hustled over the door to open it for her.
“Immediately, I think. Mr. Warner here has a rather pressing desire to go to the hospital.”
Alex opened his mouth to argue, to say any of the dozens of things he’d come up with while sitting there, fuming and ignored. But Renton choose that exact moment to turn the pain in his arm back on, so instead he ended up doubled over, clutching his forearm and wishing aloud for an unpleasant death for Renton, Anastasia, and the whole human race.
4.
There didn’t seem to be a single street in Shanghai that wasn’t crowded. Margot had been walking through the city for hours; broad, neon lit avenues packed with cars and bicycles giving way to claustrophobic alleys where vendors lined the walls, towered over by the concrete towers that hid the night sky. Everything seemed to be in motion, in a frantic race with no obvious goal, a consuming hunger for change, for profit, for the new world that they were building out of concrete and dreams and exports to the fading western world. She imagined that New York must have felt this way, once, back when the skeletons of the skyscrapers were first being erected by an army of immigrants, all hustling for their part of the new prosperity. It gave her a headache.
“Any luck, Margot?”
Alistair’s voice in her head, something else that she did not appreciate about her new situation. Back at the Academy, even Renton hadn’t had the balls to try to violate the privacy of her own well-shielded mind. Vampires had an innate resistance to psychic interference, one that most telepaths found insurmountable. Apparently, however, that did not apply to Alistair.
“None whatsoever. My feet hurt, my head hurts, and I am getting very cranky. Thus far, I haven’t seen a single Caucasian, much less the people we are looking for. I suppose that, if you’re asking me, then the others have come up empty as well?”
Margot knew that the delay meant Alistair was debating what to tell her, and she took that to mean that she was right. She felt a certain satisfaction at guessing the motives of the Chief Auditor.
“That’s not exactly true, Margot. Xia reported something a minute ago; we’re just not sure what to make of it…”
Margot turned down the next alley, waiting for Alistair to elaborate, surprised when he did not. She thought hard in his direction, even visualizing the snapshot of him that she been forced to memorize to aid the uplink, but it availed her nothing. She tried for Rebecca Levy, an admitted long shot given her limited telepathic abilities, and got nothing. Margot came to a halt in the middle of the narrow alley, a vendor pitching knockoff sportswear to one side, a tennis shoe vendor on the other, and puzzled over the wall in front of her, creating an unexpected dead end. She consulted the map of the city that Alistair had implanted in her mind and could not find it. Then Margot cursed her own stupidity and started to scramble.
It was too late to try to dodge the attack, but she did manage to roll with it, diminishing the force of the blow. The Weir’s claws tore gouges from her shoulder, exposing white bone, and the impact sent her tumbling backwards. She hit the ground rolling, trying to give herself some distance to work with.
Obviously, they were feeling confident. They let her get back up to her feet.
They hadn’t bothered with an isolation field, probably to avoid tipping Margot off to their presence, or to avoid alerting the other Operators scattered around the metropolis. Foregoing it meant casualties and chaos among the normal citizenry, something that was normally avoided, but not an apparent concern for her adversaries. Three Weir lurked in a rough group, ambling cautiously toward her, the alley behind them filled with the wreckage of shattered stalls and mutilated bodies, some still able to move and cry out. Margot knew there was nothing she could do for them. She never even considered trying.
Behind them, a
“Immediately, I think. Mr. Warner here has a rather pressing desire to go to the hospital.”
Alex opened his mouth to argue, to say any of the dozens of things he’d come up with while sitting there, fuming and ignored. But Renton choose that exact moment to turn the pain in his arm back on, so instead he ended up doubled over, clutching his forearm and wishing aloud for an unpleasant death for Renton, Anastasia, and the whole human race.
4.
There didn’t seem to be a single street in Shanghai that wasn’t crowded. Margot had been walking through the city for hours; broad, neon lit avenues packed with cars and bicycles giving way to claustrophobic alleys where vendors lined the walls, towered over by the concrete towers that hid the night sky. Everything seemed to be in motion, in a frantic race with no obvious goal, a consuming hunger for change, for profit, for the new world that they were building out of concrete and dreams and exports to the fading western world. She imagined that New York must have felt this way, once, back when the skeletons of the skyscrapers were first being erected by an army of immigrants, all hustling for their part of the new prosperity. It gave her a headache.
“Any luck, Margot?”
Alistair’s voice in her head, something else that she did not appreciate about her new situation. Back at the Academy, even Renton hadn’t had the balls to try to violate the privacy of her own well-shielded mind. Vampires had an innate resistance to psychic interference, one that most telepaths found insurmountable. Apparently, however, that did not apply to Alistair.
“None whatsoever. My feet hurt, my head hurts, and I am getting very cranky. Thus far, I haven’t seen a single Caucasian, much less the people we are looking for. I suppose that, if you’re asking me, then the others have come up empty as well?”
Margot knew that the delay meant Alistair was debating what to tell her, and she took that to mean that she was right. She felt a certain satisfaction at guessing the motives of the Chief Auditor.
“That’s not exactly true, Margot. Xia reported something a minute ago; we’re just not sure what to make of it…”
Margot turned down the next alley, waiting for Alistair to elaborate, surprised when he did not. She thought hard in his direction, even visualizing the snapshot of him that she been forced to memorize to aid the uplink, but it availed her nothing. She tried for Rebecca Levy, an admitted long shot given her limited telepathic abilities, and got nothing. Margot came to a halt in the middle of the narrow alley, a vendor pitching knockoff sportswear to one side, a tennis shoe vendor on the other, and puzzled over the wall in front of her, creating an unexpected dead end. She consulted the map of the city that Alistair had implanted in her mind and could not find it. Then Margot cursed her own stupidity and started to scramble.
It was too late to try to dodge the attack, but she did manage to roll with it, diminishing the force of the blow. The Weir’s claws tore gouges from her shoulder, exposing white bone, and the impact sent her tumbling backwards. She hit the ground rolling, trying to give herself some distance to work with.
Obviously, they were feeling confident. They let her get back up to her feet.
They hadn’t bothered with an isolation field, probably to avoid tipping Margot off to their presence, or to avoid alerting the other Operators scattered around the metropolis. Foregoing it meant casualties and chaos among the normal citizenry, something that was normally avoided, but not an apparent concern for her adversaries. Three Weir lurked in a rough group, ambling cautiously toward her, the alley behind them filled with the wreckage of shattered stalls and mutilated bodies, some still able to move and cry out. Margot knew there was nothing she could do for them. She never even considered trying.
Behind them, a
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