Felon didn’t think he’d pose much of a threat to him either.
“Well,” Felon heard Driver’s voice through the hidden microphones. “Where in hell is he?”
But Felon was already moving. He slipped out the pocket door behind him and stepped into the hall that ran parallel to the dining room. There were two men with guns approaching. That wasn’t part of the plan.
The black man on the left was tall. He reached for an Uzi on a sling under his arm. That was his mistake. Felon’s suspicions immediately crystallized.
The heavyset man on the right was average height and build. He had an automatic with extended clip in his hand.
They weren’t supposed to be here. The assassin knew that. And they knew that. They were behind schedule. If the black man hadn’t touched his Uzi they would have had him.
With one hand on the doorknob, Felon flicked his right into his coat, came up with the. 9 mm. The silencer was on, so the kills would be quiet. He took his time as the two gunmen lifted their weapons. The tall black man took a bullet to the face. The other man took three to the heart. They dropped.
Something caught the corner of Felon’s vision-movement to the left. He spun and fired a couple more bullets. These caught a dwarf in ridiculous Victorian livery. The top of his head blew out from under the powdered wig.
Felon replaced the clip and hurried over to the dwarf. There was something wrong about him. It resembled the Marquis’ servant but the legs were too thick and the arms long. The assassin flipped the body over and recognized the distended and twisted features of an Eyesore. A stench of vomit and urine rose from the body. Wurn had smelled like that.
Felon turned and ran toward the dining room.
Gunfire suddenly erupted in the hall ahead. The assassin threw himself against the wall. He listened, counted weapons. Driver’s automatics were clattering. Tiny’s. 357 boomed, so did Bloody’s. 45.
He also recognized. 38 caliber gunfire, rapid maybe automatic, followed by the unmistakable monster howl of autoshotguns. Authority?
It was a trap! The Marquis was in on it. But why attack them openly? He quickly saw the plan: gun Felon down in the observation booth and murder the others while they were distracted at the table-it was stupid, amateur-and it almost worked. Its sheer simplicity might have been the key. Felon was expecting something malignant and premeditated. Or whoever made the decision didn’t care if it worked. Was it played out to delay or distract them? A jolt of adrenaline caught his breath.
Footsteps, running, coming from the direction of the dining room were followed by the clatter of a machine weapons. Then a squat heavy-limbed shape lurched into view. Like a dwarf with cow’s hooves for feet, and long frog-like hands, the Eyesore moved with incredible agility. Its face expressed human surprise as Felon put a bullet in its eye. The thing dropped like a bag of gravel.
The assassin hurried forward into a haze of gun smoke. He could see ahead that the hall turned toward the dining room. There was another Eyesore and a man crouched, taking shelter. The wall opposite the entrance was peppered with bullet holes.
Felon shot the Eyesore twice. The plume of brains and skull bone alerted the man who heaved his autoshotgun around, but the wall behind him exploded, was ripped to pieces by the heavy caliber weapons inside. The man’s ribcage blew open and outward and he hit the carpet seconds after his guts.
Felon moved forward just as Bloody stepped into hall. The big gunman had a couple of ragged furrows cut into his left temple by bullets. He turned his sunglasses to Felon but his expression was unreadable. He swung the. 45 at him. The assassin did not hesitate. He lifted his gun, hoping it would be strong enough to drop the gunman- blind him, hoping his Kevlar vest would stop the big bullets because Bloody fired twice.
And missed. Felon had dropped to a crouch and was ready to fire, when something heavy hit the ground behind him. He rolled across the carpet-gun still centered on Bloody’s face, and got an angle where he could see two dead Eyesores. They’d come out of one of the Marquis’ damn pocket doors. It was open behind them. Their heads were ruined messes.
Felon looked at Bloody who watched him reload.
“The woman!” Felon allowed some emotion into his voice. He ran toward the basement. Bloody followed reloading.
44 – Orientation
It was late afternoon and the other forever kids were away at lessons. Dawn wondered why they hadn’t taken her along, but there was so much to get used to-there was no point getting worked up over that too. She’d spent the time napping. The angry boy, Larry, had really given her a scare so she barely got any sleep her first night.
She did find other kids who were nice and even apologetic for Larry. While it was good to know that she might have friends in the Orphanage, Dawn had no intention of staying. The friendly kids had asked where she came from and who Mr. Jay was, but the grownup voice in her head took charge and told her to keep quiet about all that for now. Luckily, Meg shooed the inquisitive children away; saying Dawn needed time to adjust.
She was just wondering where Mr. Jay might be, when one of the dead childcare workers came over to her. There were lots of the workers in the Dormitory, and even though they were kind, the forever girl was unnerved to discover that they spent the whole night sitting quietly in chairs along the Dormitory walls.
“I am Frances,” the woman said. She was tall with straight brown hair, wore a print dress and flat-soled shoes. “The Principal wants to see you in his office.”
Dawn felt queerly out of step, looking down at her simple nightshirt and slippers. It was all any of them had to wear. She shrugged and followed the dead woman between the rows of beds, through the Dormitory doors and into the hall. The worker turned to the left and led Dawn past two junctions where halls overlapped.
The floors were cement, and like the walls had a dirty look to them; though there were clear paths worn in the grime where the children walked. Overhead fluorescent lights flickered. Many were burned out or had gone dim. There were double doors leading off the hall left and right and on occasion, Dawn heard forever children singing or reciting stories.
At the end of the hall, Frances paused by a door with “Principal” painted on the inset window. Dawn glanced at the dead woman, a sudden shiver of fear curled her toes and then she remembered what Mr. Jay would say: “Worry about what happens, not what might happen,”
And with that small boost to her courage she left Frances in the hall, pushed past the door and into an open office space. There was a big desk with an older dead woman behind it. She was tapping on an ancient iron machine with paper rolling out the back. The woman looked up from her work and nodded to another door inside that was half open. Dawn made her way hesitantly across the room. She slowed long enough to peek to her right. There were only two long couches there, and a wastebasket.
She stopped at the door and took another big breath. “ Be careful ,” said her inner voice. “Remember how to get out of in.”
And she pushed the door aside.
There was a desk on a brown carpet. There was a chair on her side of the desk. There was a book on the desk. There was a man in a chair on the far side of the desk. There was an empty bookcase behind him. There was a picture of a man on one wall. There was a large map on the other. The man at the desk looked up, pen in hand and smiled over his notes. He had glasses and a long head, jaw and nose. His hair was combed flat over his skull. He wore a neat brown suit and was long-limbed. He half-rose from his seat and nodded at the chair across from him. He smiled, sat and watched her sit. When she was settled, he looked her up and down and then he cleared his throat.
“I am the Principal. Welcome,” the Principal said with flat even tones. “I wanted to see you, Dawn, after the other children had finished their lessons. Your lack of knowledge regarding our system here might have caused a disruption. And that wouldn’t be fair.”
He cleared his throat and opened a file in front of him. “Dawn. You say you haven’t got a last name. And you say your pre-Change age is six.” He looked over the rim of his glasses and smirked. “You’re visiting the City of Light for the first time. Have had no formal education and you were on Zero having wandered there from the wilderness
