and dripping with blood. Unable to lift his limbs. Scarcely able to hold his head up. Once more he became a steady central object in Iapetus's visor-cam, as Barrington approached him, shotgun to the fore.
'Sorry now, you lousy mongrel?'
Hercules's brimming eyes suggested he was, if only for himself. The tears mingled with the blood spatters on his cheeks, turning from clear to pink as they trickled down.
'The other… Olympians,' he gasped. 'My family. They… will kill you. All… of you.'
'Maybe,' said Iapetus. 'But you won't be around to see it.'
He lodged the end of the shotgun barrel between Hercules's teeth.
'I'd ask if you have any last requests, Herc,' he said, 'but I can see you've got a gobful. Just the way you like it.'
'Do it, Dez,' Sam muttered, off-mic. 'Enough tormenting. Get it over with.'
'My brother was worth a hundred of you,' Iapetus declared, and squeezed the trigger.
Hercules's cheeks were lit up from within like a jack-o'-lantern. Then his face seemed to collapse in on itself. His eyes bulged dumbly. His body slumped.
'There you go, Malc,' Iapetus said softly. 'She'll be right. Rest easy, mate.'
The other four Titans joined him beside Hercules's lifeless body.
'Good work, one and all,' said Cronus. 'Iapetus, I trust you're pleased.'
'Ripper, boss. Couldn't be happier.'
'Then we should think about making tracks.' Cronus's visor-cam viewpoint swept from one end of the street to the other. The roadway was deserted, as were the sidewalks, but faces were visible in almost every lit window overlooking the scene. 'Before we attract any more attention.'
'Fair go.'
'We rendezvous at — '
'All Titans.' This was Sam, into the mic. 'Look north. I think I just saw…'
The visor-cam images all swung in the same direction.
All showed that something was coming.
A man.
Fast as a car.
Sam had spotted him appearing round the corner at the far end of the street, just as Cronus had been turning to look the other way. Cronus had missed him but she hadn't.
Loincloth. Winged sandals. Winged metal helmet. Staff with a pair of snakes wrapped around it.
Hermes, brandishing his caduceus.
None of the Titans had time to move, or even to cry out.
Then the visor-cam image from Coeus spun, showing brown night-time city sky, buildings, ground, sky, buildings, ground, until it finally settled on just sky, with blobs superimposed on it, splashes of something ink-dark and wet…
' Scheisse,' Phoebe hissed. ' Sein Kopf. Sein verdammter Kopf! '
'Go!' Sam yelled.
'His head…' said Iapetus, numb, aghast. 'Clean off.'
'Go!' Sam repeated. 'He'll be coming back for another of you. It is a trap. Go! Split up! Run! As fast as you bloody can — run!'
45. RUN
T he four Titans scattered, Iapetus northward, Cronus, Phoebe and Rhea west. At the first intersection they came to, Cronus and Phoebe continued west while Rhea turned south. All four of them used road as well as sidewalk, slaloming between people and cars, going wherever a gap presented itself. Pedestrians yelled in protest as they were accidentally bumped into or barged aside. Drivers slammed on the brakes and honked their horns as black-clad figures shot by in front of them. Taillights flashed. Headlights flashed. Some very ripe language erupted in each Titan's wake, as if they were farmers sowing quick-sprouting seeds of profanity. For every person who was alarmed or startled to see an armoured, paramilitary-looking figure rushing past at astonishing speed, there were ten who were simply annoyed or indignant. 'Hey, asshole, go shoot your goddamn sci-fi movie somewhere else!' 'Extreme sports is California, dude!' 'Fuck you, buddy!'
New York.
'Where is he?' Cronus yelled. 'Where's Hermes now?'
'No idea,' Iapetus replied. 'Bastard's got to be chasing one of us.'
'Somebody look over their shoulder.'
'Not me, mate. Too busy running. At this speed I've got to concentrate on where I'm going, or — shit! See? Nearly hit a mailbox just talking to you.'
'Peripheral expansion mode,' said Sam. 'All of you.'
'It's even harder to run in a straight line when that's on,' said Rhea.
'Just do it. Keep looking forwards, blinker out the rest. I'll be the eyes in the back of your head.'
One after another the visor-cam images jumped into warped widescreen. Buildings on either side ballooned from the vanishing point then tapered off again to the edges. Parked vehicles, railings, front doorsteps, shop windows, passers-by — everything swelled and shrank away as though viewed through a crystal ball travelling rapidly a few feet off the ground.
A quick scan of the screens told Sam all she needed to know.
On the far right-hand side of the feed from Cronus, and the far left-hand side of Phoebe's, there was a tiny, pale shape in motion. Sam could make out arms pumping, legs flickering, the gleam of streetlights reflecting off a shiny silvery helmet.
'Cronus, Phoebe, it's you. He's on your tail.'
'Dammit!' Cronus spat. 'Dammit all to hell!'
'Just keep going, both of you. You can outrun him.'
'No, we can't,' said Cronus. He was breathing heavily already, and Phoebe had begun panting hard, perhaps in panic. 'Hermes has a top speed of well over fifty. We can barely manage forty.'
'The suit goes faster the faster you go. Pour it on. Run flat out. Sprint.'
Cronus and Phoebe accelerated. Their tachometer readings crept up above 40 mph. 45, 46, 47…
But Hermes was still gaining.
'Why doesn't he just teleport ahead?' Ramsay wondered.
'He can't do both at once,' Patanjali replied. 'It's not safe for him. He can only teleport from a standing start. Otherwise, when he reappears his stored momentum could carry him slap-bang into a brick wall or whatever and splatter him to pieces.'
'And that would be a shame.'
'Quite.'
'Base, I'm going to double back.' It was Iapetus. 'I've got a lock on their whereabouts. Maybe I can intercept.'
To Patanjali, Sam said, 'Where's the GPS map? Why's it not up? Pull it up.'
'No sooner said than done,' the computer programmer said, and did.
A blue-on-black street map of Manhattan winked into life, with four moving red dots tracking the four Titans' positions.
'All right, Iapetus, try,' Sam said into the mic. 'Judging by your relative locations, I don't think they should count on you making it, though. Cronus, Phoebe,' she continued. 'I have you headed along West Eighteenth Street. You've just crossed Sixth Avenue. Now, if you continue on that course, you're going to run out of city and hit the Hudson River in a couple of minutes.'
Cronus groaned.
'No, it's all right. Just listen. You can't attempt evasive manoeuvres yet. All the turns here are right-angles and you can't afford to slow down as much as you need to in order to take one without wiping out. Hermes will
