N A D I R The evening was hot and moist despite the looming winter; the air periodically condensed into droplets that fell like dead flies to splatter on the sidewalk. Tran winced as the acidic moisture filmed his eyes and hurriedly dug out his shades to hide the reddening. The world instantly reduced itself to muted glows and impenetrable shadows, people floating by him like visions amidst a buzz of low conversation. A vague grey line hung disturbingly before his left eye, moving in tandem with his head as he tried to look around it. Scratch, dead center on the lens. So this is it, he mused, gazing at the thick pink-grey air above. Decades before, people argued over whether the deteriorating atmosphere would bring about a new Ice Age or a global hotbox. Now the debate had been reduced to whether hot or cold drinks made the heat more bearable. Unconsciously declaring his position, Tran shouldered his way through the worn-out, slow- moving crowd and wormed into the forever-open doorway of the cafe, hands deep in the pockets of his Gore-tex jacket. The thick, hot air of the room clogged his nostrils with the mingled odors of sweat and cologne. The dark shoulder of his jacket brushed elbows and hairlines as it led him through a solid block of addicts sharing excited conversation over steaming black water. The weight of the crowd pressed him into the bar as he reached its edge, and he pushed himself back on his elbows, chest heaving in the sudden breathing room. "Triple 'spresso," he told the sunken-eyed blonde at the register, feeling the weight of the world--or at least the room--on his back. He reached for his wallet reflexively with his thumb and forefinger, found it was gone. The curse he spat silently didn't bring it back, but he managed to find a few quarters crammed amidst the lint at the bottom of his pocket. "Scratch," he said quickly, smiling half-apologetically as the cashier irritably punched a void. "House." He traded her the quarters for a thin paper cup that seared his fingers. "Thanks." One forearm extended like a shield, cup held just above his head, Tran eased through the random gaps people habitually left between their small social gatherings. The coffee scalded his thumb twice before he reached the sidewalk, and the outside air came as a relief after the sauna behind him. He had to go half a block before he could find a seat on the curb. Boots in the oily water of the gutter, denims on the grit and cigarette butts of the sidewalk, he set his coffee next to his hip and dug a smoke from a crumpled pack. The flint lighter rang as he flicked it open with a casual gesture, the flame flared his cheekbones orange as it ducked and twisted around his cigarette; he caught it with a sudden breath and coaxed the tobacco to life, smoke filling his lungs with a comfortable solidity. The cherry dropped from the end of the smoke, as if it had lost the will to live, and smoldered a hole in his pants before expiring. Clouds of blue-grey smoke left his mouth in a curse that was half sigh. The coffee cup warmed his hand with an unwelcome heat as he drank deeply, the dark brew splashing the insides of his mouth and lighting up his cavities. Tran set down the cup, his tongue suddenly rancid with the bitter taste of the drink, and dug out his lighter for a second attempt. As his thumb snapped open the zippo, his eyes caught a wrinkled and stained thermal print-out. After a hesitant drag, he leaned over and gripped the paper, fanning it through the dead air to spread it out. A newsreel, he realized. Yesterday's. Tran's eyes flicked back and forth beneath the shades as he read the headlines. Medical breakthrough in Bolivia. None here, of course. The anniversary of free elections in some third-world country he couldn't pronounce, let alone locate. Crime rate rising with the heat, almost a surprise. Riots in Argentina, so apparently they are catching up to us first-worlders. Kheng's claimed another four lives; no news there. Some physics guy has brought home the first North American Nobel in thirty years. The U.N. is declaring corporate activity in Saigon to be inhumane--another attempt at power by a now-defunct entity. Same old stories, same old news; did they make this up, or is the world really that redundant? The article on Kheng held the most promise, so he flipped back to that. A report of the killings, analysis of M.O., a deepening of the mystery, and a referral to the psychoanalysis of Kheng in the missing Section B. Tran smiled. As if one could fathom the actions of the killer. Kheng was a force of nature: strong, random, inevitable. It would be easier to reason with a tornado then with the enigmatic assassin. You have plagues, you have rain, and you have Kheng. It's simple. He let the paper fall from his fingers, took a reflective drag. His wallet had been hiked; he had no money, which was standard, no cards, and what was worse, no I.D. The smoke left his mouth in a breath that was heavy and devoid of hope. No cash, no way to pick up his unemployment checks...he couldn't even afford the fare to a government retinal scan for a new I.D.. Tran sipped his coffee morosely, half-consciously turning his head toward the distant Heights. He could probably make it before distribution next week, with a little luck. It was less a matter of time than one of survival; with no cash, he was going to be doing the palm-out gig for awhile, plus he'd pass the Walk on the way. He took in another lungfull of near-oxygen, let the smoke dangle from careless fingers. Shouldn't be too bad; once he hit Olympic things'd be a snap. Following the cues of an invisible commander, the towering streetlights kicked on in perfect formation, spilling green-tainted light to the ground. Tran shifted slightly. Catching the lamps light up always unnerved him--as if he had ruined the act by catching a process painstakingly designed to be as smooth and unnoticeable as possible. Slowly, tiredly he stood, leaning forward slightly to draw the final hit from his smoke, as if kissing it goodbye before he flicked it off-handedly to bounce sparking off the fender of a passing car. It was getting dark now, and the crowd was thickening like sorely-missed blood, clogging the sidewalks in its hurry. Tran merged expertly, a corpse among corpuscles, his colorless clothes blending noncommittally with the flashy, intimidating costumes of the other peds. The flow milled to a halt at a light, like lemmings fearing a premature end. Tran paused, coffee halfway to his lips, as he waited for the walk signal to favor him. The sounds of shattered glass and smoking tires reached him almost simultaneously, the glass a little off to his left, the tires belonging to a dark red blur that did not take the corner too seriously, its rear end fishtailing across the pavement. A tan blur far too close snapped his head back to front as coffee coated his hand. Fingers jerking reflexively, he took an involuntary step back as the woman who had backed into him turned to see what had doused her back, face a mask of last-straw disbelief. She looked at the crumpled cup in his fist, the coffee dripping from his arm, the brown splash on the ground. "Shit!" she vented, momentarily planting all of her limbs in frustration. Tran agreed. Her tan denim shirt was trashed by the coffee that was by now streaming down her legs. "You okay?" he ventured, making a useless, half-hearted gesture of help with his left hand, like he could flick his wrist and make the day disappear. "Fuck you!" she snapped as she spun to move with the crowd, her brown hair whipping in a vengeful arc. Tran looked at the wadded mess in his hand, the remains of the beer bottle that had been hurled against the wall behind him, the brown puddle that had once been his dinner. Yeah, he thought, then moved to cross the street before he could finish the idea. It was a few hours into dark when he realized what his immediate destination was, or should be. Periodically he would look up from the concrete just ahead of his soles to see if he was still in the same life that he had been in the last time he checked, then return his gaze to the depths of the earth before him, as if trying to make out the planet's core amongst the cigarette remains, burger wrappers, gum stains, and drained cans that he strode through. His surroundings, changing so slowly at a walking pace, eventually began to be recognized by his sinking mind, and he realized with a slow apprehension that he was in, for lack of a better term, friendly territory. Specifically, he was close to a club where he knew people, where he was welcome, where he spent his money when he had it. The news was as close to a flash as his mind could get at that point, and he began to shape mere possibilities into vague plans as it slowly dawned on him that there might be a way around walking across town. His legs seemed to take on an aluminum lightness, a subtle wave of nervous energy filtered through him as he toyed with the prospect, turning the extents of his limited resources about in his downturned mind. Wordlessly, face an expressionless mask, he shouldered through the darkened figures travelling the sidewalk. He looked up, startled, at the muted pink and green glow of neon tubing above, a sharp pulsing line in the midst of a fuzzy black fog, then realized he'd left his shades on. With a quick, smooth gesture, he swept the lenses from his temples and into a pocket, squinting as though he'd rather have them on. There, the sign, two blocks down. The distance was all soft concrete, the sign an abstract lure that drew him close before he noticed having taken a step. A small crowd in black and grey, blue and purple ignored him in slow- drinking, long-haired conversation, and he moved through them without a thought and half-dove into the club that was somehow darker than the nighttime streets outside. Tran stood, took a breath of congested human heat and ill-fated stage effects, looked up to the stage. Harmonic Divergence pounded away in full strobelit fury, electronic discord with a relentless backbeat that had the self- conscious dancers whirling spastically. Rob the guitarist caught Tran's eye, nodded with a half-smile, his curly hair bobbing. Tran smiled back. Things were looking up. He moved to the bar. "Marty," he greeted the bartender. "Want to start me a tab?" The white-shirted man smiled. "Sure thing. Running out of cash?" "Fuckin wallet got yanked," Tran replied in a bitter tone and a cavalier smile. "Christ," Marty shook his head. He poured a pint of bitter to add to Tran's store, set it on a coaster. "On the house, man. I been there." "Thanks, man," Tran tossed him a thumbs-up, sipped the pilsner gratefully, licked his dry lips. A handful of stale pretzels shot down to satiate the aching void that had been his stomach. A hand gripped his shoulder, then Rob grabbed the stool next to him; the band was in between songs. "What's up?" the musician asked. Tran shook his head. "Not my outlook, hombre." He took a sip of beer. "Still haven't been able to find a place. Jobs are getting scarcer and scarcer. My wallet's gone." Rob shook his head, blew out regretfully. "You've been out of a roof since Sheila kicked you out, huh? Where the hell you been staying?" Tran smiled sickly. "Street closets." The other rolled his eyes. "Shit," he groaned. "You don't need those boxes. Hell, tell you what, stick to the end of the show, alright? You can crash at my place for awhile, till we find you something." "Really?" Tran asked, disbelief filling him high enough to leak out of his mouth. "You sure?" "Of course," Rob smiled. "You've helped me out enough times. When checks come, we'll scout you a cheap pad, okay?" "Yeah, that'd be great," Tran agreed. "You know anyone who can get me a ride to the Heights, get my I.D.s reissued?" The guitarist paused in thought. "How 'bout our manager?" "Gary?" Incredulous. "Gary's got a car? Hell, he'll give me a ride." Tran looked into the golden brew that filled his glass. All this was almost enough to make a man religious. "Yeah," Rob caught a cue, stood up. "We're back on." He placed a hand on Tran's shoulder. "Stick around, huh?" "You bet. Hey Rob," the musician turned around with a hurried look. "Thanks a lot, man." He smiled, nodded, drifted off through the crowd. Tran turned back to his beer, somehow feeling like he'd stepped off the rail of a balcony. He dug the last cigarette out of his pack, left the crumpled cardboard next to the pretzels, took a long savored drag. He'd been saving this last one for hours, riding the edge of a nic-fit until he was sure of another pack. A woman with a huge well-dressed escort leaned against the bar next to him, signalled for a drink. Tran groaned when he recognized her, tried to hide his face. He wasn't fast enough. "Well," she said with a suddenly arctic expression. "I see you're still among the living." As though an unfortunate discovery. "Sheila," he greeted. "How're you doing." Not enough interest to make it a question; he could still feel the handle of the knife that'd been stuck in his back so many months ago. "Does it matter?" she retorted with a twisted lip. "You still in your rut?" "Always will be. You still in yours?" "Fuck you, Tran." "Too late to ask for favors, Sheila." She slapped him, knocking the cigarette from his lips in a spinning orange arc. He glared at his beer. "That," he began with a slow drawl that rode the thin edge of disaster, "Was my last-" "This guy bothering you, Sheila?" Christ, was Tran's first thought, then: he's big. Followed by a close third: and he owns this place. Tran took a large swallow of beer. Something told him he was going to need it. A large hand pinned his forearm to the table, splashing his hand with wild pilsner. He could almost hear his bones creaking. "I think," the large man began. "That you'd better leave." "Look," Tran began in the slow reasonable tone of one who's dealing with a large and rather unjust member of society. "I'm just trying to have a drink and listen to-" "And I think," the man repeated. "That you better leave." He rallied and tried again. "Can't I-" Finish my beer, he was going to say, or even wait for the end of the show. He was interrupted by vertigo as he was lifted from the stool, the half-finished pint knocked over by his unbalanced arm, and shoved through the crowd. He regained his feet in time to be set upon by three of the club's impressive bouncers. He couldn't see Rob or Marty over the spinning crowd. They waited until they were at the back door, alone and out of the sight of the crowd, before they beat him. Amidst the hammering to his abdomen and the wild arcing of his jaw he caught the satisfied smile of Sheila, pausing at the edge of the crowd before she turned and sauntered off with a champagne glass held up by her cheek. It was hot and wet when he came to, head throbbing, cheek scraping against the gravel of the alley like a hand on broken glass. Sweat and blood both dripped from his body as he pulled himself into a seated position, back against the oily brick wall at the back of the alley. The back door to the club, battered and without knob or handle, rested shut a few yards away; through it he could hear the muted thrumming of his friend's band. Tran sighed, spit blood from a cut tongue, watched plastic splinters fall from the pocket that housed his sunglasses. Yeah, things were looking up all right. Up the fucking crack. Ouch, he thought when it finally came to him. It even hurt to breath: a cold, asthmatic pain that racked him with coughs if he inhaled too deeply. Everything was sore, his bleeding and broken nose, his torn lip, the watery eyes that only an extreme effort kept open. He tried to push himself up, but his ribs ached too bad, and half his fingers were either sprained or broken. He gave up and sat there in the fog-ridden darkness with half-lidded eyes. It took him a long time to resolve the figure at the end of the alley. A black silhouette at first, timeless in its arrival, watching or sleeping...but unmoving, silent, like a statue or a movie still. Framed by the faint glow of distant streetlights, ambient coils of steam and car exhaust rolling about beneath it like silent waves, it watched him. Tran struggled to make out more detail, squinting a bruised eye desperately, then gave up and stared glassily at the shadowed figure, his breath hoarse and heavy. The sharp staccato pulse of a helicopter tore through the alley as a news crew screamed overhead, heading further downtown where the news was at. The dark figure at the mouth of the alley looked up, and in a brief instant of airborne strobes Tran glimpsed a torso encased in hard bone-like armor, limbs swathed in chains and greaves, silent eyes that glittered in the deep recesses of a skeletal helm; then it was over, the darkness pouring back into the alley as rotothrob faded into the polluted distance. The armored figure lowered its gaze and fixed upon Tran, its spiny fists clutching an ebony pole that caught the scarce light on a curving sword blade and scattered it across the brick walls. Tran sat, paralyzed, a single word percolating over and over in his thoughts like an evil brew. Kheng. The brief branching horns that stabbed forth from the grimly-grinning cow-skull face, the chain-mail gauntlets wrapped in barbed metal tubing, the saw-edged cutlass blade grafted onto a quarterstaff with an unholy weld....there was no mistaking the signs. He realized his hand was shaking, there on the gravel, and before the panic set in he wondered just how much time he was going to be allowed to think about this. And Kheng charged. The arcing blade caught the dim lighting twice in its figure-8 arc, creating a set of phantom headlights that moved in on Tran in sporadic strobe-light leaps. Studded metal soles pounding along the pavement melted eerily into the sound of hooves, an illusory stampede created in the fearing corners of Tran's mind and spurring his stalled body into action. The first burst of adrenalin sent him rocketing forward from the palms of his hands, rolling under the path of the soul-reaping blade and standing awkwardly into a run that brought him to a break in the buildings while the dark figure behind him struck sparks from the bricks and recovered from its trial blow. Tran slipped in a crack twice as wide as his shoulders, worming past hanging drainpipes and jutting airvents that blasted him with jets of weak steam. As the buildings grew together in a soiled concrete seam he looked back over his shoulder and saw the dark armored figure negotiating the crowded alley behind him. He sighed, looked around. Nowhere to go but up... Tran gathered his breath and tensed his limbs against the sides of the buildings, working his way upwards in a desperate, skin-scraping chimney climb. He paused for breath, arms hot and shaking, then jerked abruptly back to awareness on a wave of adrenalin as Kheng's long-hafted blade licked at the soled of his boots. He looked down and saw the murderous creature digging steel fingers into the brick in pursuit; inching away in fear, he felt the coldly mossy surface of a drainpipe against his arm and swung onto it, a whirlwind of panic sending him shakily up it and towards the roof twenty stories above. He paused at the top, after he had lowered himself over the concrete lip of the building and was leaning on it , looking down, his palms trembling against the cement, his breath coming in short gasps. No sign of his grim pursuer came up through the shadows: no glimpse of a leering helm, no sharp fingers reaching up through the dark, no sounds of climbing or falling. Tran turned and leaned back against the cement, catching his breath and gingerly probing the bruises left by the bouncers. Off to his left, past the inside corner of the low wall he leaned upon, there was a faint crunch of gravel as a dark figure vaulted onto the rooftop. Tran felt his breath turn shallow and bolted, running along the grimy roof away from the figure. A dizzying crack in space swam beneath him as he leapt to another roof; he did not pause as he kept running, boots slapping the concrete angrily, tiny slices of infinity looming at the edge of each rooftop and passing beneath his legs as he hurled himself desperately forward. He paused again when he got to a higher wall, a climb he must make, and chanced a look behind him. Kheng was still coming, determined, relentless, fording the gaps in the buildings with long, easy strides. Tran jerked his eyes around quickly, wondering where he was, then gripped a thick rubber cable that hummed softly and began another ten-story climb. He lost track of Kheng three blocks later, at the base of a forty-story step-pyramid that crowned a full block of buildings. By day the structure was alive with lights and crows, a haven for the jaded appetite; now, in the dead of night, it was grey and lifeless like the tomb of some urban Pharaoh. He looked around wildly, but once again could uncover no sign of the mad life that chased him. He crept along the carved rooftop carefully, edging around a corner on a little-used walkway more than fifteen floors from street level. The city lowered, here before him; the highest buildings were Downtown, behind him, or far off in the distant Heights, thin shafts of dotted light that crowded out the horizon. Beneath him stretched the top of another building, crowded like the others with antennae and wires and the remnants of households and campfires, which looked out upon a three-block long mall with grating glowing pyramidal skylights. And there, on the rooftop below him, back turned, stood Kheng. There was not enough time for thought. Tran slipped over the edge and dropped down straight and silent like a blade in the hand of an assassin. His knees and toes bent as he landed, coiling his frame long enough to allow him to spring forward in a blind charge. Kheng turned just as Tran levered a shoulder under the torso to lift his assailant over the hip- high retaining wall. Taloned fingers gripped him through his jacket and for a brief spot of time the two hung precariously over the edge of the roof, Kheng's deep-set eyes locked on the five-story drop to come, Tran kicking his feet in the air in a desperate attempt to regain the roof, the locked bodies swaying like a skewed balance in the night air that suddenly seemed too still for a breeze. The ancient stained concrete of the retaining wall cracked, crumbled, gave way, and the two bodies fell twisting and fighting into the night. The roar of the rushing air was overwhelming like the onslaught of the ocean, brooking no thoughts, no words, no passing of time. Tran fought the whipping air and clutched frantically at the hardened leather straps of the torso armor while the madman kicked and clawed him. He strained his arms and chest in a desperate imitation of a gymnast, finally ending up on top with his knees on Kheng's chest and his fingers locked onto the metal collar of the armor as sharp nails clawed at his chest and arms. Beneath Kheng he saw the golden glow of a four-sided pyramidal skylight, its apex dead center beneath him, growing from the size of a playing card to that of a book to that of a poster to that of a car.... The impact was a sharp blow to the chest that drove the air out of Tran's lungs and rang his ears with the shriek of twisting metal and the crashing rain of shattered glass. Kheng's solid form shot out of his grasp as the metal panes of the skylight gave way, then Tran was falling, flailing amidst a curtain of razored glass shards, the artificial blue oval of an ornamental fountain filling his vision. The pool grew larger and larger and when he was able to distinguish the tiny copper pennies under the still waters Tran began to wonder roughly how deep it was. He was spared the sound of his body slapping the tiles by the water that filled his ears and shot through his nose and hoarsely-shouting mouth. He sat up instantly, his shoulders barely breaking the surface of the water, and spat and coughed his way to breathing again. Then the pain flared up through his back like an acid bath and he clenched his teeth, every muscle in his body cramping and knotting in the cold pool. Tran looked up at the shattered skylight and the backlit grey clouds of the night sky. A single twisted strand of metal hung down from the jagged wound in the ceiling and swung faintly in his breeze. Kheng was not hanging from it. Tran looked around wildly, saw nothing but the red clouds forming in the water around his body and the bouncing flashlights of the security guards running towards the noise. He cursed, threw himself to his feet, and splashed to the edge of the pool in a wild froth of water and pain, a growl working from his tortured limbs to trickle out of his lips. He broke into a run, following the faint green EXIT signs that would lead him to a stairway and fire exit, kicking ashtrays and plants in his coughing sprint through the darkened, dead corridors of the mall. Street level. It felt good to be in the wide ground again. Tran wandered aimlessly, more or less headed west towards the Heights, his weight falling forward with each step. The people he tried to implore for aid made their way quickly from this bleeding, dirty figure on the verge of collapse. How many of the people, he wondered to himself silently, that I have ignored in distaste, how many were actually victims of Kheng? He staggered along dazedly, slipped into an alley, looking for a place he could hole up and sleep. The walls were steep and high, with occasional dim lights that were too revealing for his taste. He turned a sharp corner, feeling like a rat in the labyrinthine city, and saw the grey towering walls turn black ahead where the lights had burned out. Perfect. A black form dropped from nowhere to land before him, and before he could realize Kheng had found him those armored fists were striking his aching ribs, knocking aside his defensive blocks, tripping his legs and throwing him to the ground. Tran grunted, tried to stand, and in another blur of Kheng's form found himself flung against a concrete wall, blue-white stars of pain flashing through his skull. Dizzy, disoriented, he rolled, tucking his body up just enough to barrel past Kheng's legs. He shot to his feet before his adversary could turn around and bolted into the blackness, listening intently for the sound of pounding feet behind him. At the next circle of light he found a two-by-four lying amidst some garbage bags and an abandoned water heater, just beneath the steel-grated square of a darkened window. He gripped the splintery wood, switched it around so that the single bent and rusted nail was at the weapon edge, then turned to look behind him as he hefted his new weapon. No sign of pursuit, no vengeful shadowy form. Nothing. Think, he told himself. The attacks usually come from above. Suddenly he felt very naked, and he took off running down the alley again, breath rasping by the time he reached a cross-street. Immediately he cut left, found a wide canvas awning fronting a store, and stood beneath it with the improvised club held firmly in his grasp. Tran waited, trying to stifle the sound of his breath, adrenalin coursing through his veins, making him as unto a mad god. Without warning a black armored form dropped to the sidewalk before him, hesitating briefly, facing the street. Tran swung the timber instantly, launching a quick flurry of three strikes to what would be kidneys beneath that tough hide. Kheng lurched to the left, dropping instinctively towards a roll, but Tran leapt nimbly forward and swung the club two-handed at the grinning helmet, hitting it again and again, left to right and right to left, keeping the armored beast off balance. Kheng staggered back towards the store front as Tran hammered the armour with his two-by-four, wood chips flying, doing no real damage but gaining more and more time. Without really stopping to think about it he reversed his grip on the wood and thrust it forward like a spear, lifting his opponent up and through the plate-glass window to land on a display of cardboard cutouts and travel brochures. The top third of the window came loose and dropped like the blade of a guillotine, shattering on Kheng's black armour in a blow that would have severed an unprotected torso. The alarm cut in instantly and Tran dropped the splintered and cracked club, then backed away slowly at first, finally turning to run as he saw Kheng twitch and start to rise. This time he could hear the sounds of pursuit, and he pumped his arms fearfully in his flight down the two-lane street. Up ahead the avenue ended in a T-intersection with a rail that overlooked the tracks of the subway where it broke ground, surfacing from a long suffocating trail beneath Downtown. He could hear Kheng's angry breath and the low rumble of the subway as he ran full-tilt across the empty intersection. Tran jumped onto the rail; looking down at the tracks that were even now being lit by the strobe of surfacing train, and knew that he would never make it. The growling breath of his adversary grew louder and he could feel the wind of pending blow prickling the hairs on the back of his neck. He jumped. The trains that ran along the subway tracks were wide and low, seating three aisles of two seats apiece. Tran landed on the smooth plastic roof of a car going seventy miles an hour, and slid fully across its fifteen-foot width before he could brace himself on the lip of a brake cable and the short stub of an air vent. Then he worked on getting his air back. For awhile he just lay there, aware of the throbbing knife-like pain in his chest beneath his ribs, the creaking agony of his knees from the running and jumping and fighting and rolling, the cold ache of his lungs as they fought for more and more oxygen. The wind was cold on his sweating body, his Gore-Tex jacket was torn and shredded from the fall through the skylight, and he shivered uncontrollably as the city streamed by in a river of dead buildings and empty streets. The heat left his body along with the adrenalin, and all of a sudden he felt very tired, very cold, and very hungry. He sighed, locked his limbs against the scant purchase on the wide roof, and waited out the time until the next stop. It took almost forty minutes for the train to go underground again; by then Downtown was a faint line in the distance and the Heights were so close he could make out through his squinting, wind- whipped eyes the arcing trails of VTOLs flicking across the sky. The it was all dark for a few teeth- rattling seconds and the train lurched to a halt in a tunnel ringed with so many fluorescent bulbs that Tran felt he was in a CAT-scan. He forced his limp and aching body to the concrete, looked around for other passengers to blend with. Ten cars down the platform, his heart almost stopped beating as he saw Kheng do the same. If I can do it, he can do it, Tran sighed to himself. Then he ran. The turnstile was up ahead with its attendant guard in a bulletproof glass booth, and Tran realized dimly that he had no ticket, no money to buy his way out of the station. He risked a glance at the heavy figure that chased him with an unearthly ferocity and allowed an insane grin to cross his face. The guard was gesturing and yelling something through the sound-absorbing glass, but Tran leapt the turnstile, was past him and running up the exit ramp before anything could happen. As he reached street level he wondered if Kheng would stop and do in the guard, or if he was a single-minded maniac. Tran slowed to a walk as he reached the street, his kidneys aching with the constant sprinting. He had got half a block when he noticed Kheng emerging from the subway station, and he smiled grimly. This has to end sometime, he told himself. One way or another... He was jogging now, panting, and ahead of him he saw a massive grey concrete structure, like someone had poured concrete over a mile of the city and had forgotten to leave such amenities as doors and windows. It was a place of nightmare, dubbed the Graveyard because that is just what it was: the final resting place of the outcasts, the misfits, the violent and the sick and the dying, entombed in the very malls they overran by walls of solid concrete as dictated by an urban control ordinance now decades old. The cavernous depths of the Graveyard were untouched by electricity, water, fresh air; denizens slipped in and out of forgotten ventilator shafts to foray into the outside world for supplies, victims, entertainment. Few tales slipped from the cracks of its concrete shell, but what was told of the Graveyard spoke of a dark network of scaffolding and rubble inside the six-story encasement, immersed in dank soot-clouded air, lit by the torches of madmen and the fires of cannibals. The debasement and barbarism of the Graveyard Clans gave rise to an anarchic broth of murder, rape, and torture that was more responsible for their isolation from normal society than the three solid feet of concrete shell. Tran smiled when he saw it, picked up his pace. Would even Kheng be crazy enough to brave the Graveyard? He was gambling, he was desperate, he was at the base of a wide air duct and crawling through the grimy tube before reason could take hold and sway him. It was dark when he emerged from the cramped tunnel and onto a solid floor, but it was a dark like no other he had experienced. There was no starlight, no streetlamps, no light from any source save the distant orange glows that did nothing to aid his vision. The air itself seemed black; it coated his lungs and made him cough, smelling like moss and ash and old dirty fur. Ropes and struts surrounded him and he bumped into them occasionally, finally pulled himself up on one hand-over- hand until he was on a swaying catwalk two stories up. He heard a scurrying and a muffled cursing directly below him, where he had just come in, and the stench of a Dweller caught in his nostrils even from this height. He shivered, then began inching his way along the catwalk. All about him came the sounds: roars, the rare thunderclap of powder weapons, feet pounding along platforms, bodies bouncing along the scaffolding. Tran clenched and unclenched his fists, wished he still had that two-by-four or any kind of weapon, and started determinedly forward as distant cries of dementia echoed through the thick air around him. It was ninety yards and four stories to the next skylight that led out of the Graveyard. Here goes hell, Tran told himself grimly. The dawn was looming on the horizon of the dead and quiet morning. Tran jogged slowly, painfully across the rooftop, covered in soot and sweat and dried blood. He'd lost his shirt somewhere, along with half of an ear in the Graveyard; his boots were torn from the climbing, his jeans stained and ripped from the barbed-wire trap he'd fell into Inside. It seemed impossible, but Kheng had followed him through the Graveyard. Tran had battled up through the greasy skylight, beating back a gang of Denizens who grasped at his legs hungrily with a chain he'd looted from the first man he had ever killed, not two minutes and twenty paces into that concrete hell. It had seemed so certain, nothing could have followed him through that, through the ropes and nets rigged along the scaffolding by human spiders, the climbing bladesmen that slashed at him from outside the scaffolding, the small gritty knots of people that greeted him like so many angry scorpions. Once he'd even found himself on the fringes of a clan war, had to throw in with one side to gain passage to the topmost level.... And yet still Kheng struggled out of that same skylight a few minutes later, as alive and determined as ever. And from that, through the streets with steadily increasing traffic, through the cafes and stadiums, the government buildings and the condemned wrecks, the basements and the rooftops...to here. It must end here, Tran told himself. I'm too tired to go on. He dropped down to the next rooftop, now only thirty-five floors above street level in the heart of the Heights, on a clean and polished concrete roof with an unbeatable view of the rising sun coming bright and golden over the dark cluster of buildings Downtown, staining the baby-blue sky a thick orange. Tran leaned against a western wall and watched the sunrise, his body limp and ragged. Above him stood Kheng, on the rooftop, a rugged black silhouette blocking out the blinding sun. Tran smiled, relieved, thinking: It's over. Kheng stepped off the roof lightly, landed without a sound, strode purposefully over to where Tran lay. Every bone and muscle in his body screamed in pain as he was lifted up strong inhuman hands, pinned against the smooth white wall where he bled sullenly. He could smell the animal sweat of his adversary, feel the hot wasted breath upon his face, see the faint whites of the shadowed eyes set deep in that battered skeletal mask. Kheng leaned him against the wall, steadied him with a single metal palm, drew a thin curved blade from his belt that flashed like a golden crescent in the new sun. Tran stared at the knife through pain-lidded eyes, his face bruised and swollen, his limbs weak and useless. Taloned fingers held the gleaming razor up by Tran's left eye, the dipped in a quick fluid motion, opening a long gash along his cheekbone that flowed blood like a faucet. The palm left Tran's chest and he fell hard onto the ground, his head and back rolling limply against the wall, blood tickling his face and neck with its warm touch. Kheng turned and walked away, sheathing the knife, and leapt over the side of the building without a word. Tran just lay there in disbelief, gasping for air, staring at a thin white cloud that floated overhead. "Congratulations." The voice was solemn and feminine. Tran opened his eyes. "What?" A woman was standing over him, her features dimly lit by the blue-grey morning sky. Later on he would find her attractive; at the moment he only saw the short blonde hair and the faint, curving white scar along her right cheek, and wondered if she was going to kill him. "You did it. You fought the good fight." She turned and looked off in the direction that Kheng had taken. "That's why he didn't kill you." Tran sat up slowly, every inch of every muscle and tendon and bone awash with pain. "I don't understand," he told her, squinting in the brightening sky and reaching instinctively for the sunglasses that lay shattered in the pocket of his jacket, somewhere in the city. His hand came back, palm empty, imploring. He stared at it: it wasn't bleeding. She sat down in front of him, rocking slightly on her heels. "Same thing happened to me, three years ago. Kheng chased me up and down the city, fighting and screaming. We ended up here, just about dawn, and suddenly he stopped attacking me. He just walked away. "I went inside and found an old man living here. He didn't tell me how he got here, but he seemed well acquainted with Kheng. Maybe they were friends, maybe the old man created him, I don't know. At the time the I had nowhere to go, and the old man took me in for training. He taught me what it means to be one of the few that Kheng lets live, and the responsibility that goes with the honor." She paused, briefly. "And he taught me how to kill." Tran looked her, wondered where this was going. "So you hire out?" She nodded. "In a way. There are...contracts that appear. Piotro--the old man--used to hunt them out, but since he died I've become fairly adept at selecting work." She looked at him. "And now it appears I've got a partner." He tried to digest the news, the offer, the whole evening. Suddenly his old concerns, the petty priorities with which he structured his life, his old habits and allegiances...all seemed so shallow, so meaningless. Late last night, fighting for his life on the rooftops and asphalt of the city, none of it could save him. His past, his lifestyle, his humor, his rules and beliefs...so many wasted years, so much excess baggage. Finally he met her gaze with an inquisitive, squinting look. "Just what does being spared by Kheng mean?" The woman stood up. "That you're one of the best." She looked down at him, watching the changes flash across his battered face. "How much choice do I have on working with you, ...." "Kara," she filled in with a brief smile, then she shrugged. "Much as you like, although after last night I doubt you'll be going back to your old ways." Kara reached down to offer him a hand up. He took it. "Come on, let's get you some coffee," she remarked, the offer reaching into his soul like a ray of salvation. "And a shower; you smell like the Graveyard." For the first time that night, as he followed her inside the building, Tran laughed.