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That'sthe best they can do?
A morgue?
I actually tried asking around about it, but no one I've talked to had anything concrete to say, and that's no surprise. Much about the Nox is shrouded in mystery, and it's pretty much the same everywhere else in Night Bloom.
This place might share the same railway with the rest of New York, but they're certainly not of the same flesh. Everything to see here is preter-owned. All of the homes, the businesses, and even the lone police station next to the subway's D2 exit. You name it, a preter is on top of it, and humans have no right to complain about thisat all...since Night Bloom isn't one's normal definition for a 'city'.
It might look and feel like one, but all ten thousand acres of the place are private property, and the one person who owns this is my boss.
Well, my boss's boss, but you get what I mean.
****
ASTREAK OF LIGHTNINGflashed across the cloudy skies in broad daylight, and both human and preter members making up Nox Incorporated's board of executives gulped and trembled in their chairs as the air inside the room cracked with danger and fury.
Something - or someone - had obviously pissed the King to make him bristle so, and when lightning flashed again, the man they served spoke only one word in its aftermath.
"Go."
The preters had enough presence of mind to remember to bow before taking their leave, but the humans, whose minds were already warped with fear, could only scurry away like frightened mice.
Michalis shifted as soon as the door closed behind the last of his executives, silver fur coating sinewy muscles, and his beastly senses unleashed in but a fraction of a second.
Lightning wasn't always a discharge of electricity. Sometimes, it was simply divine, like this one was, and Michalis wasted no time as he loped out of the balcony and began clawing his way to the top.
The Nox was equipped with its own transmission tower, and its peak offered the tallest vantage point of the city. Michalis waited tensely as he reached the top, and when lightning struck again, he was finally able to pinpoint the anomaly being augured.
A pulse.
Neither human nor preter. But patently different. Unfamiliareven.And therefore, potentially dangerous.
That beating pulse could be a threat to his city.
Anditwas coming closer and closer.
Kindred sensed the change in his mood, but none of them stirred from their dens. Did this mean that they were unable to senseit?Or perhaps theywereaware it was coming, but did not perceive it as a threat?
Whatever that beating pulse was, it was moving at a steady and unhurried pace, almost as if it were provoking him, and a growl ripped out of Michalis' throat when it actually had the gall to enter his domain.
He placed a call to his head of security and asked tersely if their scans had picked up anything.
"Óchi,kýrios."No, master.
"And our preter patrols?"
"No alerts," Spiros reported, "and all of their trackers show up as active in their assigned routes."
What the hell?
He was clearly the only one able to sense it, but even with it already inside the fucking Nox—-
This was the first time in his entire life that Michalis was unable to tell whether the other entity was friend or foe.
****
RICHARD WAGNER'SRide of the Valkyriesis playing in the background as I tap my employee ID on the turnstile's scanner, and I do my best to wheeze for breathsilentlyas I push past its metal arms.
My fellowhomo sapiensare so much more judgey than preters, and while I didn't know this when I was in my twenties, the way some humans see you apparently changes the moment your age exceeds the number of days in one calendar month.
