The street is slick with rain and city grime, neon signs bleeding color across the pavement in streaks of red and gold, vibrant under the dark skies. I pull up my hood from my jacket and scan the sidewalk, cataloging faces, checking reflections in shop windows, doing the math on every person within a hundred feet.
I spot two men in dark coats across the street.
They weren’t there when I came out.
They’re looking right at me.
I keep walking, a quick but steady pace. Casual. Just a woman heading home after a late night, nothing to see here, nothing worth following.
I can tell they fall into step behind me.
Fuck.
I duck into the alcove of a closed bakery and dig the earrings out of my pocket. My hands are shaking as I push them through my healing lobes, wincing at the sting, but they click into place and suddenly Bayo’s voice is in my head, mid-sentence, like he’s been talking to dead air this whole time.
“—copy? Mia, do you copy?”
“Bayo,” I say, my voice faint and ragged. “I’m here.”
“Jesus Christ, where have you been? Cal checked in an hour ago, said he was going back to bring you new comms, and then bring you back here for debriefing but he never showed. We’ve been trying to reach?—”
“Cal’s dead,” I say blankly.
Silence on the line. Just for a second, but I feel every millisecond of that information hit.
“What?” Bayo whispers. In the background I can hear Kat asking the same thing, wondering what we’re talking about.
“Vanguard killed him,” I say, gulping down air as the memory comes back, as the awful realization, the truth, settles in. “In my hotel room. Twenty minutes ago. Snapped his neck. Oh my god, Bayo…he’s dead, Cal is dead.”
More silence as I try to quell the rising panic. Then Bayo’s voice comes back, harder now, all business. “Where are you?”
“Street level. Two blocks east of the hotel.” I risk a glance back. The men are still there, maintaining distance but not losing me. “And I’ve got a tail. Two hostiles, maybe more.”
“Description?”
“Dark coats. Professional. They’re not trying to hide.”
“Global Dynamix?”
“Probably, maybe Kozlov’s men, though they don’t look it. Too pretty.” I take in a deep breath. “Nate said Julia must know. Knows who I am, knows everything. She orchestrated thiswhole thing, Bayo. She sent him to find Cal. She wanted this to happen.”
I hear him swearing under his breath, a rapid-fire mix of Yoruba and English that means he’s thinking fast. “Alright. Okay. Head toward Hell’s Kitchen. There’s an extraction point on…” I hear him typing, “48th and 10th, alley behind the parking garage. Kat and I will meet you there.”
“Copy.”
“And, Mia?” His voice softens. “I’m sorry about Cal. We’ll mourn him later, together. Right now, you stay alive. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
I start moving again, knowing that Bayo is still in my ear if I need him.
The rain is coming down harder now as dusk falls, turning the city into a blur of headlights and umbrellas. I weave through pedestrians, using bodies as cover, keeping my pace just fast enough to gain ground without breaking into a sprint. The men behind me match my speed.
There’s a subway entrance ahead. I take the stairs two at a time, shoving through the turnstile with my MetroCard, and the underground swallows me whole.
It’s rush hour now, so the platform is crowded with commuters. I push through them, heading for the far end, putting as many bodies between me and the stairs as possible.
A train is pulling in. Not my line, wrong direction, but it doesn’t matter.
