Seeker

“We can’t get the sparks off!” John said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Their man Fletcher had at last stopped flailing his arms. He was now lying on the concrete floor with nothing but a few moans and muscle twitches to let them know he was alive. The sparks whirled around Fletcher’s head in dizzy patterns that made John’s own head ache. He felt sick: it had happened again, a man disrupted.

And he’d had to hurt Quin. Watching Gauge hit her had been worse than being punched himself. But she had almost helped him; she’d started to help him.This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

“Then what do we do? Carry him off the Bridge like this?” It was Paddon asking him.

“Not if we want to get out the ordinary way,” John said. He wiped a hand across his brow and realized he was bleeding and his forehead was swollen. He’d taken a heavy blow to the head during the fight.

Paddon moved over to check the other man, Brethome, the one she had knifed. “Brethome’s dead,” he said flatly.

“And Gauge?” John asked. Gauge was the man with the stubbly chin, the one who had led the attack.

“He’ll live,” Paddon answered. “She crushed his throat, but he’s breathing all right now.”

They had lost a third man as well. The one who had fired the disruptor lay nearby, his neck broken by the tall Asian who’d come out of nowhere. Two men dead, one disrupted, one injured.

“Who were the others?” Paddon asked.

“I don’t know.”

The tall Asian and the other one, the big one, had looked like petty criminals, the kind that hung around the lower levels of the Bridge. When John had taken the crack to his head, Paddon had chased after the big one but he’d lost him in the bowels of the Bridge. As far as John could tell, Quin had simply walked away from the melee with the athame. Why? She hadn’t even wanted to touch it. After a year and a half of searching, he’d had the dagger in his hands for a few hours, and already it was gone.

“Men are dead. This isn’t going to be easy to explain to my grandfather.”

“Probably not,” Paddon agreed, bundling the disruptor into a backpack.

“How long is our guard on duty?”

They had bribed a customs agent at the Bridge entrance. They had to leave while he was still at his post, or there would be questions about their entry. And if their weapons were spotted …

“Twenty more minutes, give or take.” Paddon was studying his watch. Then he examined the blood on John’s forehead. “We have to clean up. Then go back the way we came, separately.” He nodded to himself, calculating the needed time. “We can’t stay any longer, John.”

“Can Gauge walk?” John asked.

Paddon leaned over Gauge, who still had his hands at his throat, trying to ease the pressure from the blow Quin had struck with the stone dagger. The man tried to nod.

“Yes, he can walk,” Paddon said. “But we have to … take care of the others.”

“Yes,” John agreed, hating the word as it came out of his mouth.

He leaned over Fletcher, who was moaning among the disruptor sparks. Grimaces swam across the man’s face, hinting at the agony within. Be willing to kill. It was never easy, though his mother would have called this a small death. John consoled himself with the thought that, in this case, killing would be a mercy.

He reached for his knife.