Maddie and I climbed from the subway into a neighborhood that looked like Wall Street and smelled like Chinatown. More people worked in any one of those buildings than lived in most towns in Mayne. Hell, more people worked on any floor than lived in many of them.

We trotted through the jostling pedestrians until Maddie pointed across the street. "There."

I looked behind a plastic orange construction fence, and saw tarps and scaffolding rising over a deep excavated chasm that ran the length and width of a side street. Below street level, plywood embankments jutted from uneven concrete walls, forming alcoves and ledges and tunnels.

"That’s not Dane Street." I looked closer. "And there’s no juice bar."

"There was," she said. "Until the construction."

I eyed the tarps dividing the underground area into a uneven chambers. Didn't looked like anyone was there. No shouts, no jackhammering. The excavation was empty, like a mine abandoned for fear of collapse.

"How come nobody’s working?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Maybe they’re on break."

No threat loomed on the busy New Park street, yet a chill of dread touched me. Maybe just an echo of Shandra’s fears. "I guess I'll, uh, poke around."

"That's what you're here for, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "Here goes nothing."

"I’ll wait here. If you need help, just ..."

"Mm?"

"Scream," she said, and kissed me on the cheek.

"Really?" I said. A kiss on the cheek?

"Take what you can get," she told me.

I made a face that probably wasn't quite as adult and long-suffering as I hoped, then slunk away, raising my hood because I didn’t know if the surrounding shops had security cameras or any pedestrians were recording the area with their phones.

I slouched across the street toward the construction site then slipped an orb into my palm and pressed another into the sidewalk. The one in my hand boosted me upward and helped me hop the high fence like your friendly neighborhood spiderlark. The third orb plunged into the gloom in front of me and I followed, falling from sight. The orbs slowed my descent--tucked into my armpits, which maybe is less-than-optimally-heroic--and I landed on a scaffolding walkway, with a twenty-foot drop in front of me and a section of old brick wall behind.

Cooler down there, and quieter. Smelled of fresh-dug earth, with a faint tinge of rot. Lightbulbs in orange plastic cages dangled from extension cords, giving no light. The power must've been turned off at the source. As the daylight diffused, the tarps turned opaque. I couldn’t see twenty feet in any direction, but one walkway extended forward, following the length of the block, and another branched to my right.

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The orbs darted ahead, and I felt a tug of wariness. Was that scuffling I heard?

I shook myself. Calm down. There's nobody here. No reason to get the creeping jeebies. I took a breath and crept forward. A huge rusted pipe crossed a chasm, emerging from the dirt wall and disappearing past a plywood wall. In front of me, the scaffolding ended at a ladder leading downward, and a blue tarp angled above, blocking my vision and bathing everything in a cyanotic light.

I cocked my head--

Danger. An alert from an orb, like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul.

Danger, coming from behind me, speeding toward my head. As I spun, the orbs slammed into the threat--a pale claw slashing at my face.

Except the pale claw was just a plastic bag. An empty plastic bag drifting through the air.

Great. These mercenaries moved yachts and soldiers and helicopters around like pawns on a chess board, and a plastic bag just got the drop on me.

I needed to slow down. I needed a system. I’d start at the top and make a complete circuit of each level of this excavation. Not the most cunning plan, but better than nothing. So I grabbed the scaffolding, to climb upward, and a wisp of scent overcame the tang of overturned earth.

The stink stopped me, one hand on the crossbeam. It was almost familiar--like rancid, rotting seaweed--and a vague urge tugged at me from one of the orbs.

Instead of climbing toward the street, I pivoted to the outside of the scaffolding and climbed downward, deeper into the hole until I hit bottom. So much for my plan.

Feeble sunlight filtered to the lowest level. A dirt floor spread at the base of a forest of scaffolding, hard and uneven underfoot. I followed a passageway toward a pyramid stack of PVC pipes, so white they seemed to glow in the gloom. I sent the orbs though a half-open tarp, and heard something behind me.

An intake of breath. I spun and--

"Jack of all trades," a man said from behind a Dumpster. It was Ed, the guy from the Rock who’d killed his buddy. "Catch."

A blur of motion glinted in the air.

A grenade.

One of the orbs flew bullet-fast at the grenade and hit with a hard smack, returning it like a tennis serve. Another plowed into my shoulder, spinning me roughly, while the third shot into my hand. I used it to leapfrog upward, harnessing the momentum of my spin, as the grenade exploded behind the Dumpster. No flames, no killing hail of metal. Just a thunderclap, like God clapping two inches behind my head.

I grabbed the scaffolding above as the noise hammered me, and flipped onto the level above--a makeshift walkway made of plywood sheets. I smacked the floor like a drunk gymnast, sprawling onto my stomach … and another grenade fell ten feet away, bouncing with an almost-cute doot off a support plank.

Adrenaline spiked in my veins and thoughts buzzed in my mind: I'm dead! I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead. My eyes widened and my heart squeezed and I scrambled backward in desperate panic, but I didn't get far before a shock wave hit me like a truck. My ears rang and my eyes burned and shooting pains scraped my skin .

My breath came in short gasps, but I was still alive. I didn't know why. Hell, I was even still standing--or at least swaying.

I blinked and saw nothing except the afterimage of that grenade hovering an inch above the plank, a snapshot burned into my retinas. My balance was shot. I reeled backward and my heel caught an edge and I windmilled my arms and would’ve fallen from the scaffolding except an orb shoved me forward.

I heard faint screaming and couldn't tell if it was me. I still couldn’t see anything except that one freeze frame, a mental picture of the grenade caught in mid-flight.

The screaming stopped and I realized they weren't grenade grenades, they were flashbang grenades. I’d batted the first one back into Ed’s face. Detonation at eighteen inches must've hurt him pretty badly. Maybe killed him. The thought made me tremble as I crawled blindly away, following the tug of the orbs, chasing flickers of color and intuition. Trying to get far enough from the detonation that I could hide before Ed's friends tracked me down.

But I'd only dragged myself ten feet when they found me.

Crouching on the walkway, I closed my unseeing eyes and caught glimpses of movement through the orbs. Men with drawn weapons, stutter-stepping closer.