink to avoid answering. Claims of self-defense didn’t go so well when you had a big enough stack of bodies to fill an industrial freezer. Especially not when you were jacked up on Chroma, and trespassing at that.

Mayor White made me uneasy, and had done ever since she publicly threw her support in behind me before she was elected a couple of months ago. She used to be a hotshot defense lawyer, the kind who could sing and make the jury dance. She’d come to visit me in my cell, made me tell her my story. A couple of days later, my court-sponsored lawyer was gone and I had a slick, high-class defense lawyer working pro bono as my new legal counsel. It was no secret that the guy was an old colleague of Juliet White’s. Saved me from going bankrupt, but it made me cold inside. She was playing an angle, and I didn’t much like it.

“Oh, don’t go getting all shy on me, Franco,” she said, putting a heavy arm around my shoulders. “You should seize this chance. Do some networking. You’ve got more to offer this city than the rest of these bozos put together.”

The crowd parted around us like the goddamn Red Sea. “I dunno, Miss White, I was thinking of heading off soon. Gotta wash my hair, you know.” I paused. “Actually, now that you mention it, there is someone I heard might be around. You heard of these AISOR guys?”

“Ah.” She gave me a knowing look and tapped the side of her nose. “Looking for work, eh? Good man, good man.”

“Not work,” I said. “I just want to talk—”

If she heard me, she didn’t pay a lick of attention. Her arm steered me to a small group sitting around a table in the corner. All were human—come to think of it, I hadn’t seen a single Vei since I’d arrived. Most of the group were middle-aged and sagging in all the wrong places, but two of them drew my eye. A tiny man in gold-rimmed spectacles peered at me with a look like a hawk. He brought a glass to his lips—water, plain—and then wiped the dampness from his pencil mustache with a napkin. I knew at once he was important. Regular guys like me can’t pull off facial hair like that.

Next to him was an Asian woman, probably in her late twenties. She paid me no mind, but she had a smile for the mayor. Black hair ran in straight lines past her cream-colored face. She was no knockout like Vivian, but she had a kind of quiet, open beauty to her, like a wishing fountain in a park.

I was instantly on guard.

Mayor White forced me into a chair and slapped me on the back so hard one of the sandwiches nearly came back up. “I’m sure you all recognize this face, don’t you?” she asked the group. “He’s been on TV enough.”

Eight sets of eyes looked at me, and seven looked away again. Spectacles had a hell of a stare on him for such a little guy.

She turned to me. “Franco, let me introduce you.” She pointed at Spectacles. “Miles Franco, meet Jozef Kowalski.”

“CEO of AISOR,” I said, offering my hand. Amazing what you could find on the Internet. Well, amazing what Tania could find. Kowalski peered at my hand for a moment like a biologist studying some new specimen out of Limbus, then he took it. It wasn’t so much a grip as a whispering touch. I could’ve wrapped my thumb and little finger all the way round his wrist and had room to spare.

“Who’s this, Jozef? Got yourself a new woman?” Mayor White gestured to the dark-haired girl who finally seemed to have noticed me.

Kowalski loudly didn’t smile. “This is Zhi Lu, one of my most promising chemical analysts. She’s with me in a purely professional capacity.”

I didn’t doubt it. By the look of him he wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if he found himself alone with one. Hell, it’d been so long I was starting to forget, myself.

“Miles Franco,” I said.

She nodded. “I know.”

The other people at the table went back to their own discussions, hushed now. A few sent looks in my direction, and a pair of them walked away to find better company. I tried to see if my glass of Coke had any conversation tips for a man half the city considered a mass murderer. It didn’t, but the mayor stepped in to rescue me instead.

“Jozef’s been a huge help getting the city back on its feet,” she said. “This is what Bluegate needs. Business. Investors. Some inflow of capital to get the wheels turning again.”

Kowalski waved the compliments away. “We saw an opportunity. We’re not a charity organization.”

“Charity’s not what we need.” The mayor pointed her wine glass in my direction. “You’ve seen the effort AISOR’s put into rebuilding the infrastructure in central and the South Bay.”

“Uh, not really. I’ve been in…” I glanced at Zhi Lu and changed what I was going to say. “…indisposed. Anyway,” I said, “I was wondering something. Call me an idiot, but what does AISOR do exactly?”

“We’re involved in a number of industries, but our main focus here in Bluegate is the Tunneling sector.” His voice was pure corporate-speak, but it didn’t tell me much. “The world of Tunneling has changed, and there are all sorts of opportunities for a company like us.”

I frowned. “You’re talking about Limbus? You’ve got a way to make money from that place?”

He took a sip of his water and said nothing.

“Well, watch yourself,” I said. “Those critters are nasty.” I still had scars on my arm where a spider-dog had sunk his teeth into me. I downed the rest of my Coke, grimacing as the bubbles stung my throat. I glanced at Zhi Lu and found her studying me, her head cocked slightly to the side. She was wearing a red satin dress that showed just a hint of cleavage. I turned my gaze back to Kowalski before she could make me nervous. “Say, you guys don’t have anything to do with drugs, do you?”

He glanced at me and took a sip of water. “Drugs? Medicines, you mean?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Never mind.” Was he lying? I wanted to press him, but I couldn’t exactly be discreet here. Maybe if I ducked out for a while, I could tail him and get him alone. It was the best I could come up with, and besides, I was getting jumpy again. I left my empty glass on the table and stood up.

Mayor White grabbed my sleeve. “Where are you going, Franco?”

“To take a piss.”

She grinned and waved me away. “Be back in time for the speeches. After that the fundraisers will come out to try and empty your pockets, and you’ll want to be on your guard. Don’t let ’em get anything without a fight.”

I tipped an imaginary hat to Kowalski and the girl, said, “Nice meeting you,” and shoved my way back through the crowd.

My ear might be stuffed, but I could still smell the bullshit. Something about that guy made my gut do backflips and set off the alarms in my head. Maybe AISOR didn’t kill Claudia, but I’d bet my shoes they weren’t as sparkling clean as they wanted to appear. In this city, no one was.

I waited until I’d put enough suits between me and the table that I couldn’t be seen, then I went back to the bar and found the smiling girl. “Hit me again.”

“Coke?” she said.

“Good memory.” I drummed my fingers on the bar. Where to now? Maybe I could ask around, see if I could dig up any dirt on AISOR until I could get Kowalski by himself.

The idea made my head pound. Good luck trying to fit in here. The air was stifling despite the air conditioning, and the armpits of my shirt were soaked.

The bar girl passed me my Coke. I put on my nice guy face. “Is there somewhere I can get some air?”

She pointed. “The courtyard.”

None of the hotels I’d ever stayed in had a courtyard. Most would be lucky to have a swimming pool without a dead rat in it. I thanked the girl, shoved my free hand in my pocket, and made my way back through the press.

It was a relief to actually breathe again. The courtyard was as swanky as the rest of the place, filled with hanging plants and tile walkways. A few of the other suits had escaped out here, and one or two even risked becoming social pariahs by lighting cigarettes. I found a bench in the corner that had a view of the garden and took a load off. My feet thanked me. I was wearing Tania’s dad’s shoes, though I might as well have been walking barefoot on tacks.

The courtyard’s garden was so big I couldn’t see the far side of it in the dark. Trees and rose bushes stood in ordered rows alongside the lawn. A dense line of hedges and evergreens stood guard to my right. I let the earthy scent wash over me while I sipped my drink.

Something moved in the garden. Maybe someone got too drunk, went to spew in the bushes. No, this wasn’t that kind of party. The shadow moved again. Ice dripped down my spine. I stood up quickly. The shadow ducked behind a line of trees. Hell. Was someone watching me?

A hand touched my shoulder. My skeleton tried to jump out my nose. I spun, grabbed the wrist, and cocked my hand with the glass in it, ready to smash it in a goon’s face.

Only it wasn’t a goon I was looking at. I lowered my arm and hoped the dark covered the color in my cheeks. “Sorry, I…uh…didn’t hear you.”

Zhi Lu had taken a step back from me, but the fear in her face fell away a moment later. She looked much prettier when some asshole wasn’t about to sock her one. “I saw you out here,” she said. She had a hint of an accent. “I wanted to escape from the speeches.”

I glanced back toward the main hall. Someone’s voice was crackling over a bad speaker system. He must’ve made a joke, because a wave of polite laughter rolled out a moment later, then died like an old man in an empty room.

“Your boss was right about you being smart.” I shuffled on the spot. She was closer than I normally like people to be, close enough for me to smell her vanilla-scented perfume. And since she was a beautiful woman working for a company that might or might not be engaging in mass murder, I’d have preferred at least a couple of sheets of bullet-proof glass between us.

But she wasn’t going anywhere. I stood there like an idiot for another couple of seconds, then pointed to the bench. “Seat?”

She tucked the hem of her dress in around her legs and sat down, knees together. I sat next to her and glanced back at the garden. The shadow was gone. Hell, maybe it was never there to begin with, me being a madman and all. I put the glass of Coke against my forehead, hoping the condensation would calm me down.

“What happened to your ear?” she said.

“Cat got me.”

“A cat?”

I held my hands a couple of feet apart. “Big one. Fangs like razor blades.” I bared my teeth to show her.

She giggled, and it was like the sound of rain on a window. The knots in my muscles began to relax.

“So what does a chemical analyst do in a place like AISOR?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing at the moment. I’m a field analyst, but we’re not going anywhere right now. Not since our lead Tunneler disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

She mimed a little explosion with her fingers. Her nails were painted red. “Poof.”

I took a drink of my Coke. Disappearing Tunnelers. And they said Bluegate had changed.

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Then: “Did you really do those things they accused you of?”

“Which things?” I said.

“Killing those gangsters.”

I took another long drink. Something shimmered in the corner of my vision. No, no more hallucinations.

“Pretty much, yeah,” I said.

Another weak laugh came from the audience inside. We were the only ones still in the courtyard. I waited for Zhi to get scared and make an excuse to leave.

“This isn’t really my scene,” she said. “I make sixty grand a year if I’m lucky. It’s enough, but I don’t exactly have a trust fund. You want to go somewhere else?”

I’ve been hit with sucker punches that were less surprising. I gaped for a moment, trying to find the right gear for my brain. “Uh…”

“There’s a Mexican place a couple blocks down,” she said. “Margaritas and nachos until three a.m.”

I met her eyes. Ever get that feeling when you’re on top of a cliff, looking down at the jagged rocks below, and your chest tightens, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that you’re going to fall?

Yeah.

“Nachos, huh?”

EIGHT

Zhi Lu had good taste in nachos. We sat in a corner booth and shared a large plate, blocking out the sounds of the busy restaurant with our own conversation. She told me a little about work at AISOR, while I tried to deflect questions about what it was like to cross worlds. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of Tunneling. I just didn’t want to dwell on what I’d done with it last winter. I’d had enough of that, enough of the letters from screwed-up women seeking some danger in their life by trying to screw a mass murderer.

Zhi was different, though. She didn’t focus on the destruction and the Chroma and all that other stuff. She just asked me about Heaven, and about the old days when I got in good honest trouble. Slowly, the tension went out of my shoulders and I started to relax around her. Of course, that might have been the booze.

We started getting buzzed on tequila and margaritas—her idea, not mine. She could hold her liquor well. Within a couple of hours we were giggling together, our knees pressed together beneath the table, her hand touching my shoulder. Her scent was making me feel things I hadn’t felt in months. So around two a.m. I finished off my margarita and said, “Hey, so, hey, you want to get out of here, or something?”

And she took my hand and we caught a cab and we went back to Zhi’s place. And we kind of slept together.

I’m not that kind of guy, I’m really not. I don’t think she was that kind of girl either. But it had been a long time for me. A really long time. I’m pretty sure mammoths were still around the last time I was with a girl. And right then, I didn’t think I could stop myself.

She was stronger than she looked. Her fingers traced my bruises as she sat atop me, her face glowing, her naked body glistening with sweat. My palms tightened around her narrow hips as she rocked back and forth. Heat radiated from her. In that moment, all the ghosts, all the guilt drained away, and it was just me and her and the night.

Finally, achingly, we both shuddered and she collapsed atop me, her breath coming fast against my neck, her hair tickling my nose. After an age, she rolled off me and pulled the covers up around us. Her lips touched mine, soft and wet and sweet. My vision was still blurred and spotted, and a distant voice in the back of my head wondered if she had literally fucked me blind. She put her head down on the pillow next to me and her hand came to rest on my chest. It was intimate, comforting. I closed my eyes for a second.

When I opened them, light was streaming through the window. The alarm on Zhi’s phone was beeping, and she was scrambling to shut it off. I hadn’t got a good look at the place last night, what with the dark and the booze and the sex and all, but it was nice. I seemed to remember it was on the second or third floor of an apartment building south of the central city, probably no more than ten or fifteen years old. A line of worn Robert Ludlum and Lee Child novels were stacked on a bookshelf in the corner, bookended by a framed photo of an older Asian couple and a small pile of textbooks.

Zhi finally got her phone to stop screaming. She rolled back toward me. She held the sheet to her breasts in a display of modesty that was nowhere to be seen last night. Her smile was shy.

“I have work,” she said.

“Good morning to you, too,” I said. She playfully bit my shoulder. “Bit early for work, isn’t it?”

“I’ve got an errand to run first. Then back to the grindstone.”

“Ah yes, the work of the chemical analyst who can’t do anything because her Tunneler’s missing. Sounds tough.”

“Shut up,” she said, smiling. “There are old samples I can use. And maybe they’ll get it working today.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I could still taste the tequila in my throat, but at least I hadn’t drunk enough to have a proper hangover. “Get what working? A Tunnel?”

She nodded, slipping out of bed. I caught a glimpse of dark pubic hair before she pulled a robe around herself. Something in me stirred again. “We’ve been having trouble with it,” she said. “Giles was the only one who could keep it open, and even then it was unstable.”

“Any Tunneler should be able to keep a Tunnel open for at least half a dozen people.” I sat up in bed. “What kinda losers you been hiring?”

“It’s not a normal Tunnel. There’s no one with the kind of experience…” She glanced at me and touched her lower lip with her index finger. “You opened a Tunnel to Limbus. The first one.”

“You shouldn’t listen to rumors.”

She pounced on top of me. Her robe fell open, and my wits checked out without settling the bill. “You met my boss last night. He was interested in you.”

“Yeah?” Something about the way she said it made my stomach give a little turn. But I saw the opportunity she was offering. “Say, if you want a Tunneler, maybe I could be your guy. I’m pretty handy.”

She bit her lip and studied me for a moment. “You might be just what we need. I could see if he’ll give you a try,” she said. “It probably won’t be a permanent job, but if you can get it working there’ll be a bonus in it for you.”

I pulled her down on top of me. “What kind of bonus is that?”

She giggled and struggled free. But as she got up, a little voice whispered in my ear. That was easy. Maybe too easy. You thought Caterina Andrews was a sweet little thing as well. You thought you could trust her.

“Miles?”

I blinked. Zhi’s thin eyebrows were pulled together, forming little creases between them.

I forced a smile onto my face and kicked the voice back where it belonged. “Huh? What?”

“I said I need to have a shower. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

She planted a kiss on my lips, jumped up again, and made for the door.

“Hey, give me a shout if you want any help in the shower,” I said. “I’m good at scrubbing. And toweling. I’m an expert toweler.”

She poked her tongue out and closed the bedroom door behind her.

I put my hands behind my head and lay back down. It was a hell of a bed. I was going to have to get me something like this if I ever had the cash. Mine had so many springs sticking out you could skewer a deer on it.

Not everyone was out to get me. Zhi was a good person. I mean, sure, I’d only known her, what, ten hours, and five of those I’d been asleep, and I wasn’t the world’s best judge of character. And okay, maybe it was awfully convenient that someone working at AISOR had taken me home to have sex with me and then offered me a job only a few hours after I’d met her and only a day after I’d started looking into the company, but I could trust her, right?

“Goddamn it,” I muttered. I crawled out of bed, found my boxers, and slipped them on. The bathroom fan started to hum. I heard the shower running. I stumbled across the room while pulling my pants on and found Zhi’s handbag sitting on the floor beside her bedside table.

Hating myself already, I unzipped it. I had to know. Or that’s what I told myself. I started rummaging. Her purse was nothing special. Twenty bucks and change in cash, a couple of credit cards, driver’s license, library card. I put the purse to one side and kept looking through the bag. A compact mirror, a tube of lip gloss, a couple of tampons, some hand sanitizer. I flipped open a small notebook with a pen attached, but all it said was: “Milk, eggs, tissues.” Other than that, just a set of keys and a smartphone. I started to check through her text messages. Then I realized what I was doing.

Jesus Christ. I really was screwed up, wasn’t I? Tania or Desmond would have my head off if they could see me now. I felt sick.

I started shoving everything back in more or less the same way as I found it. The Chroma Wars were over. Not everything was a goddamn conspiracy. I didn’t have a damn clue what she saw in me, but Zhi hadn’t kicked me out first thing in the morning or pointed a gun at my face. She was good people. Maybe she even…

My fingers brushed against a zip inside the handbag wall, so small I’d missed it the first time. I froze, my fingertips on the zip. Don’t do it, Miles. You don’t wanna know.

Hell. I unzipped the hidden compartment, and my fingers closed on something plastic. I pulled the zip-lock bag out into the light, opened it. Three thousand dollars, all in hundreds. And another driver’s license with Zhi’s photo inside. But the name beside it didn’t say Zhi Lu. It said Brittany Wei.

Told you you didn’t wanna know.

My pocket started ringing. My heart nearly gave out. I shoved the cash and license back in the plastic bag, stuck it in the handbag compartment, zipped it up, and put it back on the floor. After a second to get my breathing under control, I got my cell phone out of my pocket.

“Yeah?”

“Miles. Where are you?”

“Vivian?” I said. “I’m…out.”

Vivian made a noise like she was clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I know you’re out. I’m outside your apartment. I want to talk.”

“Is the pretty boy with you?” I found my shirt on the floor and tried to put it on one-armed. “Ask him if he’s noticed I swiped his notebook yet.”

“Detective Wade,” she said, with extra sauce on the detective, “is at the station. And stealing documents pertaining to a current investigation could be construed as obstruction of justice.”

“Also, tell him he writes like a girl.”

There was an audible outflow of air from her nostrils. In the bathroom, the shower stopped running.

“I was going to apologize for the way you were treated yesterday, but I don’t think I’ll bother. I just wanted to let you know we’re releasing Claudia’s body. We contacted her sister. She’s flying in today. She’ll get in touch with you about the funeral.”

The funeral. Christ, I hadn’t even thought of that. “Thanks, Vivian. Really. You guys find anything more on the autopsy?”

“There was one thing. The pathologist found some sort of crystallization in her arteries. We’ve had something similar on the other victims, but never this…” She paused. “Wait. You’re not sticking your nose into this on your own, are you?”

I heard the bathroom door open, and Zhi—or Brittany, or whoever she was—approached. “Me? ’Course not. I gotta go.”

The bedroom door swung open. Zhi’s hair dripped trails of water across her naked shoulders. She wore a towel and nothing else. “Who’s that?” she said, pointing to the phone.

“Who’s that?” Vivian said in my ear.

“Bye Mom,” I said. “Be sure to tell Dad what I said.”

“Franco—”

I pressed the end call button and slipped the phone back into my pocket.

Zhi raised an eyebrow at me. “You always call your mother after you sleep with someone?”

“We’re very close.” I tried for a smile, but I don’t know if I pulled it off.

She came near me, very near. The smell of her damp hair was intoxicating. No, damn it! Stay on guard. She tilted her face up to mine, glanced at my lips and gently bit hers.

“I should go,” I said.

Her face dropped. “Already? You don’t want a shower? Breakfast? At least let me look at your ear.”

“I’ve got some stuff I need to do,” I said evenly.

“Oh.” She frowned and studied my face, but I gave her nothing. “Well, you’ll come by and have a look at the Tunnel, right? Here, let me write down the address.”

She went back out to the living room, still in a towel, and scribbled something on a scrap piece of paper.

“Thanks,” I said, pocketing it without looking. I finished buttoning my shirt and found the tie Tania had lent me.

Zhi followed me to the door. My gut was having a knot-tying competition with itself. She was the one who lied to me, and now I had to feel like the asshole. Damn it. I’d really liked her.

“Well, I’ll see you later,” she said. She stood up on tiptoes, and I didn’t have the strength to avoid the kiss. Even now, I wanted her.

I broke the kiss and opened the door. “Yeah,” I said. “See you.” I closed the door without looking at her again. I just couldn’t.

I took the stairs to the street. It was a nice part of town, with honest-to-God grass next to the sidewalk and everything. The apartment buildings in the area weren’t the kind to have parking garages, so the streets were lined on both sides with cars, none more than four or five years old. I shoved my hands in my pocket, squinted against the glare of the morning sun, and walked to the end of the block. A few respectable people in business suits were up and about. They gave me a wide berth. I took shelter in the doorway of a small Indian restaurant that hadn’t opened yet, and there I waited.

Zhi came out ten minutes later. She wore a white blouse and dark, form-fitting trousers. She looked fantastic. Without a glance in my direction, she put her key in the door of a regal blue compact Ford and climbed inside. I kept my head down as I made my way to the street and flagged down a taxi.

“Where to?” the driver said as I climbed in.

I shoved a twenty in his hand. “If you can follow that car without making a smartass comment about it being just like the movies, I’ll pay double the fare.”

NINE

I worked out where Zhi was going a few minutes later. She’d said she had an errand to run before work. Must’ve been a strange errand to send a human deep into the Vei-dominated district south of the central city. We followed her as she came off the expressway, rolled down familiar, pothole-filled streets, and stopped outside the Mercy of the Eight hospital.

The taxi driver pulled over a way back from the Ford. Zhi parked, got out, and made her way to the hospital entrance. Just around there, in that clump of trees, was where Aran and his brothers had sliced and diced me. My ear throbbed at the memory.

I paid the driver his fare, double as promised. He even kept his mouth shut as I got out and he pulled away.

I considered following Zhi into the hospital. Then I unconsidered it. Too much chance she’d see me, and if she didn’t, that nurse would. So I strolled over to see if my bike had been jacked.

I was on someone’s good side, because it was still there and it hadn’t even been touched. I found my keys, started it up, and rolled the rumbling machine back to the street where I could watch the hospital from the cover of an alley between a pair of low-rises.

I could hear the Vei community waking up around me. Families picked up quarrels from previous nights and young children played some sort of game that involved shouting the names of the eight faces of the Vei gods.

It was twenty minutes before Zhi emerged from the hospital. She was too far away for me to read her expression, but her shoulders seemed slumped and her movements slow. Maybe she was just hungover.

No one accosted her on her way back to her car. Were Aran and Co. still hanging around? If their sister was still alive, I imagined they couldn’t be too far away.

Zhi got into her car. I put on my helmet, started my bike up, and rode after her at a distance. Riding was automatic, allowing my mind to take advantage of the free time. This settled it. Unless she had a secret Vei step-mother in hospital, Zhi was visiting Penny Coleman. What the hell for, I had no idea. But there was no way a goddamn chemical analyst had any business hanging around a sick Vei prostitute unless she knew something about why she was there.

The thoughts dug barbs into my heart. I should have known better. Miles Franco, biggest sucker in any dimension.

The traffic got heavy as we got closer to the central city. I stayed a few cars back from her as the traffic slowed to the pace of a paraplegic turtle. She gave up on the expressway and took an exit. I wound my way through the cars until I could follow her again.

It took me five minutes of driving through the South Bays before I realized where I was. Six months had turned the place from a desert of abandoned construction sites and the tombstones of destroyed buildings into a thriving rainforest. On every street, men dangled above the earth on safety harnesses, putting glass and walls around the skeletons of buildings that had lain dormant for a decade. This part of the city hadn’t been hit too hard last winter—not much point blowing up things when no one’s around to watch, I guess. A sign on an in-progress apartment building said in huge garish letters: Coming Soon: The Home of Your Dreams!

Real fucking likely. I rode on.

I figured Zhi was on her way straight to the AISOR offices, but then my figuring never has been good for much. She slowed down and turned into a quiet side street, too quiet for me to go lumbering down on my bike and remain inconspicuous. I rode past and pulled to the side of the road, switched the bike off and put out the kickstand. By the time I jogged back along to the road she’d gone down, I’d lost her.

“Damn it,” I grumbled to myself. I shoved my hands in my pockets and made my way quickly down the road.

What was she doing here? Everything was still being built; there was only a scattering of houses and no business. The only people around were construction workers.

Then I spotted movement coming from a black sedan parked next to a phone booth. It was newer than Zhi’s car, and it stood out here. I approached from behind, using lamp posts and trash cans to cover me as best I could. The windows were darkened, but not completely tinted. Out of the sun’s glare I could make out shadows within. Two of them. Their arms were flying around. Must’ve been some discussion. The car rocked back and forth a little, like a heavyweight boxer was throwing himself around inside. I snuck closer.

The driver’s side door opened, and I froze. I was in the open. Shit.

But no one got out. A heavy arm unfolded from the car and dropped the butt of a cigarette to the roadside. A foot followed, crushing the smoking butt beneath a blue women’s shoe. I caught a flash of platinum blond hair before the door slammed shut again.

I’d recognize that hair anywhere. Mayor Juliet White. My legal savior. The woman who’d pledged to drive organized crime out of Bluegate. I could feel a headache coming on. What the hell was going on here?

I was still standing there stunned when someone moved to my right. I got the briefest glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye. He was big and kind of stretched, like he took a ride in one of those medieval racks they used to get confessions out of witches. His shadow fell across me. His black coat was still in the breezeless morning.

Then his fingers wrapped around my throat.

Not again.

He drove his knee into my kidney, like a slow and unstoppable piston. The agony took hold of my heart, clamped down tight, and started gnawing. I went blind.

My back was still burning when the pressure disappeared. Vision came back like someone poking holes in a black sheet. My heels were skidding along the concrete. He was dragging me by my neck. Each shallow breath took a gargantuan effort. My brain coughed once, twice, then came to life. My hands went to my pockets.

There was nothing there. I hadn’t taken any Kemia with me last night. Son of a bitch.

I grabbed at the hand around my throat. I might as well have tried to cut down a tree with a spork. The giant clubbed me over the head with his fist, and suddenly I didn't feel like fighting so much anymore.

“Say,” I choked out, “you’re kinda big, anyone tell you that?”

“Shut up.” His voice would’ve been just right for a baritone in a barbershop quartet.

I tried to shout out, but all I managed was a squeak. The mayor’s car vanished behind a wall, and the ground beneath my feet changed from concrete to brown dust. Jesus Christ, where’s he taking me? Panicking, I tried to get my feet. If I could stand, maybe I could fight. But Stretch jerked his arm, damn near ripping my throat out in the process, and I lost what balance I had.

Machinery. I heard power tools, the stomp of nail guns and the grumble of a cement mixer. Voices too. Risking another drubbing, I grabbed hold of Stretch’s wrist and twisted myself round to see. A dozen construction workers in orange vests and yellow hardhats grew quiet and still around us.

“Help,” I said. It was worth a try. Stretch slammed me face-down into the ground. The wind went out of me along with the rest of my fight. My mouth tasted like rust.

“Leave,” Stretch said.

“I’d be glad to,” I mumbled into the dirt. A boot came to rest on my shoulder blades and pushed down. I groaned.

“Leave,” he said again, and this time my short-circuiting brain figured out he wasn’t talking to me.

I got my head out of the dirt in time to see him pull back his coat. The short-barreled shotgun he pulled out had no reflection in the sunlight. The construction workers stared at it, like they didn’t know what it was.

Then he pumped it. There’s a special kind of silence that comes after a noise like that. Even the sounds of engines and car horns in the distance faded away.

A few construction workers backed away. Then it turned into a flood. Some moved so fast they actually kicked up dust trails like on a Road Runner cartoon. Within twenty seconds, I was alone. Well, aside from the giant with the shotgun.

“I got an idea,” I said. “How about we settle this over a game of Hide-and-Seek. Close your eyes and start counting.”

He slammed the shotgun barrel into my spine. Lightning shot down my legs. I grunted.

I felt my shirt tear as he lifted me up by it. One-handed. Tania was gonna kill me. “What?” I said. “Afraid you’ll lose?”

He carried me across the construction site. My feet didn’t even touch the ground this time. For a minute he went back and forth, like he was looking for something. Then he stopped beside the foreman’s hut, grunted, and hurled me against the wall. I hit it face-first and a wave of pain broke through my nose.

Next thing I knew I was on my back in the dirt. Something was dribbling out my nose and down the back of my throat. I spluttered. Stretch appeared above me, blocking out the sun. He had a different gun in his hand now. My gut clenched. No. Not a gun.

A power drill.

I tried to scramble up, but he dropped to his knees and slammed his palm into my face. I tasted blood and dirt and the sweat on the man’s hand. I got my first decent look at his face. It was expressionless. He lifted up the drill and pulled the trigger. The whir of the motor made my chest contract so tight it hurt.

“Why?” I said. Or at least, that’s what I tried to say.

He grabbed my jaw and forced it open. And with that same blank look on his face, he brought the spinning drill bit toward my teeth. Why did they always have to go for the face?

“This is a message,” he said over the sound of the drill. “The only one you’ll get.”

I was going to make a smartass comment, but speaking’s difficult when a giant’s got hold of your mouth.

“Go,” he said. “Leave town. Find a nice girl, fuck her, marry her, fuck her best friend, get divorced. Become a sports fan. Learn to drive a tractor. Just never come back. Forget about dead women. Forget about your conspiracy theories. Do you understand, Miles Franco?”

He let go of my jaw enough for me to talk. The drill was an inch from my front teeth. I was going cross-eyed looking at it.

“Does it still count as a conspiracy theory when this is happening?” I said.

“No,” he said, his voice as flat as his face. “I suppose not.”

“Does this sort of thing really work?”

He nodded. “Usually.”

“And when it doesn’t, what do you do then?”

He brought the drill so close I could feel the air moving against my upper lip. “What do you think?”

I tried not to breathe.

He backed the drill up an inch or two. “You get the picture, Franco?”

“I got the whole goddamn picture gallery.”

“And you’ll leave this alone?”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

A flicker of a smile. “You shouldn’t make jokes in a situation like this.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But you gotta leave ’em laughing.”

He released the trigger, and the drill bit stopped spinning. I exhaled and turned into a puddle of warm honey.

Without another word, Stretch tossed the power tool aside and stood up. I caught a glimpse of the shotgun hanging against his body as his coat flapped open. He gave me one final boot in the stomach to make it official. A punctuation mark to end his message. Then he turned and strode away, his long legs eating up the distance.

When I could breathe again, I got up onto my hands and knees and spat a glob of blood into the dirt. I was trembling all over.

After another couple of minutes, I felt brave enough to try standing. Somehow, it worked. I brushed the dirt off my ripped shirt and shoved my hands in my pockets to stop them shaking.

I reckoned I had time to go home and have a shower before I went to see AISOR. Some chump with a growth disorder wasn’t going to stop me that easily, not any more than a Vei with a knife and a dislike of ears. I still owed it to Claudia. I owed it to myself. Besides, this was getting interesting.

They always said I was a bad listener.

TEN

The AISOR offices were something else. One whole exterior wall of the building consisted of a couple of hundred huge TV screens, showing a rotating image of the AISOR logo interspersed with pictures of grinning customers. The building wasn’t near the tallest around, but it was the only one on the street that looked like it was pulling a profit. A steady stream of young, well-dressed but not over-dressed businesspeople—and business-Vei—made their way in and out of the automatic doors, walking among the carefully manicured trees that shaded the entranceway. I whistled a long, low whistle. I figured they deserved that at least.

I was a bit cleaner now. A shower had done me a few worlds worth of good. I’d even found some canned meals in my cupboard that hadn’t expired. My nose wasn’t broken, but it was a near thing. Parts of my face had taken on a jellyfish-purple hue, but I’d got rid of the blood. I’d even shaved. I rubbed my chin as I crossed the street, enjoying the weird sensation. A weight bumped against my hip with each step. A bottle of Kemia in my jacket pocket. I wasn’t going to get caught out again. My coins and a small pocket knife balanced the weight on the other side.

The doors opened to accept me into the modern, glass-walled lobby. The security guard had a smile for me, which was so unusual it almost sent me running. I’d already passed him before I realized I should have given him one back. I did better when the string-thin guy behind the reception counter looked up from his keyboard and smiled.

“Can I help you, sir?”

What the hell was with all the sirs lately? I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “I’m a…a friend of Zhi Lu’s, one of your chemical analysts. She asked me to come by and help her with something.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, and he flashed his pearl-white teeth at me. “You must be Mr. Franco.”

“I must be.”

“I was told to expect you. You’ll find the elevators just down the hall there. You’ll need to swipe this before you press the floor button.” He handed me a lanyard with a swipe card attached. VISITOR was printed across it in big red letters. I shoved it in my jacket pocket.

“Where am I going?” I said.

“Basement four, sir.”

“Four? How many do you need?”

He smiled and made a noise that could’ve been a polite laugh. Maybe he just had something stuck in his throat. I thanked him and wandered over to the elevators.

A pair of pretty young women in tight business skirts waited for the elevator with me. I wondered if they were native Bluegatians, or whether they came packaged with the rest of the company when it got shipped in. How had this place got a foothold here so fast? What was here that interested them so much?

The elevator let out a sing-song noise while a down arrow flashed up on a screen. The doors slid open like they were floating in angels’ spit. Apparently the girls were going up, because I was the only one who got in. They watched, smiling politely, while I waved the visitor’s card in front of the panel. Finally, the blonde took pity on me and showed me the right place to swipe it. The panel beeped happily and let me press the button for B4. The blonde returned to her friend, and the doors slid closed, leaving me alone.

At least until I blinked, and Claudia appeared beside me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’m working on it, okay?”

The doors opened again. I didn’t even notice the elevator moving, but I guess it must have, because the room I was looking at was completely different from the lobby. Black marble lined the walls and the ceiling, and there was a sense of heaviness about it that made me decide it was no thin veneer.

The room had more computers than people. Three rows of computer stations sat in front of me, sloping downward to an open space in the middle of the room, maybe ten foot by eight. It looked like some sort of theater that put on shows so obscure and arty they’d only command an audience of twelve. I counted nine people—six human and three Vei. Most pecked away at keyboards or stared blankly at the open space on the floor. They weren’t wearing white coats, but there’s some sort of geek aura that makes scientists instantly recognizable.

I stepped out of the elevator, leaving Claudia behind. I watched her watching me until the doors closed and she disappeared from my sight. If there was something here that told me why she died, I’d find it.

“Oh my God.” Zhi’s voice tickled the hairs on my neck. I turned back to the room of computers to find her coming toward me. “What happened to you?”

“Sorry I’m late.” I wasn’t sorry.

Zhi’s face was clouded with concern. Or a good replica, anyway. “Your face. You’ve been beaten up.”

I shrugged. “It’s kinda my thing.”

She raised a palm to my cheek. Her touch was warm, soft. My heart skipped a couple of beats. I pulled away before if it could skip any more. Don’t be an idiot, Miles. Stay on task.

“What is this place?” I said. “Why so far underground?”

She bit her lip and let her hand fall from my face. “It’s for shielding purposes.”

“What?”

“You need a doctor, Miles.”

I shook my head. “Later.”

She didn’t look pleased about that. “I’ll show you what we’re doing,” she said, “but then I’m taking you to Doc McCaffrey, the on-staff medic here.”

“Yeah? This doctor any good?”

“The best.” Zhi took my hand, and I didn’t have the strength to take it back. A few of the scientists glanced at me and offered a nod or a smile as she led me through the rows of computers. Fluorescent panels in the ceiling gave the place its only light. I saw now that there were a few glass doors leading off the main room—offices, maybe—and something that looked like it was full of giant flashing boxes. Probably the sort of computer thing Tania or Desmond would understand. To me, it might as well have been a post-modern art installation.

We moved past the computer desks until I finally saw what was occupying center stage. Someone had painted a huge Tunneling circle on the floor in red paint. Standard Tunneling symbols filled the interior of the circle, but in an arrangement I’d never seen before. They were trying to get it open for five people and equipment, by the looks of it, but the coordinates were all screwy.

“That’s not going to Heaven,” I said.

“No.”

I walked in a slow circle around the closed Tunnel. It was big enough that I could almost sense it even when it wasn’t open, like a noise on the edge of hearing. Something was off about it. Like a violin that’s not tuned quite right. Even if you don’t know exactly what it is, something grates inside you, makes you uncomfortable.

“It’s not going to Limbus either,” I said when I got back to Zhi’s side.

She smiled. “No.”

A couple of the scientists had looked up from their computer screens. I didn’t like audiences. I resisted the urge to get into a staring contest with them.

I put my hands in my pockets and tapped two Pin Hole coins against each other. “You going to tell me where the hell you’re going?”

“A new world, Mr. Franco,” someone behind me said.

I hadn’t noticed the elevator opening, but I recognized the voice from last night. Jozef Kowalski was so small it took me a moment to spot the little man in his gold-rimmed spectacles. The scientists shuffled in their chairs to make room for the CEO to pass, not that he needed it. His pencil mustache was looking particularly fetching this morning.

“Why?” I said. “Three ain’t enough?”

“Not nearly.” He took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on. I bet he did it just to look sophisticated. “Heaven is an old cow, and what milk she does have left goes into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats.”

“I won’t argue with you there,” I said.

“As for Limbus, the place is likely remarkable, but we have decided to abandon attempts to exploit the world for resources. Our people are important to us, and we will not have them torn apart by those creatures.”

“That’s an attitude I like in a boss.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Is everything a joke with you, Mr. Franco?”

Claudia’s face flashed in front of me. “No. Not everything.”

He pursed his lips and walked around to inspect the Tunnel. The scientists were working hard at looking like they were working hard. All of them kept one ear pointed to us, though.

“Our Tunneler is missing,” Kowalski said after a moment.

I nodded. “Zhi told me. Did he design this Tunnel?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then you’re better off without him. This is a piece of crap.”

He clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth. I glanced at Zhi, but she was inspecting the back wall for defects.

“You believe you can do better, Mr. Franco?” Kowalski said.

I studied the Tunnel. “I can’t do worse. You offering me a job?”

“Perhaps. If you really can do what you claim.”

“You know I’m on a suspended Tunneling license, right? You could get in trouble hiring me.”

He strolled away and stared at the faulty Tunneling circle, as if he could fix it with just his eyes. “I’m well aware. But we’re getting desperate. We cannot delay. I’m willing to risk any legal trouble if we are able to establish a stable Tunnel.”

“Headstrong. A man after my own heart. Where do you want to go?”

He turned to me, and his lenses flashed. “The world of temptation.”

“Sounds like a strip club.”

“We call it Tartarus.”

“Sounds like a dipping sauce.”

Kowalski glared, and I smiled. Was it him? Did this little guy cause Claudia’s death? My hands formed fists in my pocket. I grinned wider to keep my face turning into a scowl.

“Give me some Kemia,” I said. I wasn’t going to empty my private stash to impress him.

He studied me, licking his lips. Then he nodded. Zhi hurried away to a refrigerated cabinet and came back carrying a bottle the size of a gallon milk jug. Inside, the silvery fluid sloshed unnaturally. I took the bottle in both hands, unscrewed the cap, and upended it.

The liquid moved to fill the circle the instant it touched it, never going outside the line. The scientists weren’t even pretending to be working now. Everyone watched.

It took half the bottle to fill the circle. The song that no one else in the room could hear got louder, the discord stronger. I gave it a splash extra for good luck and shoved the bottle back into Zhi’s hands.

I let the discord wash around my mind. I was operating by instinct here; if this Tunnel was going somewhere no one outside AISOR had been before, there sure as hell wasn’t any formal training. The sound grew louder in my head. I realized I was humming back in response. But something else was happening that I’d never felt before. It was like someone had put a hole in my big toe, hooked up a vacuum cleaner, and turned it on. All the pain of my bruises, all my thoughts, all my higher emotions fled from me. And I wasn’t sure I liked what remained.

I understood Zhi’s comment about the facility being underground for shielding purposes now. If this was on the surface, every Tunneler within the city limits would be able to sense it. A few of them might be able to recreate it. And there would go Mr. Kowalski’s competitive advantage.

There was no pulsing, no reluctance as the floor dropped away in the center of the Tunnel. It just opened like a whore’s legs while something primal throbbed in my chest. I wasn’t me anymore. I just wanted. Exactly what I wanted, I had no idea.

Physically, the circle resembled a Tunnel to Heaven. The same blackness, the same unnatural sheen. No, not quite the same. The edges were indistinct, and the surface shivered. Every second I kept the Tunnel open, it sucked more energy from me. I didn’t feel exhausted or drained, just pleasantly sleepy. The discord strummed in my head, over and over again.

It’s wrong. My first instinct about the Tunnel was correct. The design wasn’t right. It was like trying to drive a car with four flats. You could do it, but not fast, and it wouldn’t hold forever. The Tunnel was calling to me. I realized I was swaying on the edge of the circle. No. It wasn’t ready yet. With all the willpower I could muster, I severed the connection.

The hole in the floor grew smaller and finally vanished. The Kemia was gone, gobbled up by the Tunnel. The sense of desire in me was snuffed out like a cigarette butt. Something grabbed hold of the world and gave it a spin. I dropped to my knees, desperately gulping down air.

The room exploded with applause. Zhi wrapped her arms around me and planted a moist kiss on my cheek. I was too leeched of strength to stop her. Truth be told, the afterimage of desire still lingered within me and left me wanting more than a kiss from her.

I forced myself to stand. When that didn’t work, Zhi added some force of her own, and with her help I got to my feet. Kowalski was the only one who didn’t look impressed. He probably wore that same look when he went to restaurants and his steak wasn’t pink enough.

“You did it,” Zhi said. “No one but Giles has got it open. We can start making expeditions again.”

I shook my head, and the world shook back. “I told you. That Tunnel’s a piece of shit. I’m not doing a thing with that.”

Kowalski narrowed his eyes. “Then it appears we have wasted your time.”

“No,” I said. “You’ve been wasting your time with that. The thing’s one stray thought away from collapse. This Giles of yours was trying to adapt an Earth-Heaven Tunnel into something that goes to…what did you call it?”

“Tartarus,” he said.

I felt like I could stand on my own now, so I stepped away from Zhi. My legs thought I was on a boat, but at least I didn’t fall. “This is a new world you’re going to. You need a new kind of Tunnel. Give me a while to think on it. I’ll get your teams there. Safely.”

The light caught his spectacles again, and I couldn’t make out his expression. He was quiet for a moment. Then he spoke. “If you do that, Mr. Franco, this company will be in your debt.”

“I take checks and cash money. No credit cards, though.”

“Miles,” Zhi said. Something in her voice made made my back tense. She pointed at my face.

I touched a finger to my upper lip, and it came away wet. My nose was bleeding again.

“Let’s get you to Doc McCaffrey,” she said, glancing at Kowalski as she spoke. He nodded, and she took my arm. I let my blood trail behind me as we went.

My gut spoke to me as we walked. It told me there was something very wrong about this Tartarus business. It told me Claudia was linked to this, but I couldn’t work out how. And it told me it was nearly lunch time.

But despite all that, an insidious excitement was spreading through my chest. It wasn’t every day you found a new world. Not even for me.

ELEVEN

Based on nothing more than the name, I was expecting Doc McCaffrey to be a fifty-year-old man with a round, kindly face, a white coat, and a pair of reading glasses he kept on a string around his neck. I was right, except he was a she.

I lay back on the hard bed with my head turned to the side. The scent of alcohol stung my nostrils as she rubbed my ear with a swab. The dampness evaporated, leaving the skin cold and the wound burning.

“This is going to hurt like a son of a bitch,” she said, brushing a stray brown hair out of her face with her forearm. Then something sharp bit into the front of the loop of my ear. She was right.

“God damn,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. She kept the needle in there for a few seconds, and I swear I could feel the liquid seeping below the surface. Then came a tug. I opened my eyes in time to see her throw the empty syringe into a small yellow bin. “Do I at least get a lollipop?”

She smiled behind her oversized glasses. It made her face crinkle, but not in a bad way. “Only if you’re good and brave.” I liked her already. She consulted her suturing kit and picked up what looked like a pair of blunt scissors and some clear thread attached to half a fishhook. I decided to look out the window instead.

“Tell me how this happened again,” she said.

“Mike Tyson bit me. You know how it goes.”

“Mm-hm. And your nose?”

“Ninjas.”

My ear felt weird. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her moving, and every time her arm moved a certain way it felt like someone was gently but persistently pulling on my ear.

“So tell me,” I said, “is this company a front for a supervillain’s evil plot to take over the world?”

“Do you think that’s likely?” Another tug on my ear.

“I get that vibe. You know they’re conducting secret research in the basement, right?”

On the other side of the room were a computer desk and a poster that asked, Could YOU Have Chlamydia? Ask Your Doctor! I wondered if that ever worked.

There was a snip, and then she rolled away from me on her office chair with the remaining thread and the hook, which she tossed into the yellow bin as well. “You mean his Tartarus project,” she said. “It’s his pet project. But have you met Mr. Kowalski? I can’t see him as a supervillain.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I sat up and swung my legs around to dangle over the side of the bed. “Probably not tall enough for any diabolical speeches. He’s more hands-on than I expected. Came down to meet me in the basement. I would’ve thought he had important CEO stuff to do.”

“Important CEO stuff?”

“You know. Practicing his golf putting in his office. Downsizing. Upsizing. That sort of thing.”

She smiled and touched the bridge of my nose. “Jozef’s very involved in the Tunneling side of the business. He studied it at university. Does that hurt?”

“Ow,” I said. “Kowalski’s a Tunneler?”

“No. An interdimensional physicist by training. He published some important papers a few years ago, before he started AISOR.” She released my nose. “It’s not broken. I’ll give you something for the pain.”

“Don’t worry about it. What sort of research was he doing?”

She stripped off her latex gloves and washed her hands. I caught a glimpse of a gold wedding band on her finger. “I think I’ve got copies of some of them on the computer,” she said. “Would you like me to email them to you?”

“Uh…any chance you can print them out?”

“Not a computer lover? Sure.”

I gave my ear a few experimental pokes while she found the files. I should tell Doc McCaffrey about the hallucinations, I thought. She’d be used to that sort of stuff; people going off their rocker. She’d understand. Maybe get me a padded room with a nice view. Three meals a day, some new pills, maybe a chance to play ping pong with a guy with multiple personalities. Maybe, in time, I wouldn’t feel guilty anymore.

Doc McCaffrey put staples in the papers and handed them to me. There were three of them, none shorter than thirty pages. Just looking at them put me to sleep.

“Anything else?” she asked.

One more thing. I’m crazy, Doc. Round the bend. Three cards short of a straight flush. I see goddamn dead people.

“That’s it.” I rolled up the papers and shoved them in my jacket pocket. “Thanks for sewing me up.”

“Are you sure you won’t take a prescription for some painkillers?”

“Tough guy like me? Wouldn’t dream of it. See you round, Doc.”

“Not too soon, I hope.” She gave me one last motherly smile. I waved and pulled the door closed behind me.

I went through the tiny medical center toward the hallway. Doc McCaffrey had her practice on the first floor of the AISOR building. She can’t have been very busy, because there was only one person in the waiting room, blowing his lungs out into a tissue. I stayed clear of any aerial virus particles and found a nice wall to lean on out in the hallway, next to a window that took up most of one side of the building.

I pulled the papers from my pocket and leafed through them. Kowalski’s name was the first author on all of them. Two other names were common to the three papers as well: F. Weyer and D. Bohr. They didn’t ring any bells. Their work couldn’t have been important enough for me to study it back in school. The first paper was titled: “More Things than Heaven and Earth: Pandimensional Theory and Its Impacts on the Future of Tunneling.” I flicked through it. It’d been a long time since I’d studied Tunneling theory, but I was pretty sure his ideas were way outside of the accepted views. Or they would have been six months ago.

But I could see one point where he was wrong. He’d made the same mistake as AISOR’s missing Tunneler; he’d assumed that the same Bore-derived Tunneling symbols could be used for traveling to other worlds. But to get a stable Tunnel to Limbus, you needed something that was both unnatural and animalistic. And to get to Tartarus…

I turned the paper over, fished a pen out of my pocket, and started doodling on the back. After a couple of tries, it came to me. An epiphany. A beam of sunlight hit me, followed by angels and a heavenly choir. I made for the elevators.

By the time I hit the basement, I’d sketched out my full design. Kowalski and Zhi were conferring over a computer screen, pointing and nodding. They didn’t notice me until I swept past them and called.

“Hey, guys. I got something.” I pointed at the symbols on the floor. “Get rid of that crap and get me something black to paint with. I’ve got a new Tunnel for you.”

It was a simple Tunnel to draw. Four circles arranged so they were all overlapping in the center, completely filled in with black paint except for the space I left empty where they overlapped. As soon as I put the finishing touches on it, I knew it was right. The discord was gone, and now it sang in my head perfectly in tune.

“Kemia,” I said. Someone shoved a bottle in my hand. I unscrewed it and started to pour. The fluid hit the edge of the painted image and immediately flowed toward the blank center, like the floor had turned into a giant funnel. The Tunnel swallowed it greedily, sucking it into the floor. Thought and emotion drained out along with it, but I felt stronger this time. Something purred in my head.

When the Tunnel opened, it swirled with kaleidoscope colors. Warmth bathed me.

Kowalski was the first to break his silence. “Get the team together,” he shouted. I heard scuffling movement behind me, but I was having trouble getting my eyes off the Tunnel. I didn’t want to wait. It pulled me like a swimming pool in the middle of a heat wave, and I wanted to do a cannonball into the middle of it.

“Mr. Franco.” Kowalski touched my shoulder, but I didn’t take my eyes off the Tunnel. “Do you think you can accompany the team to Tartarus? We need someone to maintain the Tunnel.”

“Show me where to sign.”

“Normally we’d brief you properly before we send you in,” he said. “The expeditions we’ve sent have reported Tartarus isn’t entirely safe. For now, all we want to do is take samples from some of the pools there. Miss Lu’s preliminary analysis has suggested the liquid may have some powerful properties. But we don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“Sure,” I said. Christ, those colors were mesmerizing. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

I caught a whiff of Zhi’s perfume on my other side. “That’s what we don’t want you to do,” she said. “See if these fit.”

She shoved something over my eyes and tightened a band around my head. The colors disappeared. I jerked like someone had stuck a knife in me. “What the hell? I can’t see a damn thing.”

“That’s the idea,” she said. If I squinted through the goggles, I could just make out her outline. It looked like a thin line of chalk on a blackboard.

“Tartarus is dangerous, Mr. Franco,” Kowalski said. “There are certain places that draw people in, both human and Vei. It’s a visual stimulus, almost hypnosis.”

“A visual siren song,” Zhi said. “In Greek mythology, the Sirens—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Pretty women who sing to sailors and lure them to their deaths. Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”

“What?” she said. I could hear the frown in her voice.

Kowalski interrupted before I could reply. “The goggles are designed to block the effects of Tartarus. It’s the only method we’ve discovered so far that works.”

“So we’re all going to be walking in the dark down there? Sounds like a great way to walk into a crevice. Are there crevices in Tartarus?”

“Many,” Zhi said.

“Brilliant.”

“You’re in charge of the Tunnel, Mr. Franco,” Kowalski said. “But once you’re in Tartarus, Sean Beekman, your team leader, will be giving the orders. For your own safety and that of everyone on the team, you’re to follow his instructions without hesitation. Is that going to be a problem?”

Yes. “Not at all.”

“Good. We won’t sent in any rovers or heavy equipment until we’re sure this Tunnel of yours can take it. This will be a short expedition. An hour in Tartarus should be enough for today. Will your Tunnel take five people with packs and a small chemical analyzer?”

I let my mind probe the Tunnel. The desire to dive straight in had disappeared as soon as the goggles were on, and now I could give a more objective consideration of its strength. “Shouldn’t be a problem. It’s solid enough that it should stay up for at least thirty minutes even if I went for a coffee break right now.”

“Good,” he said. “Do you have anything you want to take with you?”

If I had a camera, I’d bring that. If there was some clue there to Claudia’s death, it might be good to get some photographic evidence. But poor saps like me have to make do. “I’ll take some spare Kemia and the clothes on my back.” I considered leaving my phone behind. If I was going to Heaven, electronics would be more likely to blow a chunk out of my pocket and any nearby flesh. But this didn’t seem like the sort of probability-twisting place that Heaven was, and something told me it wasn’t a smart idea to leave my stuff lying around this company building. “That’s it.”

“All right. I’ll have the team ready to leave in twenty minutes. Good work, Mr. Franco.”

“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?”

Zhi and Kowalski scurried away to be busy somewhere else, leaving me alone at the Tunnel opening. I still hadn’t taken off the goggles, and I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to. Truth be told, I was scared half to hell by whatever had grabbed me by the balls before. And I was only getting the echo through the Tunnel. How powerful would that feeling be on the other side? I wasn’t so sure trusting my survival and my sanity to a pair of glorified sunglasses was the best idea. Still, I wasn’t exactly brimming with better ones, and there was no way I was going to back out on this now.

With my goggles on, the others in the team were just squiggly white outlines to me. Aside from Zhi and me, there were three others. The boss, Sean Beekman, was a solid, broad-shouldered guy about my height. By the sound of his voice, he’d given up on oxygen entirely and now only breathed cigarette smoke. The other two team members were a guy and a girl named Jamie and Jaimee, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell which one was which. The girl carried some sort of computer tablet, and the guy was carrying so much gear I could’ve mistaken him for a pack mule.

After a few moments chatting among themselves, Sean came up to me and shook my hand. “Good to meet you. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how excited we are about getting back to Tartarus. Do you want to tell everyone how you want the Tunnel run to go?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. I raised my voice to cut through the chatter of the scientists behind me. “Guys and girls, this is a brand new, never before seen on TV Tunnel here, so I don’t want anyone being a jackass. I’ll go first, and everyone stick close. If I tell you to run, ditch your gear and haul ass. I’ve been inside a Tunnel collapse before. You don’t want to be sitting around sucking your thumb. So keep your arms and legs inside the Tunnel at all times and don’t rock the damn boat.”

Everyone got their goggles in place, gathered their gear together, and stood in single file behind me at the Tunnel entrance. Zhi was right behind me, which was closer to me than I liked, but I couldn’t think of an excuse to get her to the back.

Kowalski came to see me off. “Make sure you get yourself and my people back, Mr. Franco.”

“Will do. Cross my heart.”

“You’re part of an incredible endeavor for science.”

“Science? I thought this was for AISOR.” I waved the team forward. “Let’s roll, everyone.”

TWELVE

Everyone kept their traps shut as they walked through the Tunnel, which suited me just fine. The Tunnel had a beautiful kind of humming about it that I’m pretty sure only I could hear, and it got louder with each step.

The end of the Tunnel approached quicker than I expected. Most journeys to Heaven take an hour or so, but I’d guess we were only walking fifteen or twenty minutes before the white dot at the end of the Tunnel became an opening. By now, the humming in my head was loud enough to drown out everyone’s footsteps. I called a halt, the first words spoken since just after we started making our way through the Tunnel.

“This is us,” I said. “Better get yourselves ready.”

Two of the figures rummaged around doing something with a large box on wheels they’d dragged behind them, while the other two approached me. I guessed by their outlines it was Zhi and Sean.

“Do you know what sort of terrain we’ll be coming out into?” Sean said in his chain-smoker rasp.

I shook my head. “Not a clue. Somewhere flat enough for a Tunnel exit to form, but there could be snake pits on every side for all I know.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take point, and Zhi will be behind me. You follow her. If I say stop, everyone stops.”

“What if you fall to your death before you can say stop?” I asked.

“I’ll try to scream,” he said.

Good enough for me. Sean moved away to ready himself, and Zhi’s silhouette moved closer. She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her over the humming. “What’s up with you?” she asked. “Last night you were one person, and today you’re someone else entirely.”

Something in me wanted to tell her exactly what the hell I’d seen. I wanted to tell her all about Claudia, and I wanted to make her tell me what she knew. I wanted to say a big “Fuck you” to Mayor White, and the cops, and the Vei who’d split my ear open, and most of all, this damn girl who had the nerve to take me into her bed, screw me and then screw me over.

But I couldn’t blow this. So I settled for some good old-fashioned passive aggressiveness. “Just ’cause you spread your legs for me, doesn’t mean you get to psychoanalyze me. Don’t go getting full of yourself.”

She had good aim considering how little she could see. Her palm cracked against my bruised cheek and sent my head spinning on its axis. Jesus Christ, that stung.

By the time I got my head pointing the right way again, she’d stormed away and everyone else was looking at me. I gave a half-shrug and tried to gesture to Sean to get this show on the road. Somehow, even through the goggles, he worked it out. “All right, standard protocol everyone. Remember, we’ve only got an hour in Tartarus, so make it count. With me.”

He stepped up to the white surface that separated us from Tartarus. There was something nervous in the way he moved his shoulders. Zhi fell in behind him, not even looking at me. Without another word, Sean took a step forward, plunging through the surface. The Tunnel hummed happily in response. Zhi followed him a few seconds later, and the humming increased in pitch. No screams from the other side. That was promising. I rubbed my sore cheek, glanced back at Jamie and Jaimee, and stepped through the exit.

A chorus exploded in my head. My legs turned to cooked spaghetti and I only stopped myself face-planting into the rocky ground by sticking my hands out in front of me. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was too busy listening to the music. Compared to what was going on in my head, every song Claudia or my band had ever played might as well have been the gurgling of a garbage disposal. Tartarus itself was cuddling me, warming me. I felt like a three-year-old getting tucked in by the mother I’d never known.

“Franco.” The voice was horrible, out of tune, a blight on the soundscape inside my head. Hands grabbed me and pulled me up. I realized I’d practically been stroking the ground. Stop it, I warned myself. Don’t let the world do this to you. You’re doing this for Claudia, remember. I shook my head and pressed the sound to the back of my mind.

“Franco,” Sean said again, his hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”

I hoped the goggles kept him from seeing the blissful smile that wouldn’t come off my face. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I tripped.”

I could tell by the pressure of his hands he didn’t believe me, but one of the Jaimees came out of the Tunnel behind me and Sean had to go help with the equipment. No one was affected like me. The poor bastards couldn’t even hear the music.

With a strange sense of comfort still enveloping me, I looked around Tartarus for the first time. I was gripped with the desire to take off my goggles, but I kept my hands firmly in my pockets. From what I could tell, we were in some sort of huge underground cavern. I could see surfaces in every direction, with no sign of the sky. White outlines gleamed at me from a hundred surfaces. Every crack and corner of Tartaran rock was cast into sharp detail in my goggles, like an artist had sketched the place in white ink on black paper. My team, on the other hand, were shadowy figures, barely distinguishable.

I left the Tunnel open and started to wander. “Have you guys got lights on in here?” I said to whoever was listening. “I can see.”

“The walls give off their own light,” Sean said over his shoulder. “That’s one of the things we’re studying.”

I continued examining the cavern. The uneven floor opened up into cracks and crevices, and disappeared entirely a hundred feet to my left. Somewhere, water dripped into pools with tiny splashes. I could hear the sound of a slow-moving creek trickling through the rock. The air had a vaguely sweet scent. I took a few steps away from the Tunnel and laid my hand against the nearest wall. It was soft and moist, with patches of something moss-like. I was hit by a sudden desire to lick the moss. I jerked my hand back as soon as I realized what I was thinking.

“Don’t go too far, Franco,” Sean called to me. “We’re going to collect samples of vegetation and the liquid in the pools.” I glanced back and saw that everyone was through the Tunnel.

“That’s not water?” I asked, pointing at the nearest pool. It shimmered with white light.

“Not even close. If you want something to drink, come get something from the supplies.”

I nodded. “I’ll take a look around, see if I can’t find a good place for a permanent Tunnel exit.”

“Take Zhi with you.”

“No.” I thought my voice had echoed, then I realized she’d spoken at the same time.

Sean sighed. “Fine. Just stay in visual range. There’s a mike in your goggles if you’ve got an emergency and you can’t yell.”

I nodded again and walked away while they were still unpacking. I wanted to get the hell away from these people.

I kept one hand near the wall to steady myself as I walked. The ground was uneven and the goggles made it a pain in the ass to see clearly. I made my way down a gentle slope toward the sound of running water—or some liquid, anyway.

This place had something to do with Claudia, but what? She couldn’t have visited here. And none of the other victims in Detective Wade’s notebook were any more likely to have come to Tartarus. Prostitutes, junkies, transients.

I wracked my brain for answers. Maybe by opening Tunnels here, AISOR had accidentally released some sort of disease on Earth. I could be breathing it in right now. But why would it affect Claudia and the others but not AISOR’s staff?

I shook my head. The music was making it difficult to think. The chatter from the others had died down. It sounded like they were spreading out to get their samples. I came across a narrow creek that trickled down one wall and cut a groove through the rock floor before it flowed into a pool maybe eight feet across. I couldn’t tell how deep it was. Liquid dripped from the stalactites directly above it, making little tinkling noises in time with the music. It was so peaceful here. I took my hand off the wall and moved slowly toward the pool.

Each drop sent concentric circles of white light radiating across the surface. It was only when the rings reached the edge that I figured out the pool was perfectly circular. I knelt in front of it. Kowalski said this liquid was dangerous. Maybe it was acidic, or poisonous. But even though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, something about the pool was hauntingly beautiful. I bet Claudia would have written a song about this if she’d come here. A song to make grown men cry.

Something scraped on the rocks behind me. I started to turn, but a hand roughly grabbed my head. There was a tug, and the pressure of the goggles on my eyes increased.

“Hey,” I said, “what’s the big—?”

The goggles suddenly came loose and dropped away from my face. At the same time, my attacker’s grip left my head. I shifted my weight and started to turn, fist clenched, until I realized I could see—really see—the world I was in. And nothing else mattered anymore.

It was beautiful. Majestic. In-fucking-credible. You could make a thousand poets write for a thousand years, and they’d never capture it in words. The English language would run screaming. All I can say is that it was life itself, the canvas of gods, spread across the walls in such color that I’m pretty sure my eyes were giving off smoke. My entire body tingled with energy. A twenty kiloton orgasm bomb went off in my head.

And then my gaze fell on the pool in front of me. It gave off no reflection. What was inside was too awe-inspiring to be tainted with a reflection of my ugly mug. But no, it was me I saw in there. It was me free of pain, free of fear. In there, I was changing the world. There was Bluegate, free of crime, corruption, hate. I’d done it. I was a hero.

I’d made sure everyone I’d ever loved was safe, happy. Des, my band mates, Tania. Faces from long ago. A woman’s face that I’d spent the better part of a decade trying to forget. She pressed her naked body against me and snuggled into my embrace. “Miles,” she whispered. A strand of blond hair fell across her face.

“Anna,” I said, smiling. I kissed the tip of her nose, and she giggled.

Then her face changed. Her skin grew darker, her breasts fuller, and it was Vivian pressed against me. That made me happy too.

Everything was good. Everything was perfect. Everything I ever wanted and everything I didn’t know I wanted was in that pool. All I had to do was reach in and get it.

I didn’t know I was falling forward until I went face-first into the pool. The liquid was light, like foam. I dropped straight through, slipping away from the rocky ground. It was deeper than I thought. Distantly, some part of me knew I was drowning.

But that didn’t matter. Even death was beautiful in Tartarus.

THIRTEEN

Everything hurt. My eyebrows hurt. My toenails hurt. My nose burned with the stench of Earth. My stomach heaved. I rolled onto my side and puked my guts out without opening my eyes. The smell was even worse, and I puked again. My guts were trying to escape out my mouth. Someone had poured gasoline down my throat and tossed in a match.

“It’s all right, Miles. You’re okay.” The voice was kindly, even if it was ugly. Everything was ugly now.

I opened my eyes into slits. Horrible yellow sunlight streamed in from a window in the corner of the room. I was on a bed—no, it wasn’t a real bed, it was an examination couch. I was naked from the waist up, with a thin white blanket lying across my lap. The poster on the wall asked me again if I had chlamydia. I figured I had enough to worry about for now.

“Doc,” I said, testing my voice. It was the worst noise I’d heard since I woke up. My throat didn’t much care for it either. I fought down another wave of nausea. “Next time someone gives you that ‘Earth is beautiful’ crap, tell them to go screw themselves, all right?”

Doc McCaffrey laughed, and every line on her face crinkled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She held out a box of tissues. “You’ve got vomit on your chin.”

Too tired to be embarrassed, I took a couple of tissues and wiped my mouth. “Sorry about your floor.”

“I’ll get the maid to clean it up.”

“I didn’t know you had a maid,” I said.

She raised her eyebrow at me behind her glasses.

“Oh,” I said. “Right. A joke. I’m still a little fuzzy. A lot fuzzy. They could make stuffed toys out of me. What happened? Why am I here?”

“Hold still.” She tightened a blue strap around my upper arm and collected a couple of paper packages on a tray. After a few moments, the veins in my forearm and hand bulged. “Apparently, you took your goggles off in Tartarus. Sean found you floating face-down in one of the pools.”

It came back to me in a flood. The pool, the things I saw in there. The desire. Jesus.

But the doc was wrong; I sure as hell didn’t take my own goggles off. I opened my mouth to correct her, but stopped myself. Someone had tried to kill me. That was getting to be less of a novelty now, but I didn’t want my attempted murderer to know I knew that murder had been attempted. And I had a pretty good idea who’d been doing the attempting.

She considered my arm for a moment, picked a vein, and wiped it with an alcohol wipe. The sensation was so strong on my sensitive skin that it hurt. “They said you had a big grin on your face when you came out. You weren’t breathing, so they gave you chest compressions until you coughed up the fluid.” She pointed to a small white container on her desk. “That’s some more you coughed up back here.”

“Souvenir,” I said. “I brought it back for you ’specially.”

“They had to carry you back through the Tunnel. Lucky it stayed open when you went out.”

“Wasn’t luck. I make my Tunnels to last.”

Doc McCaffrey pressed her gloved fingers against my vein and slid in a needle with a little plastic holder on the other end. The skin wasn’t so sensitive anymore, but I still had to grit my teeth. She removed the tourniquet and stuck a tube into the holder. As I watched, a flash of dark red blood appeared in the tube. I was about to look away when something about the blood caught my eye.

“Doc,” I said. “Are my eyes screwy or is that blood looking a little green?”

She took away the filled tube and connected another empty one to the needle. “You swallowed a lot of fluid. We’re not sure what effect it will have. I’d like to keep you here.”

Something she said rang in my head. Swallowed a lot of fluid. I glanced again at the blood flowing out of me. There was no doubt; the blood was tinged with green. The same green I’d seen in Claudia’s neck veins, and running up the arms of the Vei prostitute, Penny Coleman.

Shit.

“Miles, are you okay?” Doc McCaffrey removed the needle from my arm and brought her face close to mine, her brow knitted. “You’ve gone pale. Are you dizzy? Light-headed?” She pressed two fingers against the pulse in my wrist.

I struggled to speak. “No…no. It’s probably just the heat. Say, are you really set up to take inpatients here?”

“Not really.” She released my wrist and pressed some device into my ear. It beeped and she consulted the tiny screen. I couldn’t tell from her expression if it was giving her good news or bad. “But your vitals are good and the vomiting seems to be your only symptom. Even if the hospital took you, they wouldn’t be able to do much for you.”

“And you can? You’ve had this before?”

“We’ve got equipment the hospital could never afford. Our analyzers and scanners are top of the line.”

“Great. Are you trying to sell me one?” I asked.

She smiled and laid a motherly hand on my shoulder. “You’re in good hands here, Miles. Chances are, you’ll be able to go in a day or two. I just don’t want all my good handiwork going to waste.”

I tried to return her smile. My cheeks ached. “All right. Something tells me you guys’ll have better grub than the hospital anyway. Speaking of that, I’m starving.”

“Most of your breakfast is all over my floor. How about I get us something from the cafeteria for dinner and organize someone to clean this up?”

“You’re a godsend, Doc. Get me anything. I’m not fussy.”

She smiled again, washed her hands, and left. The blinds fluttered as she closed the door.

Shakily, I sat up. My pains weren’t so bad anymore. My chest still felt wet and heavy, but breathing wasn’t too difficult. I swung my legs over the side of the examination table and looked around.

Zhi Lu was more dangerous than I thought. I must’ve given something away, let her know that I knew she was up to something. Sean must’ve come across me before I drowned completely. That meant not everyone in AISOR was involved. But I had no way of knowing who I could trust. I was worse than a sitting duck if I stayed here. Ducks had wings, at least. Fatigue was taking me again, and I couldn’t stay awake forever. I had to go.

I carefully lowered myself to the ground. My legs trembled and swayed like a bridge in the wind, but somehow I stayed upright. I found my clothes and all my stuff on a chair. Somehow, it was dry and cleaner than it had been before. I dressed as quickly as I could, stepping around the pool of vomit on the floor. Sorry about leaving you with that, Doc.

I had my hand on the door knob when I paused and glanced back at the white container containing the fluid I’d coughed up. It was kind of gross, but that liquid had something to do with what was going on. I wasn’t likely to get another sample of it.

Time was running out. I crossed the room and picked up the container. It had a clip-top lid. I opened it and peered inside, but it just looked like water. I closed it and tucked it under my arm. On a whim, I pocketed my two blood samples as well. If I wasn’t staying here, they wouldn’t be much use to the doc, and if I got sick maybe I could give them to the hospital doctors to save time.

I went back to the door, passing the chlamydia poster again. A look out the door revealed an empty hallway. No guards, no assassins. No Vei with knives and no drill-wielding maniacs. Most importantly, no femme fatales. I closed the door as quietly as I could and made for the elevators. Claudia walked beside me. I tried to ignore the concern in her dead blue eyes.

I recognized the cop from six months ago, when Vivian and Detective Todd had hauled me downtown. Before everything started. Before I became a killer.

The cop was still about three sizes too big for his uniform, and still had the same spiteful look on his face. I’d ridden my bike straight from AISOR to the police station. Now this bastard was giving me a hard time.

“Look,” I said, trying to be reasonable, “I just need to talk to Detective Reed.”

“I can’t let you go to her desk.”

“Then call her. I’ll take her out for a goddamn coffee.” I would’ve done it myself but her number was blocked on my cell phone and she hadn’t given it to me herself. Besides, I wanted to get her face-to-face. It was nearly nine at night, but I didn’t think she’d have clocked out yet. Judging from how many roadblocks this bastard was trying to put in front of me, I was right.

He rested his arm against the desk and looked bored. “Mr. Falco—”

“Franco. My name is Franco. Christ, it’s been on the news enough. Will you please just call her and tell her I have information for her?”

He looked at me for a long time. Objectively speaking, I guess I could appreciate that he didn’t want his colleague getting harassed by a disheveled guy who’d narrowly escaped a couple dozen murder convictions, but I was far from objective right now.

Finally, agonizingly slowly, he picked up the phone and dialed.

I waited on a wooden bench, watching Vei hookers and tattooed thugs and scurrying cops come and go. The mayor had promised to clean up corruption on the force, and there’d certainly been a few cops going under the hammer of justice in the last couple of months. A lot of the cops I saw here were baby-faced, probably only out of the academy five minutes. I’d heard we’d also been getting some transfers in from neighboring cities. I wondered if it would make a difference. These things ran deeper than a few bad apples. The gangs had taken a few hits, but they still had their gloves up and their weight set for a swing. Bluegate didn’t seem to realize what was coming.

Vivian came down about ten minutes later. Her low heels click-clacked on the floor, making an interesting counterpoint to the sway of her hips. Her dark hair bobbed around her cheeks with each step. An image I’d seen in the pool in Tartarus flashed inside my head, and my cheeks grew warm. I hoped the bruises covered it. I stood up to meet her.

“What is it, Miles?” she said, her hands on her hips. “What happened to your face?”

“Zombie outbreak. They tried to gnaw my face off. Where’s your worse half?”

She checked her watch in what was probably the least subtle hint she could manage. “Detective Wade is going through old case files. Would you prefer to talk to him?”

“Nah, you’re better looking,” I said. She was giving me one of her stern looks, so I decided to get on with it. “Walk with me. We’ll get a vending machine coffee. Any leads on the case?”

“We’re thinking it’s gang-related. Some members from one of the new gangs have been snooping around the victims, so we’ve been trying to conduct surveillance on them. They’re slippery, though.”

I shook my head. “It’s not gangs. When you called this morning you mentioned some sort of crystallization in Claudia’s blood vessels, right?”

She walked with me to the vending machine in the corner of the lobby. The faint scent of a long day’s work trailed behind her. It wasn’t unpleasant. “I thought I told you not to follow this up.”

“Yeah, you did.” I put a styrofoam cup under the vending machine’s nozzle and punched the buttons at random until the machine started rumbling and squirting out something that resembled coffee. “I considered your suggestion with great care.”

She closed her eyes and muttered something to herself. It was probably a good thing I didn’t hear what she said. “What did you find out?”

“You heard of AISOR?” I passed her the coffee, then put another cup in for me.

“Yes. Of course.”

“No need to get snarky,” I said. “I found myself a little employment with them.”

She raised her eyebrow and blew on her coffee. “You? You got a job?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. More of a paying favor that I’ve yet to be paid for. They’ve found another world, Vivian. Not Heaven, not Limbus, something else.”

She studied my face like she was trying to decide if I was lying or just crazy. “How can you be sure?”

“I’ve been there.”

The coffee machine finished vibrating and I took my coffee. The powder hadn’t mixed properly, leaving little brown bits floating on the surface.

“That’s all very interesting, Miles. But how does it connect to these deaths? Our gang leads are solid.”

“Some friendly Vei put me on to AISOR. Check this out.” I retrieved the tubes of blood from my pocket and held them out. She didn’t take them.

“A bottle of wine would’ve been fine,” she said. “Whose blood is that?”

“Mine. Take them,” I said. She did, reluctantly. “Notice anything familiar?”

“The color,” she said. “It’s like the victims. It’s—” Her eyes flicked back to mine and her lips pressed together. “Miles…”

“Give those to whoever needs to look at them. That asshole pathologist, maybe. See if whatever’s in there matches what was in Claudia’s blood. If so, that’s your connection. AISOR, and their new world.”

We started walking back toward the seats on the other side of the room. She still hadn’t taken a sip of her coffee. Her voice lowered. “Goddamn it, Miles. I told you to stay out of this.”

“A lot of people did. Some of them were very persuasive. But you know me.”

“We need to get you to a hospital,” she said. “If you’re infected with this thing, or poisoned, or whatever it is…” She shook her head. “People are dead, Miles.”

Claudia’s face appeared in my mind’s eye. My chest felt like it was filled with rocks. “I know they are.”

“I’ll take you there. Or we can call an ambulance if you’d prefer.”

I shook my head, and a drop of hot coffee splashed onto the back of my hand. I made no move to wipe it off. “I’ll get there myself. I’ve got a couple more things to do first.”

She shot me a look.

“Really,” I said. I took a long sip of the coffee. It wasn’t actually that bad.

“You’re an awful liar.” She sipped her coffee as well, and we were silent for a few seconds. Over in the corner, a drunk was making a hell of a noise while a couple of cops tried to talk some sense into him.

“Did Claudia’s sister call you?” Vivian said after a while.

I shrugged. “I haven’t been home, and there wasn’t much cell reception where I’ve been.”

“The funeral’s tomorrow at noon at St. Matthew’s Church. The sister wants to get it over and done with as soon as possible.”

I nodded. It must have been a hell of a job getting the church booked on short notice like that. I didn’t even think Claudia was religious. “I’ll be there.”

“I’ll look into AISOR,” she said, “but I don’t see it. They’re a huge company. They have nothing to gain from this, and everything to lose. The Collective fit better as suspects.”

I stopped with the coffee cup halfway to my mouth. The Collective again? Who were these guys? And what was their connection in all this?

“Miles?”

“Never mind,” I said. “A thought just occurred to me. Will you be at the funeral tomorrow?”

“No. Detective Wade will be, though.”

Great. “Did you tell him what I said?”

“Yes.”

“How’d he take it?”

She said nothing, but she allowed a small smile to touch her lips. It made her look even more beautiful.

“You still owe me that talk,” I said.

She nodded. “I do.” With one last gulp, she finished the last of her coffee. “Please, Miles. Leave this alone. And go to the hospital. We’ll find who did this.”

“I know you will. You’re a good cop. Say, you ever use those cuffs outside of work hours?”

“Thanks for the coffee, Miles.” She walked away, past the overweight cop behind the desk. I watched her until she was out of my sight. Then I drained the coffee, crushed the cup in my hand, and tossed it into a waste bin. I offered the overweight cop a wave before I left, but he just glared.

The sun had long set by the time I stepped back out onto the street. The streetlights gave off little pools of light, trying to hold back the darkness. I paused for a moment on the stone steps leading down from the ancient police station. A few cars rumbled along the street, making their way home. I was starving.

Vivian was right; the hospital was where I should be, but I knew what those places were like. If they decided I was sick, they wouldn’t just let me walk out. And I wasn’t done yet. I pictured Penny Coleman lying in that hospital bed, dying. Dying hard. Sure, I was scared. I was goddamn terrified. But I’d made a promise.

I went down the steps and along the street until I reached my motorbike. As I was putting my helmet on, I thought I caught a glimpse of movement in my side mirror. I could have sworn I saw someone move in that silver sedan parked a couple of cars back. But when I looked again, there was nothing. Maybe it was another hallucination. Maybe.

I pulled on my helmet, started up the bike, and pulled out onto the road. It had been a long, long day. And tomorrow I had to bury my friend.

Somehow, I didn’t think she’d stay buried.

FOURTEEN

Tania was waiting for me outside my apartment when I got home, a handbag across her shoulder and a plastic bag in her hand. She cast her gaze over my body. “How do you manage to look worse each time I see you?”

“Scientists have been trying to find out the answer to that for years. What are you doing here? Did I forget another lesson?”

She shook her head and held up the plastic bag with a couple of white styrofoam containers inside. “I brought you some Turkish. Last time I was here your fridge held nothing but Kemia and old cheese.” She frowned at the bag. “It’s probably cold now, but—”

“Gimme.” I snatched the bag away from her and tossed her my apartment keys while I ripped open the packaging. There was a plastic spork in the bag, but I’ve found cutlery only gets in the way when you’re starving. I grabbed a handful of rice, salad, and meat and shoved it in my mouth.

Tania shook her head as she opened the door. “You’re disgusting. No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Hey, maybe I don’t have a girlfriend because I’m playing the field.” I followed her inside and dropped myself onto the couch, still eating. “Anyway, I do all right.”

Tania studied me carefully for a few seconds. Then her eyes lit up. “Oh my God. You got laid, didn’t you?”

I shoved another pile of food in my mouth so I didn’t have to speak. I hoped the dim lights of my apartment were enough to cover the blush creeping up my neck.

“You did!” she practically squealed. “Who was she?”

I choked down the dry meat. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re way too young to be exposed to the dirtier parts of life.”

She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “I’m seventeen, Miles.”

“So you keep telling me.”

Tania glared at me for a second, then lunged forward and grabbed the container of Turkish food out of my hands. She wheeled backward, fending me off while I desperately tried to reclaim the meal. “Come on, I won’t tell anyone. Who is she? Tell me that and you get your food back.”

“I’m not hungry anyway.” My stomach made a contradictory moan.

Tania raised an eyebrow.

“Seriously, kid, it’s not worth talking about. She was a girl I met. I liked her. But it didn’t work out.”

“Oh. How come?”

Because she wasn’t who she said she was. Because she killed me. “She snored,” I said. “It was never going to work.”

Tania gave me a look that said she didn’t buy my line, but she passed me back the food anyway. We sat down on the couch and stared at the blank TV for a few minutes, eating and thinking. Mostly eating, on my part.

“Desmond called me,” she said after a while. “He told me your friend died. I’m sorry.”

I licked my fingers clean and said nothing.

“You didn’t say anything the other day,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“He said you’re planning to do some stuff,” she said. “Dangerous stuff. Stupid stuff.”

“You’re one to talk. Des told me you’ve been conning him into letting you come along with this idiot neighborhood watch thing he’s got such a hard-on about.”

She shrugged like it was nothing, and flashed me a little smile. “He’s easy to play. But it’s not like I’m doing anything really dangerous. Not like you.”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “I can’t let her lie in that morgue without knowing why she’s there. I can’t.”

Tania pulled her legs up on the couch and tucked them beneath her. “You think this will make up for what the Chroma made you do?”

“The Chroma didn’t make me do anything,” I said, growling more than I intended to. “I did it. Me. I killed those gangsters, kid. The Chroma gave me the strength, but…” I shook my head. “You don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it?” Her eyes were glistening, but her voice was all fire. “So when John Andrews’ men held me down and injected Chroma into my veins, when I lost my mind and started blowing them all away, that was my fault, was it?”

I was having trouble speaking with my foot in my mouth. “That’s not what I meant. That was different. They kidnapped you and forced the drug into you. I shot up that Chroma myself and aimed myself at those gangsters. I knew what would happen.”

“Stop being so melodramatic,” Tania said. “Just because you held the syringe yourself, doesn’t mean you weren’t forced. You had to save Vivian. You had to save all of us.”

“But not like that.” I ran my fingers through my hair. My voice fell. I was so tired. “I can’t deal with what I did.”

Her tiny hand touched mine. “You’re not the only one who got screwed up by Chroma, Miles. I still have nightmares every night. Do you know why I practice Tunneling so much?”

I shook my head.

“Because I have to learn to control it. I need to. Because the thought of losing control like that again….” She shivered. “And it wasn’t just when I was on the drug, either. After, the withdrawal symptoms, the need for it that overwhelmed everything else, that made me hate everyone who tried to stop me from getting more Chroma, I can still remember that. And it makes me sick.”

I knew what she was talking about. A couple of days after I’d dosed myself, the withdrawals hit. The doctors practically had to tie me to the bed to keep me from fighting my way out of the hospital. I even tried to deck one of the nurses, a petite little brunette thing. I’d never felt so desperate. And I’ve been awful desperate at times.

Tania leaned her head against my shoulder. “But we’ve got to get through it. We can come out of this better. You can’t do this thing you’re doing if it’s only guilt driving you. If you want to find who hurt your friend, you have to do it for the right reasons.”

“Yeah? And what reasons are those?”

“You have to do it because she deserves some closure. And because you cared about her. That’s your weakness, and your strength. You care so much. Desmond thinks this will destroy you. But I don’t. I think this is something you need to do.”

I looked down at the veins in the backs of my hands, at the green tinge I saw there. “Maybe you’re both right.”

“You’re pretty hard to destroy.”

I grinned and squeezed her hand. Damn the kid, but she was optimistic. I couldn’t bear to wipe the smile off her face, so I changed the subject. “You bring your Tunneling stuff with you?” I asked.

She patted her handbag.

“Draw me a Tunnel to Heaven,” I said.

“Where to?”

“Where do you want to go?”

She pursed her lips, then smiled brightly. “Oh, I know. The Hanging Cities. I was reading about them the other day. Do you know they have air-jet elevators to get between the levels?”

I’d nearly got myself killed fooling around on those elevators when I wasn’t much older than Tania, but she was more sensible than me. “Good choice. Sketch me a design for a Tunnel to take you, me, and whoever else you want to come. When this is all over, we’ll go.”

“Really?”

I looked her in the eyes and tried to pretend I wasn’t dying. “Really,” I lied.

She grinned and dug a charcoal pencil and a sheet of paper out of her bag. I watched her brow wrinkle as she concentrated for a few seconds. Then she nodded to herself and started drawing. I got up, turned around, and let the smile fade from my face.

While she worked, I settled down at my kitchen table next to my goldfish and flattened out the crumpled scientific papers Doc McCaffrey had given me.

It took me the better part of an hour to get through the first one. Most of Kowalski’s work was hypothesis and supposition backed up by numbers but no hard evidence. But as I propped my eyes open with matchsticks to get through the boring math parts, I started to see hints of something deeper underlying the research. There were references to several supposed worlds, including one world with no indications of life but displaying a psychic stimulus that the authors likened to a powerful pheromone. To me, it was more like one of those deep-sea fish with the light on its head to attract prey.

Though the paper only gave the world a code number, it didn’t take a genius to work out they were talking about Tartarus. The paper had been published nearly two decades ago, long before I’d cracked open the Tunnel to Limbus or AISOR even existed. How long had this been in the works? And why had it taken Kowalski so long to get there? This was promising stuff, even if most of the world’s interdimensional physicists would’ve laughed them out of town. Why stop the research for so long? And why start again now?

Zhi Lu’s face came into my head. How did she fit into this? I guessed someone must be paying her. And the mayor, what about her? What the hell did she have to do with this Tartarus bullshit?

None of it made any sense. Or at least, not to a dumbass like me. I glanced up at Tania, drawing on a new sheet of paper with a couple of scrunched up pieces around her. No matter what Des said, I had to keep her out of this. I wouldn’t let her end up like Claudia. She’d been through enough already.

But that’s not all, is it? a voice in my head whispered. You don’t just want to keep her safe. You don’t want her to see. Deep down, you know you’re a dead man walking now. Tartarus will have another victim. You don’t want anyone to see how far you’ll go now that you have nothing to lose. You don’t want yourself to see.

I could feel the anger rumbling away inside me, quiet and waiting. Someone had killed Claudia, and now they’d killed me. The world wouldn’t miss me, but Claudia was different. Someone had robbed the world of her songs. They had to pay. I knew exactly how far I’d go to hurt the person who’d killed Claudia.

And it scared me.

FIFTEEN

I was feeling lousy. My stomach churned like it was trying to make butter. My forehead was coated in a thin sheen of sweat. I’d spent half an hour this morning sitting by the toilet, wondering if I was going to spew. Somehow, I held it back. Maybe I should have stuck my fingers down my throat and got it over with. It was probably just bad Turkish food. Yeah, that was it.

After Tania left, I’d fallen asleep in front of the TV with Die Hard: With a Vengeance playing on mute. Bruce Willis had requisitioned a taxi and was racing through Central Park when I blinked and my eyes stayed shut. Next thing I knew, the sun was shining in my face.

Despite the queasiness, I fixed myself some off-brand cereal without milk and choked it down with some black instant coffee. I didn’t usually drink coffee in the morning, but it was that or pass out in my cereal.

It was a long wait until midday. I tried to pass the time by piecing together the puzzle, but my brain wasn’t working. I slouched with one leg hanging over the arm of my couch, passing the white container of Tartaran fluid from one hand to the other. I wondered how long I had before I’d start getting really sick. Then again, maybe I was being pessimistic. Maybe it wouldn’t affect me. I only knew about the people who were dead or dying from this thing, but who knew how many people had been exposed to it and lived. It was about time I got lucky, wasn’t it?

At 11:30 I forced myself to get up. I put on my black suit with a black tie, fought my hair until it submitted, and wiped the dried blood from around the stitches in my ear. I wondered if there was any chance it could get infected. Doc McCaffrey hadn’t given me any antibiotics, so she must’ve thought it was okay. Besides, it was probably the least of my worries.

I was about to leave when I thought about the container of fluid. It was valuable stuff. For a moment I stared at it, trying to figure out what to do. Then I carried it back to my bedroom, put my back against my set of drawers, and heaved. They came away from the wall with a groan, leaving behind pockmarks in the carpet and a heavy layer of dust. I bent down and tucked the container into a jagged hole in the drywall. I’d kept stuff in there once or twice before when I’d brought something slightly illegal back from Heaven, but it was empty now, aside from a few spiderwebs hanging from the wooden frame. I hoped the rats didn’t find it.

I shoved the drawers back to cover the hole, slipped a bottle of Kemia into my pocket, and left the apartment. Outside, it was turning into another scorching day.

The funeral service was all right, as far as these things go. Less than fifty people showed up, and I didn’t recognize most of them. The coffin lay at the head of the church beneath a tortured Jesus on a cross. It was closed casket. A framed photograph sat on top, showing Claudia at least ten years younger. Her smile hadn’t changed.

Claudia’s sister, Georgia, didn’t much resemble her except for the blond hair. She stood up the front of the church after the minister had said his piece, and gave a wooden speech full of generic statements about kind hearts and pure souls. She didn’t mention how the world got so bright when Claudia sang you had to wear sunglasses.

I sat about halfway down the church at the end of a pew. No one wanted to get too close to me. A couple of times I caught people staring at me with wide eyes. I wondered how many were speculating that I’d killed her.

That might’ve been part of the reason they didn’t ask me to be a pall bearer. Then again, they didn’t seem to have picked the other guys in my band either. Bubbles was nowhere to be seen, but Salin came up to me as we followed the coffin out to the hearse in front of the church. Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” was playing over the speakers. It was a good song, but she would’ve preferred jazz.

“It’s a sad thing,” Salin said. A lock of hair fell across his dark, leathery forehead.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Yup.”

When we got outside, I caught a glimpse of Detective Wade leaning against his dark blue sedan. He was wearing sunglasses, but I could feel his eyes on me. I looked away.

Salin and I watched for a while as the pall bearers loaded the coffin into the hearse. It was hot out, and Salin dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “We’ll never find another singer like her.”

“No.”

“You’re still looking for the people who did this, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “Good. And when you find them, you will kill them?”

“I’m not a murderer, Salin.” I wished I sounded like I believed that.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “But you will kill them. If you need help, you will call me. I will kill them too.”

I glanced at him. Salin was slightly chubby and shorter than me, and I wasn’t exactly Sun Ming Ming. I’d never seen him raise his voice, let alone a fist. Still, he looked dead serious.

We parted company. He wasn’t coming to the burial, so I took my bike to the cemetery alone, following the convoy that trailed behind the hearse.

The hole in the earth was already waiting for her. The pall bearers laid the coffin on a pair of green straps that stretched across the grave site. Motors hummed as they lowered her into the ground. A breeze had started to pick up, but it did nothing to cut through the heat. The minister said a few more empty words, and women in black wiped away tears.

Detective Wade had come as well. Like me, he stood apart from everyone else, his hands folded in front of him. I could make out the bulge of a pistol beneath his jacket.

When Claudia was in the ground, everyone took turns tossing a flower in after her. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something about leaving a pile of rotting vegetation on top of her didn’t seem right.

I glanced around at the other mourners. My presence was making them uncomfortable, that much was obvious. I’d already said my goodbyes to Claudia. Besides, that thing in the ground wasn’t her any more than my hallucinations were. I figured I should go. I turned away from the group and walked through the neatly-trimmed grass back toward the parking lot. Detective Wade glanced in my direction as I left, but he didn’t say anything. Something black and hollow gnawed at my insides.

The walk back to the parking lot put a low, grassy hill between me and the mourners. A handful of other individuals were scattered around the cemetery, tending to grave sites. None of them looked at me. I kept walking. Something in my throat tickled. I put my fist over my mouth and coughed wetly a few times. Maybe I was getting a cold. I shoved my hands back in my pockets.

Footsteps came from behind me, crunching on the dry grass. Something hard pressed into the small of my back. Something awfully gun-shaped.

“Walk,” a man’s voice said in my ear. “Hands out of your pockets.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, putting my hands by my side. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Did they buy you guys in bulk?”

He jabbed me with the gun barrel, pointing me toward a white Toyota Corolla parked a few spaces away from my bike. “Shut up.” The voice had a squawking quality to it.

I wasn’t even scared. I was just angry. A line of trees partially shielded the two of us from the rest of the cemetery. There was no one in the parking lot except for a small, hairy dog racing around the back seat of a Land Rover.

“You got a name?” I asked.

“Shut up.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I said shut up.”

Not the friendliest of kidnappers. Not the classiest, either. It was a goddamn funeral. Who kidnaps someone from a funeral?

Some part of me wanted to run for it and make him shoot me, just to screw his plan over. I decided against it. I had enough problems without a bullet wound. The dog in the Land Rover yapped as we went past.

“You’re driving,” he said as we reached the Corolla. He tossed a key onto the concrete.

I still hadn’t seen his face. I tried to glance at him as I bent to pick up the key, but from down here the sun was in my eyes, and he wore a hat that cast his face into shadow. I squinted, grimaced, and turned back to the car.

“Get in,” he said. His voice was really starting to grate on me. He sounded like he’d been raised by trained parrots.

I opened the driver’s door and climbed in. At the same time, I heard the door to the back seat open. The car rocked slightly as he got in behind me. I took the opportunity to palm a coin from my jacket pocket and slip it into the other hand.

“Put the key in the ignition.”

“I know how to drive a bloody car,” I said. I moved to put the key in, then fumbled it. It dropped to the mat. “Damn.”

The gun barrel pressed against the back of my neck. “Hurry up.” He was nervous; I could hear it in his voice.

While I bent down to retrieve the key, I put my other hand in my jacket pocket and carefully uncorked the bottle of Kemia without removing it from my pocket. I could feel the bastard’s breath on my neck as he watched me pick up the key.

This time I got it in the ignition. At the same moment, I pressed the coin I’d palmed against the rim of the Kemia bottle and splashed a little Kemia on it. A fragment of chaos burst inside my mind. I didn’t know much about car engines, but it wasn’t hard to screw one up.

I turned the ignition. For a few seconds, the engine groaned and spluttered like a lifelong smoker getting up in the morning. The noise didn’t stop until I released the key. The car didn’t start.

“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Your car’s screwed, pal.”

The car rocked with his fidgeting. I glanced in the rear-view mirror and got a glimpse of a pale face with sweat on his forehead. “Try it again.”

I did, keeping the Pin Hole open. The car sounded like someone was throwing cats at a lawn mower.

“You want me to get out and push?” I asked.

“Shut up,” he growled. “Give it some gas while you do it.”

“You sound a little stressed,” I said. “I can call a mechanic if you like. I won’t try to run away until it’s fixed, I promise.”

He shoved the gat against my head so hard I was looking at my own chest. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. Let me think!” The pressure of the gun barrel disappeared. “Let me try.”

He leaned past my head, reaching for the ignition with his free hand. The pistol came into my field of view.

I released the Pin Hole that was screwing with the car’s engine and clamped my fingers around his wrist. Tugging on his arm, I slammed his gun hand against the steering wheel. He screamed. A moment later, the gat went off. The windshield shattered and my ears rang like the world’s most annoying alarm clock. That got my heart going.

I smacked his fingers into the steering wheel again. The pistol barked, ejecting its hot casing into my lap. I barely noticed it. He screamed again and tried to gouge at my face with his free hand. The gun dropped to my feet.

I rammed my elbow backward. It was an awkward angle, and all I managed to do was hit my funny bone on one of his bony prominences. Electricity rocketed up and down my arm. His fingers dug harder into the flesh of my cheek. I turned my head and bit. His fingers tasted like oil. His scream turned into a screech.

Blood spurted into my mouth as he jerked his hand back. I spat the taste out, fumbled at the lever for the door, felt it pop open. There were hands grasping for the back of my jacket, but I was already scrambling out of the seat. He caught me by the belt, just for a second, and it was enough to throw me off balance. I came down on my forearms in the parking lot and scrambled the rest of the way out of the car on my hands and knees.

My heart jumped around inside my chest. A glance back showed me he was wriggling through the gap between the front seats, trying to retrieve the gun. No time for subtlety. It was never my strong point anyway. I crawled around the side of the next car over and put my back against the muscle car’s tire. I fished in my pocket for another coin and pulled out the bottle of Kemia. Somewhere, a dog was yapping like crazy.

Another gunshot split the air. The round slammed through the muscle car door a few inches from my head. I ducked as the pale-faced bastard let off another shot. Kemia splashed over the coin in my hand. A new whirl of unreality took my mind. I hummed in tune to the madness while my heart kept the beat. The Pin Hole opened. My ears popped. I stood up and faced him over the muscle car’s hood. He leaned awkwardly over the Corolla’s handbrake and leveled the gun at me.

I don’t think he expected me to leap at him. It’s not the thing you tend to do when a rod is pointed in your general direction. But more than that, I don’t think he expected me to have turned into something that resembled an agile gorilla.

With one huge, unfamiliar hand I snatched his outstretched arm and jerked it upward. He fired again and again, but he wasn’t hitting anything except the sky. Then he pulled the trigger once more and nothing happened. I could smell the sweat pouring from him.

I dragged him out of the car by his arm, my muscles bursting with animal strength. His finger continued to switch uselessly on the trigger. Snarling, I grabbed the wiry bastard by the front of his shirt and pulled him close.

“Who do you work for?”

He just whimpered. My nostrils flared.

“I’m sick of you guys,” I said. “Ambush me once, shame on you.”

I slammed him back against the car. His eyes bugged and his mouth resembled the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.

“Ambush me twice…” I headbutted him in the nose, and he cried out. Blood poured from his nostrils. “…shame on me. Ambush me three times—”

“Franco!”

I glanced toward the voice. Detective Wade stood with his legs spread at the edge of the parking lot, his golden hair blown perfectly by the wind. A pistol was in his hands. It was pointed at me. A small crowd of onlookers—the people who had been at the funeral—gaped at me.

“Let him go,” Wade said.

“Come on,” I said, “we’re just having a chat.”

The man trembled in my hands. His eyes were wide as his gaze swept up and down my new body. “It’s…it’s not possible. Tunnelers can’t do that.”

“Anything’s possible if you put your mind to it. Isn’t that right, Detective?”

“Franco.” If his voice was filled with any more warning, it would have a sign and flashing lights attached.

I grunted. The queasiness in my stomach was coming back anyway. I let go of the man, releasing his head right into the car door. He yelped and toppled dizzily. As he fell, I slipped his wallet from his back pocket, using my body to hide the action from Wade.

“Now,” Wade said, still aiming his gun at me, “return to your normal state.”

“Ain’t I pretty enough for you, Wade?”

He didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t crack anything at all.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and severed the Pin Hole’s connection to Heaven. The chaos in my mind stopped swirling, and my ears popped again. When I opened my eyes, I was the same old me again. I met Wade’s eyes across the parking lot. “Happy?”

He holstered his weapon. The crowd behind him started whispering furiously to each other and comparing the footage they’d captured on their phones. While Wade crossed the parking lot, I pocketed my attacker’s wallet and picked up my bottle of Kemia from next to the groaning, half-conscious man.

Without a word, Wade rolled the man onto his stomach, cuffed his hands behind his back, and hauled him to a dark blue sedan. The pale-faced guy wasn’t really hurt. He bled from a nice cut above his eye, but I’d probably done him a favor. Ladies like scars.

I made my way to my motorbike, doing my best to ignore the whispering crowd. My gut was groaning, and I was feeling a little light-headed. That was unusual. Tunneling drained me a bit, but it didn’t usually leave me feeling like shit.

I was halfway to my bike when Wade called out again. “Franco. You’re coming with me.”

I stopped and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Like hell I am,” I said without turning around.

“This is out of control. Detective Reed told me what you’ve been doing. You’re going to get yourself killed out here.”

“So nice to know you care.”

“Someone wants you out of the picture.” Wade came up behind me. “You think he was the only one they’ll send?”

I shrugged. “I’ve handled things all right so far,” I lied.

“You need our protection.”

I would’ve laughed if I didn’t feel like hurling. “Protection. Right. I’ll take my chances on the street, thanks.”

I took a step forward, and then a hand gripped my upper arm. A white-hot flash went through my head. Christ, I wanted to take a swing at him.

“I’ll arrest you if I have to.”

I could still taste the man’s blood in my mouth. I spat it out. “What charge?”

“We’ll start with assault and Tunneling on a suspended license.”

Son of a bitch. I had things to do. I needed to nail AISOR, and I couldn’t do that cooling my heels in a police station. For a brief moment, I considered attacking Wade and making a break for it. I could probably manage it, if I didn’t get shot. Come to think of it, the risk of getting shot was becoming a major impediment to me achieving my goals.

I kicked at a loose stone with my shoe. Hell, I didn’t have a choice, did I?

“Would you really have shot me?” I asked.

“I still might.”

I grinned and let him lead me back to his car. That damn dog was still yapping.

SIXTEEN

Detective Wade insisted on bringing my pale-faced attacker to the station in his car, so I got to sit in the front seat and not behind the mesh. The guy groaned in the back seat for a while, and then he lapsed into nervous silence as he came around. The paramedics wanted to take him to hospital and make sure I hadn’t slammed him around enough to knock anything important loose, but Wade said he wanted to get the guy talking. I had to agree; this son of a bitch must know something about Claudia. Of course, I didn’t tell Wade I was on his side here.

The pretty boy drove in silence, his hands at exactly ten and two on the wheel. After he cracked the window, the breeze turned his hair into a men’s shampoo commercial. My initial impression of him hadn’t dimmed in the slightest. There was something smarmy beneath his exterior, and I didn’t like it. Physically, there wasn’t much similarity between him and Vivian’s previous partner, but something about him reminded me of Detective Todd. I found myself clutching my bottle of Kemia while the sun-drenched streets rolled past.

Wade got a uniformed cop to take my attacker to booking when we reached the station. I didn’t get the same privilege. I signed my name at reception, then Wade dragged me past the vending machine and we took an elevator up a few floors. He didn’t say a word. I followed his example.

We emerged from the elevator into a large room that could’ve come from damn near any office building in the world, if it weren’t for all the cops walking around. One side of the room was lined with large, grimy windows that let some of the day’s heat creep in, while the other held a few doors with stark metal name plates in holders. Most of the rest of the room was filled with desks and computers, vaguely separated into different teams. Every desk I could see was adorned with stacks of paper and a styrofoam coffee cup, or in some cases, five or six.

A few of the cops greeted Wade as he took me past, but no one glanced at me. I shoved my hands in my pocket and tried to not look like a mass murderer. A vice was slowly tightening around my chest.

“Wait here.” Wade pulled up a seat near the windows. The hard plastic stung a bruise on my ass. I didn’t let it show on my face.

“Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” Wade said. He turned and walked away before I could respond. Stupid? Me?

I glanced around once more at the cops to make sure none of them were paying me any attention, and then I pulled the pale-faced man’s wallet out of my jacket pocket. It was brown leather, nothing fancy, but with a lot less tears and holes than mine. I flipped it open and had a look inside. About a hundred bucks and assorted change inside, but no receipts to give me a clue what he’d been doing recently. Other than that, there was only a single Visa credit card and a driver’s license. My attacker had the unfortunate name of Anthony Gullet. I figured it was too terrible to be a fake identity.

I caught a whiff of reheated pasta, and my stomach rumbled. The petite female cop left the steaming container on a desk a few feet from me and wandered over toward the coffee machine. I’d never even got to enjoy the post-funeral snacks. I wondered if I could snag the cop’s lunch and eat it before she got back. Nah, I didn’t want to give Detective Wade any ammunition.

I took the cash and cards out of the wallet and went through them carefully again. Gullet sure wasn’t one of the scientists hanging around in the basement of AISOR, but he could easily work for them. Or maybe Zhi or Kowalski hired him to take me out. There were probably plenty of ex-gangsters out of work right now that would take a job like that in an instant. I didn’t get a gangster vibe from him, though. He was too inexperienced.

“You’re not going to try to bribe your way out of this, are you?”

I looked up to find Vivian standing in front of me. With her chin, she pointed at the wallet in my hands. She was wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt today, with just the top button undone. Her gun sat in a leather shoulder harness. It made me a little uncomfortable. She was sexy anyway. She could make wearing a burlap sack look sexy.

I shoved the cash and cards back in the wallet. For a moment I considered keeping my hands on it, but I’d got all I could out of it anyway. I tossed the wallet to her. “That belongs to my pal with the itchy trigger finger. Do me a favor and return it to him, will you?”

She turned it in her hands, checking the ID like I had, then nodded and pocketed it. I caught a glimpse of Wade hovering behind her, a vaguely satisfied smile playing around his lips. I raised my eyebrows at him.

“What’s up with you?” I asked. “You look like you’ve been tattling on me to my mother.”

He smirked and said nothing.

“I’m not your damn mother, Miles.” Vivian folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Let’s go to the interview room. We need to talk.”

I smiled as casually as I could, leaned back, and rested my arms on the seat backs to either side of me. “I’m comfortable here.”

“Fine,” she said. Without turning around, she grabbed an office chair, dragged it in front of me, and sat down. That threw me a little. I expected more of an argument. Maybe some good old-fashioned police brutality.

“We need you to go through everything,” she said. “Right from the start.”

“And then what?” I said.

“And then you’re going to drop this. Actually drop it this time. This situation is beyond dangerous, Miles. We’ll take you to hospital, or if you won’t go, we’ll bring a doctor here. And we’ll find whoever is responsible for killing your friend. But you have to talk to us.”

I licked my lips. There was fire in her eyes, and not some lousy candle flame either. And even I had to admit she probably had a point. Attempted kidnappings and gunfights in broad daylight probably wasn’t the best way to heal a recovering city. But every inch of me wanted to resist. It was me who failed Claudia. I was the one getting beaten up and poisoned. I should be the one to avenge her.

I rubbed my chin, feeling the sandpaper brush of stubble. For an instant, I thought I saw Claudia again, but then she was gone. Deep in my stomach, some thick, oozing pain lurked.

I sighed. “When you’re right, you’re right, Vivian. I’ll talk. One condition.”

She arched an eyebrow. “What?”

“Pretty Boy gets lost.”

Wade scowled and tucked his thumbs into his belt. Vivian shook her head. “I have to tell him everything anyway.”

“Fine,” I said, “but I’m not talking to him directly.”

“You’re being a child,” she said.

“It’s one of my most endearing qualities.”

For a moment, I thought I caught a tiny smile flash across her face. Then it was gone. She studied my face for a few seconds, and it was all I could do to hold her gaze. Then she nodded.

“Detective Reed,” Wade said testily, “can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Of course. How about you go pick us up some takeaways for a late lunch, and we’ll talk then. I’m sure we’re all hungry.”

I wished I had a camera to capture the look on Wade’s face.

Wade didn’t say anything. After a moment, he gave me a sneer that did nothing for his handsome face and walked away.

I grinned at Vivian. But if there’d been a smile there before, it was nowhere to be found now. “Start talking.”

I thought back to how I tailed Zhi. I didn’t know whether to tell Vivian about Mayor White. Truth is, I didn’t know what I’d seen. Still, I had to at least give her an idea what I thought was going on. “This thing’s big. I can feel it. How big exactly, I don’t have the damnedest.”

“Let’s take it from the top,” she said. “Go through it nice and slow.”

“Don’t I even get a ‘please’?”

“No.” There was something dangerous in her eyes. I was beginning to regret getting Wade sent away. He might have been the one holding her leash.

“Look—” I started.

“No, you look. The lab ran a test on your blood sample. It’s what killed the others, all right. You don’t have the same level of crystallization yet, but you’ve only got a couple of days, maximum. You’ve got yourself into a very deep pile of shit, and I don’t know if I’ve got a long enough rope to pull you out. I need you to take this seriously.”

“I—”

“Seriously, Miles. We’re trying to get what we can on AISOR, but it’s a fucking huge company and we don’t have enough to convince a judge to let us knock down the doors. I need your statement telling us exactly what happened and what you’ve found out. And I need you to stop screwing around and turning this whole thing into a legal nightmare. AISOR has lawyers. A lot of lawyers. If you’re stomping through everything, they’re going to tear us to shreds when we try to prosecute.”

Something strange touched my consciousness. A kind of heat, and something that sounded like a drum. No. A heartbeat.

“Vivian—”

“This is the only way you can help your friend. This is the only way you can help yourself.” Her eyes touched the floor for a moment, and then returned to meet my gaze. “I want to be your friend, Miles, I really do. You have a good heart, even if you try to hide it. I want to help you, but…” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not even listening to me, are you?”

“No,” I said. “Shut up. I’m trying to concentrate on something.”

The heat was growing stronger. The bustle of cops moving around continued, but inside my head, everything melted away. Then there was another sound in my mind, like claws on glass.

Oh, shit.

“Someone’s just opened a Tunnel to Limbus,” I said.

She frowned. “What?”

“It’s close. It’s really close. Vivian, we need to—”

A cacophony of inhuman screams ripped through the office. The windows behind me shook in their frames. Black dread crept like a spider up my spine. Car tires screeched, and then the yelling began. They were outside.

Vivian and a dozen other cops raced to the windows while I twisted in my seat to look outside. The street below looked like a child had kicked over his toys and released his sister’s pet rats into the chaos. Cars were stopped in the streets, abandoned by their drivers. Pedestrians sprinted in every direction, some of them literally running in circles like they were in a cartoon. And everywhere, the creatures attacked.

There were at least ten of them, maybe more. I recognized most of them instantly. They were the same hairy, screeching, fang-filled monsters I’d sicced on Caterina in John Andrews’ mansion. I’d called them spider-dogs at the time, and the name still fit. I watched as a pair of them sank their teeth into a middle-aged woman running down the street. Even as she fell, she never let go of her grocery bags.

But there were two creatures that I didn’t recognize. And they were big. The cyclopean monsters were each the size of an SUV, with enough muscle to feed a neighborhood. Their black fur was streaked with orange across their backs, making them look like a cross between giant apes and hornets. And they looked pissed.

“Everyone outside!” Vivian yelled. The other cops were drawing their weapons, but not her. “Push them back and plug the Tunnel.”

I stood, heart hammering, and pulled my Kemia from my pocket. It was still mostly full. My mind spun up half a dozen attacks to put into action. My limbs seemed to be moving awkwardly, in slow motion.

“No,” Vivian said. “You’re staying here.”

“To hell with that. You need me to fight them. I can find the Tunnel.”

“So can we. We have Tunnelers too, remember? This attack has something to do with you. I’m not letting them draw you out.”

“Your Tunnelers are a bunch of saps,” I said. “They couldn’t turn Coke into Pepsi. People are going to die if you don’t let me help.”

I tried to push past her, but she blocked my way and shoved me back down in my seat. The rest of the cops were already scrambling for the stairs.

“We can handle it.” Her hands touched my shoulders. “No one’s going to die. Please, Miles.” She leaned down close to me. Even through the adrenaline—or maybe because of it—her scent was overwhelming. “Stay here.”

“I—”

Her face was inches from mine. A stray dark hair hung from her forehead to tickle my cheek. I could feel the warmth from her body. “Please, Miles.”

I could hardly breathe. Even the sound of the creatures’ screeching sounded far away. All I could see was her. I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry. “I—”

There was a clicking sound. Something cold wrapped itself around my wrist.

“You didn’t,” I said.

I looked down to find my left wrist handcuffed to the arm of the seat.

“I did,” she said.

I went for my Kemia, and I realized it was no longer in my hand. Vivian took a step back and held up the bottle. I hadn’t even felt her take it.

“Not cool,” I said.

Vivian turned and flagged down a passing uniformed cop. “Collins. Stay here and keep an eye on him.” She pointed to me. “Make sure he doesn’t get free.”

The skinny cop hesitated, glanced at me, and nodded. I glared at him. Goddamn it, I hated cops.

Vivian pocketed the bottle of Kemia and drew her pistol from her shoulder harness. “Back soon.”

“If you get yourself killed, just remember I told you so,” I said.

She turned and ran for the stairs. Outside, the popping of gunfire started to overlay the screeches and screams. Collins, the young cop, crossed his arms and tried to look at me sternly. I would’ve slugged him if he was within arm’s reach.

I spun awkwardly in the seat and craned my neck to look out the window. Both plain-clothes officers and uniforms were battling the creatures, using cars as cover. Some moved in to flank and surround the creatures, while others helped usher the civilians away, firing at any creature that came too close. One of the giant apes overturned a car and slammed its knuckles into the concrete in a scream of fury. The road cracked.

Where the hell was the Tunneler and his Tunnel? I couldn’t pinpoint a location from here, but it couldn’t be more than a couple of blocks away. I had no clue how he—or she, I guess—had managed to herd the creatures here. The monsters from Limbus weren’t known for being tame or timid. Damn it, Vivian. She needed me out there.

“Stay still,” Collins said. He had one eye on me and one out the window.

“You’re as bad as Detective Reed. I’m trying to concentrate here.”

I closed my eyes and focused. I really needed to get closer to find the Tunnel, but it was big enough that it was putting out a pretty decent amount of energy. If I could get a general area to point the cops in, that would let them…

Wait a minute. Something wasn’t right. There was definitely a big Limbus Tunnel close by. But there was something else as well. Limbus again, but slightly modified and coming from further away. No, that wasn’t quite true either. It was a different signal, for want of a better word, but mainly it was smaller. Almost like a Pin Hole, but for Limbus. And it was moving closer.

“Hey, Collins,” I said. “You got a gun?”

“Yeah.” He sounded wary.

“You might wanna draw it.”

There was a new screech, bird-like this time. I pulled at the handcuffs, hoping against hope they would give. Christ, what I wouldn’t do for some Kemia.

A shadow blocked the light from outside. Then something huge and winged crashed through the window.

I spun away from the sudden rush of air, throwing my free arm across my face to shield my eyes from the rain of glass. Tiny pricks of pain sprung up along my hand. Far away, I heard Collins swearing and fumbling for his pistol. Then the noise was blocked out by another screech and the whoosh of wings beating against the air.

I wrenched at the handcuffs again. Wind buffeted me. When I could open my eyes, my guts turned to ice. The creature perched in the window with its wings folded. It resembled a giant, four-winged bat. I’d guess that when it was flying, its wingspan would be bigger than two of me lying head to toe. The most obvious deviation from a regular bat was the huge beak and the two pairs of talons it had—one pair it used for standing and the others like low-slung arms. It regarded me with four small, black eyes.

“Shit,” I said.

A gun barked next to me. Collins had finally got his pistol out. He pumped a couple of rounds into the bat-creature. Pink blood spurted from its wounds, making it screech in pain. Collins didn’t notice the other bat swooping in until it was too late.

The second creature came smashing through the next window and slammed into him talon-first. I doubted he even knew what hit him before the bat drove its beak into his head and cracked the bone like it was made of balsa wood. His finger squeezed reflexively on the trigger of his gun, firing one more round before he went still. I swallowed back vomit as the creature’s head jerked up, blood and skin dangling from its beak. Poor fucking kid.

The first bat turned its head to regard me. I could sense something, the same weirdness I’d felt before, but right then I was more concerned with ending up as bird food. I stretched for Collins’ fallen pistol. Out of my reach. I was screwed. At least I’d be saved the long death of my poisoning. That was me, the eternal fucking optimist.

The bat’s beak jerked forward. I closed my eyes and waited for the sharpness to pierce my skull. Claudia’s face flashed in front of me. I failed her.

But when the crunch of the bird’s beak came, it wasn’t my head snapped in two. There was suddenly slack in the handcuff chain. I opened my eyes and found the mangled mess of the other bracelet dangling from the chain, no longer attached to the chair. The bird had bit right through it. I was free.

I put my palms on the ground, ignoring the stabbing of shattered glass, and tried to scramble to my feet. But then the creature beat its wings and leaped forward. The weight of the thing knocked the breath from me and drove me back to the ground. Talons dug into my shoulder, so deep I swear I could feel them grinding against bone. I screamed.

The bat dragged me along the floor, then lifted me toward the window frame. My fingers tried in vain to grab at something, anything. I could see over the edge to the street below. Sweat drenched my face, cold in the wind. Below, I caught a glimpse of dead creatures littering the road. A couple of cops looked up at me and the bats perched in the window. I couldn’t decide if I wanted them to try shooting it or not. Maybe friendly fire was better than the alternative.

But before anyone could loose a shot, the bat leaped into the air, dragging me with it. There was a sudden sense of falling. My stomach lurched. The police station disappeared behind me, and then there was nothing between me and a long fall except a flying monster from another world.

As the streets swept by below me, I started to wonder what the hell I’d done to piss off Lady Luck.

SEVENTEEN

I gotta say, heights weren’t my favorite thing in the world. I mean, they usually didn’t cause me much more than an uptick in my heartbeat and a desire to take a step back. But I had my limits, and dangling from the claws of a giant bat-creature a couple hundred feet above the street was one of them.

All my muscles had turned to stone. My stomach was clenched so tight it was at risk of collapsing into a black hole. I tried to shut my eyes, but my eyelids refused to obey. The city continued its horrifying movement below until the pops of gunfire outside the police station faded away and the only sounds were the wind in my ears and the alternating flapping of the creature’s four wings.

The pain in my shoulders had faded to a distant throb. I could barely feel my arms, but that didn’t concern me. Even if I could use them, I was too scared about dislodging myself from the creature’s grasp to go flailing about. I resolved to never set foot in an airplane again if I ever got out of this.

It took me a while to realize the bat was descending again. The other bat—the one that had impaled Collins—was playing wingman, guiding us down. I’d gotten so turned around with adrenaline and fear that I wasn’t sure exactly where I was, but if that light back there was the Bore, we must be headed north, toward the northern industrial district or the airport. Yeah, I could make out the runway off to my ten o’clock.

The creature’s flapping turned into a glide. The ground began to get bigger. My eyes watered against the constant assault of dry air and the first hints of smog. I was sure we were descending too fast, and I wanted a word with the captain.

We were over the oldest part of the industrial district now, where most of the factories and warehouses stood cold and empty. The high fences were no longer able to stop anything, full of rust and holes. Graffiti even marked the roofs of the buildings, proudly displaying some illegible tag or other. One of the spray-painted images resembled a bullseye. For a moment a new wave of panic took me as I wondered if the creature was planning on playing a modified game of lawn darts with me as the dart.

But we continued to descend until a large loading area emerged from behind a green factory with twin chimneys piercing its sloped roof. The bat-creature banked and changed the angle of its wings to slow itself. It wasn’t as slow as I’d’ve liked.

My feet hit the ground, sending shockwaves rippling through my feet and up my legs. The pressure on my shoulders disappeared. I toppled forward, getting my arms up just in time to scrape them along the concrete. Pins and needles poked holes in my arms as the blood rushed back.

Wind beat against my back. The sound of flapping wings faded into the distance.

I struggled to my hands and knees as I heard the footsteps behind me. Heart hammering, I tried to get to my feet. Something sapped me on the side of the head, and I decided the ground wasn’t so bad after all. I felt a pinch in my thigh. I got my vision back in time to see a small syringe sticking out of me, gripped by a Vei’s hand.

I didn’t feel so worried anymore. I didn’t feel much of anything. It’d be nice to sleep.

I was in a bar. Cigarette smoke touched my nostrils. I didn’t mind. The bar stool was soft underneath me. I looked down at my arms and found my jacket clean and unripped. It was old, but it fitted me perfectly. Or maybe I fitted it perfectly. It was hard to tell.

A gentle rain of voices soaked me, overlaid with the trickle of music coming from a jukebox in the corner. I thought about going over and seeing if they had some Keith Jarrett or Miles Davis, but when I put my hands in my pocket, I only came up with a ten dollar note and no coins.

I decided to get a drink to break the note, and the bartender appeared in front of me. I could swear he wasn’t there before, but that didn’t seem to bother me.

“Hey, pal,” I said. “Can I get a beer? Whatever you’ve got on tap.” I slid the note over to him.

The bartender’s face was hard to make out, but I was pretty sure he smiled and nodded. He poured me a drink of liquid gold and put it on a coaster for me. He put my change into a small stack of coins, with the biggest on the bottom and the smallest on the top, then slid them over to me. The coins clinked satisfyingly as I picked them up. I brought the beer to my lips.

“Do you think you should be doing that?” asked the woman sitting next to me. Her voice had an accent. German, I thought.

I turned to her. Like the bartender, I was sure she wasn’t there before. She wore a silver cocktail dress that dropped to mid-calf, and her blond hair was pulled behind her in some sort of clip. A pair of hoop earrings dangled from her ears. She wasn’t the sort of beautiful you’d see in a magazine, but when she smiled at me, it made me happy.

“Tough break,” I said, “when a guy can’t even drink a drink in his own dream.”

She looked around the bar, and I followed her gaze. It was a small place—maybe a dozen tables—but the walls were plastered with photographs and the lights cast a warm orange glow over the place.

“Is that what this is?” Claudia said. “A dream?”

Claudia. As I thought her name, her face came into sharper detail. Her eyebrows were narrow and arched, and her jawline had a squareness to it. The lipstick she wore wasn’t quite enough to cover up the deathly blue of her lips.

I sipped my beer before I spoke, enjoying the warmth as it went down. “Either a dream or another hallucination, I suppose.”

“What’s the difference?”

I couldn’t remember. Maybe there wasn’t one.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“You called me, you asked for my help. But I didn’t help you.”

She smiled and crossed one leg over the other. Behind us, the conversations continued, but when I tried to see who was sitting at the tables, everyone was in shadow.

“Can you forgive me?” I asked.

“No.”

I nodded and took another pull of my beer. “Because what I did was too terrible? Or because you’re a figment of my imagination?”

She shrugged.

“You are a figment of my imagination, right?” I asked.

“You’ve never believed in ghosts. Don’t start now.”

“Why am I having these hallucinations? Am I just crazy? Or is it something else?”

She shrugged again.

I swiveled in my seat and played with the coins in my hand. I considered buying Claudia a drink, but I wasn’t sure if hallucinations could actually drink, and I didn’t want to offend her.

There was something strange about the layout of the bar. A stage was at one end running perpendicular to the countertop, and a pair of doors sitting side by side said GUYS and DAMES. Except the doors were painted onto the wall, and they didn’t have any handles. Then I figured out what was bothering me. There was no exit. It didn’t concern me as much as I thought it would.

“I’m dying, kid,” I said after a while.

“I know,” she said.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to nail the guys who killed you before I get killed myself.”

“Not the way you’re going now,” she agreed.

I grunted. “You know, for a guiding spirit or whatever the hell you are, you’re not very supportive. Can’t you just tell me everything’s going to be all right?”

“The world doesn’t work that way. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Not your fault.” I jingled the coins in my hand. “Say, what do you want me to put on the jukebox?”

She smiled. I realized she hadn’t blinked since we’d started talking. “Why don’t you play something?”

“I don’t have my…” I turned and found a black case sitting on the bar. “Oh.”

I unfastened the catches and took out my silver trumpet. It was cleaner than I remembered. We’d been through a lot together, me and it. I was playing it when I fell in love for the first time. But that was a million years ago. I would’ve thought by now I’d be a bit wiser, but it never seemed to happen.

“Got a request?” I asked.

She said nothing for a moment. Instead, she took my hand and slipped to her feet. I let her lead me along the length of the bar, following the soft whisper of her footsteps. And then I saw where she was taking me.

The stage was all set up. Salin sat on a high stool, his dark hair falling across his face and a double bass resting against his legs. On the other side of the stage, a scrawny guy in sunglasses sat in front of a keyboard. Bubbles. They both nodded at me as Claudia led me up the stairs.

“You don’t have to play alone,” she said.

“Is that supposed to be some kind of mystic wisdom?”

She smiled again. The warmth filled my chest again. But this time, it was tinged with heaviness.

“One last song,” she said. “And then you have to go.”

I nodded. “I’m a busy man.”

“Miles,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Everything’s going to be all right.”

I smiled. “Take it, guys.”

We played until the end of time. We played for our lives.

EIGHTEEN

Coming to was like crawling out of a swamp. A warm, pleasant swamp, but a swamp nonetheless. I could still hear the music in my head. The smell of cigarette smoke was more abrasive back here in the real world. Grudgingly, I opened my eyes.

I was inside a factory. Row upon row of giant cylinders attached to rusted machines took up most of the space beneath the high ceiling and the hanging fluorescent lights. The windows were covered up with yellowed newspaper. If I had to guess what the factory used to do, I’d say textiles. But I got the feeling I hadn’t been brought here on a field trip.

There were about thirty guns pointed in my general direction. Most were handguns and shotguns, but I picked out a few nastier-looking pieces among them. One of the assault rifles looked like it could take down an armored rhinoceros in one shot.

It took me a couple of seconds to get past all the shiny death machines pointed at me and actually see the people holding them. Both men and women were among them, with maybe two-thirds Vei and the rest humans of all colors. None of them looked like they’d bathed much in the last week. Then again, I wasn’t one to be talking. Their clothes were mismatched and non-uniform, but they all had a sort of utilitarianism about them. They looked mean enough to send a tax collector running. Whoever these guys were, they weren’t AISOR.

I was in an office chair—tied up, of course—facing the wall where a few cracks of sunlight got past the papered-up windows. My shoulders hurt like hell. I could still feel the handcuff bracelet on my wrist, just below where the ropes rubbed the raw skin. After a few experimental tugs on the rope, I decided I had more immediate concerns.

The crowd seemed to be waiting for something. A few of them glanced to my right. I craned my neck to see what they were looking at.

“Hey, Stretch,” I said. “How’s the dentistry business going? Put drills to any more teeth lately?”

The black-coated giant folded his arms and said nothing. I could make out the shape of his short-barreled shotgun beneath his coat.

Stretch had a way of commanding attention, so it took me a couple more seconds before I realized he wasn’t the one in charge here. A Vei dressed in a leather jacket sat cross-legged on top of a crate next to him. A cigarette stuck out the side of his wide mouth, and a red headband was wrapped over his thickly-ridged forehead. When he reached up to pluck the cigarette from his mouth, I saw he was missing a couple of teeth. The Vei blew smoke and unfolded himself.

“Miles Franco. Heard you were stubborn. Told you to stay outta this.” He spoke like a machine gun.

Stretch nodded and glanced at the Vei. “You should’ve let me tell him harder.”

The Vei grinned, baring his rows of sharp teeth. My mouth felt awfully dry all of a sudden. I could feel my coins in my pocket. Maybe if I stretched…no. Vivian had my Kemia. I was going to give her a piece of my mind. If I had any left by the time I got out of this.

“I don’t like taking orders from…well, anyone, to be honest,” I said. “But especially not people who threaten me.”

The Vei took another drag of his cigarette and walked quickly toward me. His movements were jerky, wild. Vei were normally a bit screwy, but this guy was pushing it. Stretch jerked his head at the others. They lowered their weapons a little and backed away to give us more space.

“Fair enough,” the Vei said, “mmm, fair enough. Name’s Bohr. Daniel Bohr. Like the physicist, yes?”

Something about the name seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “I’d shake your hand, but, you know…” I wriggled in my bonds.

“Yes, yes, a pity that. Surprised to find you unarmed. No Kemia either. Still, can’t be too careful.”

“I don’t like guns,” I said. I glanced around at the wide assortment on display. “So anyway, Mr. Bohr—”

“Daniel.”

“Usually the people who kidnap me aren’t so cordial. You couldn’t fix me a Coke while you’re at it, could you?”

To my surprise, he met Stretch’s eyes and nodded. The lanky giant whispered something to a short, skinny Vei woman. The woman tucked her revolver into her belt, glanced at me with an unreadable expression, and strode away. All right, now this guy’s really scaring me.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, anyway, I was just wondering some things. Like who the fuck you are and why you got trained Limbus monsters to capture me. Nice trick, by the way.”

“Thank you.” His grin grew so wide he could’ve fit a whole baby in there. “I knew you’d appreciate it. Been seeing you on the TV. They say you were the first to open a Limbus Tunnel. The creatures aren’t tame, just controlled. A special Pin Hole. I could show you, but I won’t.” He paused an instant for breath. “But your questions, yes. I’m what you’d call the leader of this motley band.” His pronunciation of “motley” was slightly off, like he’d been saying it in front of the mirror too much. “We call ourselves the Collective.”

I probably should’ve seen it coming. That Aran guy certainly had good information. I wondered what all these gangsters and evil corporations did when they weren’t screwing with me. Maybe I was on a list somewhere. Guys That You Can Beat and Kidnap Without Consequence.

“You’ve heard of us,” Bohr said. “Good, good, that’ll save us time. As for the why, well, that’s more complicated. Ah, here’s your drink.”

The short Vei woman appeared in front of me again. The glass she was holding was more suited to a cocktail than Coca Cola, but I wasn’t picky. She moved to give it to me, but Stretch intercepted her. He took the glass from her hands, put it to my lips and tilted it almost tenderly. I sipped and tried to pretend the bastard hadn’t kicked the shit out of me just yesterday. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the Vei woman blend back into the crowd. There was even ice in the drink. Classy.

“Good?” Bohr said.

I smacked my lips. “Could use some bourbon in it.”

“No bourbon, sorry. I don’t drink. Now, the hard business. There’s a war going on, Miles Franco. You walked into the middle. Into…what is the name? The place between the trenches.”

“No man’s land,” I said.

“Yes, a good name, I like it. Didn’t want you involved. Messy.”

“I’ve never known gangsters to be particularly concerned about collateral damage.”

He shook his head. “Bad for business. Bad for public image. That’s why the Collective doesn’t deal drugs. Too risky, too many communities damaged. Doesn’t further the goal. Smuggling weapons and tech easier.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked like a small ivory handle. But then he pressed something, and a spike four feet long shot out the end, turning it into a glimmering fencing sword. “Made by a hidden Vei tribe. Don’t normally trade with Earth. Very dangerous. Pierces your human kevlar like…like…”

“Butter?” I suggested.

“No. More like yogurt.” He squeezed the handle, and the blade retracted instantly. “But beside the point. You’ve been working for AISOR.”

Something about the way he said the company’s name sent dread spilling through my veins. “Depends on your definition of working.”

“Hmm, funny. Unfortunately, makes you an enemy.”

“Wait, what? Did I get that right? You’re at war with AISOR?”

He nodded, and a murmur of assent passed through the group. “They don’t know it. Not yet. My people inside the company will soon change that.”

People inside the company. Like Zhi Lu?

“Excellent,” I said, thinking fast. “I don’t like them either. They killed my friend. I think. Tried to kill me as well. I didn’t appreciate it. How about we work together? I don’t know what they did to you, but I reckon we can get the cops to bring them down if we give them enough evidence.”

Bohr looked equal bits sad and insane. He finished his cigarette and stepped on it. “No. Maybe before, but no. Not now. Going to burn them. Burn them all, and take what we need.”

“What you need?” I said. “I’m a bit slow. Help me out here.” A bell rang in my head. “Wait. Bohr? Your name’s D. Bohr?”

His eyes flashed and his teeth glinted.

“Your name was on a bunch of scientific papers along with Kowalski’s. You’re an interdimensional physicist. What the hell are you doing running a gang?”

He moved closer, until he was only a foot from me. “Cigarette?” He slipped his hand into his jacket and offered me the pack. I shook my head, and he pulled one out and lit it up for himself. “Kowalski betrayed me. All my ideas. They didn’t agree with what I wanted to do with them. Cut me out. When I spoke out, tried to have me killed. So I had new ideas. A new plan.”

“I got a feeling I’m gonna regret asking this,” I said, “but what plan?”

The tip of his cigarette glowed. “Revolution. Hostile takeover. Just need a weapon.” I shrank back from the look on his face. The bastard’s crazy. I need a miracle.

A shout echoed through the factory from somewhere behind me, and all heads turned toward the noise. I tried to twist in the chair, my heart skipping like a schoolgirl in a playground. Holy shit. This miracle stuff has good timing.

A crackle of gunshots rang through the air. Far away, I could hear the bat-creatures screeching in response. It was the cops. It was Vivian. She’d tracked me.

“In here!” I shouted. “Thirty plus sons of bitches with big-ass guns. Watch the—”

Stretch’s elbow collided with my jaw. Something popped. My ears rang. It felt like someone was scraping the bone with a screwdriver. I tried to swear, but my mouth wasn’t working properly, so all I could manage was, “Urgggh.”

The gunfire stopped abruptly. Had the cops killed the Collectivists outside? No, wait, that was automatic gunfire, not handguns. It was the Collectivists shooting.

I tried to move my mouth again. It hurt like a son of a bitch. Stretch glanced at me and grunted. He put his palms on either side of my face and tucked his fingers around the back of my jaw.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I tried to say. It came out as: “Aaaigh, ough aah ooo oiee?”

He jerked my jaw forward, and something popped back into place. Fire swept through my jaw. I’d definitely need to put ice on it.

By the time I finished swearing, everyone had gone quiet. They were looking toward the door, and now I heard some groaning and scuffling. I managed to spin the office chair enough to see what was so interesting. My heart did a nosedive into concrete.

There were three of them being brought in at gunpoint, but they weren’t cops. The stockiest of them was bleeding from a wound in his side and another in his hip. Vei were normally pale, but this one was gray. His two friends were Vei as well, wearing the same clothes I’d last seen them in and looking like they hadn’t slept or showered in two days. In fact, I could still see speckles of blood on the cuff of the tallest one’s shirt. My blood. It was the bastard who’d cut my ear outside the hospital. Aran.

A gangster waved his assault rifle at the Vei brothers and spoke to Bohr. “They were sneaking around outside. Must’ve followed the blackhawks in.”

Bohr’s face twitched. “You.” He studied Aran, almost smiling. “Thought you’d attack us sooner.”

One of the gangsters next to Aran was holding a backpack. He unzipped it, revealing what looked like white bricks with small electronic displays inserted.

“Hmm, explosives,” Bohr said. “Trying to blow us up, yes?”

Aran said nothing. His eyes were cold as they swept across the crowd of gangsters, defiant. Then they fell on me, and his face turned to stone.

Bohr saw. “You know this man, Miles Franco?”

I met Aran’s eyes. What the hell was he doing here? Part of me wanted to kill him myself. His wounded brother groaned, his blood pooling on the concrete. I pictured Penny Coleman lying in that hospital bed. Was she still alive?

“I think I’d remember an ugly mug like that,” I said, then I shrugged. “Never seen him before.”

I couldn’t tell if Bohr believed me. The seconds of silence stretched on, only spoiled by the shuffling of the wounded Vei as he tried to rise.

Then Bohr spoke. “All right. Take them to the other room, yes? Ask questions later. Deal with our friend here first.”

The gangsters nodded and escorted the brothers away. Two of them carried the wounded one between them, blood staining their clothes. Aran met my eyes for a moment. Something in them made me shiver.

“Hmm, yes, anyway,” Bohr said as the groaning and footsteps receded, “where were we?”

“You were about to let me go,” I said.

He grinned. “Nice try, yes, a good one. Not possible. Not yet. I would, but…” He shrugged and made a face as if to say: “I just work here.”

“Well, could you at least explain why you went to so much effort to bring me here?” I said. “Was that your guy who tried to kidnap me from the funeral?”

“Funeral? No, not us. You’re very popular. You’ve become a…how do you say? A commodity in this war. Both sides want you.”

“Want me for what?” A commodity? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Did they want me because I could make a Tunnel to Tartarus?

I didn’t like where this was going. I couldn’t find Claudia’s killer if I was the target in a city-wide game of Capture the Flag. Then another thought occurred to me. “If I’m just a commodity, why are you telling me this at all?”

“Just to pass the time. Thought you might know more. Could be helpful. But not important. Ah. Here we go.” He looked over my shoulder at something I couldn’t see. I heard footsteps approaching. “Result?” he said in Vei.

“Positive,” someone responded. A Vei came past me and handed a sheet of paper to Bohr without looking at me.

Positive? Positive for what? I had a feeling another one of those miracles could come in handy right now. Maybe a better one this time.

Daniel Bohr glanced through the sheet and nodded. “Fortunate, but unfortunate,” he said to me in English. My neck prickled.

“Seriously,” I said, “you can let me go now. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get home fine. If you just wanna do something about these ropes…”

“We took blood from you while you were unconscious,” Bohr said. “Tested it. Came back positive. You’ve come into contact with Tartaran toxin, yes?”

“Yeah…”

He nodded again. “We need it.”

I tensed. “I’m not making you a Tunnel to bring any more of that shit back to Earth. It’s killed enough people already.”

“No. Not what we want.” He turned to Stretch. “Is the grinder ready?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, struggling against my bonds. “What’s the grinder?”

Bohr pointed at me with his cigarette. “The timing is not optimal, but we cannot afford to wait. AISOR will make their play soon. Take him.”

My vision narrowed. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. Stretch strode toward me.

“Bohr!” My scream could’ve shattered glass. Stretch grabbed me by the shoulders and started wheeling me away from the group. “What the fuck’s the grinder?”

Stretch leaned down and whispered in my ear. “You don’t wanna know.”

NINETEEN

Stretch was right. I didn’t want to know.

The grinder looked like it had started life as—of all things—a tanning bed. But now that it was standing upright and was filled with spikes, syringes, and saws, it looked more like an iron maiden. It even had its own generator. The machine stood in the center of what used to be a bathroom, but all the stalls and sinks had been removed. I knew why they’d put the grinder here. Blood wouldn’t stain the tiles. If I’d been standing up, I think I would’ve fainted.

“It’ll process your entire body and extract the toxin from every cell,” Stretch explained helpfully. He pointed out a spike that looked like an ice pick. “Mr. Bohr says a lot accumulates in the brain and spine. Not the cerebrospinal fluid…” He pronounced “cerebrospinal” very carefully. “…but the blood vessels. The machine is very efficient. It even gets it out of the bones. Supposed to, anyway. You’ll be the first to try it.”

I tugged at my ropes a few more times. My heart was going so fast I couldn’t tell when one beat stopped and the next started. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be sedated. You won’t feel a thing.”

A couple of the gangsters moved to start the generator and prepare the machine. Several hoses led out of it, leading to sealed containers on the floor. The short Vei woman who’d prepared me a drink was there as well. Like the others with their weapons slung across their shoulders, she left her gat in her belt. I guessed they figured I wasn’t much of a threat right now. I had to agree with them.

“Hey,” I said, not even bothering to be embarrassed by the way my voice cracked, “don’t you think I’d be more valuable alive? I can get into AISOR for you. Feed you information. They like me there. Tell Bohr that.”

“No,” Stretch said. “You should’ve listened when I gave you the message.”

“Yeah, you’re right, my bad,” I said. My jaw was aching from when he dislocated it, but it probably wouldn’t be bothering me much longer. “Let’s start over.”

“Shut up,” the Vei woman said. She checked my pulse. I had a flashback to Doc McCaffrey’s examination room. I guess all her hard work was going to end up in a bucket under the grinder. The thought made me crack a smile. A crazy smile. I started giggling.

“What’s he doing?” Stretch said, frowning.

The Vei woman shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably gone insane. Help me get him up.”

Someone sliced the ropes around my wrists. I immediately started flailing, but Stretch grabbed me by the upper arms and lifted me off the chair. He didn’t even seem to be straining.

Stretch pulled off my jacket and shoved me into the machine. I would’ve fallen down, but he held me up with one hand while he fixed leather straps into place at my wrists and around my neck. One of the other gangsters did my ankles. Then he moved back to the door with his friend and let his gun slip into his hands in case I got any ideas.

“You guys are fucking insane, you know that?” I said.

Stretch glared at me, but the woman spoke up before he could do anything. “Move. I need to get him ready.”

The giant grudgingly moved aside and the woman took his place. I worried I was going to spew on her, but then I realized that wouldn’t be so bad. She ripped open my shirt and pushed the sleeves up. She pulled tubes and needles out of the machine and pressed them against my skin. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see. Something sharp pricked a vein in my forearm.

A strange peace settled over me. Maybe it was time for me to die. I’d survived more than any human had a right to. I’d done things that no one should do to anyone. I’d done my best. That was all anyone could ask of me. At least now I could relax.

I opened my eyes to find the Vei woman studying my face. Her eyes had an orange color to them that was rare among Vei. They glowed like the lava lakes of the Blackglass region of Heaven. She leaned in close and pressed something into my hand. Two somethings. One round and metallic, the other smooth as glass.

“A gift from Desmond,” she whispered.

I stared. A conversation came back to me, drifting across endless ages, or maybe just a couple of days. Desmond’s source inside the Collective.

She turned away, and I gripped what she’d given me tight to conceal it from Stretch. The woman moved to the back of the room, glanced back at me once, and nodded almost imperceptibly. I didn’t respond.

Stretch came back to inspect the machine. I think he was just pretending he knew what he was doing. He rubbed his chin and nodded. “Let’s get on with it.” He grabbed hold of a face mask with a thin hose attached and moved to place it over my mouth and nose.

“Wait,” I said. “Before you do that, I just wanna know something.”

He paused. “What?”

“Who killed my friend? Who killed Claudia?”

“Why?”

“Because.” I strained against my neck brace, trying to lean forward. “I need to know. Was it AISOR? Was it Kowalski?”

“Kowalski is a coward. He wouldn’t have the guts.”

“Then who? Was it you? Was it Bohr?”

He shrugged. “She’s dead. You’re about to be dead. It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” I said. Cold liquid poured across the object in my hand. A nonsense tune sang in my head. It mixed with the pain, the rage, the frustration, the desperation.

“No, what?”

“It matters,” I said. “It matters to me!”

Chaos flashed in my head, and the Pin Hole opened. In an instant, every strap binding me came loose.

I was free.

I braced myself against my wrist straps and kicked out with both feet. My shoes slammed into Stretch’s chest. He stumbled and fell, eyes bugging out. His coat flew open as he hit the ground, exposing the shotgun.

I ripped the cannulas from my arms and dived forward. At the same time, one of the gangsters by the door let out a burst of gunfire. It would’ve got me clean in the torso if I wasn’t already on the ground. The Vei woman pulled her revolver from her belt and pointed it at the other Collectivists. But I had more immediate worries.

I grabbed hold of Stretch’s shotgun. Unfortunately, he had the trigger end. With all my strength I forced it up. It went off, blowing a hole in the bathroom ceiling. The barrel grew hot against my palm. White dust rained on me.

Two more shots went off, the muzzle lighting up the room. I was damn near deaf already. Still on his back, Stretch landed a boot in my stomach and I rolled away, gasping.

I was still gripping the Pin Hole coin and vial of Kemia the woman had given me. The bottle was tiny, and I’d already used almost all of it just to free myself. Still, I might have enough for one more. I let the Pin Hole close and grabbed for my jacket where it lay discarded on the floor. I had to get my coins. But then I heard the click-clack of the shotgun pumping. I looked back at Stretch and found him sitting up, pointing the gun at me. My stomach went cold. Everything slowed.

The butt of an assault rifle collided with the side of his head. His eyes went fuzzy and he dropped to the side. The shotgun boomed. I put my hands out like they could shield me from the buck shot. But the blow had thrown his aim off. He’d missed me. I was alive.

Then I pulled on my jacket and hot pain ripped through my shoulder. I touched the skin, and it came away red. A couple of pellets must’ve clipped me.

“Christ, that stings,” I said.

“Shut up and move,” the Vei woman said. “They’re coming.”

I looked up and froze. The two gangsters lay on the bathroom floor, an entry wound in each of their heads. Blood leaked into the cracks between the tiles. The Vei woman picked up one of their assault rifles and slung it across her shoulder, then gripped the other in her hands.

“You killed them,” I said.

“What are you, the commentator?” She stuck her head out the door. Footsteps stomped from the factory floor. “Get a gun and let’s go. And take this.”

She reached into her pocket and tossed me a full-sized bottle of Kemia. I caught it in mid-air. The silver liquid glinted.

I looked at the gangsters’ bodies once more. I remembered another set of dead gangsters. Bloodied, burned, killed by my madness. I shook my head. Not now. Not here. I pulled on my jacket and fished out a couple of coins. As I got to my feet, keeping my weight off my injured arm, my shoe nudged Stretch’s short-barreled shotgun.

I paused for a moment, then I picked it up. It was heavier than I expected. Could I really shoot someone with it?

“Come on!” the Vei woman said.

Screw it. I found the safety, held down the slide release, and pumped the shotgun. A shell sprang out of the chamber. I worked the pump action again and again until no more shells came out.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked as I trotted over to her.

I shrugged. “You told me to get a gun.” I held it up by the barrel to show her how I could whack someone with the butt.

She bared her teeth, but then she glanced down the hallway. “Here they come. Go!” She fired a burst back toward the factory floor. I ducked behind her, pulled the cork out of the Kemia bottle with my teeth, and spat it into my hand.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Lucetta.” Another burst of gunfire.

“Miles,” I said, while I poured Kemia onto another coin. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

She ignored me and bared her teeth. “Can you do something useful?”

“On it. How’s this?”

The Pin Hole opened, and the air turned to thick smoke in an instant. I could barely see Lucetta in front of me. She fired off another few rounds into the cloud and jerked her head in the opposite direction. “That way.”

I jogged through the smoke, with Lucetta coming up behind, throwing cover fire to keep the gangsters away. I had no idea where we were going, so I had to pray she did.

I nearly ran straight into a wall before I realized we’d hit a T-intersection. I glanced one way and the other, but I couldn’t see anything through the smoke. “Which way?”

“Right!”

I turned to the right and started walking, but then I heard a sound in between the gunfire. Someone was shouting, back down the left corridor.

Lucetta reached my side. “What are you doing now?”

“Those three Vei they captured. Where’d they take them?”

“You’re going to get us killed—”

I grabbed her shoulder. “Where’d they take them?”

She bared her teeth again and pointed her rifle down the left corridor. “Storage room at the end. But we don’t have time.”

I pulled her behind the cover of the corridor and released the Pin Hole. The smoke disappeared.

“What are you—?”

“Just a sec,” I said. I pulled a second coin from my pocket, splashed a good helping of Kemia on, and started humming. This one was trickier than the smoke. It’d be a piece of cake on Chroma, but I wasn’t ready to go back down that rabbit hole again.

The Pin Hole opened, and reality shifted around us. The gangsters’ footsteps turned to squelching sounds, like someone poking a bowl of pudding. They shouted in anger.

“What…what did you do?” Lucetta said.

I grinned. “Turned the concrete down there back into liquid. Nice little trick of thermodynamics. Watch this, it’s even better.”

I stuck my head around the edge of the corridor and closed the Pin Hole. The gangsters cried out as the liquid concrete set around their feet, trapping them. They struggled, several of them losing their balance in the process. Somehow, after everything I’d been through—or maybe because of it—I found it fucking hilarious.

“Keep watch for me, will you?” I said. I dashed across the open corridor before she could reply. A couple of the trapped gangsters half-heartedly tried to kill me, but I was out of their line of sight too fast. The sound of crunching concrete and frustrated cries followed me. I smirked.

Without the smoke, it wasn’t hard to find my way around. Most of the offices I passed were barren, although a few busted-up desks were still lying around. I followed the sound of Vei shouting to the end of the corridor, where the sign on the door said STORAGE. I held the shotgun like a baseball bat and kicked open the door.

I saw everything in a flash. Aran, teeth bared and snarling. His wounded brother bleeding out on the floor, while the other stocky Vei tried to apply pressure to the wound. And a Collectivist in gray overalls pointing an ancient bolt-action rifle at Aran. All eyes turned toward me. So did the rifle.

I swung the shotgun clumsily. All that rapid fire Tunneling and fisticuffs had drained me more than I thought. I aimed to bring the butt of the shotgun down on the gangster’s head, but the blow glanced off and came crashing down on his elbow instead. The rifle swung down and a gunshot cracked. There was a puff of white dust from behind me as it punched through the drywall.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I swore I could see my own wild, teeth-baring grin in the reflection of the gangster’s wide eyes.

No time to bring the shotgun around for another swing. I set my feet and drove forward with my shoulder, slamming into his sternum. Shockwaves went through me, rattling my teeth. The gangster went down hard with me on top of him. He dropped the rifle. I dropped the shotgun. It only got worse from there.

I hated fighting almost as much as I hated guns. But the universe didn’t take into account my personal preferences very often. I smacked the gangster a couple of times in the jaw with an open fist, then when he still kept struggling, I put my knee into his gut. His fingers grabbed my injured ear. I thought I could feel the stitches tearing. I drove my elbow into his solar plexus as hard as I could. That got him to stop squirming. The fight was still in me, telling me to keep hitting, but I reined it in and rolled off him.

Then I heard the bolt action of the rifle being worked.

I jerked up, grabbed the barrel, and pushed it aside. The rifle went off a couple of inches from the gangster’s head. A flash of pain went through my ear drums. For a moment, everything sounded like I was underwater. Aran snarled at me.

“Let me kill him.” I could barely hear him through the ringing in my ears.

“Not likely.” I tapped my right ear with my palm, trying to get the ringing to stop, then got to my feet and met him eye-to-eye. He was tall for a Vei, but I still had a couple of inches on him. His teeth were streaked with blood. There was a cut on his cheek where someone had smacked him.

“Our sister is dead,” he said. “They betrayed me. Their war killed Penny. I’ll kill them.” His fingers tightened on the gun, and my muscles tensed. “I told you not to get involved where you don’t belong, human.”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting that a lot lately.” I glanced at the gun barrel and tried to slow my heart. “Look, I’m sorry about Penny. But you’re gonna lose another family member unless we go right fucking now.” I pointed at the wounded Vei, then at my throbbing ear. “I’ve still got a half a mind to leave you here. Should I have stayed out of it, huh? Should I have left you to die?”

He narrowed his eyes and spat a glob of blood onto the floor. “No,” he said after a minute. “Thank you.”

“Then get your brother up and let’s go.”

I turned my back on him, picked up my shotgun, and made for the exit, half-expecting a bullet in the back. But after a moment I heard rapid Vei whispers and a groan from the wounded brother as they lifted him up.

All right. Now we just had to get out of this place.

I spotted Lucetta down the hallway where I’d left her. She stared at me with a mixture of rage and panic on her face. She waved her gun down the corridor we’d escaped from. “They’re getting loose! Move it.”

She was right; I could hear the cracking of concrete. Maybe the Collectivists weren’t as stuck as I’d hoped. I glanced back at the Vei brothers. Aran had the rifle in his hands while the other brother had the wounded one across his shoulders in a fireman carry. I led the way, pulling out my smoke coin again, until we were on either side of the corridor that held the trapped Collectivists.

“It’s gonna get hard to see in a second,” I said to the brothers. “Keep going forward. Lucetta, we’ll follow you to the exit.”

She nodded, and I splashed some Kemia on the coin. “Go!”

The smoke returned, blinding me instantly. A few of the gangsters shot randomly into the cloud, but I didn’t think they were even pointed in the right direction. I dashed across the corridor with Aran and company close behind. I could just make out Lucetta’s dress flaring in the smoke. Behind us, there were more crunches, and then running footsteps. Some of the gangsters were free. Shit.

“Lucetta?” I said between breaths.

“Nearly there.”

The footsteps behind were getting closer. I kept glancing behind, but the smoke was too dense. Come on.

I skidded to a halt. A door. An exit! Lucetta grabbed the handle.

“Locked,” she said.

Shit. I fished in my pocket for the right Pin Hole coin. “Gimme a second.” Damn it, where was it?

An assault rifle rattled. The smoke swirled and cleared for a moment, and then I saw the bullet holes Lucetta had put in the lock. She kicked the door open. Blessed sunlight shone through the haze. I shoved my bottle of Kemia back in my pocket, and we darted outside.

Right into a semicircle of growling, six-legged spider-dogs.

Lucetta swore in Vei. Aran matched her and raised her a scream of frustration. I slowly lowered my shotgun as I stared around at the rows upon rows of teeth and drool and animal rage. My heart deflated like a balloon at a children’s birthday party.

“Nice try,” came Daniel Bohr’s voice from behind us. “Hmm, yes, nice try.”

I let the smoke Pin Hole close. It wouldn’t do us any good out here in the open. We were in a huge open space, surrounded by a chain-link fence. An empty, pothole-lined road sat on the other side. Behind the squealing spider-dogs, a handful of Collectivists pointed their guns at us. All except for one. She was so broad-shouldered I took her for a man at first. I could sense the animal energy coming from her clasped fist. She was a Tunneler.

Daniel Bohr stepped out of the door behind us and made his way in a wide circle between us and the spider-dogs. A cigarette burned in his mouth. “Lucetta, interesting. Didn’t suspect. Not after all this time.” He bared his teeth and shook his head. “Why help this man?”

Lucetta stared at him and said nothing.

Bohr took a long drag on his cigarette and crushed it beneath his feet. “After everything we worked for. You never understood. Anyway, guns down. Come on.”

A couple more Collectivists appeared behind us. I tossed the shotgun, since it was empty anyway. It skidded to the feet of a spider-dog, but the animal didn’t react. Its many eyes stayed fixed on me. After a moment, Lucetta and Aran dropped their guns as well. My shoulder stung where Stretch had got me. Blood dripped from the fingers of my left hand.

The energy coming from the Tunneler shifted, and the spider-dogs closed in around us. But I only had eyes for the Tunneler. It was like Bohr said. A Pin Hole to control the Limbus creatures. But I could tell from here she wasn’t a particularly powerful or skilled Tunneler. Her Pin Hole was leaking energy more like a hose than a sieve. A germ of an idea put out roots in my mind.

Bohr nodded, as if to himself. “Good, good. No harm done.”

“There’s a couple of dead gangsters that might argue with you,” I said. “If they weren’t dead, I mean.”

Bohr frowned. “Not something to joke about. Expected better of you.”

Something slipped in the Tunneler’s Pin Hole, and an extra burst of energy sprang loose. A couple of the spider-dogs snapped at each other before the Tunneler got them back under control. Sweat made rivers on her forehead. Sloppy.

I folded my arms across my chest. The blood pooling on my fingertips touched my shirt, leaving a stain. I smiled and half-closed my eyes, letting my instinct guide me. I was going to run out of shirts if I kept ruining them like this. A red triangle formed on the fabric above my heart, hidden from the gangsters by the position of my arms.

Bohr continued to pace, jerking like the breeze was blowing him around. He stabbed his cigarette toward Aran and the others. “And why rescue these three, hmm? Dangerous. Cost you time. Might have got away without them.”

I saw Lucetta shooting me a glare out of the corner of my eye, but I ignored it. I sketched a couple more symbols in blood, improving the design I’d reverse-engineered.

“Not much to say now?” Bohr asked. He came closer. “I understand. You got your hopes up. Hope is dangerous. Is that it?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just letting you talk yourself out while I wait for the cops.” I pointed over his shoulder, the broken handcuff bracelet still hanging from my wrist. “Oh look, here comes the cavalry.”

A dozen gangsters spun on the spot, pointing their guns toward the road. Aiming at nothing. I snatched my Kemia from my pocket and splashed it on the triangle I’d painted on my shirt. The liquid felt like ice as it soaked through to my skin.

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” I said. The gangsters pointed their guns at me again. Bohr’s eyes widened as his gaze came to rest on my shirt. The cigarette dropped from his mouth.

The Tunneler shrieked. “He’s trying to gain control of the animals!”

I grinned. “Not trying.” The Pin Hole opened, filling my mind with fear and rage and hunger and hot blood pumping through a quick heart. It soaked up the Tunneler’s excess energy like a sponge. I severed her connection. “It’s already done.”

It was incredible. I existed in twenty bodies at once. My vision fractured into a hundred separate images, overlaid with a sense of hearing that was both broad and sharp. But the smells, Christ, the smells. They were everywhere. And I could smell fear. I bared two dozen sets of teeth and growled.

I had to grab hold of my human component like a life preserver in a storm of animalism. I blinked, and felt Lucetta grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the chaos. Then I blinked again, and my teeth dug into flesh and hot, salty blood filled my mouth.

Gunfire popped, and pain ripped through me. I screeched as I died, confused, both understanding and not understanding. Then one set of eyes went blank, and the other primitive minds squealed in rage. The shooter screamed and fell under a pile of ripping, tearing bodies. I couldn’t wait to see the eyes fading, blood pooling, cartilage crunching as I bit down and tore the human’s throat out and fire filled my muscles and I snarled and squealed and went after the next prey.

No! The spider-dogs seemed confused by my cry. One of them paused with its jaws over the gangster’s throat.

They were killing because that was what they did. They had no morals, no strange human constructions about whether killing was right. Killing just was. But I wasn’t an animal. And I’d killed enough people with Tunneling.

Stop. It was like trying to stop a steam roller by building a wall out of toothpicks. The spider-dogs didn’t want to listen; they wanted to rip and tear. I pushed more energy into the Pin Hole, forcing more of myself on them. Their rage dimmed a little. There was no negotiation here, just pure strength of will. Jaws loosened their grip on the Collectivists’ flesh.

“Franco.” It took me a moment to remember that was my name. I blinked again, and the vision I saw came from the eyes of the human Miles Franco, not the black eyes of a monster. Lucetta was dragging me to my feet. “Our ride is here. Come on.”

Our ride? What was she talking about? It was difficult remembering how to walk on two legs instead of six, but I got the hang of it after a few seconds. I let the Vei woman lead me past the wounded bodies of the Collectivists who hadn’t fled. Aran and his brothers were nowhere to be seen. Had I killed them, crushed their bones between my teeth? No, I had enough control not to do that, didn’t I? I couldn’t see Daniel Bohr either, but I could smell the stench of his cigarette. The spider-dogs watched me as we passed, making slight whimpering noises. The Pin Hole was still open, but I couldn’t keep this up for much longer. I was ready to fall asleep standing up. I just had to hope the remaining gangsters could get away before the animals returned to their natural instincts.

My feet kicked against each other as I walked. My vision was so hazy I could barely see the concrete in front of me. Then I saw the car, and the face that always had a grin for me. But not today.

“Hey, Des,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. “You’ll never guess what I’ve been up to.”

TWENTY

Desmond ended his call, stuffed the cell phone in his pocket, and put the steering wheel in a death grip. “I finally managed to get through to the cops and let Detective Reed know you’re alive. Sounds like there’s been at least three Limbus attacks all over the city. They’ve only just got them under control. I gave them the Collective’s address. They’ll do a raid as soon as they’ve got people together.”

“They’ll enjoy that,” I said.

“Goddamn it, guy. God fucking damn it.”

I lay in the back seat, my shirt undone so I could inspect the damage from the shotgun blast. It looked like another trip to the doctor was in order. Lucetta was in the front passenger seat, tending to a graze on her hand. She hadn’t said a thing since we got in the car and tore away from the old factory.

“You know how lucky you are?” Desmond said. He jerked the steering wheel to the side and passed a slow-moving van. “If Lucetta hadn’t called me, you’d be dead by now.”

“A slurry.”

“What?”

“They were going to turn me into a slurry.”

He tugged his fingers through his sandy hair. He was a Tunneler, so he must have sensed what I’d done with the Limbus animals. But he hadn’t mentioned it. He was too busy playing the angry mother bit.

“You couldn’t just let the cops handle this, could you? You had to get involved.”

“Hey, I didn’t walk to that factory by myself. I was bird-napped. From the same goddamned police you’re so fond of.”

He shook his head. “You’ve been digging yourself a grave since this thing started. Are you trying to get yourself killed? You really think that’ll make up for whatever sins you think you’ve committed?”

The sun flickered between buildings as we passed. It made me nauseous, so I closed my eyes.

“I’m trying to get answers.”

“By yourself? I don’t think so. You’re trying to be a martyr.”

I was too tired for this. “I’m not trying to be anything.”

“Then why aren’t you working with Detective Reed on this? She contacted me. She told me about the—”

“Look, thanks for the save, Des, but I’m fine,” I said without opening my eyes.

“Then you’re going to drop this?”

I said nothing.

“You need that shoulder looked at,” he said.

“Screw that. Take me home.”

“You need—”

“I don’t need a hospital. I’m fine.”

“No, guy, you’re not. I’m taking you to the hospital, and then I’m calling Detective Reed.”

“You do that, and I tell the cops about all this quasi-vigilante stuff you’ve been up to.”

He hit the brakes. The car skidded to a stop, making my stomach lurch. Des twisted around to stare at me. His eyes were hard. Mine were harder. I wasn’t going to a hospital. I couldn’t afford to waste a second. No matter what—or who—it cost me.

“Do you mean that?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Des nodded slowly, turned back to the road, and started driving again. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, emotionless. “Then you can hold on a few minutes. I need to do something first.”

We fell quiet for a while, and I slipped in and out of a dozing sleep. The rumbling road beneath me was like a cheap massage on my aching muscles. I’d escaped death again, at least for a little while. But I could feel it in my gut now, I could feel the poison in me.

I opened my eyes as Desmond pulled up outside his place, one of a dozen apartments in a gated complex near Lavender Park. He turned around and leaned over the seat.

“You still alive?”

I grinned. “Barely.”

He didn’t smile back. “I need to get Lucetta out of town. They’ll be gunning for her. I’m going to run inside to grab my bug-out bag and let Rob know I’ll be gone for a few hours.”

“Don’t tell him about all the wild hijinks I got you into,” I said. “He dislikes me enough as it is.”

“I’ll be back in a minute. Stay put.”

“Don’t worry, Des. I’ll look after your girl here.”

“Somehow,” Lucetta said, “I think I’ll be looking after you.”

Desmond and Lucetta shared a knowing look, then Des got out of the car and jogged inside. I stretched out as far as I could in the backseat and tried to arrange my shoulder so it didn’t feel like it was being poked with rusty nails.

“So, I got a question,” I said. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

Lucetta stared out the side window. Even after all the hell we’d just been through, she didn’t so much as tremble. “I told you who I am.”

“No, you told me your name. The look on Bohr’s face back there when he saw you, I thought his eyeballs were going to pop. Were you and he a thing?”

She bared her teeth in a wild grin and croaked out what passes for a laugh among Vei. “A thing? With that man?” She laughed again. “I was his lab assistant.”

“That’s some handy shooting for a lab assistant.”

“I’ve been more than a lab assistant in my life, Franco.” She turned in her seat to face me. “You don’t understand how desperate they are, do you? How far they’re willing to go.”

I glanced at Claudia’s ghost standing outside the car, looking in at me. “I’ve got a fair idea.”

“You’ve only seen a fraction of their work. A microsecond. Bohr, Kowalski, the others, they’ve been working on this for twenty years. And for a while, I was with them. I saw the potential in what they were doing. You cannot comprehend it, human.”

“You’d be surprised what I can comprehend. Spill the beans. Tell me what was so great about their little research group.”

“You’ve read the papers they put out?”

I retrieved the crumpled articles from my jacket pocket. “I’ve skimmed them. Theories on parallel worlds, reflections, alternate universes. Equations that suggest the potential for infinite worlds. But it’s all numbers and guesswork.”

“Not all,” Lucetta said. “Not all. That—” She gestured dismissively at the papers. “—that is mostly Kowalski’s trash. Bohr was the driving force, the one who actually understood. He was the one with the ideas, the math that made it all fit together. He worked out that weak Tunnels, unstable Tunnels, could be used to get data on the other worlds. When the Tunnel is unstable, hints and whispers of the other universes can be transmitted. The information was a mere echo of an echo. The scientific community rejected it, of course. But I was there. I saw the data. And now the truth is finally coming to light.”

I thought back to last winter, when I got caught in a collapsing Tunnel. When the link to Earth was severed, the Tunnel recoiled like a stretched string, all the walls losing their tension. And through them came other feelings, other things. It was there I first felt the raging heart of Limbus, first began to learn how to open a new kind of Tunnel. It made sense that if a dumbass like me could pull that kind of information out of a broken Tunnel, some interdimensional physicists might be able to do the same. But there was something in the twitch of Lucetta’s wide mouth that told me that wasn’t the whole story.

“Out with it, then,” I said. “What’d Bohr do?”

She bared her teeth. “It wasn’t what he did. It was what the others did. Kowalski and a few others slowly became isolated from the rest of the group. They stopped sharing their results with the others. Bohr and I didn’t care. We had our own work to do, and we were finally managing to piece together solid evidence of a few of the strongest worlds. Nearly enough to go public with.”

“But?”

“But Bohr and I were working late one night. Bohr heard the noise. He has the ears of an airsnake. The sound came from Kowalski’s lab. Scuffling, shuffling, like your mice. Then shouting in Vei. ‘Khrah,’ someone was saying.”

“Help,” I translated, my guts feeling cold. But it didn’t mean quite the same thing in Vei as in English. It wasn’t a word you used everyday, like, “Hey man, help me shift this couch.” No, it was more like, “Help, I’m getting my eyes gouged out and it really hurts.”

Lucetta must’ve seen something in my face, because she nodded and her eyes narrowed into slits. “Bohr and I were supposed to be the only Vei in the building. We ran into Kowalski’s lab. His little group was there, including the lab’s main Tunneler. And an old Vei woman, ugly, so weathered she was starting to form scales on her face. She shouted once more through the gag. Then Kowalski pushed her into the Tunnel in the center of the floor. And the Tunneler severed the link with the woman still inside.”

I swallowed. To die with reality collapsing around you, to fall into the emptiness between worlds… “You’ve got some sadistic colleagues. I’d bring that up with HR.”

“Vei minds operate differently to humans’. They are guided by and projected onto the world around them. It’s partly what shapes Heaven. Kowalski discovered that if a Vei was in the Tunnel when it collapsed, the signal from the other worlds was magnified. Superb resolution. Massively amplified. They’d begun to discover the power of the other worlds. And they’d nearly worked out how to get a Tunnel there. But when Bohr and I stumbled across what they were doing…”

“They didn’t take kindly,” I finished for her.

“They had it all worked out. They already had their scapesheep—”

“Goat,” I said. “Scapegoat.”

“Sheep, goat, what does it matter? It was easy for them to make it look like Bohr had done it all. All their records were under his name. His own research used data Kowalski had gathered with his experiments. They’d planted evidence through his lab, his home, even on him. He could never get rid of it all. And they knew his politics wouldn’t get him any sympathizers.”

“Let me guess: he was one of those Legalize Marijuana activists.”

“He was a Stabilist. He thought he could use Earth’s stability to soothe the chaos in Heaven.”

I’d heard about those guys, but I always thought they were just bogeymen made up by politicians to scare the general public, like debt-ceilings and Communists. Changing the nature of a world wasn’t something to do lightly. I had my doubts that Heaven could even survive having a more logical reality forced on it. At the very least, all the flying cities would be destroyed, along with half the wildlife and some of the more M.C. Escher-esque geographical landmarks. There were downsides to living in a world governed by randomness, but the cure would almost certainly be worse than the disease.

“So you guys ran for it?” I asked.

Lucetta nodded. “Kowalski and his friends drove us into hiding. I’ve stayed with Bohr for years, following him everywhere.”

“I bet you won’t be following him anymore. Shooting his pals and busting me out probably got you crossed off the Christmas card list.”

“I didn’t see it for a long time, how much the exile damaged him. Bohr has always been eccentric, and the darkness came over him so gradually. But this, this murder and kidnapping…”

“Tell me something,” I said. “Did Bohr kill my friend? Did he poison her with the fluid from Tartarus?”

Lucetta shook her head slowly. “No. We haven’t been able to make our own Tunnel to Tartarus.”

I looked in her eyes and I believed her. Cross that name off my list.

She opened her mouth again. “But he would have if he could,” she said. “He’s not the same man anymore.”

“None of us are,” I said. “One last thing. The fluid. What does it do?”

“I do not know. Bohr, he refused to tell me. Refused to tell everyone. He just said it would change our fortunes.” She looked away. “I am sorry, Miles Franco.”

I sighed and settled back down. I was getting sleepy again. “S’okay. Thanks for saving my ass.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“That doesn’t make my ass any less grateful.”

Desmond emerged from his home and trotted back to the car, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He opened the door and glanced at the two of us, frowning slightly, then tossed the bag in next to me and started the car without a word.

The road became smoother the closer to the central city we got. When I got home I was going to sleep for a day. Then I was going to find out everything I could about Daniel Bohr and the Collective and Kowalski and everyone else I could tie into this mess. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Desmond for help.

The sky was growing dark by the time Desmond pulled up outside my apartment building. Lucetta hadn’t said another word and Desmond hadn’t even turned on the radio, so it wasn’t the friendliest trip ever. I sat up, wincing at the pain, and opened the car door. “Thanks for the getaway, Des.”

“Wait a minute.” He glanced at Lucetta. “I’ll just be a second.”

He jerked his head at me and got out of the car. I followed him to the steps outside my apartment building. Something in his expression told me I should wait for him to speak first.

“You know how long it took to get in contact with someone in the Collective, guy?” Des said after a while. “It took me weeks to turn Lucetta. She could’ve helped the cops break their whole ring.”

“Jesus, Des, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Of course not. You never do anything on purpose, do you? Do you have any idea how messed up you look right now?”

I shrugged. “Sorry I don’t meet your aesthetic standards.”

“Vivian said you’re sick. Dying.”

Goddamn it. Why did everyone feel the need to gossip behind my back? “It’s nothing.”

“You need lessons in lying, guy. Seriously.”

“Leave it, Des.” I crossed my arms, ignoring the pain in my shoulder.

He brushed the hair out of his eyes. His mouth formed a tight line. “Don’t do this. Let me take you to the hospital. We’ll work this out together.”

“No.”

“Miles…”

“I said no. You can’t help me. I have to finish this. Go home.”

Over on the sidewalk, a pigeon cooed. The last rays of sunlight dipped below the skyline. And Desmond’s fist collided with my face.

My jaw didn’t dislocate this time, but the pain still tore through my cheek and sent me reeling backward. I stumbled and fell, landing ass-first on the concrete. I was too stunned to do anything but swear.

“Son of a bitch!” I rubbed my chin and stared up at Desmond. He loomed over me, the skin grazed over one of his knuckles.

“You stupid, selfish piece of shit,” he said, his voice trembling to match his hands. “Fuck everyone, huh? Fuck me, fuck Vivian, fuck Tania. You wanna die? Then go die. Just don’t pull us down with you.” He threw up his hands and turned his back. “I’m done.”

I watched, still in a daze, as he walked back to the car and climbed in. Lucetta glanced at me through the window, but I couldn’t read her expression. Then my friend started his car and pulled away.

I sat on the sidewalk for a few minutes. I didn’t think. I didn’t feel. I was already a ghost. For the first time since this began, I wanted to see Claudia. Even if she was a hallucination, even if she was a manifestation of my guilt, she’d become a sort of comfort. But she was nowhere to be seen. I was alone.

The streetlights came on, casting an orange glow across the twenty-year-old cars that lined the street. A couple of pedestrians hurried past, glancing at me out of the corners of their eyes, but no one stopped to talk. Even the stray cats seemed wary of me.

Time to get up, Miles. I planted my hands on the ground and pushed myself to my feet. The handcuff bracelet jingled as I moved. Everything swayed like I’d had too much to drink, and something bubbled in the depths of my gut. I fished my keys out of my pocket and slowly made my way inside. With a deep breath, I started up the nine flights of stairs to my apartment. No one met me on the way. A handful of empty beer bottles sat huddled in the corner of the stairwell on the fifth floor, like they were taking a rest before they made the last journey to the summit. I kept going.

I was a zombie by the time I hit the ninth floor. The world slid in and out of focus. Someone had made gray soup out of my brains. I didn’t even feel scared when I realized the door to my apartment was ajar.

My hands went to my pockets and came to rest on the nearly empty bottle of Kemia. Probably pointless. Hell, I didn’t think I even had the energy to open another Pin Hole right now. But old habits, and all that.

I nudged the door open with my foot. It creaked on its hinges. A warm breeze blew over me. The window on the far side of the apartment was open, the curtains dancing in the wind. There was enough light seeping in to illuminate the carnage, but I flipped on the light switch anyway.

I could only conclude that the place had been hit by a herd of wild bulls with bombs strapped to them. My TV lay on the floor with a hole in the screen, spewing glass across the room. Someone had taken a knife to my couch and turned it inside out. The only thing on my wall—a poster from the horror flick Army of Darkness, complete with the chainsaw-armed Ash and a buxom love interest—was torn in half, the bulk of it curled up on the floor. About the only thing I could see that was still upright was my fishbowl. Munsey and Frank swam around in little circles, seemingly unconcerned by the invasion of their home. I envied them.

Going room-to-room didn’t take long, because my bedroom and bathroom were the only things in my apartment that could reasonably be called rooms. The window by the fire escape was shattered. I could make out where shoes had ground little fragments of glass into the carpet. The mattress of my bed was sliced open, with the springs exposed. Whoever had come had really gone to town on the place. But now, there was no one left but me.

I stared around, dumbfounded. Who’d done this? Vandals? Kids? Yeah, right. My luck wasn’t that good. Was this just another message? They hadn’t stolen…

My gaze flicked to my set of drawers. The invaders had pulled out all the drawers and upended them across the room, but the hole wasn’t exposed. Maybe…

I put my good shoulder against the dresser and shoved. The dresser seemed heavier than it had been before, even with no drawers in it. I heaved again, and it scraped along the carpet. There. I dropped to my knees and stuck my hand in the hole in the drywall. Come on.

My fingers touched plastic. They hadn’t found it. Something let go of my chest, and I could breathe again. I pulled out the plastic container and opened it. The fluid still sloshed about inside, swirling like something halfway between liquid and gas.

“Is this what you’re after, you sons of bitches?” I murmured. No one answered.

I couldn’t leave it here. They’d come back, sooner or later. I tucked the container under my arm and made my way to the bathroom. Paper and glass and plastic crunched beneath my shoes as I walked. But light-headedness hit me again. My intestines slithered and squirmed like a pit of snakes. The room swayed, and I collapsed to my side. Bile spilled up the back of my throat.

I managed to crawl to the toilet bowl before my insides clenched and the contents of my stomach came roaring out my mouth. Acid burned my nose. It felt like someone was trying to push my eyes out from the inside. Vomit splashed into the toilet water. I had a moment’s reprieve before the stench hit me and I was hurling again.

It was worse than anything I’d had from too much beer and whiskey. For one thing, I was sober, but there was something else. It was like my soul was trying to escape a failing body. But every time a new wave swept over me, only acid and half-digested food got out. No, not just that. I blinked away the water pooling in my eyes and saw the streaks of dark red against the white toilet bowl. Blood.

Slowly—I’m talking glacial speeds—the nausea subsided, and I was left feeling even more drained than before. I closed my eyes. I wanted to curl up on the tiles and rest, or sleep, or die, whatever happened first. There wasn’t any point doing anything else. Tartarus had poisoned me, and there was no antidote. I was already dead. I just needed to stop walking around.

But when I opened my eyes, Claudia was crouching beside me. She was wearing the same dress she’d been wearing in my dream, right down to the hoop earrings. She smiled at me.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, with my mouth smooshed against the floor. “You’re like the world’s most persistent stray dog. I can’t even quit now?”

She shook her head.

I sighed. “You’re a bad influence. I should tell Desmond it’s your fault I keep getting into this crap.”

I grabbed hold of the toilet and hauled myself up. It would’ve taken less energy to KO an elephant. The bathroom still swayed, but if I kept my legs spread and braced myself against the sink, I could manage. I flushed away the blood-streaked vomit and washed out my mouth with water.

Then I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and I nearly started spewing again. At first, I thought some hideous, skeletal figure had crept into the apartment and hidden behind the mirror. But no, that was me. Even if my skin had turned a bluish-gray hue and my eyes were sunken in their sockets, that was me. Little red spiderwebs grew in patches beneath the skin of my face and hands. Dried blood had accumulated around my wounded ear, and I’d picked up a whole host of new scrapes and bruises. My jaw was swollen where Stretch had dislocated it. I looked worse than Penny Coleman had on her deathbed.

But it was me. I tried to convince myself of that.

Maybe I wasn’t so wrong when I was on the floor. I needed to sleep. And I’d just have to pray that I woke up again. But I couldn’t stay here. I doubted I’d wake up for anything short of gunfire, and by then it would be too late if someone came back. And besides, my bed and couch were destroyed. I needed a friend.

I reached into my pocket, found my phone, and scrolled through my pitiful range of contacts until Desmond’s name came up. But I couldn’t make the call. His voice went through my head again. You stupid, selfish piece of shit.

I sighed and pressed my forehead against the mirror. There had to be someone else. Someone that didn’t quite loathe me yet.

I touched the broken handcuff bracelet and sighed again. There was no choice. I dialed the number for the taxi company.

She opened the door of apartment 402 wearing a purple dressing gown. It clung to all her curves, but not even that aroused anything in me.

“Miles?” Vivian said. “What…?”

I leaned against the doorframe. It was the only thing keeping me upright. I clutched the white container to my chest. “I need a place to crash. Please. I’m so tired.”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“Thank you,” I said. I took a step forward. My knee buckled.

She caught me. Her arms wrapped around my torso and she drew me into her home. She smelled like bubble baths and shampoo.

I was asleep before I hit the couch.

TWENTY-ONE

I was swimming in green darkness, like the swimming pool at the apartment block of my old foster home. I was a lost soul without money to pay the ferryman, so I dived into the Styx and tried to swim without sight and without strength. My muscles locked up, fish gnawed my shoulder. I thought someone touched my cheek and whispered something.

Years and centuries floated past, and still I slept. The wet darkness turned to fire. Sweat poured from my forehead as flames licked at me, cracking my skin, singeing my hair. I tried to scream but I had no air; I tried to open my eyes but someone had stitched them shut. Thick blankets, like the skins of animals, covered my body, keeping in the fire. I kicked them off, but they kept coming back. Again the touch of a cool hand, and again the whisper. Liquid that tasted like an Arctic river dribbled over my lips and into my mouth. Something propped my head up, and I swallowed. The water cooled the crackling pain in my throat. Down I went again.

Flies buzzed around my stomach, gnawing, sucking, laying their eggs. My insides were filled with a million squirming maggots. They crawled around inside, up my throat, into my mouth. I heaved and spat them out. Someone took my hand and pressed it against something hollow and plastic, and when the next wave of maggots came out they went into the container. I felt better when they were gone. Darkness took me back into her embrace.

Basically, it was a hell of a bad trip.

I woke up.

Light cut through the window opposite me and jabbed me right in the eyes. I could make out the faint sound of traffic and construction equipment rumbling outside. A strange, sweet smell had me by the nostrils. I was lying on a short couch with my legs hanging over the end and a pillow under my head. A woolen blanket lay across me. A pink blanket. Beneath it, I was down to my boxers. There was a white bandage affixed to my shoulder, tainted with a hint of pink in the center. I poked it. It still hurt.

I blinked a few times, trying to resist the urge to drift back into sleep. I couldn’t work out where I was. Then I remembered.

I pulled the blanket up around me when Vivian came into the room. She was wearing jeans, a tank top, and a smile. It was the sort of smile I imagine mothers have for their children when they’re home sick with the flu. She placed a steaming bowl on the coffee table in front of me, along with a big glass of pulpy orange juice. My stomach growled.

“Oatmeal?” she said.

“They should name a public holiday in your honor.” I pushed myself up on my elbows, my muscles grumbling. I was too busy grabbing the bowl of oatmeal to pay them any attention. There was a swirl of honey mixed into it. I stuck a spoonful in my mouth. I’d never been so glad to taste oatmeal before.

Vivian brushed a couple of dark strands of hair out of her face. Now that I looked closer, I realized there were dark circles under her eyes.

“You’re a terrible house guest,” she said, still smiling that motherly smile.

I shoveled in another spoonful. “Sorry. But that’s what you get for handcuffing me to a chair.” I glanced at my wrist. “Hey, you took it off.”

“Well spotted, genius.”

“I was getting kind of attached to it. It made me look tough.” I lowered my wrist and looked around. “I didn’t spew on anything too valuable, did I?”

“You got most of it in the bucket.”

When my stomach held all it could take for the moment, I put down the bowl and sipped the orange juice. My lips stung when the juice hit, but I brought the glass up again and drained it. Christ, it felt good to have something in my stomach. I went back to the oatmeal with barely a pause to swallow.

“Seriously,” I said, “thanks for this.” I glanced down at the shoulder she’d patched up. “And for that. I had nowhere else to go.”

“Nice to know I’m your last resort. It’d be a full-time job being your nurse every time you get beaten up.”

She reached over and peeled back the bandage on my shoulder. The motion had a nice effect on her cleavage, and I stopped chewing to fully apply my concentration.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked, her eyebrows raised. There was a sharp sting as she poked the skin around my wound.

“Thoroughly.”

She poked me again, harder than was strictly necessary, then she covered up the wound and sat up. “What happened, Miles? I saw you getting taken away by those…things…but none of us could get to a car. By the time we took out the last of those creatures, you were gone and we had more reports of Limbus tunnels opening nearby. Then a couple of hours later I get a call saying your friend’s picked you up from the Collective.”

“It’s a long story,” I said, “full of torture machines and daring escapes. I’m sure you can get it out of Daniel Bohr. He likes to talk.”

She shook her head. “The factory was almost totally cleared out by the time we got a team there. We’ve got plenty of trace evidence, but no Collectivists.”

I swallowed a mouthful and slumped down on the couch. “You know, one of these days we’re actually going to catch a break, and we’re not even gonna know what to do with it.” I paused for a moment. “The cop who was guarding me. Collins. Did he…?”

Her face tightened a little, and she shook her head. “He was the only serious casualty. He was dead by the time we found him.”

It wasn’t surprising, but I had to check. I mightn’t be too fond of cops, but no one deserved to die like that. And all so they could get to me.

Vivian took my empty bowl and glass to the kitchen. I settled back down and gazed around the apartment. Extensive bookshelves occupied the opposite wall where a normal person would have their TV. I glanced along the spines of the books, but none of them seemed familiar. For some reason, I figured a cop would have more crime novels. I looked around for a clock but I couldn’t find one, and my watch—like the rest of my clothes—was nowhere to be seen. Trying to judge the time of day by the sunlight gave me a headache.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

Her voice floated back from the kitchen. “About nineteen hours. It’s just after four in the afternoon.”

That long? I’d wasted so much time. I started to get up, but Vivian returned with a couple of coffees and pressed one into my hands. Despite everything, I enjoyed the warmth of the cup against my palms. I’d never really noticed it before. Maybe I was getting sentimental so close to death.

I filled her in on what’d happened after the Collective got hold of me—leaving out the drug-induced dream, of course. I kind of expected her to be more impressed by my ingenious Limbus Pin Hole trick, but no dice. I told her someone had flipped my apartment, looking for the fluid from Tartarus.

I craned my neck around. “Where is it? There was a white container.”

“Over there.” She pointed to the kitchen table. I could just get a glimpse of it if I stretched my neck. The bottle of Kemia I’d brought sat next to it, and what looked like my phone, keys, and wallet. “They went to all that trouble for that?”

I shrugged. “It has to be. Whatever that fluid is, they want it.”

“Why? It’s poisonous.”

“Maybe that’s why they want it.”

She frowned. “There are easier ways to poison someone.”

I shrugged again. I had nothing. Maybe it was worthless, just something for AISOR and the Collective to fight over, like the figurine in The Maltese Falcon.

“By the way,” she said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, “I took the liberty of putting my number in your phone.”

“I like an assertive woman.”

“I’d just appreciate a little notice next time your near-dead body shows up on my doorstep. And while I remember, your phone rang a couple of times while you were out.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t get many phone calls. “Who was it?”

She shrugged. “The caller ID was blocked. I picked up the third time they rang, but they hung up.”

“My landlady probably just found out my last check bounced.” I realized the blanket had pretty much slipped off me, and I suddenly felt very exposed. “Say, this is great and all, but you think maybe we can continue this conversation when I’ve got dressed?”

She smiled a little too widely. “Sure. But I don’t think you want most of your clothes back. I managed to save your jacket, but the rest is a little…vomit-covered.”

“Ah.” I didn’t like the idea of doing the walk of shame in nothing but my boxers and a suit jacket.

“Hang on.” She walked away and came back a few seconds later with some thin plastic packages. “I had to guess your size.” She handed them to me.

They were department store clothes—nothing flashy, but decent. “A public holiday’s not good enough for you. How do you feel about sainthood?” I swept my hand in an arc and took on a priestly tone. “Saint Vivian. Hmm, needs a little something.”

She reached into a cupboard and threw a towel at me. “Go have a shower. The sainthood can wait.”

I nodded, got to my feet. For a moment I was lightheaded, but it slowly faded. I felt so thin you could slip me through a mail slot. Still, I managed to keep my feet under me as I shuffled to the bathroom. “So I’m guessing there’s no chance of a sponge bath? No? Damn.”

She was shaking her head when I closed the bathroom door. Just before she disappeared from view, something in her smile broke.

“Okay,” I said, tenting my fingers on the kitchen table, “here’s what we’ve got so far. Someone discovered Tartarus and liked what he saw there. He found the liquid in the pools, brought it back to Earth. Then somehow—maybe an accident, maybe intentional—the liquid ended up poisoning people. Killing them.”

Vivian nodded. “Most of the victims were below the poverty line. Streetwalkers, the homeless, long-time drug users.”

“But Claudia doesn’t fit that pattern,” I said. “There wasn’t much money for her in singing, but she got by all right.”

Vivian had her notebook open on the table. She had writing like an autistic chicken. “We haven’t been able to find any links between her and the other victims,” she said. “No signs of drug abuse either. No unusual phone calls, and all her finances were in order. She was running a little light since she lost her job, but she was doing all right.”

“Told you. She always was a good kid.”

“She was almost at the end by the time she presented herself to the hospital. Until then, there was no sign of anything amiss.”

I leaned back and stretched. The shower had cleaned me up, but I still looked like hell. Maybe worse than that. My gums had started bleeding when I used the toothbrush Vivian had bought for me. My eyes were shot with greenish-red, and each of my swollen finger joints felt like they’d been snapped in half.

“Okay, let’s skip how Claudia got involved and focus on Tartarus itself,” I said. “If AISOR’s the only one who has access to it, it’s gotta be them who’s poisoning people.”

“Not necessarily. You said Bohr was an interdimensional physicist. It could be the Collective.”

“Possible, but I don’t see it.”

“What about this war of theirs?” Vivian said.

I prodded my aching gums with my tongue. “I don’t know if Kowalski even knows he’s at war. Security’s not lax at AISOR, but they don’t look like they’re ready to fight a horde of gangsters and their pets from Limbus. Did you find out anything about that guy who tried to snatch me from Claudia’s funeral? What was his name? Gullet?”

“Anthony Gullet,” she said, and she shook her head. “His lawyer’s telling him not to talk, and with the attack on the station we haven’t had time to do much more than an initial background check. Nothing has pinged yet.”

Another mystery. I wondered how many I had to collect before I won a prize. “Okay, Bohr hates Kowalski for what he did to him, and he’s been biding his time. Meanwhile, Kowalski managed to get his research to a point where he can open a Tunnel to Tartarus. Somehow, Bohr found out about the new world. They both want the fluid, and we know the Collectivists are willing to kill to get it.” For a moment my mind flicked back to the sensation of harmony I felt as I was drowning in the pool on Tartarus. “And at least one person in AISOR is willing to kill me to keep me out of the picture. But does that person really work for AISOR? Or is it one of Bohr’s spies?”

I still hadn’t told Vivian the full story about what happened when I followed Zhi Lu. It was the one thing I’d kept back, and I had no idea why. The woman seduced me, fucked me, then tried to drown me in a pool of happy-fluid in another dimension. That’s not how I like my dates to end. And more than that, there was something going on between her and the mayor. In this city, there was more corruption in the air than oxygen. So why did the idea of Mayor White being on the side of the bad guys sound out of tune to me? Was it just because her support had helped me stay out of the slammer? Was I just believing what I wanted to believe?

“I can tell there’s still something you’re not telling me, Miles,” Vivian said.

I closed my eyes. “How far would you go to crack this?” I asked her.

“It’s my job.”

I opened my eyes and met hers. “And you’re damn good at it. But these are nasty people we’re dealing with. And they’re powerful, Vivian. This isn’t like the thing with Todd. Some of these people….” I sighed. “If this thing goes to the wall, you could find yourself in a world of trouble.” I touched my hollow cheeks, felt my aching gums. “And I won’t be around much longer to watch your back.”

To my surprise, she reached across the table and touched my hand. Her skin was warm and smooth against mine. My heart skipped a beat, or that might just have been the poison coursing through my system.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said with a smile that didn’t come within spitting distance of her eyes.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” I said. “Not yet.”

“I know. But you can’t do this alone, and somehow you’ve wormed your way further into this thing than Detective Wade and I could. So here’s the deal. We help each other out. No more going at this thing like the Lone Ranger after he’s put back too many whiskeys. We’ll do this together. And when this is all done, we’ll find you a doctor who knows how to get you better. We’ll figure out a way to cure you. Deal?”

She still didn’t understand how big this thing was, but the words stuck in my throat. I wasn’t going to survive this. I knew that, and deep down, I think she did as well. But Desmond’s words came back to me again, along with the numbness and the guilt. They were right. I couldn’t do this on my own. After everything that had happened to my friends last winter, I couldn’t bring myself to drag them into another snake pit full of trouble. But if I couldn’t finish this myself…

“All right,” I said. I put out my hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal, partner.”

She took my hand and shook it. She had a grip like a sumo wrestler. I was so distracted by it I didn’t notice the familiar feeling pressing against my mind until something scratched at the door to Vivian’s apartment.

Both our heads swiveled toward the door. There was a pause, just long enough to make me think I’d imagined it. Maybe it was just someone walking down the hall, their shopping bags brushing against the wall. Maybe I was hallucinating again, and the sensation in my head was the last gasps of a dying brain. But then it came again. A long, slow scratching sound, like someone scraping the door with a knife, and then a high-pitched whine like no animal Earth had ever given birth to.

“Is that…?” Vivian said.

“Yeah.” I stood. A bang, and the door rattled in its hinges. I grabbed my bottle of Kemia off the table. “If you’ve got a gun—” I glanced at her and saw the pistol already in her hands. “Oh. Good. Put a few rounds through the door, will you?”

“I’m not shooting before I see what I’m shooting at.”

Goddamn cops. “Fine,” I said.

The door shuddered again, and the frame gave a tortured groan. Wood cracked. My heart was firing like a machine gun. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I edged toward the door.

“What are you doing?” Vivian hissed.

“Just be ready.” I shuffled slowly forward and reached for the door knob. As I approached, the squeals became more excited. The animal sensation pressing on my mind seemed different to what I’d felt yesterday, but I wasn’t in a position to analyze. Various Pin Holes I could use popped into my head, but I discarded each idea as it came along. No time. The door was ready to give; we had to act now. For once in my life, I was glad there was a gun nearby.

One more thud, and cracks appeared. I touched the door knob, cast a glance back at Vivian, and nodded. Her hands didn’t shake. Mine did.

I wrenched the door open and took a giant ball of fur right in the gut. Thought left me along with my air and my balance. I hit the ground ass-first, pain shooting up my tail bone. The bottle of Kemia I was clutching went rolling across the carpet, out of reach.

“Shoot it!” I shouted, knowing damn well there was no way Vivian could get a clean shot with the spider-dog on top of me. Alien drool splattered my face, and in an instant my entire world consisted solely of the rows upon rows of teeth before my eyes. More eyes than any creature had a right to stared at me, blinking out of sync, and the creature let out another high-pitched whine.

And that’s when I realized it wasn’t eating me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Vivian maneuver to the side and level her weapon at the creature.

I threw out my hand. “Wait.” With the weight of the spider-dog on my chest, it came out as a rasp, and I wasn’t sure she’d heard. But no gunshot came.

It was only now I noticed the spider-dog was smaller than most of the others I’d seen, no bigger than most dogs. Its fur was soft, not coarse, and its eyes were milky.

“Well, fuck me,” I said. “It’s a baby.”

“What?” Vivian sounded a little on edge.

The creature pranced happily on my chest and let out another hoot. I finally allowed myself to really feel the animal sensations pulsing through my head. It was like the Pin Hole I’d sensed when the bat-thing attacked me, but there was something much more familiar about it. It was my Pin Hole.

I carefully sat up, pushing the creature down to my lap. It didn’t change its mind and try to bite me. That was promising.

“Miles,” Vivian said, still aiming her gun at the creature, “what the hell is going on?”

“I, uh, think it likes me.”

“Miles…”

“Remember that Pin Hole I told you about? The one I opened to take control of these things outside the Collective’s headquarters? This baby one must’ve been inside somewhere, close enough to be affected. It was a new Pin Hole I was trying. Powerful. Somehow, I think I…imprinted myself onto this thing.”

“What are you saying?”

I reached out a hand for the creature. It sniffed my hand, yipped a couple of times, and snuggled into me. “I’m saying I think I have a new pet.”

For a moment, the only sound was the whistling coming from between the creature’s teeth as it breathed.

“Can’t you go five minutes without something weird happening to you?” Vivian said.

“Hey, I didn’t know this would happen. It’s just an unintended side effect.” I awkwardly put my hands under the creature and lifted it. It was heavy, and I was weak, but I managed. “What should we do with it?”

She hadn’t put away her gun. “I’m still tempted to shoot it.”

“Come on,” I said, aiming the teeth and eyes in her direction. “It’s kind of cute.”

“Wait, I have a better idea. I’ll shoot you instead.”

I returned the thing to the ground. It sniffed my leg, squealed, and started sprinting around the room. “I think I’ll call it Toto.”

“You’re not seriously going to keep it,” she said. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Look who I’m talking to. Of course you’re going to. Don’t you think you’re a little busy right now to be dealing with—”

My cell phone started ringing on the table.

I raised my finger. “Rain check on the argument.” With one eye still on the spider-dog racing around Vivian’s apartment, I answered the phone.

“Franco’s Weird Pets,” I said. “How may I direct your call?”

The voice on the other end of the line was honey laced with hemlock. “Hello, Miles.”

No. No no no no no. Not now. Not anytime, but especially not now. Put my balls in a vice, pour acid in my eyes, anything but this. Anyone but her. Anyone.

“Caterina Andrews,” I said. I saw Vivian’s eyes widen. “How’s prison life treating you?”

“It’s good to hear your voice, Miles.”

“You know, I wish I could say the same, but ever since you got high on Chroma, executed your husband, and tried to shoot lightning at me last winter, I just have trouble summoning those warm fuzzies.”

Caterina laughed, and ice dripped down my spine. “Don’t be like that. We had some good times too, remember?”

“Sure. I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait,” she said. And damn her, I did. “I want to see you. We have so many things to talk about.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like your friend. What was her name again? Oh yes, Claudia.”

The ice in my spine turned to acid.

“Tell me,” Caterina purred, “has she been haunting your dreams? Or perhaps more than just your dreams? Can you see her right now?”

And just like that, Claudia was there in the room with us. Vivian stared right through her, seeing nothing.

“Come and see me, Miles,” Caterina said. “Alone. We have so much to talk about.”

The line went dead. Claudia smiled. The screeching spider-dog nuzzled my leg. And some dead, forgotten part of my heart burned to life.

“Vivian,” I said. “I need a favor.”

TWENTY-TWO

Prisons. I hate prisons. Give me death, give me splinters under my toenails, just don’t put me in a box. And here I was walking into one voluntarily, through the gates and the metal detector, past the guards that looked like they could chew gravel and compliment the chef, into a tiny room not much bigger than a toilet cubicle with a telephone handpiece and a glass divider and a metal stool bolted to the floor. They’d even taken my Kemia and coins for safekeeping. The guard ushered me inside, waited until I sat down, then pulled the door closed. I shivered as it clicked, even though it wasn’t locked.

I wouldn’t have got in if it hadn’t been for Vivian. She called in some favors and got me a visit outside normal visiting hours. Deep down I was hoping she wouldn’t pull it off, but I got unlucky. She wanted to come in with me, but I convinced her not to. I knew Caterina Andrews wouldn’t talk with a cop in the room, except to screw with her. And if she knew something about Claudia and this whole goddamn mess, I needed to get it out of her. Besides, Vivian had her own investigations to conduct, and if she really wanted to figure out what was going on before I kicked off, we needed to use our time wisely. So I set up a makeshift litter box for Toto in Vivian’s apartment—I assumed spider-dogs must shit—then she dropped me off at the cemetery where my bike still sat. I rode north to Bluegate Women’s Correctional Facility alone.

I had just enough time to get gut-wrenchingly nervous before the door on the opposite side of the glass divider opened and Caterina Andrews entered. Even in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit, she still looked fan-fucking-tastic. Her red hair fell down around her cheeks in waves, and her slim frame flowed into the room like expensive French wine. The last time I saw her she was unconscious, bloodied, and torn from the spider-dogs I’d unleashed on her. But now, not a scar marred her skin. Her eyes met mine. Her lips curled into an impish smile.

My throat went as dry as a hangover in the Sahara.

She sat down on the other side of the glass. It took me a moment to realize a female guard had accompanied her. The woman worked a key into Cat’s handcuffs, removed them, and stepped back. The lock on the door made a heavy sliding sound as the guard left.

For a century or two we stared at each other through the divider. There was something in her eyes, something I couldn’t place. It made my skin crawl. I imagine I didn’t look half as confident as she did. Focus, Miles. Just get what you need and get gone. But my nerves were already throwing monkey wrenches into my plan. For one thing, her face kept shifting into that of Claudia. I’d come so close to killing Caterina last winter. Even after everything she’d done, that knowledge still got my guilt centers working. It would’ve been another woman dead by my hand. What kind of man was I?

Caterina was the first one to make a move. She stretched out an arm and plucked the telephone handpiece off the wall as delicately as if she was picking strawberries. With her eyes, she pointed to the one on my side of the divider. I swallowed, trying to get some saliva flowing, and brought the phone to my ear.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was gonna shave before I came, but time got away from me. You know how it is.”

She twirled the phone cord around her finger. “I’ve missed you.”

“Look, I’m sure you’ve got lots of important prison stuff to be getting back to. So how about we skip all the femme fatale crap and cut to the chase.”

“You always were wound too tight,” she said with a wry smile. How the hell did she get her hands on lipstick in here? “I just wanted to catch up on old times. But you’re right. You don’t have time to waste, do you?”

I licked my lips and adjusted my grip on the phone. My palms were sweaty. “What do you know?”

“I know you’re dying.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You don’t need glasses after all. Be sure to settle the bill with our clinic receptionist on the way out.”

“I know what’s killing you. Tartarus.” Her lips seemed to kiss the word as it left her.

That shut me up. She smirked.

“You’re so easy to impress, Miles,” she said. “Just because I’m in here doesn’t mean I’m gone for good.”

“You had something to do with this?”

She quirked an eyebrow. “No. Of course not. Does this seem like my style? But I have ways of finding things out, if I’m interested. And after that man came here to talk to me and offer me a way out of here in exchange for a special job, I got very interested.”

“Wait, you’re saying someone involved in this came to talk to you? When? Who was it?”

She shrugged. “Some man. Just a goon. A couple of weeks ago.”

“What did he want?”

“Not yet, Miles. This is important information I have. I can’t just give it away, can I? Not when you need it so desperately. Not when you need it to avenge your friend.”

“Fuck yourself with a broken broomstick.”

She was enjoying herself, I could tell. “I saw a picture of your friend, you know. Not much of a beauty, really. What do they say? Homely. I honestly don’t know what you’re so upset about.”

I don’t remember getting to my feet, but my palm collided with the glass divider. I could feel my lips pulled back around my teeth. “Don’t,” I growled. “Don’t.”

Her smile only infuriated me more. The guard banged on the door behind me. Don’t be an idiot. Calm. You’re calm. For once in your goddamn life, play it smart.

The guard was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear.

Sit down. Don’t take the bait. Sit down, be calm, get what you came for. Do it for her. Sit down.

I sat down.

The banging on the door stopped, and footsteps shuffled away. Blood still pounded in my ears, but I forced myself to take a deep breath. Then I brought the phone back to my ear.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“A promise, Miles. Just a promise.”

Nothing would ever be just a promise with Caterina Andrews. But I kept my trap shut and listened.

“I won’t be in here forever,” she said. “A year from now, two, three, maybe, I’ll be out.”

“Not likely.”

“And when I’m out,” she continued, “I’m going to give you a call. And you’ll fulfill your promise.”

“And what promise is that?”

“The promise of training.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and she glanced at the walls around her. “The world is changing, and it’s hard for a girl to keep up in a place like this. Heaven, Limbus, Tartarus. Who knows how many worlds will have been uncovered by the time I’m out? I want you to teach me how to Tunnel in this brave new universe.”

“What makes you think I’ll even be up-to-date myself? What makes you think I’ll even be alive?”

She smiled. “You still don’t understand how strong you are, do you? How many others could open a Tunnel to a whole new world with nothing but gut instinct and a bottle of Kemia? How many others could do it as close to death as you were?”

I didn’t answer.

“So you’ll know,” she said. “You were born to Tunnel, Miles, and no matter how hard you try to resist, you’ll get more powerful than you can imagine.” She leaned forward. “And you’ll teach me that power. If you want what I can tell you. If you promise.”

I shouldn’t be here. I knew that damn well. Caterina was a viper with lasers for eyes and a machine gun duct-taped to her tail. Screw dealing with the devil. This would really be selling my soul.

But look at me. I was so close to Death’s door I could see the rust on the door knob. There was no way I’d still be above ground when Caterina got out of here. By that time she’d be someone else’s problem. All of Bluegate would be someone else’s problem. But maybe, just maybe, I could nail Claudia’s killer before I went. If I just took what Caterina had to give me.

Hell. I never had a choice.

“I promise,” I said.

“Good boy.” She tilted her head to the side and beamed. “Shall we get started then? Let’s see. The man who came to see me called himself Anthony.”

“Pale guy, kinda nervous?” I asked.

She nodded. Anthony Gullet, my friend from the funeral, now reconsidering his life choices in a police cell. Caterina was right. It really was connected.

“What did he want?” I said.

“As I said, he had an offer for me. He wanted my help on something he called Tartarus. In exchange, he would arrange my release from prison.”

“Breakout or early parole?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t specify. I suspect either was possible.”

My thoughts went to Mayor White. Maybe she and the warden were batting for the same corrupt team. “But you’re still here. Why didn’t you take the offer?”

“Because I excel at reading people, Miles, and this Anthony was a terrible liar. Whatever they wanted my help with, they didn’t intend for me to survive giving it. I’m no idiot. And I intend to live a long, long time.”

This was all starting to sound familiar. Except I wasn’t as smart as Caterina, especially not when a pretty girl was involved. Had Zhi Lu taken me to her bed knowing that a few hours later she’d be leaving me to drown in a pool of poison? She had to have. My fist tightened around the phone. Why didn’t I learn? I couldn’t trust people like that.

At least it’d probably be the last time I got the chance to make that mistake.

“Do you know what they wanted you to do?” I asked, trying to keep my feelings from showing on my face.

“They were rather vague. They had their new world they wanted help accessing. But that obviously wasn’t their true purpose.” She gestured to the walls. “If that was all they wanted, they could have picked Tunnelers in more convenient locales. And they would have been a little less insistent. There would’ve been fewer threats.” She smirked. “It was cute, in a way.”

“So, what then? Stop playing games. What did they really want?”

She shook her head, eyes dancing. “You’re so impatient. You really do look awful. And I don’t think it’s just the poison, is it? I’m betting you haven’t slept well the last few months. Have the screams been waking you at night? Does the fear still grip you? The guilt? The knowledge of the lives—and deaths—you’re responsible for. You must have such terrible nightmares, I’m sure.”

“Everyone has nightmares. If nothing scares you, you’re already dead.”

Her eyes flashed. Shouldn’t she be blinking more? “Ah, but these aren’t ordinary nightmares, are they? Not when they pursue you into daytime. It’s not normal to hear the dead whispering to you, Miles. It’s not normal to see them following you.”

My chest tightened. The voices I’d been blocking out started hissing, talking, begging, screaming. And their images appeared, as clear and sharp as if they were lying all around me. The gangsters I’d killed. The people I’d let down. Oh, Jesus. Jesus H. Christ.

“How?” I whispered into the phone. “How can you know that?”

She grinned the grin of a madwoman. “You didn’t think you were special, did you?” She leaned forward. “I know because I see them too.”

I looked into her eyes, and I knew she was telling the truth. There were certain kinds of crazy you just couldn’t fake. But why? Why were both of us losing it?

And then I realized. “Chroma.”

She nodded. “You didn’t think you could take something that powerful and get away clean, did you?” Her laugh crackled in my ear. “Just because the drug wore off, doesn’t mean it’s gone completely. It changed us, Miles. It made us stronger. And it broke us.”

I licked my lips. She was right. My Tunneling was stronger now than it ever had been before. I figured these hallucinations were some kind of hardcore PTSD. But maybe…

“No,” I said. “We weren’t the only ones to take it. Tania did. Dozens of other Tunnelers, too.”

“And how many of them were as strong as us? Have you followed the news reports? A quarter of them are dead. A few of them, the younger ones, were barely affected. Others have been experiencing symptoms. Depression, mania, catatonia. But you and I, Miles, you and I were powerful enough to draw on the full strength of Chroma. And it left its mark.”

I massaged my forehead with my palm. It didn’t matter why I was crazy. It didn’t change the fact that I was crazy. And it wouldn’t bother me much longer.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “What does this have to do with anything? Tell me what you know about Tartarus. Tell me what you know about the fluid.”

“Don’t you get it yet?” She crossed her legs. “The fluid is nothing. A poison, sure, but a slow one, and easily detectable. Pointless. On its own.”

“What do you…?” The penny dropped. It was a big penny. “Oh.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Do you understand now?”

“The fluid needs a host,” I said. “That’s why they were poisoning people with it.” The realizations tumbled in one after another. “The pathologist who did Claudia’s autopsy said he found crystals in her blood vessels. That’s it, isn’t it? The fluid is nothing, but when someone’s poisoned with it, it crystallizes, changes somehow. And it’s the crystals they want.”

I touched my bleeding gums again, and pictured the blood in my vomit, the red spiderwebs on my face. Blood vessels being shredded by the same damn crystals.

“So it’s the crystals that are useful,” I said. “But why? What are they used for?”

“How should I know?” Caterina said.

I chewed my lip and tasted blood. “But if it’s just crystals they want…” I tapped my head with my palm, willing my brain to work faster. “…then why would they come to you?”

“To poison me with the fluid, of course,” she said. “To make the crystals in my veins.”

“Yeah, but why you, specifically? They were happy doing it to homeless people and prostitutes before.”

And how come they didn’t take the crystals before the cops got their hands on the bodies? Maybe they did, maybe there were dozens of deaths, and the few Vivian and Wade had found were just ones who slipped through the cracks. Or maybe….

“Maybe it didn’t work in those people,” I said. “The crystals were flawed somehow. They thought it would work, but it didn’t. So they didn’t harvest the crystals. Which meant they needed someone different. They came to you.” I met Caterina’s eyes. “But why you? Why are you different?”

“Do I really need to spell it out for you?” she said, head cocked to the side. Once more, the madness flashed behind her eyes.

And then I caught up. “Goddamn it. Chroma again. It’s always fucking Chroma, isn’t it?”

Cat said it herself. Those doses of Chroma had changed us. Claudia’s killers must think that Chroma would affect the crystals.

Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the crystals had failed inside me just as they’d failed inside Claudia and all the others.

No. The Collective took a blood sample from me. They said I was positive. And then they tried to put me through their grinder. They tried to extract the crystals. Damn them all. It had worked. I’d become their goddamn lab experiment. I’d become their host.

My blood. The Collective used my blood to test if it had truly worked. My mind went to my trashed apartment. I’d thought they were looking for the fluid in the container. But that was worthless. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even active once it was back on Earth. But the fluid hadn’t been the only thing I’d swiped when I ran from AISOR. I’d also taken my blood samples. The blood samples I’d given to the cops to test. That’s what they’d been looking for when they tossed my apartment. Maybe they sent that goon to kidnap me from the funeral to get more blood, and when that failed, they went looking for the blood samples that had already been taken. And only AISOR knew about those blood samples.

“Kowalski,” I said to myself. “It has to be him.” I’m coming for you, pal.

Caterina was smirking loudly by the time I dug myself out of the avalanche of thoughts. “It’s a rush, isn’t it? Discovery, I mean.”

She was right, but I wasn’t going to get in the habit of agreeing with her. I stood up and started to put the phone down. I had what I came for. I have a promise to keep, and so many fucking miles to go before I sleep.

“Wait,” she said. “I can tell there’s one thing you haven’t worked out yet.”

I stopped, the phone a few inches from my ear. “What?”

“Your friend, Claudia. They killed her, never intending to harvest her crystals.” She leaned forward. “You’re so predictable, Miles. They knew you’d come snooping, they knew if someone told you to drop it you’d only come on harder. It was the easiest way for them to get you to Tartarus so they could poison you. Claudia’s a corpse so they could get to you. Isn’t that funny?”

The world swayed like a couple dancing a slow waltz to no music. Something wrapped around my shoulders, took hold of my skin. And it began to pull. I staggered. The weight was too much. Too goddamn much. I looked to my feet and saw the bodies scattered there. They clutched at my shoes, my trousers, my legs, tugging me down into my own personal hell. Too much. It’s too much.

No.

I steadied myself against the divider. There was only one thing I could do. It wouldn’t make the guilt go away. Nothing would. This didn’t change anything. I already knew Claudia’s death was on me. I’d be dragging these bodies behind me for the remainder of my short, miserable life. But those bastards wouldn’t get away with it. I’m coming, Kowalski. You’re mine. Bohr, too. You’re all as bad as each other. You can all go to hell.

“One last thing,” Caterina said. I met her gaze, and the hallucinations faded. “Don’t forget your promise. I won’t be in here forever. And don’t worry, Miles. You’ll survive this. You’re a hard man to kill.” She stood, her freckled nose an inch from the glass. “And when I get out, after you’ve fulfilled your promise, we’ll finish what we started last winter.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll pencil you in. Have your people call my people. We’ll make it a fucking date.”

I dropped the phone handset, letting it dangle, and turned my back on the smartest, scariest maniac I’d ever known.

Claudia walked beside me and the guard on our way back through the prison. She wasn’t haunting me anymore. Now, she was the only thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other. My stomach was squirming again. My legs felt like sacks of cement. A cold sweat coated my skin. Just a little longer, she seemed to be saying to me. You’re nearly there.

I needed to call Vivian and tell her everything. If I died before we got a chance to put Kowalski away, I didn’t want AISOR or the Collective getting their paws on my body. I didn’t know what the crystals did, but if those bastards wanted them, I wasn’t going to let them have them.

There were other things I should put in order as well. Even if Desmond hated my guts, I figured he’d still be willing to take over Tania’s Tunneling training. God knows I’d done a shitty job of it so far. And then there was the question of what to do with the baby spider-dog terrorizing Vivian’s apartment. As stupid as it was, I wasn’t willing to let Toto get put down or stuck in a research facility. I just wanted to preserve one damn thing before I croaked. My whole life had been self-destruction. My family destroyed itself. I destroyed myself. I was willing to pay for the way I’d lived my life. But I just wanted this, this one last, stupid chance to keep something alive.

Even if it was a butt-ugly killer animal from another dimension.

We went back through the metal detectors and signed the log book for the woman behind the counter. She listened to the radio while she got the things I’d left with her before going in. I leaned against the wall to preserve my strength while I pocketed my bottle of Kemia. When I got outside I’d call Vivian. And then I had a date with a man in gold-rimmed spectacles.

It was the name that caught my attention. It crackled through the radio news bulletin a couple of times before it finally penetrated my thick skull. After all, it was always on there. But never like this.

I steadied myself against the desk and tuned in my hearing. No. I misheard, that’s all. You’re crazy, Miles. You can’t trust your ears anymore. But I knew what I’d heard.

“Holy shit,” the guard said, shaking her head and turning up the radio. “Can you believe it?”

I could. I could believe anything.

Juliet White, the mayor of Bluegate, had taken one shot to the heart and one to the head in the middle of the street. Point blank. Execution-style. Witnesses reported that the suspect, still at large, was a six-foot-ten Caucasian man in a black coat bearing a short-barreled shotgun.

Add another corpse to the list.

TWENTY-THREE

I popped the clutch, shifted into fifth, and burned through the evening. The sky was red, the sun giving up its last photons before it dropped below Bluegate’s skyline. My last sunset, maybe. Night was hitting the city once more. And it wasn’t going to be any more peaceful than the day.

The bike screamed under me as I pushed it to its limit. An evening wind blew in, buffeting me, slicing through the thin department-store shirt Vivian had given me. The taste of blood never left my mouth, and I swear I could feel more leaks all through my gut. I was in no condition to go racing through the streets like this. I’d left a message on Vivian’s voicemail, telling her everything Caterina had told me. I’d made a deal with Vivian, and I was going to hold to it. But there was also someone I wanted to see. The last person I’d seen with Mayor White.

The woman who’d killed me.

In the fading light, Zhi Lu’s neighborhood took on an ominous tone. These buildings were built on the backs of the unluckier citizens of Bluegate. What kind of cut did she get? Is that how she could afford those dresses and that car and that apartment and those wads of bills in the secret compartment of her handbag? Did she have an account in the Cayman Islands with a nice big payday waiting for her? Probably. Bad guys always had accounts in the Caymans.

Traffic was light in this part of town. Clean riding all the way through. Rows of parked cars shone in my headlight. Nearly there. I pushed back my helmet visor to get the wind in my face. I needed the sharpness to keep me awake. To keep me moving. I was going to find Zhi. I told myself this was logical. I’d make her talk, see what she knew about Mayor White, about Kowalski, about Tartarus, about everything. Gather evidence. And then I’d make her give me something so I could get to Kowalski. He’d probably be protected. I needed her.

But in the deeper recesses of my mind, the bits I didn’t like to look at too closely, I knew that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to see her. My visit to Caterina had awoken something inside me. Cat had seduced me and betrayed me. She’d tried to use me, and when she was done, she tried to kill me. Zhi did the same thing. Only this time, she succeeded. And I didn’t take kindly to that.

A kid on a Vespa darted to the side as I zipped around a corner. There, I could see her building now. And there, her blue Ford parked outside under a street light. And in the orange glow, I saw little dark-haired Zhi Lu toss a black duffel bag into the car and climb into the driver’s side. The brake lights lit up and clear fumes puffed from the exhaust.

The bitch was running.

The Ford swung onto the road and tore away from me. I pulled my visor down and opened up the throttle. I was too sick for this shit.

She wasn’t going toward the AISOR offices, or to the hospital where the Vei prostitute Penny Coleman took her last breaths. She was headed east, for the highway. She was leaving town. Guilty conscience?

Damn it. I really did like her for a little while.

I leaned low on the gas tank to try to coax a little more speed out of the groaning bike. It had good acceleration, but it didn’t have the power to match Zhi in a long distance chase. Her car kept a tight line around the corners, avoiding routes that would get her stuck at traffic lights. I couldn’t tell if she knew I was after her, but she sure as hell knew what she was doing, and by the speed she was going, she wasn’t going to make this easy.

I was half-dead, so drained I could barely keep the bike beneath me on the turns, and I was getting worse by the second. If Zhi got outside the city, she was home free. My ability to Tunnel depended on my proximity to the Bore, the huge Tunnel hovering a few inches above the surface of the river that ran through the city. I needed to end this now.

I’d lived in this city pretty much my whole life. Things had changed in the last few months, but that was only the surface. The veins of Bluegate wouldn’t be so easily reconfigured, and if Zhi was making for the eastern highway, there was still only one way out. She’d have to take the East Bridge. To get there, she’d be going through the tight, twisting streets that were the territory of the 23rd Street Bikers. Streets connected by shortcuts that only a motorbike could travel.

I slammed on the brakes, shifted down to third, and pulled a tight turn that made my stomach drop out the bottom of my shoes. My line of sight to Zhi’s Ford was cut by a pair of parked cars, but that was okay. It was a risk, but I had no choice. My tire bounced as I mounted the curb and darted between a pair of dumpsters. Then I was in the alley, my headlight shining off the eyes of the stray cats that scattered in front of me. The bike’s rumbles turned to thunder, the sound echoing between the brick walls closing in on either side of me.

Out on the road again, the rumble dropped away. A car’s brakes screeched and someone leaned on their horn, sending my heart rate up a few notches, but I only gave them a fleeting wave before I dove back into another alley. Darkness swallowed me again, with only the glow of my headlight to guide me.

I mapped out the streets in my head as I rode. I’d only get one chance. If I miscalculated her speed, I could come out onto the road when she’d already passed, and then I’d have no hope of catching her before she hit the bridge. What if she stopped, or took a strange route? If she pulled off the road when I couldn’t see her and waited me out, I’d never find her. Too many streets, too little time. No, she wouldn’t. I’d seen the way she moved when she jumped in the car. She was nervous. Scared. A couple of days ago, she saw vulnerability in me and took advantage. Now it was my turn.

I tore out onto the road, jammed on the brakes, and brought the whole bike squealing around to face the oncoming traffic. I could hear my heartbeat pounding inside my helmet, with a beat to match the twisting of my stomach. With my left hand I kept the clutch lever pulled, and with my right I flipped up my visor and dug in my pocket for a coin and my bottle of Kemia. I was lucky it hadn’t flown out during my manic ride, but no time to be thankful. The road was too tight to try anything fancy or original, and I couldn’t afford for her to crash the damn car and get herself killed. So I went with the coin that’d already saved my life once in the last few days. I poured a splash of Kemia over it, felt the fabric between our world and Heaven weaken, and shoved the bottle back in my pocket.

Just in time for a blue Ford to come racing around the corner in front of me. I imagined I could see Zhi’s eyes widening behind the steering wheel. She didn’t slow. I shoved the coin between my teeth, gave the throttle some revs, and released the clutch.

My tire skidded for a moment, caught, and shot me forward. I hummed as I rode toward Zhi. It was easy to get in the right frame of mind for the chaos of Heaven to do its thing. I was half-mad anyway.

She was hammering her horn when she came in range. Her headlights blinded me. I grinned around the coin, trying to pretend like I knew what I was doing. Then, with a blow of energy, I ripped a Pin Hole open in the universe and turned the road ahead of me into wet tar and melted concrete.

I swerved and mounted the sidewalk to avoid the slush. With cars lining the street, Zhi couldn’t do the same. Her tires sunk into the road, kicking up wet, gray slurry. The car came to a growling stop.

I grinned despite the ache in my gums and the cracks in my lips. “Gotcha.”

I released the Pin Hole. The concrete solidified, with the Ford’s tires sunken half a foot inside. Zhi stared at me for a moment, revving her engine, then scrambled for her seatbelt. I gunned my engine and came around to the driver’s side of her car just as she threw open the door.

“License and registration, ma’am,” I said, planting my hand on the door and putting out the kickstand.

She didn’t think it was funny. I could tell by the revolver she pointed at me.

“Don’t move. What the hell are you doing?” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

I’d had guns pointed at me plenty of times before. For the first time, it didn’t scare me. I slowly climbed off my bike and stepped forward so the barrel was right against my chest. “There’s a lot wrong with me. And some of it’s your fault. But that can wait, can’t it? We’ve got plenty of time. Unless you’re in a hurry to get somewhere?”

“I….” She chewed her lip. “Where have you been, Miles? You ran from AISOR before I could talk to you. I’ve been trying to find you.”

“I bet you have. Were you the one who tossed my apartment? Or did you get someone further down the ladder to do that?”

“What?”

“I figure you probably wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty. Same goes for killing the mayor, right? Did you have another argument? Disagree on how to divide up the spoils of whatever the hell it is you’re doing? Were you there when Stretch killed her, or were you safe and sound at home?”

Her mouth dropped open an inch and her brow wrinkled. “Wait. You think I killed Mayor White?”

“Not you personally, but yeah, pretty much. I kinda wish you’d killed me more like that. Getting shot in the head would be a lot easier than this slow death bullshit.”

“You…you think it was me who got you poisoned on Tartarus?” She pushed her hair out of her face and waved the rod at me. “Are you a moron?”

She was a better liar than I thought. Tiny cracks appeared in my resolve.

She lowered the gun, pulled something small, black, and rectangular from her pocket, and shoved it into my hands. “Read it. Go on.”

My gut told me it wasn’t wise to argue. The rectangle was like a wallet, only smaller. I flipped it open. There was a picture of her with a shorter haircut alongside her real name, Brittany Wei, and an ID number. And above that, a badge.

“You’re a cop?” I said dumbly.

“I was,” she said. “In Corton. Mayor White set up an undercover task force independent of Bluegate PD. Someone to look into the new gangs hitting the city and their links to AISOR. You think you’re the first to figure out something’s going on with them? Then the poisonings started. There were too many leaks in your police force. We were reporting directly to Mayor White.”

My mind had turned to slush. “So…” I reached into my helmet and scratched my nose. “…so you didn’t try to kill me?”

“No, goddamn it,” she said, exasperated. “I think it was Sean Beekman, the team leader. We’ve been digging into his finances. Someone else has been paying him a lot of money.”

“Why did you invite me into AISOR, then?”

“Kowalski wanted you. I needed to see why. I was going to explain, but you ran as soon as we got you back from Tartarus.”

I nodded. “So that’s why you slept with me?”

“No!” She shoved me in the chest, and I nearly fell over my bike. “I fucked you because I liked you, you idiot.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oooh. Shit.” I glanced at her car sunk in the road. “I guess that makes me a bit of an asshole, doesn’t it?”

“You think?” She shook her head and rubbed her face with the palm of her hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Zhi…Brittany….”

“I said it doesn’t matter.” She snatched her ID back and turned away. “Kowalski made us. Maybe he already knew we were watching them, and now it’s time for him to silence us.”

“So you’re saying it’s definitely Kowalski behind this?”

“It has to be. As close as we can tell he’s been involved at every level. His people came for us an hour ago. They moved on Mayor White, pulled her out of her car, gunned her down in the street.”

Stretch was one of Kowalski’s people? Then what was he doing hanging around with Bohr? No, no time to worry about that now.

“I’ve lost contact with the rest of the undercovers,” Zhi said. “I have to get out of town.”

“Ah, Christ.” I stared at the car. It wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry. I’d screwed up again. Zhi…Brittany…threw a look behind her. She was scared off her face.

I made up my mind. “You know how to ride a motorbike?”

“What? Yeah, but—”

I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to my bike. “Take mine.”

She tried to pull away from me. “Miles, I can’t. I need my bag.”

“Forget it, I’ll send you some nice new clothes. On me. I’ll write you into my will. You won’t have to wait long.”

“There’s evidence—”

I grabbed her and pulled her bodily onto the bike. It took nearly everything I had. “The clutch is sticky. Watch out for it.” I twisted the key in the ignition and the bike came to life.

“Miles.”

I pulled off my helmet and handed it to her. “You’ll need this.”

She was still mad at me, I could tell. I was mad at me, too. I’d let my paranoia drive me. I’d trusted the people I shouldn’t have trusted, and let the people who mattered slip away. Zhi would never fully forgive me, I knew. But that wasn’t what was important now.

“You need to get out of Bluegate as well,” she said. “It’s not safe here. They’ll find you.”

I almost laughed at that. “I’ll be fine,” I lied. “Get out of here.”

She buckled the helmet. It was too big for her. Her eyes met mine. “Thank you.”

She turned to face the road ahead. As she did, I slipped my hand inside her pocket and wrapped my hand around her revolver. I pocketed it before she could realize it was gone.

Then she gunned the engine and took off.

I watched her head for the East Bridge. She’d need to stop for gas once she was outside the city. I hoped she’d find somewhere to lay low. Kowalski would still be coming for her. Unless I dealt with him.

I inspected Zhi’s revolver. It was a small thing, made for someone with little hands. But right now I figured I needed it more than her. I opened the cylinder. Fully loaded, six rounds. It’d do.

I tucked the gun back in my pocket, turned my back on another woman I’d failed, and went to hail a cab.

Kowalski. You’re done.

TWENTY-FOUR

It was a hot night. The kind of night where your shirt sticks to your skin and you can feel the sweat of one and a half million people pressing in on you. The kind of night you just wanna spend with a cold beer in your hand, the river lapping at your feet, and maybe, if you’re real lucky, a warm lady at your side.

I didn’t have a beer or a river or a lady. I had a gun, a quarter bottle of Kemia, and a poison in my veins that stung every inch of my guts. Inside me there was no more piss and no more vinegar, just a deep, cold anger that kept my legs moving when they screamed at me to stop. My ear stung where I’d been sliced. My shoulder ached where I’d been peppered with buckshot. And a woman walked beside me. Dead, irretrievably dead.

I kept walking.

Vivian wasn’t there when I finally dragged myself back to her apartment. I knocked a couple of times, and when there was no answer, I used a splash of Kemia and a Pin Hole to unlock the door.

Toto started squealing right away. The spider-dog came scampering out of the bedroom and leaped at me. He was little, but not that little. He hit me with the force of a eighteen-wheeler and I went down on my ass again. Christ, he was an ugly little son of a bitch. Smelly, too. I pulled him against me and stroked his fur until he quieted down.

“You hungry?” I asked him. He yapped and nuzzled my chest.

I put him down and hauled myself to my feet. Dizziness hit me for a second, but it passed. The little bastard ran around my legs as I staggered to the kitchen, nearly tripping me a couple of times. I aimed a half-hearted kick in his direction, but he easily raced around my foot and went back to nipping at my heels. I gave it up and opened the fridge to see what I could scavenge.

“What do you eat anyway?” I asked. With teeth like that, he was obviously partial to meat. It didn’t look like Vivian had been shopping much lately. Aside from half a bottle of milk, a couple of specks of ketchup, and a container of margarine, the fridge was nearly bare. I found a sad-looking carrot buried at the bottom of the vegetable drawer, but Toto turned up his nose at it, so I started munching on it while I pulled open the freezer door.

“Here, how about this?” I pulled a couple of frozen pork chops out of the corner. Toto squealed and leaped at them, teeth gnashing. “Hold on, damn it. Let me defrost them first.”

I tossed the meat in Vivian’s microwave and pressed buttons until it started working. While I waited, I rummaged in the cupboards for the biggest bowl I could find—I think it was supposed to be a fruit bowl—then filled it with water and put it down on the kitchen floor. Toto buried his head in it immediately and started making horrible slurping sounds. I left him to it.

I didn’t have much longer. I had to prioritize. Bohr and his goddamn Collective were just as willing to kill and maim to get these crystals as Kowalski and AISOR, but I had no way of getting to them. The Collective had gone to ground. Hell, maybe they weren’t even in the city anymore, though I doubted they’d leave. Not before they got what they wanted. But either way, one day they’d stick their nose up and make a mistake. I trusted Vivian to track them down and nail their asses to the wall.

That left AISOR. I still had no idea what they wanted the crystals for, but it sure as hell must be important if they were willing to kill the mayor in broad daylight and leave a trail of bodies behind. I could probably just sit here and wait. They’d come find me eventually. I was the only living host for these crystals of theirs, and they wouldn’t let me get away from them. There were others they could try to use. Caterina. Tania. The other Tunnelers in the city who’d taken Chroma. But they’d made their choice. And they were moving in for the kill. Maybe after they were done with me, they’d go after everyone who’d been involved. They’d hunt down Zhi. Maybe they’d kill Desmond, if they linked him to me. And Vivian and Detective Wade. I couldn’t care less about the pretty boy, but if they killed Vivian, that’d be strike three for me and my guilt.

But that was all moot. I wasn’t going to sit here. I wasn’t going to wait for them to come find me. In a few hours I’d probably be too weak to do much more than flop around like a drunk koala. I needed to act while I still had strength. The strength to open a Pin Hole or two. And the strength to pull a trigger.

The microwave beeped. The pork chops still seemed a bit cold, but they’d have to do. I stuck them on a plate and left them on the floor next to Toto’s water bowl. He hooted at me and started tearing them apart with so much gusto I decided to leave the room. I hoped Vivian wouldn’t get too mad at me for stealing her food and painting her kitchen floor with it. I guessed I wasn’t going to get a chance to make it up to her now.

I went to the couch, opened the window, and sat down next to it. The breeze helped, even if it was warmer than I’d like. It was a hell of a summer. I always hated summer.

I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed. It rang eight times, then someone picked up. No, it was just voicemail. Maybe it was better that way. The pre-recorded message ended, the phone beeped, and silence waited for me to talk.

“Hey, Des,” I said after a moment. “It’s me. Don’t delete this message yet. I just wanted to say you were right. I’ve been going about this all wrong, but I’m out of time and it’s too late to change trains now.”

I paused and rubbed my forehead. Christ, I could use a drink.

“Anyway,” I said, “I know this isn’t exactly going to pass as a legal will, but if you can swing it, I want you to have my stuff. Most of it’s sliced to bits, but maybe you’ll be able to salvage something. My coins and my Kemia are yours if you want them. If you don’t, just make sure Tania doesn’t get her hands on too much at once until she’s ready. You made a promise to me last winter, and I know you’ll keep it now. Tania’s training will be in good hands. She’s gonna be a hell of a Tunneler one day, if she can keep herself in check.” I snorted. “Hell, she can’t do much worse than me, right?”

The voicemail didn’t answer.

“Take a couple of hundred out of my bank account and give it to Vivian. I need to reimburse her for a couple of things. If there’s anything left, do what you want with it. Use it to fund your neighborhood watch. Might be illegal as all hell, but it saved my ass, and I approve of anything that can do that. Help out Vivian with anything you’ve got on the Collective, if you can. Just don’t go incriminating yourself, all right?”

Toto trotted back over to me, pink blood coating his mouth, the bone between his teeth. He dropped it at my feet and hooted. I ruffled his fur.

“Anyway, I should go,” I said. “I got some crazy shit to do. I just wanted you to know there’s no hard feelings. You hit like a sissy anyway.” The phone grew heavy in my hand. Any minute now I was gonna start blubbering. No. Keep it together, Miles. “Keep fighting, Des. And thanks for everything. See you round.”

I hung up and returned the phone to my pocket. Fatigue drooped over me. Coming here was a mistake. I should’ve kept moving, not let my body know how tired it was. Now that I was sitting down I could barely move a muscle. Someone had glued lead weights to my eyelids. The room faded to a slit. And then it went black.

That was better. The pain wasn’t so bad in the dark. I felt like I was lying on my back in the middle of the sea, floating on a bed of water and salt. I could taste it, taste the salt. No, maybe that was just blood. Never mind. Never mind.

“Miles.” Claudia’s voice floated as well.

“No,” I said. “Go away. You’re just a Chroma hallucination.”

“Get up,” Claudia said.

“You were nicer last time.” I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t move. “Don’t I even get a song now?”

“No song. I’ll sing when you’re dead.”

“No, you won’t. When I’m dead, you’ll be dead too. You only exist in my head.”

“Get up.”

“No.”

“Stop being a bitch.” Claudia’s voice changed, grew deeper.

“You really were nicer last time.”

“I’m not real. I’m what you need me to be.” The voice was definitely different now. Familiar.

“Get up,” I said.

“No,” I replied.

“Lying down is for saps,” I said. “So is pussying out.”

I had me there. “What should I do?” I asked.

“What you need to do,” I said.

“You’re right,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Get up,” I ordered.

“Yes.”

“Now.”

I opened my eyes. Something wet and slimy was touching my hand. Toto was nuzzling my palm. He screeched a few times as he bumped his head against my leg. Christ, no one was willing to let me lie down and die.

I got to my feet. They trembled under me. The world swayed. But I stayed upright. Everything hurt. But that was all right.

I picked up the spider-dog and carried him as I walked through the apartment. I’d brought a spare bottle of Kemia with me when I’d stayed here last night, so I swapped it out for the nearly empty bottle I was carrying. I found a pocket knife in the kitchen drawer and a pair of binoculars that might come in handy, and I counted out all my Pin Hole coins to make sure I hadn’t lost any. Each one was a different size, and each one had a different Pin Hole. I hoped they’d be enough. If anything unexpected happened, I’d have to make do and see what I could come up with on the fly. I was Miles Franco, the Tunneler that wiped out half of John Andrews’ gang. Even Caterina Andrews said I was powerful, and she was my mortal enemy. Or something. And if my Tunneling failed, well…

I touched Zhi’s revolver sitting in my jacket pocket.

I’d thought I could use Zhi to get to Kowalski, but that was never going to happen. I’d have to do this the hard way. I couldn’t be sure where Kowalski would be. I didn’t know where he lived. But on a night like this, after he’d already got in a few casual murders before dinner, I figured I could make a good guess where I’d find him.

I scratched Toto under the chin and turned him toward me. “Listen. You need to stay here and look after Vivian. Make sure no one comes gunning for her. She’s always getting into trouble. You know what she’s like.” I tickled the top of his head and he squealed happily. I put him down on the carpet and let him nibble my feet a few minutes longer.

There was a sheet of scrap paper and a pen by the phone. I held the pen poised to write for a moment, trying to think. Vivian had been kind to me. A hell of a lot kinder than I deserved. Pity, we wouldn’t be able to have that talk she’d promised me.

Ah, to hell with it. I put pen to paper.

Gone fishin’, I wrote.

I patted myself to make sure I had everything. Spectacles, testicles, bottle of Kemia, revolver. Good. No more delays. Kowalski was mine.

I was a dead man walking, murdered for something I didn’t even fully understand. Everyone I cared about I’d driven away, or worse. I was half-mad, with only a Chroma-induced hallucination to keep me company. Most of the people who’d come to me for help were dead. I wasn’t far behind.

In short, I had nothing to lose.

I closed the apartment door on Toto and made my way down the stairs alone.

TWENTY-FIVE

Kowalski was right where I expected him to be. I crouched on the fire escape of an abandoned apartment building opposite the AISOR offices, a pair of binoculars to my eyes. The night was warm and empty. Behind me, to the north, the river flowed. The Bore would be glowing. Customs would be busy even at this hour. The city didn’t stop imports and exports between Earth and Heaven for some pesky little thing like nighttime. But in front of me was the reason I was here. Only a few lights were on in the AISOR building. I figured if Kowalski’s office would be anywhere, it would be on the north side, facing the Bore. He was an interdimensional physicist at heart, after all. And lo and behold, there he was, the top of his head just peeking over the back of his chair, silhouetted in the light of his office. He was working late. He had some sort of criminal affairs to conduct, I expected.

I wanted to look him in the eyes. I wanted to hear from his own lips why he’d killed Claudia, why he’d dragged me into this whole sordid mess. I wanted to make him beg for forgiveness. I wanted him to tell me what the crystals did. And then, if he was really lucky, I’d let Vivian and Wade take him away and give him a cell in the worst prison possible. If he was lucky. If I could keep myself from throwing him out the window.

Now I just needed to get to him. Coming here, I’d figured I could requisition one of those window washing scaffolds that were always conveniently in place in action movies. But the wily bastards hadn’t left any out for me. If I was stronger, maybe I could’ve fashioned a Pin Hole that’d get me up there. But I was running on fumes. Any Tunneling would have to be simple. So it looked like I was doing this the hard way.

I counted off the floors to Kowalski’s, then half-climbed, half-slipped back down the rickety fire escape. My hands weren’t working so well anymore. It felt like I was trying to do everything with ski gloves on. My spinning head didn’t do anything for my balance either. The metal platforms shook and rattled with every step, and it was only my death grip on the handrails that kept me from nose-diving into the pavement.

I made my way slowly down the final ladder and stepped onto the sidewalk. Traffic was light. A couple of stray cats watched me with yellow eyes as I waited for a car to pass, then I lurched drunkenly across the street. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep them from shaking. I had to keep going.

AISOR’s giant TV screens above the front doors were flashing with color, giving the pitiful neighborhood an eyeful of their logo. I staggered toward it like a moth to a flame. A moth with a gun in his pocket. There was a light on behind the wide glass wall leading into the lobby. I could spot a security guard lounging with his feet up on the desk inside, fiddling on his smartphone. He didn’t look like the usual weedy kid working a nightshift job to fund his studies. More like police academy dropout. He probably didn’t know what Kowalski had been up to. He was probably just a dumb asshole working a shitty job.

I prayed he didn’t do anything stupid.

I knocked on the glass doors. The black-haired guard looked up at me, fingers still poised over the smartphone. He shook his head, smiled, and waved me away. I knocked again. The shake of his head was more annoyed this time. The smile disappeared. I knocked a third time.

He slammed his phone on the desk with more force than was probably necessary, stood up, and marched toward me. I checked his belt for weapons. Nothing there, but there was an interesting gun bulge beneath his jacket.

“We’re closed for the night,” he said, his voice distorted through the glass. “Beat it.”

“I need to see your CEO.” Speaking felt like someone was shoving sandpaper down my throat. “Kowalski.”

“Then make an appointment in the morning.” He jerked his head toward the street. “Get lost.”

I sighed. It always had to be the hard way, didn’t it? I cracked open the bottle of Kemia in my pocket, pulled a coin out, and splashed the silvery liquid over the top. Chaos entered my mind. A loud click came from somewhere above me. The automatic glass doors slid open. The guard’s eyes widened.

“That’s better,” I said. I pulled the gat from my pocket before he could move and shoved it in his face. “Sorry. I’m not usually like this. Don’t move, don’t do anything stupid, blah blah blah. You know, the usual.”

While he was still looking like someone had slipped a cockroach into his sandwich, I reached under his jacket for his pistol. With my fingers as clumsy as they were, it took me a couple of tries to get the catch undone and the pistol out of the holster. I pocketed the gun and waved my own at him.

“We’re going to the elevators, okay? I’m a little tired to be climbing stairs right now. Come on.”

He turned woodenly, still doing his best impression of a deer in the headlights. I followed a few steps behind him, trying to walk as normally as possible. I was having trouble keeping the gun outstretched, so I aimed at his back from the hip, keeping my finger off the trigger. In my current state, I didn’t trust myself not to have a seizure or something and squeeze off a round into the poor bastard by accident.

I noted the security cameras in each corner of the lobby as we walked. How many guards were in this place? They couldn’t have someone watching the cameras all the time, could they?

“Going up,” I said to him as we reached the elevator banks. He pressed the call button, and we waited.

I wasn’t blind to the idiocy of my current position. I figured I had maybe five minutes before some guard tried to take a shot at me. That just meant I had to work faster. The black-haired guard seemed to be finally coming out of his shock. He glanced at my face a couple of times, and I gave him a grin. Then his eyes flashed to my gun.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t try it.”

The elevator let out its sing-song noise and the doors slid open. I waved the guard inside and followed him in.

“Take me to the ninth floor,” I said.

His eyes went to my revolver again, then he swiped his card and pressed the button for nine. The doors closed and the elevator started moving with barely a shudder.

“Whatever you’re doing, it’s not going to work,” the guard said.

I shrugged. “Thanks for the concern, but I think—”

A wave of nausea rolled through me. At the same time, something wet tickled the back of my throat. I curled over and coughed a thick glob of blood onto the nice clean floor of the elevator. My eyes burned as I coughed again and again. Keep the gun on him, a voice inside me said. It was too slow.

The guard dived. Not for me. For the elevator panel. His finger jabbed the emergency stop button. The elevator jerked like an elephant had landed on the roof, and a bell started screaming at me.

The spasms going through my chest finally subsided. I’d got blood all over my shoes, but right then I was more concerned about the guard desperately trying to get himself shot. Or be a hero. Same thing, really.

He grabbed my gun arm and forced it to the ceiling, simultaneously driving his fist into my side. Nausea hit me again. I was too weak to grapple with this guy. So I kneed him in the balls.

He grunted, eyes widening, and his grip loosened for a moment. It didn’t put him down. He probably would’ve had me, if he hadn’t shifted his weight to protect himself from another blow to the nether regions. But he didn’t count on all that blood on the floor.

His foot slipped, and he started to go backward. I helped him with that. He went down hard, head slamming against the elevator handrail. His eyes went out of focus. When I clocked him in the side of the head with the butt of the revolver, they closed completely. He slumped to the side, groaning slightly.

I grabbed the handrail for support, my legs trembling and my guts trying to escape my mouth again. Cold sweat poured from my forehead. It wasn’t until the spasms stopped that I was able to breathe again.

“Why does it always have to be the hard way?” I mumbled, trying to convince my legs to take my weight fully again.

The alarm finally stopped ringing, but my ears didn’t. I pressed the button for nine. The elevator didn’t move. Oh, right, the guard’s swipe card. I nudged the unconscious man onto his side and unclipped his card, then swiped it against the sensor and pressed the button again. The panel beeped and we started going up again. Thank Christ for that.

The number nine flashed up above me before I had a chance to fully catch my breath. The door slid open.

Two more guards stared back at me. Their wide eyes went to the black-haired man slumped in the corner.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I pointed the revolver at them. “No, you know what?” I pulled the unconscious guard’s pistol from my pocket and aimed that at them as well. “I’ve had enough of this shit. Get in the elevator.”

I staggered into the corridor and waved them in. They glanced at each other for a second, then did what I said. Maybe someone in this damn building could play nice.

“Gimme your swipe cards,” I said. “Come on, I’ve got an important meeting to get to.”

They unclipped their cards and tossed them into the hallway at my feet.

“Good,” I said. I retrieved the unconscious guard’s card from my pocket without letting go of either of the guns. “I’ve got enough rods for now, so I’m letting you keep yours.” I reached into the elevator, swiped the card, and pressed the button for the ground floor. “See you soon.”

I kept the guns pointed at them until the doors slid closed on their stunned faces. The elevator hummed quietly to itself as it started to descend.

My arms dropped to my sides. Christ, these guns were heavy. What were they made of, plutonium? I tossed the guard’s one on the ground next to the other swipe cards. All this pointing guns at people was taking it out of me, and I felt like I’d coughed up a lung back there. But I didn’t have time to wait for everything to stop aching. I figured I had maybe three minutes before those bozos got hold of some spare swipe cards and came after me. And that was best case scenario. More likely they’d call in some heavier hitters. I had to get on with it.

I staggered down the hallway, barely noticing how nice this part of the building was. The lights were dim, which was fine with me. Each big wig’s office had a tinted glass wall looking out into the hallway.

Just walking was like fighting through a crowd at a concert. My joints were in on the action now, stabbing at me with every step. I gritted my teeth and kept going. If I hadn’t got completely turned around, Kowalski’s office was just around the corner.

Kowalski. I walked a little faster.

His light was on at the end of the corridor. Still there. A phone started ringing in his office. I shuffled along, the gun slippery in my hand. My eyes kept going in and out of focus. I felt like I had a hole in my foot and everything inside me was leaking out. Too bad. No time for bitching. Nearly there.

The ringing stopped. A muffled voice came from the office. “Yes?”

I put my shoulder against the door and shoved it open. It barely made a whisper. Kowalski faced away from me, the phone at his ear. He turned as my shoe landed on the cream-colored carpet that covered the floor of his office.

The guy looked older than I remembered. Then again, I probably did too. He squinted at me from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, his forehead creasing into a frown.

“Mr. Franco?”

I raised the gat. The weight of it almost made me topple over. I was beginning to enjoy the looks people gave me when I did this. Maybe this was why the gun-nuts loved their weapons so much.

“You remembered,” I said. “How sweet. Put the phone down.”

I heard a voice squawking from the phone. The sound cut off abruptly as Kowalski laid it back in the cradle.

For such a modern building, the office was pretty old-fashioned. The desk and bookshelves were some nice stained wood. A few photographs sat in the recesses of the bookshelf, and an old copy of the Journal of Interdimensional Physics was framed and fixed to the wall paneling. The whole back wall of the office was a window, looking out over the city and the Bore, like I’d guessed. The blue light stung my eyes to look at.

“What are you—?” Kowalski said.

I shook my head and crossed the room. “We really don’t have time for that. Hands above the desk. No point hitting the silent alarm. Your boys’ll be here soon enough.”

I rounded the desk until I was within spitting distance of Kowalski. He was in a business suit—tailor-made, probably, and it looked like it must’ve cost him the better part of a grand. I rubbed my bloody shoe against his trouser leg and grinned. He trembled slightly.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” I said. “I got a million questions for you, but let’s start with the one that’s been driving me crazy. Why? Why’d you do it?”

He was nearly going cross-eyed staring down the barrel of my gun. I brought it closer to give him a better look.

“I don’t…” he said. “Please, you have to—”

“Please? Please?!” I lurched forward and grabbed him by his tie. “Is that what Claudia said to you? She was my fucking friend, you understand? You killed her. You killed her to get to me and now I can’t sleep and I can’t eat and I’m dying too and that’s okay because all I want to do is this one little thing before I can finally rest and you’re going to tell me why!” My teeth were bared and I was spitting blood on his shirt. I didn’t give a fuck.

“I…I didn’t,” he said. The shrewd, cold businessman was gone now. There was only a broken, scared man in its place. I had no sympathy, no restraint left in me. I only had enough room in my heart for so much guilt, and I was all filled up.

I pressed the revolver barrel against Kowalski’s forehead. “One.”

“It wasn’t me, I swear—”

“Two.” I pulled back the hammer of the revolver. The metallic click it made was satisfying. A shiver went down my spine.

“It wasn’t me!” he screamed. The scent of urine filled my nostrils. He’d pissed himself. “It was her!”

His finger pointed wildly past me. I glanced in that direction, but there was only the bookcase. He was stalling. My finger touched the trigger and I turned back to him. But something in his eyes stopped me from finishing the countdown.

“Who?” I asked.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

I turned back to where he was pointing. The photos, maybe. I licked my cracked lips. Everything was swaying. I didn’t have time. But I had to be sure.

I let go of his tie and lurched toward the bookshelf, using the desk to steady me. There were two photos. One showed a younger Kowalski with a woman and three children in front of a black background. Was he pointing at his wife? No, that was stupid. I inspected the other picture. Kowalski was even younger in this one, but his spectacles made him easy to pick out. He was in a suit in the picture too, but it wasn’t as nice as the one he was wearing now. And he wasn’t alone. He was in some sort of classroom or research lab, with half a dozen other people, most in their late twenties or so.

I picked out another face instantly. There was one Vei in the group, and it was hard to forget the face of the guy who’d sent me off to be grinded. Daniel Bohr. This was their research group, the one who’d written the papers. The one who’d speculated on the nature of worlds other than Heaven and Earth. So was Kowalski saying Bohr did it? No, he said “she”. There was only one woman in the picture, a blond woman with glasses. I stared at her, trying to place her. My head was thick with fog and slime. Something about her tried to turn on the light bulb in my memory, but it couldn’t quite get there.

I glanced back at Kowalski to make sure he hadn’t moved, and looked at the door. No guards yet, but they’d be here any second. Goddamn it. I returned my attention to the photo. Why was she so familiar?

I grabbed the framed photo off the shelf and turned it over. My thick, clumsy fingers wouldn’t let me work the catch. “Ah, to hell with it.” I slammed the frame against the bookshelf. The glass shattered. I ripped the photo out, not even feeling where the glass cut me.

There were names on the back, Kowalski’s and Bohr’s among them. And a single woman’s name. Faye Weyer. That was the name from the papers Doc McCaffrey had given me.

Wait a minute. No, it can’t be. I flipped the photo back over and studied the woman. She was skinnier then, and she’d changed her glasses, but the shape of her cheekbones was the same. But the name was different. I closed my eyes and pictured a wedding ring. Crap. She had the same eyes.

No.

I spun, nearly toppling over, and pointed the woman out to Kowalski. “Her? You’re saying she did it?”

He swallowed. “She didn’t give me a choice.”

“No,” said a soft, kindly voice from the door. “I didn’t.”

I didn’t even have to turn to recognize the voice. “Christ,” I said, the last of my strength draining from me. “I fucked up again, didn’t I?”

Doc McCaffrey stood in the doorway, a guard to either side of her, machine pistols trained on me. Her soft features betrayed no fear, no malice. A stethoscope still hung around her neck. Behind her oversized glasses, she smiled sadly.

“Yes, Miles. You fucked up.”

TWENTY-SIX

I dropped my gun without being asked. There’s a special kind of non-verbal communication that only burly guys with machine pistols can manage.

Doc McCaffrey ushered her men into the room. I recognized one of them. Sean Beekman, the team leader on the Tartarus expedition. “So, I hear you’re the bastard who took my goggles off,” I said to him.

Sean shrugged. “I did what had to be done.”

“Noble. I hope my death at least paid well.” I backed away behind the desk, putting myself near the window. The Moon was bright. Hell of a night to die. My hands hung limply at my side, all the fight drained out of me. My heart tried to hammer at the sight of the guns and my own impending doom, but it couldn’t manage more than a feeble lurch.

“Get Jozef out of here,” the doc said. “We need to start tying things up.” Sean stalked over, grabbed Kowalski by the scruff of his neck, and roughly shoved him back across the room. Kowalski whimpered and shuffled away.

“Sorry about the threatening to kill you thing,” I said to Kowalski. I was getting good at being an asshole. First Zhi, and now Kowalski. And I was getting worse. I would’ve pulled that trigger, and it would’ve been so damn easy. Something had taken me, some blind rage. It was amazing what you thought you could live with when you didn’t have to live with it very long.

Sean shoved Kowalski out into the hallway, and they disappeared from view. Now it was just me, McCaffrey, and one more armed goon. There was no way I could rush the guy with the gun. Hell, I didn’t even think I could win a fistfight against the fifty-year-old doctor right now.

I pointed at Kowalski’s empty chair. “You don’t mind if I…?”

Doc McCaffrey shook her head. “Please.”

I dropped into the chair and slumped down. Christ, it was comfortable. It even managed to take some of the pain out of my lower back. Why hadn’t I ever got one of these before?

“I must say,” she said, “you’re taking this rather well.”

I shrugged. I was too tired to even be surprised. I’d been so sure it was Kowalski. But then I’d been sure about a lot of things. I’d been sure Zhi was betraying me like Caterina had last winter. I’d been sure I could do this all on my own. Miles, the big fucking martyr, trying to redeem himself. And what a great job I’d done. Claudia would be so proud.

“You killed a lot of people,” I said. “Cops. The goddamn mayor. That’s not something you decide to do when you wake up one day. So, just tell me one thing.”

“You want to know why?”

I nodded. “I’m guessing you were part of Kowalski’s little group. Bohr’s pretty pissed at you, you know?”

I bent over and had another coughing fit. The doc waited in silence. While my insides were trying to fight their way out of my throat, I slipped my hand into my pocket.

The spasms faded again. I kept talking. “Were you a physicist before you were a doctor? Or was it the other way round? Never mind. Irrelevant. You and Kowalski finally got to Tartarus. You got your fluid. But it didn’t work like you wanted at the start, did it? All those bodies for nothing. How’d you get Kowalski to go along with it? Threaten his family?”

She shook her head. “Nothing so crude. I know secrets that would crush him if they were ever made public.”

She was enjoying this. She was like a lonely old lady, desperate for someone to talk to. Fine, I’d play. I didn’t have anywhere better to be. The bottle of Kemia in my pocket felt cold against my palm.

“You had everyone wrapped around your finger from the start didn’t you?” I said. “All these years, Kowalski’s been dancing to your tune. And then you came after me. You killed my friend just to get my attention. Played Zhi so she’d bring me in. How’d you know it would work?”

“I studied you, Miles. You’ve been all over the news for the last six months. And if you’ll excuse me, you’re not the most complicated individual I’ve ever come across. You seem to practically throw yourself into trouble at the slightest provocation. It was easy to see where you’d end up.”

I grunted. I wasn’t really that transparent, was I? “You went to a lot of effort for little ol’ me and your crystals. Your friend Bohr did too. Did I tell you he kidnapped me with a giant bat-creature? I mean, who does that? But what’s so special about the crystals, Doc? Just tell me what they do.”

“No,” she said simply. She smiled at me and waved to her goon. “Take him. We’ll escort him downstairs. It won’t be long now.”

The suit-wearing goon nodded and took a step toward me, machine pistol in his hands.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling the bottle of Kemia from my pocket and uncorking it. “I don’t think that’s gonna work out.”

The goon paused and glanced back at the doc. She just smiled in her kind, motherly way. “Oh, Miles. We both know you’re not strong enough to open a Pin Hole right now. Those crystals are tearing you up inside. Just come along. I can make your last few hours peaceful.”

I shook my head and held up a coin between my index and middle fingers. “That’d be like lying to myself. I intend to die the way I lived my life. Stupidly and without purpose.” I grinned. “And you’re half right. I can’t open a working Pin Hole right now. Hell, I don’t even think I can stand up. But this here…” I wiggled the coin in my fingers. “…is not a working Pin Hole. It’s about as far from one as you can get. You know all those warnings about the dangers of Tunneling without proper training? How if you screw up the Pin Hole, you could turn yourself inside out or liquefy your own brain?”

Her smile stayed, but her eyes betrayed her. “You wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would,” I said. “I don’t have enough energy to open a Pin Hole. But I think I’ve got just enough strength to screw one up. I wonder if your precious crystals will survive if I splatter myself across these nice, pretty walls.”

The goon looked from me to his boss and raised his gun a little, but he didn’t fire. Doc McCaffrey was silent. Interesting. I’d been half-expecting them to put a few rounds in my head and get the crystals afterwards. But maybe it didn’t work like that. Maybe they actually needed to extract the crystals when I was still alive or freshly dead, like the Collective wanted to with their grinder. That bought me a few more seconds of bargaining time.

“If this was anyone else, I’d ask if you were bluffing,” Doc McCaffrey said. “But maybe you’re stupid enough to actually do this.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Doc. So if you want the crystals, you better start talking. What do they do?”

She adjusted her glasses on her nose and frowned at me. “What does it matter? Either way, you’ll be dead.”

“People keep asking me that. Why does it matter? Because all my goddamn life I’ve been a screw-up. The only thing that makes me worthwhile in the eyes of anyone anymore is the way I burned a gang to the ground, and now I can’t escape the dreams and the waking nightmares. I was a loser. I never wanted to be a mass murderer as well. And now all I’ve got is this.” I shook the Pin Hole coin and the bottle of Kemia. “I’ve let too many people down. And before I end up as a pile of goo on the floor, I wanna know why the hell so many people had to die.”

There was silence for a moment. I tried to focus on McCaffrey, but my vision was starting to get dark, narrow. I couldn’t keep this up forever. I wasn’t bluffing. The Pin Hole was a modified version of the one I used to turn myself into the Incredible Hulk, which had been based on my Chroma-enhanced bug-out last winter. If I’d worked it out right, the Pin Hole was screwed up enough to change the position and orientation of every organ in my body. Skin, guts, bones, everything. And maybe, if I was lucky, there’d be some nice splatter as well, like someone had implanted a grenade in my stomach.

“Answers,” I said. “Three seconds, or I’m gonna blow this popsicle stand.”

She smiled again. “Such a flair for the dramatic. Very well. Leslie, it’s all right.” She gestured to the goon. He scowled and lowered his gun, moving aside.

“Leslie?” I said. “Your thug’s name is Leslie? No wonder he looks so angry.”

Leslie scowled, but McCaffrey ignored the comment. “Have you ever really considered the power you wield, Miles? You play with it like it’s a toy, but inside you you have the ability to reshape reality as you see fit. And you’re good at it too. I’ve studied dozens of Tunnelers. Most use the same few Pin Holes to help with menial tasks, but they depend mostly on the reliability of full Tunnels as a way to ply their trade. You aren’t content to stick with the basics. You improvise. You do things that would kill other Tunnelers, and you make it work. You have a brilliant, instinctual command of your craft. And that’s only increased since the incident with the Chroma.”

“What did I say about flattery?”

I struggled to put it together in my brain. She’d used me because I’d taken Chroma. But why? I didn’t know. I wasn’t smart enough to work this thing out. My gaze went to the phone. I had to tell Vivian that McCaffrey was behind this. Could I use my life as a bargaining chip long enough to make the call?

I met McCaffrey’s eyes. Even now, she looked kinder than most of the foster mothers I’d had. She wasn’t power-mad like Caterina or tweaked out like Bohr. She looked almost sad. What had driven her to do all this? Somewhere deep inside, the fire that had been driving me, the burn of guilt and revenge, dimmed a little.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Doc McCaffrey said. “He doesn’t need to know. I think he’s bluffing after all. Take him.”

So much for the sympathy.

Leslie came for me. I lurched up, every inch of me on fire, and kicked the chair toward him. He deflected the pathetic attack easily and kept coming. I stumbled backward, put my back against the window, and held the Kemia up to the moonlight.

Nowhere to run now. No clever escapes. I was ready. Hell, I was way past ready. I glanced at the doc and saw Claudia standing behind her. She smiled at me. I’d found the person who’d killed her. Not that she would be caught, but that was all right. It was someone else’s problem now. I couldn’t wait to finally rest, free of hallucinations and fear and pain and those goddamn dreams. It was time.

Leslie lunged at me. I could barely feel my limbs. Somehow I lifted the bottle of Kemia and tilted it. The silvery liquid shimmered, just waiting to hit the broken Pin Hole and turn me into a living bomb. Time seemed to stand there forever.

And then the bottle slipped from my fingers. I watched it fall, my heart giving one last, pathetic throb. No. I grabbed for the bottle, but my knees went next. They couldn’t take my weight anymore. I fell at the same speed as the bottle, liquid sloshing inside both of us.

The bottle hit the ground. It shattered.

The silvery liquid hissed and dissolved as it came into contact with the carpet. I watched, unable to even utter a groan, as my last act of defiance petered out in the most humiliating way possible.

I couldn’t see Claudia anymore. I knew she was disappointed.

I lay on the ground, slumped and broken. The goon’s shoes came into view and kicked my hand. I didn’t even feel it. The sabotaged Pin Hole fell out of my grasp and rolled away under the desk. My mouth hung open, blood and spit drooling into the carpet. I could barely even blink.

“You made this harder than it needed to be,” McCaffrey said. “But I always knew you would.” She moved to my side and slowly crouched, her joints cracking with age. I could make out the darkened, spotted skin of her ankles, and a varicose vein that disappeared under the hem of her trousers. Her fingers touched the artery in my neck. Her skin was clammy. Or maybe it was me that was clammy. I tried to pull back from her touch, but her other hand wrapped around the back of my head and easily held me in place. I wheezed, trying to keep from slipping into unconsciousness.

Her touch left me. “He’s nearly at the end,” she said. “I need to sample his blood before he dies. Get him downstairs—”

A boom ripped through the night. The floor vibrated beneath me. I thought I heard shouts somewhere far away, but I couldn’t be sure. My broken mind was having trouble piecing everything together. Was that a bomb?

I rolled to the side, my muscles groaning, and realized McCaffrey and Leslie weren’t next to me anymore. They were at the window, staring down toward the street. Their faces were lit from below by flickering orange light.

Footsteps crashed into the room. I forced my neck back the other way to look at the door. Another goon rushed into the room, his eyes the size of pizza dishes, his gun trembling in his hands like he was going to start loosing shots at any second.

“It’s the Collective,” the goon said, his voice rapid. “They’re coming in the main entrance. Dozens of them.”

My head rolled a little more to the side, and my gaze fell on the gun that I’d dropped. Zhi’s revolver. Within my reach. I saw McCaffrey’s face, and for the millionth time I pictured Claudia lying on that slab. With my muscles trembling, I reached for the gun.

“Get him up,” McCaffrey ordered. “Take him to the basement via the service elevator and get him prepped. I need to clear out Jozef’s office. Go.”

My fingers brushed the butt of the revolver. It was almost as cold as I was. Then two pairs of arms grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me up. The revolver was a million miles away now.

“Fuck this,” Leslie said. “I’m not carrying him. Stick him in the chair. We’ll push him.”

They threw my limp body into Kowalski’s office chair. I slumped to the side. There were pops and cracks coming from downstairs. Gunfire. Leslie grabbed me by the shirt, shoved me upright in the seat, and took hold of the back of the chair to haul me away. My heels scraped on the floor as he rolled me backward away from Doc McCaffrey.

“See you soon, Miles,” she said.

I tried to spit, but all I got was blood dribbling down my chin. I don’t think it had quite the effect I was going for.

The goons dragged me down the hallway in the opposite direction I’d come from. We passed a stairwell, and I heard the echo of boots stomping up the stairs. The goons quickened their pace.

We went through a door and down a wide corridor that lacked the fancy styling of the rest of the floor. Finally, we stopped outside a bare metal elevator with oversized doors. Leslie jabbed the call button. Something deep in the bowels of the building rumbled to life.

“Hey,” I rasped. “Leslie. Why’d your mother give you such a girly name, huh?”

“Shut up.” He pressed the call button a couple more times, just to make sure the elevator knew he was in a hurry.

“You want me to ask your mom next time I see her?” I asked. My head drooped to the side, and I didn’t have the strength to pull it back up. “I was gonna go visit her in the morning. You know how horny she gets in the mornings.”

“The doc doesn’t need your tongue. Don’t make me cut it out.”

The elevator doors slid open silently, and the goons dragged me inside. Leslie punched the button for the basement.

“You know, your mom always said my tongue was my best feature,” I said. “You should hear the way she screams when I—”

He clocked me in the mouth with the butt of his machine pistol. Compared to the fires raging inside me, it felt like getting a massage while sipping cocktails on a beach in Thailand. One of my incisors was loose when I probed it with my tongue, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

When I could see again, I let my eyes fall on the digital display above the door, reading off the floor numbers as we descended. 6. 5. 4. Every one brought me closer to the basement, and my inevitable mulching.

“Hey,” I said. “I’ve worked it out. You don’t even want the crystals, do you? You’re just going to turn me into Soylent Green. You sick bastards.”

“You don’t ever shut up, do you?”

“I’m not known for it,” I said.

“Well, you’ll be silent soon enou…” The elevator slowed and stopped. I glanced at the floor display. G.

“What the fuck?” Leslie said.

The doors slid open. The three scruffily-dressed guys with submachine guns looked as surprised to see us as we were to see them. They were no more than five feet away. For a moment, my goons stared at the Collectivists, and the Collectivists stared back. Then everyone started shouting at once.

“Drop the guns!” Leslie screamed, waving his machine pistol at them.

The single Vei gangster went bug-eyed and snarled, his shark teeth bared in a classic Vei threat response. I wasn’t liking how close the barrel of his gun was coming to being pointed at my chest. My heart feebly tried to pound. I flopped down a little lower in the chair.

The doors started to close again, but one of the human Collectivists shoved his foot in the door and stopped it. I could tell from the way he was looking at me he knew who I was. Leslie must’ve seen it too. The goon’s hand closed around my neck. Cold metal pressed against the side of my head.

“Drop the guns,” Leslie said. His voice was cracking. “Drop them or I drop Franco. I’ll splatter him right here. Then no one gets him. Drop the guns. Drop ’em!”

No one looked inclined to do any such thing. I was most worried about the Vei gangster. Vei are unpredictable at the best of times, and this one looked about ready to blow his top and smoke the lot of us. With the grip Leslie had on me, I had no chance of dropping to the ground to avoid the shootout. It was funny in a way, how much it scared me to be looking down the barrels of those guns. I was going to be dead in an hour anyway, and just ten minutes ago I’d tried to kill myself. But now here I was, every instinct urging me to stay alive.

Gunfire burst out, echoing in the elevator. My spine—or what was left of it—turned to ice. But I didn’t fall. Neither did Leslie or the other suit-and-tie goon.

The three Collectivists weren’t so lucky. They all stood there for a second as the blood leaked from the holes in their chests. All the fire had gone out of the Vei’s eyes. He said something to himself in Vei, but I was too far gone to translate it. Then all three dropped to the ground. Their blood mixed and trickled into the crack at the door of the elevators. The guy who was blocking the elevator door with his foot was still in the way.

Leslie’s grip left my neck, and he sighed deeply. The other goon had gone whiter than his shirt. Neither of them had touched their triggers.

“Was that Sean who shot them?” Leslie said. He stuck his head out the doors. “Sean—” He jerked upright. “Who the hell are you?”

Gunfire ripped through him, and I watched the back of his skull turn into pulp. His body slumped across me for a moment, before sliding to the floor. The stink of death and piss and shit and gunsmoke burned in my nostrils. I dry retched, but my guts had nothing left to give.

The white-faced goon dropped his gun. It landed on the elevator floor, engulfed by an ever-growing pool of blood. The goon pulled himself into a ball in the corner, trembling.

A figure appeared in the doorway. He was tall for a Vei, dressed in a button down suit. Aran. The Vei that’d sliced my ear, the one I’d rescued from the Collective at their base. He just couldn’t stay away from me, could he? He raised his assault rifle. But it wasn’t pointed at me.

“No,” the trembling goon said, holding his hands out in front of him.

It did nothing to stop the bullets ripping through his face. Aran stopped firing. The goon slumped. They were all dead. All but me and Aran.

“Wha…?” My brain couldn’t keep up with what was happening.

Aran shook his head, tossed his assault rifle aside, and pried the machine pistol out of Leslie’s hands. “Talk later. My brother’s outside in the car. We need to get you out of here.”

I tried to make sense of the words coming out of his mouth. I gave up. “Wha…?”

He sighed and kicked the dead Collectivists out of the way, then grabbed the back of my chair and scooted me out of the elevator. “They want you, Franco, all of them. I don’t want them to have what they want. They want to process you and your precious crystals while you’re alive, before they have time to degrade. But they’ll take you dead and fresh if they have to.”

He pushed me along a wide corridor. Gunfire was still cracking throughout the building. In the distance, I could hear sirens.

We were approaching a fire escape door. Aran smashed in the glass of a fire alarm on the wall and pulled the lever down. The alarm started screaming, and the door opened automatically. He dragged me out into the night. The smell of the city nearly drowned out the taste of smoke and blood in my mouth.

“So, you’re here to save me?” I asked.

“No,” Aran said. “I’m here to keep you alive long enough so you can die where they can’t get to you.”

“Oh,” I said. “Close enough. Lead on.”

He dragged me across the empty parking lot to the waiting car, his brother behind the steering wheel. I looked up and tried to see stars, but to me, everything was just the color of blood.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I lay curled up in the back of the rusted old Impala, feeling every bump as we tore down the road away from the AISOR building. My vision was fading in and out, or maybe that was just the strobing of the streetlights outside. I wasn’t going to be hanging around much longer, but at least I’d have the chance to tell Vivian that McCaffrey was running this messed up game. Or I would, if I could get my numb fingers to operate the buttons on my cell phone.

“Aran,” I rasped, pushing the phone toward him where he sat in the front passenger seat. “Find the number for Vivian in my contacts and dial it for me.”

The Vei reached back and took the phone, but he hesitated. “Who’s Vivian?”

“A cop.”

“No cops.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “I need to tell her so she can end this.”

Aran stared out the windshield and gestured to his brother in the driver’s seat. “We’ll end this.”

“You already got one brother in hospital—”

“He’s dead,” Aran said. “Dead like my sister.”

Shit. “You two will be dead too if you keep at this,” I said. “This is beyond crazy. Make the damn call.” The irony of my argument didn’t escape me. Look at me, the voice of reason. Call the cops. Let them handle it.
Do as I say, not as I do.

Even looking at the back of his head, I could see Aran’s cheeks twitching. If he was a cat, his ears would be flat against his scalp. He glanced at his brother, who shrugged.

“We’re in deep,” the brother said in Vei. “Maybe the stinking human is right.”

“Hey,” I said. “I can understand you, you know.”

Aran ignored me, scowling. Looking past him, I could see buildings and construction sites flashing past, but I was too far gone to know what direction we were going.

He cursed again, enough to make even me cringe. Then he jabbed buttons on the phone and turned around to press it to my ear. It was ringing.

“This is Vivian,” she said. Voicemail. Even so, the sound of her voice settled on me like a warm blanket. “Leave a message.”

“Vivian, I’m pretty much gone, but I got some information for you. It’s not Kowalski behind this. It’s a doctor who works with AISOR, name of Faye McCaffrey. She was a research partner with Kowalski and Bohr, and she’s been masterminding everything. She looks like someone’s grandmother, but she’s got a nasty set of teeth. I figure she’s been watching me for a while, working out how to get her hands on me. I don’t plan on letting her. I don’t know exactly how it fits together with the Collective, but you’re smart enough to figure that out without me.”

Aran’s brother started slowing the car, and Aran gestured at me to wrap it up.

“I figure the explosions and gunfire is a tip off that the Collective have cranked this fight up to full scale war. Hell, that’s probably where you are now. I trust you to take care of this.”

I paused. My throat was burning with the effort of speaking, but that wasn’t what was making it hard to get the words out. “Vivian, I…” I pictured the way she looked the first time I met her in that police interrogation room. So stern, so hard, so beautiful. And then the last time I’d seen her, after I’d turned up at her door and she’d nursed me back to some semblance of health. Still beautiful, but in a softer way. Still a cop, but a real, intelligent woman as well. I closed my eyes.

“Stay safe, Viv,” I said.

I waved the phone away, and Aran hit the end call button.

Aran’s brother pulled the Impala over and shut off the engine. Aran reached over, slipped my phone back into my pocket, and bared his sharp teeth in a predatory grin. “Come on. We must get you off the streets. They’ll be scouring the city for you.”

I nodded. We didn’t have the luxury of an office chair this time, so the two Vei helped me out of the car and took me under each arm, the machine pistol dangling from Aran’s other hand. There were no streetlights here, and I didn’t recognize the neighborhood. Someone had spray-painted indecipherable tags on several of the apartment building walls—memories of my wasted youth ran through my head—and there was so much trash in the gutters the street must’ve flooded every time there was a light shower.

“Where are we?” I rasped, cringing with each step as they hauled me down an alley. In the gloom, I could just make out a short staircase leading to a basement door.

“Silk Dragon territory,” Aran said.

It wasn’t the Silk Dragons’ best neighborhood, that was for sure. The stairs were so narrow we couldn’t go down three abreast, so the two Vei had to turn awkwardly and half-carry me like a mattress down the stairs. When we got to the bottom, Aran fed a key into the door and kicked it open. It creaked more than my bones did.

If I had to describe the basement apartment in one word, it would be “dank”. By the looks of it there had once been carpet, but it had rotted away long ago. The light above flickered menacingly. Through my fading vision, I gathered the apartment was just one room plus a tiny bathroom through a sliding door. The whole place wasn’t much bigger than your average shipping container.

The brothers lowered me onto a piss-stained mattress in the corner. I curled back into my favorite fetal position. Aran’s brother bolted the door behind us, and then we fell into silence. The smell of mold was greater the closer I got to the ground. Far away, I could still hear the sirens, but the only sounds in the room were a steady dripping sound in the corner and the scurrying of something that may or may not have been a rat.

So, this was it. This was where I died. To be honest, I was starting to regret leaving AISOR. At least they had air conditioning. But I guess I couldn’t be picky. It felt strange, though, just lying here. Nothing left to do. Nothing but wait to die. I wondered if it would hurt. More than I already hurt, I meant.

I was hearing music inside my head. Probably not a good sign. It was the same song we’d played in my dream, the one we wrote. “Destiny is No Excuse”. A moment later, I felt a presence beside me. I didn’t have to look to know it was another Claudia hallucination. I did it, I told her inside my head. Kind of. I found your killer. It took a while, but I did it. The cops will take care of the rest.

Then why didn’t I feel happier? Sure, I was dying, but that wasn’t such a big deal. There were still things nagging at me, details obscured by my dying brain and the missing puzzle pieces. It was like getting to the end of a movie and having the last fifteen minutes chopped off.

“Tell me a story, Uncle Aran,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Maybe start with who the fuck you are and what you’re doing here.”

Aran and his brother glanced at each other, then Aran jerked his head toward the door. The other Vei nodded, picked up the machine pistol, and went to stand guard.

“I used to work for Bohr,” Aran said after a moment. “I was a Collectivist.”

Maybe it should’ve surprised me, but it didn’t. Not after what I’d seen him do. “What sort of work?”

He grinned, showing the points of his teeth. “The kind of work that would get me eighteen to life.”

I shivered. A police car screamed past outside, its siren dropping in pitch as it sped away.

“Bohr’s a persuasive man,” Aran said. “I believed in him for a long time. I believed in our group. Our family. I would’ve done anything for them. I think maybe you can understand that, can’t you, Franco?”

I could still feel Claudia beside me. “Yeah, I think I can.”

Aran nodded. “Bohr asked me to pull a kidnapping job. AISOR’s main Tunneler. We wanted to disrupt their Tartarus operations. They were getting too far, too fast. So I tracked this guy down, Giles something, he was called, and pulled him out of his bed. An easy job.”

I thought back to when I met Zhi Lu, how she’d told me their Tunneler had gone missing. I guess I just found out where he’d gone.

“He started talking right away,” Aran continued. “I mean right away. I hadn’t even got him back to Bohr yet. This Giles was shivering like a frozen kuroth, giving up names and offering to turn on his friends if I protected him, like I was the police or something. I stopped listening. Tuned him out, as you humans say. Until he gave a name I recognized.”

It took me a moment, then I got it. “Penny Coleman,” I said.

Aran’s oversized eyes narrowed, and he nodded. Another stream of Vei cursing flooded from his throat, the sounds thick and guttural.

“She was innocent. She didn’t play the game. But somehow they duped her into coming with them. Knocked her out, took her to Tartarus. Injected her with the fluid. That’s how they did it for most of them—injection. I’m surprised you’ve lasted so long after practically drowning in it.” He eyed me, then shrugged. “After they were done poisoning my sister, they brought her back to poke her and prod her and test her like they did to all the rest.”

As depressing as the story was, it took the edge off my own pain. I had a fair idea what must’ve happened next, but I let the Vei tell his story. Hell, maybe it would be good for him to get it out.

“I went to Bohr, told him my sister had been taken. But all he wanted to do was wait. I thought we’d been fighting to stop AISOR, but it turned out we were just biding our time until AISOR got their breakthrough and Bohr could steal it and use it.”

“For what?”

He shrugged. “He’s crazy. You know his history?”

I nodded.

“I didn’t really know until I saw it in his eyes. He wants this war. He enjoys it. So I took my brothers and left. I got my sister out, but it was too late. By the time I realized they were after you, I was too late as well. No more people are going to be used for their experiments. I’m going to burn them all down, Franco. I think you can understand that too, can’t you?”

I did. There was nothing like it in the world, nothing like that drive to deliver righteous retribution in the form of shattered kneecaps.

“How many?” I asked. “How many did AISOR do this to?”

He shrugged. “A few dozen in the last six months. But they have a history.”

“So I hear.”

Aran smirked and shook his head. “I always thought it was Kowalski behind everything. McCaffrey must’ve had him on her leash for years. After they made Bohr their fall guy, Kowalski and McCaffrey and all the others were cleared of any wrongdoing. Their names were even suppressed in the media.”

I’d feel sorry for Bohr if he hadn’t tried to have me grinded. As it was, I only had enough emotion left to feel sorry for myself. My heartbeat had slowed to a crawl, and I was using every bit of energy I had left to keep my eyelids from drooping. If I closed them, they’d stay closed.

“Aran.” It came out as a mumble, so I tried again. “Aran. The crystals. What do they do?”

“Does it matter?”

I tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a death rattle. “Tell me.”

He ran a tongue along the points of his teeth. For a few seconds, we listened to the sirens outside. I wondered if Vivian would call me back before I dropped dead. Aran stretched in the chair, his long, narrow arms rotating like a contortionist’s. Finally, he spoke.

“It’s a reality-shaper. That’s what they think.”

“That’s it? Yawn. I’m a Tunneler. Reality manipulation is already my thing. They could’ve just asked me instead of killing a bunch of people.”

“It’s not like that. And not like Chroma either. Not Tunneling trickery. They think they can draw on Heaven’s instability, but that’s not all. It’s Tartarus as well. You felt the power of that place. The desire. The temptation.” He grinned. “Combine that with the strength of a Chroma-affected Tunneler like you, and the crystals can shape reality permanently.”

I looked into his eyes, but I couldn’t see any lie there. To be honest, I couldn’t see much of anything. It felt like I was looking down a long, dark tunnel.

“The crystals look into your soul,” Aran said. “They look at your deepest desires. They combine that with some Chroma-sourced instability. And then they crystallize it in Earth’s dimension. Time, space, everything, it’s all fair game. One wish, any wish. You’ve got a fucking genie swimming in your veins, Franco.”

“Huh,” I said, letting the idea play around in my mind. “I guess that is worth killing for. Don’t let them get it, will you?”

“I’ll burn your body first.”

I tried to nod, but I couldn’t. “I’m on my way out,” I said, but I had no idea if I was actually speaking. I seemed to be hearing my own voice in an echo chamber. “You know, you’re still an asshole for slicing my ear. That was my favorite ear.”

I couldn’t see the room anymore. Maybe the light just went out. Probably unlikely. Something told me I wasn’t breathing right. I was taking a couple of deep breaths, then nothing, then a whole lot of shallow ones. I couldn’t feel the mattress beneath me, though I could still smell the urine in it. Or maybe I’d just pissed myself. That was probably it. I’d seen enough death to know it was never pretty. I didn’t expect mine to be any different.

Loud banging. There was some sort of commotion happening, but it seemed to be a long way away. It wouldn’t bother me much longer. High pitched screeching and yipping kept cutting through my mind. It was getting annoying. Couldn’t they see I was trying to die here?

There was another noise too. It might’ve been shouting at first, but it quieted to talking. I couldn’t make out the words. I hoped McCaffrey or Bohr hadn’t found me. I hoped Aran hadn’t betrayed me. But I wasn’t too worried about that anymore. I was warm, peaceful. I could’ve sworn I felt the touch of Claudia’s hand on my shoulder. I could hear the music again, like she was singing in my ear. If only that damn yipping would shut up so I could listen.

“Miles?” Something slapped my face. “Miles!” A woman’s voice. Something slimy and wet brushed my hand. I couldn’t move my arm to push it away. Fingers at my neck. “I think he’s slipping into a coma.”

“Gimme the syringe.” A man’s voice this time.

“It might kill him faster.”

“Does it look like he’s gonna get better any time soon? Give it here.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Not a damn clue.”

Something pricked my shoulder, but I could barely feel my skin anyway. Everything went quiet. I was happy again. I was gone. Dead. Good. Time to sleep. Sleep forever.

My heart lurched. Again. Again. Faster. Every beat sent pain echoing through my body. I sucked in a lungful of air, then immediately regretted it. So much pain. Every inch of me. I thought I’d at least get a chance to settle into Hell before the devil started the eternity of fire and torment.

Something slapped my face again. It felt like being hit with a cattle prod.

“Miles!”

I opened my eyes. That was another mistake. My retinas had pretty much packed up and gone home, and they weren’t happy about being dragged back into work. Figures hovered above me, silhouetted by that damn flickering bulb in the basement ceiling. The slimy thing touched my hand again. I jerked my arm away, and something yipped happily.

“You with us, guy?” I knew that voice. A friend. A partner through a hundred scrapes. Desmond.

I groaned. It took a few attempts to get my vocal cords warmed up. “Fuck this. I hate Kansas. Take me back to Oz. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

“He’s delirious.” The woman’s voice again. It was familiar, but I couldn’t see clearly enough to make out the face.

“No,” Desmond said. “He just thinks he’s funny. Guy, we don’t have long. The adrenaline’s going to wear off any minute, and I don’t think you can take another shot. I need you to show me how to do a Pin Hole to Tartarus.”

I closed my eyes tight and opened them again, but the figures didn’t go away. My heart was going like it was trying to set a new land speed record. “What?”

“A Pin Hole. You’ve designed a Tartarus Tunnel, you can do a Pin Hole. Something that’ll give me a focus on the crystals.”

“I thought I was done with this bullshit.”

“Not yet.” I felt him shove the slimy yipping thing aside and press his hand against mine. “Draw it on my palm with your finger. No more jokes, no more talking. Just do it.”

He didn’t sound like he was screwing around. I closed my eyes and pictured the Tunnel I’d made for AISOR. I could still feel the pull I’d felt that day, the temptation. Something inside me resonated with my thoughts as I probed the feelings. I could feel the crystals inside me, lining my blood vessels, swimming through my body. They vibrated in tune with my mind. It was taking everything I had just to keep the connection in place.

Without thinking, I let my finger drift across Desmond’s palm. Three interlocking circles with a triangle in the middle.

“Got it,” Desmond said, and his touch left me. “We’re going to try something, guy. Just stay still, all right?”

“Wha…what are you doing?” I asked. My eyes had drifted closed again, and my heart was slowing.

“You got this, Tania?” Desmond said.

Tania? What was she doing here? It must be past her bedtime. But her voice was unmistakable. “I think so.”

I opened my eyes in time to see Desmond passing a bottle of silvery liquid to Tania. She looked so young. Mainly because she was young. Seventeen wasn’t old enough to watch a guy die in a dank shithole like this.

Desmond moved aside and started scratching something into a piece of brass. Another face entered my view. Vivian’s dark hair fell down around her ears and tickled my forehead. Even though it looked like she hadn’t slept in two days, she was a hell of a dish. Her touch was warm against my cheek.

“How’d you find me?” I asked.

She smiled the same way she had when I’d woken up in her apartment after puking my guts out. “We had a guide. This damn creature of yours stinks, but he’s persistent.”

The yipping started again, and the wet thing returned to nuzzle my hand. I let my head loll to the side. The tame spider-dog stared at me with all of its beady eyes, then laid its head down on my hip and started drooling all over me. I clumsily rested my hand on its head, barely able to feel the fur on my skin. “Good vicious alien pet.” Toto screeched happily.

“This may or may not hurt like hell, guy,” Desmond said.

“Whatever doesn’t kill me, right?”

“It might do that too,” he said.

I could sense the Pin Hole he’d carved. But it wasn’t the only one. I glanced at Tania and saw another Pin Hole in her hand, already coated in Kemia. One glance at the complex web of shapes and symbols enclosed in the circle told me it was a position shifter, and not a basic one either. She’d be pulling on Heaven’s instability to pull a whole lot of somethings out and away to a single focus.

“Wait a second,” I said. “What are you guys planning?”

“Just stay still, Miles,” Tania said. She encircled my hand with her own tiny one and gave it a squeeze. “We’re going to shift the crystals out of you, and you really don’t want to be moving while we do it.”

“Wait.” It was getting hard to form words again. “Wait. This is going to tear me to shreds.”

“Only if we mess up,” Desmond said. “Tania brought a medical textbook with her. It covers most of your major blood vessels.” He splashed some Kemia on his Pin Hole, and I felt the barriers between Earth and Heaven weaken.

Ah, fuck me. “Vivian?” I said. “You remember our deal?”

“No doctors?”

“Yeah. Screw that. I want doctors. Lots of doctors. From real medical schools.”

“Too late,” she said. “You’re stuck with us.”

I sensed both Pin Holes opening at the same time. If I was more alive, I might’ve run for my life, but I doubted I could even raise my head right now. So while my head screamed at me to get away from these nutjobs before they turned me into sushi, I shut my mouth, laid completely still, and prayed that Tania’s medical textbook was up to date.

Three worlds collided. Chaotic energy swirled inside me, burning through every sense in my body. Desmond’s Pin Hole tugged at the crystals. I could feel every one of them vibrating, pulsing. At the same time, Tania’s Pin Hole was pulling on randomness and entropy. Reality shimmered all around me, through me.

And then the pain started. Someone had injected thumb tacks into my blood, my stomach, my heart, my lungs, my eyes. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t remember how.

“You’re losing them,” Desmond said.

Tania’s face was coated in sweat. If she looked young before, she looked like a terrified toddler now. “There are too many crystals. I can’t hold them all at once.”

“Yes, you can. Breathe.” There was strain in Desmond’s voice as well, and his Pin Hole was leaking energy. “You can sense my Pin Hole. You can tell where the crystals are.”

Someone was trying to dig my teeth out with a bread knife. Lights flashed in my eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “But I can’t—”

“You can,” he said. “I’ve seen you do complex Pin Holes before. You’re better than I was at your age, and better looking. Look, there, you’ve got some.”

My vision cleared enough to see half a dozen green, transparent crystals floating above my chest, each the size of a small pebble. Then a new wave of pain went through me. My vision went black.

“Miles?” Vivian stroked my face, but I couldn’t see her anymore. “Don’t be an asshole. Look at me.”

I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything anymore. At least the pain was fading. It was a nice try. Tania was going to be a hell of a Tunneler someday.

The music started again.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Every time I blacked out, every time I thought I was dead for sure this time, I woke up. I don’t know if that made me the luckiest guy in the world, or the unluckiest.

I woke slowly. I felt like someone had dropped a house on me, which was pretty good, all things considered. My sense of smell came back first. Apparently I hadn’t been moved from the piss-stained mattress. But there were other scents overlaying the acrid dampness. Sweat—Desmond’s probably. Toto’s stink. A hint of flowers that could only be Vivian’s or Tania’s perfume. I breathed in and out, testing my lungs. The pain was still there, but it lacked the knife-like quality it’d had before.

I heard traffic outside. What time was it? Morning? How long had I been out? Was this real? Or was this the last hallucination of my dying brain?

I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids were stuck together. My mouth tasted like I’d demolished an entire case of bottom-shelf whiskey and then used my tongue as an ashtray. Something shifted against me, and I realized Toto was still nuzzling my side. The spider-dog screeched something as I gave the eye-opening thing another try.

“Water,” I said. It felt like I’d been chewing on sand. “Water.”

There was a whisper and a shuffling noise, then footsteps. I felt the mattress shift beneath me a little. Something cold and wet and delicious trickled into my mouth. I gulped at it greedily, breathed half of it in, coughed, and kept drinking.

“Careful.” This time I recognized Vivian’s voice instantly. Her hand touched the back of my head and tilted my face forward. The water came again, and I didn’t choke so much this time.

My eyes opened. The room was still blurry, but the pain wasn’t so bad. Vivian was sitting on the mattress next to me, a cup in her hands. I turned my head away from the water. Vivian took it away from my mouth and laid me back down. My chest ached with the movement.

“Thanks,” I croaked. “I’ve got a hangover like you wouldn’t believe. Am I alive?”

“More or less. You stink like a corpse, though.”

“You ready to give me that sponge bath yet?”

The punch she gave me was probably playful, but it felt like she’d given me a pile driver.

“Where are the others?” I asked when I could speak again. “Are they okay?”

“They’re fine. Tania’s shattered, but she’s sleeping it off. Your other friend needs sleep too, but he’s being stubborn. He went outside for some air.”

I nodded, then regretted it. “Did they get the crystals out? I guess they must’ve if I’m still alive, right?”

She rattled something in front of my face. It took me a moment to get my eyes to focus on the glass jar filled halfway to the brim with tiny green crystals. “See for yourself.”

I eyed the crystals. They looked so innocent when they weren’t killing me. “That’s all there was?”

“Apparently.”

“They must’ve been vicious little bastards.”

I realized how tired she looked. Her eyelids drooped, and the bags under her eyes had grown darker. I felt a sudden urge to pull her down next to me and fall asleep again. She looked like a good spooning partner. But, mindful of that mean right hook of hers, I kept my hands to myself.

“We still need to get you to a hospital,” she said, putting the crystals down behind her. “None of us know how much damage those crystals did to you.”

I shrugged, pretending the action didn’t make my shoulders want to pop out of their sockets. “I’m fine. You know me. I’m tough.”

She set her jaw and gave me a look. “You died, Miles.”

“What?”

“For a minute or two, while they were still getting the crystals out. No pulse, no breathing, no nothing. The other patients survived thirty minutes or so after they went into comas, but the adrenaline must’ve finished you off faster.”

I tried to make sense of her words, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even mount an emotional response. How are you supposed to feel about that? I died, but just for a little bit. Not one of those permanent deaths or anything. More of a holiday.

“How am I alive, then?”

“When they got the last of the crystals out, you just started breathing again on your own.”

Jesus. That was closer than I liked to come to death. I thought about my aching chest, and something occurred to me. “Wait. If Des and Tania were busy Tunneling, then someone else kept me from going completely. Did you give me CPR?”

My eyes still weren’t working so good, and Vivian’s dark skin made it difficult to tell, but I could swear she blushed. I grinned.

“Grow up,” she said.

“Never. Help me sit up, will you?”

She got her hands under my shoulders and pulled. I gritted my teeth and planted my hands on the bed to get the rest of the way. Everything swayed and everything hurt, but after a few seconds I was sitting roughly vertical. Toto trotted back and forth in front of me, hooting. I rested my head against the cool concrete wall of the basement apartment and blinked my eyes into focus.

Tania was curled up asleep in the opposite corner, wrapped in someone’s jacket. Desmond must’ve still been outside. I couldn’t blame him. This place didn’t have much in the way of ventilation. Aran’s head was nodding as he sat against one wall, and his brother was sitting in one of the chairs facing away from me, the machine pistol in his hands.

“Rowdy bunch, aren’t they?” I said. I patted myself down. I was still wearing my jacket and the shirt Vivian had bought me, but they were both wrinkled and smelling pretty funky. As for me, I’d been better, but I felt like after six to eight months of intensive physical therapy I might be able to brush my own teeth again.

“Vivian.” I paused, not looking at her. “Thanks. You guys…well, I’m sure you know how much you saved my ass.”

I tried to stretch, but I couldn’t get comfortable. Vivian shifted her weight as well, and I felt her warmth close to me. I closed my eyes.

“I know I didn’t do this right,” I said. “I screwed up a lot. It’s what I do best. I should have come to you sooner. You and Des and Tania. Hell, I should’ve come to you before all this kicked off, when I couldn’t even get myself out of a glass. What I’m saying is—”

She snorted. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was curled up on the mattress, eyes closed. Every few seconds she inhaled, sounding like a vacuum cleaner.

“Christ, you can snore,” I said. I touched her shoulder. She murmured something, and without opening her eyes, she adjusted her position so her head rested in my lap. Then she started snoring again.

I watched her for a few seconds. A few of her hairs were draped over her mouth, so I gently brushed them out of the way and smiled. “You’ve got the right idea,” I said. I rested my head against the wall again and let my eyes droop. Toto snuggled up to me on my other side. I realized that I hadn’t seen Claudia since I’d come to, but I was too tired to figure out if that meant anything. I closed my eyes.

Footsteps. Outside, on the stairs leading down here. Probably just Desmond coming back. Or you’re dreaming. But something wasn’t right. They were moving too quickly, and they sounded too heavy. I pried my eyes open.

A boom ripped through the apartment.

Vivian jerked awake. A hole had appeared in the door at the level of the deadbolt. Something smashed into the door, sending it flying inward. A tall figure filled the doorway, silhouetted by sunlight. He pumped the short-barreled shotgun in his hands.

Aran’s brother jumped to his feet, the chair toppling over behind him. He brought the machine pistol up. Too slow.

The shotgun roared again, and I caught a glimpse of the man’s face in the muzzle flash. Stretch.

Aran’s brother folded at the middle, the machine pistol dropping from his fingers. He collapsed, blood leaking from the hole in his chest.

“No!” Aran screeched in Vei. He leaped. Stretch pumped his shotgun, but he couldn’t bring it round before Aran was on him. The enforcer slammed the shotgun into Aran’s chest, then put a boot into him to send him sprawling across the rotted carpet.

Tania was screaming. Toto was going crazy, and it took all my strength to keep him from rushing at Stretch. Vivian’s hand was halfway to her pistol. She froze when Stretch turned the gun on her.

“Good,” he said to her. “Hands flat on the ground.”

She complied, looking like she could take a bite out of that shotgun and swallow it. The room got quiet. Tania had stopped screaming, and now the only sound was Aran as he groaned and swore, clutching at the ground like the room was swaying.

Stretch turned the gun to me, his long black coat flapping as he moved. “Glare all you want, Franco. Keep your hands on that…creature. And no Tunneling out of this.”

I did as he said. Toto let out a high-pitched whine and stared at Stretch with all his eyes.

“You look better,” Stretch said to me.

“You ever hear of that show Extreme Makeover?”

His face was blank. “You’re coming with me.”

I forced myself not to look at the jar of crystals sitting just beside Vivian. From his position, Stretch wouldn’t be able to see them, but if either of us moved, the game was up. My heart hammered.

“Now, Franco,” he said.

“It’s kind of an inconvenient time. I was about to catch forty winks. Come back in a few hours, we’ll talk then.”

His dead eyes didn’t flicker. “I don’t have time for this.” He turned the shotgun away from me. He pointed it at Vivian instead. “This one looks like she’s important to you.”

I shrugged, but my throat was closing up.

“Is she important to you?”

I glanced at Vivian. She looked braver than I felt. I’d done it again. Another friend dead. I’d say I was cursed if I didn’t know that every death was my own stupid fault.

I opened my mouth to speak, but I sensed something. Chaos. I fixed my expression on my face, praying I hadn’t already betrayed myself, and stared Stretch dead in the eye.

“No,” I said. “She’s nothing to me.”

“You lie,” he said, advancing slowly. “I know what you’re like. You’ll do anything to protect your friends.”

“And look where that got me. People are dead. I nearly died. I’m sick of this shit.” I could feel Vivian’s eyes on me, but I refused to take my gaze off Stretch. “I’m done.”

He stopped a couple of feet from Vivian, the shotgun aimed at her head. There was no way he could miss at that range. “You’re bluffing.”

“McCaffrey said that too. She was wrong.”

“Last chance,” he said.

“Kill her.”

“As you wish.”

He pulled the trigger. The shotgun boomed.

And it exploded in his hands.

My ears rang. Releasing Toto, I lurched forward and put all my energy into a single kick. My shoe slammed into Stretch’s knee. The shock nearly jarred the skeleton out of my body, but it did the trick. He was screaming, probably more from the shrapnel that had shredded his hands than from my kick. But either way, he went down.

Vivian recovered faster than I expected her to. She had her pistol aimed at his writhing form in less than a second. With her free hand, she pulled a pair of handcuffs from her pocket and tossed them on the floor next to Aran, who had managed to get onto his hands and knees.

“I’ll cover him. Cuff his hands behind his back.”

I’d turned to rubber again, but Aran was sprier. He got up, still wheezing, and kicked Stretch square in the gut.

“Hey!” Vivian said. “The cuffs.”

Aran snarled at no one in particular, then bent over while clutching his chest and rolled Stretch onto his stomach. Swearing, Aran slid the cuffs into place and drove his foot into Stretch’s side again.

“Kuroth shit,” Aran spat at the enforcer. “All by yourself, huh? Planning to sell us off to the highest bidder, huh?” He kicked Stretch in the ribs.

Vivian holstered her gun and grabbed Aran by both shoulders. “Leave it. Leave it, I said! See to your brother.”

Aran’s had snapped toward the Vei bleeding out on the floor. I could tell from here the poor guy was dead already. But Aran shook himself free of Vivian and went to his brother’s side.

I pushed myself back up against the wall, trying to calm the hammering in my chest. Stretch’s screams faded. I tore my eyes from him and found Tania in the far corner, still gripping the bottle of Kemia in shaking hands.

“Kid,” I said to her. “You did good. Real good. You can release the Pin Hole now.”

She glanced at the circle she’d scratched on the wall, her cheeks going pink. I felt the chaos slip away. Stability returned.

“Smart, blocking the shotgun barrel like that,” I said. “Your Pin Hole was clean and precise. And you did it under pressure. Desmond’s been teaching you well.”

She flashed a smile, even though she was still trembling. “You taught me that one.”

“I did?”

She nodded. I wasn’t humoring her. She’d done a damn good job. The poor kid needed a hug and a long sleep, but I didn’t think I could stand right now, let alone cross the room to get to her.

The shotgun was a wreck, but Vivian kicked it away from Stretch anyway. She patted him down and found a switchblade and a pistol concealed in his coat pocket. She took out the mag, ejected the round from the chamber, and pocketed everything. She found a revolver in an ankle holster as well. Seemingly satisfied, she stood and met my eyes.

“What I told him before…” I said before she could speak. “I didn’t—”

“I know.” She smiled and nodded, and the knot in my stomach loosened. I couldn’t take another friend pissed off at me right now.

Speaking of pissed off friends… “Where’s Desmond?”

Vivian glanced around the room once then disappeared out the door. Aran was muttering in Vei as he sat cross-legged beside his brother’s body. Tania shouldn’t have to see this. None of us should.

Vivian reappeared a few minutes later, one arm around a limping Desmond. He had his hand to his forehead, blood dripping over his eye.

Tania squeaked and leaped up to help while Toto ran in circles around them, hooting. I felt like the most useless person in the room, even more useless than the handcuffed gang enforcer lying on the floor. The two women helped Desmond to the mattress where he sank down next to me.

“Caught with your pants down?” I asked.

He prodded the gash on his forehead. “The son of a bitch cold-cocked me.”

“Is that some gay sex thing? Because what you and Rob do in the privacy of your own bedroom—”

He didn’t hit as hard as Vivian, at least not this time, but I still had to bite my tongue to stop myself wincing.

Tania and Vivian crowded round him, checking the wound. It’d need stitches, but he’d survive. I caught Vivian’s eye and gestured for her to come closer.

“You should get him to the hospital,” I said in a low voice so the others didn’t overhear me. “He can’t drive after being smacked in the head like that.”

“You would,” she said.

“He’s smarter than me. So are you.” I glanced at Tania. She was too busy mothering Desmond to notice. “Tania needs rest as well. That was a lot of Tunneling in a short space of time for a novice. And with the shooting and everything…”

Vivian nodded and turned around. “I need to take the Vei downtown as well. He knows more than us, and—” She frowned. “Where’d he go?”

I stared past her. His brother’s body was still lying there in a pool of blood, but Aran was gone. Along with the machine pistol. Stretch smirked at me.

“Shit,” I said. At least we still had the crystals. Such tiny little things. I picked up the jar and examined it. A new feeling was bubbling away inside me. Well, not a new feeling. An old feeling. The oldest of feelings. I pushed it down and tried to keep the darkness off my face.

“It doesn’t matter,” Vivian said. She pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll call Detective Wade and get him down here with some uniforms.” She glanced at me. “I’d offer to take you to hospital if you weren’t so stubborn.”

“Hey, I gave you a chance to back out of the deal, and you blew it.”

“Will you be okay here until Wade arrives?”

I forced a grin onto my face. “I think I can take care of a body and a handcuffed asshole. Besides, I’ve got Toto to look after me.” I patted the spider-dog. “Just don’t expect me to be nice to Wade when he shows.”

She dialed and pressed the phone to her ear. I met Stretch’s cold eyes again and let the grin slip.

“It’s me,” Vivian said into the phone. “I’m at an apartment on Poe Street. We’ve got….” Her voice dropped away, and I broke my staring contest with Stretch to see her frowning. “Where? Okay.”

She hung up and turned back to me. “We’ve got a position on Bohr and the rest of the Collectivists that evaded us at AISOR. They ran to an abandoned apartment block in the Avenues. We’re ending this now.”

“Just Bohr?” I tried and failed to get to my feet. “What about McCaffrey and her goons?”

“Nothing yet. They’ll turn up.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “If you can stand.”

“I can…” I tried again, but my legs were less stable than a house of cards. “I’ll catch up.”

She turned to Desmond and Tania. “I’ll drop you both at the hospital on the way.”

Desmond nodded, then clutched his head and made a face. Tania got up and knelt in front of me. Her hands still trembled slightly. She was a tough kid. She hadn’t even cried yet, but that would probably come later. It always did for me.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” she said.

“I’m glad you didn’t accidentally turn me into a fruit salad.”

She kissed me on the cheek, her lips scratching on my stubble, and stood. She and Vivian got on either side of Desmond and helped him to his feet.

“You still got your phone?” Vivian asked me. “Call the station, tell them I told you to call, and let them know what happened.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

Toto followed them to the door, hooting quietly. Desmond gave me a half-hearted wave with his blood-stained hand, and Vivian nodded to me once more. I couldn’t interpret the look in her eyes. Then they were gone, and Toto trotted back over to me, nipping at Stretch as he passed.

There was silence for a while. I couldn’t hear much traffic outside, or anyone walking past. No sirens. Gunshots were probably so common in this neighborhood it didn’t even warrant a call to the cops. I scratched Toto’s head, waiting for my strength to recover.

“So,” Stretch said, breaking the silence. “Those are the crystals.”

I picked up the jar and looked at them again. “Seems like it.”

“We could sell them.”

“We?”

He rolled a little bit, like he was trying to get comfortable. “We could help each other. I have contacts. And you have the ability to get me out of here. I notice you haven’t called the cops yet.”

I smiled a smile I didn’t feel. “I will. Soon.”

“So, what are you waiting for?”

I pocketed the jar, then put my back against the wall, gathered my legs beneath me, and pushed myself slowly upward. My tendons screamed, my bones quivered. I went down again. Stretch watched me, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. I set my jaw, gathered myself together, and tried again.

It took me ten minutes, but I did it. I stood up. Toto provided moral support while I planted my hand against the wall, sweat pouring down my face.

It was another five minutes before I could take a step without falling. It was like learning to walk again, except this time there was no one to catch me if I fell. But I did it.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Stretch asked. I ignored him and staggered into the tiny bathroom, pulling the sliding door closed behind me as I went. I was glad to have the bastard out of my sight.

The bathroom must’ve had the same interior decorator as the rest of the apartment. I stared at myself in the cracked mirror. It didn’t scare me to see what I looked like anymore. At least the greenish tinge was gone.

I splashed water on my face and gripped the sides of the sink with both hands to take the weight off my legs. I supposed I should be happy about being alive. That seemed like the logical response. But the lump in my chest was still there, heavier than ever. How many people had died the same way I nearly had? I pictured Claudia lying in a hospital bed somewhere, going through that kind of pain. No one had saved her. I hadn’t saved her. For the millionth time I tried to remember what she’d said to me in that phone call, the last time I talked to her before she died. But the night was too hazy. I was too busy drowning myself in cheap booze to do a thing.

I pulled the jar of crystals from my pocket, shooed a cockroach off the edge of the sink, and set the jar down in its place. I stared at the crystals. Reality-shapers, Aran called them. Bringing three worlds together, powered by my very own Chroma-laced blood. Giving life to your deepest, darkest desires.

But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Because who really knows themselves? Six months ago I thought I knew exactly what kind of guy I was, what I would do and what I wouldn’t do. I had my code, my personal morals. And look how that turned out.

Maybe McCaffrey and Bohr knew what they wanted. They were smarter than me. Or maybe they were just like everyone else, burying the darkest bits of their soul so deep even they’d forgotten what was there.

I turned on the tap again and drank water from my cupped hands. I never took my eyes off the crystals. They called to me. It sounded just like the song Claudia and I had been playing.

“Damn it,” I said to myself. I snatched the jar off the sink, unscrewed the lid, and tipped the crystals into my hand. They were warm, and squishier than I was expecting. I fished one out of the pile and held it up to the light between my thumb and forefinger. It seemed to quiver.

I closed my hand around the rest of the crystals, closed my eyes, and concentrated. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to make them work, but something told me I didn’t need to know.

What did I want? What did I really want?

Freedom. Love. Forgiveness. A long sleep in a clean bed. A shower. To be someone else. To have another chance. For everything to be all right.

I listened to the energy pulsing through me, radiating from the crystals. It felt like the same pull I’d felt on Tartarus, but different. Less ethereal. More concrete. Visions floated behind my eyes. My knees went weak.

My eyes snapped open. The feeling vanished. I was on the bathroom floor, my head against the toilet bowl, the crystals digging into my palm. My tail bone ached where I’d landed on it. I’d be lucky if it wasn’t cracked by now. I opened my hand one finger at a time and looked at the crystals sitting there, just the same as before.

A single, clipped laugh bubbled out of my throat. Then another. My chest stung and my lungs burned, but no matter how much it hurt, I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. I knew what I had to do now. I knew the game I had to play. And I’d play it to the end.

Finally, the laughs subsided. I sat there on the cold tile floor for another few minutes, smiling and shaking my head. Then I clambered to my feet, poured the crystals back into the jar, screwed the top on, and went back into the main room.

“What’s so funny?” Stretch was still on the floor, watching me.

I shook my head, the smile still painted onto my face. “The world. Everything. You have to laugh at it. You laugh at it or you go insane, right?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing.

I pocketed the crystals, wiped the smile off my face, and staggered forward until I was a foot from his head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about something else. I heard what Aran said to you. You knew each other, didn’t you? You both worked for Bohr.”

“I work for myself.”

My legs were already getting tired again, but I didn’t want to sink back to the ground. I walked behind Stretch, got the chair Aran’s brother had been sitting on, and dragged it back. I was sweating again by the time I sat down facing the enforcer, but I refused to show him how much it had hurt.

“Aran said you were going to sell me to the highest bidder. You haven’t been the most loyal Collectivist, have you? Were you Bohr’s first, and then McCaffrey bought you? Or did McCaffrey order you to infiltrate the Collective?”

He just looked at me with that infuriating smile. I dug my fingernails into my palms. The darkness simmered inside me.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. The point is you were playing both sides. That was you watching me at the fundraiser where I met Zhi, wasn’t it? Hiding in the garden like a peeping Tom. Were you watching her or me?” I shrugged. “And of course when I followed her to her meeting with the mayor, you were there again. To ‘warn me’ this time.”

“It worked,” he said. “Doc McCaffrey knew it would. You’re predictable, Franco. Too stubborn for your own good. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned forward, heels tapping on the ground. “You want me to help you out of here. So you can make us both rich.”

“So rich you’ll be able to swim in it.”

“Like Scrooge McDuck,” I said.

“Who?”

I licked my lips and smiled. “I don’t want money. I don’t want protection. And I don’t want to bargain with an oversized orangutan like you.” I bent down to look him in the eye. “I want McCaffrey.”

He shook his head, chuckling. “You’re so predictable, Franco. So boring.”

I laughed with him. “You like that, huh? You think that’s funny?” The laugh died in my throat. “Tell me how to get to her.”

“Your friend is dead. She’s not coming back. Not even if you find McCaffrey.” He stretched his neck to the side until it clicked, then returned his gaze to me, the smiles gone. “And if you do find her, I’ll come for you. McCaffrey and Bohr are my paychecks. They can’t pay me if they’re in prison. If they go down, I’ll take my payment some other way.”

I studied his eyes. They were dark brown, the color of mud. He watched me, unblinking.

“You’re a big, tough man, aren’t you?” I was whispering, but I could tell he heard me. “Yeah. You’ve done things. I can tell. You’re probably used to scaring guys like me. I mean, look at me.” I shook my jacket by the lapels. “I’m not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger, am I?”

He said nothing, so I let go of my jacket and stood up. It was easier this time. I had a new kind of energy powering me.

“I was ready to die a couple of hours ago,” I said. “It was inevitable. And then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t dying anymore. I don’t know how to feel about that. But I do know what I want. I’ve done things too. Do you know what I did last winter, when a friend of mine was in danger?” I dug my foot under Stretch and kicked him onto his back, then crouched so my face was directly over his. “I killed thirty-seven people. I set the air on fire and burned them alive. I crushed them, mutilated them. For most of them, they had to use dental records to identify the bodies. I bet I’ve killed more people in one bad day than you have in your entire career.”

I turned away and went back to the chair, but I didn’t sit. My hands closed over the chair back.

“Now my friend is dead. And she’s not the only one. It was you that killed the mayor, wasn’t it? She was always good to me. She gave me a second chance at life.” I turned around to face him, scraping the chair along the ground. “And then you came here. You threatened to kill Vivian. You worked over my best friend. You shot that poor Vei kid who’d helped me. So how far do you think I’ll go this time?”

I tossed the chair down onto the ground and stomped on one of the legs. The wood snapped a few inches from where it connected to the seat. I picked up the leg, tested the weight of it in my hands.

“Now, I know how these things usually go,” I said. “I’ve seen the movies. I ask you a question, you don’t answer, I get rough. We repeat that a few times until you tell me what I want to know. But I don’t have time for that. So let’s get the pleasantries out of the way first.”

I swung the chair leg into his face. His head snapped to the side, a grunt escaping his lungs. Toto ran in circles, yipping. There was no guilt. This wasn’t me, but it was who I had to be right now.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said as I watched him grunting, his mouth half-open. “Did I dislocate your jaw? Hurts, doesn’t it? Let me fix that for you.”

I slammed the chair leg into his chin. He let out a scream this time. Blood trickled from his chin.

“Do you understand yet?” I shouted as I brought the chair leg down on his sternum in an overhand blow. My muscles were too scared to protest. “Do you see the kind of man I am?” I smashed the chair leg into his kneecap so hard the wood splintered.

I stopped, panting, watching him writhe.

“There’s just one question I have,” I said. “How do I get to McCaffrey?”

He turned his head and spat blood on the floor. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. “I don’t know where she is.”

I brought the chair leg down, driving the splinters into his thigh. An inch to the left and he wouldn’t be much of a man anymore. “Try again.”

“Goddamn it,” he said through gritted teeth, his eyes squeezed shut. “I have her phone number.”

I released the pressure, and his face slackened. “That’s a start. A cell phone number? She’ll have it with her?”

He nodded, his eyes on the chair leg. “My phone is in my coat pocket. Her number’s under the name Abigail.”

I fished the phone out of his pocket, getting a noseful of his body odor, and checked the contacts. I copied the number for Abigail into my phone.

“If you’re lying…” I said.

He spat more blood and nodded.

“While I’m here,” I said, “you can tell me which of these numbers is Bohr’s. Just in case.”

“The number under Jimmy.”

“He does look like a Jimmy, doesn’t he?” I found the number and copied it down as well, then tossed Stretch’s phone onto the ground next to him. I realized my hands were shaking, so I shoved them back in my jacket pockets. “Thanks for your help.”

“My pleasure.” He coughed a couple of times. Toto gnawed on his boots. “Since you’ve treated me so well, I’ll give you one more thing for free.”

“Yeah?” My legs were getting wobbly again. I regretted smashing the chair. “Cough it up, then.”

He rolled onto his side and worked his neck back and forth, cringing as he did so. “That apartment building in the Avenues your cop friends are going to, where they think they’ve got Bohr buttoned up?”

Shit. “It’s a trap, isn’t it?”

He smiled.

“Goddamn it.” I flipped through my phone contacts, found Vivian’s number, and dialed. It rang three times. Four. My stomach knotted.

Then she picked up, and I sighed with relief. “Detective Reed,” she said.

“It’s me. Are you at the apartment building yet?”

“I’m two minutes away. It took me a while to get to the hospital and drop the others off.” I could hear the sound of the car engine in the background.

“Wait,” I said. “The tall asshole with the shotgun reckons it’s a trap. Can you raise Wade and the rest of your cop buddies and see if they’re alive?”

I could practically hear her frowning through the phone. “Detective Wade won’t have moved in yet without me there.”

“Just call him, will you? And call me back.”

I hung up and leaned against the wall, gripping the phone in my hand. It was a long wait.

“What does she want?” I asked Stretch.

“Who?”

“McCaffrey. What does she want to do with the crystals?”

He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her.”

“Right. You’re just the dumb muscle.”

“I’ll come for you one day. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I said. “But your grudge is with me. Only me. Remember what I do to people who hurt my friends.”

We glared at each other beneath the flickering light. The seconds ticked away. Then my phone rang. I stood up straight and answered before the first ring ended.

“I can’t reach Detective Wade,” Vivian said. “Or the sergeant who was supposed to lead the raid. Dispatch is still trying, but no one’s responding.”

“Shit,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stretch smile. I ignored him. “Can you see the apartment building from where you are?”

“Yes. No movement. I can see the police vans and Wade’s car down the end of the street, but there’s no one there.”

“All right. Get out of there before they get you too.”

“I’m not stupid, Miles.”

“I know.”

There was a pause. I rubbed my forehead with my free hand.

“I’m going to make some calls,” I said. “Do you think they’re still alive?”

“There’s blood on the street. But not a lot.” She was holding it together well, but I could sense the strain in her voice. I didn’t care a lick about Wade, but the asshole was Vivian’s partner, which meant she cared about him.

“Lay low for a while, and do whatever cop stuff you need to do.”

“You’re not going to go off half-cocked again, are you?” she said.

I consulted the anger boiling through me, the disgust. The urge to pick up the chair leg again and beat in Stretch’s head until his skull was nothing but powder.

And then I thought about everything my friends went through to save me. I thought about seventeen-year-old Tania, not even old enough to get a drink to calm her nerves after what she’d seen here. I thought about how much I owed them. And about how much I needed them.

“No,” I said. “Not this time. Wait for my call.”

“Ask me nicely.”

I had to smile. “Please, then. Please wait for my call.”

I hung up. My stomach was starting to remember that it hadn’t kept anything down for nearly two days, and it wasn’t happy about it. It growled loud enough to start Toto yipping again.

I rested against the wall, facing away from Stretch, and dialed another number. Six rings this time. Then a click, and a voice that made me want to hurl the phone at the wall.

“Hello?” McCaffrey said in her soft voice.

“Doc,” I said, trying and failing to sound as calm as her. “Good to hear your voice again. We need to talk.”

“Miles?” There was a pause. “I expected you to be dead by now.”

“That makes two of us. Some assholes decided they couldn’t let me die in peace. I’ve got something you want.”

There was an intake of breath, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “You have the crystals?”

I rattled the jar next to the phone. “Pretty little things. You wanna see them?”

“I would love to, Miles. But I’m a little busy right now.”

“More evil schemes?”

“Sadly, no. A gentleman has a gun to my head.”

I barked a laugh I didn’t feel. “Oh, that’s excellent. The Collective nabbed you in the attack on the building, huh?”

“No, we fought them back. I sent a team to pursue them as they fled. We assumed they’d captured you, and I wanted you back.”

“My knight in shining armor,” I said.

“I underestimated their control over Limbus creatures. Incredible work. Bohr always was talented at that sort of thing.”

“It’s neat stuff, isn’t it? Is Bohr there? I want to talk to him.”

“He’s here. I’ll put him on.”

“Thanks. And Doc?”

“Yes?”

“You better have a good reason for wanting these crystals. Or I’ll burn you alive.”

“See you soon, Miles.”

There were a few seconds of muffled whispers and crackling. Then I heard someone breathing into the phone.

“Bohr?” I asked.

“Yes. Quite the escape artist, aren’t you? How’d you kill my men?”

“I didn’t. I had help.”

“Hmm, help. Very well. How are you alive?”

“I had help there too,” I said. “Do you have the cops?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. They’re here somewhere.”

“And McCaffrey’s people?”

“Some. Not enough. Many struggled. Kowalski is here, though.”

“Are you going to kill them?” I asked.

“Soon. When I’ve hurt them. I can never hurt them as much as they hurt me. But I can try. You should never have got involved, Miles Franco.”

“Never had a choice,” I said. “Don’t kill them yet.”

“Why?”

“I have something you want. The crystals.”

A full thirty seconds passed. I tapped the floor with my heel while I listened to him breathing. The phone grew sweaty in my palm. Then he spoke again.

“You want to meet,” he said.

“I do.”

“What do you want in exchange for the crystals?”

“Your hostages. All of them.”

“Hmm,” he said. “McCaffrey and Kowalski?”

“All of them.”

Another long pause. My stomach growled to fill the silence.

“One-hundred-twenty-one Twelfth Avenue,” he finally said. “Two hours.”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “One thing. If you hurt them, or touch me, or try to get the crystals by force, I’ll destroy them.”

“Yes, yes. Come alone, or they all die.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I hung up and slipped the phone back into my pocket, then wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve. Nearly done. You hear that Claudia? I’m nearly done.

I turned around to face Stretch. His face was already going purple where I’d hit him.

“I’m going out for a bit,” I said. “Make yourself at home. The cops will be here shortly to entertain you. Come on, Toto.”

The spider-dog hooted and followed me as I walked past the cuffed enforcer. I felt like tiny gnomes were giving every inch of me a tiny beating, but with every step I got stronger, and the pain got less.

“Remember what I said,” Stretch said as I reached the door. “I’ll come for you.”

“And you remember what I said. Keep the chair leg as a souvenir.”

It was a beautiful day outside. I shielded my eyes, climbed the stairs back to the alley, and pulled my phone out again.

“Yeah?” came the reply on the other end of the phone.

“How’s the head, Des?”

“Stings like a son of a bitch.”

“I need some help. You up for more fun?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

TWENTY-NINE

By the time I found the twenty in my jacket pocket, my stomach was starting to eat itself. I’d spent the last hour and a half making preparations, and the effort had sapped whatever energy I had left. Leaning against a lamp post outside a construction site, I tried to puzzle out where the cash had come from. Then I remembered Tania kneeling in front of me before she left, giving me a kiss on the cheek. The little brat must’ve slipped it into my pocket. I tried to be mad at her, but my stomach wasn’t playing ball. It would be ungrateful not to use it, really.

I started off with a Big Mac combo and a couple of cheeseburgers from the McDonalds on the corner a few blocks away. After polishing off the large Coke and tossing the paper bag into a dumpster, I stopped at a street vendor selling fruit, picked out the three apples that didn’t look rotten, and started devouring them. I even had enough change for the subway fare to the Avenues.

The other passengers moved away from me when I sat down on the train. Even the homeless guy didn’t stick around to ask me for change. I knew I smelled, and I guess my bruises and blood-stained clothing weren’t helping. At least I didn’t have Toto with me. I didn’t want to see what a stampede of screaming passengers in a subway train looked like. The spider-dog had taking a liking to Vivian’s apartment, so he’d seemed happy when I left him there.

I finished off the last apple—core and all—and returned my hand to my pocket. The vibrations of the train were helping to work the aches out of my body. I closed my eyes and pictured Claudia when I first heard her sing. I pictured her working that job in the clothing store, trying to scrape enough money together to get herself a visa to Heaven. And I pictured McCaffrey reeling Claudia in with promises or threats or empty words, reeling her in and putting her back on the hook as bait for me. It’d worked. I’d got hooked myself. But I could be a mean fish.

I opened my eyes as the subway train squealed into the station at First Avenue. Claudia was dead, and she wasn’t coming back. I had to finish this, one way or another. Not just for her. For me.

I got off the train and went to break some teeth.

The Avenues had never recovered from the Chroma Wars, and they hadn’t exactly been high class digs in the first place. Stunted trees lined the streets, and behind them the crumbling buildings sat packed together. A bag lady shuffled past with her shopping cart, watching me out of the corner of her eye. I slipped her my last couple of bucks. She looked like she needed it more than I did. She took the money without comment and hobbled on.

Across the road, a couple of kids were shooting craps in the alley. Other than that, it was a ghost town. Once there would’ve been Gravediggers gang members on every corner, ready to put their leather boot halfway up my ass. But between the Chroma Wars and the Collectivists they’d been squeezed out of here, and now most of what remained of the Avenues could pass for a bombed European city from World War Two. Even the rats had moved out.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and kept my head low as I walked down the center of the street. The sun beat down on me as hard as anyone had in the last few days. The sole of my left shoe was coming off, and my jacket was torn in so many places it was barely holding on. The breeze bit at my sliced ear, and every step made my shoulder jar where Stretch’s shotgun blast had hit me back at the Collective’s headquarters. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say I was death warmed up.

I spotted the cop cars from two blocks away. My heartbeat kicked up a notch, but I didn’t change my pace. There were two vans and four cars, doors wide open, lights flashing, and no one home. As I came closer, I spotted a couple of pools of blood on the concrete, each about the size of a pizza. The wind picked up, sending an empty beer can rattling along the street toward me. I kept my eyes on the broken windows as I passed, hoping the shadows moving inside were pigeons and not angry gangsters with very big guns. My liver played jump rope with my intestines as I approached the abandoned cop cars.

I felt the creatures before I heard them, but that didn’t make me any more prepared when the two huge cyclopean creatures lumbered around the corner and stared at me, their black-and-orange fur bristling as they pounded at the street with arms bigger than my entire body. A dozen spider-dogs swarmed around the two behemoths, hooting at me and baring their teeth. They didn’t look as cute as Toto.

My mouth had gone dry. I froze in the center of the street as the creatures fanned out, slowly circling me. The Limbus creatures never came within eight or ten feet of me, but the reek wasn’t so polite. Bile crept up my throat, and I swallowed it back down.

A Vei and two human men rounded the corner, dressed in loose-fitting shirts of gray and red and white. Two carried guns—a shotgun and an assault rifle. The third had a pistol tucked into his belt, but I could see the glint of metal clutched in his hands. Animal energy radiated from him. He must be the Tunneler in control of the Limbus creatures.

“Come with us,” the one with the assault rifle said.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” I said.

He looked confused. I guessed people didn’t usually argue with so many mean-looking beasties. “What?”

“I said I’m not going with you. You expect me to walk right into whatever trap your boss has set up? Here’s fine. Tell him to meet me here, or I destroy the crystals. And bring the hostages.” I glanced around. “Get rid of these things, too. That one with the big teeth is making me nervous.”

The Collectivists exchanged looks. The one with the assault rifle looked dubious, but Shotgun shrugged like he just wanted to get on with things. I stood in place while the creatures snarled at me, their reek bathing me. I breathed through my mouth so I didn’t hurl.

Finally, the gangsters seemed to come to a consensus. Shotgun left and jogged back around the corner while the others watched me. The creatures didn’t move.

“How about this weather, huh?” I said. The gangsters didn’t reply.

Five minutes passed, then ten. And then Shotgun came back with a trail of gangsters in tow.

Bohr was at their head, the Vei walking in his jerky fashion with a cigarette between his lips. His leather jacket flapped in the breeze. I recognized several of the other Collectivists from the warehouse. All of them were armed, and most of them looked like they hadn’t showered for as long as me. A few of the humans wore Kevlar vests. And in the center of the mass of gangsters came the hostages.

There were about twenty cops, half of them in black fatigues with empty holsters and pouches, and the other half in standard cop blues. Each had their hands cuffed in front of them with their own handcuffs or plastic ties, and they kept their heads low as the gangsters prodded them along with the barrels of their weapons.

I spotted Detective Wade near the edge. His golden hair didn’t look so pretty now that it was mussed and tangled. His face was whiter than usual, and I could guess why. His left sleeve was ripped off, with a red-stained bandage wrapped around his shoulder. I met his eyes and tried to grin reassuringly. I was too far away to make out what he said, but it wasn’t hard to lip read: “Oh, fuck.”

Separated from the cops were a handful of other hostages, including a tiny man with cracked spectacles and a grandmotherly woman with curls in her hair. Even now, Doc McCaffrey looked innocent. I wasn’t sure whether to work her over with a baseball bat or ask her for some homemade cookies.

The creatures cleared a path for the gangsters. Some of the Collectivists eyed the spider-dogs and cyclops-gorillas nervously, but Bohr paid them no attention. He bared his teeth at me in a smile and plucked the cigarette from his mouth.

He cocked his head to the side and nodded to himself. “Miles Franco. It is you. I thought this might be a trick.”

“You should know it takes more than a little deadly poison to kill me,” I said.

“The crystals.” He held out a thin hand.

I shook my head. “Lose the zoo.”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Nice work, isn’t it? We improved the Pin Hole since you…hmm…appropriated our animals the other day.”

He wasn’t lying. I could sense the Tunneler’s work, and it wasn’t leaking energy nearly as bad as it used to. I could still do better, but I wouldn’t be able to get control of the creatures so easily this time.

“Send them home,” I said. “Make this safer for everyone. I only want to deal with things with actual intelligence.” I jerked my head toward Wade and the other cops. “And those guys.”

Bohr cocked his head to the other side and took in a lungful of smoke. Then he gave a jerky nod and waved with his cigarette. The Tunneler paused, glared at me, then turned and walked away. The creatures followed, still growling. Their stench hung around like it had been painted onto the air.

Bohr stepped closer, his posse following. “Better?”

“Much. You might want to give those things a bath.”

“I’ve acted in good faith, as you say,” Bohr said. He couldn’t hide the hunger in his eyes. He pointed at the hostages. “Here is what you want. Now I want the crystals, Miles Franco.”

I looked over the hostages once more. Kowalski looked like he was going to pass out. I met McCaffrey’s gaze for a moment. Her smile made me want to smash her dentures beneath my shoes. I forced myself to breath.

“You promised not to hurt any of them,” I said. “That asshole detective over there looks pretty hurt to me.”

“He struggled,” Bohr said simply.

“He can barely stand. You’re not going to make any friends with the cops doing this.”

Bohr’s lips peeled back in another grin. “They did not like me anyway. Now they know not to underestimate me, yes? No matter. This will be done soon.”

“Yeah?” The wind gusted, sweeping my jacket behind me. The rest of the city was alive with traffic and sirens and construction work and people chatting in their offices, but here we could’ve been the last people on Earth. “Tell me, what do you want? What do you think these crystals will get you?”

“Do you know what they did to me?” There was no anger in his voice, but he jabbed his cigarette toward McCaffrey and Kowalski. “They stole everything I ever did. They broke my life. Some of my companions were their victims as well.”

“You could’ve gone to the cops,” I said.

“Like you did, Miles Franco? You know the ineffectiveness of your human police. I worked on Earth, but I am a Vei. You know the way we settle things.” His eyes danced with fire, and his slitted nostrils flared.

“So why haven’t you killed them already?”

“That would never be enough. They don’t deserve death. I will make it so they never existed. I’m going to scour AISOR from history, and everything they’ve done. I will break Tartarus if I can, and if not, I’ll break the connections between the worlds. They have only brought destruction.”

Jesus. This guy’s more than eccentric. He’s high-functioning, but he’s certifiably bat-shit. “Bit overdramatic, isn’t it? Do you even know what you’re doing? I read the papers you guys wrote. Well, I skimmed them. You did an awful lot of talking about the interconnectedness of the worlds. What if you screw up Tunneling for good? What if you collapse the worlds in on themselves? Hell, what if you just manage to erase yourself in the process? You’re connected to all this too.”

“No matter,” he said, his voice cold. “The question is whether you are willing to take that risk. How badly do you want these ones, hmm?”

I looked over McCaffrey and Kowalski. I blinked, and Claudia stood behind McCaffrey, staring at her with dead eyes. I blinked again, and she disappeared.

“Badly,” I said.

“Then please, the crystals.”

“Sure,” I said. “Except I don’t have them with me.”

He looked like he was going to bite his cigarette in half and swallow it. “Do not joke with me.”

“Who’s joking? I’m not thick enough to stroll down here in the middle of the day with the crystals in my pocket.” I gestured around. “Not with so many friendly gangsters ready to plug me as soon as I hand them over.”

Bohr ran his tongue along the points of his teeth, his eyes darting around at his people. His hand drifted inside his jacket, and I caught a glimpse of an ivory handle. I kept a smile on my face, but inside, all my nerve had dripped into my shoes. This was the only way to play it, but Bohr wasn’t the most stable guy I’d ever dealt with. I kept a careful eye on all the guns trained on me, resisting the urge to wipe away the sweat beading on my forehead.

“Where are they?” Bohr said, mouth twitching.

“I think we both know I’m not going to give it up that easy. I’ll take you to them. Not your whole gang. You.”

“You push your luck, Miles Franco.”

“I’m good at that. You can bring a bodyguard if you’re nervous. I want McCaffrey, Kowalski, and the pretty boy detective.”

“Hmm, and the rest?”

“Let the cops go. Or keep them somewhere out of the way until this is over. Same as McCaffrey’s people. I don’t want you wasting them all when you have your precious crystals.”

Bohr crushed his cigarette butt beneath his heel, his fingers flexing on the ivory handle. Have you used up all your luck yet, Miles? I asked myself.

“Perhaps you do not have the crystals at all,” Bohr said. “Perhaps I should kill you now.”

I fished in my pocket and retrieved a single crystal. I held it above my head. It glinted green in the sunlight.

“A sample,” I said. I tossed the crystal to him. Behind Bohr, McCaffrey’s eyes widened, her hungry gaze following the crystal as it arced through the air. Bohr caught it one-handed, and McCaffrey’s face went impassive again. She seemed almost serene, even with a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head. What was her play going to be?

Bohr brought the crystal up to his eye and examined it. “How do I know it is real, hmm?”

“Can’t you feel it?” I said. “Don’t you hear that song in your head?”

He frowned and cocked his head again. “I hear nothing.”

“Don’t you trust me?” I asked. “After all we’ve been through together.”

He brought the crystal to his ear and listened. After a few moments, he shook his head. “Nothing. Test it, yes?”

He tossed it back to me. The instant it touched my skin, I heard it calling again.

“Be quick, Miles Franco.”

“What do you want me to do? AISOR’s the one with all the chemical analysts.”

“Use it. Should be enough for a small change, yes? What do you want?”

I looked at the crystal and scratched my chin. “I’ve been broke all my life. Maybe it’d be nice to be rich, for once.”

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, opened it, and showed Bohr there was nothing inside but a large pile of receipts and a driver’s license.

“Make it work,” Bohr said. He gestured to the gangsters behind him, and one of them shoved Detective Wade out in front and forced him to his knees. Bohr pulled the ivory handle from under his jacket and pressed something. The thin spike instantly extended to its full length. He pressed the point against Wade’s forehead. The cop looked like he’d forgotten how to breath. Bohr stared at me. “Do not delay, hmm?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “That’s the hostage you’re threatening me with? I don’t even like the guy.” Wade set his jaw and widened his eyes at me, his nostrils flaring. I grinned at him, trying to look more confident than I felt. “All right, all right, you know I can’t stand those puppy dog eyes.”

With my empty wallet in my left hand and the crystal in my right fist, I closed my eyes. The song grew louder in my head, and the sound of the gangsters shuffling in place and the wind coming down the street died away. My hands were slippery around my wallet.

I waited, counting the seconds away in my head. With every one that passed, my gut tied itself a little tighter. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. My skin prickled.

The song changed. No, it didn’t change. Another tune laid itself over the top. A nonsense tune, a distant sense of chaos. Reality shimmered, and something seemed to crack far away to my left. Maybe it was my muscles playing tricks on me, but my wallet felt slightly heavier. The crystal still dug into my palm, pulsing as always.

I opened my eyes and lifted my wallet. At the same time, while everyone’s eyes were fixed on my left hand, I palmed the crystal with my right and slipped it up my sleeve. The sense of disorder still sang distantly in my head.

“It is done?” Bohr asked. His spike had drawn a drop of blood from the center of Wade’s forehead.

I opened the wallet so everyone could see it. A thick wad of crisp hundreds sat inside.

“Next round’s on me,” I said.

I glanced at McCaffrey. Her eyes were shining, her smile lines creased and deep. Proud of yourself, Doc?

Bohr wasn’t so reserved in his expression. His face was practically split in two by his shark grin. “Good. Very good. Yes. The crystal is used up?”

I showed him my empty right hand.

“Yes,” he said, turning his attention back to my wallet. “See, we all come out happy.”

“We’re good?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes.”

He waved at the Collectivists and retracted his spike from Wade’s head. The cop sighed and deflated like a kid’s bouncy castle.

“Lock the police officers and the others in the basement,” he said to one of the gangsters. “Leave two guards, but pull everyone else out. We will notify the police where they can find their comrades when this is done.”

The gangster nodded and hurried away, dividing up the rest of the Collectivists. My heart wasn’t trying to punch its way out of my chest anymore, but I wasn’t done yet. I tried to look like I wasn’t about to pass out.

Finally, the gangsters got their act together. Most of the mob marched away, the cops going with them. And then it was only the cool kids left in the street. Me, Bohr, one of his human goons, and the three hostages: Detective Wade, Kowalski shivering in his boots, and McCaffrey, smiling like the cat who’d worked out how to open the cream bottle.

“That was beautiful, Miles,” she said.

I tore my eyes away from her to stop myself breaking her neck.

Bohr pulled a pistol from the back of his pants, glanced at it, and let it dangle from the end of his arm. “Insurance.” He gestured at the other gangster. “I need this man to search you.”

“Sure,” I said, holding my arms to the side. The goon patted me down. He found the coins jingling in my pocket, but I didn’t have any Kemia. He shook his head at Bohr and stepped back.

I held the wallet out to Bohr. “You want any of this cash? Now that I have it, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Keep it. You will think of something, yes?”

I shrugged and pocketed the wallet.

“I have a vehicle down the end of the street,” Bohr said. He gestured with the gun. “After you, Miles Franco.”

I turned, trying not to care about having guns pointed at my back, and walked back down the street, hands in my pockets.

Somewhere far away, the nonsense tune finally ceased. My wallet got lighter again. I didn’t stop walking.

THIRTY

“This is another of your jokes, yes?” Bohr asked.

“For once, no,” I said.

Bohr sat behind me in the van, holding the pistol against the back of my head. His goon was in the driver’s seat, and the hostages were bound and gagged in the back. Wade had groaned every time the van hit a bump. I hoped the gunshot wound in his shoulder didn’t finish him off before we were done. I still wanted to screw with him a little more.

Trying to ignore the bullet that was one trigger pull away from shredding my brain, I looked out the van’s window at the damage that the Collective had done to the AISOR offices. They’d used a small bomb on the entranceway, blowing the doors in and turning part of the lobby into rubble. The upper floors were undamaged, apart from a few bullet holes in the windows.

Vivian had said that so far the cops had found no evidence of illegal activity in the building. AISOR’s Tunneling activity was licensed, and no records suggested any human experiments had been conducted. McCaffrey was too smart for that. I’d bet my trumpet she’d done everything off-site, and even then her name wouldn’t appear anywhere. Kowalski was her new fall guy, like Bohr had been all those years ago.

I’d got Vivian to convince her bosses to clear out most of the cops and forensics guys that were investigating after the attack. It went down better than I expected. They had pretty much all they could deal with at the moment, and were more interested in chasing down the Collective than hanging around collecting ballistics evidence. Besides, with twenty cops vanished while chasing the gangsters down, they were having a severe manpower shortage.

Now only a handful of cops were in the area, and from what I gathered on our drive around, most of them were blockading the street to keep any rubberneckers away.

“I do not like this,” Bohr said. He tapped the back of my head with the gun. “If this is a trap, you will be the first one I kill.”

“Of course,” I said. I’d directed the driver goon to park down an alley on the parallel street that the cops hadn’t blocked off. The van was hidden from view from any cops, but from where we were sitting we got a clear view of the AISOR building.

“Shall we?” I asked.

Bohr grunted, and the cold metal left the back of my head.

We got out of the van. Bohr kept the gun on me while the other gangster got the hostages out of the back and untied their ankles. He left their gags in place. Kowalski’s eyes were as big as his spectacles. Wade looked like he was chewing his gag in pain—the bloodstain on his shoulder bandage was getting bigger. And McCaffrey managed to look like she was out for a pleasant stroll with her grandson.

Bohr kept us in the alley for a full five minutes while his head swiveled around, checking the street, the buildings, the windows, and any shadow that could conceivably hide a man with a gun. Finally, he nodded and waved at me with his gun. “You first, hmm?”

He pushed me ahead of him, out into the street. I looked around as I walked, but there were no cops in sight. Better that way. Saved Bohr from turning the back of my head into a soup bowl. Strange, how much I wanted to live. The last few hours had convinced me of that. I’d been so ready to die, eager for it, almost. But no more. I wanted to get McCaffrey alone, get some answers. That was all that mattered. And then I had to make it up to some people. I couldn’t do that if I was dead. I didn’t want to carry this guilt with me to the grave.

I made it to AISOR’s destroyed entranceway, clambered through the criss-crossing police tape, and glanced back. Bohr looked up and down the street again. Then he waved to his goon, and all five of them hurried across the street. The goon kept his gun on Detective Wade. The gangster wasn’t dumb; he knew the value of a police hostage.

Bohr didn’t bother with climbing around the police tape. He just pulled out his ivory-hilted spike and sliced through it. The yellow tape drooped over the twisted metal door frame as Bohr stepped through, the others behind him.

Something in McCaffrey’s face changed as she entered the building. The muscles of her face slackened briefly. She met my eyes and smiled around her cloth gag.

“Good to be home, huh?” I said.

Bohr waved his spike at me. “Talk later, yes? I dislike this place. I want it gone. Walk.”

I held up a finger and reached into McCaffrey’s pockets. She smiled at me while I searched. I found a swipe card in a plastic sleeve in her side pocket. I led everyone to the elevators. They were still working. We piled in, and I swiped the card as I pressed the button for B4. The doors slid closed, and the elevator started moving with a whisper. I was close enough to smell the blood on Wade’s shoulder and the sweat dripping from Kowalski.

“You are tough, Miles Franco,” Bohr said.

“What?”

“I should have brought you in with us from the start. These ones killed your friend, yes? We could have destroyed them together.”

“Don’t fuck with a fucker, Daniel.” I could swear I felt Claudia’s hand on my shoulder, trying to soothe me. “You might not have killed her, but you let her die. I talked to your ex-employee Aran. You don’t care about the people who died, not anymore. This is all about you throwing your toys. They screwed you over, cut you out, so if you can’t have Tartarus, no one can. You’re over the edge.”

Bohr bared his teeth. “You are not far behind, hmm?”

The elevator doors slid open. If the cops or the Collective had been down here, it didn’t show. The black marble walls looked as shiny as ever, and all the computers remained in place, powered down. The only sounds were the humming coming from some unidentifiable machine and the elevator announcing we’d reached our destination. I stepped out, the others behind me.

“Search the place,” Bohr ordered, and his bodyguard snapped to attention. The Collectivist shoved me aside and swept through the room, his gun swinging around. He did a circuit of the room, poking his gun into any place large enough to hold a person, kicking open the few doors that left the main workspace. Apparently satisfied the bogeyman wasn’t going to jump out of the closet, he lowered his gun and nodded to Bohr.

“We are here,” Bohr said, tucking his spike back into his jacket. “The crystals.”

“Undo their gags,” I said, pointing at the hostages. “I want to make sure you haven’t hurt any of them too badly.”

Bohr’s forehead ridges lowered, but he nodded to his goon. The bodyguard tugged the gags out of each of their mouths in turn. Detective Wade spat blood on the ground when his came out.

“How you going, Detective?” I asked.

“Bite me, Franco.”

I grinned and inspected his wound. “They tagged you good.”

“It’s nothing. Is…is everyone okay?”

He meant Vivian. “Yeah. Everyone’s peachy.”

“Don’t give these bastards what they want.”

“Stop trying to be a hero,” I said. “Just sit down, shut up, and let Uncle Miles sort everything out.”

He scowled for a moment, his face lined with pain and annoyance. “I’m a dead man, aren’t I?”

I slapped him on his good shoulder and turned to the other two. Kowalski had been steadily trying to edge away from McCaffrey since we got out of the elevator. Even now, he seemed more afraid of her than he did of Bohr and the other goon.

“Sorry for nearly blowing your head off last night,” I said.

I don’t think he heard me.

I turned to McCaffrey last. “What are you smiling about?” I asked.

“You really were the best choice,” she said. “I studied you for months, but humans being what they are, you can never be sure what will happen when you wind them up and start them moving.”

“It was just easier getting to me than busting Caterina Andrews out of prison. All you wanted was someone with Chroma in their blood.”

She shook her head. “Not at all. Most people we tested the fluid on didn’t survive a day. The fluid drained them so quick it didn’t even get a chance to crystallize fully before they died. Only the strong survived. A homeless man who used to be a boxer. The Vei girl, the prostitute. And your friend. What was her name again?”

I brought my face close to hers, my fists balled in my pocket. “You know her name.”

McCaffrey smiled. “This is exactly what I mean. So much fire inside you. And somehow you’re still standing. How did you do it?”

“With great fucking difficulty.” I shot a glance at Bohr. He looked like he was getting impatient. I returned my attention to McCaffrey. “Why did you do all this? Why did Claudia have to die?”

“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you.”

I wanted to break her legs. I wanted to wail on her like I had Stretch, and then when it was all done I wanted to pour gasoline over her and light a match. But I stepped back and looked at Bohr.

“All right. I’m ready. You want your crystals?”

“Yes,” Bohr said.

I walked over to the bench, grabbed a pair of black goggles, and tossed them to Bohr. “Put those on. All of you.”

He examined the goggles and glared at me. “What is this?”

I tugged a pair of goggles over my eyes. Everything turned to blackness and white outlines. “This is your safety gear. The crystals aren’t here, exactly. They’re on Tartarus.”

I was feeling pretty proud of myself. Everything was falling into place. And then a bell dinged behind me.

That’s not part of the plan.

I pulled up my goggles in time to see the elevator doors slide open again. Aran, that damn Vei bastard, stood inside, his teeth bared. The machine pistol was in his hands.

“Shit,” I said. “Aran, wait—”

Somewhere behind me, the bodyguard swore. I glanced back to see him raising his gat.

He didn’t even get it to his hip before Aran opened fire. The roar of the machine pistol was deafening. The goon dropped in a cloud of red mist and sparks from a nearby computer. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. He looked like someone had caved in his forehead with a railway spike. Poor bastard. This isn’t supposed to happen. Everyone was supposed to get out alive!

I ducked and clutched my ears to block out the pain of the noise. Kowalski scrambled along the ground, out of the line of fire. Wade went for cover. But McCaffrey and Bohr stood motionless. The smile hadn’t left McCaffrey’s face.

Finally, the roar of the gunfire stopped. But Aran wasn’t done yet. The Vei charged out of the elevator. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I didn’t need to.

“No!” I shouted, diving in front of Bohr and McCaffrey. Aran’s finger hesitated over the trigger. The ringing in my ears slowly faded. I could hear Kowalski whimpering.

“What are you doing?” Aran shouted in Vei. “Why are they still alive?”

“I’m not killing them,” I said, taking a deep breath. Inside, I was screaming like a toddler at a toy store. The son of a bitch was going to ruin everything. If I told him the plan now, everything would be screwed up. I had to get them to Tartarus. I had to.

“They killed my family,” Aran said, advancing. “They killed your friend.”

I moved to keep myself between Aran and the others. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bohr’s fingers flexing around his pistol, but he kept it at his side. Wade stood slowly and gave me a look, his jaw tight. He glanced pointedly at Aran, asking if he should try to tackle him. I shook my head slightly. He’d never be fast enough.

I looked back at Aran. “I’m dealing with it.”

“Dealing with it?” he said in English. “I saw the police follow you here. I told you I don’t want them involved. I’m doing this my way.”

Fuck.

“The police?” Bohr said. He snarled at me. “You tried to trick me.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

McCaffrey smiled at him. “You can’t contact your friends, Daniel. There’s no reception in here. But I can help with the police problem.” She looked at Aran. “If you want to stop the police getting in here, press that red button by the elevator.” She pointed with her cuffed hands. “It’ll seal the shaft. It will take them an hour to get through.”

Aran snarled and pointed the gun at her, but I could see his brain working.

“Don’t listen to her,” I said.

Aran hesitated, then reached behind him and pressed the button without taking his gun off the rest of us. Red light flashed. A thick metal door slid down over the elevator doors. There was a groan as it locked into place. Great. Now we were alone down here.

“Now,” Aran said, “get out of the way, Franco. Take the policeman and go sit in the corner. I’m finishing this.”

My heart pounded. I needed to calm him, let him know I had this under control without giving myself away to McCaffrey and Bohr. Too bad my brain was coming up empty for new ideas. I met Wade’s eyes. He gave a small shrug. He had nothing either.

McCaffrey wasn’t having the same trouble. “Aran, is it?” she said. “I know what it’s like to lose family.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“But it doesn’t have to be this way, Aran. I can help you.”

Shit. I could see where she was going with this. “Aran, I’ve changed my mind. She’s trying to manipulate you. Kill her.”

Doc McCaffrey smiled. “You know what the crystals can do,” she said to Aran. “If you let me live, I can show you how to use them. I can help you get your family back.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I knew it was already too late. There was only one way to convince him not to pay attention to her, but I couldn’t say it. So I shut my mouth and prayed he wouldn’t be an idiot.

His gaze flicked to me, then back to McCaffrey. The rage in his eyes dimmed, and I knew I had lost.

“You’ll regret this,” I said.

“Probably. But I have to try.” He waved the machine pistol at me. “Get out of the way, Franco. Bohr, drop the gun.”

Bohr twitched, but he didn’t have a choice. He let go of the pistol.

“You should remove Daniel from this situation,” McCaffrey said to Aran. “You know how he can be.”

“I’m not doing anything until I have this sorted out. Everyone lives. Everyone stays together.”

I pointed to Kowalski where he sat against the wall, arms across his chest. He looked scared half to death. “At least leave Kowalski and the cop behind. They’ll just be in the way. Tie them up, if you have to.”

“No. The cop comes with us.” Aran ran his tongue along his sharp teeth. “But Kowalski can stay. I’ll deal with him later. The cop can tie him up before we go.” He nodded, as if trying to convince himself of something. “Franco, where are the crystals?”

“As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted, get some goggles on. We’ve got a little world-hopping to do.”

THIRTY-ONE

The sense of desire filled me again as soon as I opened the Tunnel. Even through the goggles, I could almost see the swirling colors. I tore my attention away from them long enough to take in McCaffrey’s twisted smile. My stomach clenched. Nice plan, Miles. Really worked out well. I shook my head and stepped into the Tunnel, letting the music engulf me.

I led the group down the Tunnel, Aran taking the rear. We were silent as we walked. Aran was brooding, Bohr’s forehead ridges were twitching in thought, and McCaffrey smiled serenely. Wade was directly behind me, too busy grunting through gritted teeth to talk. He stumbled once, nearly falling on top of me. I caught him, somehow managing to avoid grabbing his wounded shoulder. As he came close, he spoke in my ear.

“I hope you’ve got a plan, Franco.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Aran growled something at us, and we separated. The Vei was getting edgy. I didn’t want to see how far I could push him.

The end of the Tunnel appeared in my goggles. The artificial desire was doing wonders blocking out the feeling of rubber bands slowly tightening across my chest, but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I was more sensitive to the pull of Tartarus than the others, and it wouldn’t be easy to get out of this while being high as an Ink junkie.

“This is it?” Aran said as we approached the Tunnel exit.

“Yeah. I’d tell you guys not to do anything stupid when we cross into Tartarus, but if you do it’ll probably make things easier for me, so what the hell, go crazy. Take a dip in the pools. They’re nice this time of year.”

“That’s enough,” he said. “You first, Franco.”

I glanced at Wade, tried to smile reassuringly at him even though I knew he’d barely be able to see me through his goggles, and nodded.

Then I stepped back into Tartarus.

The power of the place dug a hook in my navel and tugged me forward before I’d even touched the ground on the other side. Somehow, the feeling was even stronger than it had been the first time I was here. I’d taken half a dozen steps toward the nearest pool of shimmering fluid before I got a handle on myself and slammed on the brakes.

It didn’t help that I now knew the beauty of Tartarus without goggles on. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep myself from tearing the goggles off. It almost would’ve been worth dying again just to see it one more time.

I’d engineered the Tunnel to bring us out more or less the same place we’d been last time. The cavern stretched out in all directions, filled with the echoes of fluid trickling down a thousand crevices. From here I could see the main pool, the place where I’d dived in and poisoned myself. Somehow, even after everything I’d been through, the idea still seemed appealing.

Wade came through a few seconds after me. The tension drained out of the cop’s body in an instant as he stared around at Tartarus like it was his first time at Disneyland. I grabbed his good arm and pulled him close.

“Don’t let it get to you,” I said. “And don’t do anything stupid until I tell you to.”

“What—?”

I cut him off as Doc McCaffrey came through the Tunnel. “What are you two conspiring about?”

I shoved Wade away from me and ignored her question. I could easily take her down, but Aran would be out any second, and I still intended to get out of this without being riddled with bullets.

Bohr was next out, head cocked. Aside from Aran and me, he was the only one with his hands unbound. He grabbed McCaffrey by the front of her blouse and showed her his teeth. “Whatever you’re doing—”

I took a step forward to intervene, but before I’d gone a foot, Aran swung out of the Tunnel and leveled his machine pistol at the two of them. “Get away from each other,” he said. “We’re doing this my way.”

Bohr’s teeth opened and closed inches from McCaffrey’s face, hissing. But after a moment, he released her and backed away.

Aran finally seemed to be taking in where he was, but he shook his head as if to shake off the feelings washing over him. “Good. Everyone stay calm. Franco, get the crystals.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just let me do one thing first.”

I released the knot of normalcy sitting in the back of my head. It unraveled, fading away. The white light in my goggles faded. It took the others a few seconds to notice anything had changed. But by then, it was far too late.

“He’s closing the Tunnel!” Bohr screeched.

Aran spun in time to see the last bit of the Tunnel contracted into nothing, leaving only Tartaran rock in its place.

“You wanted to be alone?” I said. “Now we’re really alone.”

Aran stalked over to me and leveled the gun at my head. “Open it again.”

“Gonna shoot me, Aran?” I said. “Who’ll get you out of here then? Assuming I had Kemia, which I don’t.”

Aran smacked me in the mouth with the butt of his gun. I went down, spat the blood from my mouth, and grinned at him.

“You shouldn’t’ve listened to McCaffrey,” I said. “She’s manipulating you.”

“Shut up!” he yelled, pointing the gun at me again. “Just…just shut up.” He backed up, rubbing his temple.

McCaffrey raised her bound hands in front of her. “It’s okay. Miles wouldn’t close the Tunnel without having another way out of here. Would you, Miles?”

I shrugged. “Staying here doesn’t seem so bad as long as I get to watch the rest of you starve to death.”

“No,” Aran said. “She’s right. What is it? How are you going to get out of here?”

“Try hitting me some more. Maybe I’ll feel like telling you then.”

“Forget that,” McCaffrey said. “The crystals are what’s important. You want your brothers and sister back, don’t you?”

Aran was calming down. It was hard to stay angry in a place like this. I was only managing it by imagining McCaffrey torturing puppies. Aran nodded and looked at me. “Get me the crystals.”

“They won’t do you any good, you know.”

“My family was everything to me. I have to try. I—Bohr!” The outlines of Aran’s face twisted.

I didn’t have to turn to see what got him so excited. Something cold and impossibly sharp pressed against the back of my neck, at the very top of my spine. My insides went cold.

“Everyone be quiet, yes?” Bohr said. “I kill Miles Franco, and none of us leave. Everyone, move over there. Do it!”

Detective Wade gave me an “Is this part of your plan?” look and limped over to join Aran and McCaffrey where they stood by a narrow stream of fluid, the reflections distorting their white outlines.

“Aran,” I said through gritted teeth, “how long did you work for this guy? How many times did he show you this pretty spike of his? And yet you didn’t take it away. You’re an idiot.”

“Good, good,” Bohr said. He switched to Vei to talk to Aran. “Hmm, you, throw the gun in the pool.”

Aran’s eyes were invisible behind his goggles, but I could see him thinking. Getting a good shot at Bohr with me in the way would be hard enough without the goggles distorting everything. He had no choice. He walked over to the main pool in the center of the cavern and tossed the gun in. It barely made a splash as it sunk.

“Good,” Bohr said again. “You all move apart and sit down, yes? The policeman over there. McCaffrey, over there. Franco…” The point of Bohr’s spike dug into my skin so hard I swore it was scraping the bone. “…the crystals.”

This keeps getting better.

Bohr stayed with me while I walked, the spike never far from my neck. I crouched at the base of the huge glittering stalagmite a few feet from the central pool and reached into a narrow crevice. My fingers closed around the glass jar. Goddamn it. How did it all go so wrong?

“Give them to me,” Bohr said, holding out his hand.

I passed him the jar. Even as it left my hand, I could hear the crystals singing in tune with the world. They glowed white in my goggles.

Bohr grinned and held the jar up to his face. “I hear it now, Miles Franco. You are right. It is beautiful.”

He was too busy staring at the crystals to look at me. I slipped my hand back into the crevice and grabbed another glass bottle. It sloshed as I pulled it out and slipped it into my pocket, but Bohr paid no notice. I’d only have one chance. I eyed the spike in his hands.

“We done?” I asked.

“Hmm? Yes, yes. I am sorry for the pain and the deaths. Unfortunate, yes. But you are free to—”

The sound was more of a ffuump than a crack. The noise was quickly swallowed up by the song of the cavern, but it was Bohr’s chest that swallowed the bullet.

The Vei stumbled and looked down at his shirt. Even through the goggles I could see the thin trail of blood crawling out of his ribcage like a snake.

Another ffump, then another. He said something that sounded like Vei, but I couldn’t make it out. He tried to take a step. He fell.

I don’t know why I caught him. I sure as hell had no love for the son of a bitch. Instinct, I guess. I awkwardly grabbed him around the shoulders and slowed his descent. His mouth was open, the point of each tooth shining in my goggles.

“A stupid idea, to bring us to such a dark place.” Doc McCaffrey said. “Makes it so easy for us all to conceal our weapons. Step away from him, Miles.”

I didn’t move except to look up. McCaffrey’s arms were outstretched in front of her, still joined at the wrist by her handcuffs. In her palm was a tiny pistol. It looked like a toy.

“Men are always hesitant to frisk an old woman properly,” she said. “Put down that bottle of Kemia you slipped into your pocket. I don’t want you getting any ideas.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a heartless bitch?” I said. “You should knit yourself a sweater that says so.”

She gestured with the gun. I stood up and took the Kemia out of my pocket, setting it down in front of me. I wanted to scream.

McCaffrey smiled at me and nodded, then lowered her gun to hip level and brought it around to cover Wade and Aran. Wade looked like he was in too much pain to do anything about her anyway, and Aran still sat on the cavern floor.

“Bohr never was sensible,” she said. “He should have waited until he saw the crystals before he made his move. Oh well. Get the crystals out of his hand. Take five steps toward me, put down the crystals, and then move back.”

I gritted my teeth and pulled back Bohr’s fingers one by one. Rigor mortis wouldn’t set in for a while, but he’d been gripping the jar hard when he died. His skin was still warm. Not even the songs of Tartarus could make it pleasant.

I finally got the jar loose, stepped forward, and placed it on the cavern floor, then stepped back. McCaffrey’s shoulders relaxed. She made a noise like a satisfied cat.

This was far from ideal. I’d figured I’d only have one gun to deal with, and then I could shut down the Tunnel and wait them out. Use the Kemia to get them disarmed, get some answers. Then I could open up a new Tunnel to take us back to AISOR’s basement. By that time Vivian would be in place. She would’ve led the targeted raids to break up most of the remaining Collectivists, and she’d be ready to arrest McCaffrey and Bohr as soon as they came back to Earth.

But that was down the shitter now. Aran had screwed us with his cowboy act. Bohr was another corpse for the morgue, McCaffrey had fished a gun from God knows where, and if we got back too quick, the cops wouldn’t be waiting, thanks to that damn seal on the elevator.

“Thank you,” she said. “Aran, go and take it. It’s yours.”

“What?” he said. He glanced at me, but I had no more answers than him. She was just going to give it away after all this?

McCaffrey smiled. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? And without your intervention I never would have got free of Daniel. So go on, take it.”

Aran rose and carefully made his way toward it, like a wild animal being offered food. McCaffrey smiled and nodded encouragingly as he picked up the jar and clutched it to his chest.

“You think this buys your life back?” he said.

“You shouldn’t make threats when you’re not the one holding the gun,” she said, her voice hardening for a moment. Then she was her old motherly self. “I’m sorry for what I did. Truly. But this is a chance for us to move on.”

I snorted. Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one surrounded by dead friends and family.

She ignored me and kept her eyes on Aran. His fingers curled protectively around the jar, his shoulders drooped, and he nodded. He moved back to his position and sat down. I couldn’t blame him. But I wanted to.

McCaffrey turned the gun back on me. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could tell she was sizing me up for something. A noose, maybe. I shivered. She took a step toward me, moving in time to the song in my head. For an old lady with a gat, she was still more graceful than I’d ever managed to be.

“Miles,” she said. “Move over there, will you?”

She waved the gun toward the pool.

I did the mental arithmetic to work out if I could rush her. Old people had delayed reactions, right? Sure, there was no cover, but she could only shoot me, what, three, four times before I reached her. And how much damage could that tiny gun do?

I glanced at Bohr’s body splayed out on the stone, swallowed, and said, “Since you asked so politely.”

I backed up to the pool.

“You’re a survivor,” she said.

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

“I admire that. A dead man is only useful once. A live one…” She shrugged. “But it’s not just your propensity for living that I like about you, Miles. You have heart. You came after me hard and fast. You’re a man who doesn’t sit down and play quietly.”

“Put the gun down, we’ll see how I play,” I said.

She laughed. “I knew you’d come for me. You had things to make up for. How drunk were you that day when she called you, begging for your help?”

I took a step forward.

She raised the pistol to aim it at my head. “Don’t be silly.”

I stopped.

“All this time you’ve been chasing me,” she said, “you’ve really been chasing yourself, haven’t you? The chase is over now. But you can still make it all worthwhile.”

“Yeah?” I said. “How?”

“Take your goggles off. Go back in the pool.”

“I didn’t bring my swimsuit.”

“I can offer you the same deal I gave to Aran here,” she said, moving slowly closer. “You’re a survivor, Miles. Somehow you survived your last encounter with the fluid. You got the crystals out. You can do it again. Make us a Tunnel, then let yourself be taken by the fluid again, let us take you back to Earth. When it’s time, we’ll remove the crystals. We’ll all get what we want. You can even come back to Tartarus again, take the fluid once more. Have some crystals of your own. You can make it all okay.”

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. “It will never be okay.”

“It can be,” she said. “You can bring her back. Claudia.”

I stared down the barrel of the gun. Aran and Wade were watching us, silent. They looked like they needed some popcorn. Tartarus sang in time with McCaffrey’s words, swirling around me like a stripper giving me a lap dance. Teasing me. Begging me to reach up and slip the goggles off. Just for a moment.

I took a shaky breath. “No.”

“Make the Tunnel,” she said. “Then go into the pool. We’ll get you back safe. I can manage the pain. It won’t be like last time.”

I shook my head. “No.”

She sighed and shifted her aim.

Ffump.

I didn’t feel it at first. The flash of the pistol had left an afterimage on my goggles, a little flower-shaped light in a world of darkness. Then the burn started. It was in my left thigh, just above the knee and a little to the left. Like someone had pressed a soldering iron against my skin. My leg quivered.

“It’s going to be okay,” McCaffrey said through a fog. “Sit down.”

It seemed like a good idea. I sat.

“Aran,” she said. “Bind his wound, then get a stone and help Miles while he scratches a Tunnel back to Earth. He’ll get the Kemia when it’s drawn, and not before.”

The fire was spreading up my leg. Aran moved beside me. Goddamn it. She’s got me.

“Franco.” It took me a moment to recognize the voice. Detective Wade. “Hey, asswipe. Look over here. Look at me.”

I tried to focus on him. He was still sitting. He had no chance of rushing McCaffrey.

“What the hell do you want?” I said.

“How bad are you bleeding?”

“How should I know? I can’t see shit.” I patted my leg, the pain searing me with every brush of fabric against the skin. “Somewhere between a trickle and a fire hose.”

Aran appeared next to me. He tore up the leg of my pants and worked on the bullet wound like he’d done it before. He packed fabric against the wound while white flashes of pain went off my head. By the time he was done I was sweating so much I needed a scuba tank. While I panted, Aran shoved a sharp rock the size of a fist into my hand. I tried to push it away, but Aran wouldn’t let up.

“Don’t do what she wants,” Wade said from somewhere far away.

“Hey, Detective,” I said. “How many cops does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one, but he’s never around when you need him.”

I laughed my ass off. No one else seemed to find it funny.

“Miles,” McCaffrey said. “The Tunnel, please.”

I stopped laughing and sat there looking at the rock, trying to work out whether to scream or pass out from the pain or do what I was told. I was never good at doing what I was told, but her sitting idea had been a good one, so maybe this would be too. Then again, this whole thing was too funny, and no one had gotten the joke yet. I dropped the rock next to me. Aran tried to force it back into my hand.

“Do what she says,” he said in Vei.

“You in a hurry to get back to Earth?” I said.

“I want my family back.” He paused and lowered his voice, hissing at me in Vei. “Please. I need your help. You saw my sister in the hospital. You can do the same with your friend. We can still get back at McCaffrey. I promise you we’ll do it. We’ll kill her. But not today.”

I started laughing again. I laughed so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. It felt like someone was jamming a screwdriver into my bullet wound. I laughed harder.

“Why aren’t you all laughing?” I said, gasping for breath. “Don’t you get it yet?”

“Get what?” McCaffrey said. For the first time there was doubt in her voice, and that made it all the funnier.

“They don’t work,” I said. “The crystals. It’s all bullshit. You think I didn’t already try to use them? You think that wasn’t the first thing I did? I want everything back the way it was. But it never will be. Your research was all flawed. Tartarus wants you to think you can make them work because it wants you to feed it more victims. That’s all this place is. Empty temptation. Everything you’ve done has been a waste. It was all for nothing. Now you see why it’s so fucking funny?”

Aran bared his teeth and pulled the jar of crystals from his pocket. “They’re useless?”

“He’s lying,” McCaffrey said. “He’s trying to play us. I saw them work. The wallet, and the money…”

“A trick,” I said. “I had a Tunneler friend in the alley near us. That’s why I had to get Bohr’s Tunneler to piss off, otherwise he’d sense the trick. Tania just temporarily changed the receipts in my wallet into cash.”

“You’re lying,” she said again.

I rolled onto my side, pulled out my wallet, tossed it into Aran’s hands. The Vei opened it. Nothing but receipts.

He shouted something raw and pained and incomprehensible. And then he was on his feet. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but it was too late. He turned to McCaffrey, snarling in Vei.

Ffump. Ffump.

He went down next to me, a hole in his chest, another in his stomach. He faced me, his mouth opening and closing, a low groan escaping his throat. I could hear Wade shouting and swearing.

“It’s not true,” McCaffrey said. “It…our research…”

I stretched out to put pressure on Aran’s wounds. His blood trickled downhill and into the pool.

“Give it up!” Wade was shouting. “Put down the gun. It’s over, McCaffrey.”

“Be quiet.” She swung the gun toward him. “It works! It has to work.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, tearing my eyes from Aran’s writhing form. “It’s just as fucked up as you and me.”

“Be quiet!” She turned the gat on me and pulled the trigger.

I rolled. The gun barked. The bullet struck the ground next to me, kicking up fragments of stone. I didn’t stop rolling. My leg stung like it was filled with hornets every time it struck stone. My ears pounded with blood and music.

And then I ran out of ground. My legs went into the pool first, numbing the pain. Everything felt better now. My body slipped into the fluid, spreading warmth outward from my chest. I still had my goggles on, but that didn’t help. I could hear the colors swirling around me.

My head slipped under the surface. I didn’t even make a splash as I sank.

THIRTY-TWO

A phone was ringing.

Consciousness came slowly. I opened my eyes, waited for the room to stop spinning. My mouth tasted like someone had pissed in it, and my clothes were starting to itch since I’d worn them for three days straight. Slowly, my apartment resolved itself around me. There was something wet and sticky on my shirt. I prodded it with a clumsy finger. I was still clutching a bottle of no-brand whiskey in my hand. I must’ve fallen asleep on the couch and spilled it all over myself.

Heh. The bottle couldn’t hold its liquor. Heh.

The phone rang again, driving nails through my skull. I tossed the empty bottle to the ground with the others and rubbed my eyes with the back of my sleeve. What time was it? I reached for the curtains, realized my arms were about three feet too short, and gave up. I was dry as hell, and my stomach was moving around like an accordion. I could do with a good long piss as well.

Ring ring.

“All right, fuckin’ all right,” I yelled in the phone’s general direction. I tried to determine precisely where up was, made a guess, and shoved myself in that direction. I got to my feet without falling. How about that? I was doing all right.

I staggered across my apartment. The carpet was strangely sticky beneath my bare feet. I should get that sorted out. Must be a leak again. I’d only been out on bail a couple of months, and already the place was falling to pieces around me. Maybe it was my lawyer calling me, telling me I’d missed court. Nah, they’d send cops around to haul me down, wouldn’t they? The phone let out another screeching ring like it was trying to find the resonant frequency to make my skull shatter.

I jerked the phone off the cradle before it could ring again and jammed it against my ear. “Yeah?”

“Miles. I thought you must be out.” It took me a moment to translate the woman’s accent.

I squeezed one eye shut tight to try to focus on the clock on the wall. No good. “Who is this?”

“It’s Claudia,” she said. “I’m not doing so good.”

I stopped squinting and gripped the phone a little tighter. “Claudia. Are you okay? Do you need help? I can be there in…” I tried the clock again, but I swear the numbers weren’t where they were supposed to be. “…soon. Where are you?”

“No, it’s all right. I don’t need help. I just wanted to talk.”

I rubbed my stubble. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved. “What’s going on?”

“I wanted to say sorry.”

“Sorry? The hell for?”

“You were right,” she said. “I didn’t take your advice. I did the drug trial. It was a bad idea.”

She could’ve slipped back into German for all I could tell. “Drug trial? Advice? Help me out here, Claudia.”

“Last week, remember? I called you to talk about the drug trial I’d heard about. It would’ve paid for my visa to Heaven. The guy who talked to me seemed nervous, though, and I wasn’t sure, so I wanted to talk to you.”

“You did?”

For a few minutes, the phone was only filled with the sound of wet coughing. Was she sick? Finally, she came back on the line. “You’re the only one who’s always been there for me without wanting anything in return. You had a lot on with the trial and everything, and I think you’d had a lot to drink, but you told me not to do it. You said it sounded shady, and you were right. But I wanted that money.”

“I could’ve got you to Heaven,” I said. “I’ve told you that before.”

“I know.” She sounded sad. “I thought I could do everything by myself. Look how that turned out.”

Something about the way she was talking was making me nervous, but I couldn’t puzzle it out with all the booze swimming between my ears. “Where are you? We’ll go grab a bite.”

“I’m not very hungry,” she said. She coughed again. “My stomach is upset. I think the drug doesn’t agree with me.”

“What drug? Who gave you it?”

“I…I don’t remember. I think I blacked out. I woke up back in my bed last night.”

Even drunk, my mind skipped straight to the darkest theories. Claudia going alone to a shady drug trial and blacking out? My stomach churned. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make the words come out.

“I’m going to the hospital now,” she said, sounding remarkably calm.

I nodded into the phone. “Good. Yeah, that’s good. Make sure they call the cops, huh? Just…just in case, you know? In fact, I’ll come with you.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve ordered a taxi. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. And I should have been there more for you the last few months. You’ve always been there for me. With all this Chroma stuff, I should have—”

“Hey, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. You did everything you could. I’m just stubborn.” There was the sound of a car horn. “The taxi’s here. Look after yourself, Miles. And let others look after you too. I know you don’t think you need it, but trust me, you do. I learned that too.”

“I’ll visit you,” I said.

“Goodbye, Miles. And thank you.”

“See you round.”

It took me three tries to get the phone back on the cradle. I swayed in place, trying to decide whether to get a taxi myself and meet her at the hospital. But she sounded like she wanted a bit of alone time first. I’d visit her in the morning. Whenever that was.

I staggered back to the couch, snagging another bottle of some unidentifiable substance on the way. It smelled like booze, so that was good enough. The alcohol kept the visions of the gangsters I’d killed away, made it easier to get through the days in court. I collapsed into the creaking cushions of the couch, took a swig, and closed my eyes.

Maybe I should write myself a note, remind me to go visit Claudia in hospital. I glanced around, but I couldn’t find a pen in my immediate vicinity. Ah, to hell with it.

Imagine that, Claudia being worried about me, apologizing to me. She was a good kid. I hoped she’d be okay.

Darkness took me.

I opened my eyes. I’d only been out a few seconds, but it felt like I’d been reincarnated. The goggles turned the swirling colors of the Tartaran fluid into streaks of black and white. The liquid pressed against my mouth, my nose, my skin, trying to get in. Trying to use my body. But it wasn’t inside me yet.

The dream—memory—played inside my head. I’d thought Claudia had called me to ask for help. But that wasn’t it at all. McCaffrey and her goons had already knocked her out and brought her to Tartarus. Injected her with fluid, probably from this very pool. And then they’d returned her to her home, to wait until she died. To draw me out.

It wasn’t my fault. I felt Claudia next to me, her hands keeping the fluid out of my mouth, her whispers in my ear telling me to stay alive. I sunk to the bottom of the pool, my body coming to rest on the smooth stone bottom. My hand touched something that felt like plastic.

Claudia was dead. That was irreversible. I was a fuck-up, a drunk, a loser. But I could forgive myself. I’d done everything I could.

Well, almost everything. There’s still one more thing to do. My hand wrapped around the grip of the machine pistol that Aran had tossed in the pool. I planted my feet on the pool floor and pushed off, swimming back toward the surface.

Though my lungs were burning, I forced myself to come up slowly, just breaching the surface with the top of my head. When my nose came clear of the fluid, I sucked in air and let the fluid drip out of my ears. I could hear shouting. As quietly as possible, I stroked forward and rested my arm on the edge of the pool before raising the gun out of the fluid and shaking it dry.

The fluid on my goggles obscured things, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. McCaffrey was pacing back and forth, the gun gripped in her bound hands. Wade tried to get to his feet, but McCaffrey pointed the tiny pistol at him, yelling at him to be still.

“You have to help me get him out,” Wade shouted. “You want to live, we need a Tunneler. Put down the gun.”

“Be quiet,” she said. “Miles has Tunneler friends. They’ll know he’s here. When he doesn’t come back, they’ll open a Tunnel to get here. I just have to wait.”

“Even if you’re right, you’re still screwed. You think they’ll let you walk out of here free?”

She stopped pacing and turned toward him. “Do you think your police force will risk one of their own getting killed? You, Detective, are my pass out of here.”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Aran was turned toward me a few feet away, his arm stretched out. The rise and fall of his chest was quick and shallow. Without medical care he wouldn’t be sticking around much longer. He met my eyes and opened his mouth. I pressed a finger to my lips, and he nodded slowly.

McCaffrey turned her back to me, still shouting at Wade. I dug my fingers into a crack in the ground and slipped out of the water. The fluid drained off me instantly, sucked back into the pool. The pain roared again in my leg. I hoped Aran’s makeshift bandage had kept most of the fluid out of the wound. But right now I had more pressing concerns.

I tried to stand, failed. Fine. I dragged myself along the ground, the stone scraping me with every movement.

Bohr’s body lay fallen and twisted between me and McCaffrey, his jacket open, his head facing away from me. I dragged myself toward him, gripping the machine pistol and gritting my teeth. I could shoot McCaffrey from here. It’d be hard to miss. But there were enough bodies already, and a burst from the gun would be too clean, too easy for her. I pulled myself along until I was alongside Bohr. The sleeve of his outstretched arm touched against my side, along with something cold and sharp.

Then McCaffrey turned back toward me and froze. Damn it. I guess a bit of luck was too much to ask for.

“Miles,” she said, pointing the tiny pistol at me. “You are a survivor, aren’t you?”

Heart hammering, I carefully moved forward so my body covered the machine pistol. I prayed that with Bohr’s body in the way, she hadn’t spotted it.

“This makes things much easier,” she said, striding toward me and Bohr’s body. “I’m sorry for shooting at you before. But now we can get back to making that Tunnel out of here. Take us somewhere away from AISOR, where the police won’t look for us right away.”

“Jesus, don’t I even get a minute to catch my breath?” I said. I inched my fingers back toward Bohr’s hand and looked past McCaffrey at Wade. “Hey, Detective. You’re not in a rush to get home, are you?”

“No more stalling,” McCaffrey said. She stopped on the other side of Bohr’s body, barely three feet from me, and pointed her pistol at my head. “The crystals may not work, but I’m not going down. You make the Tunnel now, or I kill you and take my chances.”

Her voice had lost all hint of softness. I froze, one hand wrapped around Bohr’s cool fingers, the other shielding the machine pistol from her view.

“I heard you talking before,” I said. “You were wrong. My friends aren’t coming. They don’t even know how to make a Tunnel to Tartarus. I didn’t want to give you any more chances for escape than I had to. You’re screwed, Doc. Kill me, and you’re stuck here.”

Her fingers twitched over the trigger. “Well, in that case, I’ll kill the detective.”

She turned toward Wade. He raised his hands in front of his face, like he could stop the bullet.

I ripped the ivory-handled spike from Bohr’s hand. At the same time, I shoved myself up onto my good knee and hurled the machine pistol across the cavern toward Wade.

“Do something stupid,” I said.

McCaffrey seemed to hesitate, her head tracking the gun as it clattered across the ground. Then she aimed her pistol at Wade’s head. Too slow.

I drove the spike into the back of her leg. The Heaven-derived metal pierced her skin and bone like water. She screamed. I kept pushing, putting all my weight into it. Her gun went off as she fell, killing an innocent bit of rock. The spike went out the other side of her leg and kept going through the stone of the cavern floor. I drove it to the hilt and shoved her down, pinning her by the leg to the ground.

Wade was already moving. He’d snatched the machine pistol from the ground with his good hand, and now he was moving toward us, using his forearm to steady his aim.

Still screaming, McCaffrey pointed her gat at him. Wade stomped on her hand. Bones cracked. She screamed louder. The pistol came loose. Wade kicked it away, keeping the machine pistol trained on her. He was panting.

“You were right, Franco,” he said. “That was very fucking stupid.”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve. “I aim to please.”

McCaffrey writhed on the ground. There was surprisingly little blood leaking from the wound in her leg where Bohr’s spike pinned her down. I could see her trying to move her leg, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. It was almost pitiful, really. I resisted the urge to break her other hand for good measure.

“Help me up, huh?” I said to Wade. The cop tucked the machine pistol under his shoulder, gave me his good hand, and pulled me to my feet. Well, foot. I wasn’t going to be putting any weight on my left leg for a while.

Wade went to tend to Aran’s wounds. I stood there for a few seconds, breathing like a ninety-year-old with emphysema. I looked over the scene of carnage. Bohr’s lifeless form, mouth open. Aran, slowly bleeding out, groaning softly. And now McCaffrey, pinned to the ground like a butterfly specimen. Wade was shot, and so was I. I needed to start keeping my own personal trauma surgeon on retainer.

“This place is giving me a headache,” Wade said as he pressed his hands against the wound in Aran’s chest. “Get us out of here.”

“Say please,” I said.

“Fuck you, Franco.”

I hobbled across the ground and reached down for the bottle of Kemia I’d left lying there, but I shouldn’t have bothered. At the other end of the cavern, where we’d come in, a series of four intersecting circles began to glow on the ground. The light grew brighter, and then the stone floor gave way in the center as the Tunnel formed. I smiled. Nice work, Des.

Wade looked at me, and I shrugged.

“I was bluffing,” I said. “You think I was going to risk getting stuck here without having someone back on Earth ready to open a Tunnel if I took too long? Screw that.”

“You’re a son of a bitch.”

I pointed to Aran. “We can make a sled to drag him if we need to.”

“What about her?” he said, nodding at McCaffrey.

I studied her. She’d finally gone silent, but she still moved around, her left hand opening and closing on the ground. “We can come back for her. I want to talk to her first, though.”

Wade nodded and turned back to Aran. It didn’t look good for the Vei, but we had to try to get him back. McCaffrey, on the other hand…

I sat down in front of her, giving my leg a break. She was breathing hard, but she seemed lucid. I hoped she wasn’t going into shock.

“This is your one chance,” I said. “I could leave you here. I could return to Earth, get my friend to close the Tunnel, and then no one would be able to come get you. You’re done, Doc. Most of your goons have been killed by the Collectivists, and the cops are rounding up the rest. Same with Bohr’s boys. If I take you back to Earth, you’ll get prison. Three meals, four walls, all that good shit. If I leave you here, you’ve got about a day or two before you die of thirst. That’s if you don’t bleed out first. Understand?”

She nodded, panting.

“Good,” I said. “So here’s your chance. I just wanna know one thing. Why did you want the crystals so badly? What did you want to do with them that made all this worth it? Convince me you deserve to live.”

She licked her lips. “Years ago, my husband was with our daughter in Heaven. A sightseeing trip. I was back here, working. Too busy, and I’d been to Heaven before.” She took another labored breath. “On their way back to Earth, the Tunnel collapsed. We never found out what happened. The design was probably poor. You can’t trust these government-sanctioned Tunnelers.”

I nodded and said nothing.

“My husband, my daughter. Neither of them were recovered.” She held up her hand, where her wedding ring still sat. “I wanted them back. That’s all I wanted.”

I couldn’t see her eyes behind her goggles, but I could picture them. Fatigue hit me like a truck. It was over. I pushed myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the pain.

“You done, Detective?” I called to Wade.

He’d taken his jacket off and placed it under Aran. He dragged the Vei toward the Tunnel, both of them groaning with each step. “Help me with this before I pass out,” Wade said.

I hobbled over and took hold of the other side of the jacket. It was awkward as hell, but we got Aran to the edge of the Tunnel.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Get him into the Tunnel. I’ll be there in a second.”

He nodded, looking like he was about to say something, but he shut his mouth again and grabbed hold of the jacket. He stepped out over the edge of the Tunnel and swung down below the surface, dragging Aran with him.

I’d kill for something to make a crutch out of, but this place wasn’t exactly brimming with timber. I turned toward McCaffrey and stared down at her.

“Take it out,” she said, gesturing to the spike in her leg.

“No,” I said.

She stared at me. “You wouldn’t leave me here, Miles. Would you?”

I crouched in front of her. “Yes. You were lying to me, weren’t you? About your family.”

“If I die here, you’ll never know.”

I wanted to laugh, but I just didn’t have it in me.

“You’re really going to leave me, aren’t you?” she said. “What could I have said?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing you could have said would have saved you. No excuse, no reason would be good enough. You killed my friend. That is unforgivable.”

I got up and limped back toward the Tunnel. When I entered it, I couldn’t hear her screaming at me anymore.

I came back to Earth in the AISOR basement, dragging a near dead Vei and feeling like my leg was about to fall off. The Tunnel closed behind us, finally shutting off the song of Tartarus. I couldn’t be happier to hear the end of it. The last of the guilt and rage drained out of me. I could be me again.

Vivian, Desmond, and Tania were waiting for us, along with a couple of medics and half the Bluegate police department. Someone had burned a hole in the sealed elevator shaft with an acetylene torch. The medics grabbed Aran and shoved us out of the way. I collapsed to the ground spread eagle. I think I’d earned a break. Wade sat down marginally more gracefully.

“Thanks for the assist, Des,” I said. “Your timing is terrible, as always.”

Desmond shook his head. “So, how did your plan go, guy? Because from the looks of you, it went great. Is that a bullet wound in your thigh?”

“Plans are overrated,” I said. A medic ripped back the bandage, and I would’ve broken his nose if I wasn’t in so much pain. “I find that plans are secondary to the ability to take a good beating.”

Tania crouched by my side, her eyes wide as she examined the extent of my injuries. Behind her, Vivian stood with arms crossed.

“You certainly are good at getting beaten up,” Vivian said.

“I know. It’s my superpower.”

“I thought your superpower was the reality-manipulating magic.”

“Nah. That’s just gravy.” It felt like the medic was putting out cigarettes in my wound, but I was afraid to look. “Where’s Kowalski?”

“In custody,” she said. “Where are McCaffrey and Bohr?”

“Gone,” I said.

“Franco,” Wade said warningly. Another medic was buzzing around him, trying to look at his shoulder.

“All right, all right. I was just messing with her. Bohr’s dead, but Des can go back and pick McCaffrey up. She got herself stuck. Don’t hurry, though.”

Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do now?”

“Told her I was leaving her there to die. It was just too damn funny.”

Vivian said something else, but I didn’t hear it. I was too busy passing out. I only had one dream while I slept. Claudia was in her cocktail dress again, smiling. She kissed me on the cheek, ruffled my hair, and said, “Thank you.”

THIRTY-THREE

I sucked at playing trumpet sitting down. I mean, I sucked anyway, but sitting down with my leg all bandaged like an Egyptian mummy seemed to shrink my lungs to about half their usual size. It was like trying to play with a belt around my chest. But my bandmates and I played anyway.

The bar was damn near empty, which wasn’t surprising, considering it was three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. Desmond had slipped the bartender ten bucks to let Tania in even though she was underage. I’d hate to think how much he’d have to pay to get Toto in here. They sat at a table ten feet from what could generously be referred to as the stage, Desmond taking pulls of an imported beer and Tania with a glass of Coke. Diet Coke. Like I couldn’t already circle her entire waist with my thumb and forefinger.

My heart swelled just looking at the two of them as they smiled away and pretended they didn’t want to block their ears. It had been Tania that’d pulled the wallet trick in the Avenues. It’d been a long range Pin Hole, but she’d pulled it off perfectly. I couldn’t believe how good she’d got.

The door to the bar opened just as we came to the end of the song. I almost missed the last couple of notes. Vivian glanced around the nearly empty bar, raised an eyebrow at me, and came in. She was in her work clothes—black pants and a white blouse—and she looked fantastic. I held the last note for a moment, then let the trumpet drop as Bubbles took us out on the keyboard. As the music died, Desmond clapped and Tania whistled.

I gave the best bow I could manage while sitting, then turned to my bandmates. Our keyboardist, Bubbles, had finally surfaced after a three-week-long drinking session on some tropical island, looking like someone had dropped an anvil on him. Salin looked much the same as he had at Claudia’s funeral. Nothing much ruffled Salin. He hadn’t said anything about what’d happened to me over the last few days, though I knew he’d heard about it. He’d just nodded at me and told me to remember that the last four bars of the piece were supposed to be allegro.

“Let’s take a break,” I said.

Bubbles pushed up his dark glasses and made a face. “I thought you said there were going to be people here.”

“There are people here.”

“You can’t count your friends. That’s cheating.”

I put my trumpet back in its case and used my crutch to get myself up. The bullet hadn’t hit any major arteries, but it’d torn up the muscle pretty good. The docs said I might have a bit of a limp even after it healed, and they were worried my hearing had taken a pounding with all the gunshots going off by my head. But I didn’t care. I was more content than I’d been in years.

I hobbled over to Desmond and Tania. Desmond kicked out a seat for me, which I gratefully accepted. “Some advice,” I said. “If you ever get shot, don’t get shot in the leg. It’s not fun.”

“Stop being such a bitch,” Desmond said. “You can’t pretend you didn’t deserve it.”

I stole a couple of fries from the bowl they were sharing and shoved them in my mouth while I eyed Tania. I swore she looked older each time I saw her. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I told you three times already,” she said, rolling her eyes and smiling. “We’re on break at the moment.”

“Oh, right.” I scratched my leg—the bandages were always itchy—and tried to think of the right words. It’d been Desmond who’d gone to Tartarus and left the crystals and the Kemia there for me. Even though it was dangerous, even after everything I’d done, he gladly helped me. “I should’ve come to you guys at the start. I didn’t want to drag anyone else into my mess, especially after last winter. But you were right, Des. I was being an asshole, and in the end I couldn’t do it alone. I’d be a ghost if it wasn’t for you guys. I dunno what to say.”

“How about thanks?” Tania suggested.

“Yeah, that works.” I looked over Desmond’s shoulder, where Vivian was standing a few paces back. She caught my eye, gave me a quick smile, and jerked her head toward the back of the bar. I nodded at her and turned back to Desmond and Tania. “I’ll be back. Tania, don’t let him get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

“Can you buy me a beer?” she said. She pointed at Desmond. “He won’t.”

“No,” I said. Tania pouted.

I grabbed my crutch, got up, and followed Vivian to the corner of the bar. Neither of us spoke until we were out of earshot of the others. We took seats in a booth. I took the opportunity to study her face. The bags under her eyes had faded, so I assumed she’d finally managed to get some sleep. But even though she looked more relaxed now, she was still carrying too many cares. I was done, but a good cop in this city was never finished working. Her gaze traveled over my face. I could tell she was judging the extent of my bruises. I tried a grin. She smiled back.

“I didn’t think you’d make it,” I said.

She shrugged. “I have to get back to work in a few minutes. We’re still working up charges on a lot of the Collectivists. I’m going to be typing all night.”

While I was prancing around getting my ass shot in Tartarus, Vivian and every cop she could get her hands on had been busting the remaining Collectivists. Most of them had been caught in possession of unregistered firearms, so that was enough to haul them downtown while they got the rest of the charges sorted. A lot of the gangsters were parolees and cast-offs from the Gravediggers or the Andrews family gangs, most of them with rap sheets longer than my arm. Some would walk, but enough of them should be going down to pretty much put the gang out of commission.

As for AISOR, no one really knew what the hell was going on. The company didn’t have a board of directors, so with Kowalski in police custody, the building damaged by the Collective’s bomb, and half the assets seized, they were at panic stations. Most of the business they did had been legit, and it looked like most of the employees had no idea the sort of shit they’d been up to.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Vivian said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Mr. Poole’s lawyers are kicking up a fuss.”

“Who?”

“The tall guy,” she said. “The enforcer for the Collective. The one with the coat.”

“Oh, right. Stretch. What are they so worked up about?”

Vivian tapped the table with her fingernails and looked me in the eye. “By the time he was finally arrested, he seemed to have sustained several injuries. Dislocated jaw, unexplained bruising, a small amount of internal bleeding. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Miles?”

I rubbed my chin. “Maybe he fell.”

“He was lying handcuffed on the floor of that apartment.”

“Are you asking me if I beat the living shit out of the man that tried to put me through a grinder, shot at me, knocked out my best friend, killed the mayor, killed that Vei kid that helped save me, and tried to blow your head off? Is that what you’re asking, Detective?”

She said nothing.

“Well, all right then.” I decided to change the subject before I wound up in cuffs myself. “And what about McCaffrey? How’s she doing?”

“She hasn’t said a word since we brought her back from Tartarus. Won’t even say who stabbed her in the leg.”

I tried to look innocent. “Some things are best left unsaid, I think.”

“We’re slowly pulling together a case against her, using the information we got from the undercover police inside AISOR. It’s going to be weeks before we’ve got something that won’t blow over in a strong breeze, but we’ll get there. Mr. Poole is willing to testify against her to get better treatment. Some of the Collectivists we arrested have testimony we can use as well.”

“You’ll get her?”

Vivian nodded, smiled. “She’s going down. Kowalski as well. He wasn’t the leader, but he did terrible things.”

The relief felt as good as the painkillers the doctors had been feeding me. I closed my eyes. I did it, Claudia. I was a goddamn wrecking ball through this whole thing, but I did it. We got them.

Something touched me. I opened my eyes to find Vivian’s fingertips brushing the back of my hand, her eyes on my face. “Are you all right, Miles?”

“Yeah,” I said, and I meant it. “Yeah, I’m good. For now, at least.”

She chewed her lip, like she was thinking something over. I enjoyed just watching her think.

Eventually, Vivian glanced up from the bar table and met my eyes. “You’re a mess, Miles.”

All right, I’ll admit that dented my confidence a little. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Let me finish. You’ve been a mess these last few months. I don’t think you do so well on your own. But when you get it in your head to do something, you go at it as hard as that damn creature of yours. I don’t think I really understood what you were trying to do last summer, when you went after Andrews, trying to save me.”

“But you do now?”

“Maybe.” She went back to tapping on the table. “I’m concerned for you. I think if I walk out of here now, in a month you’ll be in the gutter again. It’s in your nature. The only time you’re not destroying yourself is when you’ve got your teeth in something else.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Phil.”

“But you’re a good Tunneler, and you’re damn good at wriggling out of whatever trouble you’ve got yourself in.” She flashed a smile at me. “Even a lug head like you can see things are changing. Tunneling-related crime used to be simple. Drugs, smuggling, illegal immigration, a bit of reckless Tunneling. But with the Chroma thing, and Limbus, and now this, it’s getting out of hand. Bloody hell, the mayor just got assassinated because of this Tartarus business. The department doesn’t have the…” She seemed to struggle to find the right word. “…expertise…to deal with all this.”

I remembered what Caterina said when I visited her at the prison. Maybe this was a new leap forward in the history of Tunneling. Mostly it just felt like the Wild West.

“Are you offering me a job?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t be on salary,” she said. “Strictly freelance. But we could use you. This McCaffrey thing is going to take a while to clear up, but the world’s going to keep changing in the meantime. The gangs are regrouping, and we’re getting interesting rumors about political extremists in the Vei community. You’ve been closer to the dirty side of Tunneling than anyone we’ve got in the department. You seem to speak Vei better than most of our translators. So if you’re interested, we can look at bringing you along to consult for us. If you can keep it together.”

I sat back in the booth and considered it. Working for the cops. Try telling that to my sixteen-year-old self. But maybe she was right. Maybe it was time to come in out of the cold. It was all right when I was just destroying myself. But I couldn’t keep doing that to Vivian and Des and Tania. They’d saved my life. It wasn’t mine to throw away anymore.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I’d like that.”

She smiled again, properly this time, and I couldn’t help but grin back. Her pocket beeped, and she pulled out her cell phone.

“It’s Detective Wade,” she said, checking the text message. “I should get going.”

“They work you guys too hard. You should take that shit up with your union.”

She stood and waited while I levered myself to my feet as well.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said.

“Thanks for everything, Viv.”

She turned away and made for the door.

“Hey!” I called. “Don’t I even get a kiss goodbye?”

She flipped me off without turning back and let the bar door swing closed behind her. I grinned and limped back to the stage where Salin and Bubbles waited.

“One more song?” I said.

They nodded. I sat down and retrieved my trumpet. I looked around. There was only one thing missing, and she wouldn’t be around anymore. I missed her voice. But the show must go on.

I brought the trumpet to my lips. Salin led us in. I played for all I’d lost. I played for her.

And for a little while, everything was all right.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Thank you for reading! Rest assured, Miles will return.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Strange is a writer of urban fantasy and other fantastika. He is especially fond of writing hardboiled stories with a noir influence. His goal is to deliver intense, humorous and sometimes dark stories to his readers.

In his spare time, Chris is an unapologetic geek, spending far too long wrapped up in speculative fiction books, watching old zombie movies and playing computer games. He lives in the far away land of New Zealand, and occasionally he goes to university like he’s supposed to.

He doesn’t plan on growing up any time soon.

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THE MAN WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS

Originally published by Cheeky Minion 2013

Copyright © 2013 Chris Strange

Kindle Edition

Version 1.0

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, and locales are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living, dead, or in another plane of existence) is entirely coincidental. May contain traces of nuts.

Table of Contents

THE MAN WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SCREWED-UP LIFE OF MILES FRANCO

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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THE MAN WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS