“Not your fault, Sullivan,” I told her. “You didn’t have a choice.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped at me. She tended to snap at me a lot. Well, not just me. The girl’s a snapper. “That’s the lie they want us to believe, Parish.”
Back on Main. Easing up to the corner, I peek around the edge of the building toward the coffee shop. Directly across from it is a three-story, windows boarded up on the bottom floor, fractured on the top two. Nothing glows in the windows or on the roof; no green balls of light through the eyepiece. I hold for a few seconds, watching the front. I know the drill. That building has to be cleared. We practiced it a thousand times in camp, only we had seven guys to do it. Flint, Oompa, Ringer, Teacup, Poundcake, Dumbo—down to just one now. Down to me.
Hunched over, I trot across Main Street, every inch of my body tingling, expecting the punch of the sniper’s bullet. Whose bright idea was it to cut straight through Urbana? Who put that guy in charge?
Keep moving, stay focused, check those windows up there, those doors over there. The street is choked with trash and broken glass, slick with the residue from ruptured sewer lines and water mains, puddles of oily water glimmering in the starlight. One block over, then cutting back south. The building is straight ahead at the end of the block, and I force myself to slow down. You’re taught to stay in the moment, but the moment I’m in is the one that happens after I’ve neutralized the shooter. Do I abort the mission to find Ringer and Teacup? Get Dumbo back to the safe house? Or leave him here and pick him up later on my way back from the caverns?
I’ve reached the end of the block. Time to make the call. Once I penetrate the building, I’m all in, there’s no going back.
I step through a broken plate-glass window and into the lobby of a bank. A carpet of paper covers the floor: deposit slips and brochures and old magazines and the remnants of a banner (OUR LOWEST RATES EVER!) and bills in every denomination—I can see hundreds among the fives and tens.
The damp, rotting carpet squishes beneath my boots. I sweep the room in less than thirty seconds. Clear.
I find the stairway door opposite the elevator and ease it open. I’m down to zero visibility, but I’m not risking light; I might as well scream out my name or yell Hey, bud, here I am! In the stairwell, the door clicks shut behind me, sealing me inside absolute darkness. One step up, pause, straining my ears, another step, pause. Faintly, the building groans around me like an old house settling. The harsh winter, the broken pipes within the walls, water worming its way into the mortar, freezing, expanding, breaking apart the bones and sinews that hold the structure together. If the Others weren’t dropping the bombs in four days, Urbana would crumble on its own. In a thousand years, you could hold the entirety of the city in the palm of your hand.
First landing, second floor. I keep moving up, one hand on the metal railing, step, pause, step. I’ll start on the roof and work my way down. I don’t think he’s nesting up there; Dumbo and I were hunkered by the back counter, and the trajectory from the rooftop into the coffee shop is too sharp. More likely the sniper’s set up on the second floor, but I’m going to be methodical about this. Think through every move before I make it.
I smell it halfway to the second floor, on the landing where the stairs turn: the unmistakable stink of death. I step on something small and soft. Probably a dead rat. In the tight, closed-in space, the stench is overwhelming. My eyes pour water, my stomach rises into my throat. Another good reason to blow up the cities: It’s the fastest way to get rid of the smell.
Above me, a razor-thin bar of golden light shines beneath the door. Holy crap and WTF, he’s a brazen bastard.
I press my ear against the door. Silence. Though it might seem obvious, I’m not sure what to do. The door could be booby-trapped. Or the light could be a ruse—bait to lure me into an ambush. At the very least, the door’s gotta be rigged to make a sound if it’s opened. You don’t have to be a Silencer to take that precaution.
I drop my hand onto the cold metal door handle. I fiddle with the eyepiece, stalling. You don’t ease in, Parish—you bust through.
The worst part isn’t the busting through, though. The worst part is the second before you do.
I throw open the door, whip sharply to my left, then step into the hall and turn back hard to the right. No bell jingled, no stack of empty cans clattered to the floor. The door swings closed silently behind me on well-oiled hinges. My finger twitches on the trigger as a shadow races across the wall, a shadow that’s attached to a small, orange, furry creature with a striped tail.