A dozen people swarmed through the shattered window into the restaurant, across the wreckage of tables and dishes. None of them spoke but their eyes were burning with focus. They weren't armed, they weren't soldiers. They were a mob, controlled by PJ. Innocent people--worse than human shields, he’d turned them into human swords.

We couldn’t fight back without hurting them, so we ran. Or, in my case, limped rapidly. Staying low, wary of gunfire from outside, we slunk toward the back of the restaurant--and I loosed the orbs.

When the mob spotted us, they didn’t howl, they simply swerved like a school of piranhas scenting blood.

"Upstairs," Rachel said, and took the stairs three at a time, her gun low.

I followed a little slower, ramming the orbs into the bottom step. I smashed that step into splinters, then the second step, then the third, exploding the staircase behind me as I scrambled upstairs.

Shoes crunched through broken glass, and I heard the gurgle of a baby that made my stomach clench.

The mob reached the bottom of the ruined stairway and still didn’t look at each other, still didn’t speak. I saw the baby, strapped in a carrier to her father’s chest, pudgy arms waving toward me.

I sent an orb to nudge the father away and stumbled around the landing. The moment the people couldn’t see me, they paused. Their forward momentum halted, and a meaningless mumbling arose.

I dragged myself to the second floor, a long room with another bar, then followed Rachel past a curtain with a little sign reading ‘Rooftop Seating: Closed’.

We climbed to a flagstone roof with patio furniture and little trees in pots. Taller buildings loomed around us, and sirens echoed through the city, coming closer.

"Block the stairs," Rachel told me.

The orbs flashed around the rooftop, dragging chairs across the stone floor to tumble down the stairwell and form a barricade. Then a wave of weakness washed over me, and I stumbled and Rachel brought me to a bench.

She stared at my eyes. "You don’t look concussed."

"I'm just tired."

"You need a doctor for that leg."

"Yeah."

She scanned the street from the edge of the roof. "PJ’s gone. Cops and fire are here, and EMS. What do the blobs tell you?"

"Orbs." I closed my eyes and felt the orbs drifting through the heap of chairs at the bottom of the stairwell. "There's still a bunch of people down there. Milling around."

"Yeah, they're on the street, too. Twitchy, but not homicidal."

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I nodded. "Like the marine rescue guys at Fort Dolores. They've got a PJ hangover."

"It should’ve taken him hours to control that many people." Rachel's voice sounded strained as she brushed her hair off her face. "Now it's thirty seconds and he barely talks to them. We’re more screwed than I thought."

"At least they snapped out of it once they couldn’t see us."

"Yeah." She pulled her cell from her bag, and cocked her head. "And here’s some good news."

"What?"

"My phone’s still working."

She called Umlaut and I closed my eyes again, and felt the orbs edge under my ruined shirt and into my chest.

I reunited with them, feeling a psychic click. The hard swirl in my chest that anchored them seemed to warm and I unclenched my jaw and released the knot between my shoulders. My whole body throbbed. My head felt wooly and dull. I dropped my face into my palms and tried not to think about Dewitt.

After a while, I heard activity from below. People clearing the stairwell. Then the crackle of a walkie-talkie, the sound of voices. Cops and firefighters. I heard Rachel, calm and commanding. I sat hunched on the bench, inside a billowing fog, trying to blur the pictures in my mind: Maddie rolling me off that roof, Shandra in the intersection with her eyes bleeding, Dewitt slumped in the stairwell.

How could Dewitt be dead? How could someone so present be gone forever?

I drifted into a pretty bleak place until two paramedics brought me into the back of an ambulance parked at the curb. The doors closed and I stared at the ceiling of the ambulance. I felt a tugging on my leg and heard the rip of denim. The paramedics murmured in a shorthand I couldn’t follow. Painkillers, antiseptic cream, anesthesia and staples in my thigh.

The heavyset paramedic glanced at the orbs in my chest.

"Body art," I told him.

"What are they, implants?" he asked.

"I’m starving," I said.

"That’s always a good sign."

"You know what I want?" I smiled at the ceiling. "What’s your favorite pizza?"

"Patsy’s," he said. "The one on 117th."

"Almost on par with DiFara’s," the partner said.

"That’s in Brooklyn."

"Did I say it wasn’t?" The partner lifted an aggrieved eyebrow at me. "Did you hear me claim otherwise? Am I hard of talking, I don’t know what I just said?"

"Um," I said.

The doors opened and Rachel climbed in. "Let’s go," she told the paramedics. "You're driving us home."

"We’re not done with the patient."

"He’s tougher than he looks," she said.

The guy cocked his head. "And how about you?"

"I’m a pushover," she said.

"I meant your injuries."

"I've already been to the hospital."

"I can't go," I told Rachel, trying to sit up. "I got to stay here, to find PJ before he--"

"Bare-assed?" Rachel said.

I looked down at myself. I was naked, my clothing torn into shreds and tossed in a biohazard bag. I started to say something, then didn’t.

"Umlaut’s buying you new clothes." Rachel looked at the heavyset guy. "Which one of you drives?"

----------------------------------------

I woke in the hotel bed, to the sound of Rachel talking on the phone. I rolled onto my side and watched her through half-opened eyes, enjoying sound of her voice.

"Okay, Grandma, you too. Take care." She paused. "Hey, Audrey. How's things? Of course I’m still out of prison. No, I’m good. What's, um, new with you?" Rachel listened for a while, saying ‘uh-huh’ and smoothing her hair behind her ear and smiling. Then she said, "Oh, you know me. I’m fine. Everything's good." She listened again. "No, that’s not a lie, it's a pleasantry." Another pause. "Fine, okay, are you somewhere Grandma can’t hear? Well, close the door. Yeah, the truth? The truth is, I’m in over my head. I'm hip-deep in quicksand and sinking. But that’s my element, I don’t know anything else."

They talked for a while as I drowsed, then Rachel said I love you and goodbye.

She crossed to the window and stood with the afternoon light cupped around her. Maybe I drifted off for a while. The next time I looked, she was still there. Gazing into the distance like she was trying to catch a glimpse of a better place.