“Don’t move,” the kicker said. His voice was strained. Perhaps he was hurt, or maybe he too had come here on foot.

“What are you doing here?” Gaylen asked.

“It may be a small boom, but I know it well,” the Heg agent told him.

“I wasn’t being that precise with my question,” Gaylen replied. He wanted them talking, because talking was a potential distraction.

“We are here for the Green Jacket hideout,” the man went on. “We already knew roughly where it was, but not exactly where.”

“Then maybe we can talk business,” Gaylen said.

“We have nothing to talk about,” the agent told him.

“But clearly we do,” Gaylen said. “Since we’re talking. I know where he is. I knew it before that meeting. And you’re not here to be their friend, are you? Since you haven’t just made a call.”

“I am done with this job,” the agent told him, with a sudden heat. “I am finishing it tonight, and I don’t care how many people I have to kill to do it. I warned you to walk away, and-”

“And you don’t want to search through an entire city core for Sammy’s little burrow,” Gaylen insisted. “Come on, be rational.”

“I am very rational,” the agent told him. “I-”

“Then give me a reason to help you. Give me some guarantees.”

“What do you want? A promise?”

“Well, we are bargaining,” Gaylen said. “It is on you to make a good offer.”

The man walked closer, with his compact gun braced against his shoulder and pointed straight at Gaylen’s centre of mass. Gaylen could just about make out the general features of his face. They were scrunched up in anger.

“I am not bargaining with you, spacer trash. I have you, and maybe you can earn your life. Maybe. So you talk. You stop blowing air and prove you aren’t just wasting my time.”

“Their place is proofed against outside scans,” Gaylen said, though he knew no such thing. “And there are a lot of floors here for you to comb through, and no small amount of underground space. I know my knowledge is the only thing keeping me alive, so I’m not just giving it away. I know how these things play out. So the ball is back on your side.”

He spoke a bit slower than was natural to him. It was a matter of buying a few extra seconds. Because he felt it again; that inner dread. That growing feeling of wrongness. And now, as he looked past the agent’s frustrated face, he saw the horror again, looming over the other two.

Perhaps it was that very feeling that caused one of them to finally turn around. He screamed and fired, and Gaylen ran. All three men fired, as he ran down along the row of windows overlooking the dead core. He heard a man die, he heard voices and ripping and smashing, and the eardrum-hurting burst of a small explosive. He reached the end of the corridor, but thankfully there was no door in the doorway that led away from it.

At his back, the fighting continued, although it was now sounding more like a fighting retreat, and Gaylen couldn’t quite tell if one agent still survived, or two.

He had been hoping that maiming, perhaps killing, the robed man would somehow mean the end of the thing. That it would go back to wherever that colour came from. But no.

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He didn’t understand the rules.

There was another, more powerful blast, and closer too. The boom of it drowned out all else for a bit, as Gaylen searched for a stairwell or an elevator shaft. He peeked into one empty room after another, past corridor after corridor. It was all just lifeless corporate infrastructure, without even the thinnest veneer of a soul now that it had all been abandoned, and no hint as to a way up or down or out.

There was a fairly popular game, played in scummy ports and stations all over the Nearer Fringe, where a tiny prey animal would be dropped into the centre of a maze, and a slightly larger predator would be pushed in through the entrance. Observers would then bet on the outcome.

That was what this all felt like. Except no one was even benefitting from this particular chase. Not even that robed bastard.

The sounds of shooting and running and fighting stopped. Gaylen came to a halt himself, and listened. It was possible that one of the agents had managed to kill the damned thing. But there were no footsteps, no shouts, no nothing. And that deep dread wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, it was strengthening once more.

Gaylen kept on moving. It was all he could think to do. There was that ladder; he could see about making his way back to it, but clearly changing locations just didn’t work. The thing was determined, and moved about as fast as a man did, despite the size.

A small sign on the wall sparked sudden hope. It was a bright yellow colour, and showed a simple stick figure stepping through a door. An arrow pointed the way, and Gaylen had a new direction. He arrived at a sturdy metal door, and was downright pleasantly surprised to find it unlocked as he pulled the handle to the side.

The night air greeted him with a slight whoosh as the door swung open, and before him was a balcony. It was wider than any of the hallways he’d just been through, and long enough to disappear into the darkness on both sides. The walls nearby had suffered some of the stripping that had been done, by either the original corps or locals in search of valuable metals and wiring. What mattered was the length of sturdy metal that had come loose in it all. It was longer and nearly as thick as Gaylen’s leg, and the effort needed to lift it assured him it was a good choice.

He closed the door behind him, then wedged the thing into the U-shaped handle, barring the door. Hopefully, it would buy him enough time to justify the seconds spent on setting it up.

He hurried over to the railing. Across a narrow gap there was another building with a similar set of balconies. Compared to the height of the buildings, the gap barely existed, but it was still about five metres. Far too long for him to jump. And while he’d gone to that meeting prepared for various scenarios, he’d seen no reason to bring a grapnel gun. Or just a rope.

There was an identical length of balcony on each floor, above and below. He could not reach the one above, and the prospect of dropping down and catching the one below… he just wasn’t that kind of acrobat. Especially not when this tired. It was far more likely he would just plummet all the way down to the ground, left either dead or a broken mess for the thing to pick at like a scavenger.

Thinking of whom, that dread was still growing.

He could run the length of the balcony, trying for a different door. Perhaps he could get around it, and continue his quest for a flight of stairs. Or-

“AY, DAGI!”

It was Bers.

Gaylen spotted a glowstick across the gap. On the balconies of the opposite building, one floor up, the wild Outer Fringer was waving one in his left hand, and his axe in the right.

“BERS!” Gaylen shouted. “It’s here!”

He pointed back into his own building.

“A thing from the colour! Like after we left Chukata Mog! A…”

He felt a bit like an idiot for saying the next part, but said it anyway.

“A demon!”

Bers’s face hardened. It took on that severe look one saw on occasion. A reminder that there was more to the man, more mysteries, than a possibly intentionally silly savage from the depths of barely-known space. He looked down over the railing, then back up.

There was no way he would be able to cross the distance in time to make a difference, and Gaylen felt the dread that was his own personal inner radar pinging ever more loudly.

Bers dropped the stick and two-handed the axe. Then he flung it with all his strength. The great, keremak-bladed weapon spun end-over-end across the gap, and bounced off the floor near Gaylen. He hurried over and picked it up.

Bers pointed to his own head.

“Don’t think!” he bellowed. “Don’t…”

He waved his hands, searching for words. Then he just thumped his chest.

“Wari!” he said, with great emphasis. “Heart! Feel! Fight with heart!”

Then he picked the stick back up and ran into a nearby door. Gaylen took it to mean he was coming over. But there was no reason to assume he’d have an easier time navigating the near-featureless interior than Gaylen. He really wouldn’t arrive in time to help.

Well, you are an adult, Gaylen told himself. Figure it out.