Dragon City. James Axler

“‘Hostile types’?” Bry repeated, and Farrell suspected that, wherever he was, the man had raised an eyebrow at the phrase.

       “The stone nuts,” Farrell grunted, clambering over the sagging fence. “Ullikummis’s people. They tracked me down—I don’t know how.”

       “Is Sinclair okay?” Bry asked, the consummate bookkeeper even in times of stress.

       “She’s one of ’em, man,” Farrell said. He was running now, arms pumping, the pipe swinging in his hand as he pelted across the overgrown expanse of garden toward another shell of a building.

       “What do you—?” Bry asked, mild surprise in his voice.

       Farrell sprinted past the side of the house, pushing himself on. “I can’t explain how,” he interrupted. “I think maybe she’s always been one of them, like she was just biding her time waiting for the right moment to strike.”

       He hurried on, out past the churned-up tarmac of the drive where an ancient automobile waited, its red paint bleached white by the sun across its roof and hood, rust marring its bodywork like ringworm.

       “Am triangulating your position now,” Bry told Farrell, his tone reassuring.

       There was a pause, during which Farrell ran down another forgotten Bradley street that now looked like a strip of jungle had been transplanted into the suburbs. Startled birds took flight from a twisting cypress as he hurried past, squawking in ugly caws, their feathers orange and an almost luminescent green.

       In a secret location hundreds of miles away, Farrell knew that Donald Bry was even now using his subdermal transponder to track his position, applying it to a map of the local territory and assessing the best escape route.

       “Farrell, I have a mat-trans located in a military redoubt about three miles west of your present position,” Bry announced over the Commtact. “Do you think you can make that, or do you want me to scramble a team to come to your aid?”

       Farrell glanced self-consciously behind him, searching the wreckage of the nearby houses and the towering ferns for signs of movement. The leaves shimmied in the breeze, making whispering sounds as they swayed. But there was no one around—maybe, just maybe, he had lost them?

       “I should be able to make it to the redoubt,” Farrell told Bry reluctantly. He knew how tight the personnel situation was just now, knew that Cerberus could ill afford to scramble a CAT team to protect one lowly tech. “If I go careful, I think I can avoid any more trouble. I’ll let you know when I’m within sight.”

       “Excellent,” Bry acknowledged over the Commtact. “We should be able to remote program a jump for you from here. We’ll get you to safety.”

       Pipe in hand, Farrell hurried on down the overgrown streets of Bradley, far away from the safehouse he had shared with the traitorous Sela Sinclair.

      * * *

      BACK IN THE OVERGROWN remains of the service road, Tanya and Jackson Stone and Sinclair stood with Brigid Haight as the trim figure of Farrell disappeared from sight.

       “Let him go,” Brigid instructed, watching the retreating figure as he hurried toward the break between the houses where a wall cut across the roadway’s path. “He doesn’t matter.”

       “But we’ll lose him,” Tanya insisted, clenching and unclenching her fists where she held the leather band of the slingshot.

       “The world belongs to Ullikummis now, and all who share in his love,” Brigid intoned. “Where is there left for him to run?”