My hand closes around the tag.
The plastic cracks.
Arturo sees the address. “Kauss.”
“Where is he?”
“We do not know yet.”
I turn toward the nearest captured runner. He is no older than nineteen, face pale, purple jacket soaked through with rain. “Where is Ron?”
“I swear, I don’t?—”
I seize the front of his jacket and lift him off the ground.
Arturo steps forward. “He may not know.”
“Then someone does.”
The boy shakes so hard his teeth knock together. “Nessa. Nessa coordinates fire teams. Red hair. Scar on her lip. She was at the rail hotel an hour ago.”
I set him down.
He collapses anyway.
We take the explosives. Cleo disables the fuel cells personally, muttering that children with bombs should be buried in paperwork before graves. I do not ask what she means.
At dawn, the city looks bruised.
Fires burn in three districts. Police hovercraft finally swarm downtown, blocking streets they should have watched yesterday. Lenrog’s organization has splintered into armed pockets, some loyal to Arturo, some silent, some already negotiating with Ron. Poison Memories paint purple skull-blooms over walls still wet from rain. People stay inside if they can. Those who cannot move quickly, heads down, pretending not to see men with guns.
I have not slept.
I have not called Evie.
The comm rests in my pocket like an accusation.
Every time I reach for it, another crisis arrives. Every time I imagine her voice, I hear the last thing she said: Don’t come to the bakery tonight. I hear myself telling her I love her too late, in the wrong place, with the wrong life closing around me.
Arturo finds me on the roof of a parking structure overlooking West Market. Below, his people change vehicles. The captured comm grid flickers on a portable screen beside Cleo.
“You’re bleeding,” Arturo says.
I look down. A slash crosses my forearm where someone got lucky with a monofilament blade. Dark blood drips steadily from my fingers onto wet concrete.
“It will close.”
“You should clean it.”
“I said it will close.”
He stands beside me, careful to maintain distance. Smart. “You saved the clinic.”
“No.”
“We found their target sheet. We intercepted the fire team. That is a save.”
“It is delay.”
