low cloud cover that threatened rain.
“What the hell are we supposed to do? Fly?” Emily whispered.
“We’ll go by roof, until they see us. If the zeps get involved, we’ll just have to bite the bullet and find a way out by street.” Wilson checked the load on his rifle then scampered down the roof. We followed, but carefully.
Wilson led us to what looked like a warehouse. His building was part of an academic complex, the whole block seemingly abandoned. Getting to the warehouse was a trick, but it looked like Wilson had practiced this route before. He scuttled down the roof then pounced across the alley and rolled behind a chimney. Emily and I waited at the gutter, looking at each other nervously, until the thin man reappeared with a board. It wasn’t wide enough to make for a comfortable crossing, but we made it. He was pulling the board back when he stopped, his face pale.
“The beetle.” He turned to us. “You have it?”
“I don’t,” I said. “Emily? Where’d you put that little bottle?”
“Back on the table. You can always make another.”
“I need to go back,” Wilson said, scraping the board back into place. His spider legs were twitching spastically, their hard talons clicking against the brick of the warehouse walls. “I don’t know what that pattern means, but I don’t want to hand it to the Badge.”
“We’ll wait,” I said.
“No, you won’t. Go down the roof here. You’ll have trouble crossing to any other buildings without my help. There’s roof access from that little shack, a stairwell that leads into the building. From there-”
“We’ll wait,” I said. I crouched behind the tiny brick wall that ringed the roof and nodded to the domed building we had just abandoned. “Go get your bug.”
Wilson looked between us, then nodded and hurtled across the gap. His human limbs didn’t even touch the shingles as he scuttled up to the peak of the roof and disappeared into the skylight.
I glanced over at Emily. She had her head down, the shotgun peeking over the roof’s edge at the street below. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Where’d you say you found this guy?”
“An old friend. He fixed things for me, back when I was a kid.”
“He’s a little creepy,” I said.
“Hm,” she said. She turned her shoulder to me. I kept my eyes down on the square. The Badge seemed to be organizing. The word was spreading. They’d found the building, and reinforcements were on the way. I looked over at Emily again. Her back was stiff.
“Look, I’m sorry. You know I don’t mean shit like that.”
“What?” she asked.
“The whore thing. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?” she asked. “The whore thing?”
“Just… I don’t know. I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
“Sure.”
I pocketed my revolver, spun the cylinder then drew it again. Spun the cylinder and shifted on my heels. Emily still wasn’t looking at me.
“Anyway. I’m sorry.”
“Sure,” she said. It was quiet for a little while.
“Your creepy friend is taking his time,” I said. “You sure you left the bottle on the table?”
“I said so, right? I put it right back where-”
The building across from us exploded in gunfire. The blacked-out skylights were limned in red. Wilson burst from the open window, his back to us, the long rifle dipping into the building. He opened up a long line of fire. The Badge in the streets below looked up. I cracked a shot at them, enough to keep their heads down.
Wilson got to us in a flash. His face was black and thin lines of blood traced the path of shattered glass across his cheeks.
“I couldn’t find it. They came through the door with a storm engine. Didn’t think I would make it out.” He shot a look down at the street. The Badge was swarming. “We won’t be taking the stairs. Follow me.”
Behind us the dome of skylights wrinkled and a terrible roar tore up from the roof. Glass shattered in a long cascade, and a thin rope of wind twisted up from the building. Lightning flashed down its length, then the whole entity collapsed into dust. There was a lot of yelling in the streets.
“They’re not fucking around,” Emily said next to me. I shook my head and turned to Wilson. He was already gone, scuttling to the next building over, hopping to the roof with practiced ease.
“I don’t suppose any of us are, anymore. Whatever’s going on, Em, it’s big. And it’s dragging us along with it.”
She grimaced, and then the two of us crossed to the next roof. Wilson was waiting. We spent an hour hiding, running, looking for someplace in the city where we’d be safe from whatever forces pursued us. We didn’t talk much. It was grim work.
We found a hole and planted. Veridon is full of holes, burrows in the steep slopes or nooks under the built up terraces of the modern city. This one was a warehouse that had lost its floor to a cistern that had collapsed, one of the ancient rivers that ran under the city shaking off its domestic borders and cutting into the architecture.
We set up on the ledges around the lake. Stairs led down into the water, and under the old first floor there was a cave of brick and mud, just a sliver of space that couldn’t be seen from the street. It was cool down there. The bricks were mossy and slick, and the air smelled like dead fish.
I lay my coat out on the brick and tried to relax. Wilson was setting up in the corner, and Emily was crouched at the water’s edge, staring down into the cold.
“Don’t get too comfortable, Wilson,” I said. He was hanging his tool belt on the wall, holding it there with some kind of viscous gunk. “We’re not sticking around.”
“Was that some crude swipe at humor?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Was it funny?”
“Not particularly.” He kept his back to me. His shoulders were twitching.
“Well then. I guess not.”
“We’re going to need food,” Emily said. “And we can’t be hiding in empty buildings forever.” She craned her neck to look at us over her shoulder. “We need a plan.”
“We need to know what we’re dealing with, first,” I said, struggling up. “There’s a lot more going on than is apparent.”
“Every Badgeman in Veridon is hunting us, Valentine has banned you from the organization… there’s more than that?”
“Yes,” I said. “The gods are trying to kill us or something?” Emily asked.
“Something like that.”
Wilson snorted, but he didn’t say anything. I folded my coat open and fished out the list I had gotten from Calvin.
“The guy you talked to, after I left. A little shorter than me, neatly dressed. Could have been military at some point. Bald. Leather gloves?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s the gloves I remember the most. And his hands were hard. Very strong.”
“That’s Mr. Malcolm Sloane.” I took the paper and spread it out on the ground, smoothing it down. “Right here at the top.”
Wilson and Emily gathered close, stooping to look at the list.
“What is this?” Emily asked. “Angela Tomb is on this list. Where did you get this?”
“A friend. It’s a list of deceased, all from a single military unit. Their date and cause of death was censured, by order of the Council. Angela’s name is here because she authorized it. Sloane was Coordinating Officer.”
“Then he’s not the guy who came by Emily’s place, is he?” Wilson looked at me. “I mean, if he’s been declared dead.”
“Two things,” I said. “Coordinating Officer is not a field rank. It’s administrative. These other names could be the deployed unit. Sloane was the guy they’d report to when they got back to the city. Secondly, recognize anyone else on the list?”
