Black Marion

32

If ever Haneul believed in fate, some great hands playing him like a puppet, then the cut in the comm line was like a cut through his strings.

Everything became staccato and smeared after Alex ended the call with those three words, from the sound of his own name to the roar of their halted vehicle engines. He managed instructions in a practiced calm; he told them to call Maria and Stefan and Victor and find Peter Kozlov; he sent for Bennie and asked MM to follow; he had a direction still when he spurred his bike forward along the Ground tunnel. He knew what he needed to do next, but gone was the passioned and methodical strategy that had gotten the resistance this far.

Like a switch had been flipped, he stopped thinking about them. When he rolled his palms against his vehicle handles, the moist heat sickening his head, he stopped thinking at all.

His father had said that mindlessness was a common product of fear. Haneul, he was afraid of many things. He never went a day in his life without being afraid—of losing a patient, of losing a friend, of making the wrong call and smothering this rare hope. He had never lost his mind about it, but then again, he had never been afraid like this.

This was like the Tag upon his neck, a hundred times heavier than it had been.

Kai cut in front of his path. He veered around, but the others blocked his way.

"You can't go up there," said Kai. "It's suicide."

"Get out of my way," he said.

"Haneul, we can't pull off a trip that far up. You know that."

He wound the power to his engine and rode toward the weakest gap in the block. The riders pulled back quickly to avoid the crash.

"Doc—"

"Haneul! Don't let him—"

Someone collided into him. The pain burst through his right side with a screech and a metal clamor, and then he was thrown off, rolling along the tunnel cement. It hurt to move, but he moved enough to see his damaged bike and blood along his arm. That thing over his heart dripped into his lungs, bursting.

He roared and said, "They're going to kill her. Don't you get it? They're going to fucking kill her!"

"They're not—"

"After everything she's done for us, we're going to leave her to die?"

"Doc, they're not going to kill her. Just—"

"They'll torture her. They'll make it worse than death." He stood up, shook his head, shook out the fury, kept just the desperation. Just Alex. "I'm not going to let that happen. I'd die first."

"No, god damn it! You need to think this through. Piensa—"

"Get out of my way."

"Just—"

"Get the fuck out of my way."

"You need to calm down. You're not—"

He threw his knuckles into MM's cheek. Someone grabbed his arm, and he lashed reflexively. Someone else grazed his sleeves—then it became an ugly brawl, uncontainable. They said things he couldn't hear or process, and he shouted at them like a madman, shattering the illusion of their blessed doctor. He had never felt so bare and careless of it before. It was a while before they dragged him off, bloodied and unconscious.

---

They told him about Maria and the others at the clinic when he woke up, that they had been taken by the Sky, and then they told him that Peter Kozlov had been secured underground. Then he asked for his keys to the parking complex, and they locked him in a shelter room.