Quinn had seen the drainage tunnel from the air. A corrugated aluminum tube cut through a small rise and prevented a depression near the tracks from flooding. Foliage hung over the opening, which yawned in front of them, completely dark.
Ezra turned on his hood light, and two rows of bright LEDs shown from either side of his forehead.
“That’s not gonna help,” Quinn told him, dropping his red emergency backpack on the grass. “But leave it on for a minute.”
Both men were in full hazard dress. A stiff but flexible airtight hood was affixed to the chest and shoulders of their uniforms. A wide plastic visor filled the front and allowed a nearly unobstructed view. Filtered slats sat below the ears. Their hands were covered in skintight gloves with studded discs that transferred the sensation of touch to the fingertips. Ezra had marveled when he first put them on.
“It’s like you can feel through the plastic!” he had exclaimed.
Pinned to each man’s chest was a radiation indicator that passively changed color based on the concentration of ambient particles. A semi-spherical surveillance drone, roughly the size of a large grapefruit, hovered in the air over them and served as their primary connection to the lab.
Clo’s voice came over the radio. “Kripke’s got— solu— on th— satellite plots.” Her voice glitched repeatedly and was almost completely masked by static. “—a 95% chan— the ano— originated in—ghly one square —lometer —t two clicks fr—r location.”
“We’re losing you, Control. Send it to my visor while you still can.”
But she already had. A small animated map appeared in the lower right of his visual field. In moving green lines, it triangulated a spot between three landmarks: the windmill, a distant water tower, and the strange antenna shapes Quinn had seen from the air.
He opened the red backpack and set the plastic bottle full of sand on the grass. He removed a second water bottle from the bag and emptied it. Then he poked a hole in the cap with a ballpoint pen.
“What are you doing?” Ezra asked.
“Very little of this equipment has been tested in the field. We can’t rely on any of it.”
“Is it true that Arkatech fabricates all our stuff?”
“Some of it. Some is military. Some we bought off Amazon.”
Ezra paused before asking the next question. “Do you think I’ll get to meet her?”
“Who? Armani? Why? Got a crush?”
When Ezra’s LED flickered, Quinn inverted the sand-filled bottle on top of the one he had just emptied and watched the sand dribble into the bottom.
“What’s that?” Ezra asked.
“You’ll see.”
Quinn shook the bottles to make sure the hole was clear and waited for it to fill. When the hood lights flickered again several minutes later, Quinn quickly separated the bottles. He dumped the remaining sand out of the top. Then he inverted the bottles, one on top of the other so that the sand fell back the other way, and fixed their nozzles together with several rounds of surgical tape from a first aid kit.
“You made an hourglass,” Ezra accused.
“More like a stopwatch. But yeah. According to our friends at FEMA, those growth spurts are getting longer each time, so that should give us a bit of a buffer.” Quinn stood. “You ready?”
Ezra nodded once, nervously.
“You’re gonna do great. Just follow my lead.” Quinn handed him an orange candle from the emergency kit he had stolen, which he had slung over his shoulder.
“What’s this?”
“Emergency candle. Sort of like a slow-burning flare. Pull the tab at the top.”
“Oh. I thought that was the wick.”
Quinn stood before the opening of the tunnel. The top barely reached his chin. He’d have to stoop. And there was no way the backpack would fit. He took it off and handed it to Ezra.
He sighed. “This is gonna be fun.”
The anomaly’s parabolic growth made it possible for the team to estimate when the exterior would traverse the space between the two openings of the long drainage tunnel. The only question was whether the mass would split and follow both tunnel and land. From what Quinn had seen, the anomaly was holding together. Rather than breaking in different directions or radiating outward in spikes, it had kept the same oval shape, like a giant amoeba, even as it moved across the varied and uneven landscape. Still, the tunnel was long and dark and there was no way to know for sure whether they were walking directly into it. There was no light at the end, which suggested it might be blocked. Either that, or the opening was much farther away than Quinn expected.
Ezra’s LED lights flickered again, but this time, they went out, along with the heads-up displays in their visors. After a moment, neither came back on. Without the lights, the tube was nearly pitch black.
“EMP,” Ezra said through his visor.
“Looks like we’re going low-tech today,” Quinn drolled.
He turned the makeshift hourglass as Ezra yanked the tab on the candle. After a short gap, the long cylinder fizzled at the top and caught fire. It burned weakly, sparking periodically.
“I think it’s broken,” Ezra said.
Quinn laughed once. “That’s so it’ll light itself again if it gets wet or goes out.” He braced himself and shuffled forward again. “Man, this is gonna kill my back.”
He lifted his foot and black slime—a mix of mud and decomposed leaves—slid from the sole of his boot with a plop.
“We should’ve filmed this. Would’ve made a great recruitment video. Crimes Division: janitors with gadgets.”
Ezra snorted once in laughter.
After shuffling forward at a steady pace for several dozen yards, Quinn stopped suddenly.
“Shit.”
“What?”
He stuck out his hand. “Gimme me the candle.”
He lowered the flame to the ground to make sure it was clear. Then he stepped forward cautiously and illuminated the top curve of the corrugated tube, where a network of tiny black tendrils were pulsating uniformly but irregularly: Everything throbbed at the same time, but the strength of each throb and the time between them fluctuated randomly. Many of them seemed to cascade.
“Whoa . . .” Ezra breathed. “Creepy.”
In the tendrils’ wake were irregular veins of an iridescent, charcoal-colored material, which was seemingly inert.
“Seems to be replacing what it touches with that material.”
“Waste product, maybe?”
Quinn checked the hourglass. Then he set it on the ground. “Hand me a knife.”
Ezra dropped their mobile equipment pack and looked inside.
“There isn’t one.”
“What do you mean there isn’t one?”
“There’s a sonic cutter.”
He lifted a small device, like a fat yellow highlighter, with the ARKATECH logo on the side. He clicked the button several times but nothing happened.
“Fried.”
Quinn sighed. “Look around for something sharp.”
“But won’t it just eat whatever we poke it with.”
“Fuck.”
The kid was right.
While the pair contemplated their predicament, the anomaly pulsed again, and Quinn jumped back as knife-shaped spokes of various sizes erupted from the dark material left in the tendrils’ wake, nearly skewering him.
“JESUS!”
Ezra pulled him back and helped him to his feet in the low tube, which was then silent except for their panting breath.
“What the hell . . .”
Both of them examined the clusters, which looked like dark crystals made of knife blades of varying sizes. The pulsating tendrils seemed unaffected and went about their work devouring the tunnel in veins, like ore in a mine.
Quinn tapped the tip of one knife with the plastic on his finger. “Sharp.”
“Careful,” Ezra urged in a whisper.
In the low light from the candle, Quinn’s noticed a thin fog at the edge of his visor. Without power, the ionic filters in his hood weren’t circulating air.
“Is it just me,” he said, “or did it get colder in here?”
Ezra thought for a second. He nodded. “Feels like it.”
They looked up again at the irregularly pulsating tendrils.
“What the hell is this thing?”
Quinn checked Ezra’s radiation badge since his own was too difficult to see. The original gray color had faded to bright orange. While not enough to be immediately lethal, without the suits, both of them would’ve been looking at an early death from cancer.
“What do we do?” Ezra asked, staring at the dark tunnel ahead, now partially blocked by a fur of knife blades growing from above.
Before Ezra could object, Quinn leaned forward and snapped one with his hand. The material was rigid but brittle, and when it broke free suddenly, he nearly lost his balance.
“Please be careful,” Ezra urged again.
“If something happens to me, don’t try to help. Okay? You might just make things worse. Leave me where I am and go tell the others. Got it?”
Ezra nodded nervously.
“Still glad you came?” Quinn joked.
He turned the pseudo-blade in his gloved hand. Then he held it over the pulsating tendril and glanced to the makeshift hourglass. They still had time.
“Here goes . . .”
Quinn pushed the dark, iridescent blade through the tendril, which split easily.
“Believe it or not, it’s about the consistency of a marshmallow.”
The severed tip of the tendril immediately formed a circle with a thick edge, like the anomaly in miniature. But as parent and child both grew, they sensed each other across the narrow gap left by the retreating blade, and the masses reconnected.
“It’s like, when it gets separated, it forms its own organism or something,” Ezra said.
“Definitely didn’t react to being cut. I don’t suppose you have any idea what it’s made of?”
Ezra shook his head.
“Me either,” he said, slipping the blade into a heavy evidence bag from Ezra’s pack. “But I don’t think it’s organic. Come on. We don’t have much time.”
The tunnel bent slightly toward the end, which was why the opening hadn’t been visible. The tendrils of the anomaly clung to the ceiling the entire length. While the fur of knives gradually diminished, the tendrils grew larger, and the men had to crawl like babies the rest of the way, sliding their packs behind them.
But they made it, and Quinn stood straight finally and stretched his back. Immediately, he heard a distant fluttering sound and looked up to see a large, camera-studded media drone hovering some two thousand feet in the air. It wasn’t directly over the anomaly, but it was close—closer than Nguyen would like, Quinn was sure. Not a minute later, the helicopter that had given him the tour appeared to move the drone back. The noise fluttered down.
“Shouldn’t we be . . . ya know?” Ezra said, hanging back.
“What?”
“Hiding.”
They watched the chopper make a circle.
“The Humvee we took has GPS,” Quinn said. “They know where we are. I want them to. With luck, they’ll keep tabs on us.”
As tiny drops of rain accumulated on Quinn’s visor, he turned to check the pulsating anomaly, only visible as fat tendrils disappearing from the rise. These were much too large to pulsate and sat motionless like a cluster of giant anaconda after a meal.
“Doesn’t seem to react to water.”
“What do we do once it passes the other side of the tunnel?” Ezra asked, still holding the lit candle.
Quinn snuffed it and pushed the pliable sides up over the wick to keep it from contacting air. He handed it back to Ezra.
“Keep that dry. We may need it again.”
The men looked around the bleak rural landscape. The anomaly had replaced streaks and patches with the dark iridescent material. From the ground, there was no discernible pattern.
“Where to?”
It took Quinn a minute to triangulate their position. Then he pointed.
“The abandoned neighborhood is that way. If we hurry, we might be able to make it back through the tunnel before the anomaly makes it across.”
“And if we don’t?” Ezra glanced back.
It was eerily quiet inside the anomaly. There were no birds, no rustle of leaves, and Ezra got goosebumps.
“You like to drive, don’t you?” he asked as they started to walk.
Quinn figured he wanted to fill the silence. “Why do you say that?”
“Because the first thing you did in the truck was disable the self-driving module.”
Quinn smiled to himself. “Old habit, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was Bureau policy. You never knew when you’d have to chase someone, so we were required at all times to use law enforcement vehicles with high-speed pursuit modules, which are illegal for the public to own. Not that that ever stopped anyone from making their own.”
“My uncle has one,” Ezra said. “I guess I shouldn’t’ve told you that,” he added.
“Ha. I wouldn’t have cared even when I was at the Bureau. That wasn’t really our thing.”
“So, if you didn’t have a high-speed pursuit module, it had to be manual car?”
“Or have the option of disabling the safe-driving protocols, which not every model does.”
“Because people aren’t as safe as machines,” Ezra declared in explanation.
“Maybe. I grew up driving, so manual was just easier than messing with the rest. I mean, at the point you have to chase someone, you don’t want to be scrolling through a menu, looking for the disable function.”
“True.”
“If I had my way, Section 08 would have the same policy.”
“I don’t know how to drive,” Ezra said.
“Really?” Quinn turned. “You’ve never driven?”
“None of my friends do either.” Ezra shrugged. “No reason.”
“You don’t wanna learn?”
“Why? It just seems like a waste when there’s a fleet of rideshare vehicles available 24/7 who can do it safer.”
“Not out here.” Quinn remembered Ezra’s hand gripping the handle in the door as if his life depended on it. “It bothers you, doesn’t it? Riding with a human driver.”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Well. Maybe. A little. Statistically, I mean.”
“Statistically? How does something statistically bother you?”
“I just meant it’s fine. If you trust yourself more.”
“Well, thank you. I’m glad I have your permission.”
Ezra laughed once, but being unsure if Quinn meant it as a joke, he stopped and his face turned red.
“Almost time,” Quinn said, holding up the makeshift hourglass. He motioned to a fallen log. “Let’s wait it out here. I don’t wanna be moving when it pulses. The Incident Commander was right about one thing: We don’t wanna get injured in here.”
The last of the sand fell, but with the gaps between pulses increasing, the low-tech timepiece was becoming increasingly inaccurate.
“Are gonna make me learn how to drive?” Ezra asked.
“This job gets better all the time, doesn’t it?” Quinn joked.
The pulse came and several objects around them immediately shifted in a rapid, surreal dance. Quinn jumped in surprise as Ezra slipped off the log. His butt hit the ground just as the pulse passed.
Neither man moved.
“Whoa . . .”
“What just happened?”
They both turned to a nearby tree, which had changed. It still looked exactly like a tree, but where it had been replaced by the anomaly, the pattern of branches was different.
“What do you think that stuff is?” Ezra whispered, as if the dark material were listening.
Quinn shook his head and stepped closer to a branch.
“What are you doing?”
“Hand me that blade from before.”
Ezra opened the pack and paused. He lifted something with two fingers as if it were a bag of poop. The material was no longer in the shape of a knife. It was in the shape of a fragment of curved corrugated tubing.
Quinn stepped over and took it. With some effort, he snapped it in half.
“How does it remember what it was? More importantly, how does it know what to change into?”
Ezra shook his head in silence.
“Freaky.”
Quinn tossed the pieces away and turned back to the tree. He grabbed a branch and tried to break it. When that didn’t work, he stepped back to kick it.
“I think it’s too strong,” Ezra said.
But with one solid blow, the material snapped with a loud pop. The branch flew back ten feet, landed with a heavy thud, and rolled.
Ezra’s mouth pursed a little. That should’ve been impossible. It seemed there was more to his boss than met the eye.
Rather than retrieve the fallen branch, Quinn examined the uneven fracture.
“Come here,” he said to Ezra. He pointed. “Look at this.”
Ezra approached cautiously, as if he expected a knife blade to shoot out at him.
“What do you see?”
He leaned. “Tree rings.”
“Right. Whatever this stuff is, it’s like it gets deposited at the—”
Quinn caught something—movement—and spun his head. Ezra did the same, and the two men waited in silence.
After a moment, Quinn called to the air. “You can come out!”
But there was nothing. Just the occasional breeze and the dark, overcast sky.
“What did you see?” Ezra whispered.
“HELLO?” Quinn called, louder.
Still nothing.
He started toward the line of brush where he’d seen movement.
“Let’s see if we can make it to the old neighborhood before things change again. I don’t wanna get lost in here.”
Ezra looked around nervously. He hadn’t thought of that.
The housing addition, it turned out, was much closer than they realized. They could see it once they passed the next grove of half-replaced trees. From a distance, it looked no different than any neighborhood of late 20th-century tract homes, except that all the foliage was completely overgrown. But on closer inspection, the depth of decrepitude was clear. Everything was in ruins. The roads were a web of cracks from which a veritable forest of tall weeds grew. Roofs sagged. What few fences were left were dilapidated and leaning. In addition to the occasional graffiti—some of it quite artistic—a number of houses exhibited highly localized damage, as if kids had been breaking things.
“It’s like a ghost town,” Ezra said softly.
Quinn had to admit, even he was unnerved. It was the silence. It felt as if the entire place were holding its breath.
“Lotta places like this,” he said. “Cheaply built neighborhoods not even worth tearing down.”
He stopped. The top of a head peeking over an empty window had ducked.
“Keep walking and talking to me as if I were right behind you,” Quinn said in a low voice.
“Where are you going?” Ezra whispered. “Where should I—”
“Just keep walking straight. Talk to me about your favorite games.”
“Games?”
“You play video games, right?”
With that, Quinn ducked low and moved swiftly among the weeds of the road to take cover on the side of a nearby house. Ezra began talking entirely too loudly and in a completely unconvincing way, but it gave Quinn a moment to sneak through the verge at the back of the house. As he approached the rear entry, which had no door, he slowed to a creep and kept his body low. Without a weapon, he couldn’t risk an ambush. Instead, he hoped merely to make an assessment of the threat, if any.
He knelt slowly under a shattered window, careful to make as little noise as possible, while Ezra continued to chatter on the road. Quinn listened for a moment and caught some indications of movement, but since it didn’t sound close, he risked tilting his head and sticking one eye over the sill.
Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, crouched amid the detritus of the floor. One whispered to each other and made hand gestures as if they were planning on sneaking away.
Quinn stood. “What are you doing here? This place is off limits.”
They jumped. The boy darted for the front, but stopped there and waited for the girl, who was more cautious.
Quinn walked through the doorless entry. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s very dangerous.”
“This is our place,” the boy objected with too much bravado. “Who the hell are you?”
“Federal agents. This place is safety hazard. Didn’t you see the blockades? How did you even get in here?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Come on, kid. This isn’t a game. You could already be—”
The kid dashed suddenly for the open doorway, fully expecting to be faster than the large older man in the stiff hazmat uniform, but with one push with his feet, Quinn jolted forward and grabbed the kid by the coat.
“Help! Help!” the kid cried. “I’m being molested! Police brutality!”
Quinn waited for him to stop struggling. “Are you finished?”
The kid went limp, like a toddler, and Quinn let him fall to the debris. The boy hadn’t expected that, and he hit his head.
“Ow . . .” He rubbed it. “Man, why you guys always gotta be so mean?”
“I asked you how you got in here.”
He shrugged. “We waited until that thing moved over the trellis. Near Fulton. Then we went under.”
Ezra, hearing the voices, cautiously pushed the front door open. It creaked loudly.
“Well, it’s not safe,” Quinn explained. “Didn’t you see all the sheriff’s deputies?”
“We’re not scared of them,” the girl objected. “Or you.”
“It’s not us you have to worry about. That thing out there is radioactive.”
“You’re lying,” she accused jokingly, as if Quinn had just told her she’d won a free pizza. “That’s what they always say when they want to keep people out.”
Quinn had to admit, she wasn’t wrong there. Lie enough times and no one believes you anymore, even to their own detriment.
He looked down at his chest and unclipped his radiation indicator. He tossed it to her.
The girl caught it and examined the faded orange pattern. “You being serious?”
Quinn pointed to his head. “You think we wear these hoods for fun? If we get you out of here now, there are some medicines that can absorb radiation. You’ll have to stay in the hospital for a bit, but—”
“Don’t believe them!”
A second boy appeared in the back yard. He was older than the other two.
“Look!” Ezra called, holding up his own patch. “See how mine’s slightly different than his? It changes color constant—”
“No!” the older boy yelled. “You just wanna take this for yourselves. But you can’t have it. We found it. It’s ours!”
“Hold on,” Quinn said. “Nobody’s taking anything here. Whatever you found, if it doesn’t belong to anyone else, you can keep it. I promise. We just wanna get you to—”
“Bullshit! We know guys like you. Always come and take everything. We’re not stupid. But we found it. That’s how it works. We’re the first, so it belongs to us!”
The older boy, who looked 16 or 17, ran around the house toward another on the far side of the street. It was a gathering place for the local youth, or so it seemed. Quinn’s boot crunched a hypodermic needle as he walked inside, his hand still gripping the first boy, whom he had dragged the entire way.
“Is this your clubhouse?” he asked.
The girl shrugged. “It’s just a place.”
“Junkies come here?”
“Sometimes.”
“Who else?”
She shrugged again.
“Have you seen anyone else?” Quinn demanded. “It’s important everyone gets out.”
He decided not to mention the approaching bomb.
“No.”
“You could check the creep’s place,” the younger boy suggested.
“The creep?”
“Let go a’ me and I’ll tell you.”
Quinn eyed him once and let go.
“Some crazy old guy who moved into one of the houses down the street,” the kid said, fixing his shirt.
“But we haven’t seen him,” the girl said. “Not since the other day. But sometimes he doesn’t come out for, like, a really long time.”
“What’s he look like?”
She shrugged again. “I dunno. Just some creepy old guy.”
“Old like me?”
She shook her head. “Older.”
“Tall? Short?”
“Shorter than you,” she said.
Since most people were, that wasn’t particular helpful.
“Taller than him,” she said, pointing to Ezra.
“Which house?” Quinn asked.
“Down the way. You can’t miss it. All the boards on the windows are new. And he put up signs for people to stay away. He was always yelling and throwing shit at us. I think he thought this place was empty.”
“Stop telling them things.” The older boy appeared from the back of the derelict house holding a perfect sphere, about the size of a basketball, made entirely of the dark iridescent material.
“You probably shouldn’t be touching that with your bare hands,” Quinn told him.
“You just wanna take it.”
“We’re not here to take your stuff,” Quinn told him. “But we do need to get you out of here. That stuff is dangerous. It’s not a toy.”
“It’s mine. I found it.”
“We found it,” the girl objected.
“What are you gonna do with it?” Ezra asked sympathetically.
“I dunno. Sell it. Get rich. What’s it to you? It’s mine.”
Quinn took the cue. “Why do you think it’ll make you rich?” he asked.
He shrugged. “’Cuz it’s special. It does stuff.”
“Changes shape, you mean.”
“If you hold it and think of something,” the girl explained, “then when the pulse comes, it’ll turn into it. Sort of. It can’t do fancy stuff like diamonds or money.”
Quinn looked at the ball in the boy’s hands. “Did you make that sphere?”
He shrugged. “Sort of.”
“We did it together,” the younger boy said.
“If I let you keep it,” Quinn said, “will you come to the hospital and get checked out?”
“We under arrest?”
“No. But the army is planning on—” He thought for a moment. “Spraying this whole area. That’s why those helicopters have been flying. If you stay here, you’ll get hurt. Possibly killed.”
The younger boy walked over to his friend. Seeing them next to each other, Quinn realize they were more likely brothers.
“Come on, Tac,” the girl said to the older boy. “I’m scared now. I don’t wanna stay here.”
The boy called Tac thought for a moment. “I keep this?” he asked, holding up the ball.
“Sure.”
Ezra leaned close to Quinn. “How are we gonna get them out?”
“You guys are gonna start a fire,” Quinn explained. “A big one.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna go check the creep’s house, make sure no one else is here.”
Quinn stepped away, but as he did so, he noticed Ezra’s face.
“You should hurry,” he said. “We gotta get them to a hospital.”
“Okay. But. What do I do?”
“You don’t know how to make a fire?”
“I dunno. I mean, I’ve never made a fire.”
“But you know fire burns things.”
Ezra made a face.
“Find some stuff that burns, preferably stuff that isn’t wet from the rain. Siding, cabinetry, trash, whatever. Take it into the street. Pile the big stuff that burns on top of the small stuff that burns. Then light the small stuff on fire.”
“With what?”
Quinn walked over and pulled the emergency candle out of the side pocket of Ezra’s pack.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
“Expose the wick to oxygen and it’ll light itself. Make a big fire so they’re sure to see. Bigger than you think it needs to be, okay? No need to be subtle. It should scream ‘emergency.’ Just hurry. Who knows how much radiation they’ve been exposed to. Or when it’ll start raining again.” He started down the road. “I’ll be back in a few.”
The creep’s house was exactly as the kids had described. In lieu of broken windows, there was plywood hastily spray-painted with warnings. KEEP OUT. PRIVATE. TRESPASSERS SHOT. Large chunks of the single-story structure had been converted by the anomaly into the strange, iridescent-charcoal material, much more than any of the neighboring houses, and Quinn wondered if that was what the house had looked like originally, or if it had changed.
The front door was hanging loose on one hinge, and as soon as he approached the opening, he could tell there was something wrong. There was way too much freshly broken glass, for one. And it was clean. It looked as if someone had recently smashed an entire kitchen set on the floor. There were pieces everywhere. It wasn’t until he bent to examine them that he noticed hash marks. It wasn’t glassware. It was beakers and chemistry flasks.
As he stepped over a hardwood floor completely converted to the iridescent material, Quinn cursed to himself. He should’ve taken the hourglass. If the anomaly pulsed again, which could happen at any time, the floor might shift underneath him, or even open up entirely, if that’s what he was thinking about. But with the thought of falling now securely ensconced in his head, he found he couldn’t get it out.
“Hello?” he called. “Federal agent! This place is about to be bombarded. We need every—”
He stopped. There was a body in the living room. Or at least it seemed like one. But it was strange. Completely dark and without color. A man’s entire kneeling corpse had been converted to iridescent charcoal. He was on his knees on the floor. His face was twisted grotesquely, like a medieval gargoyle. His right arm was bent and his right hand was clutched close to his body, the way you might hold it if it were broken. His left arm was thrust to the sky. But he wasn’t reaching. Although the arm was straight, the left hand hung limp at the wrist, and several of the fingers were awkwardly bent. So, too, his right foot, which turned out from the body as if twisted from a bad sprain. In fact, every part of the dark figure seemed to be in agonizing pain—his cracked lips, his swollen tongue, which protruded between them, even his eyes, which bulged, half covered by their lids. The man was completely broken. Shattered.
Quinn knelt for a closer look and tried not to imagine knives shooting up from the floor.
Every detail of the frozen figure—his eyelashes, the wrinkles in his skin—had been perfectly captured. Although there was no color, Quinn could see the pattern of stitching in the flannel shirt he wore and the dangling thread from a missing button. He could see the tiny bumps on the man’s swollen tongue. Someone had beaten him. His face looked like a prize fighter’s after twenty rounds in the ring. And his neck . . .
“Jesus,” Quinn whispered.
His neck bore several deep indentations, as if his throat had been crushed by something mechanical. It was absolutely brutal.
Screaming.
Quinn jumped to his feet and ran outside.
Down the street, near a rising signal fire, two soldiers in full-body protective camo had Ezra on the ground. Their guns were pointed at his head. The teenage girl screamed and kicked as another soldier lifted her forcefully.
A fourth grunt dropped from a tether directly in front of Quinn and fired a taser. But Quinn’s uniform was too thick, and the charge went nowhere. Quinn immediately grabbed the barrel of the taser rifle and rammed it against the soldier’s night vision cowl—one, two, three times. The man tried to fight back, but Quinn was much larger, and he grabbed the soldier by his utility harness and launched him against the wall of the house.
Two more men landed on either side of him, weapons drawn, but he blew past them at full speed. The soldiers holding Ezra down lifted their heads just in time to see him body-check them at full speed. They grunted with the force and flew back.
Gunshots.
An approaching officer fired three warning shots and everyone froze. Before Quinn could react, a mechanical grapple wrapped around him, and he was puled swiftly into the sky with the others.