Should have had.
We don’t.
The NRI is positioned on 63rd street. When there were only six blocks to go, a sound from our old lives rips through the silence, catching our attention.
A car.
No.
An SUV.
The big, shiny, black vehicle comes speeding down a side street, taking a wide turn, careening down the cross street. My hand goes to my pocket, reaching for my knife. Chase jumps in front of me.
Maverick howls in rage.
The SUV stops maybe twenty feet ahead of us, spitting out six near-identical men. White skin. Dark hair. Black suits. Black shades.
Holy fuck, we’ve summoned the Men in Black.
One of them—the driver—takes the lead. He’s a little taller, a little thinner, and I notice that he has a red tie while all the others have a grey one.
The leader, I’m betting.
“Seize them,” he orders.
The five remaining men surge forward in unison, moving impossibly faster than any human should. Two each for Maverick and Chase, one to grab my arm, breaking my hold on my knife. Already they’re underestimating me. I immediately promise myself that, if I can get out of this, they’ll so regret it.
Maverick starts to buck and fight their hold, but the two silent agents—because they have got to be some sort of agents—standing on each side of him barely pay him any attention. Their eyes are locked on the man in front, and when he nods one time, the agent on the left releases Maverick’s upper arm, grabbing his forearm instead. A single powerful squeeze, then a sickening crack, and we all know it’s broken.
Maverick doesn’t scream, but his face—already so pale, even after so many days spent in the sun as the Injection goes to work on him—is suddenly ashen. He sags in the other agent’s hold, all the fight in him gone.
“That’s better. We’d hoped to offer you our hospitality without a fight, but if you insist…”
Hospitality again. We escaped Darryl and East Jersey only to get caught by a SUV full of government spooks who might not have threatened to feed us to lurkers—yet—but they speak in violence all the same.
“Fuck you,” I snap, rage roaring through me like a gasoline-soaked fire. “Who do you think you are?”
The man in front whips off his sunglasses. I shrink back in horror, and I know I’m not alone.
His eyes are solid black.
Lurker eyes.
Pale skin.
Extraordinary strength…
“You’re some of them?”
Chase saysthemlike it’s a dirty word, and I don’t blame him.
I’m fucking stunned. I can’t believe that we’ve been face to face with nearly a half-dozen lurkers in the sunlight and not a single one of them is trying to eat us. And then I realize something else?—
“You can talk? If you’re a lurker… how can you talk?”
And that’s when it hits me.
The suits. The building. The car… theeyes.
