 
## THE MAN WHO CROSSED WORLDS

### Chris Strange

Meet Miles Franco, but make it fast. If the cops have anything to say about it, he'll be dead by morning.

Miles used to make a living illegally smuggling people between dimensions. That was until the cops caught up with him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Now he's chasing an interdimensional drug smuggler across worlds. Gangsters are trying to kick the shit out of him and the cops want to put a leash on him. These days it seems like everyone wants a piece of Miles Franco.

But you can only push a man so far before he starts pushing back. And self-control isn't Miles' strong suit.

Raw, insane, and hard-boiled as hell, The Man Who Crossed Worlds is a violent fever-dream for those who like their urban fantasy to kick them in the teeth.

### www.Chris-Strange.com

The Man Who Crossed Worlds

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © Chris Strange 2011

Version 1.3

All Rights Reserved

The arcane circles in the cover art were created by Obsidian Dawn.

www.obsidiandawn.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, locales, and alternate dimensions 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

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Continue the Story...

About the Author

Other Books from Cheeky Minion

Also by Chris Strange

## CHAPTER ONE

" _Contrary to statements made by some commentators, the Tunneler's role is not merely one of transport. He is the ambassador of all humankind...If the Tunneler is to succeed, he must be charismatic, moral, and above all, lawful."_

Interdimensional Ethics: A Guide for Tunnelers, 2nd ed.

Not many things scared me. Well, all right, a hell of a lot of things scared me. In my line of work it came with the territory, same with dismal pay and unsavory customers. But only one thing made me so nervous you could use my forehead as a swimming pool.

Beautiful women.

They looked innocent enough, sure, all warm and soft. And if you were lucky, maybe one of them would cuddle up to you real nice, purring like a kitten, and you'd think you were finally being rewarded for all those good things you did in your life.

Of course, it was around that time you realized you'd done no good things in your life, there was no way you deserved this, and before you could scream she would reach into your chest, pluck your heart out, and neatly rip it in two.

So when Detective Vivian Reed sashayed into the interrogation room on those long legs, wearing a slender pantsuit that gave me a pretty good idea how impressive all her curves were, my heart dropped somewhere into my intestines.

She let the thick manila folder drop to the table, sending a resounding bang echoing through the interrogation room. Through supreme force of will I managed to avoid flinching, instead making a show of picking the dirt from under my fingernails.

The room didn't do much to inspire confidence. It was dark as a coffin and even less friendly. A video camera on a tripod sat in the corner of the room, switched off, while a dull fluorescent light bulb hung above my head. I could feel the heat radiating off it. It wasn't the only thing making me sweat.

Detective Reed put her hands on the table and leaned over me, her face set in a look that suggested I was a mauled rat brought in by her dogs. Which I supposed, in a way, I had been. She had the sort of slender face you felt you should have to pay to look at, and dark hair trimmed into a neat bob cut. Her dark skin was cast into shadow, but her eyes glinted as she fixed me with a look.

"Mr. Franco," she said, while I busied myself staring at the way her lips moved, "We've got some questions for you."

It was the standard cop line. What it really meant was: "We know what you did, or we want you to think we do, and by God you're going to tell us or you'll be facing the hurting end of our boots."

I swallowed. The folder she'd dropped onto the table between us had my name on it, Miles Franco, in clean black text on a white label. I couldn't work out for the life of me how it was so thick.

A page had spilled out, showing a mug shot of me from when I was about thirteen, after an alleged theft that was almost entirely not my fault. I looked a lot more pimply in the picture than I did now, but I still had the same narrow face and the mop of dark, curly, maddeningly uncontrollable hair.

Sweat pooled in the armpits of my shirt, but I tried to play it straight. "Vivian—"

"Detective Reed."

I shrugged as if the difference was unimportant. "I've been asked many questions by your fine police department over the years. But I can't say I've ever come out of a Tunnel with that many officers pointing guns at me before."

She didn't speak. Instead, she pulled out the chair opposite and calmly sat down. Tenting her fingers, she stared at me like a lioness about to pounce. Hell, she could probably smell my fear. Since I'd been working when they hauled me in here, I was still in my old suit, and now the tie around my neck felt a hell of a lot like a noose.

"Mr. Franco, I'd advise you to take this seriously."

I decided to do as she said. Sometimes I was smart enough to know when being a smartass would get me in trouble. The cops in Bluegate weren't particularly worried about things like ethics. Most of them were on the take, and the rest thought police brutality was a legitimate way to extract a confession. So I sat back in my chair, resisted the urge to wipe my forehead, and forced a smile onto my face.

Detective Reed opened the folder and flicked through the pages. "This isn't the first time you've been arrested for smuggling Vei, is it?"

"Vei? Those weren't Vei. Just a few souvenirs I picked up." All right, so I wasn't totally done with being a smartass.

She continued to page through the folder. "All these arrests, but no serious charges. You live a charmed life, Mr. Franco."

"What can I say? Lady Luck must have my number."

"Not this time." She jabbed at the table with her finger. "This time, Mr. Franco, we have you dead to rights."

She was right, of course. It'd been a lousy damn job from start to finish. The client was the acquaintance of someone I'd helped out a few years back, a Vei woman who'd come practically begging me to bring her family to Earth. She claimed she didn't have much money, and I was feeling stupid and generous, so I did the job pro bono. Maybe she'd spread the word, I figured, drum up more business for me. God knew I'd had barely a handful of paying jobs in the last two months. Plus, it wasn't supposed to be difficult job; all I'd have to do was go there, pick the family up, and bring them back.

As it turned out, they weren't the kind-hearted immigrant Vei family my client had made them out to be. It took me two days to track the entire family down. One of them took me for a human con-man and tried to stove my head in before I could calm him down. Another of them, a little girl, alternated between clinging to my leg and trying to run away.

I should've known. Vei were flighty and unpredictable at the best of times, and I'd never tried to transport that many of them before. I was so exhausted I could barely keep the Tunnel open on the way back, and when we finally emerged into the damp basement of my apartment building, I found half the goddamn Bluegate PD aiming pistols and shotguns at me.

As evenings went, that wasn't one of my favorites.

There were legal ways of bringing Vei to Earth, but my way wasn't one of them. I wasn't a bad guy, or at least I didn't think I was. Tunnelers took on all sorts of jobs, not all of them nice. Some smuggled booze and Ink and guns, but not me. I stuck with Vei and the occasional easily-hauled exotic metal or chemical that would've faced a hefty levy going through Customs.

Anyway, there wouldn't be any need for the likes of me if it didn't take a bribe the size of Bluegate itself to get through Immigration. Only a few were rich enough to pay that, and none of them made their money saving baby seals or caring for orphans.

But somehow I didn't think that excuse was going to fly with the cops. Detective Reed was watching me, waiting for me to speak. I opened my mouth to demand a lawyer when the door to the interrogation room opened and a man built like a tank strode into the room.

"Miles," he said, grinning, "I knew we'd get your ass one day."

My mouth was already aching from all these forced smiles, but I pretended to be happy to see Detective Todd. A few years back he'd got me out of the clutches of a crooked cop who liked me for a weapons-smuggling charge, and managed to get me set loose with a rap across the knuckles for a minor Tunneling-related charge.

Walter Todd pulled out a chair from the table, spun it around, and sat on it backward with his arms folded over the chair back. With his gray-streaked hair and his faded leather jacket, he looked like something out of a 70s cop show. A cigarette dangled from his lips, filling the room with smoke and probably breaking a bunch of healthy workplace regulations, but he didn't seem too concerned.

Detective Reed glanced at him, her face a mask, then returned her icy stare to me. I ignored her, choosing to focus on the friendlier cop. "Seems like you could find better asses than mine, Walt. I saw the hookers you guys had cuffed out in holding."

Todd winked at me and pulled my file away from Detective Reed. "Pretty impressive pile, don't you think, Vivian? Have you told him yet?"

"Told me what?" I asked.

Their demeanor was making me shifty. The good-cop, bad-cop thing was standard, but I still couldn't work out what I was doing here. The time on my watch said it was just after 9 p.m., so it was probably closer to midnight. Why the hell had they bothered to bring me into the interrogation room now, instead of letting me kick up my heels in a cell for the night? Chances were the Vei family I'd smuggled in had already been deported, and it wasn't exactly murder they were trying to get me to confess to. Vei-smugglers never did serious jail time. Why all the effort?

"We want to talk to you about Ink," Detective Reed said.

Aw, hell. A fresh wave of sweat broke out across my forehead, and I could swear I felt my blood pressure ratchet up a few notches.

I couldn't go to prison. It wasn't the criminals that scared me. It was the walls. The bars. Christ, I couldn't live in a box.

If they were going to try to pin an Ink smuggling charge on me, I was screwed. Ink was a nasty drug, as expensive as it was addictive. It was like heroin with a dash of methamphetamine, something that drowned your mind in black while making you wild as a pissed-off baboon. As the bread-and-butter of the drug trade in Bluegate, it made a lot of wallets thicker, and not just the gang members'.

"Look," I said, cringing at the panic in my voice, "I don't touch Ink, all right? Too many risks."

"Does he look like a risk-taker to you, Vivian?" Todd asked.

"He sure does. You're sweating, Mr. Franco."

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, and Detective Reed smirked at me like I'd just signed my confession.

"You've got to be bullshitting me," I said. "That's why you had me brought in here? Look at my record, damn it. There's not one Ink-smuggling charge on there. It's not my style!"

Todd chuckled. He seemed amused by my bug-eyed stare, the bastard. "Calm down, Miles. I've seen pigeons that are tougher to spook than you. We're not here to bust you."

"You already busted me once tonight," said. "Sorry if I don't take you at your goddamn word."

Detective Reed tapped her fingers on the table in an annoyed gesture. For some reason, I noted she didn't wear a wedding ring. "Mr. Franco—"

"Just call me Miles, will you? This 'Mr. Franco' thing is getting annoying."

"Mr. Franco," she said again, with a touch of vindictiveness in the words, "Does the name Doctor Dee mean anything to you?"

"My doctor's name is Roberts, and he got struck off for some dodgy organ trading scheme. Cheap, though."

Nervousness was making me babble, and I wasn't particularly keen to hurry this conversation along. It was never good when a cop asked you questions like that. It meant they wanted something. I'd seen plenty of pictures in the newspapers of police informants floating in the river, and I could almost guarantee all of them had started their snitching careers with a conversation like this.

"We got a handful of references to this Doctor Dee in drug busts we pulled off these last couple of weeks," Todd said. He stroked his clean-shaven chin as he talked, a habit he'd had as long as I'd known him. "Seems he's been offering jobs to a couple of the local dealers if they defect from their own gangs. The ones we got to before they were snuffed out said there's a new product hitting the streets soon."

"So?" I said. "There's a new variation of Ink every few years. There's always some chemist tweaking it."

Todd shook his head. "This is more than a tweak, Miles."

"Chroma, they've been calling it," Reed said. "We haven't got our hands on a sample yet, but word is it's powerful. Really powerful. Gang violence is already up. If this thing is what they say it is, there's going to be war in the streets over the supply and distribution."

I didn't know how they could tell when there was more violence in the city; it'd be like trying to find a flaming marshmallow in the middle of a forest fire. But right then, that wasn't my main concern.

"All right, I get the idea, and I have a feeling I know where you're going with this. I'm leaving."

I stood up, and so did Detective Todd. "Easy, Miles. We're offering you a chance to get out of this mess you're in."

"You're the ones who got me in this mess in the first place." I'd driven right out of nervous a few miles back and now I was accelerating into angry territory. I wouldn't let them lock me up. "A dozen Vei come into Bluegate illegally every day and you guys have never given a damn about it before. This is a goddamn set up."

"Calm down, Mr. Franco," Vivian Bloody Reed said.

She probably knew saying that would just wind me up more. "To hell with that, I'm pissed, and you'd better get used to it."

They didn't get used to it. Todd reached across the table with an arm the size of my thigh and shoved me back down into my seat. For a second it felt like a small building had fallen on my shoulders, but then the pressure was gone, and Todd was back on his side of the table.

The rage dulled slightly as the rational part of my brain reminded me about not being a smartass. I was neither tall nor well-built, and Todd could divide me into several pieces with his bare hands if he chose. I forced myself to silence and sat still like a good little boy. Christ, there wasn't even a window in this room.

"That's better," Detective Reed said. "All we want you to do is consult on the case. You do a good job, and all this..." She pushed my file to the side of the table. "...all this goes away. We'll drop the charges from today. If you're lucky, you might even get paid." I scowled, but she continued anyway. "Our best chance of tracking down this Doctor Dee and find out where he's going to bring in the Chroma is to hit his distribution network. Which means—"

"Tunnels," I finished. Ink—and most likely this Chroma—couldn't be made on Earth. Our reality was too stable, and Ink was just too damn crazy. It was a Vei drug, though it had hit the human drug market hard, just as alcohol had hit theirs. So that meant this Doctor Dee would be bringing his Chroma in from Heaven.

It wasn't the actual Heaven, of course, the one with angels and pearly gates and long lists of who'd been naughty and much shorter lists of who'd been nice. The name had been coined by some wiseass soldier in the first exploratory team. Then the media got hold of it, and the name stuck.

The soldier must've been being sarcastic when he named it. Heaven was a truly messed up place, the kind of place that drives men mad. Reality wasn't stable there, and everything was malleable. Entire textbooks had tried to describe Heaven, and I'd yet to read one that even came close.

Still, for me, the name fit. There was nothing like the freedom of being in a place where even the laws of physics weren't enforced.

But why in the seven hells did the cops want me on this? They'd gone to a hell of a lot of effort to bring me in. I was surprised they didn't go one step further and stick a dog leash round my neck. The Police Department had their own Tunnelers, upstanding men of the finest caliber, not lowly freelancers like me. Why did they feel the need to dredge me up from the gutters?

Detective Reed must have seen the look on my face. "Truth is, we've run into a brick wall on this, Miles. Even our informants have gone quiet. You've got contacts in the Vei community, and most of the freelance Tunnelers out there are no more than drug trafficking scum. Todd tells me you're different. He vouched for you."

"That's the kind of gift I can do without, Walt. Next time, just send me a box of wine."

Todd shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "Your choice, Miles. I got a nice pair of handcuffs ready for you if you don't want the job. But I warn you, them animals tonight are a wild bunch." He jerked his thumb toward the door, back to the cells where the drunk and stoned waited to be processed. "Someone forgot to feed them and they're a bit cranky."

Being backed into a corner didn't sit well with me. My palms grew moist as I chewed over the options in my head, as if I hadn't already made my decision. I didn't much like getting told what to do, but being stuck in a cage, well, that'd snap my mind clean in two. Plus, I had a feeling they wouldn't allow much Tunneling in prison.

I sighed. "Christ. Let me get some shut-eye, and we can start tomorrow."

The detectives got to their feet, and I followed suit. Todd grinned again and slapped me on the shoulder with a hand that could pass as a bear's paw.

"Sorry Miles, no such luck. We start tonight. Go home, get changed, and be back here in an hour. We got work to do."

I bit my tongue to keep from yelling. I hated cops.

## CHAPTER TWO

The two detectives made me wait in the interrogation room while they got my paperwork together. I brooded as I sat in the dark, claustrophobic room, then took to giving evil glares to the reflective one-way glass on the off chance one of them was watching me. I'd just taken to pacing the room when Detective Reed finally returned and allowed me to go.

The walk of shame through the police station was slightly less demeaning this time, mainly due to the lack of handcuffs. The hookers were still sitting in holding, the harsh light showcasing every wrinkle and faded bruise. They made screeching cat-calls as Detective Reed and I went past, but I didn't respond. My job sees me walking the darker streets of Bluegate a lot, and I wasn't keen to antagonize any more people than I had to.

Detective Reed didn't talk to me, which suited me fine. The pantsuit she was wearing was strangely alluring, and I had to keep a tight rein on myself to keep my gaze from slipping to the hint of cleavage that appeared above her purple V-necked shirt. Sure, beautiful women scare me, but I was still a man, and one in the middle of a dry spell the size of the Sahara desert. Detective Reed didn't appear to take any notice of my glances, which was probably for the best.

We stopped in front of an overweight uniformed cop sitting behind a plate glass window, the one who had taken my things when I'd gone through processing.

"Miles Franco," Detective Reed said to the man. "Give him his stuff back."

The cop swiveled around in his chair without looking at me and shuffled through several paper bags. He finally reemerged with a grunt and a bag with 'Myles Falco' scrawled on it in black ink. Goddamn cops. They really needed to up their admission standards.

"Wallet," he said, pulling it from the bag and sliding it beneath his window to me. "Key ring with three keys. Cell phone. Folding knife." I pocketed the knife before he could have second thoughts and confiscate it. It was a good knife, with a carbon steel blade about five and a half inches long. It was a tool, not a weapon, but I could see the disapproval spreading across Detective Reed's face.

The cop started to scrunch the bag up and throw it away, but I spoke up. "I had some coins."

The cop frowned at me as if I was deliberately trying to make trouble. "Bag's empty. Check your wallet."

My wallet was as empty as it always was. It was more for show than anything. "I need my coins."

Detective Reed checked her watch and made an irritated noise. "Check the shelf again, Will. This one's stubborn."

The cop scowled but did as he was told, hefting his considerable weight off the office chair. He disappeared beneath the desk for a few seconds. I could hear him shuffling around, and he finally reemerged with a handful of silver coins.

He tossed them toward me then slapped a clipboard with a release form down in front of me. "Sign."

I scrawled my name before I could make any more enemies and snatched the five coins from the desk. They settled comfortably into my pockets, and my hands stopped shaking quite so much.

"A uniform will give you a ride home," Detective Reed said as she led me toward the front doors of the station. "You can find your own way back here?"

I nodded. Anything to not have more cops loitering outside my apartment waiting for me to get ready.

Detective Reed returned my nod and strode back the way we had come. I spent a couple of distracted seconds admiring the way her hips slid from side to side, then kicked myself out of it. Hell, I had more important things to be thinking about right now.

I shoved open the doors to the station and stepped out into the night. The cold air kept the smog smell out of it, which made breathing a little more bearable. You spend long enough in a city breathing car fumes and industrial smoke and soon enough you're wondering where your sense of taste went.

The street was well-lit for Bluegate. Streetlights cast an orange glow onto the street and the drab concrete buildings. Occasionally, cars trundled past the station, probably containing married men off to visit their mistresses or gangsters on their way to rough up a troublesome drug dealer. Call me jaded, but some days it seemed like everyone in this city was one brand of immoral or other. Hell, I was no exception.

The police station was just to the east of the city center, in between the territories of the Gravediggers, the 23rd Street Bikers, and the Andrews Family. This was an older part of town, from back when Bluegate was called Garanade. A horrible name for a horrible town.

The cop Detective Reed had promised me was waiting at the bottom of the stone stairs leading out of the station, leaning against his squad car. He was a lanky kid who looked about thirteen, with a mop of blond hair and a uniform that was too short for him. He held up his hand in greeting as I approached and gestured to the back seat. "Can't let you ride up front, sorry. Rules, and all that."

I didn't mind. At least the kid seemed friendly enough. I'd give him six months before he was as calloused as the rest of them.

My apartment was on the other side of Central Bluegate, about a fifteen-minute drive if the traffic wasn't too bad. Most people tend to stay off the streets after dark in Bluegate, so we had the road almost to ourselves.

The young cop tried to engage me in conversation once or twice, but when I responded mostly with one-word answers, he gave up. I was still in a brooding mood, and I wasn't going to let any cheerful conversation spoil that. I had to find a way out of this pit of snakes I'd been dropped in. Like hell I was going to trust the Bluegate PD to be looking out for my best interests. Something fishy was going on, something they weren't telling me. Goddamn cops were like that.

I'd tried to keep out of gang business for my entire freelancing career. It wasn't easy, when skilled Tunnelers are a key part of any good drug smuggling business. I'd been offered piles of cash for my services, and I'd been given more than a few lumps on my head as an incentive to consider taking up a career within their fine institutions. But I tend to be a stubborn son of a bitch when I get backed up against the wall. I don't much like being told what to do. But that wasn't why I stayed freelance. Tunnelers who threw in their loyalties with either a gang or the cops tend to have a short life span. I happened to be rather fond of living.

The cop flicked on the radio to some easy-listening jazz as we ambled through the seedier streets. Prostitutes stood smoking on the footpaths, half-hidden by the shadow, cheap decorations for the closely packed slums behind them. I caught a few glimpses of pimps and drug dealers further back in the alleys, and expensive cars pulling up then speeding away with a vial of Ink or a half-dressed woman. Strolling down these streets at night was akin to suicide unless you were in good with the gangsters, and even then you'd better hope you backed the right gangs. Most people played it safe, fixing padlocks to their doors and praying this winter wouldn't be as cold as the last.

I leaned back in the seat and tried to take my eyes off the scenery. It was easy to get jaded in a city like this. I'd lived there most of my life, bar an unfortunate attempt at making a new start in Corton, the next city along the North River. I'm not a masochist. I didn't stay for the fun. I stayed because it's the only place I can Tunnel.

The cop drove the car along the top of a sweeping hill that overlooked the river and the bay to the west, and I could see the reason I stayed in glimpses between the buildings we passed. A series of huge, glowing concentric circles, 600 feet across, hovered a few inches above the surface of Tunnel River. It cast an eerie blue glow onto the platforms and buildings that had been built out around it, bright enough to be seen despite the city lights. Even at this late hour, the platforms around it were swarming with machinery and people, moving equipment and vehicles back and forth from the circles.

It was the sort of thing you couldn't help but stare at, even after you'd seen it a million times. You told yourself you stared because it was beautiful, in an unearthly way, but really you were scared, because even after all this time you still didn't know what it truly was.

They called them Bores when they appeared, a couple of years before I was born. Some said the twenty-four Bores around the world were the result of some government scientists with a penchant for risk-taking and an unlimited purse of taxpayers' money. More than a couple of cults were convinced it was part of some deity's screwed-up plan for humanity. Me, I didn't know who to believe, and I figured there wasn't much point thinking about it too hard.

It took all of five minutes for the government types in their black suits and their sunglasses to start poking at the Bores to see what they could make them do, or so the stories go. Turns out, the Bore only did one thing, but it did it damn well. A portal, I suppose you'd call it, a portal to another world. With the special kind of arrogance reserved especially for politicians, the government began exploring the world on the other side of the Bores.

I closed my eyes to block out the sight of the Bore. Looking at it too long stung my eyes. The Bore was the reason I could do what I could do. Tunnelers are all tied to a Bore, and this one was mine. If I went too far outside the city limits, my ability to Tunnel decreased, until I couldn't even form a Pin Hole. True, I could have left anyway, taken up some other job, but Tunneling was the one thing I knew, the one thing I was good at.

Today, though, I was reconsidering that position.

As the car reached the crest of the hill and the radio started playing a nice saxophone solo, I opened my eyes again. I could just make out the Immigration and Customs offices at the edge of the Bore. Immigration still liked to pretend they held the only path for migrating between Earth and Heaven, as if there weren't several hundred Tunnelers like me scattered throughout the city.

The clock on the car's dashboard read 1:26 a.m. when we finally pulled up outside my apartment building. 2310 Marlowe Street was a building that I'm pretty sure must have been condemned about a decade back, but had never been demolished. It stood ten stories high and was constructed mostly of dry wood that would go up like a tinderbox if someone tossed a lit cigarette at it. It was packed in between a laundromat and an almost identical apartment building, with a narrow alleyway on either side that was a haven for the homeless and anyone else looking for a nice pile of cardboard to bed down on.

I tried to open the car door, but the kiddie lock seemed to be on, so Officer Lanky had to let me out. He tried the friendly chatter thing one more time before finally giving up and returning to his car. I tried to summon some guilt for ignoring him, but I couldn't manage it. I couldn't remember the last time I'd got some shut-eye, what with the annoying Vei family and being arrested and all. I tend to get cranky when I stay up past my bedtime.

I rammed my key into the door to the building and jiggled it for a few seconds, muttering incoherent swear words to myself, before the lock finally yielded and allowed me to shove the door open. The hinges protested with a low creak, and I slipped inside. It was dark and dusty, as usual. The light bulb had burned out about two years ago and no one had bothered to replace it. I'll willingly admit the whole place was a shit-hole, but it had a quaint, shit-holey kind of charm about it. Also, the rent was dirt cheap.

Unfortunately, my earning capacity is less than dirt, so the last thing I wanted to see was my landlady's sixteen-year-old daughter leaning against the handrail on the first floor, wearing a thin nightgown that could only have come from a XXX store.

"Hi Miles," she whispered down to me, doing her best impression of a sultry temptress. "I heard you at the door."

I groaned inwardly, expended a considerable amount of energy to avoid groaning outwardly as well, and ascended the stairs. I live on the ninth floor, and apparently the building was built before some genius thought of elevators, so I had no choice but to go past her. Tania wasn't a bad girl. She'd just learned too much about dealing with men from her mother.

"Not this again," I said. "I've had a long night. Besides, it's past your bedtime."

She leaned against the handrail, awkwardly thrusting her narrow hips to the side, and batted her eyelashes at me. "It's so cold and lonely there."

I cringed, praying that the neighbors couldn't hear her. I was in enough trouble already.

I tried to move past her, but her hand snaked out and grabbed my tie, pulling me close. She purred.

"Knock it off, kid." I grabbed her hand and pushed it away, trying to be gentle. "You got no interest in an old man like me."

Her seductress act dissolved in an instant, and she transformed into something much more comforting and familiar: a pouting teenager. "Mom says you're three weeks behind on the rent."

I tried again to move past her. "Didn't she get the check I slipped under the door?"

"You did no such thing, Miles." She put her hands on her hip, blocking the narrow walkway. "You haven't had a paying job in ages."

I shrugged off the uncomfortable sensation of having a teenage girl monitoring my financial situation better than I was. I knew what was coming next. Tania was nothing if not predictable.

"I want you to teach me," she said, right on cue.

"No."

"That's what you always say. Why not?"

"Because."

She folded her arms and tilted her head to the side. "That's not an answer."

"Sure it is."

She paused and glanced back at the door to her apartment. "Maybe we should wake my mom, see what she says."

Aw, hell. The universe really wasn't going to cut me a break. "Didn't take you for a blackmailer."

She raised a hand to her chest and put on an affronted look. "Me? How can you say such things?"

The kid had definitely been taking lessons from her mother. When the hell had she got so devious? She had me over a barrel, and the damn thing was full of splinters.

Still, I knew what she was asking, and there was no way I was going down easy. "What makes you think you're even able to be taught?"

A grin broke across her face, and I got a sinking feeling somewhere in my intestines. "I already did it once."

"No you didn't." I said, hoping that denying it would make it go away.

"I did." Her voice rose, and I gave her apartment door another glance. She must've seen, because she leaned in close and whispered, "I opened a Tunnel."

"You're lying."

She glanced away from me. "Well, it wasn't a full-sized one, and it only lasted a second before it collapsed, but I did it. I really did."

She met my eyes and held my gaze. Damn it all. She wasn't a good enough liar to pull this off. The only reason I'd been able to avoid teaching Tania this long was because I was playing the odds. People with the ability to Tunnel were rare and most couldn't do so without guidance. If she was telling the truth, that made my life a whole lot more difficult.

There were two types of Tunnels, although really they were just different manifestations of the same thing. A proper Tunnel was large, at least seven feet in diameter, big enough for someone to walk through.

The other type of Tunnel we called a Pin Hole. The circles were much smaller, only an inch or two across. A Pin Hole was a channel to Heaven, and it allowed us to tap some aspects of the world. Specifically, its instability.

Everything is fluid and malleable in Heaven, from the creatures that inhabit it to the land itself. If you go there unprepared, you're likely to find the world shifting around you so fast you lose whatever trace of sanity you have left. A Pin Hole channels that instability into the real world, allowing a skilled Tunneler to transmute objects. What a thing can be transmuted into depends much more on the type of object it is, rather than what it's made of. A fork could be turned into a pair of chopsticks, even though one is metal and one is wood. That sort of thing.

The trouble was if Tania was getting into this sort of thing without knowing what the hell she was doing, she was going to wind up turning her skull into an insect's head, or her necklace into a noose.

As if I didn't already have enough to worry about.

Then a thought occurred to me. "Hang on, kid. You need Kemia to make a Tunnel. Where the hell did you...?" The guilt on her face would have been comical if I wasn't already so pissed. "You broke into my apartment?"

"It's not breaking in if you have a key," she said, attempting defiance but coming off petulant.

"You don't have a key. Your mother has a key." I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. "How much did you take?"

"I could only find one bottle—"

"I only had one bottle."

"Then I guess I took all of it." She grinned at me sheepishly, and I forced down another sigh. _Calm down, Miles_.

I couldn't pretend I wasn't a million times worse when I was her age. When she was old enough she might be able to get her Tunneler's license. Her mother wouldn't be able to afford her training, but maybe she could get in on scholarship, like I had. But I could see in her eyes that she wasn't going to wait that long.

_Hypocrite_ , a little voice inside me whispered. _Like you weren't stubborn and stupid as a goddamn donkey._

"All right," I said. It felt like I had to drag the words from my mouth. "You win."

"You'll teach me?" Her eyes were so bright they would've blinded a deer.

I nodded. "I'll teach you. But I'm in the middle of some crap right now. As soon as I get everything wrapped up, we'll begin. Okay?"

She leaped into my arms, wrapping herself tightly around me, and I became acutely aware of how thin her nightgown was. Seriously, this would not be a good look if her mother came out right now.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she squealed in my ear.

I peeled her off me, feeling my face growing hot. "Back to bed, kid. I'll be in touch."

Tania nodded, beaming, then practically skipped back to her and her mom's apartment. I ran a hand through my curls as she closed the door behind her, then started trudging up the stairs again.

I felt like shit for lying to the kid. She wouldn't understand. Kids never did.

But now it was time to go. The cops would be expecting me back soon, and it wouldn't take them long to start looking for me when I didn't show. There was no way I was getting mixed up in this Chroma business. I never pretended to be an honorable man. I was a survivor.

I had to pack my bags. It was time to leave Earth.

## CHAPTER THREE

My apartment was both my home and my site of business. I had an office once, back when I thought being a freelancer was like being a private eye, where long-legged dames strolled in late at night and offered you a chance at danger and glory.

The office was the size of a linen closet, and it took two months of no work before they finally kicked me out. After that I just conducted all my business from the semi-comfort of my apartment, relying on a few discreet newspaper ads to bring in work. It was only in the last few months that my old Tunneler buddy, Desmond, convinced me to take one of his old cell phones and use that as well. I didn't see much use for the thing myself. Next thing he'd be wanting me to buy a goddamn computer.

My apartment was predictably crappy, full of used furniture I'd found on the side of the street and hauled up the stairs with the help of anyone who owed me a favor. An actual wall separated my bedroom from the rest of the apartment, which I was pretty proud of. The carpet was a horrid shade of green, faded where the sun came through the dirt-streaked windows, and full of cigarette burns. That wasn't my fault; I'd given up smoking back when I was still a teenager, after half a dozen attempts at looking cool and rebellious.

I tossed my keys down next to a filthy goldfish bowl. Munsey and Frank drifted up to the surface of the water, and I obliged them by shaking in a good helping of fish flakes. They were ugly sons of bitches, but they were hard. I liked that. They gobbled up the food while I made my way across the apartment.

The one good thing about my apartment was the view, if looking out at Bluegate didn't depress you too much. Most buildings in the immediate neighborhood were only three or four stories, so I sometimes pulled my tattered old armchair up to the window and stared out. The window faced north, and on a dark night I could see the glow from the Bore lighting up the buildings on the opposite side of the river.

Now, looking out at Bluegate for what could be the last time in a long while, I felt strangely nostalgic about the city. Sure, the place was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it wasn't without its redeeming features. Hell, I'd been raised on these streets, and I was pretty fond of myself.

I shook my head and stepped away from the window. I wasn't leaving anything behind, not really. Besides, I'd probably get a chance to come back when the cops got bored trying to find me and learned how to deal with their problems themselves.

I pulled open the fridge door and found Tania had been telling the truth; she'd cleaned me out of Kemia. The silver fluid acted as a catalyst when making a Tunnel. I wouldn't be going anywhere without it.

I checked my watch. Nearly 2 a.m. If I could get to Spencer Davies' place before the cops started snooping around, I could convince him to sell me some more Kemia. He wouldn't need much convincing. Davies was a Vei chemist, catering to the freelancers like myself who didn't have the access to Kemia the government-sanctioned Tunnelers did. He wouldn't turn down the chance to earn a few hundred bucks to slip into some stripper's thong.

I grabbed a couple of extra shirts and underpants from a pile on the floor of my bedroom and shoved them into an old messenger bag I kept at the top of my wardrobe. No time for a shave, or a shower for that matter. Likely I stunk like a wet dog, but I wasn't trying to impress anyone. Heaven was generally pretty warm, and I wouldn't need anything heavier than the worn suit jacket I was already wearing.

I was so busy hurrying around the place I kicked a black case on the floor and nearly went down on top of it. When I got my balance back I opened up the case and pulled out my trumpet.

It wasn't much to look at. It was dented in a few places, and the metal had long since stopped shining, but it was a good instrument. Occasionally I played with a couple of other guys at bars around the city. We got beer bottles thrown at us more often than not, but it gave me something other than work to worry about. Sometimes the barkeeper would even take pity on us and shout us a hearty meal of fries and ketchup.

I hadn't played it since my last gig went bad, when a Vei playing damsel in distress dragged me into a whole lot of nonsense that I should have stayed away from. Still, I kept the instrument well-maintained. Wasn't any point letting a good trumpet go to waste. Besides, it had—what do you call it? Sentimental value. Not many people have a musical instrument that both created and destroyed a relationship. _That bloody woman._

The clock on the wall kept up its constant movement, but still I put the trumpet to my lips and played a few long, mournful notes. They didn't come out as clean as I'd like, but it was me that was rusty, not the trumpet.

Christ, I wanted to take it with me. But it was a weight I couldn't afford. With a grunt, I returned it to its case and stashed it under my bed next to a pile of old Tunneling textbooks. It was just a trumpet. Just a trumpet.

Even if it was the only thing I had left of that bloody woman.

But that was the way it had to be. I turned to head for the door, then paused. I didn't know when I'd be able to get back, and Heaven could be a dangerous place if you weren't prepared. "Damn it," I said, then went back to my wardrobe and took a long, narrow box from behind an old raincoat.

I pulled the nightstick out and tested the weight of it in my hands. It was an ugly damn thing. The thing was weapon, pure and simple, with no other purpose than to beat the shit out of someone. The knife I carried could be used to scratch a circle, but the nightstick had no such purpose.

Some Tunnelers carried guns, but I'm not that stupid. Not usually, anyway. For one thing, if you're ever in a situation where you need to shoot someone, it's likely that there's more of them than there are of you. And if you're me, they're generally more determined to use their guns than you are. Your best bet is to play the part of a peaceful bystander and hope they don't shoot out kneecaps.

For another thing, you have to be dumber than a chimp to take a gat to Heaven. Complicated things like a gun are likely to change at just the wrong moment, safety mechanisms suddenly disappearing and firing pins setting off the gun unexpectedly. Heaven's just too unpredictable to go waving such a dangerous thing around. The nightstick is much simpler, of course. Swing, smash in some skulls, run for your fucking life. Easy.

With a bad taste in my mouth, I tucked the nightstick into the pocket I'd stitched into the inside of my suit jacket. It was just a precaution. Chances were I'd bring it back with little to no blood on the vile thing.

I started to make for the door and stopped again. Goddamn it. One more thing I had to do before I go.

I picked up my phone and dialed. It rang ten times before there was a click and a groan. "Guh?"

"Desmond," I said, "I need a favor."

There was another groan, and some rustling sounds. Then he came back on the line. "I knew it was gonna be you, guy. You're the only one who asks for favors at two in the morning."

"I'm going away for a few days. I need you to feed my fish."

"You woke me at two in the goddamn morning—"

"Oh, quit your whining," I said. "There's something else. There's a girl that lives in my building."

"Congratulations. But you should know by now she ain't going to be much interest to me."

"Don't be such a smartass. It's not like that. She's just a teenager. She opened a Pin Hole."

He went silent for a moment. "On her own?"

"Well, it sure as hell wasn't me helping her."

"Is she...?"

"Yeah, she's fine. Kids are hard these days."

"She needs someone to teach her," Desmond said.

"Yeah."

He paused again, and I could practically hear his sleepy brain connecting the dots. "You bastard. You're not getting me to do your work that easy."

"I'm out the door, Des. If I'm not back in a few days, you might want to drop by, make sure she hasn't blown her own head off."

"You son of a—"

"Her name's Tania. Got to go."

"Don't you dare hang up that fucking—"

I slapped the mouthpiece back on the cradle, slung my bag over my shoulder and took a deep breath. Everything was done. All the loose ends of my life tied up in under twenty minutes. Now that was efficiency.

There was nothing else for it. I cast one more look around the apartment and threw open the front door.

I found myself staring at a chest that looked like it had been built for pulverizing buildings. I looked up, and up, and finally found the head that was attached.

Detective Todd glanced at the bag slung over my shoulder, then looked me hard in the eyes. "Going somewhere, Miles?"

I had to admit, it looked bad. My brain spun, trying to devise a good lie, but Todd didn't stop to wait. He strode into the apartment, forcing me backward lest I be crushed under his bulk, and shut the door behind him.

Confused and overloaded, my brain reverted to its backup setting: being an asshole. "You're a lot uglier than the last hooker I ordered."

Todd stared at me for a second, then tilted his head back and burst out laughing.

I glanced at the front door again and pondered making a run for it. No. Todd was big, but I had a sneaking suspicion he'd catch me and pound me into the ground before I made it halfway down the stairs. It's hard to stay fit when you're surviving mostly on a diet of instant noodles.

Finally, his laughter subsided, and he returned his attention to me. His face had been well-worn over the years, with deep wrinkles across his face. I'd never asked his age, but I would put him in his mid-40s, even though he looked much older. The silver streaks in his hair didn't give him the dignified look they were supposed to, they just made him look aged.

When the last of his laughs faded, he pointed me to the dark brown couch that smelled of mothballs. "Hell of a night, huh? Supposed to be my time with my son."

"Yeah?" I said, barely listening. "How's that working out for you?"

"It's three in the a.m. and I'm hanging around with you. What do you think?" He gestured to the couch again. "Come on. We got to talk."

I glanced at the door once more, then went and took a seat. I rested my bag at my side, leaving my arms free. The nightstick rested against my ribs, hidden inside my jacket, but I didn't let myself think too much about it.

Todd dragged my armchair around so it was directly opposite the couch and dropped into it, the springs creaking violently under his weight. "I saw the look on your face back at the station. Didn't take no genius to work out you'd try to bolt."

I tried not to let the guilt show on my face. Apparently, I didn't do a very good job, because Todd fixed me with a stern look. It's pretty easy to pull off a stern look when it's backed up by 240 pounds of muscle.

Lying wasn't going to work. I'd have to try honesty for a change. "I don't think I'm right for this job."

Todd shrugged. "Of course you're not. You're a bloody civilian, with a criminal record at that."

"Why the hell you dragging me into your mess, then?"

"You've seen what the department's like at the moment. How many of those cops do you think are in the pocket of one gang or another? Sixty per cent? Seventy? How many of them stand to benefit if Chroma hits the streets? Everyone's gonna try get their hands on a piece of the pie, and none of them will give a fuck if it's so hot it burns them."

It wasn't exactly breaking news that the police in Bluegate had long since stopped being an instrument of the state. But that didn't make this my problem. "I'm just a Tunneler. I'm not the department's dog."

Todd reached into his front jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes. He offered me one, and I shook my head.

"I've been watching you since that weapons smuggling case," he said as he lit up. "You ain't got one gang-related blotch on your record. That's almost unheard of for Tunnelers in this town, you know that. Vivian ain't so keen on having you on board. It was me that swung it."

"Gee, thanks, Walt."

"There's something else." He reached into his pocket, and as he did so the pistol in his shoulder harness became visible beneath his jacket. I tensed, but he didn't seem to notice. He pulled out a folded bit of paper with a photograph paperclipped to it, and passed it to me. "You know her?"

The photograph was a poor quality picture of a round-faced lady, middle aged, with her hair in a pixie cut that didn't suit her. She stared directly at the camera, unsmiling, reminding me of a foster mother I once had. "I know of her. She graduated a few years ahead of me. Shirley O'Neil. She's a Tunneler."

Todd nodded and leaned forward in the armchair, resting his elbows on his knees. "Our info has her working for John Andrews these days. Pulls in a nice six-figure income, so I hear, all off the books, of course." He threw a glance around my cramped apartment. "We got a lead that suggests she might be connected to Doctor Dee. If it's Andrews behind this new drug, we can expect him to move fast and hard against his competitors when it hits the streets."

I chewed my lip. I thought I was out of my depth before, now I'd been thrown into the river with concrete blocks tied to my feet. John Andrews was a Vei gangster that controlled most of the northern side of Bluegate, and he didn't do it by shaking hands and kissing babies. That wasn't his real name, of course, but Vei names tended to be unpronounceable at the best of times, even when you knew a bit of the language.

"I got a good idea what you're thinking, Miles. But we'll be with you all the way on this, me and Vivian. We ain't gonna hang you out for John Andrews and his cronies to tear apart. But you can give us a street-level view we can't get from our department."

"Walt—"

"It's our best bet for stopping this before it gets any innocent folks hurt."

The bastard was really pushing the hard sell. It was easy to make promises, but John Andrews' reach was long. I didn't trust a thin blue line to hold him back. "I don't know O'Neil personally. She's just a face and a reputation to me."

"I know. But she's got herself a personal assistant, a Vei by the name of Lance Peterson."

It took me a second to place the name. "I smuggled him and his brother into Bluegate last year," I said slowly. "I thought he was a good kid."

Detective Todd shrugged. "Maybe he got mixed up with the wrong bunch. It's easy enough to do in this city."

"You want me to talk to him."

"We need an angle, Miles. We can keep him out of trouble if he helps us on this. If he doesn't..." Todd shrugged.

Goddamn it. This was what I got for not taking one of those nice salaries and working for a gang. Being the good guy is a son of a bitch.

Todd grinned at me. "I knew you'd come around."

"I haven't said I'll do it yet."

He slapped me on the shoulder, and it felt like one of my lungs collapsed. "It's written all over your face." He pulled another slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. "Meet you back at the station in twenty, then we'll head out. It ain't too late to go visit him now. People are so much more cooperative when they're sleep-deprived." He winked at me, stood up, and made for the door.

"You're a real bastard, you know that, Walt?" I said.

He lifted his hand above his head, waving without turning back, and walked out the door.

I went to the fridge, got a beer, and popped the top. I stood over the sink and slugged it back, barely tasting it. I'd been so looking forward to a little peace.

"Fuck it."

All right. I'd play their game if it would get them off my back. But that didn't mean I couldn't cheat a little. I tossed the empty into the sink, returned my getaway bag to my bedroom, and grabbed my address book and my motorbike helmet.

I'd go see Peterson. But not with any goddamn cops holding my leash. If I was going to do this, I was doing it my way.

I slammed the door behind me.

## CHAPTER FOUR

I rode a 250cc Yamaha motorbike constructed sometime between the Ice Age and the Fall of Rome. Like all my things, it was dented and scratched almost beyond recognition, but it ran well, and it was damn fuel efficient.

The rain was already hammering down when I rode out of my basement's parking lot. The dark clouds reflected the city's light back onto me. I revved the bike, wiped the rain of my helmet visor with the back of my hand, and peeled out onto the road.

The address I had for Lance Peterson was in John Andrews' territory to the north of the city, back past the police station. There was even less traffic now, but the increasingly heavy rain and wind made me take things carefully. It'd be a real fine thing if I screwed this up before I began because I hit an oil patch that was slick with rain and went tumbling onto the road. The bike would survive—it was a solid old thing—but I didn't count myself that lucky, especially if some opportunistic criminals decided they liked the look of my shoes.

Peterson's neighborhood was full of run-down Chinese restaurants and squashed-together villas. I slowed, squinting through the rain and the darkness to find the right address. After a few minutes of weaving through the streets, I found it, a white villa with paint peeling from the weatherboard and a non-matching gaudy staircase leading up to the front door.

I switched off my bike, put out the kickstand, and removed my helmet. The house was dark, like all the others. This wasn't really a bad neighborhood, so people here were probably sleeping at this time of night instead of shooting up Ink or trawling the streets as the police department's shiny new lackey. I put my hands in my pockets and hurried up the stairs to the shelter of the house's veranda, despite already being thoroughly soaked on the ride there.

As I tried to wipe the rain from my face, I pondered what to do now I was there. Detective Todd hadn't exactly been specific about Peterson's situation these days. Last time I saw him he was just a poor Vei kid trying to make a new life for himself in Bluegate. Vei immigrants tended to live in groups to make the rent easier to pay, and I wouldn't be surprised to find eight or ten Vei living in this little villa, crammed in like kittens in a sack. It probably wouldn't make a good impression on them if I kicked in the door and started demanding to speak to Peterson.

So it was going to have to be the old-fashioned way: bang on the door until someone woke up and let me in. I straightened my tie, tucked in my shirt, and started hammering.

I was at it for two minutes before a light finally flicked on behind the frosted glass of the front door. My hand had gone red and was starting to ache when the door slowly opened.

It was a child. Damn, I hadn't counted on that. She was a little Vei girl, wearing Earth-style pajamas and clutching a plastic doll to her chest. It was sometimes hard to judge ages of Vei children, but I'd guess she was about three or four.

Vei were strange-looking people, if you hadn't seen them before. I use the term "people" loosely, because as similar as they were to us in some ways, they were very different. From a distance they looked almost human; two arms, two legs, all the appendages you'd expect, but when you got up close it wasn't hard to tell the difference. They were generally shorter and more slender than humans, with skin an almost impossible white. The most off-putting feature by far was the face.

Their heads were round, almost spherical, and completely devoid of hair. They tended to have oversized eyes as well, though that varied from Vei to Vei.

Their mouths were what really freak people out. Shark-like, I suppose you could call them. Two rows of pointed teeth on both jaws, no lips, and mouths that stretched all the way to the side of their face.

The first human soldiers sent through the Bores to explore Heaven found the Vei equal parts disgusting and intriguing. It was less than twelve hours after the first team went through that the news stations were bursting with images of the Vei and their strange cities.

But right now, this little girl could almost pass for human, if it wasn't for her teeth. She squinted up at me, rubbing the sleep from her big eyes, and frowned. "Who are you?"

I was never quite sure how to deal with kids, human or Vei. For the most part they resembled little drugged-up midgets, stumbling around the place shitting and puking. Usually I talked to them as if that's what they were, enunciating my words slowly and carefully, until I sounded more stoned than them. This time, I tried treating her like I would a kitten I found in a box on my doorstep.

"Hello, little one." My voice sounded patronizing even to my ears. "What's your name?"

Her frown deepened, something that looked somewhat frightening on a person with teeth that could gut an elephant, even if she only came up to my thighs. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."

I nodded sagely and hoped she didn't start screaming. "I'm looking for someone. Lance Peterson. Is he your daddy?"

"My father is dead," she informed me matter-of-factly. "Lance is my uncle."

Christ, they bred Vei kids hard. "I need to speak to him. Is he here?"

"He's sleeping."

"It's important. Can you take me to him?" I tried smiling brightly to see if that improved my odds. Judging from my general state of exhaustion it only made me look more psychopathic, but hey, I was trying.

To give the kid credit, she didn't balk. She studied me for several moments in the same manner all women seem to have a knack for: somehow both appraising and dismissing at the same time. She was going to grow up to be yet another woman to be scared of.

Finally, she gave me a curt nod and stepped back to let me in. I took a step inside, noticed the way she was staring pointedly at my feet, then wiped my feet on the doormat. A hard woman indeed.

The inside of the house was all wooden paneling and knock-offs of abstract paintings. There were no trinkets from Heaven; most non-living objects brought to Earth degraded fairly quickly. Even Ink had a shelf life measured in weeks, and that was with all the extra precautions the dealers put into keeping it viable as long as possible.

The girl led me through the hallway, pattering along in bare feet, and I could hear the soft sounds of breathing—something subtly non-human about it—coming from the rooms I passed. My barrage on the door didn't appear to have woken anyone else. They must have had ears made of wood.

Lance's bedroom was at the end of the hallway, sharing walls with a bathroom and a linen closet. The girl stopped in front of it, still eyeing me with no small amount of suspicion, and pointed to the door. "I better not get in trouble for this."

"You won't," I assured her, trying my smile again. She didn't look convinced, but she nodded and wandered back to her own room.

I waited until she'd gone before I opened the door to Peterson's room. Screw knocking. I was more than a little cranky, and a little sadistic part of me wanted someone else to suffer exhaustion like I was.

I groped around on the wall and found a light switch. Peterson's room was marginally bigger than my own. There were no windows, just a set of drawers, some neatly folded piles of clothes, and a single bed. Peterson was snuggled up in a thick pile of blankets, facing away from me. I could just hear him snoring through his slit-like nostrils over the rat-a-tat of rain on the roof. Turning on the light didn't appear to have disturbed him at all.

Right, that was it. If I wasn't going to get any sleep tonight, I wasn't going to let this bastard get any either. I stomped across the room and took hold of Peterson's shoulders. "Peterson, you lazy son of a bitch. Wake up!"

His eyes snapped open and a little wordless scream escaped his throat. I clamped my hand over his mouth, ignoring the sharp points of his teeth for a moment. "Easy, easy damn it. I just want to talk."

He snatched my hand away from his mouth, but at least he'd stopped screaming. He scrambled up in his bed, pulling his covers up around himself, and fixed me with a look that was equal parts confused and angry. "Franco? What...?"

I held up my hands and took a step back, already regretting my method of waking him. Probably not the smartest way to gain someone's trust. "The little girl let me in."

"Is this a dream?" Unlike the girl he still had a hint of an accent, an odd way of pronouncing his i's and r's.

"I didn't think Vei dreamed."

"What in the names of the Eight are you doing in my house?"

I opened my mouth and shut it again. How the hell were you supposed to ask someone to turn on the nastiest gangster in the city? Maybe coming here on my own wasn't one of my brightest ideas.

I blamed tiredness. And police intimidation. I was usually much better prepared for things like this. It was a necessary part of being a Tunneler, at least one who wanted to survive.

Peterson was still staring at me, so I said the first thing that came into my head. "So I hear you got a gig with Shirley O'Neil these days."

He frowned, looking even more fearsome than the girl had. "What of it?"

"Great dame, that Shirley."

Peterson's frown was rapidly turning into a scowl. He looked older than when I'd last seen him. He'd come to Earth so fresh and naive, and now here he was looking like he was about to pull a Glock on me.

I switched from English to Vei, hoping it would score me some points. "Look, here's the deal, Lance. I'm running down some leads, and I was wondering if the names Doctor Dee or Chroma meant anything to you."

His face became as still as if he'd been frozen in carbonite. He stared at me for several seconds before finally opening his mouth. "No. Not a thing."

In general, Vei are terrible liars. Peterson was the worst I'd seen. I almost smiled, but I thought it would spoil the mood. "You don't have to be scared. I know people who can protect you."

"People? What people?"

"The police are—"

"The police? You're working with the police?" His voice rose to a screech. "You brought the police here?"

"It's okay." I held out my hands in what I hoped was a soothing motion, but he just backed away further into the corner of his bed. "They're not here yet."

That was the wrong thing to say. In fact, that was probably the stupidest thing I could have possibly said. His screech turned into a wail, and he scrambled around, tossing the blankets off himself and babbling in Vei. "No, no, no. Dead, I'm dead, dead..." He began speaking too fast for me to understand. He threw the last blanket to the floor, and I realized he was naked.

"Whoa, Jesus." I held my hand up to block my vision and protect my delicate sensibilities. I was nowhere near drunk enough to see that. "Who are you afraid of, Lance? O'Neil? John Andrews?"

He didn't reply. Instead, he started grabbing clothes and assorted accessories and shoving them into a huge purple suitcase he pulled from under his bed.

"Hell, just calm down," I said. "Breathe, Lance. Breathe." He ignored me, didn't even look at me. I reached out to shake some sense into him. "For the love of God will you just—"

A jolt of pain flew through my back, like someone had just kicked me square in the kidney. I tried to turn, but my body didn't seem to be working. I heard a strangled screaming noise. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from me.

The pain lanced through my muscles, and I knew I was going to fall. I couldn't move any part of my body, and I was off balance. I toppled awkwardly, rotating as I fell. Peterson finally appeared to have noticed me; he was staring at me with his jaw dropping.

I hit the ground hard, facing the door. The little girl was standing in the doorway. She was still wearing her pajamas, but she'd abandoned her doll in favor of something more exciting.

The thing she held in her hands looked like a gun, but it was yellow, with two thin wires stretching across the room and burying themselves in my shoulder. The girl's face was fixed in an expression of determination.

I had just enough time to swear before something collided with the back of my head and everything went black.

## CHAPTER FIVE

I came to in a moving car. Something was pressing against my face that smelled of old socks and made the air stuffy and barely breathable. I opened my eyes, but it didn't do any good; whatever was over my head blocked out the light completely. I was lying down, and my muscles ached like I'd been trampled by a crowd of drunks.

My heart thudded. What the hell had happened? I tried to piece together the last few moments I remembered.

Ah, right. That bloody little girl had tasered me. When I got out of this I'd have to have a stern talk with Peterson about appropriate toys for his niece.

I tried to stretch my arms, but it did no good. My wrists were tightly bound behind my back, and so were my ankles. I wriggled around and tried to sit up, but that just sent shooting pain flying through my head, so I gave up.

Hell. I was up shit creek without a paddle, a boat, or a pair of water wings. I tried to fight down a rising panic. If this car belonged to the man I thought it did, I was dead already. Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

"Hello?" I said, my voice thin. "Any chance we can talk this out?"

No response. I doubted anyone could hear me. I had a pretty good idea I was in the trunk; whatever I was lying on wasn't cushioned enough to be a seat. I squirmed again, managing to shuffle along a few inches before my head struck the inside of the trunk and sent a fresh wave of pain shooting through my skull.

"Ow," I said. No point being stoic if I was by myself.

I could hear my rapid breathing even over the rumble of the car and the rain pounding outside. It was turning into a hell of a rainstorm. Not the kind of weather I wanted to die in, to be honest, but I supposed it fitted the mood.

_All right, think, Miles_. I could feel the handle of the folding knife digging into my hip, and the nightstick pressed against my ribs. It didn't bode well for me if they hadn't bothered to disarm me; it meant they weren't planning on letting me live long enough to use them. But maybe if I could get my knife I could cut my bonds, and then...

Then what? I remembered seeing a TV show about what to do if you find yourself locked in a trunk. I was tired at the time, so I turned it off and went to bed. Why was it that I was always foiled by my desire to sleep?

Maybe I could get out through the back seat, if it was that kind of car, or maybe I could kick out the brake light.

Damn it, if only Tania hadn't used the last of my Kemia, I'd be out of here in a snap. That girl had a lot to answer for.

No, that was just the panic talking. Maybe if I had a consistent income I'd be able to buy more than one bottle at a time. Here I lay, Miles Franco, freelance Tunneler, man who crossed worlds, trapped in a car trunk and struggling desperately to reach my pocket knife because I couldn't afford a lousy bottle of Kemia.

It would have been funny if it wasn't for all this imminent death.

I managed to touch the knife with the tips of my fingers when the car pulled to a halt and sent me tumbling over. Fat lot of good that did. The car engine stopped and doors were opened and closed. I waited and resisted the urge to start screaming.

There was a click, then a cool breeze washed over me and harsh artificial light came through the hood over my head. I caught a whiff of petrol and cigarette smoke.

"Think he's awake yet?" a nasally voice said, the thick Vei accent obvious even through the hood.

Something hard jabbed me in the ribs, and I yelped.

"Sure sounds like it," another man said, this voice deep and human.

Hands grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me out of the trunk. My head pounded at the sudden movement, but I'd be damned if I was going to whimper twice in front of these bastards. If I was going to die, I'd preserve the last of my dignity until they shot it right out of my skull.

Someone ripped the hood off my head. Fresh air rushed in, and I squinted against the sudden glare. It was still night, but a bright spotlight shone on my face. I leaned back against the car, trying to work out where I was. Christ, what I wouldn't give to have my wrists untied.

I was under some sort of awning, which explained why I wasn't getting any more soaked. Rain slashed down onto the wide concrete expanse in front of me, leaving deep puddles that cast back reflections of shattered light. Above me was a corrugated iron roof held up by unpainted wooden beams, thundering under the sky's barrage. If I had to guess, I'd say we were at one of the hundreds of dock warehouses north of the central city. It didn't escape me that John Andrews owned most of these docks, either officially or unofficially.

Two men stood in front of me, looking like they'd just been ripped out of a 50s gangster movie. The big one drew my attention first. He was human, six and a half feet with change, and so grossly overweight I was amazed his knees hadn't buckled already. His companion, a Vei man, didn't even come to my shoulder. His pale face was lined with wrinkles, and a cigarette dangled from his wide mouth.

Both the gangsters were dressed in well-fitted black suits, with black shirts underneath. On both their heads were fedora hats. Honest to God, fedoras. You can't make this stuff up. I half-expected them to pull out Tommy guns and break into fake Italian accents.

Both of them were staring at me with bored expressions, so I decided it must be my turn to kick off the conversation. "How about this weather, huh?"

They didn't go for it. The big one—Butch, I decided to call him—drove his fist into my stomach so hard I expected to feel his fingers tickling my tonsils. I doubled over and gasped for breath. My vision went spotty for a moment, and a fresh wave of pain rolled through my head.

All right, so that didn't go how I hoped.

The Vei—I thought the name Ugly suited him—sneered up at me and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. "You know, it's awful late for you to be inconveniencing us." He took a long drag of his smoke, his gaze never leaving my eyes. "It's a real pain, to be frank. That little maggot Peterson could have done us the favor of finishing you off himself."

"Well hell, if it's a bad time, you guys go home and get some shut-eye," I said. "We can pick this whole kidnapping thing up in the morning."

Butch's face didn't move—he'd probably traded in his sense of humor along with his moral fiber—but Ugly smirked, baring his teeth. "Nah, this won't take long. Besides, the wife snores like a kuroth. I wouldn't've been sleeping anyways."

"I know the feeling."

Ugly dropped his cigarette to the concrete and crushed it with a shoe that cost more than my entire outfit. With a casual gesture, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a stunted black pistol.

Blood pounded in my ears, and my legs lost some of their strength. "Hey, wait a minute, let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Butch reached behind me with surprising speed and grabbed me by the arms, pulling me in front of him. I could feel his breath on my head, coming much more slowly than my own. Ugly brought the gun up under my chin, slowly, deliberately, no smirk on his face now. "Peterson tells us you've been talking to the cops, Miles. Can I call you Miles?"

In general, I made it a point not to argue with people holding me at gunpoint. I nodded, moving as little as possible, while trying vainly to stretch my head away from the pistol.

"Now," Ugly said, inclining his head toward Butch, "you may have guessed that my companion and I ain't too fond of the boys in blue. Our boss doesn't take too kindly to them either. They're expensive little pets, except for the few wild dogs sniffing around where they don't belong." He thumbed back the hammer of his pistol—a pointless gesture, given it was a semi-automatic, but effective nonetheless. "But if you be a good little boy, maybe we'll forget all about who you work for. Does that sound good, Miles?"

"Given the alternatives, I really can't complain."

"Good. That'll make things go much smoother. Now, our employer just wants to know one little thing: what do the cops know about Chroma?"

I opened my mouth to speak, reasoning that such knowledge would go public soon even if I decided to have principles and get a bullet through my brain. But something in Ugly's face gave me pause, a faint flaring of the nostrils that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't spent a lot of time with Vei over the years. I checked myself, and frowned. "Why do you want to know?"

He jammed the pistol up against my chin, forcing my face skyward. "You'll answer the question, Tunneler. Don't make me ask again."

I shook my head, slowly. "I got a better idea," I said in Vei. "Take me to John Andrews."

The words got out of my mouth before I'd even realized what I was doing. It wasn't gambling, it was Russian Roulette with bullets in five chambers. But right then, the only way I was getting off that dock alive was to invoke some fear in them. I wasn't going to be scaring them, but I knew who would.

Butch tightened his grip on my arms, and Ugly showed his teeth to me, dozens of sharp, vicious points glinting in the spotlight overhead. The first crash of thunder rolled across the city, while the rain hammered around us. I held my breath, praying to Jesus or Krishna or the Eight that Ugly wasn't as trigger-happy as he looked.

Someone up there was listening. Ugly leaned in close, bringing his teeth uncomfortably close to my neck.

"And why," he hissed in Vei, "should I do that? Why shouldn't I dump you in the river with a couple of bullet-sized wounds in your head?"

"Because," I said, "your boss has no fucking idea who Doctor Dee is, does he?"

Ugly's eyes twitched, and that was all I needed. Like I said, Vei aren't good liars.

I felt a momentary thrill of victory, despite a not-inconsiderable suspicion that he might pop a cap in me just to spite me. If it had been Butch holding the gun, I would have bet money on it, but it seemed like there was a reason Ugly was the one in charge. His breath came hissing through his teeth, but he lowered the gun a fraction and switched back to English. "Not important, Franco. Tell me what you know."

"No."

He snarled and glanced up at Butch. The brute's hands became a vice. I grunted at the sudden pain as he started to crush me. "Andrews. I'll talk to Andrews. I'll make a deal."

"You'll deal with me."

"You kill me, your boss won't be happy."

"Last chance, Miles."

It felt like my bones were being scraped against each other. But I couldn't back down now. I'd pushed Ugly too far, and I knew if I told him anything—or if I knew anything to tell him—I'd be dead anyway. No, this was my only chance. So I gritted my teeth and did my best to smile. "Fuck you, lumpfish."

That did it. Lumpfish was the nastiest derogatory term one could level at a Vei, and you could argue there was a certain resemblance. Not that it was smart to air that opinion if you were fond of keeping your head attached to your neck. But right now, being smart wasn't an option.

Ugly smacked me across the face with the butt of his pistol. Fresh pain screamed through my cheek, and I dropped to my knees as Butch let me go.

While I kneeled, trying not to shout, Ugly grabbed me by my curls and yanked my face up. He stared down at me, murder burning in his eyes, and snarled. "Bring him. I want to see Mr. Andrews set him on fire."

## CHAPTER SIX

I had a few minutes to ponder my idiocy while Ugly and Butch took me to see John Andrews. They let me sit in the back seat this time, which was awful big of them, though they only untied my ankles.

It's not like I was going anywhere anyway. Without Kemia, I couldn't create a big enough Pin Hole to be useful, and using my knife to cut myself free wasn't going to help me much. Butch was driving, and he certainly wasn't going slow. If I jumped from the car, all I'd get was a broken neck.

So I sat quietly, watching the night go past. I had no idea what time it was, but it couldn't be far from dawn. I wondered if I'd live to see another sunrise. Then I remembered that I hated sunrises. They always happened much too early in the morning.

I'd been so goddamn stupid. Busting in on Peterson like that, trying to intimidate him into giving up the information that would get the cops off my back. If I'd stopped to think about it for one damn minute, I'd have been able to predict him flying off the handle like that. Peterson had been flighty and overly passionate back when I'd smuggled him to Earth, even more than most Vei. True, I'd expected a year on Earth to have mellowed him out a little, but that was just an excuse. In hindsight, it wasn't surprising he'd got so upset.

I really did wish his niece hadn't tasered me, though.

Oh well, I was way past worrying about that now. My only chance to survive was to talk my way out of the clutches of Bluegate's worst gangster. And I wasn't exactly a charmer.

My spirits picked up a little when Butch pulled the car up outside a strip club. I guess my life was kind of hanging in the balance, but that doesn't mean I'm not still a man.

The building lay sprawled between some sort of factory and a run-down old porno store, but it had a nice little parking lot that was nearly full even at this hour. A pink neon sign told me the place was called _The Dream Room_. Kind of a tacky name, really. I expected a gangster's club to have a bit more class.

Butch stepped out of the car and opened the back door. I tried to wriggle my way out, but he grew impatient and dragged me out by the front of my shirt.

"Thanks, friend," I said, but he just grunted. Not much of a talker, that one.

Ugly had holstered his gun again, but I could see the outline of it under his jacket. He must have caught me looking, because he smirked at me and jerked his head toward the club entrance. "Move it."

Butch shoved me to make sure I understood the instruction, and my heart rose in my throat as I walked. "Look, guys, it's real nice that you remembered my birthday, but I'm not a big fan of strip clubs. I'm waiting for the right girl, you see."

"Are you still talking?" Ugly glanced up at Butch. "If he opens his mouth again, rip out his tongue."

Butch laughed, a deep, throaty noise. "Will do."

I gulped, cartoon-style, and kept putting one foot in front of the other. At that minute, it was the only thing I could do.

Christ, I was fucked.

The bouncer on the door was human and almost as big as Butch. He nodded to my companions, gave me the quick once-over with his eyes, and let us pass without comment.

I could hear blaring music even before we passed through the foyer. I couldn't believe they were still running at full steam at this time of the morning. Then again, I guess sex, like money, never sleeps. Ugly and Butch pushed me in front of them, through the dimly lit foyer and toward the saloon-style doors where I could see flashing colored lights and the tantalizing hint of a dancing woman's flesh.

A small, spindly hand grabbed my arm. "Not in there, Tunneler."

Ugly pointed to the corner of the foyer, where I could just make out the hint of a stairway leading up to a second level. I was about to say something about missing out on all the fun, but then I remembered Ugly's earlier threat and decided to keep my mouth shut.

The upper floor was significantly less flashy than the club itself, being made mostly of polished wood floors and walls painted in muted colors. A couple of tasteful portraits attempted to brighten the place up, but I wasn't in the mood to admire the artwork. The place had a certain kind of class, I guess, but the bass beat of the music pounding through the floor dampened the effect.

Ugly led the way to a pair of impressive oak double doors. John Andrews certainly liked to make a show. Ugly turned back to me, his hand on the doorknob, and smirked once more. "I hope you've enjoyed your life. Maybe your next one will go better, huh?"

I didn't say anything. There was nothing left to say. Roll back the curtains, gaze into the lights, hold for applause.

Let the performance begin.

Ugly threw open the door and a wave of raucous laughter washed out. I'd expected something like at the start of The Godfather, John Andrews sitting behind his desk, arms folded in front of him, while he quietly granted favors.

Instead, there was a goddamn casino.

Dozens of human and Vei men and women mingled around the high-vaulted room, dressed in outfits that would be more at home in 1920s New York and drinking out of champagne flutes and martini glasses. Most of them were well into middle age, but I spotted a few people my age or younger, and as usual it was difficult to tell the ages of the Vei.

The room was three times as wide across as my entire apartment. The carpet was velvet red, and the entire room was softly lit by six fake chandeliers. Several gaming tables were set up around the room, green lining covered in cards and dice. The room was alive with the cheerful clatter of chips and the victorious shouts of the winners.

The noise faltered a little when I stepped into the room. I must've been a sight; bound, bruised, my hair matted with dry blood. The room's eyes turned toward me, the last of the noise dying away, and everyone went still.

I grinned at my audience. "Jesus. Strippers, gambling, this place has everything, doesn't it?"

Butch punched me in the side. Several women let out short screams, the romantic notions of their gangster hosts apparently dampened. I toppled, the wind driven out of me again. Butch kindly grabbed me by the shoulder and kept me from falling, and the room went silent again.

"Leave." The voice came from somewhere at the back of the room, but I couldn't see who spoke.

No one moved.

"Go!" the voice boomed. The gamblers jumped, suddenly realizing they had all left their ovens on, and scrambled for the doorway. They gave me and my companions a wide berth as they slipped out the door, none of them meeting my eyes.

I didn't give a damn. Beneath my fixed grin, my fear had acquired a layer of anger. The gangs weren't the problem in Bluegate, not really. It was people like these. People who sucked up to the gangsters, trying to see what they could get out of them. It was all a bit of fun for them.

No. Focus, Miles. Now wasn't the time to get on my high horse. I had more important things to worry about.

The last of the overdressed guests slipped past me and hurried down the stairs, high heels clacking on the wooden floors. There was a moment of silence, only broken by my wheezing breath and the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I'm not ashamed to admit my hands were trembling in their bonds.

Even though John Andrews' picture had been on TV and in the newspaper a hundred times, I'd never really known what he looked like. It was a strange phenomenon that some Vei didn't appear on camera well. The anti-immigration folks liked to claim it was because those Vei had retained some of Heaven's instability inside themselves. Me, I just figured no one was willing to hang around Andrews long enough to get a clear shot.

But still, the Vei gangster was unmistakable, rising from behind the roulette table. He was tall for a Vei, taller than me, with broad shoulders and a strong chest. The tuxedo he wore was purest white, the bowtie hanging undone around his pale neck. The gold watch on his wrist glinted all the way across the room, and I had no doubt the purchase price could've saved a large village in Africa.

His face, well, that was the really creepy bit. Burned, wrinkled skin covered his left cheek, stretching down across the corner of his lips. His left eye was milky white, with no pupil, and when he opened his mouth I saw several teeth missing.

All in all, John Andrews was one scary-looking mother-fucker.

Andrews was so intimidating it took me a moment to realize he wasn't alone. A woman sat at the roulette table beside him, dressed in a cocktail dress that she filled out in all the wrong ways. Her blond hair had been cropped close to her skull, giving her a stern appearance. I recognized her from the picture Detective Todd had showed me. Shirley O'Neil barely even looked at me as I stood there.

The Tunneler's small black handbag sat on the table in front of her, and I could see the tip of a small glass bottle peeking out the top of it. Kemia. She had some with her. If I could get my hands on some...

No. There was no way I could get to it without winding up full of bullet holes. As much as it tempted me, I couldn't rely on Tunneling to get me out of here. My one advantage was useless, and all I had left was my winning personality.

I started walking before Butch had a chance to give me another shove. I knew the drill by now. My legs seemed to be bending weirdly, like they were made of rubber, but they did their job and kept me upright. John Andrews watched me approach, his hands folded together in front of him, no expression on his face.

I stopped in front of the roulette table, fighting the urge to drop down and die right there. I was close enough now to see the silver earring in John Andrew's right ear, a simple hoop—the only simple thing on him. He regarded me with his one working eye, never looking anywhere except my face, and slowly raised his hands.

"What is this?" The Vei accent was thick, not tempered by the fifteen or so years he must have lived on Earth. "Why do you bring me this man, here, of all places?"

I could sense Ugly tensing behind me. "He wouldn't—"

"I do not care what he wouldn't. I asked you to deal with this. Why is he alive?" Andrews spoke without anger in his voice, without anything at all in his voice. That only made it scarier. Vei weren't supposed to be this calm.

"Don't mind me," I said. "Just thought I'd play some dice. Although, now I'm not liking my chances beating the house." I nodded toward Shirley O'Neil, keeping my voice under control despite my fear. "Especially when you've got a pet Tunneler to help you beat the odds."

Another of Butch's blows took me in the side, harder this time.

"This is why you are here? To insult my business practices? Perhaps I will let Shirley turn you into something more agreeable. Replace your brain with that of a nice little puppy, maybe."

"No. I wanted to talk to you about something else." My ingenious plan to avoid becoming fish-food definitely seemed stupid now. "You know, before I get killed."

Andrews' expression didn't change. He made his way around the table, removing the one barrier between him and me, and I fought the urge to bolt.

"You know who I am," he said. "I see it. You are afraid. That is good, you should be afraid. But you stand proud. I admire that in a man." He continued to move forward, until he was less than a foot away from me. "Unfortunately, you have upset my guests by coming here, and that upsets me." He glanced at Ugly and spoke in Vei. "String him up in the basement, and pray to the Eight I don't string you up as well." He turned away.

"Wait," I said in Vei. Andrews stopped and slowly turned back. I licked my lips, suddenly realizing my mouth was dry as a stone. "I thought maybe we can help each other."

His appraisal of me seemed to shift slightly. Not many humans knew the Vei tongue, especially not ones who weren't employed as ambassadors or consuls. I doubted even O'Neil did. His eye narrowed a fraction. "Help? What help do I need?"

"I hear there's a new drug coming soon. The cops think you're behind it, but me, I'm not so sure. I think you've been left out in the cold on this one. I think you're scared."

I expected him to snarl, to shout, but instead he grinned, showing me all his missing teeth. I shivered. The snarl would have been better.

He turned his grin to Ugly and Butch and spoke in English again. "Did you hear this man? He thinks I'm scared." He returned his gaze to me, the grin widening manically. "This is a strange way to beg for your life, Mr..."

"Franco," O'Neil offered.

"Mr. Franco." John Andrews glanced back at the Tunneler. "You know this man?"

She shrugged. "Not personally. He is a no-name Tunneler."

"And now the police's new lapdog." Andrews let his smile fade. "I do not get scared by dreamers who think they can take my business out from under me with no more than a shiny new drug."

"Well in that case, I suppose you don't want my help getting that shiny new drug out of your competitors' hands?"

It was a complete bluff. He had a straight flush, and I was holding a hand of Jokers. But it stopped him, and that was something. My hopes soared for a second, then started to crash back down as he opened his mouth and shook his head.

"John?" The woman's voice came from behind me. It interrupted Andrews before he could speak, and he closed his mouth. His eyelid fluttered, an expression that was either ecstasy or annoyance. Possibly both. Vei were strange like that.

I turned carefully, not eager to put my back to the gangster. The woman was human, slim, and young. Her red hair was drawn up into a ponytail, and she wore a high-necked dress and comfortable-looking sandals.

John Andrews brushed past me and held out his arms to the woman. "Caterina, you shouldn't be here."

She accepted his embrace, but stared over his shoulder at the rest of us. "I woke up early and you hadn't come home. What's going on here?"

Andrews broke away from her, taking in the way she watched me. No doubt I looked pretty horrifying, and I wondered if I scared her. She'd probably seen worse. That was what happened when you kept gangster company, I suppose.

Andrews grinned at me again, though it was a more normal expression this time. "My wife, you interest her. She likes pretty things. Maybe she thinks you're a pretty thing?" He laughed, but Caterina kept her eyes on me. A flash of something—fear?—passed across her face, and then it was gone. I didn't let myself respond. Instead, I settled for pleading with my eyes. _Get me out of here, lady_.

Interspecies marriages were rare, but not unheard of. This one surprised me, though. She'd somehow managed to keep out of the media spotlight. I hadn't even known Andrews was married.

Andrews made a shooing motion with his hands. "We have business to attend to. Go wait in my office. I will be there soon."

She didn't move. "What sort of business?"

"It is nothing. The usual. This man is a Tunneler who has been poking his nose where it does not belong." She frowned, but he put a finger under her chin and lifted her face. "You know the nature of my work. I do not wish you to see this. Go to my office."

She stared into his eyes, and I could swear his expression softened. Maybe the big bad gangster had a heart somewhere in there after all. What kind of screwed up relationship was this?

With one final glance at me, Caterina turned away and strode down the hallway. I watched her go, feeling like I'd been punched in the gut. So much for my telepathic cries for help.

Andrews sighed and pulled the doors to the casino shut after her, then faced me again.

"Well, Mr. Franco, I believe you were saying something."

I screwed up my eyes, trying to get my thoughts together. "A deal. You don't want Chroma on the streets under someone else's control. Will it be the Gravediggers who cut you down? The Silk Dragons?"

O'Neil let out a little noise, something that might almost have been a giggle. Andrews ran a tongue over his teeth. "You offer me protection from the scary gangs? Me?"

"Chroma hits the streets, that's bad for you. Bad for me, too. I don't much like you, and I know you sure as hell aren't fond of me, but maybe we can form a working relationship."

My heart twisted as I said it, even though I had zero intention of following through. Even the thought of making a deal with this man made me sick.

By the smile spreading over Andrews' face, it didn't look like I'd have long to feel guilty.

"You know nothing," he said slowly. "I see it in your eyes. You have no idea who Doctor Dee is working for, do you? When Peterson called me, ranting and raving like a mad person, I thought you were a threat. A pity for you."

He lifted his hands in front of my face. For a moment, I had the strangest idea that he was going to squeeze my cheeks like on overly affectionate old lady.

But then I realized his fingers were changing.

I watched in shock, heart hammering, as his fingers grew longer, longer. In less than a second they were as long as his forearm, slender and jointed in too many places. Butch held me tight as cruel claws emerged from the tips of Andrews' fingers, stretching toward me. Aw, hell.

"Good-bye, Mr. Franco," he said, pressing the claws against my throat. "It has been a pleasure."

My cell phone rang.

The sound of it nearly sent me jumping out of my skin, and it seemed to have scared Ugly as well. He'd got his pistol halfway out from under his jacket, and was staring at my jacket pocket like he was contemplating putting a bullet in it.

I sucked in a breath and twisted to look at John Andrews' hands, but they were normal Vei hands again, as if nothing had ever happened. Christ. That shouldn't have been possible.

I recovered myself, trying to control my breathing, and nodded toward my pocket. "Do you mind?"

Ugly glanced at Andrews, who frowned, then nodded. He returned his hands to his side, and I tried not to stare at them. Ugly reached into my pocket, flipped open the aging phone, and pressed it to my ear.

"Miles here," I said.

"Mr. Franco." It took me a second, then I recognized Detective Reed's voice. She sounded pissed. "Where the hell are you?"

"Hi Vivian. I'm at John Andrew's strip club. If I don't call you in an hour—"

Butch's hand clamped over my mouth, and Ugly ripped the phone away. Andrews stepped up to me, sharp teeth inches from my face. "That was very foolish, Tunneler."

I twisted my head away from Butch's hand, and he released me. "It's the cops. They want to talk to you."

Andrews stared at the phone like it was a loaded gun. I could still hear Vivian squawking. Andrews took the phone from Ugly and pressed it against my face. "You will tell them you are safe."

I kept my mouth shut. Detective Reed's call had rattled him more than I would've expected it to, but I wasn't complaining. Hell, maybe he was just afraid to find cops sniffing around his business for once. Most of the force was in his pocket, and the rest were too scared to do their jobs. Whatever else they were, Detectives Reed and Todd had giant brass balls.

Something dark burned in Andrew's remaining eye. For a moment I thought he might kill me there, and to hell with the police, but he brought the phone back to his ear and said, "He will call you back."

He snapped the phone shut and tucked it into the side pocket of my jacket. "This is not over, Mr. Franco." He clicked his fingers, and Butch shoved me toward the door. I walked, obedient, on a high. O'Neil watched me, still seated, her expression blank. I met her eyes, but saw nothing there.

Ugly opened the door for me and let me through. I was getting out alive. Sweet Jesus, I was still breathing.

"Wait," John Andrews said. My heart plummeted. "Mr. Franco has upset me this night. Make him hurt before he leaves."

They took me out to the parking lot and beat me like a goddamn bongo drum. It was still dark out, and I crawled in the puddles, soaking wet with rain, while they kicked me again and again in the gut. A couple of times I thought I was going to pass out, but then one asshole or other would deliver a blow that sent fire up my back, shocking me back to reality. I think the bouncer might have joined in the fun for a bit.

Just when I thought I couldn't take any more, the blows stopped. I lay on the ground, unable to stop coughing, blood in my mouth. My vision was blurred, but I could make out Ugly bending down in front of me, smoking another cigarette despite the pouring rain.

"Never call me a lumpfish again." He reached into my pocket, found my knife, and held it up. "Try cutting yourself free without this, asshole."

I groaned into the concrete, pain coursing through every inch of my skin, and tried not to think about how badly I'd failed.

## CHAPTER SEVEN

I think I must have passed out for a while, because when I came to the rain was easing and the first fingers of light were spreading over the horizon, like God reaching over Bluegate to crush the last of the life out of it.

My arms were still bound. I tried to reach into my pockets before I remembered Ugly had taken my knife. I glanced back at the strip club, but even the bouncer was gone now. It was just me, alone, in the damp parking lot. I tried to get to my feet, but the world spun and I stumbled back down again.

It was hopeless. I had fucked up. I had really fucked up. For a moment I was filled with rage, rage at the cops, at Todd for his dumbass plan to talk to Peterson. But I was too tired and sore, and the anger quickly burned out. It had been me who'd stumbled around like the drunkest man at the party, picking fights and saying dumb things.

It wasn't like this was my fight, not really. This sort of shit was what the cops were for. They got money, they got guns, they got support. Me, I was just their damn dog.

John Andrews had been scared of the cops. Maybe I should be too. Screw this Chroma rubbish. So what if there was another drug out there? Bluegate was a goddamn graveyard already, full of the skeletons of abandoned buildings. Maybe it'd be kinder to let it die.

_Not for the innocent ones_ , a little voice whispered. _Not for people like Tania_. My job led me to see the bad side of Bluegate, but that wasn't all there was to it.

Not that it mattered now. I'd failed. Andrews knew something about Chroma, but I hadn't even been close to getting it out of him. I supposed I should be thankful I got out of there alive, but given the way my ribs ached, I wasn't exactly in a grateful mood.

Part of me was tempted to lie here. I could barely think, I could barely move. Hell, the smart thing to do was sit tight and wait until the pain went away. If that meant the big sleep, then so be it.

But I couldn't. I wasn't finished yet. I couldn't wait here for John Andrews and his gangsters to come out and finish me off. I'd tempted fate enough tonight.

I said before that a Pin Hole needed Kemia to operate. That's not entirely true. Kemia is a powerful catalyst, but it is possible to open a Pin Hole without any. Trouble is, it'll be weak, and it won't last long before collapsing again. If I was much further from the Bore, it would be totally impossible, but I was close enough to see the blue light peeking between the buildings alongside the river, and I thought I could just manage something.

Making a Pin Hole isn't hard once you've got the hang of it, at least not the physical construction of it. The coins in my pocket—the ones I'd had to hassle the cops to get back—all had premade Pin Holes scratched into their surface, but nothing that would help me now. Scratching the circle into stone or metal works best, but you can draw the circle using chalk or viscous fluid in a pinch.

I used my blood. It seemed poetic. And there was certainly an abundance of it trickling down my fingers, ready to use.

Just as each Tunnel has to be specially constructed for the people using it, each Pin Hole is designed to serve a certain purpose. It's not really about memorizing the right design to use, it's about crafting each component of the circle with a specific intention. Like the old cliché goes, it's an art.

I may be broke and prone to getting the shit kicked out of me, but I'm a damn good Tunneler. I applied for a job at Immigration when I first left university, with my brand-new Tunneler's license ready to be framed and nailed to the wall. I got through every interview, every shortlist.

Sure, I got turned down by Human Resources at the last minute, but it was probably just because all my competitors were so well dressed it looked like they'd even ironed their hair, while I showed up smelling of whiskey and wearing a trench coat that was outdated the day I was born.

I didn't want the job anyway. Immigration were a bunch of assholes.

The point is this: I was a damn good Tunneler. Even so, Tunneling without Kemia was damn hard. Tunneling without Kemia when your arms were tied behind your back and you were aching all over was an absolute bitch. It took three tries before I finally got a complete circle with all the symbols in the right place. Then came the hard part.

I closed my eyes to help with my concentration. Laypeople seemed to think Tunneling was about clearing your mind, and focusing. That'd be exactly the wrong thing to do. Clearing your mind was about order, about structure. Tunneling was about chaos. It was about carving open an impossible hole in reality, to connect this world to a world where nothing is fixed and reality is fluid. Trying to bring order to that would drive anyone crazy.

Instead, I let my mind wander free. The closest thing I could compare it to is that moment when you're half-awake and half-dreaming, and your mind flits from thought to thought, unbound by logic or rules or constraints.

As my mind drifted, I became aware of a pressure, a crackling of energy coming from the Pin Hole. I didn't have to draw the instability into reality. It _wanted_ to be there, it wanted chaos instead of order. Thermodynamics and entropy and all that, I guess. All it took was an investment of energy on my part to tear open the Pin Hole. Then it was just a matter of letting chaos trickle into the real world.

I hummed as I worked, a nonsense tune, more out of habit than any necessary part of the procedure. I gathered what strength I had left after the beating while pressure grew behind my eyes, and fired it into the circle with a slash of released energy.

Without Kemia, it was only barely enough to prick open the Pin Hole, but it did the job. A sense of confusion—madness, almost—came over me, before I cleared my head again. It had worked.

I couldn't completely untie my bonds. With Kemia, I could have turned the rope into handcuffs or snakes or a hundred other things, but right then all I could do was change the knot slightly.

It was enough. I twisted my hands around, catching the loose loop that had appeared in the knot, and tugged on it. With a few agonizing contortions of my wrists, the rope came loose and dropped to the concrete.

Blood rushed back into my hands, giving me the world's worst pins and needles. I shook my hands in the air, trying to get them working properly again, then massaged the bruises on my wrists.

With an exhalation and a refocusing of my mind, the Pin Hole closed. It would draw energy from me to keep the Pin Hole open, and in my current condition I didn't know if I could keep the necessary state of mind anyway. The rope seemed to shimmer for a moment, then it was back in a loop the size of my wrists, tied up just as tightly as it had been when it was holding my wrists behind my back. That was the problem with transmuting stuff. It just didn't last.

I got on my hands and knees, tried to ignore the pain shooting through my ribs and stomach, and pushed myself up. My head spun like a merry-go-round cranked to high gear, but I didn't fall. It felt good to be on my feet, aside from the nausea that threatened to send me heaving my guts into the gutter.

I risked one glance back at the strip club. I could have sworn I saw a blind move in an upper floor window, but hell, everything seemed to be moving right now. I threw a contemptuous sneer at the window just in case, then started stumbling away down the street.

My legs screamed in pain, but they did what I asked of them. The rain had become a light drizzle, just enough to wash some of the blood that graced my face down my neck, staining my white shirt. I was too out of it to care. I didn't have a clear idea where I was, but the central city's skyline was to the south, so that's the direction I went.

Cars drove past me, headlights scattering off the mist of raindrops like a million tiny fairies. None of them stopped to help when I stumbled to my knees and retched the pitiful contents of my stomach into a storm-water drain.

I didn't blame them. I wouldn't have stopped either.

Luckily, I'd barely eaten in the last day or so, so it didn't take me long before I could continue on my merry way.

The journey passed in snatches of memory and darkness. I might have been sleeping part of the way. I blacked out again, embraced by the wonderful painless arms of unconsciousness, and when I came to there was a blue sedan pulling up beside me.

I made a move to run, but I already knew it was hopeless. If it was Andrews having second thoughts, I was dead anyway. I was too tired, too sore. I just stood at the side of the road, eyes half-closed, and prayed for a miracle.

The car's electric window lowered, but no gun appeared to put me down. Instead, there was a woman's face.

I wondered again if I was seeing things. I stared blankly at the woman, swaying slightly on the spot, her face slipping in and out of focus.

The woman's red hair was what triggered my memory. Caterina Andrews stared at me silently, eyes aged beyond her years.

I stumbled to the car, my legs moving on automatic, pulled open the door, and slid inside. It was so warm in the car, so warm and dry I didn't even care who it was picking me up. It could have been Satan himself offering me a ride and I would have accepted.

"Jesus," the gangster's wife said. She reached a hand toward my face, then froze and let her arm drop. A whiff of lavender hung in the air. "What did they do to you?"

I wasn't in the mood for recounting the beating. I wasn't in the mood for anything. "Can you take me home?" I could hear the desperation in my voice, but I didn't care anymore.

She bit her lip in a way that I thought was incredibly cute, despite my injuries, the pale pink flesh becoming tinged with white. It made me think of the flowers in one of my foster mothers' window box. Strange. I hadn't thought of her in years. Dimly, I was aware I was slipping back into unconsciousness.

"Where do you live?" she finally asked, snapping me awake long enough to tell her my address.

She nodded, started the car, and pulled out into a gap in the traffic. The rumble of the car engine relaxed me like a massage.

More comfortable than I ever thought I'd be again, I fell asleep.

When I woke, Caterina had parked outside my apartment building and was unbuckling her seatbelt. I fumbled for my own seatbelt, realized I'd never buckled it in the first place, and grunted.

"Thank you," I said, my voice croaking and painful. "I can manage from here."

She smiled at the steering wheel, a soft smile, and shook her head. "What floor do you live on?"

"The ninth."

She opened her door. "I'll help you. Come on."

Now that I was slightly more rested and feeling less like I wanted to throw up, having the gangster's wife help me was a bit of a blow to my ego. Not enough of a blow to refuse her help altogether, though.

She came around to my side of the car and helped me out. It had finally stopped raining, but I was soaked to the core.

"Aw hell," I said as I went to push the door closed. "I've got blood all over your seat."

She shrugged and slipped a soft shoulder under my arm. Her hair smelled of floral shampoo. "It'll come out. John has chemical cleaners that'll get blood out of anything."

I shivered and blamed my wet clothes for it, then let Caterina help me to the door of my apartment. I was putting more weight on her than I intended, but she didn't complain. My shaking fingers tried and failed to put the keys in the door, then Caterina took them from me and opened the door herself, without the problems I usually have.

It took us twenty minutes to get up the stairs. I had to rest after every flight, while Caterina waited in silence. Tania didn't appear on the stairway this time, thank God, and neither did her mother. I think a barreling about late rent payments might be the thing to cause me to keel over and die.

"What's your name?" she asked while I wheezed and tried to catch my breath after the sixth flight of stairs.

"Miles," I said between breaths. "Miles Franco."

She didn't offer to tell me her name. I think she knew I was well aware who she was.

When we eventually reached my apartment, Caterina again unlocked the door and got me inside. She sat me down on my couch and started rummaging through my kitchen cupboards.

"Why the hell did you stop and pick me up?" I asked, massaging my forehead where the pain was worst. "More importantly, what's your husband going to think?

She came back carrying a big glass of water, a packet of painkillers, and an open pack of chocolate biscuits that I'd stashed in my cupboard before the last job. This woman was an angel. "He won't even notice I'm gone. He's got his own troubles."

I thanked Caterina, swallowed five paracetamol and a chocolate biscuit, and followed it up by draining the glass of water. "Okay, that answers one of my questions." I shuffled over to make room for her on the couch, but she didn't sit down.

"I don't throw lives away as easily as my husband. You don't seem like a bad man."

"You must be a poor judge of character."

She didn't look at my face while we talked. I could understand. Hell, I probably looked like something out of _Night Of The Living Dead_. She held out her hand to me, and I stared at her, puzzled.

"Take your jacket off," she said.

"What?"

"You're shivering, and you're soaked. Where do you keep your towels?"

"Try the floor. Or maybe you'll find one hanging from the corner of my dresser, if you're lucky."

To her credit, she didn't screw up her face. She just disappeared into my room and started rummaging. She came back a few minutes later, somehow managing to find two towels that looked relatively dry and clean.

"Stand up so I can help you with your jacket," she said.

"I think I can manage to undress myself."

She raised her eyebrows skeptically, so I set out to prove myself right. It didn't go well. I tried to remove my arm from my sleeve and sent lightning bolts shooting through my shoulder. I grunted, attempting to maintain an air of manliness in the face of overwhelming opposition, before Caterina finally took pity on me and took hold of my soaking jacket.

It occurred to me, as she slid the jacket from my shoulders and went to work on my tie, that I wasn't as nervous as I should be. I mean, she was undressing me, for Christ's sake.

I studied her as she dug her fingers into the tie's knot, a frown of concentration on her face. She was pretty enough, though not what I'd call beautiful. Just kind of plain, I guess, but not in a bad way. She had a scattering of orange freckles across her nose, and her lips were small and narrow.

Even if she was plain, her looks would normally have been enough to set my hands to sweating and my tongue working to insult her as much as humanly possible. Instead, there was only peace. Maybe I was just tired.

She made a tsking noise when she unbuttoned my bloodied shirt, uncovering the scrapes and bruises that had turned my chest purple and red. For a brief, stupid minute, I was self-conscious about being half-naked in front of her, but I forced the thought away before it could make me blush. She wasn't there to be my goddamn lover.

She retreated to the kitchen again, filled a large bucket with warm water and a dash of antiseptic that I didn't even know I had, and started washing away the blood from my body.

I've got to say, this was a first. I couldn't say I've ever stood shirtless in my apartment while a woman I barely knew—a woman married to a gangster, no less—cleaned me. Awkward didn't even begin to describe it.

Why the hell was she doing this? Did she feel guilty for what her husband did to me? I watched her eyes, but there was no hint she was thinking about anything except the practical matter of scraping congealed blood from my chest hair.

I cleared my throat, regretted it immediately when it made my chest spasm with pain, and said the first thing to come into my head. "So, your husband's kind of an asshole."

_Great conversation starter, Miles. You're a real charmer_. She glanced up at my face for a second, not quite meeting my eyes, then returned to her work. "I wouldn't tell him that, if I were you. You might not be so lucky next time."

"Lucky?" I pointed to the bruises that stretched across my ribs. "I don't call this lucky."

"When I saw you at the strip club, I thought for sure he'd have you killed. The way he looked at you...I've never seen anyone walk away from him after that."

"Then why'd he let me go? The cops can't be that much of a threat to him."

She used another towel to dry my skin. It hurt when she pressed it against my bruises, but I kept myself from wincing this time. "I don't know. He was raging when he was done with you. He wouldn't even speak to me."

I considered about asking her how she'd managed to wind up with such a violent Vei, but thought better of it. As nice as she was being, I still couldn't work her out. Whose side was she on?

I decided to see if she had information I could use. I'm a nice guy like that. "Chroma. That mean anything to you?"

She stopped drying me. Her gaze travelled slowly up to my face, and she met my eyes for the first time. They were green, and pretty. "I've heard John talking about it to his men. It's the drug, isn't it? The new drug I heard you talking about."

I nodded.

"He's always agitated," she said, "always angry whenever it comes up. I get scared when he comes to me after those conversations." She licked her lips, a nervous gesture, and she suddenly looked like a frightened rabbit, ready to bound away.

I laid a hand on her upper arm as gently as I could, and she didn't flinch. I felt sorry for her, for whatever she'd had to go through. I'd spent less than half an hour with John Andrews, and it had scared the hell out of me. What would it be like to be married to him? "You don't have to stick with him, you know. There are people who can—"

She shook her head, cutting me off. "No. Thank you, but no."

I thought about arguing with her, but I could see it wouldn't help. Not tonight. Maybe I'd get another chance to talk her into it, but pushing it too hard right now might scare her away. I still needed more from her. Feeling like the piece of shit I was, I released her arm. "Okay. But I got a feeling this is a dangerous time to be around him." I paused while she chewed on that, and then I spoke again. "I've got to know. Is John involved with Chroma?"

She bit her lip and shook her head again. "I don't think so. He's much too afraid. If I had to guess, I'd have to say whoever's doing it has been leaning pretty hard on him to stay out of the way."

"They must be tough to go toe-to-toe with him like that." I sat down on the couch and rested my elbows on my thighs. I was too wrapped up in questions now to be self-conscious about being shirtless in front of Caterina.

Now that I was feeling more alive, I realized the incident with John Andrews had left me pissed. Somehow I'd wound up stuck in the middle of all this shit, and I wasn't pleased. Getting my ass kicked was never part of the deal.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this Chroma business, but not because the cops wanted my help. I'd had gangsters beat me up before, but I'd never been truly scared for my life, not until tonight. John Andrews, Doctor Dee, it didn't matter, they were all the same. They were goddamn bullies trying to gain control of this town, and they didn't give a flying fuck how many people they crushed in the process.

To my surprise, Caterina sat down next to me. She opened her mouth a couple of times, conflicting emotions playing in her eyes. Finally, she spoke. "John can't know I told you this. But after he sent me out of his office, I heard him on the phone. He was making calls, a lot of them."

I frowned. "So? Maybe he just had a heap of gangster business to attend to."

"He called one of the people by name. It was Paul Guzman."

"Captain of the Gravediggers? I didn't pick them as friends."

She shook her head. "Their street battles have been worse than ever. They don't speak. They never have."

"And yet your husband was calling him," I said. "All right, I'm starting to see your point. You know who else he was calling?"

"No. But the way he spoke to them...I don't think they were friends. I think he was calling the other gangs."

That didn't make a lick of sense. I couldn't see a lie in Caterina's eyes, but maybe she'd misheard. Maybe Andrews was just in a bad mood from dealing with me.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"I didn't catch much, but I could have sworn he mentioned a meeting."

"Yeah? Where?"

"Suron, I think he said. I haven't heard of it. Is it a club? A street?"

"No," I said slowly. "Not quite."

I put my head in my hands and sat like that for a few moments. My head pounded. Maybe I was misreading the information. I had to be. Surely I couldn't have spooked Andrews that much. Surely.

Aw hell. I really had a knack for picking my battles.

After a while, Caterina stood up. She picked up my shirt from the floor where she'd discarded it, and handed it to me. "You'll want to soak that in some hydrogen peroxide and get a stain remover to wash it. Or just throw it away."

I barely registered what she said, but I accepted the shirt anyway.

"I think you should stay out of this, Mr. Franco." Her voice was almost a whisper. "My husband isn't the worst man out there. Stay home. Get some rest. Maybe leave town, if you're worried. Bluegate is broken already."

I didn't reply. There was nothing else to say. Maybe I'd do that, pack my bags and go, if only for a while. I wouldn't be able to Tunnel, but I'd be alive. I was just a nobody, after all.

Christ, who was I kidding?

Caterina leaned down and kissed my forehead. The touch of her lips sent a little spark of excitement through my skull, and I came back to life a little.

"Good-bye, Mr. Franco."

"See you, Cat. Tell John I said hi."

She smiled, but her eyes were sad. She put a hand on the door handle, then paused and turned back to me. "Why are you doing this?"

I leaned back and tried to think of an answer. "Not sure," I said after a moment. "It's just...this is my city, you know?"

She nodded and turned away. The door creaked shut behind her, and I was alone in my apartment again. I realized I was cold, and exhaustion once again crept over me.

I barely gave myself enough time to strip off my blood-stained socks and trousers before I slipped my aching body into bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

## CHAPTER EIGHT

I swear I'd only been asleep five minutes before I was awakened by an insistent rapping at my door. I groaned, wrenched my eyes apart, then snapped them closed again as sunlight flooded them. I hadn't closed the curtains before I collapsed into bed, and I was sure as hell regretting it now.

I was halfway back to sleep before the knocking on my door came again, louder this time.

"If you're in there, Mr. Franco, I'd advise you to open this door before I shoot the bloody lock off."

I groaned again as I recognized Detective Reed's voice. Couldn't everyone just leave me alone? Did they want to work me right into the ground?

With a final groan for good measure, I hauled myself out of bed and snatched some clothes off the floor.

"Mr. Franco!"

"Jesus Christ, I'm coming, give me a goddamn minute," I yelled at the door while I tried to work out which trouser leg to put my foot through. My bruises screamed at me as I slid into my shirt, and I grabbed the packet of paracetamol from the coffee table in the living room before padding to the door in bare feet.

I pulled open the door and found a large, round object hurtling toward my head. By instinct, I snatched it out of the air, and realized it was my motorcycle helmet. A series of large cracks ran along the black fiberglass, and one side of it was dented.

"Fuck me," I said. "The hell happened to it?"

I glanced up and found Vivian Reed staring at me, a cell phone pressed to her ear in one hand. "Yeah, he's here. He looks like shit. I'll meet you back at the station." She paused as someone responded, then snapped the phone shut and slipped it into the pocket of her slim-fitting black jacket. "Someone worked over your bike," she said. "I've got half a mind to do the same to you."

"Son of a bitch," I whispered to myself. That was a good bike.

Vivian looked like she'd had a much better night than I had. Her dark hair hung perfect against her cheeks, and her eyes weren't bloodshot or puffy, like I expected mine were. She wore a hint of eye shadow and foundation, but no other makeup that I could see. She didn't need it. Goddamn beautiful women.

She raised an eyebrow at me, and my hand went to my head of its own volition, trying to smooth down my curls. "It don't matter," I lied, and held out a hand. "Detective Reed. How's it going?"

"Save it," she said, shouldering her way into the apartment and slamming the door closed behind her. These cops sure were belligerent. Didn't they need a warrant or something to come into my home? "Where the hell have you been, Miles?"

Apparently, we were on a first name basis now. That was promising. "Isn't it a bit early in the morning to be chewing me up? I've had a really shitty night."

"It's one in the afternoon," she said. "I've been calling your phone all morning."

Aw hell. I knew there was something I was supposed to do before I slept. I hadn't heard my phone ring. Maybe it got smashed during the beating or took on water in the rain. I opened my mouth to defend myself, then took another look at Vivian's face and thought better of it. "Look—"

"No, forget that. It doesn't matter. What I want to know is what, in the name of all that is holy, you were doing at John Andrew's strip club."

Christ, she was talking loud. My head pounded. That wasn't fair; I hadn't even got drunk. I went to the kitchen to pour myself some water and swallowed another handful of painkillers. Even her glare was painful, so I looked away, pulled up a rickety chair at what passed for my dining table, and told her the story.

Of course, I downplayed my moments of stupidity as much as I could, but I don't think she thought I was a rocket scientist anyway. She listened in silence, doing her little cop nod to keep me talking and maintaining her face in a calculated expression of neutrality, all her previous annoyance hidden behind the mask.

That all changed when I finished telling her what had happened and told her what Caterina had told me. Of course, I left out Caterina's name. Somehow I didn't think Vivian would approve of my consorting with the wife of the enemy.

"Suron?" she said when I mentioned the meeting place. "But that's in—"

"Heaven. Yeah. Not a big territory, but nasty. They're planning something."

"You really stomped all over everything, didn't you? I should slap you in bracelets right now."

I tried to ignore the snark in her tone. It didn't work. "Give me a break. You and Todd were the ones who wanted me doing this in the first place. You wanted information, and that's what I gave you. Now you can leave me alone."

"You have no idea how badly you've stirred up the hive." She stabbed her finger toward my TV. "Have you even looked at the news?"

"No," I said, and took another couple of painkillers for good measure. The last ones didn't seem to be working. "I've been recovering. You know, from the beating that I got doing your fucking job for you."

That did it. Vivian slammed her hands down on the table and I jumped halfway to the ceiling. "You don't get it, do you? This isn't about you and your petty struggles."

I was pretty sure it wasn't petty to not want the shit kicked out of you, but Vivian was just winding up, and it was pretty obvious I wasn't going to get a chance to argue my case.

"I'm not here to deal with you and your bloody authority problem," she said. "I should never have let Todd bring you in on this. Gangster or not, you're just another lawless piece of shit who never grew up, never realized the world doesn't work like that. It's people like you that are the reason my—"

Her mouth slammed shut, as if time was up and I needed to put in another coin for more screaming. Strangely, I found I was fresh out of money.

I have to admit, she'd struck a nerve in me. A nerve that made me want to lash out and put the table through my window. If she didn't want me here, then fine. I'd done what I could. What the hell else did she expect me to do? Don a mask and cape and go vigilante on the city?

She was breathing heavily after her outburst, making her chest rise and fall in interesting ways. I stopped myself staring before she noticed, I think. She was looking down at the table, her normally bronze skin flushed with pink. Whether from anger or embarrassment, I couldn't tell.

The minutes ticked by, and we sat in silence. If I opened my mouth, I couldn't be sure I wouldn't start screaming.

"Damn it," she said finally. She stood up, practically tearing the chair from under her. "I don't have time for this. John Andrews' people have been mobilizing all morning. The other gangs too. Whatever you did, you scared the hell out of him. I have to stop this city from tearing itself apart."

I grabbed her arm as she passed me. The glare she gave me nearly turned me to stone, but I held on nonetheless. "He's preparing for war?"

She stared at me for a moment, as if trying to figure out which way she was going to kill me first. But then she just shrugged. "Maybe," she said, quieter now. "Our informants all went dark a couple of hours ago."

"I wasn't imagining it. He's afraid. He's trying to unite the gangs against Doctor Dee."

She nodded, and I let go of her arm. She looked tired. "This is about more than some new drug. This union of gangs won't last longer than it takes for one of them to take control of Doctor Dee's operation. And when that happens, the violence isn't going to stop with the gangsters."

She was right. I hate it when other people are right. The city's gangs had existed in a sort of uneasy peace for two decades, somehow always managing to scale back their skirmishes before they escalated too far. But they'd never had an outside influence like this Doctor Dee and his Chroma to unbalance the spinning top. Hell, with half the city in the pocket of one gang or other, the place would be torn to shreds.

"Goddamn it," I said. "You want more of my help, don't you?"

"We have to shut this down before it starts. That means going to Heaven."

Crap. I knew that was coming. The part of my brain still bent on survival kept trying to look for a way out, like a man on fire in the middle of a desert. "I seem to recall the police force spending my tax dollars hiring a whole bunch of Tunnelers a few years ago."

She scowled. "And would you trust any of them, Miles? Give me a name, and I'll walk out of your life right now."

"Charges dropped?"

"Charges dropped."

She had to be bluffing, but when I studied her face, I could find no lie. She'd thrown a ticket to freedom down in front of me. All I had to do was pick it up, cash it in, and walk away from this whole damn mess. I knew some of the cops' Tunnelers. I could tell her to use any of them, and I'd be off the hook. Wasn't that what I wanted?

I didn't know anymore. Every inch of my body felt like it'd been fine-tuned by a baseball bat and a sledgehammer. John Fucking Andrews was scared now, and he'd already shown the means he turned to when someone spooked him.

There was a certain appeal to exacting the good old human tradition of vengeance on the bastard. He'd made me hurt. Hell, I was still hurting. I wanted to see what color John Andrews bled. But that was the Mr. Hyde part of me talking. Why should I care if Andrews and some doctor with a letter for a name had a fight over who got to rule the playground?

Because it wouldn't stop there. I'd seen Andrews, I knew who he was. He was a madman with a thin coat of sanity face-paint, and he'd bring this city to its knees before he let someone else take charge. Vivian was right, goddamn it. If I went on my merry way, if I left this in the hands of the police department's Tunnelers, Andrews would find a way to turn them. The ones that weren't crooked already would soon find themselves and their families turned inside out by Andrews or one of his counterparts.

Granted, I wouldn't do much better if Andrews decided I would make a nice hood ornament for his car. Even if I got Andrews alone, I wasn't sure I could take him, what with his shapeshifting and all. Who knew how much he could change himself?

I buried my fingers in my curls. So there it was. Survive, maybe blow town, and let Bluegate fall even further into the abyss. Or go with Vivian and the cops, try to single-handedly stop a gang war, and most likely end up feeding worms in John Andrews' backyard.

How could I say no?

"I'll need you to lend me some cash to buy supplies," I said. "A grand should do it."

Let no one say Miles Franco didn't have balls.

## CHAPTER NINE

"You know, you really don't have to come with me," I said. "I'm capable of buying Kemia on my own."

Vivian leaned against the steering wheel and threw me a look. "For the last time, Miles, if you're spending my bloody money, I'm coming with you. Last time we left you alone you sent half the city's lowlife scrambling to battle stations. You're like a toddler with a machine gun."

I put a hand to my chest. "You know, words hurt, Vivian."

If she was about Tania's age, she would have rolled her eyes—I could tell she was fighting the urge. As it was, she settled for a more cop-like scowl and peered out the window at the buildings across the street.

The neighborhood looked worse than it really was. It was typical inner-city Bluegate: scores of identical, gray, four-story apartments crammed together in blocks. The footpaths outside were scattered with homeless Vei sitting on broken-down cardboard boxes and huddled in torn sleeping bags. Both Vei and humans lived in this area, but the Vei seemed to cop the worst of the poverty here.

Many of the buildings' windows had been broken at some point or other and patched up with sheets of plywood. Still, the gang presence here wasn't too strong. Most of the residents were too poor to buy drugs, and it was hard to run a protection racket when no one had anything to protect. That was why my chemist had set up shop here.

"Well if we're going to do this, let's do it," I said, throwing open the door of Vivian's car. It was a nice little hatchback, navy blue with a minimum of dings. It stood out here, but it could've been worse. She could've brought a squad car.

A cold breeze cut down the street, and I buttoned up my suit jacket. It was still a little damp from the downpour, but it kept the worst of the cold out. Barely even winter and already the few trees on the street had been stripped of their leaves. I swore it was getting colder every year.

Vivian got out of the car as well, locked it, and strode to me, her eyes moving up and down the street. Her posture was eerily perfect. It was like watching a Barbie doll walk. A Barbie doll who could kick my ass.

"Christ," I whispered. "Stop being such a cop."

She stopped searching the street for threats and fixed me with a glare instead.

I pointed to her jacket. "Your gun's poking out."

I strolled across the street before she could reply. She caught up with me on the opposite side of the road, outside a building that looked just the same as all the others, right in the middle of the block. One set of stairs led up to the front door, while another set disappeared below street level to a dark green door with four locks that were all much too expensive to belong to someone who lived on this street.

Vivian peered down the stairs at the door, then threw one more suspicious glance around the street as if she expected someone to jump us. Hell, she was more agitated than me, and I was the one who'd spent all night getting guns shoved in his face.

"This is stupid," she said. "I can get you Kemia from the station. The sanctioned Tunnelers have a dispensary—"

"I know about their dispensary. I'm not using that crap. It's weak as rat piss. Spencer Davies is the best chemist in the city. All the freelancers use his Kemia."

She still looked dubious. "If he's so good, why does he operate out of a hole in the ground?"

I shrugged. "Holes make Spencer feel safe. Come on, and for the love of God play nice. If you spook him and he doesn't want to deal with me anymore, I'm screwed."

She shot me another look that clearly suggested I was pushing it, but being the obtuse gentleman that I am, I chose to ignore it. Just because I was helping her didn't mean I had to do it her way.

I trotted down the stairs and rapped on the door three times: one long, two short. It was a code of sorts; it just happened to be a code that every freelance Tunneler in the city knew, along with a good portion of the general population. Spencer was a paranoid little Vei, but I'd tap out _Camptown Races_ on his door and finish with an air guitar solo if that's what it took to get his Kemia.

There was a brief moment of silence, followed by some hushed scuffling, before a small rectangular window in the middle of the door slid open. Large, blue eyes stared out at me, their rims wrinkled and cast into shadow. "What?" the nervous voice snapped.

I grinned, hoping my face wasn't too bruised and gruesome-looking. "Hi Spencer. Can I come in?"

Spencer Davies glared at me. It seemed to be the default expression for dealing with Miles Franco these days.

"You got cash?" he asked.

"Oodles of it."

He threw me one more glare, then slammed the window shut. I met Vivian's eyes and jerked my head toward the door. "See. The best."

"Sorry if I don't look convinced." Her tone made me smile. I would have laughed if I wasn't afraid it would make my lung collapse.

Scraping and clicking came from the door's multiple locks, and finally Spencer flung the door open. The reek of ammonia—and something that smelled like rotten cheese—wafted out from the pitch-black interior of the building, and I threw an arm across my mouth to keep from gagging.

Vivian was slower. She started coughing like her soul was trying to claw its way out through her mouth and stumbled back from the door.

That was Spencer's cue to freak. He caught sight of her and yelped, the sound muffled by a flimsy dust mask he wore over his face. It wasn't wide enough to cover his mouth, but it made a neat place for me to grab hold of and stop him from slamming the door in our faces.

"Easy, Spencer," I said, one arm slipping around his shoulders to keep him from moving. "She's a friend."

He snapped his jaws at me and I let go of his mask before he could relieve me of any fingers. "She's not my friend."

I kept my arm on his shoulders, praying that didn't spook him too. He was wearing a white lab coat that was much too long for him, stretching all the way to his feet. I tried not to think of what toxins the chemist had managed to get on the thing.

"Her name's Vivian. Vivian, Spencer. Spencer, Vivian. There, now we're all friends."

It wasn't going to be enough for Spencer, I knew, but I wasn't in the mood to put up with his nonsense. I'd send him a box of chocolates and a shiny new padlock for his door when all this was over, but for now I needed his help. I ushered him into his dark basement apartment, hands firm on his shoulders. "Business time. Let's go."

Spencer continued to throw suspicious glances at Vivian, but he relaxed enough for me to let go and stop worrying he was going to try to knife her. He was a short Vei, his skin covered in purple liver spots. Even Vei got old, on Earth at least.

Spencer shook my hands off his shoulders and hobbled through the darkness. The one window at the back of the room had been covered with newspaper, letting only a sliver of light in around the edges. The smell was even stronger in here, thick enough to taste even if I breathed through my mouth, and I found myself wishing for something nicer-smelling to put over my face instead. Sweaty gym socks, maybe.

My knee slammed into the corner of something hard, sharp, and seemingly designed as some cruel torture device. I sucked in air—a bad move, I soon realized—and kept myself from screaming in front of Vivian. "Goddamn it, can't you turn a light on?"

"No light," Spencer snapped. "It'll deactivate the chemicals."

With my knee pounding, I couldn't care less about the bloody chemicals. I forced myself back upright and felt Vivian's hand come to rest on my back before jerking away again.

"There you are," she said. "I can't see a damn thing."

I heard a door creak open, and a thin slit of red light appeared on the other side of the room, silhouetting Spencer's thin body. "Hurry up then, if you're coming."

Vivian grumbled something just below my threshold of hearing, and I couldn't help but smile. I have to admit, I was getting a bit of a kick out of bringing her here. Especially since she'd been so insistent on coming in the first place.

Some days I really enjoyed being an asshole.

I led Vivian to the back room, and Spencer shut the door behind us. The room was no bigger than the bathroom at a hamburger joint, all lit by a single red bulb in the center of the ceiling. Spencer flipped a switch, plunging the room into darkness, then another light flashed on, a normal white bulb this time.

I blinked a few times, trying to hurry my eyes into readjusting to the light. The room had vinyl flooring and bare walls, with work benches around the edges. Another door led out the back, into Spencer's apartment, presumably.

I'd been to Spencer's place hundreds of times, but I'd never been further than this room. The man could be keeping a family and a litter of German Shepherds back there and I wouldn't have a clue.

Still, Spencer was a friend, of sorts. Well, acquaintance. Business associate, maybe. All I knew was I liked Spencer, cantankerous old bastard that he was.

"So what do you want?" Spencer ran his hands under a tap that was spewing more rust than water and wiped them on his lab coat. "I'm not giving you any more free samples."

Vivian gave me a sideways look, and I held up my hands. "Not necessary. I'll take four bottles. I've got real, honest-to-God paper money this time."

"Yeah yeah, I'll believe that when I see it." Spencer shuffled over to me—his knees had given out a couple of years ago—and squinted, looking me up and down. "You get into a fistfight with the Eight themselves?"

"Not quite. John Andrews had his boys go to work on me."

Spencer's eyes widened. He put an arm out to rest on the nearest worktable, and frowned at me. "John Andrews? You're the one that's stirring up everything? What've you got yourself mired in this time, Franco?"

Everyone was so quick to assume all this was my fault. As if I hadn't been minding my own business when this whole damn thing got dumped in my lap. Maybe I had a criminal face or something.

Vivian seemed to be enjoying herself. She'd lowered her sleeve from over her mouth and nose, and now her lips were quirked upward in irritating fashion.

"I'll have you know," I said, my voice loud with emphasis and perhaps a little anger, "I uncovered vital information on Bluegate's drug trade. There's some new drug on the way. Chroma. You heard of it?"

Spencer shook his head, and his glance darted from me to Vivian. "This your doing?"

Vivian said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. "Something like that."

Spencer frowned at us for a few seconds. I shouldn't have said anything. I was scaring the old man, I could tell. He had enough paranoid delusions without fears of John Andrews kicking in his door looking for me. As long as we didn't hang around, it didn't have to come to that. Spencer had friends he could rely on to keep the gangsters off his back, which was good for me as well. If Andrews started threatening Spencer with his creepy claw hands, Spencer would squeal faster than a whore being slipped a hundred.

Finally, he snapped out of his state. He pushed himself away from the table and tottered over to the large old fridge that sat humming in the corner. "What was it you wanted, then? Four?"

"Make it five." I jerked my thumb at Vivian. "She's paying."

I flashed her a smile that broke on her scowl like waves on rock. Still, she didn't say anything to disagree with me. I have to say, she was a good sport. I was starting to like her, beauty or no.

Spencer bent over, holding his back, and peered into the fridge. "This batch is nearly out. Got some fresh Kemia out in the lab. Wait here." He switched the light back to the red light and shuffled out the door back into the lab, closing the door behind him.

"Is this really going to cost me a thousand dollars?" Vivian said as soon as he was gone.

"Of course not. We'll need other supplies for the trip, though. It's essential for our survival that you buy me one of them new flat TVs."

She snorted and wandered away from me, glancing at the papers and notebooks scattered around the room. All of them were written in Spencer's cramped handwriting, in a mix of English and Vei. She studied them as if she could read them, though the one I picked up was indecipherable even to me. Forever the cop.

The red light gave the room an otherworldly look. I watched Vivian pick through the papers, reminded suddenly of the lights and dancing flesh I'd glimpsed at Andrews' strip club. I thrust the thought aside before my face could betray me. She'd gut me here and leave Spencer to clean up the mess if she knew the image that flashed through my head.

She wandered over to the refrigerator and put her hand on the door.

"Christ," I said. "Don't you need a warrant to go rummaging around like that?"

Apparently, she didn't. Her face screwed up in a frown, and she made a noise. "Hmm."

"Hmm? Hmm what?"

She reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Kemia. In the red light I couldn't see the tinge of silver that was characteristic, but it still sparkled and shifted in a way that wasn't natural for a liquid born of this world. She tossed it to me, and I caught it with both hands, careful not to spill any of the precious chemical.

"The whole fridge is full of them," she said.

I frowned. "But then what was..."

A loud bang came from behind me. The front door. Spencer.

That slimy little son of a bitch.

Vivian swooped past me like an avenging angel. Other cops, dumber cops, would have drawn their guns, but she didn't. The expression on her face was neither anger or excitement. It was pure determination.

She and her determination threw open the door to the lab without slowing and raced away, leaving me alone in the workroom.

"Blood of the Eight," I swore under my breath. "I don't deserve this shit."

I raced after Vivian and Spencer, emerging into the lab just as Vivian ripped the front door open and tore out onto the street. That woman must have been half-cyborg or something. I ran through the lab as quickly as I dared, not wanting to collide with any deadly chemicals, and burst out into the sunlight, blinking and dazed.

Goddamn it. Why the hell was Spencer running? I was going to have a hell of a time finding a new chemist if he got away. Or if Vivian caught him, for that matter. Either way, it was going to be a pain in the ass.

I was already panting like an obese dog when I clambered up the stairs to the street and glanced around. Vivian was tearing down the street away from me, arms pumping and hair swept back like something out of a supermodel photo shoot, but where was Spencer?

A white sedan at the end of the street roared to life, and I caught a glimpse of pale skin behind the wheel. The devious little bastard had jacked a car. So much for the goddamn cripple act.

Rubber squealed against concrete, and the car slid away from the curb and headed back toward Vivian. I watched, barely able to breathe, as she skidded to a halt, drew her gun from under her jacket in one smooth motion, and aimed it at the car.

Spencer didn't take any notice. He looked to be barely in control of the vehicle, but he tore past Vivian without slowing, even when she squeezed off a shot into one of the front tires. The crack of the gunshot sent a handful of homeless Vei screaming and ducking for cover, but I had no time to worry about them.

I don't know what made me act. Spencer was driving toward me; he'd be passed me and gone in seconds. Maybe it was instinct, something animal-like, that made you give chase when someone ran. Maybe I was just angry, sick of this shit, wishing everything would go back to the way it had been.

I was gripping something tightly in my hand. I hadn't thought about it as I'd run, but now I looked down at the smooth glass bottle. The Kemia. I had Kemia again.

Fuck them all. It was my turn.

I uncorked the bottle with my teeth while I shoved my hand in my pocket to rummage through my coins. They were all different denominations, to make for easier identification, and some were even foreign currencies.

I didn't have anything specific to change the car, so I had to rely on one of my favorite coins, a large one with several concentric circles carved into it. It was a simple probability manipulator. I fished it out of my pocket, started humming as I let controlled randomness fill my mind, and splashed Kemia over the coin.

There were no flashes of light, no loud bangs. Just the awareness of a twisting in reality, and a dull black hole appearing where the center of the coin should be. I gripped the coin tight in my hands and pointed it toward the car hurtling past.

If I was thinking clearly, and knew more about car engines, I could probably have devised a clean way to bring the car to a halt. There were a lot of moving parts in an engine, and there were a lot of things that could go wrong with them. But I did the first thing that came into my head.

I made the tires blow out.

The tire Vivian had shot went first, exploding in a burst of smoke and the smell of burnt rubber. The rim hit the road, squealing, and the car skidded for a moment before Spencer regained control.

The other three tires went half a second later. The air was filled with horrible screeching, some from the wheels and some from Spencer. I caught a glimpse of fear on Spencer's openmouthed face before the car flew by me, drifting slowly and inexorably sideways.

I had just enough time to whisper, "Shit," before the passenger side of the car slammed into a streetlight. The earth seemed to shudder beneath me, and the tortured sound of twisting metal filled my ears. Jesus Christ. That hadn't been quite what I'd intended.

The bonnet of the car had wrapped itself around the lamp post, and the windshield had cracked. A thin trail of smoke or steam wound out of the engine, and it continued to make sounds like a sick grandfather clock. Through the smoke I could make out Spencer's silhouette, but I had no idea if he was injured. I hadn't meant to do that much damage. I wanted to stop Spencer so we could find out what the hell was going on, not kill him. Christ, he was probably just running because he was afraid we'd brought gang troubles into his house. Such a stupid, paranoid Vei.

I let the Pin Hole in the coin close, and the black hole faded to nothing. Kemia had made such an extreme change possible, but I still felt drained, my breath coming heavy.

A hand grabbed my shoulder, and my heart jumped so high it nearly kicked out my back teeth. I spun around, but it was just Vivian. She'd holstered her gun, and now she was staring over my shoulder at the carnage. Her face was a little flushed, but somehow she was breathing almost normally. Me, I was still puffing and wheezing like I was on my deathbed.

"You okay?" she asked.

I nodded, unable to speak. I realized I still had the cork to the Kemia bottle wedged between my teeth, so I recorked the bottle and slipped the coin back into my pocket.

"Stay here," Vivian said.

"Nuts to that."

I followed her to the wreck. A few people in the surrounding apartments hung out of their windows, staring at us, but at least the road was devoid of traffic. I'd be worried about the cops showing up if Vivian wasn't already here.

Glass crunched underneath my shoes like ice. The air stunk of melted rubber and petrol, but it didn't look like it was going to go up in flames. Even so, I was ready to bolt if I saw a spark; I'd seen enough action movies to expect an explosion at any second.

I crept closer to the car, as if my steps would be just the thing to finish Spencer off. That was the last thing I needed. A groan came from inside the car, and my steps suddenly seemed ten times lighter. He wasn't dead. There's something uplifting about knowing you're not going to get hit with a murder charge.

We found Spencer still in the driver's seat, miraculously unkilled despite failing to buckle his seatbelt and choosing a car that didn't have an airbag. Not that he had much choice in this neighborhood.

Vivian leaned against the passenger side window frame while I set about trying to pry open the driver's door.

"You injured, Spencer?" I asked.

He rolled his head toward me, seemingly confused but coherent enough to glare at me. A nasty cut graced his forehead, but at least he wasn't spurting blood from an open chest wound or anything.

"Give me a hand with this door," I said to Vivian. I jerked against it again but only succeeded in generating a crunching noise from the twisted frame.

"In a minute. There's no hurry. You don't have any other pressing business, do you Mr. Davies?"

"The Eight take you."

"Vivian," I said. "Seriously, give me a hand here."

Spencer scowled and turned toward me. He was pinned in place by the steering wheel, keeping him from wiggling too far. "You tried to kill me! Fucking Tunneler."

"My bad. In my defense, you lied to me. I don't react well when people lie to me."

"Oh yes, and you're the epitome of virtue, are you? Get me out of here."

"I'm doing my best."

"Before we let you out," Vivian said, "I'm going to need answers to a few questions."

I threw Vivian a look, but she ignored it. She wouldn't really leave him there, would she? What the hell had happened to all her moral high ground bullshit?

"No," Spencer said.

"No? You want us to leave you here? Do you think the police or the gangsters will find you first?"

His face flicked through alternating expressions of fear and rage, so fast I wondered if she'd short-circuited his brain. Maybe it was possible; hell, I wasn't a doctor.

Finally, his face returned to a state of neutral anger, an expression I was beginning to find almost comfortable. It meant things were back to normal. "Get me out. Then I'll talk."

Vivian shrugged. "Fine. But if you try to run again, I'll have you in cuffs before you can sneeze. Then we'll see how you like it down at the station."

"You're a bastard, Franco," Spencer said. "I always knew you'd bring trouble down on me one day."

I met Vivian's eyes and grinned. "You know, I think he's starting to like us."

## CHAPTER TEN

For once I was on the other side of the interrogation table, and it made a refreshing change. This table was just Spencer's kitchen table—far less impressive than the interview room at the police station—but I was still enjoying myself. Let someone else see what it felt like.

"Why'd you run, Mr. Davies?" Vivian had given up all pretense of not being a cop as soon as we sat down around the tiny square table. For a place that let in no natural light, the kitchen was cozy, I guess, though it had a strange smell to it. I kept glancing toward his kitchen refrigerator, wondering if he kept his chemicals next to his lettuce.

Spencer, for his part, was a wreck. Not from the crash; he'd come out of that with no more than the scratch on his head. But his eyes flicked around the room constantly, and he tapped out an agitated rhythm on the table. He ran a long tongue across his shark-like teeth and twisted in his chair. He looked old, older even than he usually did.

"Mr. Davies," Vivian repeated.

"You know how much danger I'm putting myself in if I say anything?"

"You're in danger from me if you don't talk," I said.

His eyes stopped on me for a moment, before continuing their surveillance of the room. "Stop pretending to be tough, Franco. You can't pull it off."

I'd been beaten half to hell, and he didn't think I was tough. Typical. I tried to loom over the table, but it didn't really work from a sitting position, so I settled for scowling instead. Spencer didn't take any notice.

"Look at me, Mr. Davies," Vivian said. "Am I tough enough for you? Or would you like me to take you downtown and introduce you to some of the guys we've got locked up in holding? In fact, I think we've got a gang enforcer in there right now. You could make a new friend."

Spencer's face paled further—something I didn't know was possible—and ceased sweeping the room with his eyes, though his fingers continued to fidget. "All right, all right."

"Why did you run?"

He tapped his fingers on the table a few more times. Jesus, he was scared. Did I really want to hear what he had to say?

"I've been getting visits," he said.

Vivian leaned forward. "Visits? From who?"

"I don't know. First one came yesterday afternoon, when I was just getting out of the lab. All sorts of banging on my door, not the right knock. I was going to leave it, but it didn't stop. I finally checked it out, and they started right in with the threats before I'd even let them inside."

"Man? Woman?"

"Both. Two men, one Vei and one human. The human was big and fat. And there was a human woman with them. Don't recall her name, but something about her face seemed familiar. A Tunneler, I think."

That could be Shirley O'Neil and John Andrews' men. No matter what Andrews claimed, the bastard was caught up in this somehow.

"Okay," Vivian said, studying Spencer's face, "and why did they threaten you?"

"They wanted information, same as you. But they weren't quite as nice about asking for it." He shot me a look that could have melted steel. "Though I note that none of them destroyed any cars to get to me."

Being the bigger man, I chose to ignore that jab. Vivian pulled a notebook from some hidden pocket and was scribbling notes in handwriting that would have required a team of cryptographers to decipher. "Did they tell you who they worked for? And did you give them what they wanted?"

"They weren't people you play around with. They were obviously gangsters, from one of the gangs that didn't mind mixing species." That narrowed it down to about three of the major gangs, though Andrews was still my pick for first place. Spencer absentmindedly touched his neck, and I caught a tremble in his fingers. "The big one held a knife to my throat while the Vei asked questions. The woman didn't say anything, she just went around examining my chemicals and reading my notes."

"Did she find anything?" I asked.

"There wasn't anything to find."

He was getting agitated again, squirming in his chair. I didn't know if he was holding something back, or just nervous. I wanted to trust him, but the old bastard hadn't made it easy.

"And the questions the other one asked you," Vivian said. "What did he want to know?"

"Drugs. New drugs, specifically. It sounded like they were going around chemists and shaking them down. See what information they could shake out about this doctor."

"You know about Doctor Dee?" Vivian asked.

"I've heard the rumors. I sell my chemicals to many people, Miss Detective. None of them are completely innocent. Many have gang ties. Some of them like to talk." He shrugged. "So yes, I know a little."

"Do you know who he is?" I asked, feeling a thrill of excitement run through me.

He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in Bluegate. "If I knew that, I would've told those bastard gangsters so they'd leave me alone."

My heart sunk a little. I should have known that'd be too easy. "So what'd they want with you after you told them that?"

"They were careful to ensure I wasn't lying. Very careful." His finger increased the tempo of its tapping. "Then they wanted to know more about this Chroma you were so excited about. Possibilities, what it might be able to do."

"What it can do? I thought it was just an enhanced version of Ink." I glanced at Vivian, but she didn't quite meet my eyes.

The look that crossed Spencer's face could almost have passed for a smile, if I thought he was capable of such an expression. "Is that what they told you? You don't think the city would be wild as a ganuck if that's all it is, do you?"

The son of a bitch had a point. Drugs had been flooding Bluegate's streets for decades, and the cops had barely got the tips of their fingers dirty dealing with it. What had changed? Why was Chroma so important?

Vivian stared at Spencer with bloody murder in her eyes, and he just stared back smugly, though his fidgeting ruined the effect. I fought the urge to clench my fists. What had the cops been keeping from me now?

"That's it?" Vivian asked. "That's all you've got? Some rumors and a few gangsters paying you a visit."

"I'm risking my life talking to you. What more do you want?"

Vivian stood up. "Come on, Miles. We're wasting our time."

I stayed seated. I wasn't so eager to jump at her command. Not when I could be on the edge of a cliff. I'd taken a goddamn beating for this thing, stared down gun barrels, and Vivian had been hiding information from me this whole time?

"What could this drug do?" I asked, barely keeping the anger from my tone. "Is it poisonous? Hallucinogenic?"

Spencer answered first. He wanted us gone. "You're not thinking big enough, Franco. That was always your problem. If Doctor Dee is a half-decent chemist, almost anything is possible. And possibilities, as you well know, can be very dangerous."

"Tunnels?" I said. "You're talking about Tunnels, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe something worse. I'm just repeating what I've heard. I can tell you one thing, though. The gangs want it, and they want it bad. Violence is coming, violence like you've never seen. I'd leave this city if I were you. And I'd do it soon."

"How soon?" I asked. "When's this thing hitting the streets?"

"That's one thing everyone agrees on. The first shipment will be here Friday."

"Friday?" I asked, my voice rising like a goddamn castrato. "This Friday? As in tomorrow?"

The look on his face confirmed it. Hell. That's why Andrews wasn't hanging around. If he was going to act against Doctor Dee, he had to act now.

I met Vivian's eyes, and she had the same "Oh, shit" look on her face. It was clear now that neither of us had a goddamn idea what was going on. We were groping around in the dark, and not in the fun way.

Whatever this Chroma was, it had scared Spencer and the underworld half to hell. Scaring Spencer wasn't hard, but anything that scared Andrews enough to have him forming an underworld alliance and going to war was enough to scare me. We'd long since ceased to be in over our heads; the sharks were already nibbling our toes.

"Miles," Vivian said. "You still with us?"

I shook myself free of my thoughts. Vivian stood, hands tight on her hips so I couldn't see if they were trembling, her hair smooth and perfect as if she hadn't just been running around and firing guns. My mouth went dry for a moment, a sudden rush of nervous energy running through me.

Why couldn't they pair me with an ugly cop?

"Christ, you still mean to go after Andrews, don't you?"

"He's the only lead we've got to Dee."

I sighed. "And you still want my help getting to Heaven."

"Yes."

I deluded myself for a few more moments that I had a choice, even though I already knew what I was going to say. I've always been a sucker for punishment. "Hell. Let's not waste any more time, then."

She nodded briskly, a slight upturning of her lips her only offer of thanks. It was enough, for now. I'd be having words with her about whatever information she'd been keeping from me, but we had a long Tunnel journey ahead of us for me to practice my interrogation skills. I stood, leaving Spencer at the table, and made for the door.

"Hey," Spencer said. "The Kemia you took. You haven't paid for it."

I'd completely forgotten about that. The bottle was in my jacket pocket, nearly full apart from the splash I'd used to take out the car. I glanced at Vivian and jerked my head toward Spencer. "You heard him. Pay the man."

Her smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. "I've half a mind to take it. Evidence. Obstructing the case."

"You're a cop, Vivian. You don't have it in you. Come on. We're on a timer now."

She gave me a look that told me I was going to regret this later, then slammed a wad of bills down on the table in front of Spencer. "If I find out you withheld information from us, I'm going to see you in a cell."

She spun away and strode out the door without giving him a chance to respond. Spencer put his head in his hands, and a shiver ran through his frail body.

I couldn't muster much sympathy for him. He wasn't the one about to throw himself into the middle of a gang war.

That fun was saved all for me.

## CHAPTER ELEVEN

I took Vivian to my primary Tunnel in the basement of my apartment building with all the enthusiasm of a man digging his own grave.

Logically speaking, I knew she already knew where it was, since she and Todd had set up the raid that got me arrested. That seemed so long ago, but it was only what, a day and a half? Was that all? I seemed to have packed an awful lot of excitement in. Time flies when you're being threatened with gruesome murder, I guess.

Vivian called up Detective Todd on her cell phone as she drove, despite the possible legal ramifications. I suppose in a city with murder rates as high as Bluegate, minor traffic laws take a back seat.

She gave him a brief run-down of the fun times we'd been having together, and the plan for now. She left out the bit where the two of them had lied to me about the nature of Chroma. I was still pissed about that. Justifiably, I thought. They'd manipulated me into this whole damn enterprise without giving me the whole picture.

Now I didn't even have a chance to back out. The train had gone right past that station without slowing. I just had to be ready to jump before the thing derailed.

After about twenty minutes, she pulled up outside my apartment. "Do you need anything from your apartment before we go?" Vivian asked as we stepped out of her car and made her way into the building.

"Maybe I should go get a plan, since you didn't seem to bring one with you."

That felt sweet. I enjoyed the sense of smugness for a moment before she grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me up against the front door.

"Hey...what..." I tried to shove her away, but she was surprisingly strong, and despite everything I was still hesitant to push her away by her chest.

"Listen here," she said, her voice low and spooky enough to convince me to do as she said. "This isn't a joke. I don't know what we're going to find there, but it's sure as hell not going to be nice. We're going anyway, and we're going to do whatever it takes to stop this thing before it starts. Whatever it takes, do you understand me?"

I licked my lips, tore her hands from my shoulders, and pushed her backward. My eye was twitching, never a good sign. "What do you think I am, Vivian? I'm not your pet Tunneler, and I'm certainly not one of your uniforms you need to bully into doing their jobs. I'm sure as fuck not doing this because you're telling me to. Not anymore."

"Then why are you here, Miles?" She planted her hands on her hips.

"Because," I said, "this is my goddamn city, understand? This is the city that raised me when my mother dropped dead and my father bailed. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let it be burned to the ground by some asshole like Andrews or this doctor of yours. You think I don't know what's at stake? Then why don't you fucking tell me what you're hiding from me?"

My face grew hot, but I forced myself to look her in the eyes anyway. To hell with her. If she didn't want to deal with me, I'd leave her behind and go to Heaven myself. She needed me a hell of a lot more than I needed her.

Vivian's face was almost comical to watch. If her frown got any deeper I'd be able to swim in it. When she finally opened her mouth, I could almost feel the flames pouring out. "You want the truth? Fine. Doctor Dee sent a message to the gangs. Several messages. With bodies attached."

I blinked. "What?"

"In the last month we had a spate of gang murders. High-ranking gangsters, all of them, from every major gang in the city. Executed, all of them. Same method of killing: small caliber, right between the eyes."

"They're gangsters. That's what gangsters do."

She shook her head. "Listen, will you?" she snapped. "It's not the murders that are important. They'd been left near their own gangs, and by the time we got to the scenes the bodies had already been tampered with. All apart from one over in the Silk Dragons' territory. Killed the same as the others, bullet between the eyes. Except this woman still had a note pinned to her."

"Christ, haven't they heard of phones?"

"The note was typewritten. 'Chroma is death. Fly to Heaven, or it will send you to Hell. Make your choice.' It was signed by Doctor Dee."

"Sounds like your doctor has a knack for melodrama." I stroked the corner of my mouth, my breath coming a bit calmer now. "Chroma is death? Not Doctor Dee?"

"Until then we'd been operating under the assumption that Chroma was just going to be a revenue stream for Dee. But after that, we weren't so sure."

I nodded, trying to puzzle it out. Calling your drug "death" wasn't exactly a great way to win over a customer base. What was Dee up to?

"There," she said, folding her arms over her chest. "Now you know what I know. The notes were enough to scare the gangsters. Maybe we should be scared as well."

"You weren't already? Jesus, lady, I've been shaking in my boots ever since you folks hauled me downtown."

Her scowl broke as quickly as it had come, and she smiled a little. It suited her. "We're wasting time, we need to get moving. How long will it take us to get there?"

I shrugged. "It varies from Tunnel to Tunnel, but usually around an hour."

She nodded and reached for the door handle, but I grabbed her arm.

"One more thing," I said. "Keep information from me again and I'll strand you in the most fucked up part of Heaven I can find. Got it?"

She grinned and gestured toward the door. "Shall we?"

So much for the tough guy act. I'll never understand women.

The main basis for my Tunnel was a large iron ring fixed into the concrete floor with screws. The circle was seven feet across, large enough to fit someone lying inside. I had to pay my landlady a mint to keep it in the basement. It was separated from the long-broken heating system and water pipes by a pile of junk I had unceremoniously piled around it.

The expression on Vivian's face as I flicked on the single light bulb could best be described as dubious. She stared around at the water stains on the concrete walls and the webs in the corner that probably housed spiders bigger than your average household cat, her lips twisting and her nose screwed up.

"You were expecting something fancy?" I asked. "Maybe some silk curtains and a serving girl to give you cocktails while you wait?"

"No, but I wasn't expecting to inhale fatal doses of mold spores. I thought this was supposed to be your business. You should take some pride in it."

I retrieved some sidewalk paint and a good-sized brush from an old wooden table beside the metal circle. The paint was supposed to be for kids, but it was a better medium than chalk for creating the Tunnel, and I could easily wash it away when I was done. "This isn't the Bore. There isn't much room in the budget for prettying the place up. Anyway, the types of people who hire the services of naughty men like me usually aren't too picky."

I uncapped one of the paint tubes—green, this one was—and squirted some out onto an old kitchen tile I used as a palette. Vivian stood over me and watched me as I dipped my brush and began painting a large pentagon inside the circle, each corner touching a point on the ring.

"What's that for?" Vivian asked.

"That's our location. The territory of Suron. I'd pinpoint us better if we knew where we were going, but as it is I'll just plonk us down next to the main city. That's our best bet."

With the pentagon finished, I put away the green paint and got out the red. The colors didn't really matter, but it made it easier to keep track of things. Since there were only two of us, it wouldn't be too hard to make a specific Tunnel, thank God. Getting it wrong was a good way to experience what it felt like to be compressed to a singularity, but after trying to gauge a whole family of Vei and all their relationships, this would be child's play.

I put my own symbols in first, like I always do. They look like random squiggles and doodles—mostly because they are—but they're a way of defining me. There's a few that always remain more or less the same: representing my gender, who I was growing up, all that nonsense a shrink would talk to you about. Then came the more malleable bits, the bits that changed day-to-day. I put in my confusion, the aches from the beating Andrews' boys had given me, my sleep deprivation.

Vivian was quiet as she watched me. I had to put her in now, but first I had to decide what our connection was. I wouldn't go so far as to call us friends. Workmates, maybe, as a rough approximation. I drew some lines out from my symbols to another section of the Tunnel, relying mostly on instinct to get it right, then sat back on my haunches and looked up at Vivian.

"Were you born in Bluegate?"

She stared at me for a moment, frowning, then glanced at the Tunnel. "Oh. No, a town called Danton. We came to Bluegate when I was a girl, five or six, I think."

"What brought you here?"

She licked her lips. "My mother thought it'd be best for my sister and I after my father left. Bluegate was still a city full of promise then, you know." She shrugged.

I nodded and started painting. It was a typical enough story. I could write a book on it. Bluegate: City of Broken Dreams and Other Clichés.

I thought I caught a note of pain when she mentioned her sister. Dead, maybe. I didn't need details so I wasn't going to pry. I had enough of a picture of her early life to construct the Tunnel; digging further was just going to unleash emotions that we didn't have time to deal with. I knew if it was me I'd prefer to leave the past where it belonged.

I filled in the rest of the circle with my impressions of Vivian, and then it was done. It looked like the demented finger-painting of a three-year-old tripping on acid, but that was all right. It would do the job. After a while, you get a feel for these things, and I'd been at this a very long while.

"You haven't been to Heaven before, have you?" I asked.

"No."

I nodded. It wasn't the sort of place you go on holiday. "You'll have to leave your gun here. Cell phone too, watch, MP3 player, anything like that."

She looked at me suspiciously, but she slipped her jacket off and unbuckled her shoulder holster. "Why?"

"Mainly because they're a bit of a taboo in Heaven. But also, they can be dangerous if you get tempted to use them. Reality's just too unstable there. Likely your cell phone would just malfunction and die, but the gun's more likely to fire off still in its holster, or maybe just explode."

You couldn't rely on things staying as they should be in Heaven. For some reason, it was only artificial things that were at real risk. A human—or Vei—body had a gazillion more moving parts than a gun, but while they were prone to change, it was never fatal.

Vivian put her jacket back on and put her cell phone on the table next to her gun. "I don't feel comfortable leaving it here."

I scratched at my stubble and shrugged. "Junkie. Can't bear to let it out of your sight, can you?"

I took the look she gave me as a no. I grinned, feeling strangely buoyed. There was a reason I'd made my job in Tunneling, and it wasn't just because I was good at it. Truth is I enjoyed travelling to Heaven, recent events aside. For some reason, the madness of the place was freeing. There were no bars there, and nothing was fixed. It was a place of possibility.

I put my own cell phone on the table as well, even though it had been so water-damaged it'd probably have a better chance of spontaneously fixing itself in Heaven. Habit, I guess. I removed my watch and patted myself down to make sure I didn't have anything else that might be trouble. My nightstick was still sitting pretty inside my jacket. I didn't even think about taking that out. Things had gotten dangerous, and I had no idea when I was going to need it.

Other than that I just had my Pin Hole coins, which acted a little differently in Heaven. With luck I wouldn't need them, but my luck and I weren't on speaking terms, so I left them in my pocket as a precautionary measure. Safety first, that's me.

"Ready?" I asked.

"I think so."

"Good. We got a bit of a walk ahead of us." I shoved my hands in my pockets. I didn't usually take people to Heaven; most of the time I brought them back to Earth. Vivian was clearly tough, but Heaven wasn't exactly somewhere you could prepare yourself for. I couldn't know how she'd react until she'd arrived. More than one human had lost it completely spending too long there.

She seemed to be reading my mind. "Anything I should know before we go?"

"Just...just stay close, and follow my lead. And don't try to hold on to what you think things should be like, not if you don't want to come back a wreck."

She met my eyes and nodded. All right, that was it then. Time to take a trip.

I started humming, self-consciousness be damned, and let my mind slip into that special crazy state while I pulled the bottle of Kemia from my pocket and splashed it onto the concrete. Reality warped, a sensation of not-quite-rightness building just behind my eyes, and I could feel Heaven's energy pushing against the circle.

I continued to pour the Kemia until nearly half the bottle was gone. Somehow, it never washed away the painted symbols. Instead, they just seemed to slide around in place, warping and moving at the threshold of vision. Kind of like being drunk, I suppose.

As the circle sucked on my energy, trying to tear open the hole, I became very aware of how little I'd eaten in the last day or so. I made a mental note to get some grub as soon as I got back, preferably before I passed out from low blood sugar.

And then thought disappeared among a maelstrom of mental energy. The Tunnel pulsed once, twice, and I delivered a final blow to it, energy surging from me. The air hummed to match my own tune, and Vivian whispered something too quietly for me to hear.

And then the Tunnel opened.

The center of the circle seemed to sink into the ground, dragging the concrete with it. Within a couple of seconds the entire interior of the circle looked like a dark, deep well, descending to the center of the Earth, with a faint blue light glowing around the outside. It had taken more out of me than I'd expected. I glanced at Vivian, who was staring at the Tunnel like it had teeth.

"Impressed?" I asked.

"You wish. How do we...uh...?"

"I'll show you. Come here." I stepped up to the edge of the Tunnel, the light reflecting off the mud on my shoes. Vivian came alongside me and peered into the hole. I could've sworn I saw her hands tremble before she shoved them into her jacket pockets.

"Just relax," I said, "and do as I do."

With one last glance around the basement, I stuck my leg out above the hole and let myself fall forward.

I caught the sound of Vivian gasping before it became muffled. My stomach lurched as gravity shifted around me and I continued to fall forward, and then suddenly I was still again, upright inside a Tunnel lined with black. Ahead of me it seemed to stretch to infinity, an endless tube of darkness.

I looked back to see Vivian staring at me, her eyes wide with shock. She was standing perpendicular to me, a disconcerting experience if you hadn't seen it before. A film of clear fluid seemed to separate us, but I knew she'd feel nothing when she came through. If she didn't chicken out, that was.

"Come on," I said. "I thought we were in a hurry."

My voice probably came through to her distorted, but by her scowl it looked like she'd got the message. She muttered something to herself, closed her eyes, and stepped into the Tunnel. She seemed to rotate in space for a moment, then she was standing upright next to me, trembling a little. Somehow, her face was remarkably calm.

"Nice work," I said. "Ready to rock and ruin?"

She squinted and peered down the Tunnel. "God, why is it so dark in here?"

"I can fix that. Hold up."

I closed my eyes and tweaked the nature of the Tunnel. The darkness retreated, and a pale white light that had no obvious source lit up the Tunnel walls.

"Much better," Vivian said, though she didn't sound completely convinced. "Now we walk?"

"Now we walk," I confirmed.

The Tunnel wasn't really wide enough for us to walk side-by-side, so I took the lead. I realized I hadn't asked Vivian if she was claustrophobic, but she seemed all right. That made things easier for me.

"Is it possible we're not alone in this Tunnel?" Vivian asked after a few minutes of walking.

I shook my head. "The Tunnel takes us through some God-knows-where interdimensional places, but it'll keep anything out." I knocked on the wall of the Tunnel with my fist. It made a strange sound, somewhere between plastic and metal. "See? Solid as you like."

"And we won't run into anyone else going to or from Heaven?"

"Like Andrews' boys? Nah. Each Tunnel is a discrete entity. Even if there were others going to Heaven right now, we'd never see them or know about it until we got there."

"Good. That's one distraction we can do without. If we get there before the gangsters, all the better."

It wasn't impossible. Tunneling for two people was hell of a lot easier than doing it for dozens; the latter needed more detailed Tunnels and multiple trips, unless they had a whole bunch of Tunnelers. Getting there first was something to hope for, at least.

The minutes stretched on as we continued to walk. I found myself thinking of Tania, of all people. Maybe she'd be doing this one day, ferrying cops back and forth. Nah, she wouldn't be that dumb. She was a good kid, she'd know how to stay out of trouble. I didn't have a clue how she stayed so clean in a city where you couldn't walk ten feet without bumping into a pimp or a drug dealer, but somehow she'd managed it.

My stomach twisted a little when I remembered the promise I'd given her. I should have started teaching her months ago, when she first started nagging me. Instead I'd tried to blow town and palm her off on my friend. Desmond would do a damn sight better job than me, but a part of me felt like it was my responsibility.

Listen to me, talking about being responsible. Hell, I was nearly a grown-up. Still, when this was all over, I'd do it. I'd teach her how to Tunnel. I might even enjoy it.

"You got kids, Vivian?" I asked, almost without thinking.

She made a noise, then said, "I hope that's not how you usually proposition women."

My face burned. All right, I'd walked right into that. "Seriously, though."

"No time for children," she said after a moment. "Besides, this isn't the city to raise them."

"I turned out fine."

She snorted and muttered something to herself. It was probably best I didn't catch it.

"All right then," I said, "so why'd you become a cop?"

She made an "I dunno" noise at first. That was all I got out of her for a few seconds, but then she started speaking. "Stupidity and idealism, I guess. That got knocked out of me fairly hard when I hit the streets, though."

"Then why'd you stay? No one puts up with shit like this just because it's their job."

There was silence for a few moments, and I wondered if she'd even heard me. Christ, what if I'd offended her? I had a knack for pushing too far. But then, finally, she spoke. "It was my sister." Her voice was steady, but the sadness was evident. "Bluegate...Bluegate wasn't good to her."

"What happened?"

"Usual story. Drugs, gangs, prostitution. Only it wasn't so usual when it was my own sister. I was still a beat cop then, and the system had already gone to work on me. I saw there was nothing that could be done with the city. Your best shot was to just try to get by, taking what you could get."

That nearly stopped me in my tracks. Had I heard her right? "You were crooked?"

"Not at first. But after a while on the streets, it doesn't seem quite so bad. You do your job well, and you're barely rewarded for it. It's not like you're taking money from the innocent. And if you don't take the bribe, they'll find someone else who would."

I couldn't believe it. She was so holy the Pope would beg to kiss her feet.

And yet, I'd done worse than take a few bribes in my time. "We all do what we have to do."

"That was about the time Katie, my sister, started showing up on the street corners, filled to the eyes in Ink or whatever else she could get her hands on. We'd never seen eye-to-eye, me and her, and she didn't take kindly to the way I tried to bully her out of her lifestyle."

There was bitterness in Vivian's voice, a self-loathing emerging from beneath her perfect mask. I wondered if I was the first she'd talked to about this. Why the hell was she telling me?

"She stopped answering calls," Vivian said. "Mom and I lost contact with her for nearly a year. Until one day she showed up in Bluegate Hospital, beaten half to death by a rival pimp and his baseball bat. We thought she was going to die, God, some days I prayed she would die so she'd be put out of her misery, but she hung on. Only, she wasn't the same afterward." Her voice became quiet. "She's in the nursing home these days."

It took me a moment before I could speak. "You visit her often?" I asked lamely.

"Not as often as I should."

What the hell do you say to that? I couldn't even comprehend it. I didn't have any siblings, none that I knew of, anyway, but I tried to imagine. The pain, the guilt. Jesus, it was a wonder she hadn't picked up a machine gun and gone postal on the pimp who'd done it.

She was waiting for me to say something, I knew. I didn't think she wanted me to make it better. She was smart, she knew I couldn't do that. Hell, maybe she didn't know what she wanted.

I exhaled. "Vivian, I—"

Something odd entered my perception, like an unusual sound or—no, the absence of sound. Like a plucked guitar string that had just broken. I turned around, staring past Vivian, back the way we had come.

"What?" Vivian asked. "What is it?"

I'd never felt anything like this before. It was like a wave, coming toward us from the Tunnel entrance. Like...

Oh, fuck no.

"The Tunnel's collapsing," I whispered.

"What?"

"Someone's disturbed the Tunnel. It's being obliterated behind us."

Vivian's face wasn't nearly as afraid as it should have been. "What do we do?"

Oh Jesus. We were so screwed.

"Miles?"

"Run," I said. "Run!"

## CHAPTER TWELVE

We weren't going to make it. There was no way in hell. We were barely more than halfway through the Tunnel, and it was collapsing behind us faster than a junkie having a seizure. We were dead.

I ran until my legs burned and my heart ached and I couldn't suck in air fast enough. Vivian was doing better. She should have gone ahead of me, she was faster, fitter, but there was no way for her to pass me without us both colliding and going down in a heap. That was time we couldn't afford to waste.

There was a whistling sound behind us, and it was coming closer. I didn't know what it was. I didn't want to know. No one had ever survived a Tunnel collapse. There had never been any bodies to recover. Only God knew what happened, and he wasn't sharing.

I panted and wheezed, forcing my bruised and aching legs not to give up. A little ripple ran through the Tunnel walls around us, the previously solid sides moving like jelly now. Safe to say, I was more scared than I'd ever been in my life.

This wasn't possible. It wasn't. The circle was made out of goddamn iron. I'd done that for a reason. Even if something had washed away the Kemia and the symbols, once we were inside it should stay in place, even if it changed our destination or gave us a longer journey. The only way this could happen was if the iron ring itself had been broken.

That meant someone was trying to kill us. And it looked like they might succeed.

Something horrible screamed through the Tunnel. It didn't sound human, but it sure as hell didn't sound like a noise the Tunnel could make. Fear prompted me to find a little bit more energy and pump it into my legs.

A piece of the Tunnel wall crumbled ahead of us, just flaking away like it was made of paper. As we raced past the gap I could see darkness and light swirling together in an impossible dance.

"How far?" Vivian shouted between breaths.

I didn't have the breath to answer her, and it wouldn't have been much help anyway. I'd lost all sense of time and distance. With the swirling of energy that was starting to peek through the cracks in the Tunnel and the pounding in my head, I had no idea where we were.

The scream came from behind us again, so close I couldn't help but glance behind us. What I saw scared the crap out of me.

It was a creature of some kind, that was obvious enough. But it was nothing from Earth, and I'd never heard of anything like it in Heaven.

It had at least six legs that I could see, all jointed in far too many places. A thick coat of black hair covered its back, and its face was a ravenous ball of teeth and tusks. The thing nearly came up to my chest, and if it stood on its hind legs, it could have given me a hell of a body slam.

"Miles!" Vivian screamed, staring past me. I turned back just in time to see myself headed straight for a hole in the bottom of the Tunnel large enough to swallow me whole. Without enough time to think, I leaped, praying my legs gave me enough lift to get me over.

My feet slammed back down on the other side of the hole, making new cracks appear. My knee shuddered in pain, but I didn't slow.

I glanced back to see Vivian clear the gap. The horrible creature screamed again, loud enough to make Vivian turn around. "Holy fuck. What is that thing?"

"Don't know," I gasped. "Just run!"

I sprinted down the Tunnel a few more seconds before I noticed Vivian footsteps were becoming fainter. I twisted around as much as I dared, not eager to fall into another hole.

She was still running, but hunched over strangely. Oh Jesus, had she been bitten by that thing? No, wait, she was grabbing at her ankle while she ran, awkwardly pulling something out.

And that was when I realized she had another gun.

She ripped the small revolver from her ankle holster with a furious, sweeping motion, like she was a knight going to battle. Or in this case, like a suicide bomber.

"Don't!" I yelled.

She didn't hear me, or if she did, she didn't take any notice. She spun, running sideways while pointing the gun at the hideous creature that bounded toward her, and pulled the trigger.

The crack of the gunshot didn't echo; it was just swallowed by the increasingly weak walls. The bullet left the gun in slow motion—literally—the physics of the shot messed up by the fracturing Tunnel. I got a chance to see shock on Vivian's face before the gun exploded in her hands.

Shards of the gun glowed an unearthly blue as they flew in every direction. Vivian screamed as they ripped apart the flesh of her hand, and I saw at least one fragment slice a scratch across her cheek.

At the same time, the bullet slammed into the creature, moving slower than usual, but somehow delivering a powerful enough strike to shatter the thing's skull and send pale pink blood flying behind it. It stumbled a few more steps before crashing down to the floor of the Tunnel.

The Tunnel was wobbling like a bouncy castle now, though this ride was a hell of a lot less fun. I slowed down despite the approaching destruction. Vivian was still running, clutching her right hand in her left. I tried to ignore the way the blood dripped _up_ , and grabbed her by the elbow. She grunted in pain, but now wasn't the time for me to play gentle. I'd buy her a goddamn drink to make it up to her.

"Can you make it?" I had to yell over the increasingly strange sounds coming from all around us. I could hear more of those things, those creatures, whatever they were, and some other noises that were unidentifiable. Over that was the crashing and snapping of the Tunnel breaking apart.

Vivian nodded, her jaw set against the pain. She was a tough cookie. She pointed ahead while we ran. "There...is that...?"

It was. By sweet Jesus and Holy Mary, it was. The shimmering end of the Tunnel, just close enough to make out. Maybe the collapsing Tunnel made the journey shorter, like the taut string snapping and flying toward the other end. It didn't matter. We were nearly there.

Then a wild screeching filled my ears, and I noticed the operative word in that sentence was "nearly".

I swept my nightstick from my jacket without looking and swung it backward in a wide arc. It cracked against something, and that something screamed and dropped away. I didn't bother to find out what I'd hit. Truth be told, I didn't want to know.

We were so close now, so close I could see the familiar green sky of Heaven ahead of us. Something nipped at me from a hole to my right, but its jaws—or beak, maybe—closed on thin air.

I risked a glance back, and stared into nothingness. The Tunnel was fracturing away behind us, exposing us to some madness I couldn't even comprehend. Pieces of the Tunnel ripped apart and flew into the ether, or disintegrated right there. The edge had caught us. It was only a step behind. We were dead, or worse.

And then I hit the rippling end of the Tunnel, going at speed, Vivian only half a step behind me. A huge bang came from behind us, and my vision spun with light and color. I was falling, but I couldn't tell which way. We'd been too slow. It was over.

My doom-laden reverie was abruptly broken when I slammed face-first into hard, red dirt. I skidded to a halt, my head spinning like a drunken ballerina, my hands grazed and my bruises screaming with fresh agony.

I pried my eyes open, expecting to see that abyss, but it wasn't there. It was then I realized the Tunnel was gone, and it felt like my awareness of it had been ripped out through my nose. Panting and trying to block out the pain, I pushed myself off the ground and spat out dust. "Goddamn it. I think I bit my tongue."

"I'm not kissing it better." Vivian sat up, still clutching her wounded hand. It was bleeding, but it didn't look too badly damaged. I could count five fingers, at least, and there wasn't any bone sticking out.

Vivian's eyes went wide as she stared up at the sky that shifted through hues of green every few seconds, and across to the mountains in the distance that seemed to flicker and change positions every time I looked. "Is this..."

"Yup." I held out a hand to her and helped her to her feet. "Welcome to Heaven."

We weren't quite where I'd intended to bring us, but the collapsing Tunnel hadn't sent us as far off-course as I'd feared. We were in Suron, that much was clear by the wide cracks in the earth and the fractured mountains of iron-red dirt in the distance. They were sort of like Ayers Rock rip-offs, I guess, except these ones were flying. They floated a hundred or so feet off the ground, tethered to the ground by thin columns of rock that had no way of possibly holding it up under any laws of physics I was familiar with.

In the distance was something that resembled an ant, but bigger than a house. It scurried across the sands, kicking up dust in its wake, until it reached one of the cracks in the ground. Without slowing it began to stretch in an impossible way, becoming thinner and distorting like a screwed up TV picture, before disappearing into a crack that a moment before wouldn't have fitted one of its legs.

I always liked the animals in Suron. They had character.

Vivian rotated in a slow circle, taking in the surroundings. I'd been the same, first time I came to Heaven. It wasn't the sort of place you drive through without noticing.

I found my nightstick on the ground not far from where I'd landed. I slipped it back inside my jacket, not daring to look at the strange blood that graced the tip of it, and tried to find where the Tunnel exit had been.

There, a piece of ground that was a bit darker than the rest, like the energy from the Tunnel had baked the dirt. I'd never seen anything like it before, but it didn't surprise me. Accidentally losing control of a Tunnel caused a pretty decent release of energy. I hated to think what had happened when the Tunnel had been severed like that.

I crouched down to study the ground, and heard Vivian's footsteps crunch behind me.

"What the hell happened, Miles?" she said. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do nothing," I said, more to myself than her. I stroked the corner of my mouth with my thumb. I was too confused to get defensive. "That Tunnel should've been strong enough to take any accidental damage without trouble."

"So...so someone did it on purpose?"

"Looks that way." I didn't bother to wonder who. There were too many possibilities, especially if the gangs had caught on to what we were doing. Just too many people with too much at stake.

"Not a very efficient way to kill us," Vivian said.

I stared at her. "Seemed pretty bloody efficient when those...those things, whatever they were, when they were attacking us."

She shrugged as if she hadn't just had her own gun explode in her hand a few minutes ago. Women were good at ignoring the bits of logic that didn't fit their argument. "Why not just put a bullet in our heads and be done with it?"

"Maybe they intended to. Maybe we'd already gone by the time they arrived to drop us."

"Maybe." To say she sounded unconvinced would've been a huge understatement. "Would your average gangster know how to make the Tunnel collapse?"

All right, she had a point there. "Maybe they had another Tunneler with them. Shirley O'Neil seems to be pretty cozy with Andrews these days."

Vivian dropped the topic, for which I was grateful. Call me crazy, but there were only so many times I could discuss these sorts of close calls before I started wondering when they were going to be so close they were buried in my skull. Besides, I didn't want to lose my nerve. It might be the one thing I had left by the time this was over.

I set about trying to figure out where we were, which was never an easy task in Heaven. Some charlatans still stood outside the Bore selling maps to gullible saps. It never took the poor bastards long to realize you'd have more luck getting directions from a squirrel.

I glanced up at the sun, or what amounted to the sun in Heaven—an amorphous blob of light and heat hanging in the sky like you'd expect a sun to. Except it didn't rise and set like normal, it just seemed to move around wherever the hell it felt like. Occasionally you'd get lucky and it would stay in place for a few minutes, and you could get an idea of East and West from that, but today wasn't that day.

All right. It looked like we were doing this the hard way. If the floating mountains over there were the ones I thought they were, we weren't too far wrong. Now it was just a matter of finding the city we were looking for.

"Come on, then," I said to Vivian. "You coming or what?"

I tried to keep my legs from shaking as I walked.

## CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My mouth was bone-dry by the time we finally came across something resembling a trail through the desert-like expanse of Suron. I was skeptical—anything less than a full-blown road in Heaven is notoriously prone to lead right off a cliff or into the lair of some strange and possibly violent animal, but we were running out of time. I put my concerns to Vivian, but she didn't seem to grasp the potential danger of following it.

"It's just a path," she said. "It's got to lead somewhere."

I decided to strike off this decision and let her take responsibility for it when we found ourselves trying to make parachutes out of our jackets. If I was lucky I'd get the chance to say "I told you so" before we ceased to be in one piece.

So I had to admit I was a little peeved when the trail actually did lead to a full-sized road, stone-paved and everything. Vivian had the grace to not look too smug.

Decent roads were a fairly new addition to Heaven. Until they came into contact with humans, they didn't have a single motorized vehicle. They still didn't, technically, but within a few years of the first Vei to visit Earth bringing stories back to Heaven, strange new vehicles started appearing all over Heaven. The Vei refused to tell the human authorities where they'd got them, if they even knew themselves. Things had a way of just coming into existence in Heaven, so the Vei wouldn't take any notice if one morning they woke up to find a brand-new car in their driveway.

Of course, they didn't have driveways, and the cars weren't really cars. For one thing, they had skin. Shiny skin, for sure, that looked almost like painted metal from a distance, but if you ran your hand along it you'd find it was warm, and soft, and moving in that special way that only animate things can pull off. We passed a couple on the way, their red muscles contracting and cranking the wheels as they trundled along. The look on Vivian's face would've had me in hysterics on another day, but right then I was too sore and tired to muster so much as a chuckle.

The road turned into a hole in the ground, then a winding stairway, then it doubled back for a while. It would've been sure to take us in the wrong direction if this was a place where geography was fixed. As it was, it was exactly where we needed to go.

Time's a hell of a thing to keep track of in Heaven, but after an hour or two we found the city I was looking for. Surei, the Vei called it. It acted as a sort of capital city of the Suron territory, and performed the neat trick of sitting on a huge plate of perfectly circular rock, floating in the middle of a giant hole in the earth.

Vivian gaped as it came into view. "Can't anything just be normal here?"

"Here, this is normal."

She paused, eyes sweeping the city. I could hear her brain smoking as it tried to work the place out.

I tapped my wrist. "I thought we were on a timer."

She blinked a few times, shook her head, and started walking again without another word.

We followed the increasingly wide road toward the city. A ring of nothingness surrounded the floating city, like some sort of waterless moat, and several bridges stretched across the gap around the perimeter of the city. The bridge we crossed was actually disappointingly normal, resembling any number of suspension bridges from Earth cities. The city itself, though, that was something else entirely.

It was almost a parody of an Earth city. Skyscrapers littered the skyline, but instead of being built of concrete and steel, they were great bone skeletons, coated in muscle and sinew and skin. Several of them floated in the air, with only long stairways connecting them to the ground. The city looked to have grown straight out of the red stone, complete with criss-crossing streets and floating paths that disappeared up at impossible angles before dipping again and slipping out of sight behind buildings.

Vehicles of ever-stranger make trundled along past us as we crossed the bridge and made it into the city proper. All around us, Vei wandered the streets, going about their lives as if they weren't living in something that looked like the love-child of Salvador Dali and H. R. Giger. There were a few humans as well; people seeking the novelty of the place, or maybe an escape from their pasts. Maybe even a few ex-military men, ones that'd been in the exploratory forces and had decided not to come back. The Bore couldn't be directed to open a Tunnel near Surei, so it wasn't much of a tourist destination. Most of the humans here would be here to stay.

Vivian exhaled forcefully, taking in the strange place with admirable stoicism. I'd seen more than one person badly shaken just from seeing the likes of Heaven's cities. "What now, then?"

I stroked my mouth with my thumb. "Fancy a drink?"

"A drink? Now?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna shrivel up if I don't get something soon. Besides, I know a place."

"You know a place." She imbued the words with enough skepticism to convince a TV psychic to give up the gig.

I led her through the crowded streets. We drew a stare or two, bloodied and bruised as we were, but a wide, manic smile from me was usually enough to send any nosy onlookers hurrying on their way.

We were a block from the alcohol den I had in mind when Vivian whispered, "Damn it," and shoved me off the street and into an alcove beside a tree of twisted bone.

I struggled for a moment, but the look on her face stopped me. She glanced at something out of the corner of her eye, along a street running perpendicular to the one we'd been on. I followed her gaze, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, which was probably an exercise in futility.

A dozen humans were making their way down the footpath toward us, wearing getups they looked to have pinched from a bunch of heavy-metal rockers. They consisted mainly of spikes and chains and black leather, with a few brightly colored hairdos to really set the look off.

The crowd gave the humans as wide a berth as they could manage, which wasn't easy since the men looked to be deliberately trying to bump into people and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

One Vei man didn't take kindly to being shoved aside by one of the spiky men at the back of the group. The Vei snarled, and opened his mouth wide. The air seemed to warp around him and his top teeth, already sharp, shot down into fangs. The crowd around them started rubbernecking, slowing from their hurry to get away from the leather-clad men, and the tension in the air became palpable. Jesus. This wasn't good.

The man who had shoved the Vei grinned, his face filled with enough piercings to overload a metal detector. With an almost casual sweep of his arm, he drew and flicked open a switchblade from the pocket of his jacket and sliced it across the Vei's face.

The crowd went berserk, screaming and running as the Vei's blood splattered the stone. The Vei staggered back, his fangs returned to normal, with an open gash running across his cheek and nose pulsing with blood.

The rest of the leather men had stopped to watch their friend. They jeered as the Vei backed away, the knife-wielding man advancing on him. Blood pounded in my ears.

I didn't even know I was moving until Vivian's hand grabbed my elbow. Her grip could've turned concrete to dust.

"Let go," I demanded without taking her eyes off the Vei man.

She kept her voice low, neutral. "Those are Gravediggers."

"I know who they are, damn it. Let me go."

"Count them, Miles. How long would it take them to put you down?"

I took another look. There were a lot of them, sure, but I was a Tunneler. I wouldn't fight them, but I'd be damned if I was going to wait until the Vei was a corpse before I acted. Otherwise, what the hell was all this for?

I wrenched my arm free of Vivian's grip and jumped out of her reach before she could grab me again. "Wait," she whispered.

The leather gangsters chose that moment to get bored with tormenting the Vei. The one with the knife grinned one more time, spat on the Vei, and returned to his friends. The Vei dropped to his knees in the street and clutched at his wound.

I allowed myself a breath as Vivian took hold of me again and the group of Gravediggers continued on down the street that was now conspicuously empty.

"He could've been gutted," I said. "The hell kind of cop are you?"

"The kind with a job to do. Miles, this is about more than just one person. We have to be smart."

"We have to be cold, you mean."

Her face was smooth, and I couldn't pick up any anger in her voice. "If the Gravediggers are here, then it's already begun. The tall one at the front, the one who wasn't laughing, that's Paul Guzman, their head man. If he's here, I bet the other gangs won't be far behind. And we still have no clue where to find Doctor Dee. We're running out of time."

I glared at her a few more moments, but my heart wasn't in it. The wounded Vei was getting up with the help of some bystanders. Vivian was right, of course. That didn't make it easier to swallow. Not by a long shot.

"Ah, to hell with it," I said. "Let's go make some enquiries."

Not surprisingly, following the Gravediggers led us to the same part of the city I was headed for anyway. It was a nasty bloody neighborhood, famous—or infamous—for its connections to Earth gangs. I'd only been there once before, many years ago, and I'd left with a broken wrist and my face bright red and inflating like a blow-up doll. You should've seen the other guy, though.

We stayed far enough behind to avoid being spotted, but I don't think the Gravediggers were much for the whole surveillance thing. They relied more on intimidation than subtlety to keep themselves safe, and it seemed to go all right for them.

The joint they led us to was a skin-covered, circular wine lounge, floating fifteen or so feet off the ground with a wide staircase of stone at the front. We watched from across the street as the Gravediggers climbed the stairs, still guffawing about the Vei they'd cut. The only one who wasn't laughing and joking around with the others was Paul Guzman, the tallest one of the lot. He had a row of spikes across one jacket shoulder, and a couple of tattoos on his neck. He stared up at the wine lounge with something I guessed to be disdain.

They were violent, the Gravediggers, I knew that from experience. But they ran their drug racket with brutal efficiency, and a sense of brotherhood that far outclassed anything John Andrews' gang could muster.

Everything I knew about the Gravediggers said this wasn't normal. The wine lounge looked like a fairly classy establishment, something that I expected would rub the Gravediggers the wrong way.

"If Guzman's here, it looks like Andrews isn't going to be settling for meeting with small-fry gangsters," I said.

Vivian nodded. "We have to get inside."

"I seem to have forgotten my invite."

She pointed to the staircase. "It's not just gangsters going in. They're meeting in a public place, or maybe they've got part of it sectioned off. We can just go in and look."

She was right about the public place. The Vei going up and down the stairs didn't have the gangster look about them. Still, as humans we'd stick out. I sighed. "Reconnaissance only?"

"Sure."

I didn't like the way she said that, but then again I hadn't liked much of anything in the last couple of days, so I nodded. Hell if she wasn't going to get us killed one way or the other. "All right. But let's be quick about it."

We went up the stairs and into the wine lounge, me doing my best Humphrey Bogart and Vivian doing her damnedest to make sure everyone knew she was a cop. Somehow, though, no one took any notice of us. The interior of the lounge had a curiously human aesthetic, all red curtains and large brown couches despite the Vei-styled exterior.

It was mostly Vei that sat or lay on the couches, blissed out on wine, although there were a couple of well-dressed humans scattered around. Alcohol had been something of a boom industry in Heaven since the Bores opened, turning a good portion of young Vei into raging alcoholics. It hadn't caused quite the same level of societal destruction as Ink had to Bluegate, but it wasn't all fairies and butterflies either.

I couldn't see the Gravediggers, or any other gangsters. That soothed my nerves a little. A set of wooden double doors at the back of the room could've opened into a back room or a private area. I pointed them out to Vivian, and she nodded. "Could be it."

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

She pursed her lips and glanced around. "Might as well wait here and see what happens. And I believe you promised me a drink."

A smile played across her face, and I had to return it. She wasn't so bad when she wasn't being a cop. I gestured to the only empty couch, in the corner near the bathrooms. "I don't think you'll be carrying drinks with that hand. I'll bring them over. What'll you take?"

"What do they have?"

"Wine."

She rolled her eyes and waved me away. "Fetch me something nice."

I made my way up to the bar, where an old Vei man dressed in an old-fashioned human bartender's outfit polished a glass.

"Two," I said in Vei, holding up my fingers. "And give me some of that flatbread."

He nodded politely and got out a couple of mugs. Apparently, this place wasn't big on wine glasses. I wasn't complaining, though; he filled the mug right to the top and charged me something approaching reasonable. He even took currency from Earth. I liked this guy.

I returned to the couch with the bread and glasses, handed her one, and gave a little bow. "The finest vintage they had."

"Such a gentleman," she said, shuffling over to give me room to sit down. She took a sip of the wine, and screwed up her face. "Oh God. It tastes like gasoline. Rancid gasoline."

I followed suit, knocking back a large gulp, and smacked my lips. "It does have a certain exotic flavor to it."

"Exotic my ass," she muttered.

I took another sip of the wine, stoically ignoring the way it burned as it went down, then shoved a lump of flatbread into my mouth to quell my rumbling stomach while I studied the lounge's patrons. I could definitely see the Gravediggers feeling out of place here. From our position we had a decent—though not great—view of both the entrance and the doors to the back room. We had nothing to do but wait.

"Just like an old-fashioned stake-out," I said, mostly to myself.

Vivian used a bar napkin to wipe away the crusted blood from her hand. The injury had looked worse than it was. I took another napkin, gestured to her face with it, and she nodded. She closed her eyes and I cleaned off the blood from the cut across her cheek. "If this thing scars you'll look like a Bond villain."

"Shut up, Franco."

Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a Vei coming out of the bathrooms next to us. I thought nothing of it for a moment, but as he walked past, something about him tugged at my memory. I lowered the napkin and turned to him, and he paused and looked at me as well. He was well-dressed in suit and tie, though he seemed to have left his fedora at home this time. The gangster had a face that a mother would smother, and it was quickly changing from shock to anger.

Ugly stared at me, letting the cigarette dangle from his lips. "Mr. Franco." He went for the knife—my knife—at his belt.

I sure knew how to make friends.

## CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I snatched a coin and the half-full bottle of Kemia from my pocket, already knowing I'd be slower than Ugly. Luckily, I wasn't alone.

As far as I knew, Vivian had never met Ugly, but it seemed she recognized a gangster when she saw one. She kicked out a leg from the couch, catching Ugly in the back of the knee. He stumbled, his hand jerking away from the knife, and he opened his mouth to shout.

Vivian's hand flew like an arrow to Ugly's throat, her hand closing around his windpipe and cutting the scream off. His cigarette dropped to the floor.

A ripple went through his body, his fingers extending into claws and his mouth into a snapping dog's snout. As long as he was in Heaven, he could turn his body into a weapon. But Vivian had bought me some time, time enough to splash Kemia on a coin and open a Pin Hole.

When in Heaven, Pin Holes work a bit different. You open them roughly the same way, except it takes a slightly different frame of mind, more ordered, more focused. Only when you open it from this end, you're tapping into our reality's stability, rather than Heaven's instability. You can do some nifty things by sticking some nice physics into Heaven and giving them a push to get them started.

But right then, I just wanted to stop Ugly from tearing Vivian apart. His new claws raced to slice at her arm, but then my Pin Hole kicked in.

The reality around Ugly shuddered and solidified, and his snout seemed to cave back into his face. At the same time, his claws retracted and his normal fingers reappeared. A couple of the others in the lounge had noticed the commotion, but no one had started shouting or screaming yet.

Ugly didn't waste any time. He gave up trying to remove Vivian's hand from his throat and went for the knife again. I lunged and wrapped my hand around his wrist. It was taking half my concentration to keep the Pin Hole open and stop Ugly from growing claws again. The other half was engaged in a battle to not set the lounge into a panic and alert the gangsters, wherever they were hiding.

Vivian got smart first. With a face that betrayed only a hint of violent effort, she stood and shoved Ugly back toward the bathrooms. I followed, snatching the Pin Hole coin from the table with a shaking hand. Ugly was going blue from lack of air and making little gurgling sounds, but Vivian kept a tight grip and pushed him backward, keeping him off balance.

We shoved him through a door into the men's bathroom, and Vivian slammed him up against the wall with surprising strength. I scanned the bathroom quickly, concluded it was empty, and kicked the door closed without removing my hand from Ugly's wrist.

Vivian released his throat and he sucked in air before bending over double and nearly coughing out his lungs. "Crazy fucking bitch."

She frisked him, took the knife from his pocket and tossed it to me. Damn, it felt good to have it back in my hands. Knives like that are hard to find. I flicked it open and aimed the point at Ugly's face, giving him a good look, and let go of his wrist.

"Who is he?" Vivian asked.

"One of Andrews' boys."

"Name?"

"You know, I never asked. And here I thought me and him were getting to be fast friends." I waved the knife in his face, trying to be menacing. "What do they call you?"

The look on Ugly's face was almost bored. He gave the knife a cursory glance, as if it were no more than a dessert spoon. "That don't matter. I know what they'll be calling you, though. The late Miles Franco. Dearly departed."

"Yeah? You going to cry when they read my eulogy?"

He smirked. "No, but perhaps I'll write you a nice obituary. Maybe it'll teach others where they shouldn't go sticking their noses."

Vivian glanced around the stark white bathroom, and back to the door. "That thing have a lock?"

"No such luck," I said.

"Then let's be quick about this." She spun Ugly around and pulled a pair of handcuffs from her belt. "You're going to tell us what you know and why you're here."

"Am I?" Ugly said, a faint smirk still on his face even as Vivian cuffed his wrists behind his back. "Doesn't seem like the sort of thing I'd do."

The door started to open. Panicking, I threw myself against it, earning a grunt and a Vei swear word from whoever was on the other side. "Occupied!" I yelled in Vei.

"You know, I took you for a smart man, Mr. Franco." Ugly's voice curled around the words. "I thought you would've learned your place."

"You must be a poor judge of character. I never pretended to be smart. But somehow I've gotten wound up in all this, and I'm not going to sit here and let you and your buddies start a goddamn gang war over some drug."

His smile widened then, predator-like. "Is that what you think is happening? Oh, Mr. Franco, you poor fool. It isn't us you need to be worried about."

Vivian glanced at me for a moment, and I had a feeling we were both thinking about the note pinned to the Silk Dragon. Chroma is Death.

She shoved Ugly back against the wall again. "Tell us what you're doing here."

"Maybe I'm visiting family."

Vivian grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall. He didn't flinch. He shifted his eyes to me and grinned.

A white flash ran through my head. I was on the wet concrete of the parking lot outside Andrews' strip club, scrambling around in the puddles. Blood dripped from my lips, my cheek, my knuckles. Again and again Ugly kicked me, him and his buddies.

The pain, Christ, the pain. Every organ in my body was on fire, even ones I didn't know I had. I thought each blow would be the one to finally end me. I was wrong.

There was always more pain.

"Vivian," I said quietly, banishing the visions. "Go out and keep watch."

She didn't release her grip on his collar, didn't even look at me. "What?"

"I need to have a chat with him. We have a few things we need to hash out."

Ugly eyed me laconically, but I imagined I saw understanding run through him. Good.

Everyone wanted me to play their game, from the cops to the gangsters. Well hell, maybe it was time I started playing for real.

Licking her lips, Vivian shook her head. "Miles—"

"Go." I tested the heft of the knife. My hand trembled, but only a little. The real problem was the ache in my stomach.

I wouldn't do him any real damage. No worse than he'd done to me. But the son of a bitch was standing in the way of this being over. Christ, I just wanted to be free.

Vivian's eyes bored into mine, and for once I didn't try to drop my gaze. Finally, she nodded. "Okay."

Something broke in Ugly's expression. "You're a cop, you can't leave me alone with him."

"I'm out of my jurisdiction." She shrugged and made for the door.

"All right, all right," Ugly said. "Let's not play it that way. You want to know why we're here? Check my breast pocket."

I took a deep breath, and my stomach unknotted itself. Still, I didn't lower the knife. "This a trick?"

"No trick. Have a look."

Vivian frowned at me, then reached into his pocket and pulled out something small, wrapped in a bit of brown paper. "What is it?"

"I don't want to ruin the surprise."

She passed it to me to open. I stared at it for a moment. It was about the size of my thumb, cylindrical, and heavier than it looked. Something about it looked familiar, but I couldn't tell from where.

"A gift," Ugly said. "From our generous sponsor."

"Sponsor?" I unwrapped the paper carefully. I didn't trust the bastard that it wasn't a trap.

"Yeah. Gift of goodwill. You've probably never heard of that, though."

"You must've kicked it all out of me."

He shrugged. I licked my lips, gave him one more long look, and finished unwrapping the paper. At first glance, it didn't look anything spectacular. Just a little glass vial with a gray lid. The liquid inside, though, that was interesting. I took it by the lid and turned it upside down, and the liquid sloshed with the same viscous consistency of Ink. Almost like blood. But this stuff wasn't pitch-black, like Ink was. A white label clung to the front of the vial, with three letters written in cramped handwriting. Dr. D.

"It's Chroma," I said.

Vivian shot me a look. "You sure?"

"I'm not a goddamn chemist, but I'll give you good odds this is it." I waved it in Ugly's face. "Isn't it? Why would Doctor Dee give you this?"

He shrugged again. "As far as we know it's the real deal. It seems he decided it wasn't worth going to battle with the whole city. This is more mutually beneficial."

"So what?" Vivian asked. "He's the manufacturer and you lot are the new distributors?"

"You got it, dollface. So unless you want to try to arrest every gangster that's waiting just behind those doors back there..." He gestured with his eyes. "...I suggest you get lost. There's a lot of ways for a lady cop and her little pet to get popped in Heaven. And I don't think your good friends at the police department will be too keen to stick their noses into your mysterious disappearance once they find their pockets getting mysteriously heavier."

Vivian shook her head, and pushed him against the wall harder. "How do we know that's even what you say it is?"

"You don't. I ain't even a hundred percent convinced. I was just on my way back to watch the test when you two decided to unlawfully detain me."

"Test?" The way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck not only stand up, but dance as well. "The hell do you mean, test?"

We were running out of time, and I got the feeling he was just playing with his food before the rest of the pack showed up. He grinned at me, baring his vicious teeth, and I reminded myself not to let my Pin Hole collapse. I didn't want to see what he was like when he had full control over his body.

"The good doctor's letter suggested we'd get an extra special reaction if we used it on a Tunneler. It was a bit of a pain to find one on such short notice, but out of pure luck one came to us."

"Yeah?" I said.

"'Course, we figured you'd be the perfect candidate. Unfortunately, you weren't at your apartment when we visited. But we met someone even better." He ran his tongue along his teeth. "She was a feisty little thing, all claws and teeth. I was about to drop her when she started trying to Tunnel against us. Imagine that? Pretty little girl with mosquito bites for tits, and already trying to be a Tunneler."

My head spun. No. God no.

"Tania?" I grabbed his shoulder and brought the knife to his throat. "Tell me her name isn't Tania."

Ugly laughed. The noise clanged through me like tin pots against my skull. I was supposed to protect her. I'd promised to protect her, damn it! I wanted to take Ugly's face and smack it against the wall. I wanted to kick him in the face until he couldn't see from all the blood. I wanted to take my knife and stick it in his spine, make sure his little Vei dick never got hard again and he had to wear diapers for the rest of his miserable life.

"Miles." Vivian's voice was calm, warning. I realized my lips were pulled back across my teeth in an animal snarl, my knife a hair's breadth from his throat. "Don't."

A girl's scream drove itself deep into my skull. The back room. Ugly laugh turned to a snarl. "You're too late, Mr. Franco."

Anger as hot as a nuclear explosion burst inside my skull. There were jeers and excited shouts coming from outside the bathroom. Those bastards. I'd kill them all. I could do it. I was Miles Franco, freelance fucking Tunneler, and they would know fear as they died.

I drew back my knife arm and prepared to swing.

"Miles!" Vivian shouted, loud enough to shock me still. Ugly's gloating smile had turned to horror. He hadn't thought I'd do it.

He was wrong. I would have.

My snarl faded under Vivian's hard stare. God. What kind of man was I? I lowered the knife, folded it, and slipped it back into my pocket. Ugly's face collapsed with relief, like it'd just worked a thirty-six-hour shift with no breaks.

He didn't see my sucker punch until it took him square in the chin. He didn't even make a noise as he stumbled back against the wall and dropped to the ground. My knuckles stung like I'd hit a brick wall, but God it felt good.

Tania's screams stopped. I turned toward the bathroom door, ignoring the moaning Ugly on the floor. What was I doing, wasting time on petty revenge? Fuck, please let her be alive.

The jeers faded. For a moment, there was silence. Then something exploded like it'd been hit by a bazooka, and new screams started.

The floor shook beneath me as another boom ripped through the wine lounge. The fear on Vivian's face reflected mine. Jesus. What now?

We left Ugly curled up on the bathroom floor and ran toward the screams, which seemed to me the sort of counterintuitive thing people always do in horror films. But Tania was in the middle of all this shit—because of me, I might add—and I'd be damned if I was going to leave her there.

The wine lounge was in chaos. The more sober patrons scrambled and fought to get to the exit, while the ones who were too wasted to run crawled along the floor. The air was thick with smoke and what smelled like burning flesh, and the doors to the back room had been blown outward like a tank had driven through them. I slipped my nightstick from my jacket, the weight more comfortable than ever before, and made my way toward the back room without looking to see if Vivian was following. The lounge shook, and I lurched to the side.

Then the building dropped.

Panic punched through my anger. I was falling, weightless. Then the building jerked to a halt, jarring my knees. I stumbled, righted myself, and broke into a sprint.

The lounge's back room had once been a classy affair, from the looks of it, all dark reds and polished wood tables imported from Earth. It would've fitted nicely in some rich guy's mansion.

But now it looked like something from the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident. Tables were overturned, couches were ripped in two, and a gaggle of gangsters were scattered about the room, more of them dead than alive. A small cluster of them huddled behind overturned tables and couches, knives and bats drawn while they peered through the smoke.

It took me a moment to find what they were staring at. A small figure stumbled forward, clutching her head in both hands. Her clothes were torn half to shreds, and her skin and wavy blond hair were coated with white dust and something that looked ominously like blood. She looked much older than her sixteen years.

"Tania!" I hurried into the room, my head pounding. "Tania, are you okay? We got to go."

Tania's head swiveled around and finally focused on me, eyes wide and tongue rolling about outside her mouth in nervous jerks. God, what had they done to her?

"Miles." Vivian's voice came from behind me, low and warning. "I don't think—"

Tania gnashed her teeth at me, more animal than human, and raised her hands.

Reality shimmered. I sensed something below me, a solidity that didn't belong in Heaven. The bone floor crunched beneath my feet, and I was moving before I could work out what was happening.

I leaped to the side and the section of the floor I'd been standing on launched upward. It smashed into the ceiling with a sickening crunch. I hit the ground with a grunt, already rolling, when the shattered chunks of flesh-like substance rained back down, littering the ground.

I dived behind a couch being used for cover by two Gravediggers, one missing most of his head and the other groaning from a shard of bone sticking out of his leg. At the same time, another blast ripped apart the floor behind me. My head spun, unable to process the situation.

I could hear Tania babbling in her high-pitched voice, speaking much too fast for me to understand. I peeked back around the couch to find Vivian still standing in the doorway, her hand groping under her jacket where her gun should be and her wide eyes fixed on Tania.

"Vivian!" I shouted. "Get lost, damn it!"

A woman on the other side of the room—a Silk Dragon, I think—made a break for it. Her red dress, all silks and enticing slits, flew behind her, catching the dust as she skittered along in stilettos.

She didn't make it halfway to the door. Tania tracked her across the room, mouth rapidly opening and closing, and then she flicked her wrist. The Silk Dragon suddenly flew sideways, screaming and flailing. She hit the corner of a table in a spray of blood and torn flesh. I ducked back down, my fists drenched in sweat and my heart pounding, while I desperately tried to impose logic on the chaos that surrounded me.

Tania had gone fucking nutso. But that wasn't the half of it.

She was Tunneling without Kemia, or even a circle. To even call it Tunneling was an understatement to compete with the best of them. She seemed to be punching Pin Holes into being with little more than her will and a touch of insanity. She was manipulating the physics of the world around her like I'd never seen before. It just wasn't possible.

The whole lounge lurched again, gravity taking charge before being booted away again. I couldn't see where Vivian had disappeared to. If she was smart she'd be halfway across Suron by now, but a sinking part of me knew she'd be more likely to do something stupid and heroic. And then she'd get herself crushed, and Tania would expend no more effort than it took to swat a fly.

I crawled around the dead Gravedigger beside me, his blood and brains soaking into my trouser knees, trying to get a better vantage point. The room itself was pretty expansive, substantially more now that half of one wall was torn off. Bodies littered the floor—the ones that'd been caught in the open, presumably—while maybe twenty gangsters took cover, too far from the door to escape. The ones I could see had lost all tone in their faces, and they looked like the photos of shell-shocked men from the First World War. The ones with weapons in their hands held them slackly. If they had an ounce of sense remaining, they'd know how useless a knife would be.

A flash of movement behind the bar at the far end of the room caught my eye. I saw a glimpse of Vei skin covered in scars and wrinkles. It brought back another flash of memory, and my head started pounding again. Fury and fear mixed in a flurry of emotion. John Andrews. What the hell had he done to Tania?

Another gangster tried his luck at running and got crushed into an unrecognizable pulp for his troubles. I used the distraction to slip out from cover and dive toward the black countertop of the bar. Tania shouted something incoherent, but I didn't explode, so I considered that a small victory.

I scrambled to the side of the bar, my hands scratched from shards of bone and broken glass that covered the floor. Broken bottles leaked alcohol across the floor, the smell strong enough to overcome the burning flesh. I heard John Andrews muttering to himself on the other side of the bar, swearing in both Vei and English. I peeked around the corner, and my heart did its best to kick its way out of my chest.

He stared at Tania over the countertop, a snarl on his face as he muttered. In his hand was a nearly-full bottle of top shelf vodka, with a barman's rag hanging out of it. He flicked at a lighter with the other hand, and a flame appeared inches from the Molotov cocktail.

"No!" I yelled, not caring if Tania heard me.

Andrew's head snapped toward me, recognition dawning on his face. The hand with the lighter shot under his tuxedo jacket.

I launched myself at him. He turned, too slow by far, and I tackled him around the chest, my head slamming against his chin. Pain came screaming at me, but I just screamed right back. The vodka bottle flew somewhere, shattering and raining glass and alcohol down on us, and Andrews and I scuffled on the ground like animals.

I slammed my fist into his scarred cheek, and his neck snapped back like a grotesque rag doll. I couldn't see properly; red mist—or maybe blood—clouded my vision. I fought by feel and instinct and rage boiling over.

A gleam of silver appeared to my left, and a sharp pain lanced through my upper arm. I rolled to the side as Andrews' knife danced at me again, slicing a hole in my jacket and barely missing my chest. I drove my knee into his abdomen, earning a grunt that sent a visceral wave of triumph through me, and sunk my teeth into his wrist. He screamed and loosened his grip on the knife, enough to let me smack his wrist into a shelf of glasses and send the weapon flying.

With a shimmer of reality, Andrews' hand became a claw. He tore at my shoulder, but I ignored it. I drove my fist into his face once, twice, three more times, until his broken line of jagged teeth were coated in blood. His eyes rolled, and his attacks stopped.

Another explosion and another wave of screams broke out on the other side of the bar, but I took no notice. Father Time had been messing with the clocks in my head; I must have entered the room only a couple of minutes ago, but it felt like I'd been there so long I should be able to apply for citizenship. I was on top of Andrews, one knee in his chest. His neck grew limp and lolled backward, so I gave him a slap across the cheek and enjoyed the satisfying cracking sound and the wide-eyed stare as he was shocked back to consciousness.

I grabbed Andrews by the lapels of his jacket. It wasn't quite so pretty now it was coated with blood. "What the fuck did you do to Tania?"

He ran a tongue along his teeth, smearing the blood. I was aware that I'd never be able to get a Pin Hole open in time if he transformed himself, but right then I was too drunk on adrenaline and anger to care. Besides, the blows to the face I'd given him should slow him down. Heaven or no, you couldn't change when you couldn't think.

I shook him back and forth, not caring that the back of his head smacked into the ground. "Answer me!"

He spat a glob of blood to the side and focused spinning eyes on me. "This is nothing to you, little Tunneler. A drop of Chroma, and she goes wild." His grin made me want to throw up and punch him simultaneously. "It seems this doctor isn't my friend after all."

"This is all just Chroma? It isn't possible."

He laughed. "You are in world of the impossible, Mr. Franco." Tania screamed, and the room shook again. Andrews' grin faded, and he fixed me with a look. "Since you do not want to watch me set this crazy bitch on fire, I suggest you leave. Go back to your little Earth hovel, and pray to your God I forget all about this."

"I'm not leaving without Tania."

"Then you are already dead."

His fist shot up and caught me in the gut. I rolled with the punch, falling to the side. Andrews moved like a sewer rat, darting up and scurrying away along the bar. He dodged a flying table, moving faster than I would've thought possible, grabbed a thick iron candleholder, and hurled it at Tania. She didn't see it coming. It crashed into her head with a thump that sent a new visceral sickness running through me, and she staggered backward. Andrews sprinted from the room, along with a handful of other gangsters who took advantage of Tania's disorientation.

I pulled myself up and ran to Tania. Blood poured from a gash across her forehead. Her eyes swam in her head, half-closed and not seeing. A not-insignificant part of me was terrified she'd kill me as soon as she was no longer stunned, but I had to take the chance. Other figures dashed through the smoke, ghosts on the edges of my vision, but I pushed all thoughts of them aside and focused on Tania.

I caught her before she fell. My heart pounded as I lowered her into a sitting position. Her face was coated in blood, but I didn't know how much was hers. She looked like a Vietnamese refugee, half-naked with only torn rags remaining of her clothes. I had no way to describe the guilt that crashed around inside my skull, upturning memories and breaking windows. God, why hadn't I got someone to protect her? Why had I been so goddamn stupid?

The track mark in the crook of her elbow was the proof of my shame. I didn't want to see it, but now that I had, it was all I could see. The hole where the needle had made its mark was surrounded by swollen skin, swirling with color even as I watched. I reached trembling fingers to the point where the Chroma had entered her body.

I knew this wasn't a dream. My mind could never imagine something this horrifying.

Her eyes snapped open. For a moment, I thought there was recognition, and then her face was filled with madness. Everything slowed down like I was looking down the barrel of a gun, and I knew without doubt that she was going to kill me.

An arm appeared around Tania's throat. Her insane wrath gave way to shock, her eyes widening and rolling in her head.

Vivian pressed her arm against the arteries in Tania's neck. Her hair was coated with dust, making her look like she'd aged a hundred years. Maybe she had. I certainly felt broken and crippled as a weathered skeleton.

"Easy," Vivian whispered in Tania's ear. "Just go to sleep."

Tania was too weak to struggle. It only took a few long, horrifying moments before her eyes closed and she slipped backward, breathing heavily. Vivian embraced her as a mother does her daughter.

Right then, looking at the two of them, I'd never felt more alone.

## CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I wrapped Tania in my jacket and carried her out of the destroyed wine lounge, stepping among the bodies and debris. She was light as a ghost, and pale as one too. She didn't move or talk in her sleep. I prayed the Chroma would be out of her system by the time she woke. I prayed it hadn't fried her brain completely.

The stairs at the entrance to the wine lounge were half-destroyed, so I climbed down first and let Vivian pass Tania down to me. I was too numb to think, to do anything except deal with the immediate practical matters. All my anger had been burned away. John Andrews and the surviving gangsters had fled to God knows where, but they'd be back.

Crowds of Vei hovered around the streets surrounding the wine lounge, watching us leave. They parted as we moved through them, not speaking. The fear on their faces was obvious, but I didn't care. All that mattered was playing rabbit and getting Tania the hell out of town.

My shoulder stung like crazy where Andrews had sliced me, and my old jacket had earned itself a few new holes which I'd need to stitch up. My shirt was a write-off. Blood coated it—some of it mine and some not—and it had more tears than an orphaned child. Vivian had come out significantly less bloodstained, but she'd need to wash her clothes about a million times to get out the smell of burnt flesh. Whatever that wine lounge was made of, it sure as hell stunk when it got torn apart.

We left the city on foot, crossing the same bridge we'd come in on. It seemed as good a place as any. Vivian and I didn't say anything, but I think we both knew there was no point staying here. It was obvious the gangsters had been duped as thoroughly as we'd been. We'd find no answers. Not here, anyway. We were at a dead end, with emphasis on the dead. All that mattered to me right now was getting Tania to a hospital. Doctor Dee and John Andrews could go fuck themselves.

Still, as I felt Tania's shallow breath against my neck, I couldn't help but let my mind drift into the darkness. Bluegate was in for a world of hurt. This whole situation had gone from firecracker to armed nuke. John Andrews and the other gangsters would be arming up for full-scale war. Doctor Dee had betrayed them, not telling them the havoc a Tunneler on Chroma would wreak. In the end, that basically amounted to attempted assassination. Gang bosses don't generally take such things lightly. Blood would flow in the streets, and who knew how many innocents would be caught in the crossfire.

And even if none of the gangsters Dee had tried to kill made it back to Earth, Bluegate would still have to deal with the influx of that deadly drug. If it drove normal people mad, the violence would be horrifying. If Tunnelers got their hands on it...

I shifted Tania's weight in my arms. She was too deep in her sleep to notice. What the hell had the Chroma done to make her so powerful? Just a couple of days ago she could barely manage a Pin Hole with half a bottle of Kemia. Now, with one dose of Chroma, she could punch holes in reality with no more than a flick of her wrist. It was unthinkable, and it made me shiver to consider what would happen when people who craved power more than safety started shooting up.

Vivian's face was blank as we walked. The day was cooling now as the sun-analogue dimmed in brightness, but streams of sweat rolled down her face, creating rivers in the dust. She stared ahead, looking at something beyond the strange landscape.

"You thinking about how screwed we are?" I asked

She blinked and glanced at me, as if she'd forgotten I was there. "This thing, this Chroma, the power of it..." She took a breath and rubbed a sleeve across her forehead. "This won't stop at Bluegate. The other Bore Cities will start getting it as well. Before long we won't be able to stop it. It will be everywhere."

Jesus. I hadn't thought of that, though now she said it, it seemed so obvious. How many people would this thing kill?

The thought of it was overwhelming. God, I was tired. I opened my mouth and let out a jaw-cracking yawn. I felt like I was going to drop down right there. Every inch of me ached, new bruises duking it out with old ones for the right to cause me the most pain.

I needed a vacation.

I found us a nice Tunneling location about a mile from the city, in a deserted patch of red dirt surrounded by tall, sharp rocks. It would hide the Tunnel from any passersby, and hopefully prevent a repeat of the journey here.

I drew the circle in the packed dirt with a sharp stone, and hummed while I splashed the last of my Kemia on it. Vivian wasn't as amazed by the opening Tunnel this time, and she didn't appear afraid either. I have to admit, I was feeling a little nervous about getting back into a Tunnel so soon after my recent brush with being sucked into an interdimensional abyss, but Vivian didn't seem to have any of my trepidations. Maybe she just didn't care anymore.

Despite my fatigue, I pulled open the Tunnel without difficulty, letting the familiar blackness leak out. Together, Vivian and I swung down into the Tunnel, and began the long journey back to Earth.

The trip was uneventful. Vivian spoke as much as a gagged hamster, and to be honest I was grateful for it. Tania stirred once or twice, but never woke fully. Imagining the devastation she could cause if she awoke here, mad and infused with power, made my palms sweat.

I didn't know how I was going to explain this to her mother. If she was still alive. The thought sent a shiver down my spine. Ugly said they'd come by looking for me, and Tania had confronted them. What if Denise had been there too? What if she'd tried to stop them from taking her daughter?

Denise was a fierce woman. The rumor in the apartment building was that she'd beaten her first husband—Tania's father—half to death when he lost their savings on a poker debt, then attacked the gangsters that came to try to collect the rest of the debt. Ugly and Butch didn't seem like the sort of guys to take resistance quietly.

I shook my head like a dog trying to dry itself. I couldn't let the thoughts take hold, or they'd destroy me. I'd find a way to stop all this, to make everything right. I had to.

We reached the end of the Tunnel sooner than I expected. I'd been so wrapped in my thoughts I hadn't noticed time pass. Without a word, Vivian and I slipped out of the Tunnel and back onto familiar earth.

It was nighttime. Clouds swept across Bluegate, obliterating the light from the stars and moon. A chill breeze cut through the air, and the air felt damp. Another rainstorm would be hitting soon.

I'd decided to bring us back to Earth at my secondary Tunnel site. I would have been able to construct a Tunnel back to my apartment basement even if the circle was compromised, but I didn't want to take the risk of someone nasty meeting us when we got back. I assumed it had been one of Andrews' men who'd tried to collapse the Tunnel on us. I didn't know how they'd worked out what we were doing, but it was the only thing that made sense. They knew where I lived—they'd proved that when they came poking around and snatched Tania—so I didn't want to take the chance of our internal organs being replaced with bullet holes.

I peered into the darkness around us, but all I could see were old steel beams and half-broken concrete. I could hear the low rumble of constant traffic and a siren blaring past in the distance. My secondary site was in an abandoned, skeletal construction site a couple of blocks from my apartment. It wasn't ideal, since it sometimes got used as a hangout by teenagers playing at being gangsters, but it was invisible from the street and generally uninhabited.

"What now?" I asked, the words sounding strange in the quiet night. Tania shivered, and I pulled my jacket closer around her. "We need to get Tania some help."

Vivian rubbed her eyes with her fists and nodded. "My car's at your apartment. Are we close?"

"Couple of blocks. This way."

We were back outside my building in a few minutes. There were no cop cars or gangsters around that I could see, and I relaxed a little. Maybe my fears about Tania's mother were unfounded. I'd check on her later, but first we needed to get Tania to a hospital before she woke.

While Vivian drove, I sat in the back of Vivian's car with Tania's head in my lap. I stroked her hair, more to calm me than her. The night rolled past the windows. It was eerily quiet, the stare-down before the fight. We were running out of time.

Tania's eyes flickered. Instinctively, my hand jerked away from her. "Vivian. I think she's waking up."

Vivian glanced back, muttered something under her breath, and sped up. My heart thudded as Tania slowly opened her eyes. Crap. I was out of Kemia, and there was nowhere to run. If she was still crazy...

Her pupils shifted size as she focused on me, and she frowned. "Miles?"

Jesus Christ, I could have cried. Relief drained the tension from my muscles, and I suddenly found it hard to support the weight of my head. I heard Vivian sigh as well. Everything had gone wrong, but at least we still had this. She was all right, at first glance anyway, and it didn't look like she was going to explode us. Given my luck, I counted that as a success.

She tried to sit up, then groaned and put a hand to her temple. "I...What happened?" The jacket I'd wrapped her in slipped open. She yelped and clutched it closed. "Where are my clothes?"

"You remember what happened?" I asked.

She got fully into a sitting position, bent over at the hips with her head in her hands. "My head hurts."

"I know. You got hit pretty bad."

"Huh?" She was still pale, and she swayed a little as we drove. She scraped some of the dried blood from her forehead and stared at it, frowning. "What's going on?"

"Do you remember...Do you remember getting taken? The drug they gave you?"

She frowned at her hands for a moment, then her eyes went wide and she stared at me. "I...There were people, monsters attacking me. I was so scared. They were everywhere, all around me. I had to defend myself. I held out my hand and...and I could _see_. I saw everything."

She clutched her head again, as if thinking too much hurt her. Anger overwhelmed my fatigue. How could those bastards have done this to her? I wasn't looking to gangsters to be paragons of virtue, but this...

I was surprised to find tears prickling behind my eyes. I blinked and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand before Tania noticed. I wasn't no crybaby. I couldn't afford to be. Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I touched Tania's arm.

"We're going to get the ones who did this to you, okay?" I pointed to Vivian. "This is Detective Reed. I'm helping her on a case. Right, Vivian?"

"Helping. Sure."

I glared at Vivian, but it didn't help much because she wasn't looking at me. Giving up, I returned my attention to Tania. "Some gangsters kidnapped and drugged you, but you're okay now. We're going to take you to a hospital, then we're going to stop them from doing the same thing to anyone else."

Tania licked her lips and pulled my jacket closer around her. "I remember the drug. There was a little bottle."

"Like this?" I pulled the vial I'd taken off Ugly from my pocket.

She stared at it for a moment, then looked away. "Yeah. Like that."

"Do you remember anything else about it?"

She stared out the window for a few more seconds, then shook her head. "Sorry."

"That's okay." I had to admit I was disappointed, but I didn't let it show on my face. She'd been through enough. Still, what I wouldn't have given for a location to track this son of a bitch down and sic Vivian and Todd on him.

We pulled into the parking lot of Bluegate Hospital a few moments later. It was the biggest hospital in Bluegate, with an undeserved reputation for being somewhat medieval in its practice. I'd been there once, getting treated for a couple of broken fingers I took when some kids rolled me for my wallet. I hadn't seen a single leech. I was kind of disappointed, to be honest.

The solidly-built triage nurse in the Emergency Department greeted us with a sour face and a clipboard. She glanced over at Tania's attire, gave me a look that suggested I was at best a pedophile and at worst Satan himself, and began interrogating us.

Vivian answered the questions in a quick, professional manner, much more politely than I would have done. Eventually, after much scribbling on forms, she directed us to take a seat and wait to be seen.

Vivian gave a polite smile and nodded. "Thank you, Miss..." She glanced at her ID card. "...Davies."

"What?" Tania said, her face snapping toward Vivian.

Vivian glanced at me, puzzled. "What what?"

"Her name. Davies. One of the gangsters, I remember him saying it to the others." She screwed up her face. "He was reading from a letter, I think. 'Gotta be a fake,' he kept saying."

Holy shit. The light bulb above my head could've blinded everyone in the room. I stared at Vivian, and she met my gaze, eyes gleaming.

I shoved my hand in my pocket and retrieved the vial of Chroma. There it was on the label, "Dr. D", written in the same cramped handwriting I'd seen earlier that day. I'd seen it on a dozen notebooks scattered about a room that stunk of ammonia. Jesus H. Christ. Why hadn't I seen it?

"Spencer," I whispered, and Vivian nodded. "Spencer mother-fucking assclown Davies. He's Doctor Dee."

## CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Breakthroughs had one hell of a rejuvenating ability. I clutched the bottle of Chroma in my hands so tight it hurt and tried to work out which of the swirling thoughts I wanted to deal with first. My sleep deprivation was gone in an instant, replaced by a sense of determination that burned through my veins. I wanted to leap, I wanted to hug Vivian, but most of all I wanted to see the cops slap handcuffs on Spencer and haul him off to jail.

A dim part of my brain remembered that I'd once considered the chemist a friend, or at least a business acquaintance, but I shoved that thought aside. He was a liar, that's what he was. He'd hurt Tania. He could've killed her, goddamn it! And he was going to do it again and again. No, I had no qualms about seeing him banged up.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked. "Let's go."

Vivian started to nod, but then her face dropped, and she touched her bottom lip with her teeth. "I'll call Detective Todd. But..."

"But? But what?"

"You're not coming."

It felt like she'd just offered me a million bucks then set it on fire. "What the hell, Vivian? I'm in this case as much as you. You think I won't risk a little more danger?"

I was getting close to shouting, but I didn't give a damn about the stares I was attracting from the other patients. The triage nurse glared at me, and it took all my self-control not to scream obscenities at her.

Vivian raised her hands in what she probably thought was a soothing gesture, and spoke in a quiet voice as if hoping that I'd follow suit. "It's not the danger, Miles. You know Davies—"

"So do you," I said, waving my arms around. "The hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Damn it, Miles, you're not a cop, all right? I don't know what Davies has got rigged up there. If Tania knows who he is, so do the gangsters. What if they show up? You haven't got a gun."

"I've got my nightstick." I pointed to my jacket, still wrapped around Tania. She was staring up at us with eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. She pulled her knees up to her chest as I looked at her, and I realized in my current state I must look like I'd gone twelve rounds with a brick. The shock and fear on her face cut deep, dulling my anger at Vivian.

Vivian shook her head. "Someone needs to stay with Tania."

Tania opened her mouth, a pout already forming on her lips, but Vivian gave her a look that sent her jaws smacking back together. Why could I never get anyone to shut up like that?

I scowled, but the bloody woman was right. Again. What if the gangsters came back for Tania? The thought of them taking her again tied my guts into a knot.

Vivian looked me up and down, gracious in my defeat. "Thank you, Miles. Walter and I couldn't have done this without you. I'll make sure you're compensated." She took a step forward and hesitated for a moment. Then she awkwardly put her arms around my shoulders.

It took me a second to remember how to breathe. I couldn't work out where to put my hands, so I settled for a one-armed hug with my other hand dangling pointlessly by my side. A wisp of hair brushed my chin.

"Vivian?" I asked. Tania was making faces at me over Vivian's shoulder.

"Your job is over," Vivian said. She pulled away from me and patted me on the shoulder. "Get some rest. I'll contact you when we're done."

I opened my mouth with no idea what I was going to say, but she didn't give me a chance to find out. Without another word, she spun on her heel and stalked out of the Emergency Department. Despite everything, I gave a brief thought to chasing her. But I just stood there like an idiot and gave myself a moment to brood. Hell, I'd deserved it. What the hell had all that been about?

When I was done, I sat back down in the hard plastic chair of the waiting room and let my head flop backward. It didn't matter, not really. The important thing was that it was over. Being there at the end wouldn't help none.

I felt something warm on my arm, and I opened my eyes to find Tania holding my arm while she inspected the cut Andrews had given me on my shoulder. She still had a little grin playing on her face that I wished I could wipe right off.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"A little." Even now I was trying to be a big man, so I wasn't going to tell her that it stung like the devil's piss.

She smiled at me as if she knew that I was lying, then her face was in her hands and she was wracked with sobs.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm so sorry."

After I'd adjusted to the sudden change in emotion, I got my brain into gear and put my arms around her. "Hey, it's okay. You're okay now."

"I'm so stupid. I was home alone when I heard those men banging down your door. I thought I could take them. I lied to you. I still had some Kemia left. I tried to make a Pin Hole, not to hurt them, I mean, just to scare them away. But it didn't work properly. I couldn't concentrate. And then one of them had a gun, and they put a bag over my head, and..."

I squeezed her, my shirt growing wet with tears. My own tears were returning, but I blinked them away again. I was strong, damn it. I stroked her hair, lost for words.

"There, there," I offered lamely.

It didn't seem to help. She was shaking like a baby bird. Guilt made my stomach turn, shame at what she'd suffered because of me.

When her sobs quieted and her tears didn't flow quite so freely, I put a hand under her chin and lifted her face toward me. "I'm going to teach you. I promised you that, and I'm going to stick to it. Next time you'll be better prepared. Okay?"

She sniffed and nodded. "I'm so stupid," she mumbled.

I raised her chin again, forcing her to look me in the eyes. "None of this is your fault. None of it, hear me? It was me who got dumb, you were just the one that paid the price for it. I won't let it happen again."

She didn't look like she believed me, but she nodded anyway. That would have to do for now.

We waited another hour before another nurse—a Vei one, this time—came for us. Well, he came for Tania, and I just followed. I think he assumed I was her father, and I didn't do anything to disabuse him of that notion. I wasn't going to abandon her until I knew she was okay.

The nurse led us to a cubicle with curtains for walls, fluorescent bulbs for lighting, a narrow bed for Tania and a seat for me. Tania took a seat on the edge of the bed, while I remained standing. The nurse eyed my wounds dubiously and said, "I'll get someone to look at those cuts."

I shook my head. "Her first."

He looked like he was going to argue, but then he took another look at my face and just sighed. "I'll be back in a minute to take some bloods. The doctor will be in shortly." He handed Tania a green hospital gown and a little white dish made of plastic. "We'll need a urine sample. The bathroom's down the hall."

Tania blushed and nodded, and he left, leaving the curtain open. There was a moment of awkward silence before she stood up. I made to follow her, and she gave me a look.

"I can pee by myself."

I smiled sheepishly and sat down. "You know, you're probably right. Go on, then."

She wandered away, and I slipped off my damp jacket and leaned my head back. My earlier fix of adrenaline and discovery seemed to be wearing off, and now it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I decided that was an unreasonable expenditure of energy, so I closed them.

"Mr. Franco?"

I jerked awake and blinked around at the bright lights. I hadn't even realized I'd fallen asleep. Jesus, I was tired.

The stern-looking triage nurse stood over me, her face still wearing the look of disapproval that seemed to be her default setting.

"Yeah?"

She held out a black cordless phone. "There's a call for you. Normally I wouldn't, but it's a detective, and—"

I snatched the phone from her hand and pressed it to my ear. "Vivian?"

Detective Todd's voice came back at me instead. "Sorry, Miles. Just me. Nice job, by the way. Sounds like you had some adventures."

The triage nurse glared at me and gestured at me to return the phone when I was done. I nodded, impatient, and she left.

"Adventures aren't what I'd call them. Did you get him? Did you get Spencer?"

"We sure did." I could hear the grin in his voice, and I'm pretty sure I was grinning too. "Bastard's getting shipped off downtown right now. We're searching his place, and there's crates and crates of chemicals down here. Immigration's not going to send in their chemists until morning, though."

"Lazy bastards."

"Tell me about it. You want to come down and help us work out what all this crap is? You'll have a better idea about this sort of stuff than us. I want to get this thing wrapped up ASAP." He pronounced it 'aye-sap'. "You'd be doing us a huge favor."

At that moment Tania returned from the bathroom, wearing the hospital gown. Her color was a bit better now, and her eyes were no longer sunken like a skeleton's. But there was something in the way she walked, the way she didn't stand as proud as she normally did. She frowned at the phone and gave me a questioning look.

"Sorry," I said into the phone. "I can't. Not right now."

There was a click, like a lighter being flicked on. "I really need you on this, Miles. Half this shit's in Vei, and I'll be damned if I can decipher a word of it." He exhaled audibly, and I swore I could smell the cigarette smoke coming through the telephone.

"I don't see how I'll be much help. I'll try to drop by in the morning, but right now I got Tania to look after—"

Tania snatched the phone out of my hand. "I can look after myself."

"Like hell you can."

Boy, was that the wrong thing to say. She planted her hands on her hips while Todd squawked out of the phone, and gave me the kind of look women save up for those extra dumb things you do.

"What does he want?" she said.

"Christ, kid, keep it down."

"Does he want your help?"

"Yeah," I said, "but I'm not going."

She loomed well for such a little thing. "I'm not some dumb kid you have to babysit, Miles."

"But just before you said..."

I stopped before I could shove my foot any further into my mouth. It seemed to me that the patients in the surrounding cubicles had put a damper on their own conversations. Hell, I could practically see them pressing their ears against the curtain.

I decided to try again, using my calm voice this time. "Look—"

She shoved the phone back in my face and lowered her voice. "Go do what you have to do. Or I'll make such a fuss security comes calling. I'm sure I can think of something to get a grown man in trouble when he's alone with an innocent young girl."

"You manipulative little—"

She smiled and waved the phone in my face.

I shook my head. "I'll call your mom and stay until she gets here. Then—"

"Oh, help!" she called out the curtain. "Help!"

"Ah, Christ." I snatched the phone out of her hands and she gave me a victorious grin. "You still there, Walt?"

"Barely. The hell you got going on there?"

"You don't want to know." I gave Tania another long look. She just smiled sweetly back. I sighed. "I'm on my way."

"Attaboy." He sounded relieved. "See you soon." He hung up.

I jabbed at the off button on the phone and scowled at Tania. "You better keep yourself out of trouble, kid."

"I promise," she said, grinning.

I slung my jacket over my shoulder and stomped out of the cubicle. Women. Why was it always women?

No one stopped me as I walked out of the Emergency Department, though I got a few dirty looks. I gave one of the nurses Denise's number, then went to the front of the hospital. I stopped by an ATM, cleared out my account of its meager savings, and hailed a taxi out front. I gave the Asian driver Spencer's address. When I told him the neighborhood he gave me one of those "The hell kind of crook are you?" looks, but I flashed him my cash, still warm from the ATM, and he started the car.

The rain started as the taxi pulled up outside Spencer's place, right on cue. The shit-hole street looked much the same as before. A tow truck must've taken away the car Spencer had wrecked, though I could still see shards of glass glinting under the street light. I couldn't see Vivian's car, but there was another car that could've been Todd's down the road a little bit, neatly parked between a pair of vehicles so rusted I was surprised they didn't turn to dust where they sat.

I passed the cabbie his fare and stepped out into the rain. There were long stretches of darkness in between the street lights, but the street was deserted as far as I could see. I dashed across the road with my jacket above my head and went down the stairs to Spencer's door. Huddling under the narrow overhanging, I shook the rainwater off my jacket and tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

I poked my head inside. "Hello?"

"Back here, Miles." Todd's voice floated from the back room.

I closed the door behind me and felt my way through the dark laboratory. The place still stunk of ammonia. Probably it always would. I'm no expert on cleaning, but something tells me once a smell like that permeates every nook and cranny of a building, it's there until you burn the place down and start over.

I could hear someone rustling out back. I finally found the doorknob to the back room and went through into the light.

Detective Todd was holding a couple of jars of colored liquid up to the light, squinting at the label, while a lit cigarette hung from his lips. He glanced up as I came in and offered me one of them.

"What do you reckon that says?" he asked.

I took the jar and tried to decipher Spencer's handwriting on the label. "Ethyl...fluro..." I gave up and shrugged. "Not a damn clue. Where's Vivian?"

He took the jar back and stuck it on the table with a pile of others. "Down at the station putting the screws on Davies. She'll get answers out of him. Who'd've thought it, huh? The guy seemed like such a weasel. Wouldn't have thought he had it in him to cause us this much trouble."

I nodded and ran a hand through my hair. God, I needed a shower. "Threw me for a loop, that's for sure. Where do you want me to get started?"

"There's a bunch of boxes in that room back there." He pointed. "Might as well start there. Just ID what you can."

I wandered through the door he pointed out. It looked like it had started off life as a bedroom with a built-in wardrobe, but now it was stacked with crates and boxes of unknown origin. My heart sank a little at the size of the task. I gave myself a mental kick in the ass. I wanted to keep helping, and that's what I was doing. No point bitching about it.

I picked the first box up, hefted it over to a desk in the corner, and opened it. It was stacked full of little glass vials with green liquid inside, all divided by strips of cardboard. I pulled one out and peered at the label.

"So how'd you find your first case?" Todd's voice floated in from the other room. "Everything you expected?"

I gave up on the vial and pulled out the next one. "It's a bit different than the TV shows, that's for sure."

He laughed. "You're damn right about that. It's a hard slog, and there ain't much glory in it."

I nodded even though he couldn't see me. It seemed all the case had done was got people hurt. At least it was over now. "I thought you had a kid at home," I said. "What are you doing out so late?"

"He's with his mother. I just gotta finish off this one last thing, then I can go back to him."

"Must be tough, being a cop and a dad."

He laughed, but it rang hollow. "You got no idea."

I suppressed a yawn and picked up another vial. It slipped from my hands.

My heart leaped into my throat. I half expected the thing to explode when it hit the ground. I made a grab for it, fumbled, missed again.

It hit the ground, but by some miracle it didn't explode or spray corrosive acid over my feet. It didn't even shatter. I picked it up and inspected it, but it wasn't leaking. Just a tiny crack at the top.

Christ. I was so tired I could barely keep moving. The first thing I'd do when I got home was sleep for a week. Maybe two.

I went to turn back and return the vial to the box, but something caught my eye. One door of the room's built-in wardrobe was slightly ajar, and an off-white piece of fabric peeked out.

I don't know why it caught my eye. It just seemed out of place, somehow. This didn't seem like the sort of room Spencer would keep his clothes. I put the vial back on the table and opened the wardrobe.

The sight hit me an instant before the smell. I stumbled backward, bent over double, bile spilling in my throat. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, willing the image to go away, for it to be some horrible hallucination. But when I opened my eyes, it was still there.

Spencer Davies stared up at me from inside the wardrobe, his neck bent to an impossible angle. His limbs were crammed in haphazardly, probably broken.

His face, Jesus, his face was the worst part. It was coated in blood, his forehead stoved in. A bunch of teeth weren't where they were supposed to be, and his mouth was fixed open in a scream. A fresh wave of nausea ran through me as I stared into his dead eyes, and black spots swam in my vision.

"Todd!" I yelled. "Fuck, Todd, where are you?"

I spun toward the door, and found the detective already standing there. He wasn't looking at Spencer's broken body. He was looking at me. Confusion pounded inside my head, and then I saw the pistol in his hand.

"Sorry, Miles," he said without emotion. He aimed the pistol at me. "You lucked out."

## CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

My head spun like a dancing girl around a pole, and it felt about as naked too. I looked from the gun to Todd and back to the gun again.

I was getting entirely sick of staring down the barrels of guns. If I had a union, I'd take it up with them, but as it was, I settled for staring at Todd dumbly.

"Wha...?" I said, the only sound my mouth could produce.

Todd stared at me, his eyes hard. The cigarette dangled from his lip, glowing like hellfire. "It's a shame it had to go down like this. Hands where I can see them."

I did as he said, but my legs started moving by themselves. I backed up until I hit the wall. The barrel of the gun was a black pit. My eyes never left it.

Without taking his eyes from me, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket, dialed a number, and pressed it to his ear. "Got him. Make the call." He hung up and returned the phone to his pocket.

My brain was working so hard I wouldn't be surprised if smoke was coming from my ears. Finally, I managed to speak. "What the hell are you doing?"

He stayed in the doorway. His face was a mask, and there was no way I was getting close enough to claw it off.

"Here's what's gonna happen," he said. "Uniforms'll be here in a sec. They're gonna take you downtown, stick you in the box for a while. A confession will be written for you. You make your scribble on it."

"A confession? You mean...Spencer?"

"You beat him to death with that little stick you're carrying. Seems you didn't take too kindly to him trying to destroy your Tunnel while you were still inside."

Spencer's arm had flopped out of the wardrobe, bloodied and gray. I ripped my gaze from it before the nausea building in my gut managed to spill over.

"It ain't so bad," he said. "Inside, I mean. They won't go hard on you. You'll be out before you're fifty."

"Take the rap for it yourself, then."

"I can't. I need more time. Just a little more."

Todd didn't say anything else. He just stared at me for a few more moments, smoke trailing from his cigarette. I stared back. A million questions buzzed in my head, but my throat was having other ideas.

Finally, Todd ground out the cigarette on the doorframe and slipped the butt into his pocket. "All right. Out of there." He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and dangled them on his finger. "Time to go."

I trudged toward him like a zombie. This was a messed up dream. It had to be. It didn't make sense. "Walt."

"Don't give me that look, Miles. It was you that got that damn Vei all spooked in the first place. Coming round here, tossing the place like a goddamn cowboy. I did what I had to."

"You're sick."

He slammed his fist into the doorframe, setting the whole room shuddering. "Don't tell me things you don't know a fucking thing about. This city is what's sick, and I'm gonna be the one to fix it. Me, you hear?"

Jesus. The guy was off his rocker. He took a step toward me, and my collar started feeling awfully like a noose.

He brought himself nose-to-nose with me, nostrils flaring and lips peeled back. Then he exhaled sharply, blowing thick smoker's breath into my face, and lowered the gun a little.

"You don't understand," he said, "not yet. But you will, when you see what I've done. You ain't gonna like what I've done to you, I get that, but you'll see. It's for the best."

I tried to piece it together, but half my mind was focused on the bullet trembling inside his gun barrel. Then the next thought hit me. Was Vivian in on it? Had she been lying the whole time, using me for whatever twisted reasons she and Todd had? I'd trusted her, goddamn it!

Todd landed a giant palm on my shoulder and spun me away from him, then reached behind me and slipped the bracelet on. "I'm sorry, Miles. Really."

"Yeah," I said. "Me, not so much."

I kicked backward, blind, and felt my shoe connect with Todd's knee. It didn't give the satisfying pop I was hoping for, but he grunted and stumbled nonetheless. I couldn't face prison. Christ, there was no way I could live in a box.

Todd's paw tightened on my shoulder, but his grip slipped on the damp fabric. I spun and whipped the free handcuff bracelet across his face, and he stumbled backward.

The gat went off at the same time. The air burned next to my face and my ears felt like someone had been at them with a hammer, but I couldn't stop now.

I lunged to the side and flicked the light switch. The room was plunged into darkness for a split second before being lit up by another muzzle flash. Sound became hollow and my ear squealed, then darkness returned to the room.

I threw my arms out to keep myself from blindly smashing into a wall and sprinted back toward the laboratory. My hearing returned enough to hear Todd swear and swing at me, but by then I was out of his reach.

Something clicked, and a flashlight beam appeared behind me. Todd fired again, but I was already out the kitchen door and into the workroom with all Spencer's notebooks and his fridge of Kemia. Panting, I slammed the door to the kitchen closed at the same time as Todd collided with it, and the whole door frame shook.

My mind was awash with panic. I could smell my own fear. I fumbled at the wall, flicked the red light on, and jammed a chair under the door handle. Todd responded by firing again. I yelled something incoherent and dived to the side as the bullets ripped through the door.

"Miles!" Todd screamed.

Kemia. I needed Kemia. I damn near ripped the fridge door of its hinges and grabbed the first bottle I saw. The door to the kitchen shuddered and crunched, and the chair slipped out and dropped to the floor. Todd kicked the door open a moment later, but I was already sprinting for the darkness of the laboratory, ripping the cork out of the Kemia bottle as I ran.

"You piece of shit!" Todd yelled. I ducked behind what must have been a lab bench as the gun barked again, hitting something glass and expensive-sounding. I rummaged in my pocket, trying to find the coin I wanted, while Todd fumbled with something near the wall.

I got the coin out just as the lights came on. I blinked and ducked down further, pressing my back against the lab bench. The place wasn't large. He'd find me in less time than it took to pull the trigger, which I was sure he'd be doing soon after. If I made a run for the door, I'd be dead before I could take two steps.

It was safe to say I was royally screwed.

I could hear him shuffling closer to me, and my mouth grew as dry as the desert in summer. I could only think of one way out. I caught myself about to start humming, nixed that idea, and just splashed the Kemia over the coin.

I was freaking scared. That worked to my advantage. The insane, completely irrational mindset you're in when you could die at any moment matches well with the state of mind needed to open a Pin Hole. Chaos filled me, almost comforting in a way, and I felt the familiar touch of Heaven.

Todd appeared at the end of the bench, nothing between him and me. His eyes widened, a determined set to his jaw, and he raised the gun.

That's when I turned the air into smoke. It was one of my favorite Pin Holes. It had saved my bacon in the past. I left enough oxygen to breathe, but the rest of it I changed into smog so thick you couldn't see a foot in front of you.

Todd screamed something incoherent and fired his gun, but I was already moving. I scrambled through the smoke, aiming for where I thought the front door was. Todd crashed into something behind me and sent more glass shattering across the floor.

I nearly ran right into the front door, but I skidded to a halt just in time. I waved away the smoke, found the door handle, and pulled.

It was locked. Son of a bitch.

The gun fired again and hit the door inches from my head. I dived to the ground and scrambled away from the door.

"I ain't that stupid, Miles. You're not leaving here."

I crawled, my sweaty palms slipping on the floor. Jesus, what the hell was I going to do? I could use a Pin Hole to unlock the door, but that would mean releasing the Pin Hole that kept the room shrouded in smoke, and I'd have a mouth full of lead before I managed to get outside. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I slipped behind another lab bench, staying as low as possible. I could hear Todd's heavy breathing, but the smog I'd created distorted sound, making it difficult to track where it was coming from.

"I didn't want it to come to this," Todd called out. My best guess was that he'd taken up position near the door into the work room, which put a great big hole in my only other plan for getting out.

"Yeah?" I said, staying crouched. "I'm sure your sincere regret is a real comfort to old Spencer back there."

I caught a glimpse of reflected light flashing through the smoke. He was trying to use his flashlight to spot me, but in this he'd have a better chance just throwing the damn thing and hoping he bopped me in the head with it.

"Stupid son of a bitch," Todd said. "If he just kept his shit together, I wouldn't have had to rat him out to the gangs. This wouldn't've had to happen. I wouldn't have had to put him down."

None of this made sense. Todd was Doctor Dee, not Spencer? Why the hell was he doing this? He was a good cop, for fuck's sake!

The light flicked past again. I had to keep him talking. Maybe I could get him wound up, tempt him into searching the place for me.

I kept on the move, hoping to confuse him. "So how'd it all work, eh? You go to him wanting a little booster, and he gave you Chroma? Then you decided you'd make a better criminal mastermind, so you started calling yourself Doctor Dee?"

"Grow some brains, Miles. This ain't no comic book. Doctor Dee was never more than a shadow figure to keep everyone occupied, keep the gangs guessing. Besides, that little shrimp Vei Davies couldn't run a dimestore shoplifting racket, let alone a drug empire. I shook him down on another case a few months back, and I bet you can guess what rolled out."

I spoke more to myself than to him. "Chroma."

"There you go. See, you're getting it eventually. Son of a bitch had cut the project. He couldn't see the potential it had."

I felt my way along the shelves, passing chemicals and glass beakers. I paused to breathe, and caught a wailing sound from outside. Sirens. The cops were on their way. This shit just kept getting better and better.

The flashlight flickered around again. "There's no place for you to go. I made sure of that. Try to run, and all you get is another ten years."

I needed to be gone, which meant I had to distract him somehow. This wasn't working. I had to make him angry. Which, to be honest, isn't usually the best plan when the other bastard has a goddamn hand cannon.

"So why does the great unappreciated Detective Todd want to scramble about in the pits with the gangsters, I wonder? Can't get your own pussy so you want to see if John Andrews will throw you his seconds? Or do you just want some pocket money to buy yourself a few hookers?"

"Money? The hell would I want with money? You saw what I did with a single vial of Chroma and one Tunneler. Imagine what I could do with ten Tunnelers. With a hundred."

My hands tightened into fists, nails digging into my palm. "You son of a bitch. Your little experiment nearly killed Tania."

"That wasn't my fault. I didn't know they'd take a young one."

"Yeah, you're the innocent victim here," I said. "Your drug is going to set this city on fire."

I took a breath and fought to shove my anger back down. This wasn't working at all. The sirens were getting closer, and I was only succeeding in enraging myself. I had to think. Todd was large, deranged, and packing heat, but I was smart.

"Fuck you, Miles. Don't you talk to me about innocence. I'm doing this for the innocent victims. People like you and me are going to burn, but the people out there, good fucking people, they're going to come through the fire and find a brand-new city waiting for them. A city where the gangs have been turned to ashes by their own evil."

I slithered alongside the benches, peering through the smoke at the tools and instruments scattered around. There had to be something. Jesus, there had to be.

And then I saw it. A little bottle with a glass stopper, filled with a deep red fluid. I snatched it off the table and brought it close enough to read the label. Yes.

I flipped my knife out and scratched a rough circle in the floor. It would be close enough, just.

The sirens were right outside now. I heard car doors slamming and footsteps tramping down the stairs to Spencer's front door.

"Time's up, Miles. End this. Don't make me kill you."

"Why are you doing this, Walt? You can't rule a city of ruins."

"That's what you don't get. I'm not going to rule anything."

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to destroy them. I'm going to kill every last fucking gangster in this city."

"You can't beat them this way. They—"

"Don't fucking tell me what I can't do! I'm going to make them pay, Miles. I did my goddamn job, I was good police, and they tried to break me for it."

"Walt—"

"They ruined my life," he screamed. "They destroyed my marriage. Those mother-fuckers killed my son!"

The words rang in the room, penetrating the smoke in a way that shouldn't have been possible. Some note deep inside me sounded, shocking me to stillness for a moment.

Then the hammering on the door started. I shook my head, pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose, and splashed a dash of Kemia on my circle.

"I'm sorry. But I can't eat this charge." I cleared my head and clutched the bottle of red fluid. "Tell Vivian I said hi."

I hurled the bottle in the direction I thought Todd was. He shouted something at the same time as the cops outside banged on the door, and then the glass bottle hit the ground and shattered.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of tinkling glass. Then I heard Todd retching.

The smell hit me a second later, despite my attempts to block it out with my shirt. It was a stench of the worst kind, rotting flesh rolled in shit and left out in the sun for a week. I nearly gagged, even though I was ready for it. My eyes were leakier than my apartment's drainpipes, but I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself.

I was already running. I released the Pin Hole that held the smoke in place, and the room was thrown into sharp, impossibly clear light. No bullets came my way. I glanced to my side to see Todd wiping his eyes with the back of his hand while he bent over double, coughing his lungs out.

There wasn't time for pity. The front door splintered as a cop tried his foot against the door handle, but there were enough locks in place to keep out a Soviet tank. Still, I've seen cops that would give a tank a run for its money.

I changed the focus of my thoughts, opening the new Pin Hole while I ran. I didn't make for either door. That would've been suicide, and I hadn't lived through numerous attempts on my life today just to throw it away in an attempt to rush Todd. Instead, I made for the newspaper-covered window in the back.

Chaos entered me as the Pin Hole opened. The newspaper seemed to shift slightly, but not enough for me to be sure it had worked. Oh well. I'd soon find out.

I leaped in mid-run, planted a foot on the lab bench against the wall beneath the window, and launched myself forward. Todd shouted something, but he was way too late.

I hit the window fist first and drove my weight through. I waited for the cutting and the spurting blood, but none came. The Pin Hole had worked.

My foot hit the concrete outside, soon followed by my hand and my face. Around me, sugar glass rained down. It was the same stuff they used in movies, so when the hero gets chucked through the bar window he doesn't slice an artery and end up bleeding out on the ground. Despite the concrete scraping away the skin on my hands and face, I was feeling pretty proud of myself.

That faded pretty quickly when Todd's shouts reached an all-time high. I picked myself up just in time to see his face appear in the window, a gun barrel coming into view a moment later.

I scrambled out of the way as the gun went off. I was in an alleyway, with trash cans to my right and flashing police lights to my left. The image burned itself into my brain, Bluegate at its rotten core.

Todd shouted something incoherent and fired again, and I decided now might be a good time to make my exit, stage right. I turned and fled deeper into the alley, every inch of me aching.

I could already feel the walls closing in.

## CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It did strange things to your head, finding yourself on the run from the cops. It was different than running from gangsters or pissed-off customers, where you could identify the people who were hunting you. When you were a fugitive, you were on the outside. You were an enemy to society, and anyone who saw your picture on the six o'clock news could send the cops in your direction. The paranoia set in, and pretty soon you were so wrapped up in the role of fugitive you had no recollection of the man you were before.

I ran through the streets, kicking up rainwater with every step, praying that the night and the pouring rain would hide me. I had no vehicle. My bike had been trashed, and even if it wasn't there was no way of going to my apartment without getting myself a new pair of metal bracelets.

So I ran. The night wailed with sirens, sending me diving into the cover of darkness every time a police car screamed past. I'd shaken them immediately after leaving Spencer's, but the whole police department seemed to have chosen tonight to give up the donuts and beer and actually do their job for once. Lucky me.

I'm pretty sure the rain was the only thing keeping them from leaving their cars and hunting through the alleys on foot. That was a blessing, I suppose, though I felt significantly less blessed when my jacket was once again soaked through. My hair was plastered to my forehead, and my shoes squelched with every step. I made my way east, with no clear plan of what to do next. I barely had enough strength to summon a Pin Hole to unlock the cuff still swinging from my wrist.

I had a roaring headache that threatened to split my forehead in half. I was still reeling from Todd's betrayal. The guy seemed to think he was doing good, but how he'd convinced himself of that was beyond me. Starting gang wars wasn't exactly a fool-proof plan for saving the city. Innocent bystanders had a nasty habit of getting in the way of gangster bullets even in the smallest turf wars. I shuddered to think what would happen when the whole underworld drew their guns and started shooting at once.

And that wasn't even the bit that really boiled my potatoes. It was the way he planned to do it. The son of a bitch had used me, had corrupted everything important to me. His plan relied on turning Tunnelers into crazed killing machines, just like the fucker had done to Tania. I suppose if he wanted to kill the gangs' stranglehold over the city, giving the local government good excuse to take out every freelance Tunneler in the city was one way to go about it. But how many Tunnelers would be killed in the process?

Damn it, I was so tired. I needed to find somewhere to sit and hide. I needed friends, a commodity I was in short supply of at the moment. I didn't want to draw any of the few acquaintances I had into this, but I didn't have a choice. I'd be in and out quick, just get a change of clothes and some food to keep me going. My stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself.

So I took the stairs into a subway station. The trains ran late in Bluegate, and a few people were still scattered around on the platform, some drunk, some with no place else to go.

For a moment, I thought about lying down next to the homeless guys on the broken tiles. The way I looked at the moment, I'd blend right in. Christ, for all intents and purposes I was homeless anyway. It'd be so easy to give up and stop caring.

But I trudged past them all the same and found the board with the route maps. It took me a few seconds to get the colored lines in focus.

A middle-aged woman in a smart suit gave me a glance and edged away from me. I realized I'd been muttering to myself. _Keep it together, Miles. Don't draw attention. You sure as hell can't afford it now._

My eyes were drawn to the red line on the map. It went east. East was good. In the back of my mind, I must've already known I was heading to Desmond's place. He lived with his boyfriend—partner, I think he called him—in an apartment complex that bordered on Lavender Park. I could trust him. The only question was whether he'd trust me.

I gave the well-dressed woman a grin as she took another glance at me, and she hurried away to the other side of the platform.

Hey, I had to get my kicks somewhere.

It must've been a couple of hours from dawn when I finally reached Desmond's place. The complex was old—though not as old as my apartment—but it was sturdy, four adjoining orange brick buildings surrounded by a wall and a pedestrian gate alongside the main gate.

There was no one around, and I didn't want to attract more attention than I needed to, so I went round the back of the complex and clambered over the wall where it was lowest. Desmond's apartment was on the second floor of the furthest building. A fire escape at the back was invitation enough for me, so I scaled the iron staircase as quietly as I could and stopped outside Desmond's window.

The curtains were closed, but there was enough of a crack that I could make out his bed and a bundle of blankets over what could have been people.

A dog barked somewhere and I jerked around. Damn it, my nerves were getting to me. I consciously slowed my breathing to calm myself and tapped on the window.

It took a few seconds of tapping before the figures under the blanket finally stirred; maybe they mistook it for the rain at first. There was a moment where the two of them appeared to be talking, then one got out of bed, pulled back the curtains, and opened the window.

"Hi Des," I said. "Hows it hanging?"

Desmond rubbed his eyes and gave me a looking over. He was a tall guy, skinny, but with a pot belly starting to emerge. His hair was mussed from sleep, and the singlet and boxers he was wearing were crinkled. "Miles? What the hell, guy?"

He stepped backward and held out a hand to help me through the window. The figure still in bed reached out and switched on the bedside lamp. I squinted against the sudden glare. I raised my hand in greeting. "Ignore me, Rob. I'll be out of your hair soon."

That was a cheap shot, but I thought I deserved one after all I'd been through. Desmond's partner Rob had started going prematurely bald, so he'd shaved the rest of his head to hide it. He slipped on his glasses and scowled at me with the sort of look tigers give to their zookeepers.

"Shit," Desmond said, looking me up and down, "you're covered in blood. What the hell kinda trouble you in this time? I thought you said on the phone you were blowing town for a while."

"Christ, I wish I had. I'm fucked. Royally fucked. I didn't know where to go." I ran a hand through my curls, trying to keep the fatigue from drowning me. "I'd kill for a coffee, though."

Desmond frowned and glanced over at Rob. "I don't know if this is the best time..."

Rob grunted and shook his head. "It's fine." He pushed himself up on his elbows and fixed me with a glare. "I'm awake now, he might as well stay."

Desmond raised his eyebrows and gave me a "whaddya gonna do?" look and led me out to the small dining room. He planted me in a chair at the table and set the water boiling for the coffees. "All I got is instant."

"I didn't come here expecting a double frappa-latte with spiced cream and walnuts. As long as it's black, bitter, and doesn't taste too much like dirt, it'll do the trick."

He rattled around getting mugs and spoons, all the while shooting me looks. "You really look like hell, you know that?"

"Tell me something I don't know." My head felt too heavy, so I propped it up on my arms. "I'm in deep, Des. I got conned into helping the cops deal with some drug importing racket. Only one of the bastards painted me into a frame. I shouldn't even be here. It won't be too long before they're knocking on your door asking you where I am."

Desmond studied me, nodding slowly. He was a good guy, solid, dependable. He didn't like the cops any more than I did.

He used to be a Tunneler—still was, I guess, depending on how you defined it. We'd gone through training together, even worked a few gigs as partners.

But he wasn't actively Tunneling anymore. He'd been out of the game nearly five years, ever since the gangs stepped up their efforts and started more aggressive recruiting campaigns. He'd had another boyfriend at the time, another guy who'd been in our class. He and Desmond had some philosophical differences over whether it was right to take blood money from a gangster, and Desmond had decided there were better ways to make a living.

He was smarter than me, always had been. He started playing responsible citizen a couple years back, starting some sort of half-assed neighborhood watch program in the area. He was such a goody-good he ended up funding it by opening a chain of computer stores that specialized in catering to the immigrant Vei. That was how he met Rob, I think; he was supposed to be some kind of computer whiz.

Desmond parked a cup of blessedly hot coffee and some leftover Chinese food on the table in front of me, and I gave him the Cliff Notes version of my story. He listened, nodding away, putting in a couple of questions of his own to clarify. I'd been so long without sleep the story was starting to get muddled in my head, but the chow mein and coffee helped refresh me.

He got a little sickly-looking when I told him about Spencer's murder. He'd never been much good with that sort of stuff. But I guess I wasn't either. I had to clutch my mug extra tight to hide my trembling hands when I told him about that bit.

I finished about the time Rob wandered out, fully dressed. He took a mug of coffee from Desmond with a look of gratitude, then threw me an annoyed look before settling down at his computer on the other side of the room. I think Rob saw me as a bad influence on Desmond, which I suppose I was. He was an all right guy, Rob, just overprotective.

"I don't how you get into these scrapes," Desmond said to me. "I told you years ago to quit Tunneling. It's not the same city it was when we were in school."

I shrugged. Desmond had offered to go into business with me, but I'd turned him down. I couldn't even turn on a computer, let alone sell one. But right then, it was starting to look like he had a point.

"I did it for the freedom, always have, but now..."

"Now there ain't so much freedom in it." Desmond tapped his chin with his thumb. "What're you going to do?"

"What can I do?" I took a long draw of coffee to buy myself time to think. It didn't help. I could already feel the prison bars around me, keeping me in place. Even if I managed to stay out of the cops' hands, it wouldn't make a difference. Todd had stuck me in a box of my own making, a box inside my own head. I'd spend the rest of my life running, hoping the son of a bitch didn't show up to put me in bracelets or make a new hole in my head.

Desmond seemed to be reading my thoughts. "I can disappear you, guy. Get you out of town, or get you enough Kemia to get you to Heaven. No point staying here, not now."

It was tempting, I won't deny that. Hell, it was exactly what I was planning to do less than two days ago. The cops had no jurisdiction in Heaven. I could be free there, physically at least. And maybe Todd wouldn't bother coming for me. He seemed like a busy guy.

Busy turning the city to ashes.

"Fuck," I said, putting my head in my hands. "I can't."

"Miles—"

"The girl I told you about on the phone, the one who's started to Tunnel, it was her the gangsters used for their little experiment. You should've seen her. Christ, you should have seen her eyes."

My throat constricted, and I found I couldn't speak any more. Desmond got up and put a hand on my shoulder. "It's not your fault, guy."

I swallowed the lump and blinked a few times. "It'll get worse. She won't be the last one. They're all going to suffer. This city is going drown in its own blood."

He frowned, but he nodded. "So what are you going to do?"

I ran another hand through my damp hair. Telling the story had helped me get it straight in my head, imposed order on the chaotic couple of days.

I held up two fingers and counted them off. "The way I see it, I've got two things I need to do if I want to get through this and be able to live with myself. I've got to figure out a way to clear my name and pin Spencer's murder back on Todd. And I need to stop Andrews and the other gangsters from tearing themselves and the city apart in their quest for revenge."

"Might be a bit late for that," Rob said from across the room. He clicked open a news site on his computer and nodded toward the screen. "Cops had a gunfight with a bunch of gangsters in the inner city slums about an hour ago."

I bit my lip. "From what Tania said, Andrews and the others knew Davies was connected to Chroma. They must've gone looking for him." My fist tightened around the coffee mug. "Jesus, they're all moving too fast for me. The gangs are on edge. If Todd's still planning on distributing Chroma in the next few hours, there's going to be so much blood in the streets you won't be able to leave your house in anything but gumboots."

"Want me to put some calls in?" Desmond asked. "It's been a while, but maybe I can get the ear of someone close enough to Andrews to talk some sense into him."

I considered it for about half a second, then shook my head before I could think about it more. "Too dangerous. All you'll do is bring the gangs' attention down on you, and trust me, that's not what you want."

I left off the other objection—he'd been off the streets way too long. The people he once knew weren't the same people now. Even high-rolling Tunnelers like Shirley O'Neil had once been normal kids like us, before the gangs got their claws into them.

"Fine. Where we going first?"

I met his eyes, and shook my head slowly over my coffee. "There's not going to be a 'we', Des. I'm not dragging you down into this with me. I shouldn't have stayed this long."

"Don't be an idiot, guy. I've pulled you out of so many holes I'm invested in you now. It'd just be a waste if I let you get yourself shot."

I took another drink and tried to keep from breaking down right there. He was right; I'd be face down in some ditch in Heaven a dozen times over if he hadn't been there to save my ass. But I wasn't going to let him eat lead because I'd chosen his window to knock on in the middle of the night.

"All right, enough with the good guy act," I said. "You're making the rest of us look bad. Let me have a shower and a lend of a shirt, and you'll be doing as much for me as anyone could." I paused, considering, then held up a finger. "Also, you may find some dastardly fugitive has stolen your car."

He narrowed his eyes a little, studying me, but he nodded. "Okay, but I'm not just going to sit by and watch you get yourself shot. What're you going to do next?"

I swallowed the gritty dregs at the bottom of the coffee mug and stood up. "I think I need to pay Detective Reed a visit. If she's not with Todd, maybe she'll listen to what I have to say."

"And if she's crooked?"

I didn't have an answer for that. I'd grown to trust her, but this whole betrayal thing had really set fire to that. If I came to her and she tried to kill me, well, I still had most of the bottle of Kemia I'd picked up at Spencer's. I'd do what I had to.

I turned to go down the hall, but Rob called my name. "You got an address for this detective of yours? I doubt it'll be in the phone book."

"Uh-uh. Figured I'd ambush her outside the station after the sun comes up."

Rob gave me a look that told me plainly how big a moron I was. "She'll spot you in five seconds. If you're going to do this, then you may as well do it right." He turned back to the computer and pulled up a black window. "Go have your shower. I'll get your address for you."

After the sort of shit I'd been through in the last couple of days, having a hot shower felt like being kissed by angels, and by God they were great kissers.

I cleaned away the layers of dried blood that'd built up over my skin, worked the aches out of my shoulders, and tried to ignore the way my entire body seemed to have turned a nasty shade of purple. I really needed to work on not getting the shit beat out of me.

When I was feeling less like a death row inmate after a go in the electric chair, I got out and dried myself off with one of Desmond's pristine white towels. I'm pretty sure it must have been made of baby's hair, it was so soft. Desmond had hung a clean blue shirt on the door handle outside, and I slipped that on. It was a little long in the sleeves, and I felt guilty about wearing something that had been pressed so nicely. I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn a shirt with an actual crease in it, at least one that had been intentional.

Rob was waiting for me when I left the bathroom. He stood in the hall, arms folded across his chest, not quite looking me directly in the eye. "You're not going to bring this back down on him, are you?"

I saw that one coming. "No. He's my friend. I don't drag my friends into my messes. Well, I try not to anyway."

"If the cops come asking for you?"

I shrugged. "Tell them what you have to. Tell them I came asking for help, and you sent me packing. Tell them I stole your car. Tell them whatever."

He nodded, chewing his lip, then handed me a slip of paper. "Here's the address for the lady detective."

It was written in Rob's untidy scrawl, but the address looked good. "How'd you get this?"

"Bluegate PD's network security is practically made of matchsticks and tissue paper."

"Well, thanks."

"I didn't do it for—"

"Yeah, yeah, gotcha."

Desmond appeared at the end of the hall behind Rob. "There you are. Catch." He tossed me his car keys. "I want to talk to you before you go."

Rob gave me one last look and moved aside. I followed Desmond back out into the dining room.

"You sure you wanna do this?" he asked.

"No."

"You positive you don't want to quit town? Sounds like this whole thing's gone to hell, man. Take the car and go lay low somewhere."

I got to admit, it was tempting, and it's not like the thought hadn't crossed my mind a hundred times in the last few hours, as much as I tried to suppress it. "Where would I go? I don't know anyone outside of Bluegate."

"Isn't your dad—"

"No. I wouldn't go to him even if I knew where he was. He'd sell me out before I could say 'boo'."

Desmond nodded; he knew all about my relationship with my father. He shoved his hands in his pockets and met my eyes. "I could give you Anna's address."

That was enough to knock me back. Anna. That bloody woman.

I scowled. "You've been in contact with her?"

He shrugged, and glanced away. "She emailed me a few months ago. Wanted to see how everyone was doing. She wanted to know how you're doing, guy."

Goddamn it. That was just what I needed right now, a ghost from my past come back to rattle chains in my face.

"Miles?" Desmond was watching me with concern in his eyes. I shook my head, ridding myself of all thoughts of Anna Goddamn Khubova. I couldn't afford distractions. Not now.

I pulled my damp jacket on, ignoring the way it clung to my new shirt. "If I get myself killed, tell her she can have my trumpet."

"She hated that thing."

"I know."

Desmond grinned and slapped me on the shoulder. "Need anything else before you go?"

"You don't happen to have a bullet-proof vest I can borrow?"

"Sorry, pal."

I shrugged. "Never mind. Would've made things too boring anyway."

## CHAPTER NINETEEN

Desmond's car was a blue convertible number, far too shiny to be driving around the darker streets of Bluegate. The rain was still coming down so I kept the top up and drove nice and slow. I stopped at an all-night service station and bought a Red Bull, then chugged it down as I drove.

The address Rob had given me led me to an apartment building well inside the 23rd Street Bikers' territory, not too far from the police station. For some reason I'd expected Vivian to live somewhere prettied up and clean, maybe a house out in the suburbs with a front lawn and a white fence. It boded well that she lived in a building almost as run-down as mine. Honest cops don't take home much money. Or maybe she just knew how to hide the wealth she'd accumulated.

I did a drive-by of the building and kept my eyes peeled for surveillance teams. It looked clear; no one sitting in the parked cars lining the streets, and no one hiding in the shadows of street corners. I went on a little bit, parked the car around the corner, and made my way back to the apartment building.

My heart was already upping its tempo by the time I reached the door on the ground floor. I popped my collar and glanced around, but the street was still deserted. It wasn't light yet, but it wouldn't be long before the early risers started leaving home to get to their shitty jobs. If Todd had his way, it wouldn't be long before my face was plastered over the newspapers, and I didn't want to be around when that happened.

I tried the handle on the weathered door to the building. Locked. I glanced around again, pulled a coin and the bottle of Kemia from my pocket, and opened a Pin Hole. The air warped around the brass keyhole, and the lock clicked. I pushed open the door, slipped inside, and let the Pin Hole close.

The lobby was designed in some kind of faux-Victorian aesthetic. I checked the mailboxes near the door and found Apartment 402 labeled "Reed".

I gave the stairs half a look then settled on the elevator with the old-fashioned sliding gate. I'd rather fall to my death in the rickety-looking machine than climb one more set of stairs.

The elevator grunted and whirred to life and started its slow ascent. As it did, I considered my game plan. No matter whether Vivian was in on Todd's schemes or not, she might not be happy to see me.

With a bit of luck, she'd still be in bed and I could make sure she was unarmed before I talked to her. I didn't want to eat a bullet because of a misunderstanding. I fingered the coins in my pocket and decided none of them were specific enough to be of any use.

The elevator shuddered to a halt and I yanked open the gate. No one trod the ugly green carpet, and all the doors were closed. Good.

I glanced around, looking for what I needed. There, a bit of the skirting board was loose. I flipped open my knife, grimaced a little at the act of vandalism I was about to undertake—I thought I'd outgrown all that—and pried the skirting board away. I put my shoe into it and the half-rotten wood snapped, leaving me with a nice little chunk in my hand. It'd do the trick. I carved myself a circle, returned my knife to my pocket, and got my Kemia ready.

Apartment 402 was down the right side, near a small window that looked out onto the street. I put my ear against the keyhole and closed my eyes. No sound from inside. Or at least nothing I could hear over the pounding in my head.

_Okay, be cool, Miles_. I just had to get in, convince Vivian not to shoot me, and tell her what I knew. Piece of cake.

I gently turned the handle, but it was locked as well. I used the same trick with the Pin Hole to unlock it, then held my breath and pushed open the door.

It was dark inside, but not pitch black. The front door opened into some sort of living room, with a kitchen bench to the right and closed doors to the left. Instead of a television, the couch sat opposite a bookshelf that was stacked to the brim and still had a dozen books on the floor around it. A laptop sat on a little circular table in the corner, with what looked like a textbook open next to it.

A single picture adorned the wall; a photo of about thirty or forty young cops in sparkling new uniforms, in front of a banner that read: _Bluegate Police Academy_. There were only a handful of women in the group, and Vivian was easily the most beautiful. She was smiling at the camera. No, more than that, she was positively beaming.

To be honest, Vivian's apartment reminded me a little of my place, only cleaner. It wasn't a home, not really. It was just a place to keep your things. No wonder Vivian seemed to spend so much time working.

I closed the door behind me without making a sound and released the Pin Hole, then prepared my new makeshift circle. The plan was to go nice and easy, get to Vivian when she was unprepared.

That plan got shot to hell when Vivian kicked open her bedroom door wearing nothing but a black thong. My eyes bugged out and my jaw went slack. She raised her arms and pointed a gat at me.

"You son of a bitch," she whispered through gritted teeth. Her grip tightened on the small revolver.

I stopped gawking at her bouncing breasts just long enough to open my Pin Hole. I kept my arms down by my side, and by the time Vivian saw the black spot appearing in the center of the circle it was already too late.

Her gun shimmered, and the sheen of it in the dim light seemed to change. An orange cap materialized on the end of the barrel. Vivian glanced at it, her lips peeling back in a snarl, and she pulled the trigger.

The bang and the smoke was enough to make my heart skip a beat, even though I knew what it really was. I put my hands to my chest, double-checked that it wasn't oozing blood, then forced a smug smile onto my face.

"You know, it's rude to try kill people. Especially me. I'll overlook it this time, since you gave me a good show. How many guns you got anyway?"

She stared at the gun, lifting it to her face. "A cap gun. Cute."

She hurled the plastic cap gun at my head. The toy smacked me in the forehead going a million miles an hour, the corner of it driving itself into an existing bruise. Jeez, that girl had an arm on her. I stumbled back a couple of steps, and Vivian flew at me in all her naked glory.

I didn't normally have a problem with girls beating me up. I was an equal opportunity punching bag, and I was doing it well. But tonight I was jacked up on caffeine and anger, and I'd had just about enough of everyone being against me.

I took Vivian's first punch in the cheek and rolled with it, catching her by the leg as I dropped. She was ready for me, kicking me away and giving me another good knock in the face, but my other hand was going for my jacket.

She noticed it, but too late. I rolled along the ground before she could stomp on me and brought my arm free. "Shit," was the only thing she said as my nightstick connected with the back of her knee. She buckled and grimaced, and I scrambled to my feet and launched myself at her. She recovered in time to punch me in the teeth again, but I kept on driving forward and tackled her head on.

We hit the ground together, me on top with my hands pinning her arms down. My nightstick had fallen somewhere to my right, but I was too distracted by the inappropriate nature of my current position. Jesus, someone was going to get in trouble for this, and I had a funny feeling it was going to be me.

I kept my eyes northward, looking her in the face with an ungodly amount of willpower, and started swearing. "Jesus fucking Christ, Vivian, cool it. I didn't come here for a fight."

"You manipulative bastard." She spat in my face.

"I came here to talk, goddamn it! I was framed."

"I...Walter and I trusted you, you son of a bitch. You'll get nothing from me."

She tried to shake me off and nearly succeeded, but I pushed her back down. I shook my head and gripped her wrists tighter. "Todd didn't trust anybody, Vivian. It was him that iced Spencer Davies, not me."

She paused, then snarled. "You lying sack of shit."

"It's the truth. He set me up to take the murder rap." She struggled again, and I shoved her down. "Stay still and listen, will you? The hell would I be here for if I didn't want to talk?"

"To try to pass off the blame. Or just kill me outright."

"If I wanted to kill you, I would've burst your heart with a Pin Hole from outside your apartment."

She frowned, but she didn't argue with me. Truth was, using a Pin Hole to manipulate anyone beside yourself was damn near impossible, but most laypeople didn't know that.

"All right," I said. "I'm going to let you up on the condition that you don't blast me. Listen to what I have to say, then if you still don't believe me, you can try to arrest me or whatever you want to do. Sound fair?"

She just glared at me for a moment. I really wanted to let her go because straddling her while she was nearly naked was increasingly uncomfortable and damaging to our potential friendship. Still, it wasn't going to be me who drew attention to her state of undress.

"Fine," she said, in the way women use when it's anything but fine. Still, I let her go and stood up, and she refrained from sapping me in the face again. I guess that was as close as we were going to get to trust right now.

She got to her feet without any attempt to cover her nakedness. If I was a cynical man, I'd think she was using her body to keep me off balance. I averted my eyes, returned my nightstick to my jacket, and held up my hands to show I was playing nice. In return she picked up her gun—I kept the Pin Hole open to stop her from getting any bright ideas about shooting me—and set it on the table.

"So," she said, "start talking."

"Don't you want to put some clothes on first?"

She arched an eyebrow at me and faced me with her hands on her hips. I sighed. Fine. If she wanted to be naked, I might as well get an eyeful.

"You finished?" she asked after I'd spent a few seconds staring.

"Not quite. Give me a minute."

"You got three seconds before I start kicking your ass again."

"All right, all right, Jesus. Look, I was at the hospital with Tania when Todd calls up, wanting me to come help him sort through some of Spencer's stuff. So I roll on down, and there's no uniforms there when I arrive, just Todd. I find Spencer dead and beaten half to hell and crammed up in a wardrobe, and next thing I know Todd's got a gun on me."

She shook her head, but I kept going before she could interrupt.

"I know it sounds crazy, but just shut up and listen. From what I could tell, Spencer had stumbled across Chroma, but he'd seen how dangerous it was so he shelved it."

"I don't buy it," Vivian said. "You don't just stumble onto something like that."

I stroked the corner of my mouth, and managed to pass off another glance at her curves as thoughtful staring into space.

She had a point. The way it had taken Tania, the power it had given her, it was highly specialized. "Maybe...maybe it didn't start off as a successor to Ink. Maybe we've been looking at this the wrong way. What if Spencer conceived it as a better form of Kemia. One that focuses on the Tunneler, rather than the Tunnel." My heart sped up, and I knew I was onto something. A smile crawled across my face. "Yeah, now that's the sort of thing I can see Spencer doing. He is...was...a crazy bastard, but he was a goddamn genius. You saw how much more effective Chroma is to a Tunneler. Tania didn't even need a circle to tear that wine lounge apart."

She snorted and shook her head. "Effective until they start hallucinating."

"Exactly. That's exactly my point. Maybe instead of being a catalyst on the circle, it's a catalyst on the Tunneler. But that would introduce Heaven's instability directly into the Tunneler's mind."

"And you think that's what makes them go crazy."

I nodded. It made sense. "But then Todd found out about it, and he thought he could use it."

"Use it? Don't try to bullshit me, Franco. I saw how much goddamn use it is."

"Exactly. It has one use: to destroy. And Todd's put the gangs in the crosshairs."

"What the hell are you basing this on? Idle speculation?"

"He as good as told me." I remembered Todd's words just before I got away. Christ, the pain in his voice. "You never told me about his son."

If her face was stone before, it was steel now. She stared at me, her lips pursed so tight it would've taken the jaws of life to get them apart.

"All right," I said. "You don't want to talk about it, maybe I will. He'd done something, hadn't he? Done something to piss off one gangster or another. Arrested the wrong person, maybe."

She licked her lips. "It was one of John Andrews' top lieutenants."

"There you go. So maybe Andrews wanted revenge. Everyone knows what happens to cops who are stupid enough to do their jobs in this city."

"They snatched the kid from school," she said, eyes half-closed. "Last year. Tried to negotiate the lieutenant's release. Todd was a mess, but he wasn't willing to let that son of a bitch gangster get away. We set up a fake meet, acting as if we were going to hand the gangster over, but Andrews caught wind of it."

"Leaks in the department?"

"We never found out." She closed her eyes, taking her stare off me for the first time since I got there. "We found the boy in a dumpster the next day. Well, most of him, anyway. We never did find his pinky finger."

Jesus H. Christ. They did that to a goddamn kid? What the fuck was wrong with these people?

Vivian opened her eyes, but immediately glanced away. "His wife left him a couple of months later. Now she's with some crooked sergeant over in the South District."

"Ouch."

She nodded.

The silence stretched out between us, only broken by the sounds of car doors outside. Despite everything, I felt sorry for Todd.

"Todd's angry," I said. "He wants revenge. Now does what I'm telling you still sound crazy?"

"Yes." She gave me a stare so hard it could have cracked diamond. "But maybe..."

A sound drifted through the apartment building, a creaking that had been building for a few minutes. My ears must've pricked up like a dog's, because Vivian went quiet and looked at me. "What?"

I went to the window and looked out onto the street. Four cop cars were parked outside, sirens off, no one inside. I turned back toward the door and heard the patter of shoes on the stairs.

"You sold me out?" I asked.

She stared at me, her brow creased in puzzlement, and shook her head. "I didn't—"

The unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped cut her off. My gut twisted, and I looked from the door to the window. It was a long way down.

"Miles," she whispered, "it wasn't me. They must've been watching the building."

I turned over the bit of broken skirting board and scratched the first thing that came to my head. "Save it. I need a pillow"

"A pillow?"

The floorboard creaked outside the door.

"Now, damn it!"

She raced into the bedroom while I put the finishing touches on my circle. The floorboards outside the apartment door creaked as I uncorked my bottle of Kemia.

Vivian returned and tossed me the pillow. I caught it, wrenched open the window above the street, and tossed the pillow onto the footpath below.

"What the hell are you doing?" Vivian whispered.

"Tell them you tried to arrest me and I escaped," I said, while I splashed Kemia onto the skirting board and altered my frame of mind. "And look into Todd. You know I'm right."

There wasn't time for her to argue. Something heavy slammed into Vivian's door, and the sound of splintering wood crashed through the night. I got both my legs out the window and sat on the edge just long enough to stare down at the brutally hard concrete and contemplate what an idiotic thing I was about to do.

"Stop!" a man shouted.

I pushed myself off the window and stepped into nothingness. For a moment I almost seemed to hang there, suspended in the cool night, still being pelted by rain.

Then I fell. My cheeks were on fire with the cold, and the street rushed toward me in a blur. I'm not ashamed to say I screamed.

Somehow, through all the fear, I opened the Pin Hole. The chaos was damn pleasant compared to the rapidly approaching ground. The pillow shook for a moment, shaking off rain drops.

And then it exploded. Every side of it ballooned out like, well, a balloon, turning into a great white bag of air.

I hit the bag belly-first. It felt like I'd been socked for the fiftieth time that evening. The slick fabric collapsed downward under my weight, sucking me into a cushion of air with white billowing all around me. The deceleration was hard, but not as hard as the ground would've been.

There was another moment of motionless when I reached the bottom, and then I started to rebound backward. The bag rolled and I fell to the side in a tumble of limbs. I bit back my scream just as I rolled off the edge of the air bag and dropped to the ground butt-first, earning myself a new bruise right at the base of my tailbone.

I sat there, stunned and shaking, my breath coming quick and shallow. Then there was another shout from above me. I looked up to find an angry-looking cop pointing a shotgun at me from Vivian's window.

I scrambled to my feet as the gun went off, peppering the air bag with buckshot. It made a hissing sound and started to deflate, but I was already running. I closed the Pin Hole. Vivian might find her pillow a bit more shredded and damp than when she gave it to me. Served her right for trying to shoot me.

No more shots came from the apartment. I sprinted down the street as fast as I could, the early morning silence broken by the barking of startled dogs. Some primitive part of me wanted to join them.

I was panting by the time I got back into Desmond's car, and it took me a few tries to get my shaking hands to put my keys into the lock. I climbed in, started it up, and peeled away before any of the cops could get a bead on me.

Well, that went better than expected.

## CHAPTER TWENTY

I must've been feeling suicidal, because an hour later I found myself parked on the side of the road, munching on a sandwich I'd bought from a gas station and picking out the more sickly-looking pieces of chicken. It tasted like it'd been sitting inside the cabinet for a month, and from the interesting-looking spots on the bread I wouldn't be surprised if it had. I choked down the last of it and grabbed a handful of Doritos from the packet in the passenger seat.

I was careful not to get crumbs all over the inside of Desmond's car, mainly because I didn't put it past Rob to kill me for something like that. The food I'd picked up from the gas station didn't exactly make a well-rounded breakfast, but it filled the gnawing hole in my stomach. That was about all I could hope for right now.

The rain was still coming down outside, hammering on the car roof like machine-gun fire from the gods. To cover the sound I switched on the radio while I took a sip of Coke.

The newsreader's voice came hissing through the static, and I turned up the volume. "...report that gang violence is up across Bluegate, but the police have no comment at this time. In a related story, Tunneler and murder suspect Miles Franco is still on the run this morning after allegedly beating an underworld chemist to death. Franco is also being sought for questioning over the murder of Lance Peterson, a Vei with known gang ties."

I choked on my drink and had a coughing fit. Christ, Peterson was dead as well? Todd was tying up all the loose ends. The son of a bitch better have left the little Vei girl alone. Even if she had tasered me, she sure as hell didn't deserve to get rubbed out.

The radio continued its monotone condemnation. "Franco is considered extremely dangerous, and police are advising the public not to approach him. A dedicated website has been established with further information. Police are urging anyone with information of Franco's whereabouts to call the tip hotline at—"

I switched off the radio and rested my head on the steering wheel. I really didn't understand today's music.

I was starting to doze off when I caught a glimpse of red hair and an umbrella being opened across the street from me. I sat up, peering through the windscreen, and watched the figure cross the parking lot.

The pink neon lights above John Andrews' strip club were a beacon through the heavy rain. Even in Bluegate there were classier strip clubs those girls could be working at, but something told me it was the promise of more than cash that kept them in the claws of the drug lord.

Staking out Andrews' club probably wasn't the best way to avoid getting shot, but it gave me a prime chance to get the ear of the gangster. And so far, it looked like it was paying off.

Caterina Andrews stopped outside her car, fumbled with her keys, and climbed inside, closing her umbrella at the same time. The blue sedan rumbled to life and the headlights flicked on. I started Desmond's car as well. Talking directly to John Andrews would get me nothing but a hole in the ground. But maybe I could convince his wife to talk some sense into him.

Caterina's sedan pulled out onto the road, and I followed. I stayed a little way back, doing my best not to attract her attention. I couldn't afford for her to get spooked, especially if she'd seen my mug on the morning news. Tailing her would've been easier if the traffic was heavier and there were more cars to put between me and her, but I'd have to make do.

She drove carefully through the rain, making her way east toward the suburbs. The streets got cleaner and safer-looking the further we drove, or maybe the seediness was just kept under wraps. I'd never lived out in the suburbs, but I'd dealt with plenty of people who had. I soon found out you don't stay that clean without trampling on the people lying in the mud.

I'd been half-expecting her to go all the way to Andrews' mansion just south of here, but for some reason she didn't. Not that I was complaining. If she disappeared behind those iron gates with Andrews' private army guarding them, I'd never get her alone.

So it was a relief when she pulled over at a quaint diner in the middle of a block of shops. I drove past and pulled around the corner before stopping. I walked back, my hands in my pockets and my collar up against the rain, and caught sight of her as she disappeared through the door of the diner.

Doing what must've looked like a Pink Panther impression, I sneaked through the glass doors and took a seat at a booth near the main entrance. From there I could get a good view of the back of Caterina's head where she sat in the corner, reading a newspaper. Her red hair was pulled up into a tight bun, and she was wearing a similar dress to the one I saw her in the other day. It struck me as odd that a gangster's wife would dress so plainly and eat in a place like this. But then again, maybe she just liked pancakes.

The diner was doing its best to convince its patrons they'd travelled back to the 1950s, but the 1950s as imagined by people who'd only experienced it through watching James Dean films. The illusion was spoiled somewhat by the Vei waitress that came over, complete with stuffed bra and white apron. "Coffee?" she asked.

I nodded and she poured me a mug of something black and syrupy. She left me with a menu and tottered away on her high heels. I shook my head. Who were they kidding?

Caterina must've been a regular, because the chef himself brought her a plate of French toast with banana and bacon within minutes of our arrival. She said something to him, and they exchanged a polite laugh, then the chef retreated. She didn't immediately put her paper away. Half the page was covered with a splash picture of my most recent mug shot. Great.

My paranoia kicked in again, startling the butterflies in my stomach into fluttering. I glanced around at the staff and patrons. No one was taking any notice of me. Most of them still looked half-asleep, which I suppose worked in my favor. At least until the coffee started kicking in.

All right, no more screwing around. If I was going to do this, I'd better get on with it before someone recognized me and sent the police my way. Hell, I wouldn't put it past some plucky, trigger-happy civilian to put a couple in me themselves, hoping to get a nice reward from the cops or the gangs or whoever decided to pay.

I chugged down the lukewarm sludge they passed off as coffee, tossed my menu aside, and got up. Caterina didn't look around as I strode across the room.

"You shouldn't read that stuff," I said, sliding into the booth opposite her. "It'll rot your brain."

Caterina started and blinked, staring at me. "Mr. Franco? What are you—"

I raised a hand to cut her off. "First, it's just Miles. Second, whatever they're saying about me in the papers, it's not true."

"I know."

I opened my mouth to defend myself, then paused. "What?"

"I know it wasn't you. I've spent enough time around John to spot a frame-up when I see one."

"Well...yes. Good." It felt strange to have things go my way. It made me suspicious. "Well, in that case, we need to talk."

"I don't know how much help I'll be to you, Mr. Franco. My husband is the one with the police connections."

"It's not that. I need your help on something else."

"What?"

I glanced around the diner as another patron walked in. "Can we go somewhere a bit more private? All these people are making me antsy."

She looked the place over and nodded. "I know just the place."

Caterina took me to a motel a few blocks away. Yeah, yeah, I know, but it wasn't like that. She decided it was for my own good to have somewhere to crash for a couple of days, somewhere that wouldn't ask too many questions. She went in and paid in advance at the office while I parked Desmond's car outside. I felt guilty for letting her pay, but my pocket was pretty light, and I wasn't above taking charity. I wasn't above much anymore.

I huddled in the car to shelter from the rain until she emerged from the office, jingling the keys at me. I locked the car and followed her up the outside stairs to room 17.

Inside, room 17 was your typical middle-of-the-range motel room, a double bed with a floral cover, a television bolted into place, a kitchenette with a small selection of cutlery and plates, and a bathroom so tiny you'd have to be a stick figure to get the door closed once you were inside.

I collapsed onto the bed with all the grace of a junkie diving onto a new fix, then burrowed my head into the pillow. "You're a king among men, Cat. I owe you one."

"You owe me two, now," she said. "I can't stay long. My husband...he's been in a frenzy ever since he returned from Heaven."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." I regretfully pulled myself from the soft comfort of the pillow as she perched herself on the end of the bed. "I've got some information I want you to give him."

She glanced at me, then looked away. "I don't know if I want to get in the middle of this, Mr. Franco."

"I know. I wouldn't either. But this is important. I'm trying to stop him from doing something the whole city might regret."

"He won't listen to me." She screwed up her face. "He doesn't like to discuss business with me. He's fond of me, I think, but he keeps me around for political reasons more than anything."

"Yeah? How you figure that?"

"My father is Kyle Greene."

The name struck a chord, but it took me a moment to place it. "The head of Bore Customs?"

She bit her lip and nodded. Their odd relationship clicked into place for me. With Caterina as a wife—and a hostage—Andrews would have a link to Customs and the Bore he'd never get no matter how many Immigration officials he bribed. It also gave him leverage over the other gangs; he'd have some control over what was let in and out. I couldn't work out how they'd manage to keep the relationship out of the media, though. The newspapers printed stories about Andrews like they were sordid pulp novels. His reputation for violence and drugs gave the public a thrill, at least it would until they found themselves in the middle of a gang war.

I felt a sudden sympathy for her. We were both pawns in our own ways, but she must've lived like this for years. How did she survive it? How could she live with a man like that?

She continued to chew on her lip, picking at nonexistent lint on the bedspread. "You want me to talk to him, don't you?"

I nodded slowly.

"What do you want me to tell him?" she asked.

I almost didn't go through with it. Almost.

"Tell him he's being manipulated," I said, ignoring the sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach as I took my turn moving her around on the chessboard. "A shifty cop, Detective Todd, he's trying to ignite a gang war, and he's using the Chroma to kick-start it." For the second time that morning I related the tale of what the Chroma had done to Tania, the madness and power it had sparked in her. Caterina nodded as I spoke, her lips pursed tight.

"...I don't have much love for your husband," I said, "as I'm sure you figure. But if he rises to Todd's bait, it'll destroy him."

"Not if John gets enough Chroma. He has plenty of Tunnelers working for him. He could destroy Todd and the other gangs while he's at it."

"Todd won't let that happen. He must've got the recipe from Spencer and be crafting it somewhere in Heaven, but I haven't got the foggiest where. He's a crafty son of a bitch, and he'll keep plenty of it for himself. He has contacts and access to police databases. He'll find Tunnelers to join him, if he hasn't already. He'll dole out just enough Chroma to have the city fighting over it, and if they don't destroy themselves, he'll do it himself."

Caterina sighed, nodding slowly. "John is angry. So angry. I don't know if I can make him see reason. But I'll try."

"That's all I'm asking."

She nodded again. An awkward silence passed between us, interrupted only by the steady sounds of morning traffic making its way past outside. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe it was the prospect of spending a long time in the pen if the cops caught up with me, but Caterina's perfume was having a strange effect on my head. It was a floral scent, not too strong, with a hint of something else beneath it.

I watched her, and she watched her knees. We sat like that for a while, five minutes, maybe ten, maybe an hour. I couldn't tell. Then a tear rolled slowly down her cheek.

She didn't sob, she didn't wail, no part of her even moved except the bead of water trickling into the corner of her mouth.

I shuffled over on the bed, and she didn't move away. Neither did she move away when I slipped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to me. Her breath came shallowly against the skin of my neck.

I don't know why I did it. It was stupid. She was John Andrews' wife, for God's sake, and my track record with women wasn't going to win me any applause.

But regardless of all that, I kissed her. She kissed back.

I won't pretend it was any kind of love that made me do it. And I don't think it was love on her part that drove her to start pulling my shirt off. For me, it was nothing but lust and the desire for human comfort, the need for someone who wasn't trying to manipulate me.

She planted kisses on my neck and I pulled her hair loose of its bun. It flowed down to her shoulders in waves of bronze, and then I tangled my fingers in it and pulled her close.

By the time I was tugging her dress off and she was fumbling with my belt, all logic had gone the way of my reservations, booted into a cage at the back of my mind where they could do nothing but holler against the bars. I didn't plan on letting them out for a long time.

Caterina collapsed onto the bed and dragged me on top of her, her hair falling about her face like something out of a magazine. She was wearing the sort of bra and panties women only wear on third dates and Valentine's Day, a black lace deal ripped straight from the cover of Victoria's Secret. I got a good eyeful before burying my face against her skin, kissing my way across her flat abdomen.

I was so revved up it took me a few moments to realize she was gently pushing me away by the shoulders. "I can't," she whispered.

My hormones were wishing I was deaf, but I wasn't a complete asshole. The logic I'd locked up in the back of my head was attempting a prison break. Caterina kept pushing me away, and reluctantly I complied. "What'd I do?"

She pulled her dress up to her chest and gave me a pained look. "You didn't do anything."

"I can do more things. I had a whole bunch planned."

"I'm sorry."

"No big deal," I said, though parts of my anatomy were betraying me.

"Another time..."

"Another life. Yeah, I gotcha."

She stood up and slipped her dress over her head. I got one last look at her ass in those lacy panties before they were lost to my sight forever. Hey, I think I deserved at least that much.

I didn't bother dressing. I was still reeling from the sudden changes in mood. Now all I wanted was a couple of fingers of whiskey, no matter that I hadn't drunk the stuff for years. Something about it just seemed appropriate.

"So you're disappearing again?" I asked.

"I'll tell John what you told me. Maybe you'll get lucky."

I snorted. "Lady Luck's a bitch and I'm pretty sure she's got a personal grudge against me. But thanks."

She tied her hair back into a bun. Somehow, she managed to make that sexy, even in her unassuming way. Maybe _because_ of her unassuming way.

"I guess this is the part where I ask if I'm going to see you again," I said.

She turned back to me with a smile. "Then this must be the part where I say, 'Maybe, Mr. Franco. Maybe.'"

"For the love of God, call me Miles."

"Good-bye, Mr. Franco."

"Be seeing you, Cat."

She left. I got up, sat down again, then buried my head in the pillow.

"Miles," I asked myself, "how the hell did you manage to fuck that one up?"

I slept.

It was a sense of nervous urgency that awakened me. The rain had eased to a constant drizzle, and the red lights of the clock on the nightstand told me it was 4:17 p.m. Something in my head was nagging me to get up, to get moving, so I hauled myself out of bed. No one had arrested me during the day, apparently, for which I was grateful. I guessed prison cots would be a lot less comfortable than motel beds.

I gulped down a glass of water while I considered my options. Rob had given me Vivian's home phone number on the scrap of paper with her address. I could check in with her, see if she'd decided to believe me about Todd's guilt. Hell, maybe the bastard had already been arrested. That would be a sweet kind of revenge, although I would have preferred to have a hand in taking him down myself.

I picked up the motel phone, puzzled out how to dial an outside line, and punched in Vivian's number. No response. Maybe she was out kicking Todd's ass.

All right, what now? I wanted to check in on Tania, make sure the hospital was treating her right, but I couldn't just call up. If I called her mother, I'd either get the cops set on me, or I'd receive a new variation of the increasingly desperate demands for rent payment. And I didn't like my chances of the hospital giving information to a wanted criminal. Especially when he wasn't a family member.

Another idea occurred to me. I was so far outside the law right now a charge for illegally accessing hospital records would be a fart in a hurricane, so I dialed Desmond's number and prayed that Rob liked me enough to let me use his services again.

Desmond picked up after four rings.

"Des," I said, "I got another favor to ask."

"Jeez, guy, where you been? I've been calling your cell all morning."

"Oh yeah. Damn thing got itself waterlogged. I wanted to know if Rob can get himself access to the patient records at Bluegate Hospital."

Desmond plowed right over me, ignoring my question. "Have you seen the news?"

"What? No, why?"

"You near a TV?"

"Yeah, hold on." I looked around and found the TV remote on the floor beside the bedside table. "What channel?"

"Doesn't matter," Desmond said in a tone that did strange things to the hairs on the back of my neck.

I flicked the TV on, stared at it for three seconds. My jaw dropped. "Fuck."

"Yeah," he said, and I could tell he was nodding. "Fuck indeed."

The picture on the box looked like it was taken from a helicopter over Bluegate. By the position on the river, it looked to be an image on the northeast of the city, where Andrews' territory butted against that of the 23rd Street Bikers. At least, that's what it used to be.

It looked like Godzilla had taken a stroll through the district. Several of the low-rises were completely demolished, a few of them crushed, a few of them simply burnt to the ground. The street was littered with the burnt husks of cars, and more than a couple of bodies. The word _Live_ was printed in the top right of the screen, and a ticker-tape strip ran along the bottom. _Gang Wars Throughout Bluegate_ , it said. _Citizens Flee Violence_.

As I watched the live feed, a burst of gunfire rang out of one of the surviving low-rise buildings. A few seconds later, the building trembled and began to slip. The color of it changed instantly, becoming white, chalk-like. It crumbled in a way that buildings shouldn't be able to crumble, and the gunfire cut off. In slow motion the building collapsed, spewing white dust up into the air.

"It didn't work," I whispered, more to myself than to Desmond. "Chroma, it's here, and they all fell for Todd's trap."

"Reports are that Andrews' gang is leading the violence," Desmond said. "The media's keeping tight-lipped about what's causing it all, or maybe they don't know themselves, but it's my guess that Andrews got himself an advanced shipment of this drug of yours."

I slammed my fist down on the bedside table. Pain shot through my wrist, but that was drowned out by anger. I tried to warn him, goddamn it! That son of a bitch was going to destroy the city, and then find himself facing an even bigger threat from Todd. "Jesus. What the hell are we going to do?"

"Look, guy, I got a tip. I asked Rob to run down some of the things in your story that didn't ring true for me. You said Shirley O'Neil was involved in Andrews' outfit. I know Shirley, or I used to. She was a hard bitch, but not the sort of woman to toss in with the likes of Andrews."

"Yeah? What'd you find?"

"We ran her financials—"

"That's gotta be all kinds of illegal."

"—and found some interesting deposits into her account."

I scratched my stubble. "Pay from Andrews?"

"Some of it."

"And the rest?"

"Payment from a Mr. Walter Todd."

I rocked back on the bed, spontaneous laughter spilling out of my mouth at the ludicrousness of it all. "She was a goddamn double agent?"

"Looks that way." Desmond sounded like he was grinning as well. "Looks like no one can trust anyone in this city."

"You know, I have a sudden urge to have a chat with Miss O'Neil. You got a location?"

"Rob got us a home address that looks fake, but I get the feeling she won't be home anyway. I think..." He stopped talking, and I heard Rob's voice muttering through the earpiece. Desmond responded, then there was a crackle as he came back on the line.

"Des?" I said. "What's up?"

"Seems Shirley has a GPS tracker in her fancy overpriced BMW. Rob's working on tracking it now."

"Is there anything that man can't do?"

"He sucks at cooking."

"Tell him if he gets me that trace I'll love him forever."

"Hands off," Desmond said. "He's mine." He paused. "Also, I'm coming with you."

Great, another person who wanted to be a hero. I screwed up my eyes, forcing myself to take a deep breath before I said something I'd regret. "Des, this is—"

"Shut it, Miles. I'm coming, or you don't get O'Neil's location."

"You're a son of a bitch, you know that?"

"Get here as soon as you can. I'll be waiting."

There was a click, and then he was gone. Goddamn it. One more person at risk when I fucked up.

And the way things were going, that looked like it was going to happen sooner rather than later.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As promised, Desmond was waiting for me when I pulled up at his apartment around 5:30. He was wearing a trench coat over a T-shirt, with a bag slung over his shoulder. Rob stood beside him, holding an umbrella over their heads. I pulled the car to a stop and Desmond opened the back door, tossed the bag in, then got into the passenger seat.

"What's in the bag?" I asked. "Is it a shotgun? Please tell me it's a shotgun."

"It's not a shotgun. Besides, you hate guns."

"Yeah."

"It's just a bunch of stuff I thought might be useful. A couple bottles of Kemia, a few Pin Holes, a can of mace, my old knuckleduster."

"You've still got that thing? How have the cops not taken it off your hands?"

"I'm more careful than you."

I had to concede that. At least it looked like he was taking this thing seriously. I didn't expect O'Neil to go down quietly. Hell, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea having Desmond at my back after all. I just didn't think my conscience could take it if he caught a bullet.

Rob bent down and leaned against the open window. "You know where you're going?"

Desmond nodded and patted his coat pocket. "Thanks."

The concern in Rob's eyes was as plain as day. He gave Desmond a peck on the cheek, probably refraining from more for my benefit, and muttered something in his ear. Trying to be polite, I pretended I found the steering wheel intensely interesting until they were finished. There was something strained in the way they spoke. Maybe they'd been arguing. I guess Rob would see this as me dragging Desmond back into the old days of danger, and to be fair, I saw it that way myself. I tapped on the steering wheel, trying to swallow my impatience. I wanted to get this done before the whole city was leveled.

Thankfully, they cut their conversation short before I was forced to make an ass of myself. Rob took a step back and raised a hand at me. "Don't keep him out too late, Miles."

"Sure thing, Mrs. S. Any chance I can convince you to do another favor for me?"

Rob sighed and made a face, but he nodded. "What do you need?"

"The girl, Tania Phillips. Can you check the hospital records and see if she's okay?"

"All right." He gave me a hard look, then returned his attention to Desmond. "Don't get killed."

"See you in a few hours," Desmond said with smile. I gave the two of them one last chance to say their good-byes, then I started the car and pulled back out onto the road.

"So where we headed?" I asked.

"Nearest we can pinpoint it's a low-rise office building out west, not far from the Bore."

"Gallow family territory? The hell's she doing out there?"

Desmond shrugged. "Gang violence hasn't spread that far yet. Maybe she's going to wait it out there for a while. Gives her a getaway if she needs it."

"And if she's already gone to Heaven to hide out?"

"It's a possibility, but I got a feeling this Detective Todd of yours will want her round. She's one of the better Tunnelers in the city."

That she was. She had a bit of a reputation in Tunneler circles, she was the one you went to if you had a tough job with tough people. I wondered why she'd thrown in her chips with Todd. Was he promising her cash? He'd have plenty of that if he got his way. Or did she buy into his psycho talk, thinking they could bring Bluegate peace through violence?

Our route took us away from the worst of the gang fighting, but I could still see the smoke rising over the city from a dozen smoldering ruins. The car's air-conditioning filtered out the worst of the smell, but it was still there, soot and blood and death tickling the back of my nose. We had to hurry, while there were still people left to save. I hoped Vivian was having some luck.

A siren whirred to life in front of us. My heart responded instantly, hammering against my ribcage, and my knuckles tightened on the wheel. Jesus, they'd found us.

"Easy, man," Desmond murmured. "They're not for us."

He was right. A pair of police cars came skidding around the corner ahead of us and sped past, back in the direction of the nearest fire. A rumbling explosion echoed across the city in response. I forced myself to relax. This paranoia would be the death of me.

Desmond grinned at me, the bastard. "Like old times, eh?"

"No, Des. This is nothing like old times."

"Remember that job to Alona we took about a year after we graduated?"

"Where the crates of English language books we took turned out to be stuffed with heroin?"

"Yeah, those were the days." He put his arms behind his head. "Those Customs officials really beat the snot out of us, didn't they?"

"Nah, only you. I just gave myself the black eye so you didn't feel singled out."

He nodded. His glasses were so rose-tinted the thorns must've been poking him in the face. "What'd Anna say when you went home with a mug like that?"

My smile slipped. "Jesus, Des, why you got to bring her up again? Can't we reminisce about someone else?"

"Come on, guy, that was years ago. You can't still be sore about it."

I gripped the steering wheel tighter and gave a passing motorist the death stare. "To hell with you. You're no expert on women, in case you hadn't noticed."

"But I know a thing or two about relationships. I know that sometimes they end, and you just gotta get over it."

"Des, if we live through this and I don't get thrown in prison, you can buy me a drink and ask me about my daddy issues. Until then, this conversation is done."

He put his hands up in a "fine" gesture, slumped back into the seat, and stared out his window. Bringing up shit like that at a time like this. The hell was he thinking? My demons were better behaved when they were left undisturbed.

The streets were unusually quiet, giving the whole place a ghost-town vibe. Desmond directed me down a few streets until we came to a district of small office buildings for a few hundred small- and medium-sized businesses. I'd put money on most of them being fronts for one gang or another. Lights were only on in a few of the offices. Presumably everyone else decided to take the day off. Or maybe it was just the weekend. I had no idea what day of the week it was anymore.

"That's the one," Desmond said, pointing to a low-rise office building on a narrow road just off the main street. The exterior was all boring gray stucco, with a sign saying _Jackson and Leifield_ that conveniently revealed absolutely nothing about what the company did. A sloping driveway led down to the basement parking area, shuttered off with a roller door.

I pulled into a parking space across the road and switched the car off. "Curtains are closed and lights are off," I said. "It don't look like it's seen much use lately."

Desmond studied the building and tapped his chin with his finger. "Plan?"

"Why you asking me? You were always the planner."

"You have a better idea what we're dealing with here. You think Todd would've left some people with her?"

"It's possible. I don't have a clue who he's got working with him. Best to play it quiet until we know what we're dealing with."

He nodded, his neck jerking a little unnaturally. I knew Desmond well enough to tell when he was nervous. That was good. Hell, I was scared out of my freaking mind.

We got out of the car and jogged across the empty street. I kept my eyes on the windows all around me, but there were too many to keep track of. We didn't eat any sniper's bullets. Hell, the whole district looked as deserted as the salad bar at a pizza joint.

I was already breathing hard when we pressed ourselves against the outer wall of the office building. Desmond wasn't doing much better; his eyes leaped around in every direction, but he had a nervous grin plastered to his face. The son of a bitch was enjoying himself. I suppose selling electronics to Vei gets old after a few years. He'd probably already forgotten the fear of doing a Tunneling job with people who'd poke your eyes out as soon as look at you.

Desmond glanced at me and jerked his head toward the main entrance. I shook my head. "Let's start at the bottom, make sure this car of hers actually is here," I whispered.

The rolling door to the parking lot would've been a pain to deal with, but there was a side door for pedestrian access. The lock didn't look too tough to deal with; this was just an office building, after all. I pulled my lock-altering Pin Hole from my pocket and readied my bottle of Kemia.

"Wait," Desmond said, glancing up at the windows above us. "She might sense the Pin Hole."

"It's only a small one."

"If I was her, I'd be on high alert." He pulled his backpack from his shoulders, unzipped it, and stuck his hand inside. "Let's do this the old-fashioned way."

The crowbar he pulled out looked brand-new, still with a price sticker on it.

"Oh yeah, great plan," I said. "She'll never hear that." Still, I stepped aside and let him at the door.

Desmond was positively beaming as he wedged the tip of the crowbar into the crack of the door just beneath the lock. I cringed at the sound of the wood snapping beneath his weight, certain we'd be hearing shouts, or more likely, gunshots. He shoved against the crowbar one more time, the wood cracked around the lock, and the door flung open.

I had one hand on my nightstick and the other on my bottle of Kemia, but nothing attacked us. The garage looked like parking garages everywhere: dull concrete lit by long fluorescent bulbs. It looked deserted as the street outside. I took a careful step in, a bead of sweat trickling down my forehead.

There was only one car; a silver BMW sedan that was probably worth more than my apartment. It was parked haphazardly in the middle of the garage, as if the owner didn't expect anyone else to need a parking space.

Desmond came in behind me, gripping his crowbar like a weapon, and we silently moved out and apart to approach opposite sides of the car. I circled to the driver's side and slipped my nightstick from my jacket. The car looked pristine, though it still had a few drops of rain on it, and water stained the concrete underneath.

Desmond and I came at the car in unison. I peered in the front and back windows. No one inside. Nothing inside at all that I could see, not even a blanket or a bottle of water. I met Desmond's eyes over the hood of the car, and he shook his head. Nothing.

A little red LED flashed inside the car, cluing me in that there was an alarm in operation. Breaking into the car to search it properly would've been more trouble than it was worth. Besides, we weren't here to ransack. I was going to get O'Neil alone, and I was going to get some goddamn answers.

"Stairs?" Desmond asked, pointing at the door at the end of the garage. I nodded and we made our way toward it. A fluorescent light flickered above us, giving the whole place a horror film vibe.

Desmond quietly pulled open the stairwell door and slipped inside, and I followed.

"So what's the plan?" Desmond murmured. "We going in Scooby Doo?"

"No. Stick together. I don't want to be the loner at the party if she's got friends with her."

We made our way up the stairs and emerged into a series of connected hallways with a bunch of cubicles down one end and the proper offices down the other. This wasn't a modern office building with pointless glass walls; everything was closed off and walled in. The whole place had a stale smell about it, like the air-conditioning hadn't been on in a long while.

We searched the cubicles first, staying low and moving quietly. A thick layer of dust covered everything, and the computers looked so old they must've been powered by coal. No children's drawings or family photos adorned the cubicles. By the look of it, this place had been cleared out years ago.

We'd just finished with the cubicles and were moving onto the offices when Desmond pointed out the small, scattered bloodstains.

His face lost some of its childlike excitement and he glanced around, fingers twitching on the crowbar, while I bent down to examine the stains.

The blood had started to turn brown, but when I touched it, it still retained some damp stickiness. I was no expert, but the blood couldn't have been there very long.

I followed the scattered drops with my eyes. I could imagine they led to the master office in the corner of the room. The door was shut, but my mind was already spinning up all sorts of things I might find inside. I had a brief vision of taking Desmond and just leaving, getting back in the car and blowing town, like the Universe seemed to be telling me to do.

But I knew I wouldn't go. Not yet. I was already moving toward the door, stepping silently across the carpet, my heart pounding loud enough to provide the bass beat at a nightclub.

I sensed Desmond following me. I wondered if his mouth was as dry as mine was. I reached out for the door handle, had a second thought and slipped my sleeve over my hand, then opened the door.

"Oh Jesus," I said.

The smell hit me first, the same smell Spencer had when he'd been beaten to death and crammed in a wardrobe. The memory was pleasant compared to what I found in the office.

The blood caught my eye next, mainly because there was a lot of it. I doubted I'd be able to cross the room without getting my shoes soaked. The back wall had a new piece of postmodern artwork: a splatter of red covering the white wall.

There was way too much blood in the room for just one body, which made sense, because there were three of them.

Two of them were men, tough-looking sons of bitches dressed in clothes that would've blended into any street in the city. They were face-up, eyes toward the ceiling, feet toward the door. Their clothes were shredded and soaked in blood, with a couple of basketball-sized craters in their chests.

The third body belonged to Shirley O'Neil. I only knew that by her clothes and build, because her face was so thick with blood I couldn't make it out clearly. The flesh and bone between her eyes was caved in. Her body was twisted and crumpled on the floor in front of the blood-splattered wall, the back of her skull blown out.

I heard Desmond's breathing go ragged and heavy behind me, and then he started retching. My own stomach groaned and squirmed, but I didn't throw up. I didn't even feel as horrified as I had when I'd found Spencer's corpse. I was nothing, blank.

Somehow, between the running and the frustration, I'd become an undertaker, turning up late and finding nothing but bodies waiting for me.

The first thought that fought its way into my head was a paranoid one. Was this another set-up? Would there be sirens and cops and handcuffs any second now?

The answer came just as quickly, clinical logic floating through my dulled mind. No, no one had bothered to make this look like I'd done it. Todd had made it look like I'd beaten Spencer with my nightstick, but O'Neil had been shot, and I didn't own a gun. Barely even knew how to use one. Whatever had killed her bodyguards was a bit more fuzzy, but I'd read enough newspapers to recognize the execution-style killing. This was a gang hit. It looked like Andrews had caught up with her.

I don't know how long I stood in the doorway like that, breathing in the stench until the smell faded from conscious thought. After a couple of minutes the sound of Desmond's retching stopped, and he came back beside me, his sleeve across his mouth.

"Shit, man," he said. "Shit. We should get lost."

It took a few moments before I got my head working well enough to form a response. I shook my head slowly. "I've got to search the place."

"Fuck that. What if the cops show up? Or whoever does this comes back?"

"Go back downstairs," I said. "Keep an eye out. This is the last lead I've got. I can't let it go cold."

"You're crazy, guy."

"Yeah, probably." I tore my eyes away from the bodies to look at him. His face was completely pale, his eyes bugging out of his head. He'd seen some shit in his day—we both had—but this... "I won't be long. Yell if anyone comes."

He paused, then nodded. He didn't look at the office again. "Hurry, then."

"I will."

His legs were a little unsteady as he walked back toward the stairwell. Mine were too. I took a shaking step into the room, careful to stand in a patch not covered in sticky brown blood, and played at being a detective.

I started with the two men. One lay to my left and one to my right, as if they'd been guarding the door against whoever had come for them. The one to my left had managed to draw his pistol before being killed, but the other one had fallen with his gun still holstered, his hand flopped a few inches from the butt.

I crept closer to the one on the left, breathing through my mouth to avoid the smell as much as possible. His round face was set in a permanent expression of shock, eyes open wide. Something about him tickled my memory. Was he a cop that'd picked me up a few years ago? He had the police look about him, a previously fit man that'd gone to seed with too many donuts.

I gave him a cursory search. The driver's license in his wallet told me his name was Elwin Major, which struck another bell in my head. I recalled a story in the papers a couple of years back about a bunch of cops that got kicked out of the force on brutality charges.

I returned the man's wallet to his pocket and checked out the other guy. His face looked familiar as well. Had Todd been calling in his old ex-cop buddies to work for him?

Searching the two men turned up nothing else of note, just a couple of spare clips for their sidearms and some house keys. The guy on my right had a picture in his wallet of himself with a good-looking woman and a young girl at some beach. I got a bad taste in my mouth staring at it, so I shoved it back in his pocket. Stupid bastard. Why the hell had he got mixed up in this shit when he had people waiting for him at home?

I settled back on my haunches and stared at the hole ripped in the center of his shirt. The skin beneath it looked almost burnt. A Tunneler had killed these men, and he'd done it in a very personal, intimate way. He hadn't just brought the building down on them.

I went to O'Neil last. She hadn't been killed by Tunneling; it was obviously a gunshot that'd splattered her brains across the wall. Stupid bloody woman. I thought she was supposed to be smart, one of the better Tunnelers in the city. And now she was lying twisted and bloody in some anonymous office building in a city that was tearing itself apart.

"What promises did Todd make to you?" I whispered. I went through her handbag, feeling like a grave-robbing ghoul. A wallet with several hundred dollars in cash and the usual assortment of plastic. Some fancy electronic key for her BMW. A tube of lipstick. A handful of assorted Pin Holes etched into brass. Nothing else. Any Kemia she'd been carrying was gone.

"Goddamn it," I said. "You gotta have something." A signed confession fingering Todd would be nice, but I'd settle for anything that'd link them. The bank account records Rob had got his hands on wouldn't be much use, considering how illegally they'd been obtained. I needed something hard, something I could give to Vivian and point to and say: "Here's your proof, now go arrest that asshole."

But there was nothing. If she'd had anything incriminating, it'd been picked clean.

I clenched my hands into fists and ground my teeth together. I wanted to punch something, I wanted to pull out my nightstick and beat her body until something useful came out. Everything was just one dead-end after another. It was hopeless.

I was about to turn and go when I caught sight of her hand. It was clenched in a fist, but there was a corner of black plastic poking out. Her cell phone.

I crouched back down by her hand. For some reason, I couldn't take my eyes off her painted fingernails and the three rings that adorned her fingers.

_Come on, Miles_. _Just a dead body. Just a dead woman's hand. You barely even knew her, and she would've killed you as soon as look at you anyway, probably._

Her flesh was cold, though not as cold as I expected. More like a cup of coffee that'd been left out on the counter for an hour or so. I forced myself not to cringe as I took her fingers in hand and pried them apart. The worst part was the stiffness, the way her fingers resisted me. I got them apart just far enough and snatched the cell phone away. My stomach churning, I rubbed my hands on my jacket as if I could wipe away what I'd done, but I could still feel her dead skin beneath mine.

The phone was some fancy smartphone, the sort of thing you could use to reprogram a nuclear missile and unite quantum mechanics and relativity while you check your emails. By some miracle, there was no passcode to unlock it. I spent a few minutes trying to work out how to drive it. Goddamn, you'd need a Master's degree in computer engineering to work the thing.

I eventually figured out how to access her recent calls. A couple of numbers came up regularly, but no names were attached. Maybe Rob could run them with his computer, get it to spit out some names.

I was getting antsy standing around in this slasher-film room, but I didn't want to leave until I was sure I had something. I doubted I'd be able to come back. The room had been cleared out apart from a couch and an office chair; everything I had to work with was on this phone. I scrolled through to O'Neil's text messages, and that's where I hit paydirt.

Dozens of messages were stored in there, all from a single number. She'd been arrogant, or just sloppy, and hadn't bothered to delete them. Plans, hints of something sinister. Again, the number had no name attached, but I recognized Todd's words, his messed up sense of right and wrong. If we could trace the messages to his number, maybe Vivian and any honest cops left on the force could nail the son of a bitch.

_SD dealt with_ , one of the recent messages read, _but Franco slipped the net. I put out APB. He will be out of circulation soon._

Not as soon as he'd hoped. I flicked through to another message. _The vials have been shipped. Time to go dark._

I glanced over at O'Neil's body. She'd gone dark, all right. The idiotic woman.

All right, I'd spent enough time here. I slipped the phone into my pocket and patted it. It wasn't much, but it might just be enough. I allowed a small smile to creep across my face.

Got you, you bastard.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Desmond was on his cell phone when I got back to him. He was still looking a bit pale, and his grin hadn't returned. I gave him a nod and we jogged through the rain to the car, him still muttering into the phone.

I got into the car and pulled O'Neil's smartphone from my pocket to go through it again. Before I could, it started ringing.

I was so shocked I nearly dropped it. A little animation of a ringing rotary phone had appeared on the screen, along with a number. The same number that had accompanied the text messages, if I remembered correctly.

I exchanged a glance with Desmond, but he was still on his own phone. Heart pounding, I pressed the screen to accept the call, and put it to my ear.

The sound of rain and muffled engine noises came through first. And then there was a voice.

"Shirley," Todd said. "Where the fuck are you? I lost contact with William and Natalie, and the other Tunnelers aren't picking up. But I got the girl."

I clutched the phone tight to my ear, not daring to open my mouth. The girl? Who the hell was he talking about?

"I'm nearly at the Avenues," he continued. "I need you to meet me there. The girl's getting aggressive, and it's gonna be risky with so much product lying around. Something funny's going on, and—"

There was a low bang, and some muffled noises. Then he spoke again. "What the fuck? Oh, shit!"

Another crackle, like he'd dropped the phone. I heard something high-pitched, something like a scream. A familiar scream.

And then came the gunshots.

I squeezed the phone so hard part of me worried I'd crush it. The blasts sounded distorted in the phone's speaker, but they were unmistakable. A sound like the shattering of glass came through, and a car door opened. Over it all was the scream.

"Get gone!" Todd's voice was distant. "Run, you stupid bitch."

The line went dead.

I kept holding the phone to my ear for a few seconds, praying that scream wasn't who I thought it was.

"Miles?" Desmond said.

I turned to him. He stared at the phone in my hand, his jaw clenched, and silently handed me his cell phone.

"Miles, it's Rob." His voice was clipped. "I got into the hospital records for you."

"Tell me she's there. Rob, tell me she's still there."

"I'm sorry. I can't."

A punch to the gut would've been less painful. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. _Breathe, Miles_.

"What... You just mean they discharged her, right? Tell me that's what you mean."

I already knew it wasn't by the tone of his voice and the look on Desmond's face, but I didn't let myself believe it until Rob said it. "Last time they saw her was when a nurse took observations a couple of hours ago. They ran her blood, but it came back clean. They were planning to discharge her when her mother showed up. The girl started to get agitated so they decided to keep her in a bit longer."

"'Agitated'? The hell do they mean by that?"

"I don't know, Miles, I'm just telling you what's written down. It looks like she got so aggressive they called the cops. Some detective showed up and took her away."

I cradled the steering wheel with my free arm. "Jesus Christ." I shouldn't have left her. Why the fuck had I left her?

Todd was using her to get to me. Only something had gone wrong. Fuck, she could be bleeding in a gutter right now. Who'd been shooting? What had Todd got her into?

Christ, what had _I_ got her into?

Desmond had no complaints when I told him where we were going, never even asked that I drop him off home first. On another day I would have been damn near gushing with gratitude, but right then all I could think about was getting Tania home to her mother.

I'd let her down too many times already. O'Neil's phone felt heavy in my pocket, but I put all thoughts of that aside. Getting Todd and clearing my name was nothing if I couldn't protect Tania. So I started the car, gunned the engine, and headed for the center of a city at war with itself.

It didn't take long for us to find Todd's car. It was in the middle of the street just outside the Avenues. It'd been turned to Swiss cheese.

We stopped, and I practically tore the seatbelt off me. But when I reached the car, I couldn't find any blood. No sign of Todd or Tania. No nothing.

Desmond waited while I took my fury out on the bullet-riddled vehicle. White-hot fire bubbled out of every pore of my body, from every sore and every cut. I threw myself against the car, knowing it would hurt me more than it. That was okay. I wanted to hurt.

Finally, there was no more anger. Desmond came to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and let me back to his car.

"I shouldn't have—"

"To hell with your shouldn't have, guy," Desmond said. "It ain't done, yet, you hear me? We'll find her."

"Fuck you. I lost her. I fucking lost her."

I panted, face hot, and swallowed down the pain in my chest. Damn it all.

After a minute, Desmond put his hand on my shoulder and gently pulled me away from the bullet-riddled car. I let him lead me back across the road.

"Look," Desmond said quietly, "what was the last thing the cop said before the line went dead?"

I tried to piece the call together in my head. "He told her to run."

"So maybe she's not with him anymore. Maybe she got free."

He was right. And if that was true, that meant she couldn't have gone far. But where the hell would a scared teenage girl go in this part of town?

No. That wasn't the question to ask. She wasn't a scared little girl, not at the moment. Rob said she'd been getting aggressive at the hospital. Tania was crafty, but aggressive? That wasn't like her. Unless...

"The Chroma," I said. "Christ. She's withdrawing from it."

Shit. I should've seen this coming. It hadn't crossed my mind that she'd be hooked after a single hit.

I looked out the car window, down a sloping hill. Down to the Avenues. She wasn't a scared girl. She was a junkie. And she'd do what junkies do best when their stash runs out.

"We're going to the Avenues," I said.

Desmond gunned the engine.

The Avenues were lined with trees, but most of them were dead all year round, their roots covered in cigarette butts and empty beer cans. The place had always been a shit-hole, but it didn't look like anyone would have to worry about it much longer. It was a goddamn warzone.

Buildings were crumbling all around us, or destroyed already. The rain hadn't been enough to wash the debris from the streets; shattered bricks and bits of cars lay scattered across the concrete. One building had spewed its contents across the road, and we had to abandon the car before getting far into the neighborhood.

The people of The Avenues were scattered around in alleyways and huddling under awnings, dressed in multiple layers of old clothes covered in rain and dust. Humans and Vei hung around in about equal numbers, mostly sticking to their own species. Most of them had a shell-shocked look about them, staring blankly ahead. A few of them stared at the destroyed buildings with real emotion in their eyes, anger and grief clear on their faces.

My blood boiled as we walked past. These were people that didn't have much to start with, and now they were left with even less. I wondered if Todd had considered these people when he concocted his schemes.

I could hear explosions and gunfire, but most of it was in the distance. It looked like the fighting had been here in the early hours of the gang war, but it had already moved on. I didn't know exactly how many Tunnelers were in the city, but it had to rate in the high hundreds, maybe even a couple of thousand. That was a lot of destruction that could be dished out.

Few of the displaced residents of The Avenues looked at us as we hurried along, trying to stay out of the rain as much as possible. It was Gravedigger territory, but they didn't seem to be around. Probably off fighting somewhere else. The only people that took any notice of Desmond and I were the drug dealers.

They were easily recognizable by the loose collections of junkies around them. My breath caught when I saw the vials they were selling from cardboard boxes and out of the back of cars. God, if all these dealers were selling Chroma...

But no, when I got close enough to see, it didn't have the color of the Chroma vial in my pocket. The fluid inside was black, an impossibly dark black that almost seemed to suck in the light around it. It was just Ink.

Just Ink. That thought would've seemed ridiculous a few weeks ago. But compared to Chroma it was no worse than a cup of weak tea.

"Any ideas where she'd be?" Desmond asked me when we took shelter under the awning of a mostly-intact building.

I chewed my lip as I thought. Jesus, this was no place for a teenage girl. "These small-fry dealers aren't selling Chroma. That's what she wants. Todd's probably keeping as much of it in reserve as practical. If I was him, I'd restrict distribution to certain sellers to get maximum bang for my buck."

"So we need to find someone besides these street dealers, somewhere a Tunneler might go."

"Bingo."

The answer ended up being a relatively undamaged bar on the corner of a pair of particularly nasty streets. The bar had a den of violence look about it, less of a speak-easy and more of a Wild West saloon. A lowly Gravedigger initiate was on guard duty outside the old stone building, a few bits of metal in his ears and a leather vest across his chest.

I pointed the place out to Desmond. "What do you reckon?"

"Looks like a friendly place. You think they would've let Tania in here?"

I didn't doubt it. A good-looking young girl, penniless and desperate for drugs, wearing little more than a hospital gown? It made my throat clench to think what she might already have been through. If they'd laid a hand on her...

"Miles? You're glaring."

He was right. I was giving the bar's bouncer the stinkeye, and that wasn't likely to make me any friends. I smoothed my face, pressing my feelings down where they could simmer undisturbed.

"This has gotta be it," I said, nearly managing to convince myself. "It's gotta be."

The initiate Gravedigger looked me up and down as I approached, a smirk on his face saying exactly what he thought of me. He was little more than a kid, not much older than Tania. Maybe thought he was cool, standing there in his gimp suit, or maybe life hadn't thrown any better options his way. Whatever, I didn't care. All I wanted was to get Tania back.

"Hit the road," he said, jerking his thumb at the street as if we were too dumb to hear what he said.

The two of us stopped in front of him. I shoved my hands in my pockets and glanced at Desmond. His playful half-grin had returned. He had the look on his face he always got when he was reminiscing, a quirk in his eyebrows and his eyes off to one side. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was: that kid would've still been learning his times tables when we were getting scraped off the floor of bars like this.

Ah, memories.

"You hear me, asswipes?" the kid said, his smirk fading into a kind of petulant anger. "Get lost."

"Kids these days," I said to Desmond, and he snickered. I returned my attention to the bouncer, affecting a bored expression. "Look, son. We don't want to cause you any trouble. We just heard there was some new dope floating around, and we wanted to get our hands on some before this whole neighborhood burns to the ground. Can you help us out?"

He frowned, giving me another once-over. "You cops?"

"We look like cops?" I said spreading my damp, ripped jacket by the lapels.

"You don't," he said, then nodded at Desmond. "He does."

"I'm not a cop, guy." He shoved his hand in his pocket, and the Gravedigger reached for his belt, but Desmond just pulled out a thick wad of cash. "Can we come in?"

The Gravedigger gave the bills a suspicious stare, but made no move to take them. He trapped his lip piercing between his teeth, chewed on it for a moment, then gave us each another look. "All right, get the fuck inside. Go talk to Brad Darney in the corner. He'll set you right."

I tipped an imaginary hat to the man. "You're a gentleman and a squire, good sir." I feigned a step forward, then paused as if considering. "Say, you don't happen to know if you're got any good tail in there?"

The Gravedigger's face split into a grin that made me want to punch his lights out. "Matter of fact, just got some fresh meat in a few minutes ago. Young, perky." He licked his lip piercing. "Might have to fight Brad for her though. He's always looking for a bit of tight, clean pussy."

I shoved my hands back into my pockets to keep them from gouging out the smug fucker's eyes. What I wouldn't give for a pair of pliers and the chance to show that son of a bitch what I could do to those pretty little piercings of his.

Desmond slapped me on the shoulder and gave me a warning look. "You hear that? Let's get inside before all the good ones are snatched up."

He gave me a rough shove in the center of my back, and I grudgingly took a step forward. The Gravedigger gave me a funny look as I went past him. I told myself to be calm. I had more important things to defend than Tania's honor.

The inside of the bar was about the sort of hole I expected. Most of the bar's inhabitants were smoking, giving the place a feel of unexplored rain forests. The bar's patrons completed the look. They were predators, I could see it in their eyes.

Most huddled over drinks or leered at the women—some human, some Vei—wandering around in skirts so short I wondered why they even bothered at all. Most of the women wouldn't have made the cut in one of the Silk Dragon's brothels—few of them had their entire collection of teeth—but standards must've been lower in this part of town.

I got to admit, I was surprised how many people had stayed around drinking and whoring after the neighborhood had been blown half to bits. I suppose the ones that didn't feel much like fighting had nothing better to do now. The bar contained humans and Vei in about equal numbers, though the Vei tended to be the dirtier ones, the ones that looked like they'd been inside a building that had come down on top of them. Many of them huddled around the bar, alone or in small groups, slapping back shots of alcohol like they were water.

I met Desmond's eyes, and he gave me a wide grin and a couple of raised eyebrows. I shook my head at his eagerness. The quiet life had ruined him.

I tucked in my shirt, smoothed down my curls, straightened my lapels, and plunged into sweating mass of humanity. The rain and humidity gave everything a wet dog smell. I didn't mind; it was perfume compared to all the corpses I'd been smelling lately.

The dealer, Brad Darney, wasn't hard to spot. He was a human man with his boots up on a table in the corner, one arm around a topless Vei woman while his hand groped her pale breast. In contrast to most Gravediggers, he went easy on the leather and spikes, sticking with jeans and an immaculately clean black shirt. Only a pair of studded gloves and a single cheek piercing indicated his allegiance.

The booth was occupied by a few girls and someone who looked like a bodyguard. A loose crowd of well-dressed onlookers surrounded the booth. Occasionally one would trade a wad of cash for a vial or two from the bodyguard and steal away back into the crowd. A box sat on the table, stacked with vials. It drew the attention of everyone in the room, including me.

That was when I saw Tania. She'd picked up an ill-fitting skirt and a shirt to go over her hospital gown. She was soaked through from the rain outside. Her hair was tangled and damp like the rest of her. She hovered just to the left of Darney's booth while some sleazebag in a hooded sweatshirt pressed in close to her. She didn't look at him, though. Her eyes were fixed on the box of Chroma. And she was closing in on it.

"Ah, shit," I said. "Des, can you run interference?"

"On it." He shouldered his way through the crowd toward Darney's table while I went for Tania.

The hooded guy reached for Tania, but she ducked under his arm and slipped out away. Swearing, he snatched at her again, but she kept on the move, sliding through the crowd to Darney's table.

I got to her a moment before she pounced like a jungle cat. She reached forward, arm snaking out from behind the bodyguard's head, her fingers stretching for the Chroma.

"The hell?" the bodyguard said. He spun in his chair, a snarl on his face.

I wrapped my arms around her waist and yanked her backward. Her sunken eyes flashed to my face. "What are you doing?"

There was a scuffle behind me, and I turned to find Desmond staring directly into the bodyguard's face. It came complete with cauliflower ears and a permanently deformed nose, making him look like a boxer who'd lost more fights than he'd won. Delaney was standing, his hands clutched protectively around his Chroma, all attempt at class gone. The crowd in the immediate vicinity had gone quiet, the sort of quiet that comes on when everyone's expecting a fight.

Desmond glanced at me and gave me a smile small enough that only I'd see. He wiggled his hand a little, showing me the Pin Hole etched into a piece of custom brass, already splashed with Kemia. I nodded and took Tania by the hand. Desmond could handle himself against that chump.

I, on the other hand, had the tough job. I had to get Tania away from the Chroma, and it wasn't an idea she was taking to.

"Let me go," she shrieked, twisting her arm in my grip.

I held on tighter and tugged her through the crowd. "No. I'm getting you home."

The hooded guy reappeared through the crowd and shoved his meaty palms against my chest. "That one's mine," he said, showing me his three gold-capped teeth. "Get your own."

I sighed. Fucking punk. "Wrong words, kid," I said. "Wrong words."

I slugged him in the chin. My knuckles exploded with sweet, satisfying pain, as the chump stumbled backward and slammed into a group of young Vei men.

The crowd surrounding me immediately erupted into screams, but I didn't stop to enjoy the ambience. I gripped Tania's wrist tighter and kept moving.

"I just wanted one, damn it." Tania struggled against me, for all the good it did her. "You can't tell me what to do."

"You're not yourself." I shoved through a small knot of gawking Vei women, not giving a damn what they thought. "Come on."

Another shout came from behind me, and I sensed Desmond opening his Pin Hole, chaos on the edge of perception. I glanced back through the crowd and caught a glimpse of him grinning. Plucky bastard was having way too much fun.

I shoved Tania back out into the rain, a little rougher than I intended. The bouncer from before glanced at the girl then looked at me with a grin and a wink, and I just managed to refrain from kicking him in the kneecaps. I fixed him with a scowl instead and pushed Tania out around the corner.

"I said let me go!" she said, and ripped her arm away from me.

"Enough!" I roared. My face was growing hot, blood pounding through my head. Something in my expression shocked her into silence, and her eyes opened wide, her eyebrows disappearing up into her hairline.

She stared at me for a few more seconds with that same look on her face, raindrops trickling down her face. She was shivering. Then she inclined her head and dropped her eyes. Her tongue darted out, licking her lips.

"I didn't want to leave the hospital," she said, hugging herself. "I didn't want to go with the cop, but he took me anyway."

I fought down a tightening in my chest, and I pulled her against me. "It's okay. We're going to get you home."

She pressed her head against my chest. "Okay, Miles. Whatever you say."

I started to breathe a sigh of relief, then I felt a subtle shift in weight in my jacket pocket. I slapped my hand to my side, trapping Tania's hand inside. "What are you doing?"

The snarl returned. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand from my pocket. She was clutching the vial of Chroma I'd got off Ugly in Heaven.

"Tania," I whispered.

She bared her teeth at me and struggled against my grip. I held tight. I couldn't do anything else. I wasn't angry anymore, or disgusted, or anything else. I was nothing.

Tania's anger slipped as I stared at her, then her face broke completely. Tears flooded her eyes and she collapsed into my arms, sobbing violently.

I ran my hand down her damp hair. She was so small, like a little kitten out in the rain.

My pocket started making noises. I almost didn't notice at first, I was so far away. But something about the shrill ringing nagged at me, so I pulled O'Neil's phone from my pocket.

I answered the call.

"O'Neil, where are you?" Todd's voice was strained. "They ambushed me, and the girl got away. We're changing up, and we're doing it now."

"Detective, I've got some bad news for you about your Tunneler girlfriend."

There was a pause and an intake of breath. "Miles."

"Why'd you take Tania?" I clenched my teeth, refusing to let my rage boil over.

"Listen to me you little piece of shit, do you know how much you've fucked everything? When I find you—"

I hung up.

"Miles." I glanced over my shoulder to find Desmond standing behind me. "Is she..."

I stroked her hair again, and she burrowed her face into my chest. "She's okay. But I need you to take her back to the hospital."

He frowned a little. "What are you going to do?"

I disentangled Tania from my arms and took the Chroma back from her. She resisted a little, then let go with a sob. I passed her over to Desmond.

"Miles," he said, louder this time. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find Todd."

Tania collapsed into him, weeping. His eyes went wide and he grabbed me by the jacket with his spare hand. "What? Tell me you didn't just say that."

"You heard me. I'll deliver O'Neil's phone to Vivian, then I'm going to track down Todd. I need to have a little face-to-face chat with him. Some things you just can't say over the phone."

"You remember what happened last time you two had a chat?"

"This is different."

"No, this is stupidity incarnate."

"Maybe." I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned away.

"Damn it, guy, don't be an idiot. Why are you doing this?"

"Because," I said. "Just because."

## CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I left Desmond and Tania to get a cab while I took Desmond's car. The drive went by in a blur of slick streets and distant gunfire. I was speeding, but no cops were going to bother pulling me over. They had more important things to worry about.

I clutched O'Neil's phone in my hand while I drove. There was no way in hell I was letting the thing out of my sight. It was all I had to get to Todd, and by God I was going to do it.

I'd allowed that son of a bitch to hurt Tania too many times. I wasn't going to do it again. This wasn't even about Bluegate anymore, no matter the way my stomach burned every time I heard another building crashing down.

Maybe the cops could stop Todd without me, maybe Vivian would get what she needed to take him down. But I couldn't wait for that. I was going to give Vivian the cell phone and tell her everything I knew.

Then I was going to track him down and bring him to his knees.

I slammed on the brakes outside Vivian's apartment, nearly losing control as I brought the car to a skidding halt. A passing pedestrian running to get out of the rain gawked at me, his mouth hanging open while he stared at my battered face. I slammed the car door behind me and ran up the stairs to Vivian's building. I only hoped she was home. I'd never get to her if she was working, surrounded by cops. And going directly to any other police officers was out of the question. I didn't trust them not to be working for Todd. Vivian was the only one I could rely on.

I used a Pin Hole on the outside lock, took one look at the elevator, and sprinted up the stairs. They were still muddy with the bootprints of the armed police. That was one good thing about all this city-wide destruction; no cops would be spared to hang around Vivian's place waiting for me to come visit. At least, I hoped there wouldn't be.

I reached the fourth floor and realized I couldn't remember which apartment was hers. Then I spotted the fragments of wood on the ground and the still-shattered lock on apartment 402.

"Vivian," I called, pushing the door open. "You home? I got a present for you."

No response. I stood in the doorway, staring around. The cops had really given this place the once over. The apartment had been Spartan already, but the cops had trampled dirt over the bare wooden floor and knocked over the few pieces of furniture so it felt like I was in a haunted house out of some movie.

I stood like an idiot for a few more seconds, then stepped inside, making for her bedroom. If she wasn't here, I'd drop off the phone along with a note. Maybe she was asleep. God knows I would be if I had the chance.

"Vivian?" I tried again.

A muffled noise answered me this time. It hit me too late. I opened the bedroom door and took a step inside.

Vivian lay on the bed, fully dressed, her normally perfect hair mussed and tangled around her face. She bore a fat lip that trickled blood and drool down onto her chin and the collar of her shirt. Her eyes were half-shut, and all I could see were the whites.

No, no, no. My thoughts were already yammering as I followed her arms up above her head, to where her wrists were attached to the headboard with a pair of handcuffs.

Fuck. No. She had to be alive. She was tough. Oh Jesus, who the fuck had done this?

I took a step toward her. Then came a single, ominous click, the sort that only comes from a gun.

"Easy, Miles," Detective Todd said. "That's enough."

I froze. Well, my legs did, but my hands had different ideas. They went for the Pin Holes in my pocket.

"Don't be a fuckwit." Todd stepped out of the dark corner to my right, and I swear I could sense the bullet quivering in the pistol barrel. "I'm too jumpy to have you fiddling in your pockets. Come on, hands high."

I hesitated for a moment, then obeyed. Getting shot didn't seem like a particularly heroic move right now.

"Enjoying yourself, Todd?" I asked, eyeing Vivian. Her chest was rising and falling, but slowly. She was alive. Alive. I allowed myself to breathe. "Is destroying the city everything you thought it'd be?"

He was nothing like the strong, confident cop in the interrogation room a couple of days ago. His face was drawn, as tired as mine must've been. The stubble on his cheeks had gone well past five o'clock shadow. His haggard eyes watched me—never looking at Vivian—and something in them made me shiver.

"I knew you'd come talk to her sooner or later. Where is it?" he asked.

"Where's what?"

"The phone."

"What phone?"

He took a step forward and raised the gun to my head. "Don't fuck with me, Miles."

"You'll kill me if I give it to you."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I haven't decided yet. You pissed me off, but maybe I'll give you a pass, if you play nice."

"What've you done to Vivian?"

"She's fine," he said without looking at her.

"She doesn't look fine."

"I gave her a little something. She'll be all right, as long as you do what I say." He held out his hand. "The phone. Now."

Son of a bitch. I didn't have a choice. "Right jacket pocket."

"Get it. Slow-like."

I lowered my hand slowly into my pocket, pulled out the phone.

"Good," he said, jerking his gun slightly. "Toss it."

I threw it to him, and he caught it with one hand.

"Good," he said again.

He hurled the phone at the floor.

"No!" I shouted.

The phone shattered, sending bits of plastic flying in every direction. That was everything, everything I had. I took a step forward and got a gun in my face for my trouble.

Todd shoved me back against the wall and stomped on the remaining bits of the phone. The crack went right through my skull and into my soul.

I closed my eyes and fought back the twisting pain in my gut. "You done?"

Todd gave the phone one more stomp. Vivian groaned and shivered, then she was still again. I needed to get her the hell out of here. Todd was crazy, and she was in desperate need of a doctor.

"What did you think you were going to do, huh, Miles?" Todd asked. "You think this one little cell phone would turn everyone against me?"

"I'm sure they'll figure it out soon. Your eyes are too close together, classic criminal trait."

"You think you're such a righteous little shit, don't you?" He stabbed his finger toward me.

"Not really, but it doesn't take much to be more righteous than you."

He spat. "Fuck you, Miles. You think you've seen the underside of this city? You haven't seen shit. I've spent hours searching the bodies of junkies that've got on the wrong side of someone or other. I've spent decades fighting the scum that rule these streets. I was first on scene when the twelve-year-old daughter of a Silk Dragon whore was kidnapped by a group of Gravediggers. Those sick fucks shoved the barrel of a .45 in her cunt and emptied the clip into her. I'm the only one who has the guts to do what it takes to save this city."

"It doesn't look very saved to me. Damn it, Todd, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"For decades I did my job, did it clean. And my son paid the fucking price. I won't let it happen again, Miles. Never again." Todd shook his head and waved the gun at me. "But you, you had to go fuck everything. You motherfucker. You ruined everything."

"Me? I haven't done jack."

He rammed the barrel of the gun against my forehead so hard I nearly fell. "Don't lie to me!" he roared. "You got Vivian involved. You went blabbing to her, turned her against me. She came to turn me in. You made me do this to her!" He jabbed his finger toward her unconscious form.

I opened my mouth, but he didn't stop. "But that wasn't enough, was it? You talked to Andrews' bitch. You're in with them."

I stumbled back away from the gun, but Todd advanced on me.

"I'm with no one. But I had to do something." I sidestepped away, moving closer to Vivian. I had to check she was okay. "I had to try to make someone see sense."

He stared at me with widening eyes. "You fucking bumbling moron. What the hell did you think would happen when you talked, huh?" He bared his teeth. "You told them my name!"

I needed to get out of here. Todd was off his rocker. But Vivian was cuffed, and I couldn't leave her alone with him. Who knew what he'd already done to her?

I glanced around for something—anything—to distract Todd. God, why wasn't there anything?

"Andrews hit my home, worked over my wife...ex-wife." He clutched at his silver hair with his free hand. "That lumpfish fucker found my distributors. Was that you?"

I held up my hands and backed into the wall. "No. Maybe O'Neil talked. I found her body."

He shot a look out the window. I don't know if he even heard what I said. "He's controlling the Chroma. All of it, except the little I distributed before he attacked. He got my imports, he got my suppliers, he got everything. You understand me now? You see what you've done?"

My head pounded. I prayed that Todd was bluffing, trying to throw me off, but I could tell by the fear in his eyes it wasn't true. This wasn't Todd's war anymore. It was Andrews'.

Jesus, I'd been stupid. I'd all but delivered Bluegate to Andrews with a strip-o-gram and a can of whipped cream. With that much Chroma, he could do anything. He could play the other gangs off against each other and finish off the winner if he wanted. He could buy and sell anyone he felt like, right down to the guy picking up his garbage.

What the hell was I supposed to do now? The cops could've taken down Todd. He was operating under the radar; he didn't seem to have many people with him. But how the hell could anyone take down John Andrews with an army of gangsters and jacked-up Tunnelers at his back?

Vivian's head rolled to the side, her eyes flickering. She was drugged off her face.

"Let Vivian go," I said. "Let me get her to the hospital. She didn't do this. She trusted you, the stupid woman."

Todd shook his head. "It doesn't work like that, Miles. You should know that."

"Then let's go outside and you can kill me in the alley. It'll save her having to clean my brains off her floor."

"I ain't killing you. Not yet."

"I haven't got all day. Get the fuck on with it."

"I'm not killing you because you have to do something for me. You're gonna make amends for selling me out to Andrews."

"Yeah?" I sneered to cover up with quiver in my cheek. "Like hell."

"You're gonna get my Chroma back from Andrews. All of it."

I stared at him. "You really are a complete nutjob. I'd rather save the trouble and take your bullet here."

He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. "No Miles, you're going to do it. You're going to do it for her."

He waved his hand at Vivian. Right on cue, a horrible noise came groaning from her mouth, one long, awful monotone note.

The gun was against my ribs before I'd even realized I was moving. "Back up."

I watched, helpless, as a tremor ran through her limbs. Her wrists were raw where the handcuffs cut into them.

My hands formed fists, for all the good it did them. "What the bloody hell did you do to her?"

Then I caught sight of the puncture wounds in the crook of her left arm, the same ones that Tania had. No. Oh God, no.

Todd read my mind, his face twisting horribly. "I had to. I didn't want to, but you made me, Miles. This is your fault."

"Tell me you didn't, you son of a bitch."

"Five vials of Chroma," he said, his eyes fixed on me. "All at once. The chemist told me that would be enough to kill someone, but not quickly. She has..." He checked his watch. "...about five or six hours, give or take."

"No." I reached for her, and he shoved me away. I stared at him, pleading. "No. This is ridiculous. You've lost, Walt."

"Not yet." He absently fingered his gun. "Not yet. She doesn't have to die, Miles. You hear? She doesn't have to die."

My gaze snapped back to him, and he nodded.

"Davies gave me an antidote," he said, "something that'll absorb the drug in her body, stop it killing her."

"Give it to her."

He glanced at her once, then returned his eyes to me. "That's not how it's going to be. You think you're a good man? Prove it. Save her."

I grabbed my hair and tugged, letting out a frustrated scream. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to strike out. I wanted to make a Tunnel and run away and never return. It would be so easy. All I'd have to survive was my guilt.

"You know what you have to do," Todd said.

I nodded.

"Get me what I want," he said, "and I'll give you what you want. My information says he's running everything from his mansion. That's where you'll find him and the stockpiled Chroma. You might want to dress up a bit. Andrews is picky about who he lets through the door."

"You know this is impossible, Walt. But you know what? I'm going to stop Andrews. Not just because you've got yourself a hostage. But because there's good people in this city. And they deserve better than a piece of shit like you or those gangsters you think you're so much better than." My voice came out cold, emotionless. I didn't think I had anything left in me. I couldn't even look at him as I spoke. "But one day I'll make you hurt for this."

"Tick fucking tock, Miles."

I gave Vivian one last look. She'd stopped shivering, and now she lay still, breathing heavily. I still didn't know what she was to me, but that didn't matter. She was a good person. Better than me. If I had to get myself killed saving her, then so be it.

I pulled my coat closed around me and walked out of the room. Todd didn't say anything, and I didn't look back. I knew the deal.

A good cop for a lousy Tunneler. It was a fucking steal.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When I was a kid, before I knew I'd become a Tunneler, I was fostered with a rich old family, one who had lived in Bluegate for generations before it was even called Bluegate. The parents ignored me for the most part, which suited me fine; I'd always perceived adults as authority figures, and more than one social worker had noted I don't deal well with authority.

But the family had a pair of twin boys, a few years older than me. They took responsibility for me, teaching me the ways of school and girls and life. They even let me have the pick of their stash of Playboys and Hustlers they kept under their bed. They kept me on track, kept me away from the drug dealers that used to stand outside the school gates. The year I spent with that family was the most stable I'd experienced in my entire life.

But when I was thirteen, my ability to Tunnel started manifesting, and I started experimenting. The Bore had only existed for about fifteen years by then, and there was still a lot of fear surrounding it. The parents were old-school; they reacted badly to what they were afraid of. They tried beating it out of me at first, and when I still found ways to get my hands on Kemia, they shipped me off to another foster family. They did it while the twins were at school. I never even got to say good-bye.

I'd left school and was studying for my Tunneler's license by the time I tracked them down again. The kick in the guts was that it was at their funeral.

Somehow, despite all they'd taught me, all they'd done to keep me on the rails, they'd fallen in with some nasty people. I never found out exactly what had happened, or why they'd done it, but for some reason they tried a bank robbery. They botched it, and the cops surrounded the place before they could get out with the cash.

The media couldn't figure out who shot first, but it's not like it mattered. There was a firefight between the twins and the police, and when the smoke cleared, both boys were filled with holes.

I turned up drunk to the funeral. The caskets were closed. After the service, after their bodies were shoved in the dirt, me and a few of the twins' cousins drank the bar dry. I blubbed the whole time, asking everyone I could what had happened, how the hell they had got involved with the wrong kind of people.

The answer I got was always the same. No idea. Not one person had been close enough to them to notice their downhill slide. They seemed so confident helping me, but no one had been there to help them.

I thought of the twins as I pulled Desmond's car up beside a payphone on the side of the street. This city didn't just take innocents, it corrupted them. Maybe Todd was right, maybe Bluegate could only be purged by fire. Or maybe he was batshit insane. It didn't matter. I'd do what he told me. I didn't have a choice.

Night had fallen. The rain hammered on me as I got out of the car and walked through puddles to the phone booth. Spray-painted tags covered the booth, and one of the glass panels had been shattered.

I stepped out of the rain and picked up the battered receiver. It had a dial tone, which was something of a miracle in this city. I fed some coins into the machine and punched in Desmond's cell phone number. He picked up on the first ring.

"How's Tania?" I asked.

"She's settled down a bit. Fought me all the way back to hospital, but they gave her something to help her sleep. She's got sharp teeth, I'll give her that."

"That's good. Listen, I need you to do me a favor."

"I'll add it to the list," he said, but I could hear the smile in his voice. "What's up? Did you reconsider your idiot plan to find Todd?"

I ignored the question. "I need you to keep Tania safe. She needs to be taught how to Tunnel, okay? Like I asked you before. Her mother might not like it too much, but you have to convince her. Tania won't take any convincing."

"Well...yeah sure, guy, but why don't you—"

"It's complicated. Sorry to do this to you, I know it won't be cheap, just do the best you can."

"I'm not worried about the money. Miles, what the hell are you planning?"

Part of me wanted to tell him, but it was too risky. I knew Desmond, he'd either try to stop me or try to come with me. Neither was an option. I'd hurt enough people already. Hell, if I hadn't gone meddling, the city wouldn't be in nearly as bad a state. I was going to finish this by myself, or give it my damnedest shot.

"I've got to go, Des. Thanks for all your help."

"I swear to God, man, if you're doing something stupid—"

I hung up. I wouldn't allow myself the chance of being talked out of this. I was balanced on the edge as it was, being pulled one way by my guilt and the other by my fear. I didn't trust my moral compass to not send me running in the opposite direction.

I got back in the car and pulled back onto the road. Traffic was light in the darkening evening.

There was nothing else for it, no more delays, no more hesitation. Time to wrench the city from one madman's claws and hand it over to another.

Andrews' mansion wasn't hard to find. Everyone in the city knew where it was. I passed several groups of armed suits stalking the streets on my way, but none of them gave me much more than a glance. The sounds of gunfire were distant; Andrews' gang were fighting their war away from home.

I stopped the car a block from the mansion and walked the rest of the way, using the surrounding cars and houses for cover. The mansion was set on a spacious section, surrounded by a tall iron fence topped with vicious spikes. The rain didn't seem to have affected the grounds much; the lawns looked neat and perfectly trimmed with a dozen tastefully-placed trees set around the place. You could practically smell the blood that paid for the place.

I ducked behind a parked car and watched as several men and Vei in suits patrolled inside the fence, submachine guns slung over their shoulders. There were another two or three at the iron gate, giving hard stares to the cars that occasionally passed. A pair of security cameras watched the gate, and a few more were scattered around the grounds, raised up on white poles.

I could just make out the mansion itself behind a row of high hedges. It was implausibly white and big enough that you'd need a map and a team of Sherpas to get from the bathroom to the kitchen.

I crouched down and rested my forehead against the cool, wet car door. My stomach twisted itself into knots just looking at the place. Jesus, how the hell was I supposed to get through all that? I was a Tunneler, not a superhero. There had to be at least a dozen armed guards in the grounds, and who knew how many more inside the mansion.

What the hell was I doing? Todd knew damn well I couldn't take the Chroma back by myself. Andrews had doubled his territory in a matter of hours, and I didn't have a hope in hell of dealing with his insane, Chroma-enhanced Tunnelers.

A bell rung in my head, a low, mournful sound. It came to me in an instant, what I had to do. A wave of nausea washed over me. It was stupid, dangerous, suicidal. The thought of it made me sick.

And I had no other choice.

I reached into my pocket with a reluctant hand and pulled out the little vial of Chroma. It was such an innocent-looking thing, with a dozen colors shimmering in the light from the street lamp.

"You little bastard," I said to the Chroma, well aware how crazy it would have looked. Hell, madness ruled the city now. Maybe it was time to let madness guide me.

I didn't have a needle, but I was a Tunneler. A Tunneler made his own. I flipped open my knife and scratched a quick circle in the paintwork of the car I was leaning against. Someone would be pissed tomorrow, but I wasn't expecting to be around to deal with it.

I splashed on a decent helping of Kemia. It wasn't going to be a perfect Pin Hole, but it would have to do. I kept my humming quiet. No point announcing my presence early.

As I opened the Pin Hole, it occurred to me this might be the last time I'd do it. At least with my sanity intact. I would've liked to go to Heaven one last time. There were whole regions I'd only heard about, places I could get lost in, free of other people's meddling. But that was all pissing in the wind now. I had promises to myself to break.

Energy drained from me as I blew open the Pin Hole. The knife didn't morph into a syringe, it just _was_ a syringe. I sucked in a breath and shook the fatigue from my head.

The syringe's needle gleamed in the streetlight. I pushed it through the vial's diaphragm and drew back the plunger. The Chroma seemed eager; it flowed toward the needle and up into the syringe. I drew up the entire contents of the vial. No point doing things by half, not anymore.

I rolled up the sleeves on my left arm and pulled it tight around my bicep to act as a tourniquet. The vein in the crook of my elbow bulged. It wouldn't have if it knew what was coming. I cast one more look at Andrews' mansion as I pressed the tip of the needle against my skin, then closed my eyes. Vivian's face appeared to greet me.

Fuck it all.

I shoved the needle in, angling along the vein. Blood flowed up into the needle and swirled among the shifting colors of the Chroma. It was kind of pretty, in a screwed up way.

I pushed down on the plunger. The Chroma went in smoothly, sliding down the syringe like oil. A tingling sensation rolled up my arm, away from the puncture site, and within a couple of seconds the Chroma was inside me.

I hurled the syringe to the pavement. I released the Pin Hole and there was a crackle of energy, then the syringe became a knife again. I felt sick, I felt like I'd betrayed myself, I felt like I'd betrayed everyone.

And then I didn't feel anything.

The Chroma hit me like a truck. It must've been a gasoline truck, because a second later my brain burst into flames. I can only assume I fell, because the next thing I knew I had a mouth full of stones and dropped cigarette butts.

I screamed. My skull burned and froze at the same time, my eyes were bleeding, every conceivable sound was being pumped directly into my brain, nails were driving into every inch of my skin. The world shimmered, sparkled, twisted and writhed, became shredded and shattered, all of reality stripped away around me.

I scrambled to my feet, but I couldn't escape. The Universe closed in around me, imploding, sucking me outward at the same time. It was inevitable, it was everything. Every atom of my body flew apart, becoming everywhere at once. I lived. I died. I ceased to exist.

I was born. I came screaming into a world of chaos, my arms shooting out of a space below my eyes. The rest of me grew into being a moment later, shifting into existence from some un-place.

There was a castle in front of me, a white castle surrounded by iron walls and snaking forests. Something evil lived in there, a King that wanted to hurt me, to kill me, to take away my sanity. For I was sane now, I knew that, saner than I'd ever been before.

Before? An odd thought. There was no before, there would be no after. There was just the now, and the me, and the castle, and the King.

I had legs now, I realized. It took me a moment to work out what they were for, and then I remembered. They were for running. I grinned.

I hurled myself at the castle, the stone barely touching my feet. Reality broke around me like water over the bow of a boat. I could taste the flutter of a butterfly a million miles away. I was flying, invincible. I was a mother-fucking God.

I was almost at the wall when I saw the monsters. Dozens of the green, misshapen creatures loped through the castle's surroundings, their jaws snapping, their limbs twisting in impossible ways. Each of them was different, each of them was hideous. A yammering escaped my throat, an involuntary screech of pure fear. They were going to destroy me.

One of them turned his five unmatching eyes toward me. My heart vibrated like a hummingbird. His jaw fell open, exposing a black abyss inside him. The vortex spun, his festering chest expanded, and he let out a primal alarm call.

The monsters snapped toward me. They knew me. I couldn't hide. I couldn't run. There was only one way I could survive.

Something tingled at the edge of my consciousness, an awareness that'd been tickling at me my whole life. An awareness of possibility, an unbelievable sense of control. I rolled my eyes backward into my head and let improbability reign. I saw everything that could be, everything that might have been. I saw the earth shifting, becoming rivers and mountains and volcanoes. I saw buildings collapsing and rebuilding. I saw entire species evolving and dying.

And I saw what I needed. I fixed the monsters in my vision, grasped a plane of reality, and punched a hole in it.

And then I set the air on fire.

An inferno roared from my fingertips, a giant cone of fire so powerful the heat of it blistered my face. The iron gates burst open in an explosion of force, one of them coming off the hinges entirely.

My legs carried me forward, the fire gushing in front of me. One of the monsters let out a rage-filled scream before the fire engulfed him. Another pair of monsters bounded toward me on insect legs, sparks flaring in front of them.

Some strange voice—a voice that was me and yet not me—shouted for me to stop. It didn't want me to kill them.

It was trying to trick me. The monsters wanted to kill me. I had to kill them first. I turned the cone of flame toward the monsters, leaving a trail of burning grass. I was screaming, I think. I could smell rancid burning flesh.

Pure fear, thick as honey, pounded through me, even as I destroyed my enemies. Every time I killed one, I made them more angry. I didn't understand. Why did they want to kill me?

"Leave me alone!" I screamed, engulfing another monster in fire. The words didn't come out right. Some creature was in my throat, playing my vocal cords like his own guitar. I gave a gurgling cough to get it out, but it clung on, and then I couldn't remember what I was doing.

A burst of lightning came from the window of the castle in front of me, and grass and dirt flew up into the air around me. Pain exploded in my forearm, the sting of a million angry wasps.

My concentration dropped as the pain struck me, and my cone of fire slipped back out of existence, leaving nothing but a bitter smell behind.

I hurled myself to the side as another crackle of lightning flew from the window. The monster's sorcery seemed familiar, but my mind was thick with rainbow fog.

No, not sorcery. A machine. A machine that spat thunder and lead. I grinned. A shadowy memory of a failing thunder machine formed, and I grasped it before it could slip away. I twisted the chaos in my mind, punched a hole in reality. The monster's machine clicked once more, then exploded. A scream and a splash of alien blood flew from the window.

I was unstoppable. I would destroy anything that tried to hurt me.

A tiny flicker of anguish sobbed inside me.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I don't know how many of the monsters' bodies I left behind by the time I reached the center of the castle. They kept trying to kill me, and I kept killing them back. Everything was a swirl of anger and fire and lightning and blood and fear. So much fear. I was swimming in it.

I punched another hole in reality and brought a set of double doors to the ground, shredded like paper. The interior of the castle wasn't stone like I expected, it was white walls and grotesque paintings and ancient artifacts stacked around the grand rooms. The ceilings were high, with chandeliers hanging from them.

The nature of the castle confused and concerned me. It tugged at bits of my mind, memories from another life. The voice inside my head was growing louder, more insistent. "Stop!" it said. "Jesus Christ, why can't I stop?"

I pushed the voice aside and tore open another hole to drop a chandelier onto a monster. The glass tore through its body and thick red blood spewed across the wooden floor and soaked into an animal skin rug. The creature groaned once as the last of its air escaped its throat. I crept closer, heedless of the blood under my feet. The monster was wearing a blue suit. How odd.

Somehow, now that it was dead, it didn't look so monstrous. In fact, its face was pale, with oversized eyes and a wide mouth. It seemed so familiar. The voice in my head screamed and begged for me to stop, but I knew I couldn't. Not until I'd found the King.

I strode through the shredded door, fire singeing the air around me. Calling it a room would be an insult. The place was so huge you'd need to shout to be heard on the other side of the room. Couches and artifacts littered the room, coated with a thin coat of debris from my destructive influence on the place. In the far corner was a huge black table with a long stool in front of it. No, it wasn't a table. It made sounds...music. A piano, that's what it was called.

My head was clearing, the fog slowly diminishing. I could remember some things, little fragments of a broken past. I hadn't been born just minutes ago, like I'd thought. I'd done something to make myself this way, something that flickered on the edge of memory. But that didn't matter. I remembered now why I'd come here, why the monsters wanted to kill me.

"John!" I roared. "I've come for you, John!"

I heard wailing screams—no, sirens—in the distance, but the room remained silent apart from the clatter of falling masonry. I strode into the room, fear burned away by rage. I blinked and I was surrounded by monsters, then I blinked again and they were gone. A thin wave of nausea rolled in my stomach, and I became aware of how tired I was.

"John," I yelled again. "You treacherous bastard, you did this to yourself."

No response. I was getting ready to quit the room and blast down another wall out of sheer rage when something collided with my back.

It took me down hard, knocking the wind clean out of my lungs, and followed up with a raking pain across my shoulders.

I hit the ground face-first, the weight still on my back. It yelled a stream of undecipherable profanities in my ear and my back exploded in more slicing agony. I tried to roll, got halfway there, then found the shoulder of my jacket pinned to the fine mahogany floor.

The shock of the pain and the blow seemed to have knocked some more of the spiders from my mind. The room came into sharper focus, and I realized I wasn't in a castle at all. What the hell had given me that idea?

I didn't have much time to ponder that before I caught sight of what had knocked me down. Compared to this monster, the others looked like teddy bears. Its snout protruded from its wide, pale face, bristling with teeth that could tear a car in half. The tips of the canines were streaked with blood—my blood, I realized with a dully-registered shock.

The rest of him didn't do much more to inspire confidence. His arms were covered in bulging muscle, ending in claws that wouldn't look out of place on a saber-toothed tiger. They were poised above my head, ready to crush, shred or destroy me as appropriate. Inexplicably, the rest of the monster was dressed in a tuxedo, the white fabric spoiled by splashes of red blood.

His grossly misshapen body seemed much more solid than the other monsters I'd been fighting, the ones firing their lightning machines at me. The voice inside me was yelling again, trying to tell me something. I got the feeling it was more scared by this one than it had been by the others. It was more real, somehow.

I shook my head to rid it of the dizziness and flicked my wrist, intending to treat the monster to a fresh blast of fire. He was quicker than me. He raked his claws across my chest, sending a new fire burning through my skin, then followed up with an elbow to my cheek. My head snapped to the side and my ears rang like someone had blown a gas line right next to me.

"You?" the monster said. His snout snapped open and shut in a way that shouldn't be able to produce a voice. Dazed as I was, it took me a second to notice it wasn't English he spoke, but I could understand him anyway. "You dare come to my home?"

I opened my mouth to speak and got another set of claws across my cheek.

"You destroy my property," he snarled, "you murder my people." He snapped his teeth at me. "You talk to my wife!"

Sweat poured from my forehead, stinging skin that I must have scalded during my fire show. Streams of memories were flowing back to me quicker now, converging and making the world around me more real. But at the same time, I could feel the twisting threads of reality slipping away, my connection to Heaven slipping from my grasp.

I recognized the monster atop me now, despite his grotesque changes. "John Andrews," I said. "Fancy meeting you here."

He went for my throat this time, but I twisted aside just in time and he tore into the floor a few inches from my neck. I was rolling before he could strike again. My jacket ripped free of his grasp and I kicked out at one of his legs. I missed and Andrews snapped at my retreating arm, but I got away with only a graze.

My head was swimming—drowning, more accurately—but whether from the blows or blood loss, I had no idea. Or maybe it was the Chroma. I remembered taking it now, remembered the sick feeling as it tracked up my veins.

Oh God, what had I done? I'd killed all those gangsters. Burned them alive. Oh Jesus. My stomach turned and everything went blurry.

Andrews spread his legs wide and leaped at me while I was still trying to get the world back in focus. Not very sportsman-like. I got my nightstick out and in front of me just as he tackled me again, and I dropped unceremoniously to the floor.

Luckily for me, my fall overbalanced him and he stumbled forward, one foot crashing into my chest as he went. Fighting down my instinct to collapse and gasp for breath, I flung my arm wide and my nightstick connected with his ribs, throwing him off me completely.

I was fighting my desire to run, and it was wiping the floor with me. Though my sanity was trickling back in, I still couldn't shake the ice that flowed through my veins, the paranoia.

What's the saying? It's not paranoia if they're really after you? Well, John Andrews was after me, and if he had his way it wouldn't be long before there wasn't a "me" left.

An image of Vivian flashed into my head, alone in that room with Todd. I'd completely lost track of the time. I could've been rampaging through Andrews' mansion for hours by now, and I wouldn't have a clue. She could be a corpse already for all I knew. If I didn't get Todd his Chroma, I'd have another funeral to attend.

Andrews skittered round on all fours like a super-powered wolf and growled at me through his snout. Whatever remnants of bodily control he retained from Heaven were stronger than anything I believed possible. Such radical changes were barely possible even in Heaven, let alone on Earth. I had to end this.

I couldn't afford to kill Andrews—even if I could ignore the blood that already coated my hands and the frantic Lady Macbeth impersonation my conscience was doing—but now wasn't the time for subtlety either.

When he came at me again, I was ready for him. I gathered my dwindling Chroma-powered strength and punched two Pin Holes simultaneously, easily splitting my concentration in ways that would've turned my brain to mush a few hours ago.

The first Pin Hole I crafted for me personally. I took inspiration from Andrews and turned it on myself, letting the chaos wash over me. My body rippled, a cold shiver running through me, and there was a sensation of difference. My ears popped, and suddenly I looked like I'd been breathing steroids instead of air. There were several tearing sounds as my clothes gave way to my bulk in a Mr. Hyde-style makeover. My muscles bulged, and I felt strong enough to rip a bus in two.

The second Pin Hole was simpler, as dealing with inanimate objects usually is. Andrews launched himself at me again, claws outstretched, and I swung my nightstick with both muscled arms. Only, it wasn't a nightstick anymore.

It was a goddamn war hammer.

The palm-sized iron head of the hammer crashed into Andrew's chest, and something cracked—a rib or two, maybe. My arms barely slowed their swing as the force of the blow threw him backward. He slammed into the grand piano, his head catching on the corner, and he rolled to the ground, blood leaking from his forehead and his chest.

I advanced on him as he lay face-down, coughing and wheezing. My strength was intoxicating. I was a modern day Conan the Barbarian in a suit and tie. Chroma-fear mixed with rage, producing a darkness inside me. I refused to look at it too closely. I was afraid it would turn me blind.

Andrews rolled onto his back and tried and failed to sit up. The knock I gave him might've made an accordion out of a normal person, but whatever changes he'd made to himself seemed to be keeping his chest from crushing his heart. Still, it'd done him some serious damage. He was shrinking back into his normal scarred form, his snout retreating into a wide Vei mouth with scattered missing teeth.

"Nice trick, John," I said, flexing my arms and earning my jacket another few tears. "I'll have to remember this one."

Andrews coughed violently and wiped the blood from his eyes to get a better look at me. His eyes weren't quite focused—they kept rolling around like he was on a merry-go-round—but they still had enough anger in them to add another twinge to my fear despite the war hammer in my hands.

"You fucking gaiiran," he said, before lapsing into another coughing fit. "I should have killed you the first time I saw you."

"Yeah, probably." I swung the hammer in an experimental arc, and took a little savage pleasure from the way he flinched. "Then again, I did try to warn you away from the Chroma."

He snarled and clawed at the ground, pushing himself up to lean against the leg of the piano. "I should get my people to kill you for only talking to Caterina. I should kill her for listening."

I brought the hammer down on the piano. The wood shattered and for a moment the sound of tortured music filled the air. "Your people are all fucking dead, John. I killed them, and the ones I didn't kill are too scared to come back. You made me kill them, you son of a bitch!"

I lifted the hammer again and brought it back, preparing to swing and knock Andrews' head right off his shoulders. I could already feel my crazed energy giving way to fatigue, and I knew I couldn't hold these Pin Holes open much longer. I should end him now, while I still could, for everything he'd made me do. "I just wanted to be left alone!"

Andrews stared up at me, eyes blazing. If anyone deserved to die, he did. I'd killed so many people already, thanks to him, thanks to Todd's Chroma, what difference would it make if I killed him too?

Vivian. That's the difference it would make. I didn't have time to find the Chroma myself. If I killed Andrews, I killed any chance of saving Vivian. I'd told myself I wouldn't let her die too. She was good people. I'd had all those noble thoughts of sacrificing myself to save her. But what was dying compared to vengeance?

What was dying compared to losing everything I thought I believed in?

Fuck. I lowered the hammer, released the Pin Holes. They snapped closed and stability took hold again. My hammer was a nightstick, looking pitiful despite the bloodstains that coated it. Another shiver passed through me, and I was me again, a slightly scrawny, unshaven guy with clothes that were now so stretched and ripped I'd have no chance of repairing them.

As I let my connection to Heaven slip away, I knew I wouldn't be able to punch open another Pin Hole like that, not without my usual Kemia and circle. The last of the Chroma drained slowly from me, and I slumped over, feeling like I was wearing a suit of lead. My forearm stung like all hell; I think a bullet had grazed me. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't. Not yet.

"The Chroma, John. I'm taking it. All of it. You're going to give me everything you have on your distributors and the suppliers you poached from Todd."

Andrews spat blood onto the floor. "What the fuck you do you think you are talking about, Tunneler? Who is Todd?"

"Don't screw with me, John. I'm not in the mood." I leaned against the piano for support. My body felt too heavy. "Detective Todd. The asshole who's been running the Chroma racket."

"Ah," Andrews said, nodding slowly, his eyes half-closed. "I remember the detective. I should have known he would be behind this. He was always difficult."

I frowned. Had the blow I'd given him knocked the sense clean out of his head? "Caterina told you about Todd. You sent your goons to clean him out and get your hands on his drug network."

"There, you are mistaken." Another coughing fit shook him, and I waited with clenched fists for it to subside. Finally, he could speak again. "If I knew about your Todd, I would have sliced him into strips and fed him to my dogs. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else."

He threw back his head and laughed, clutching at his chest like every movement caused him agony.

The son of a bitch was bluffing. He had to be. Todd was an asshole, but I couldn't see him sending me off on this suicide mission and killing Vivian if he didn't stand to gain. He was too deliberate, even when he was crazy as a cuckoo clock.

I couldn't afford to sit here puzzling this out. The only reason I'd got this far was because most of Andrews' men and Tunnelers were out fighting around the city. If they came back...

"You're lying," I said, doing my best to hide my uncertainty. "You've got it stashed somewhere, and you're trying to stall me until your people get here. You're going to tell me..." I grabbed him by the labels and jerked him forward. "...or I'm going to start playing xylophone with your ribs."

He grinned at me in a way that made me want to set fire to him right there. "I have no wish to die. I would tell you if I knew. This Chroma is a curse on the city. How can I manage my trade in a pile of ruins, hmmm?"

I stared at him, my knuckles white as I gripped his jacket, my brain doing a loop-de-loop. "Your people are the ones destroying the city."

"My people are defending our territory." He practically growled as he spoke.

"A territory that's expanding considerably."

He shook his head. "This is not possible. My lieutenants..."

"Fuck your lieutenants, John." I didn't have time for this shit. Vivian was dying. "I'm not going to give you three seconds. I'm not even going to give you one. You're going to tell me, right now. Where is the Chroma?"

"I'm sorry Mr. Franco," a woman's voice came from behind me. "He really doesn't know."

I was too tired to spin around, so I shuffled on the spot until the source of the voice came into view. Caterina Andrews wore the same dress I'd pulled off her in the motel room, along with a leather handbag over one shoulder. Her red hair flowed freely behind her like a mane. My heart managed a feeble jump, and the image of what she looked like with a few less clothes flashed uninvited into my mind.

She strolled into the room, her white sandals barely whispering on the floor. Somehow she had escaped the dust of smashed masonry that coated me and Andrews, giving her a kind of pure angel vibe.

"Cat, you got to beat it," I said, suddenly conscious of how ridiculous I looked in my ripped clothes. "You're lucky I didn't accidentally kill you."

"I wish you had," Andrews said, his scarred face twisting horribly. He tried again to push himself to his feet, but did no better than spreading his blood pool a little wider. "One lover kills another. Poetry, eh, you treacherous little bitch!"

The look that Caterina gave her husband would have flash-frozen Hell itself. She had bags under her eyes. Had they been there the last time I'd seen her?

"My dear John," she said, almost purring. "There's no need for insults like that."

"Look, seriously, I don't got time for marital spats," I said, trying to put myself between the two of them. "He's got something I need, and—"

I stopped talking as I felt something shifting in reality. Someone was opening a Pin Hole. It didn't me long to work out who.

Caterina's homely clothing was gone, replaced with a slinky red cocktail dress with a neckline that plunged so low I worried the dress would tear in two. Her footsteps became the click of stiletto heels. Only her hair remained the same, still that free-flowing wave of bronze, but now it seemed more like Medusa's snakes.

In spite of myself, I found my palms sweating, my heart thumping with its good old fear of beautiful women. "Jesus H. Christ," I said. "You're a Tunneler?"

She didn't look at me; she had eyes only for her husband. With every step she took, her clothes changed a little more, each time baring a little more skin, each time more and more likely to slip off completely.

"Husband," she purred, "you have no idea how long I've been waiting for this."

The look on Andrews' face must have mirrored mine, an expression that was one part slack-jawed yokel and two parts sheer bewilderment.

Then it struck me. It was so obvious I can only blame Caterina's tantalizingly shifting clothes for distracting me. She wasn't using a circle for her Pin Holes.

She was on Chroma.

Neither I nor Andrews had the gumption to act before Caterina slid her hand into her handbag. I couldn't even get the breath out of my throat to speak when she pulled free a handgun and aimed it from the hip. The damn thing looked like a howitzer in her slim hands.

"Caterina..." John's voice had a note of pleading in it. It didn't do him any good.

The gun barked twice, ejected shell casings tinkling as they hit the ground. My hands went to my stomach of their own volition, but I hadn't sprung any leaks. No, those bullets weren't for me.

John Andrews slumped over, a hiss of escaping breath the only noise he made as he died. The first shot had hit him right where my hammer had got him, the other had blown a hole in his skull. His white tuxedo wasn't so white anymore.

Caterina lowered the smoking gun and turned to me, a crazed, lopsided smile snaking across her face. "There. Isn't that much better?"

## CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Just for once, I'd like everyone to be who they goddamn say they are. Was that too much to ask?

Caterina stared at me with her Cheshire cat smile, the gun hanging from her side as if it were no more than a shopping bag. Jesus, was I the only sane person in this city?

Well, given the trail of bodies that lay behind me, my sanity could be debated. Probably in a court of law.

My gaze slid from Caterina to her husband's body and back again. Her eyes were bloodshot, her mouth twitching every few seconds. She was handling the Chroma well; neither Tania nor I had stayed so calm.

She was waiting for me to speak, it seemed. Christ Almighty. I was being thrown around so much I was getting whiplash.

"Cat," I started, raising my arms in a desperate pacifying gesture. "Why don't you put away the cannon?"

She just smiled wider and kept the gun in her hand. With a few slinking steps she was in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her breath against my skin. My legs had checked out along with my brain, and I was stuck standing against the piano, a drugged-up murderess in front of me and a dead gangster at my side. This fucking day...

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Caterina said, "but it needed to be done. You understand, of course."

The Chroma had sent her round the bend. At least, I hoped it was the Chroma. What the hell had she been thinking? And since when had she been a Tunneler?

"He was a very bad man," I said, raising my hands. "I'm sure the world will be better now he's got a few extra holes in him. Now about that gun..."

"He wasn't bad," she snapped, and I flinched as she twitched her gun arm. "He was stupid. Inefficient. He would have let the whole Chroma incident pass him by, thinking of it as some new-fangled drug he didn't need. He's always been too caught up in the Ink and alcohol trades to see what he could really do."

"Christ, Cat, tell me this is the Chroma talking," I said, pushing myself back against the shattered piano. I was still flashing with impulses to flee, but the logical part of my brain kept me still. Something told me that in her current state she'd be something like a wild dog chasing the mailman. Your best bet was to look it in the eyes and keep it from biting you in the ass.

Caterina didn't seem to be paying much attention to me anyway. She prodded Andrews' body with her toe, her lips twisting with disgust.

"It was always money with him," she said. "The territory, the gang, even his marriage to me, it was all just a means to an end. He couldn't see what the Chroma could truly be used for."

I didn't like where this train of thought was going, and I wanted to get off. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be an emergency brake. "Well, it looks like you fixed that. Chroma can't be used, Cat. It doesn't play nice with others. I learned that the hard way."

She smiled then, a smile to set my knees shaking. "Look around you, Mr. Franco. Look what we've achieved with Chroma."

"'We'? Much as I'd like it not to have been me who scorched those gangsters, I did this. Not you."

She looked away from Andrews and moved so close I could feel the tips of her breasts pressed against me. Another time, that might have got my engines running, but right now it just made my guts twist all the more fiercely.

I could feel the cold metal of the gun pressed against my side as she wrapped her arms around me, one hand sliding up to stroke my stubble. "Oh come now, Mr. Franco, you're much too smart to think that. It wasn't all a lie, you know. Yesterday morning, in the motel room... I'm sorry I couldn't tell you the truth before, but I just couldn't take the risk. I didn't know whether I should trust you. But when I followed you here, and saw you tear apart my husband's mansion..." She licked her lips, moaning softly. "Then I knew."

Hell. I've met some loony women in my time—in fact, I was having a tougher time thinking of ones who were sane—but this one took the cake.

Still, even despite the gun and the crazy eyes, I wanted to believe this wasn't truly her. She was jacked up on Chroma, it was a miracle she'd only killed her husband. She didn't know what she was saying. She couldn't.

Oh, Cat. I should have known, the first time I saw her.

Beautiful women. They'd be the death of me.

She was so close I could look nowhere but her eyes. In spite of everything, they looked just as pretty as they had in that motel room. That seemed so long ago.

She was waiting for me to ask the question, the only question that could be asked. In spite of myself, the words clawed their way out of my throat, my lips growing dry as they passed. "Knew what?"

"We can be together. You understand me. I know you do."

"You've been jerking the strings on this deal the whole time," I said. It wasn't a question, but she nodded anyway, still smiling that terrible smile. I closed my eyes, but that just made me more aware of her breath on my neck. "I told you about Todd. I told you where to find the Chroma."

"I've known about Detective Todd's plan for months. One of John's people—well, my people, in truth—they spotted that bitch O'Neil meeting with him. I had someone investigate the two of them." She shrugged. "It wasn't hard to get the truth out of their chemist. I've been watching them ever since, mapping out their networks."

"It was you who had O'Neil killed?"

"Better than that. I killed her myself, her and her bodyguards." A perfect smile slid into place. "I admit I did enjoy that one."

My head pounded like someone was going at me with a jackhammer. "So when I told you about Todd, you knew when to move on him, when to seize the Chroma. You had your own people?"

"Some. The others thought they were working for my husband." She smiled. "They were wrong."

"And then you started your war. You tried to take Bluegate."

"Oh, sweetie, I didn't try. I succeeded." She ran her fingertips along a scratch Andrews had gouged in my cheek and strained her face up toward me, her lips an inch from mine. "The other gangs are all but crushed. My Tunnelers have done well. Alas, my poor husband didn't survive the war, but I'm sure most of them will see the sense in following me. And the ones who oppose us, well..."

"Christ, Cat, why? Why the hell are you doing this?"

"I'm going to rule this city, Mr. Franco. There's no stopping it." She leaned forward. "And I want you by my side."

Her lips brushed mine. Warm, moist, inviting. I was getting lightheaded. My left arm was going cold, blood from one of my nastier scratches dripping from my fingertips. Drip, drip, drip.

_Wake up, Miles_. I wasn't done yet. I jerked away from the kiss, leaning back as far as I could with my butt against the broken piano. Caterina's eyes snapped open, her lips still parted slightly, shock morphing into rage.

"What are you doing?" she asked in a tone that suggested my having a pulse depended on my answer.

Naturally, I didn't want to disappoint. "Hell, Cat, you're crazy enough to make Norman Bates look like a paragon of reason. I'm nowhere near psychotic enough to board this ride."

I could tell from her facial twitches my words weren't going down well. I was bleeding like a stuck pig anyway; if I was going to die, I wanted to die like the asshole I was. I'd been manipulated from the beginning, by the cops, by Todd, by Spencer, by Caterina. Well, to hell with that. To hell with them all.

I was going out my way.

Caterina snarled. Her hands slipped away from me and she flicked her wrist. "I offered you a chance, Mr. Franco. I want you to remember that." I sensed reality shifting, a Pin Hole cracking into existence.

So I headbutted her in the face.

Not my classiest move, but I wasn't going gently into that good night. A dull pain split through my forehead as I connected with her nose. She screeched, stumbling back with blood trickling from her nose.

I realized I still had my nightstick in my hand, a hammer no more, but still effective enough. I whipped it across her wrist just as she got her gun up. The gat went off next to my head, deafening me, then it went flying across the room.

With my ears ringing and my head stinging, I bolted. I couldn't go toe to toe with her when she was on Chroma, no way in hell. I had to lay low until the drug wore off. The mansion was big; surely I could find somewhere to hide for an hour or two without getting my skin blown off.

Yeah, like my luck was that good.

The open door ahead of me was suddenly shut, reality still twisting around it, but I put my shoulder into it without stopping and crashed right through. Caterina's scream of rage followed me as I raced up a set of stairs and into a maze of wide hallways.

The off-white walls were covered in portraits of Vei men and woman, but I didn't stop to study them. Something exploded behind me, nearly shaking me from my feet. I just kept running, taking turns at random.

Caterina's heels clicked on the floor behind me, sounding like a machine gun. She was fast, and I was growing tired, weak. My blood left a morbid trail behind me. I couldn't keep this up, and I couldn't escape. I was royally screwed.

The room I found myself diving into was a bedroom that looked so lifeless I doubted it'd ever been used. A guest room, maybe. The huge bed looked lost in the center of the room, with high ceilings stretching above it. A matching set of antique wooden bedside tables flanked the bed, and a vanity complete with polished mirror sat along the opposite wall to catch the light from the wide windows. A makeup kit sat on top, apparently the only non-furniture item in the room. There wasn't even a phone for me to call for help.

I closed the door as quietly as I could, already knowing it was useless; the blood I'd left behind me made for a perfect trail of bread crumbs. For half a second I considered shoving the vanity against the door like they always do in movies, then decided against it. It never stopped the monsters, and it sure as hell wouldn't stop a Tunneler.

I put pressure on the worst of my cuts and backed away from the door. _Think, Miles_. I could make a jump from the window, maybe break an ankle or two. Hell, I could just toss myself out headfirst and speed this whole thing up a little.

It was already plain there was nothing in here I could use to defend myself. I chucked my nightstick on the bed and shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling around for something I could use. I wished I hadn't thrown away my knife so carelessly, but I still had maybe a third of a bottle of Kemia and my standard collection of Pin Hole coins. Rolling them through my fingers, I tried to come up with a use for them, but it was hopeless. Any of the cute little tricks I'd used to get away from Todd or the cops wouldn't do me a lick of good now; Caterina would reverse them and blow me away before I could say, "Boo."

The clicking of Caterina's heels slowed, getting louder, and then stopped completely. She'd found me. I picked up my nightstick and backed away from the door in case she set it on fire or put a lightning bolt through it or something.

Instead, there was just her voice, purring through the crack in the door. "That was very mean of you to attack me like that, Mr. Franco. But I understand. You've been under a lot of pressure lately, and you had to lash out. I forgive you."

"That's awful big of you, Cat," I said, still going through my pockets and praying something useful appeared in there. I was rethinking my policy against guns. "What say we forget this whole thing and have some friends round for a bit of fun? I know some great folks, they bring their own handcuffs. I'm sure they'd love you."

Her laugh drifted through the door. I could only stall her for so long; once she decided it wasn't worth talking to me I'd be no more than a bug for her to squash. If only I had a little more Kemia I could make myself a Tunnel to Heaven, try to outrun her that way.

But no, she'd just disrupt the Tunnel behind me, and I could deal without going through the whole ordeal of a collapsing Tunnel again.

The thought didn't strike me hard, like a bomb going off in my brain. It was more like a worm nibbling its way through my ear. Like all my recent plans, it was stupid, suicidal, and crazy, but my luck had to turn one of these days. Hell, my last crazy plan had ended in me killing a few dozen people; this one couldn't be much worse. It'd be a freaking miracle if I could even pull it off.

"You still in there, sweetie?" Caterina asked, knocking lightly on the door.

"Sure am, babe." I crossed the room to the makeup box on the vanity and flipped it open. There had to be one in here. There had to be. "I'm just getting myself prettied up for you."

"I don't understand why you're being like this. Don't you see what I'm trying to do?"

"Sure I do. You fancy yourself Queen of Bluegate." Ah-ha. I pulled the golden bullet of lipstick from the makeup kit and held it up to the light, unscrewing it. A deep red, a blood red. Fitting, I guess.

"Don't be silly," Caterina said. "I'm trying to make this city better."

"Yeah? That was Todd's plan too. You guys must've got on like a house on fire."

I crept closer to the door, not wanting her to know exactly where I was in case she got sick of talking. This wasn't going to be a circle, it wasn't going to be a normal Tunnel. I had no training for this, no experience, just my gut and a sense of desperation only countered by the silent calm of blood loss. I bent down and began drawing the lipstick along the hardwood floor in a large triangle.

"Miles, I'm being serious. I want you with me. I want you by my side. You've seen how corrupt this city is, how pathetic. Todd thought he could solve all its problems by bringing the gangs down, but he was an idiot. More gangs would rise in their place, there's too much money in Bluegate for it to be any other way. This whole city is rotten, all the way through. But if we took Bluegate, if we controlled it, we could make it better. We could root out all the evil, we could bring justice to the city. Isn't that what you want? Don't you want to be the hero?"

"The hero? Me? Christ, lady, I wouldn't know what to do with that. All I want is for my friends to be safe and a couple of bucks to rub together. Anything more than that is just gravy." I put the finishing touches on the triangle and emptied the bottle of Kemia onto it.

"That's...unfortunate." To her credit, she actually sounded sad. She gave my heartstrings a good tug despite myself. "I have to come in now. If you're not with me..."

"Yeah," I said, stepping back from the door. "I know."

The door slid open almost mournfully. Maybe it was the blood loss talking, but as Caterina took a step inside, her dress shimmering around her, I could almost believe she really didn't want to kill me. And despite everything, despite the bruises and blood on her face from where I struck her, she did look beautiful. She stared straight at me, and I found myself meeting her eyes without fear.

"Please don't make me kill you," she whispered.

I shrugged. "You gotta do what you gotta do."

"Miles, I think I love you."

My heart twisted, a dull pain deep in my chest. I held back my emotion behind a brick wall and closed my eyes. "Sorry, Cat. That's not enough."

The Tunnel wasn't like anything I'd ever opened before, and it required a different mind state to anything I was used to. It wasn't about chaos or order, it was about life and survival. It was animalistic.

I opened my eyes just as she noticed what lay beneath her feet. She stood in the center of the triangle, her mouth dropping open just enough to let out a gasp. And then the Tunnel opened.

Quick as a cat she hurled herself backward into the hallway, a vengeful spark of fire leaping from her fingers and singeing my hair. I stumbled to the side, trying to gain some measure of cover behind the bed, already knowing it was useless. If my gambit with the Tunnel failed, there wasn't a damn thing I could do to save myself.

Caterina picked herself up, cast a disdainful look at the triangle Tunnel, then turned her attention to me. Lightning leaped up around her, making her hair stand to attention. Hell. This was what I got for having convictions.

And then came the screams, a sound that made my heart leap and my stomach knot at the same time. Caterina must've heard them too—they were kind of hard to miss—and her lightning faltered as she stared at the Tunnel.

The six-legged creature that leaped out of the triangle-shaped hole in the ground wasn't from Heaven, and it sure as hell wasn't from Earth, but I recognized it nonetheless. You don't forget a face with as many teeth as that. It was one of the creatures that attacked Vivian and me while the Tunnel to Heaven collapsed around us.

Despite the gut-kicking panic of the situation, I spared myself a flicker of awe at what I'd managed to do. As far as I knew, no one else had managed a Tunnel between anywhere but Heaven and Earth. Back in school I'd heard the theories that Tunnels passed through other dimensions, but it was all just post-doc student posturing. Not one of them had a shred of evidence to back up their hypotheses, or any idea how to construct a Tunnel that could reach the other dimensions.

The fur-covered animal—I had to come up with a name for it, if I survived long enough—was bigger than most dogs, and its long canines dripped with saliva. It skittered around on the floor, sniffing at the air with its flat nose, and let out another piercing scream.

The open Tunnel pulsed with energy, matching the raw animal awareness calling from a distant part of my mind, and then the creature wasn't alone anymore. Half a dozen more of the vicious-looking things scrambled out of the Tunnel, one after another, forming up into a pack around the first one. The spark of pride I felt at outdoing the ivory tower academics quickly faded. Perhaps I hadn't thought this through as much as I should have. I gripped my nightstick tighter as one of the creatures faced me and started screaming.

Caterina hiked up her dress and pulled a new snub-nosed gun from the holster strapped to her thigh. At the same moment, the first drooling creature leaped at her. She got the gun up and fired, sending a spray of pink blood across the slavering horde of creatures, but its momentum carried it forward, crashing into her and throwing her backward. Her mad eyes flashed.

I caught sight of a tight stream of flame flying from Caterina's fingers as another pair of the creatures skittered in, teeth gnashing. For a moment my heart strings quivered, and a flash of guilt went through me. But by that time I had my own problems. One of the creatures seemed to have taken a liking to me, or maybe it just thought I smelled tastier than Caterina. I stumbled backward and bumped into the bedside cabinet, but it kept advancing on me, emitting brief bursts of noise. I lost count of how many eyes it had. It's not like it mattered. They were all fixed on me.

I swung my nightstick as it lunged and landed a glancing blow at the point where one of its front legs connected to its body, but I was weak and tired, and the thing kept on coming. It sunk a mouthful of teeth into my arm and swung me in a circle. I had to grit my teeth to keep the scream from leaving my throat. Christ, now I probably had alien rabies.

The air on the other side of the room crackled with lightning and a couple of the creatures went flying back, even as two more jumped out of the Tunnel. They raced in and joined their buddies in surrounding Caterina, leaving me blessedly alone. Except for the one intent on tearing my arm off. I spun around and slammed the creature into the vanity's mirror, sending glass raining through the room. The damn creature didn't budge, just clamped its jaws down all the tighter and started screaming again.

_All right, to hell with this thing_. I slammed the butt of my nightstick into its side. I had more important things to worry about than some interdimensional spider-dog. The fact that it was me who brought this creature here in the first place was beside the point.

I whacked it again and again, ignoring the jolt of pain that shot up my arm with each blow. Finally, before I could start screaming, the pressure of its jaws lessened a little. Before it could clamp back down again I rammed my nightstick into a gap between its teeth and pushed down on it, trying to get some leverage. The creature whined and squealed, but gradually I pried the jaws apart and hurled it to the floor.

God, I was so tired. My arm stung like I'd dipped it in acid, and I tried to keep the world in focus. "Ugly little son of a bitch, aren't you?" I said to the creature.

It responded by jumping at me again, going for my throat this time. I was ready for it. I slipped to the side and brought the nightstick down on its skull. It hit the ground with a thud, tried once more to get up, then stumbled back to a lying position.

I felt a little sorry for the thing, but not sorry enough to be nice. I wedged my foot under its flailing body and kicked it back to the triangle Tunnel. It rolled into the black abyss and fell from my sight, back into whatever crazy place it came from.

I took a moment to press a hand over the new holes I'd developed in my arm and assess the situation, by which I mean I stared openmouthed at the havoc Caterina and the creatures were wreaking back in the hallway. She'd charred several of the creatures to perfection, and put bullets in another couple.

But she wasn't quite the avenging angel anymore. She had her back to the wall, bleeding from half a dozen bites across her arms. Her dress didn't look so sexy now it was torn and coated with blood. The wall behind her was cracked and smoking, the victim of a few stray lightning bolts.

Only four of the creatures were left alive. She gritted her teeth and took a shot at the creature directly in front of her, but missed the other one sneaking around to the side. It dashed forward and planted its teeth in her leg, and she let out a yelp.

I should've been proud that one of my plans was actually working for once, but this was getting out of hand. I'd have time to smother my guilt and consider the paradigm-shifting nature of this new Tunnel later. For now, I needed to get out with most of my skin intact and get Todd's Chroma so I could save Vivian. Caterina forced me to this, she could deal with the goddamn consequences. I wasn't going to get sucked into some goddamn heroics. Not again.

Caterina desperately tried to shake the creature off her leg, but all that did was give another one the chance to latch onto her other ankle. Her screams reached banshee-pitch and she toppled to the ground. Her gun spoke again and again until it was empty, and another creature went down. There was no way she could set the creatures on fire when they were in so close to her. Even if she could, I doubted she could maintain the concentration to punch open a Chroma-enhanced Pin Hole with so many creatures trying to get themselves a piece of her flesh.

I vaulted the Tunnel to get back out into the hallway. It took me close to Caterina and the creatures, close enough for me to see the bloody gashes across her skin. _No, Miles. Don't be stupid._

I bolted past and the creatures let out rapid hooting screams, almost sounding like victory cheers, and then they started dragging Caterina along the floor toward the Tunnel.

"No!" she screamed, flailing around and trying to gain purchase on the wooden floor. "Miles!"

The agony in her scream turned my spine to jelly. I'd heard screams like that throughout Bluegate before. I sometimes wondered why they even bothered screaming; they must have known no one would come to save them. No one ever did in this city.

I slowed and cast back a look at Caterina. She locked eyes with me, her lips twisting with pain, clumps of blood matting her red hair. They nearly had her to the Tunnel now. She snatched at the doorframe, but her hand was slippery with blood, and she couldn't hold on. But I needed the distraction to get away. I needed to find the Chroma before it was too late for Vivian.

"Miles," she said again, her screams nothing but puppy dog whimpers now. "Please."

Aw, hell. I always hated that word.

I once read a book that claimed there was no such thing as free will. Everything we do, every decision we make, is an inevitable result of a million things that have happened before; there is no other way we can possibly act. Our lives are linear, and all the "what ifs" are nothing more than an illusion, a game we play with ourselves long after the dust has settled.

I guess if that's true, it made the choice easier. Because really, it was no choice at all.

Caterina's feet disappeared over the lip of the Tunnel first, the two creatures dragging her down. She rolled onto her stomach, defeat already clear on her face, but she dug her fingernails into the floor anyway, a futile attempt at survival, the only thing she could do.

I took two running steps and dived, my arms outstretched in front of me like a special-needs Superman. One of her hands slipped out of sight along with her face, but the other clung on for a moment, one long, painful moment, before sliding away.

I thrust my hand over the lip, snatching blindly. I felt skin, warm, soft skin. With a jerk that nearly tore my arm out of its socket, I grabbed her by the wrist, hooked my shoes into a doorway, and held on.

Pain tore up my arm from far too many injuries, but I held tight. The screams echoing out of the Tunnel changed their pitch from victorious to frustrated. There was a tug, and another. Caterina screamed. I think I did too.

"I got you, Cat," I shouted. Her hand slipped in mine. "Well, kind of, anyway." I thrust my other arm over the edge and pressed my body against the floor to keep myself from going over as well. "Grab my other hand."

For a moment, there was nothing, and I wondered if she'd lost consciousness. Then I felt fingers brushing mine. I strained, feeling like I had the puny arms of a T-rex, and then Caterina's hand grabbed mine.

"Miles," she said, pain burning any sultriness from her voice.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm going to get you out. Uh, somehow."

I got as good a grip on Caterina's wrists as I could and started wriggling backward on my stomach, using my feet in the doorway to pull myself backward. The floor was slippery with blood, and every movement sent a new wave of electric pain shooting through my shoulders, but I gritted my teeth and kept moving backward, bit by bit.

Her hands came into view first, red nail polish scraped away, knuckles bloody and raw. Then her arms, then her face. Her eyes were screwed up tight, tear tracks carving through the dust on her face. I kept pulling until I got her torso up out of the Tunnel, and then she could help by pushing with her elbows.

"Cat," I said, my voice coming out thinner than I expected. "Are they still on your legs?"

She nodded without opening her eyes and kept hauling herself out.

"Okay," I said. "We're going to have to be quick. When I say, I want you to lift your legs up as high as you can. All right?"

She nodded again. I didn't know if she understood me, but I didn't have the strength to ask her again. I wiggled back, little by little, to the symphony of inhuman screams.

She got her hips over the lip. The creatures were pulling stronger now, or maybe I was just getting weaker; I felt like I'd been drained of every bit of life.

I got her out as far as her knees, her stomach pressed hard against the floor. For a moment she slipped, and my heart leaped in my chest, but she got back her balance and I kept pulling. The creatures' fur was visible now, peeking over the Tunnel edge, their eyes swiveling around to face me.

"Okay, Cat, it's time. Ready?"

"Yes," she hissed.

"All right. On the count of one. Ready?"

She nodded.

"One."

She hauled her legs up, bending at the knees. The creatures came up with her, their heads appearing over the lip, teeth piercing both calves. They squealed and rocked from side to side, trying to pull her back down with them. They looked hungry.

They could go fuck themselves.

I released the Tunnel's energy, switching off the animalistic state of mind that kept it open. The energy fled from me, causing physical pain, like a punch to the gut.

The edges of the Tunnel pulsed for a second, like the heartbeat of some great animal. The two creatures squealed as if they could sense what was happening, but it was too late for them.

The three edges of the Tunnel snapped inward, faster than I could make out. The floor reappeared like three overlapping blades, missing Caterina's knees by less than an inch.

The creatures didn't fare so well. The floor cut through their heads like a laser, shearing cleanly through flesh and bone. The screams cut off abruptly and a pool of pink blood flowed out over Caterina. On one of her legs the remaining bits of the creature's head dropped off, the jaws sliced through. The other one got caught lower, so the head was mostly intact, and its teeth stayed embedded in her leg.

My strength fled from me and all my aches came back ten times as strong. She looked worse than I felt. The two of us lay there for a moment, panting, Caterina's hands still in mine. Jesus, I needed a drink.

Finally, I let go and pushed myself to my feet, half dazed as I grasped the black object lying in the blood beside me.

Caterina looked up at me, her face drawn and her hair stuck to her face. "Miles, I—"

I swung the nightstick at her head, catching her in the temple. Her face didn't even have enough time to register her shock before she slumped back down, unconscious.

I may have been a softie, but I wasn't stupid.

I stumbled backward and slid down along the wall, all my strength gone. I couldn't recall hitting the ground, but apparently that's where I was, because I could feel blood soaking into the seat of my pants.

I was sweating, I think, though it was hard to tell. Everything felt so cold, so numb. I was vaguely aware I should do something about my wounds, but another part of me told me not to worry. It was too late for any of that sort of stuff now, and besides, I was so tired. Didn't I deserve a little rest?

I sure as hell didn't want be around to clean up this mess.

Some annoying voice inside me was nagging at me, telling me I wasn't done yet. I let it complain. I was so sleepy, I doubted I could get up even if I tried. Sparks floated in front of me, or maybe they were butterflies, I'm not too sure. They were pretty.

I closed my eyes.

"Miles!" Something slapped my face, or maybe it was someone else's face. "Wake up, you stupid son of a bitch."

I kept my eyes closed and brushed a floppy hand across whatever was annoying me. "Don't wanna. It's not even a school day."

"Miles, if you don't open your eyes, I'm going to throw your trumpet under a steamroller."

I opened my eyes. I liked that trumpet.

My eyes weren't seeing too well. Everything was in double, but a face resolved in front of me.

"Desmond," I said drowsily. "You bastard. You seriously couldn't have come ten minutes ago? You would've made my life a hell of a lot easier."

Desmond slid his arms under my armpits and hauled me up into a proper sitting position. "It's always bitch, bitch, bitch with you isn't it?"

I grunted at the pain of moving muscles that didn't want to be moved. "Tania?" I asked.

"She's fine. We got to her in time. She's going to be okay."

Desmond tsked as he inspected my wounds. He disappeared for a second then reappeared carrying a clean white bed sheet and began tearing it into strips. He pressed the makeshift bandages against my wounds. Idly, I wondered what Andrews would say if he was still alive to see what I was using his property for.

Sudden panic gripped me as I remembered what happened. I glanced around, but Caterina was still lying on the ground, sleeping like a baby.

"It was her," I said, grunting as Desmond squeezed a cut on my shoulder. "Andrews' wife. Freaking lunatic."

"Yeah, bitches be crazy," Desmond said. "I'm getting sick of patching you up all the time, guy. We gotta get you to a hospital."

I started nodding, eager to go any place with a bed, but then I froze. "No. We've got to go to Vivian's place."

"The detective? The hell for?"

I planted my palms on the floor and pushed myself up. Desmond made noises of protest, but the look I gave him must have scared the shit out of him, because he settled for putting an arm around my shoulders to help me up.

"I made a deal," I said, and brushed away his arm. "I can walk. I'm fine." I tried to prove it, and found myself leaning against the wall. "I need you to take her." I pointed to Caterina.

"How come?"

"She's got a hot date."

## CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I don't remember much of the ride to Vivian's apartment. The night was black with no sign of dawn. Desmond drove—I could barely keep my eyes open, let alone operate heavy machinery—and we had Caterina in the back, trussed up with some bed sheets. The bonds wouldn't do much good if she came to with enough Chroma left in her system to attack us, but there wasn't much we could do about that.

I directed Desmond to pull up directly outside Vivian's place. No need for subtlety now. I fumbled my seatbelt off, stumbled out of the car, and made for the door. Desmond had already got Caterina across his shoulders by the time I got to the building's main entrance.

We took the elevator up, the rickety shaking nearly sending me right off to sleep. When we reached Vivian's floor I wrenched the gate open and stumbled out as fast as my broken body could manage, makeshift bandages growing a little redder with every step. Desmond stayed silent, watching me walk with a skeptical eye. I didn't look that bad, did I?

I made for Vivian's apartment, already trying to brace myself for what I might find. How long had I been gone? It could've been minutes, it could've been days, and I wouldn't have a clue. Oh God, let her be alive.

"Todd!" I yelled as I shoved open the door. "Where the hell are you?"

The living room looked the same as before. I heard Desmond coming up behind me, Caterina slung over his shoulders. I had no energy left to spare to help him. I lurched forward and shouldered through the door to Vivian's bedroom.

The bed was empty. The handcuffs that Todd used to secure her dangled uselessly from the headboard. I sucked in air, smelling smoke and stale sweat, and gasped like a fish hauled onto land. My eyes bored into the place where Vivian had been. A trickle of blood stained the pillow. My throat closed up.

"Miles." Todd's voice came floating through the fog to me. I turned and found him sitting on the floor with his back against the wardrobe door, with several cigarette butts scattered around him. A handheld radio lay next to his hand, quietly muttering to itself. He plucked an unlit cigarette from his lips and gestured to it. "My lighter ran out of gas."

I staggered to him, dropped to my knees, and grabbed him by the collar. "Where is she?"

He didn't even raise his eyes to look at me. His arms hung at his sides, doing nothing to brush away my hands. Despite his bulk, he looked like a little kid. "I let her go."

I socked him in the jaw, sending his cigarette flying. "Lie to me again, you asshole. I dare you."

Desmond's hands grabbed me by the shoulder, gently but firmly pulling me away before I could tag Todd again. Caterina was lying on the floor, bound and unconscious; Desmond must've put her there. I pointed to her, snarling at Todd. "I brought you this bitch. She's the one who's got your Chroma. Now I'm going to ask you again, where is Vivian?"

Todd rubbed his jaw, bringing away a trickle of blood. "I'm not lying. She left about twenty minutes ago."

"Yeah? I guess she just walked out of here with a lethal dose of Chroma in her system, huh?"

He shook his head, looking lost as a kid on his first day of school. "I didn't give her any Chroma."

I tried to break free of Desmond's grip to kick Todd in the ribs, but I was so weak he could hold me back with one hand. Instead, I settled for spitting at his feet. "I saw her, you stupid fuck."

"It was a sedative. Something Davies gave me. I didn't have any Chroma on me, I'm not that stupid, and when Andrews' gangsters struck they cut off my supply."

"I don't believe you."

He shrugged and pulled another cigarette from the packet in his jacket pocket. "You'll find out soon anyway. She's coming for me. Can't you hear?"

I frowned, trying to figure out a way I could get away from Desmond long enough to put in a couple of good kicks. But then I heard it. Sirens cutting through the night, coming toward us.

Todd put the cigarette in his mouth, but didn't even bother trying to light it. I brushed off Desmond's hands, and he didn't try to stop me. I slumped down to the ground, leaning against the bed opposite Todd.

"We won, didn't we?" Todd said. "We beat them."

"What?"

"You brought the fuckers down. It's all over the squawk box." He jerked his thumb to the radio beside him. "They say Andrews' mansion is in ruins."

I wiped the blood out of my eyes. It was getting hard to think. "I killed a lot of gangsters. But that don't mean you won. It don't mean shit."

"They won't hurt any more innocents."

"Those ones won't, sure. But others will. They'll come back. Bloodshed was never going to change this city, Walt. You should've known that." I shook my head. "You stupid fuck."

Some stirring noises came from Caterina, and Desmond went to her. Hell, I wasn't sure any of us had won. It sure didn't feel like I had.

Then again, my friends were safe. In the end, that was all that really mattered. Maybe it was enough.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why'd I let Vivian go?" Todd said

"Yeah."

He shrugged. "Because she's good police."

"She is."

"I think I loved her a little," he said.

"Yeah, I figured."

I leaned back, resting my head on the bed. It was so comfortable. The sirens were coming closer now, but I wasn't sure I'd be awake to see if Todd was telling the truth. If he was, and Vivian was alive, she'd find an interesting bunch of folks sitting in her bedroom. I was sad that I was going to bleed out all over her floor.

"You ain't looking too good, Miles," Todd said.

"Fuck you, Detective."

Desmond appeared at my side, his hands moving to my makeshift bandages. "He's right, Miles. You've had your little trip. It's hospital time now."

His voice was fading out, just like his face. Somehow I'd pushed myself to keep going, but now that there was nothing left to do, all I could think of was sleep.

I knew what that meant. I wasn't stupid. But it was okay. I could go now, for real this time.

"Des," I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from somewhere else. "You there?"

"Yeah, guy."

"You look after Tania like I told you, right?"

There was a pause. Then, "No."

I tried to open my eyes again, but the lids were too heavy. "Whadya mean, no?" I slurred.

"You want to keep Tania safe, you do it yourself. You ain't getting out of it that easy."

"You asshole."

"I love you too, guy. Stay with us. Hear those sirens? They're almost here."

I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything anymore, except my heartbeat and the sound of my breathing. "Heh," I said. "My landlady's not gonna get paid. She'll be pissed."

And then there was nothing.

## CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I'd had a lot of people tell me I was a failure over the years. Teachers, foster parents, hell, even gangsters. They must've been onto something, because I couldn't even die successfully.

I came to with an antiseptic smell filling my nostrils and a God-awful artificial light trying to claw its way through my eyelids. There was no pain, which was a plus, but I felt like I'd run a marathon carrying an elephant on my back. I considered slipping back off to sleep, but curiosity got the better of me. I opened my eyes. The ceiling was kind of boring, just a bunch of white tiles with holes in them. I didn't know why I'd even bothered waking up.

"Well, look who decided to stop napping."

I rolled my head to the side to find the source of the voice. "Christ, are you still here? You're like a goddamn puppy dog. I just can't get rid of you."

"Asshole," Desmond said. "You still look like shit, you know, guy."

I tried to sit up, then abandoned the idea when my head started screaming. I had more tubes going in and out of me than I knew what to do with, including something pouring fluid into the vein in my arm and another one snaking under my blanket that I guessed was draining more fluid from my nether-regions. A curtain was half-pulled around the bed, and I could make out people in scrubs moving past outside.

I tried to work through my jumbled thoughts. I was having trouble getting my head straight, and the painkillers they were pumping into me didn't help any.

Then I remembered. "Vivian? Is she..."

"A lot better than you." Desmond nodded. "Todd was telling the truth. She showed up a few minutes after you couldn't be bothered keeping your eyes open with half the police department behind her."

"Is she here? I want to talk to her."

Desmond dropped his eyes. "She...had work to do." He paused, then pulled a crumpled envelope from his pocket. "She left this for you."

What the hell? All I got was a letter? I took it and turned it over in my hands. It was thin, with my name scrawled across one side.

"This better be a check," I said.

Desmond smiled, but said nothing.

I tried to sit up again, and it went a little better this time. A dull ache pounded through my head, and fatigue threatened to drag me back off to sleep, but I sure as hell wasn't ready to go yet.

"I've got a present for you," Desmond said in a too-cheerful tone.

"Yeah?"

He got up, peered around the curtain conspiratorially, then pulled it closed. He returned to his backpack and pulled out two bottles of German beer. "Sorry, they're kinda warm."

"Des," I said, "you are Jesus returned to life. Think I'm allowed to drink with all this new plumbing?"

"Do you care?"

"Touché."

He popped the tops off the beers and handed me one. I untangled myself from the pipes pumping air into my nose and took a sip. It tasted like life itself.

"So are we in Bluegate, or did they decide to abandon it and start over?"

"It's still standing, for the most part," Desmond said. "The slums and the Avenues got hit hardest, there's a lot of people that got displaced. Hundreds of millions in damage. Billions, maybe. But the war fizzled out. The first shipment of Chroma was limited, most of it got shot up within hours of it hitting the street. Todd probably had plans for distributing more, but when that precious girl of yours got hold of it and you tore her husband's house to pieces, well, that put a bit of a damper on things. Now the cops are working with the Vei to hunt down the last of it and find the manufacturers in Heaven."

"Did Todd get hauled away?" I asked.

"Yeah. The cops have been working him over all day. Vivian said he confessed straight up, laid out his entire plan. No lawyer, no nothing."

I took another long pull of my beer. "And Caterina?"

"She's being more shifty. She was careful, there's not much to tie her to everything."

"Tell me she's not gonna walk."

He shrugged. "I ain't no expert. Maybe if the cops get her people to roll on her, they might have a case."

Goddamn it. That was the problem with the law; it imprisoned the innocent and set the guilty free. I polished off the rest of my beer in one hit. I could do with another, but I didn't ask Desmond if he had more. Instead, I squeezed the bottle in my fist and asked the question that had been burning a hole in my mind since I woke.

"How many?"

"How many what?"

"When I attacked Andrews' place. How many did I kill?"

"Ah." He didn't say anything for a moment. He looked older than I remembered. Hell, I probably did too. Finally, he spoke, going a little pale as he did. "Twenty. Maybe more. Vivian said some of the corpses...some were too badly charred to...you know."

I closed my eyes. So many. "I've never killed anyone in my life. Not until now."

"I know, guy. It was a mistake. You were on Chroma, you—"

"No," I said. "I'd do it again if I had to."

"What?"

My head pounded, but I took a breath and forced myself to speak anyway. "I hate what I did, and I gotta live with it. But what the hell good is some moral code if you let the people you care about die?"

Desmond didn't seem to have an answer for that. Sticking to what you believed in was the easy bit. Having to abandon all that...

"I guess the cops will be dropping by to arrest me soon," I said.

"You remember my offer, the one I made when you showed up at my place? It still stands, guy. There's my car keys." He pointed to the little table beside my hospital bed. "Maybe I'll leave them here while I go have a coffee. Maybe my car will be gone when I get back."

"Stolen by some dastardly fugitive?"

"Sounds about right."

I thought about it for a moment. A long moment. There would be walls if I stayed, lawyers and courts and probably a box for me to spend the rest of my life in.

I shook my head. "Thanks, but no. I got a promise to keep."

"Miles—"

"Is Tania around?"

"I don't know if you'll get a chance to talk to her. Apparently, her mother has taken a disliking to you."

"Can't imagine why. I'm such a charmer."

He grinned and stood up. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks for everything, Des. Really."

"Someone's gotta keep you out of trouble." He raised a hand and left me alone.

I settled back in my bed and closed my eyes. I felt like a truck had driven over me then reversed. I doubted I'd be getting out of this hospital in a hurry. Maybe the cops would be kind enough to wait until I was a bit healthier before they started in with the handcuffs and the interrogations.

I could hear nurses and patients shuffling past on the other side of my privacy curtain, but none of them came to visit. I wondered if any of them had any idea how much their world had been changed.

I pictured the new Tunnel I created in Andrews' mansion. I could still feel the animalness of that energy pulsing through me, throbbing in time with the spider-dogs' screams. I wondered if I was the only person who felt that. If there had been any decent Tunnelers within a mile or two, they might have picked up on it. Even if they hadn't, it wouldn't be long before knowledge of it leaked out. Information like that never wants to remain secret.

In one reckless, idiotic moment, I'd changed everything we knew about Tunneling. There were more dimensions than Heaven's universe and ours, there was no denying it now. Who knew how many? I was feeling an awful lot like Pandora right now, holding an open box and wondering who I could blame this on.

I stopped pondering long enough to remember the crumpled envelope in my hand. It wasn't sealed, so I lifted the flap. The letter written was short and written in Vivian's barely-readable handwriting.

Mr. Franco,

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. I guess I felt I owed you some explanation. And an apology, I guess. Your friend Desmond told me what you did to try to save me and stop the gang war. You risked your life. Thank you.

But damn it, Miles, you nearly destroyed everything we worked for. I can't forgive you for that. Not yet. I can't comprehend the destruction you left.

I won't deny that I am angry with you. Still, you were pulled into this mess against your will, and I'm responsible for that. For that, if nothing else, I'm sorry.

It's best if we don't speak again until after the state prosecutor has decided what charges to lay against you. But I'll make sure he knows the truth. Perhaps then we can meet and talk about what happened.

Until then, Mr. Franco.

Vivian

I read through the letter two more times, trying to make sense of it. Christ, why did women have to be so complicated? Did she hate me, or was she grateful? It made my head hurt just trying to untangle the meaning from her words.

I was considering getting some code-breakers to have a go on it when something moved out of the corner of my eye. "Hi, Miles."

I looked up to find Tania standing over me. She had bags under her eyes, but a cautious smile softened her face. I returned the letter to its envelope and stuffed it under my pillow along with my empty beer bottle. Hell of a role model I was.

"Hey kid. How you feeling?"

"Way better than you look." She smiled and took a seat beside the bed. "Desmond said you wanted to talk. Mom will kill me if she finds me here."

I smiled despite the pain it sent shooting through my cheeks. "This won't take long. I got something for you. Not here, though. You can still get into my apartment?"

She nodded.

"There's a box of books under my bed—"

"Ew, Miles, I don't want to know about your nudie mags."

"They're textbooks!" I said, a little louder than I intended. Tania giggled. Christ, it was good to see her laughing.

I smiled again in spite of myself, took a breath, and continued. "My old Tunneling textbooks. You still want to learn, right? Before we get started, I want you to take them home and read them all. Cover to cover, understand?"

Her face lit up like the world's tackiest Christmas tree. "You're really going to teach me?"

"Hell, someone's got to, right?"

She threw her arms around me, making me hurt in places I'd forgotten I had. "Thank you, thank you!"

"Easy, kid," I said through gritted teeth. "I'm fragile."

She pulled herself off me and grinned sheepishly. "I don't have to be respectful or anything now that you're my teacher, do I?"

"Just don't start calling me Mr. Franco." I rearranged my tubes and lay back down. "All right, get lost before your mom realizes where you've got to. Remember, kid, cover to cover."

She nodded once more, beaming, and practically skipped away. I watched her go, the smile still on my face. She'd be all right now.

I closed my eyes. When I got better, I had a lot of amends to make, a lot of pieces of a broken life to put back together. But that could wait. Even assholes needed sleep.

My dreams were thick with fire and guilt, but that was all right. I couldn't remember them when I woke.

THE END

## CONTINUE THE STORY...

Miles' story continues in his next adventure, _The Man Who Walked in Darkness_. If you think Miles had a hard time here, you ain't seen nothing yet. Find _The Man Who Walked in Darkess_ in your favourite online bookstore to start reading immediately.

### THE MAN WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS (MILES FRANCO #2)

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.

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Strange discovered at an early age that he was completely unsuited to life among normal human beings. After experimenting with several different career paths, he said to hell with it and went back to writing, his first love.

Chris is the author of DON'T BE A HERO and the Miles Franco series of hard-boiled urban fantasy novels, beginning with THE MAN WHO CROSSED WORLDS. He writes for the daydreamers, the losers, the cynics and the temporarily insane. His stories are full of restless energy and driven by a passion for the unorthodox. He loves writing characters on the fringe of society: the drifters, the knights errant, the down-and-out.

In his spare time, Chris is an unapologetic geek, spending far too long wrapped up in sci-fi books, watching old kaiju movies and playing video games. He lives in the far away land of New Zealand, and is currently working towards a Master's degree in Forensic Science.

He doesn't plan on growing up any time soon.

Chris also writes crime and noir fiction as Harry St. John. You can find Harry's website here.

Contact Chris at: chrisstrangeauthor@gmail.com

If you would like to receive an email whenever Chris releases a new book, sign up for the New Release Email List here: <http://bit.ly/StrangeList>

### www.Chris-Strange.com

## OTHER BOOKS FROM CHEEKY MINION

DON'T BE A HERO

### Chris Strange

It's a bad time to be a superhero.

When the world turned its back on metahumans, the golden age of superheroes came crashing down. But now a mysterious supercriminal is making one final bid for power, and with no one else left to protect the world, ex-hero Spook must risk everything to take him down. There will be no reprieve, no negotiation. War is coming.

Put on the mask. There's work to be done.

Chris Strange presents a stunning, no-holds-barred superhero adventure that will lure you in and knock you out. This is the novel superhero fans have been waiting for.

AVAILABLE NOW

~~~

### LEAVE HER HANGING

### Harry St. John

Ella Lewis is dead. Someone must pay.

" _I loved Ella. Now she's a corpse, cooling off in the morgue with a noose-shaped bruise around her neck. The cops say it's suicide. It wasn't suicide. I don't know who killed her, and I don't know why. But I'm going to find out, no matter what it takes. And when I'm face-to-face with the man who broke my world, I'm going to break him."_

In this tough-as-nails noir crime novel set in Auckland's dark underbelly, 17-year-old Jack "Spade" Miller must traverse a web of violence, love, and illicit sex in his search for justice.

Only one thing is guaranteed: no one is walking away unscathed.

AVAILABLE NOW

## ALSO BY CHRIS STRANGE

Miles Franco Urban Fantasy

The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

The Man Who Walked In Darkness (Miles Franco #2)

The Man Who Lost Everything (Miles Franco #3)

### Heroes of the Atomverse

Don't Be a Hero

### Kaiju Thriller

Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller

