flashed as I staggered and started to fall.
Smooth material brushed my face as someone darted past me. The case disappeared again, leaving only the radiation signature. The cluster of particles moved away quickly, fading away to nothing as they moved out of range.
I went down on my knees, shaking. One of my internal stim packets popped as the JZI tried to cut through the fog. My stomach churned, and I had pins and needles in my legs as the feeling came back. I manually popped two more.
That did the trick. Everything got brighter. My heart pounded as oxygen and adrenaline flooded my bloodstream. I picked my gun back up and pushed myself to my feet, the room spinning around me.
The revivor had gone back down the corridor, but it had too much of a head start. If it left through the closest exit, then it would come out near the loading dock. I made for the freight entrance instead and slapped my palm on the button.
The stim wouldn’t last long, but if I didn’t beat him down there, it wouldn’t matter anyway. The door began to rise on its track and I ducked through the gap, my muscles starting to tighten. It was getting hard to breathe. A cold gust of wind and rain hit me as I crossed the dock and slipped on the steps. People stopped on the sidewalk a few feet away from me and stared. Sirens had begun to wail, and I saw red-and-blue lights flash down the length of the street.
The map put me on the western side of the building. If the revivor made a run for it, it would be through the alley out back. Rain pummeled me as I tacked left past a pile of trash and between the buildings. Water was running down in a stream from a clogged gutter up ahead, and I headed toward it, looking for signs of the radiation signature. It was getting harder to move. The side of the building was veering away. I shook my head, trying to focus. Something splashed in a puddle near a pile of trash bags. I stood there, trying to keep my balance, and watched it.
Every time I took a breath, my chest got tighter. Looking back and forth down the alley, I didn’t see anything.
I watched the rain stream down from the gutter, splashing into a puddle formed around a crack in the pavement. The stims weren’t working anymore. My arms and legs started to get heavy again.
There was no answer. I was still staring at the water kicking up droplets when I realized the words never appeared in the HUD. I hadn’t sent the message. The coupling to the JZI had dropped.
The air blurred in front of me. The water was streaming in slow motion, and for just a second I saw it stop about five or six feet above the ground. Water sprayed off something I couldn’t see; then it continued like it never happened.
Something moved next to the pile of trash bags; then a dark shape flew toward me. A large plastic bag hit me and tore open, scattering garbage as I heard feet hit the pavement, running for the street.
“Stop!”
I couldn’t get a bead on it. I lunged and felt cloth under my hand. I grabbed a fistful of it, but it slipped through my fingers as the footsteps moved away. My chest burned. When I took a step, my leg crumpled under me and I went down on the wet pavement.
From the blacktop, I could see the crowds of people moving down the sidewalk. Wind blew sheets of rain across the street as I watched them pass. One of them glanced over at me, but kept walking.
Everything was going blurry. The blind spot floating in front of my eyes started blooming, getting bigger until everything began to go dark.
The revivor had gotten away. Along with the one Takanawa had taken, twelve nuclear devices had just left the hotel and disappeared into the city.
Zoe Ott—Outside Empire Apartment Complex
I’d been sitting on the bench, watching it rain for, like, an hour, and even with an umbrella, it was pretty miserable. The slicker kept me mostly dry, but it was cold enough that I could see my breath coming out through my nose. I figured I’d probably end up getting sick. I don’t know why I didn’t just go home.
Everything had changed, back when I first met Nico. I still don’t remember a lot of it, since I had been drinking nonstop then, but I know at some point I had gotten sucked into whatever he was involved in, and I almost got killed. A lot of it was a blur, but I remembered a revivor came into my house and dragged me away. My downstairs neighbor almost died trying to save me. Nico brought that woman—the one from my dreams—back to life, and she almost killed him. I think I might have actually killed someone myself.
After, when the FBI questioned me, I told them I didn’t know anything. I made them believe me, and I went home. It seemed like a long time ago.
Nico kind of took me under his wing after that. He started bringing me to help with interrogations at the FBI, which, in a weird way, was kind of how we first met. No one knew how I got my results. They just knew I did. I got cleaned up, sort of, and got semiregular work there. I moved with Karen downstairs, and we got to be good friends. The roommate thing was doomed to fail, though, and I was back upstairs in four months. The drinking just got to her after a while, and she never said it, but I think the visions did too.
“I’m so stupid….” I muttered, watching the rain fall.
The rain was supposed to go all week, I’d heard. It was so dark and gray all the time that most places kept their lights on even during the day. It was the most depressing time of year, and it was the first time I’d tried to face it when I wasn’t drunk. So far, I’d hated every minute of it.
Something hissed next to me on the bench, and when I turned to look, I saw a woman sitting beside me. She was hunched over with her hair covering her face, and her coat was black and burned. When the rain hit her body, it sizzled, and smoke drifted off her. The ends of her sleeves still smoldered. She wasn’t real.
They never were.
She didn’t look at me. After a minute, she looked up at the apartment building across the street, and I saw her face was scalded and covered in soot. The rain that fell on her face turned black, streaming down her neck. She looked sick and in pain.
“Why?” she whispered.
A line of cars went by, almost splashing me. The last one in the row rolled to a stop and I saw it was a police car. When I looked back at the bench, I was alone again.
I waited to see if it would just drive off, but it didn’t. The window went down and an officer with a square face and a mustache looked out at me. He waved for me to come over.
There was no point in trying to ignore him. I got up and went over to the car. Warm air drifted out through the window, and I could smell his cologne when I leaned over.
“Evening, ma’am,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Hell of a night, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Security camera has you watching that building for over an hour,” he said. “You want to tell me why that is?”
“A friend lives there.”
“A friend?”
“Yeah.”
“If you know someone who lives there, why are you out here in the rain?”
