Chapter 322: Fourteen Minutes to Live.

"You’re sure those things aren’t going to bite us?" Linn’s voice came up out of a whisper into something dangerously close to speech.

"That’s Bram." Mercury answered before I could. Flat. Absolute. "Whatever he says it is, that’s what it is."

"I didn’t ask you, bitch. Keep your mouth shut."

"I don’t know whether you’re having a bad time of the month, girl." The edge came straight into Mercury’s voice. "But you’re lucky I’m at the back of this alley."

"And what were you going to do if you weren’t?"

You have no idea who you’re talking to.

I watched what she did to Richard.

"Bram." Mercury’s voice dropped. The fight in it went somewhere quieter and more practical. "Just go. Move."

I couldn’t. Linn was our route. She was the only person here who knew which building we were walking to, and dragging her along a street she was terrified of was going to cost more time than persuading her.

"Linn." I kept it level. "We’re standing in a corridor arguing with explosives on our ankles. We need to go."

She was quiet for a second.

Then her hand came onto my shoulder. Fingers digging in as if the contact itself were the only thing keeping her upright.

"Okay. Let’s go."

"How long?"

"Fourteen," Mercury said. The number landed between us like something already spent.

"Then we move fast and we move quiet."

They all agreed—short, overlapping sounds of assent that didn’t fully believe themselves—and I stepped out of the alley onto the street.

The open air hit differently after the close heat of the brick.

Nobody followed.

I stood there in the open with the street light coming down on me and the infected two hundred metres away on my right, all of them facing that building, all of them still.

The distance felt both too large and nowhere near large enough. My hearing stretched toward them without finding the wet shuffle or the low continuous sound that usually came off a gathering that size.

They’re facing away. That’s the only thing keeping us alive right now. And whatever’s holding their attention can let go of it at any second.

"Walk, you bitch," Mercury said from inside the dark. The words were tight, almost strained.

"Linn. Walk." Trapper, trying it more gently.

She was stuck in the mouth of the alley and she was blocking everybody behind her. Her body filled the gap.

The white spill from the street light caught the edge of her shoulder and left the rest of her in the dark she refused to leave.

"Fuck. Tell your stupid girlfriend to move, we don’t have time for—"

I looked back into the alley and then down the road.

"Linn." I softened it right down. "Hey."

"I can’t." Her voice had gone small. The earlier edge was gone; what remained was thinner and younger and completely without the performance she’d been using on Mercury. "Those things will tear us apart. King told us what they do. He described it to us."

"They’re not looking." I kept every bit of my temper where it belonged. The effort of it sat behind my teeth. "Look at me. I’m standing in a street light in the middle of the road. If a single one of them were looking, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Please move."

A pause. Long enough to feel the minutes continuing to spend themselves without us.

"Okay."

She stepped out onto the street. The motion was stiff, reluctant, each boot placed as if the asphalt itself might give way.

Trapper came after her. Quick. Close. His hand hovered near her back without quite touching.

And Mercury came out last.

Her fist landed on Linn’s face before she’d fully cleared the alley.

The sound was short and clean—bone and cartilage under knuckles—and Linn went down hard.

Mercury went down on top of her, and the punches started coming without a word from either of them. No shouting. No threats. Just the wet, rhythmic impact of someone who had been waiting for an open stretch of ground and the absence of brick walls to finally put the whole of it down.

Trapper was already on them, both hands in it, trying to prise them apart and getting caught by both—an elbow in the ribs, a wild swing that clipped his already broken face, the particular chaos of a man attempting to separate two people who had decided the only conversation left was the one their fists were having.

I didn’t help.

I turned and looked down the road.

The mass of infected hadn’t moved. Still facing the building. Still giving their attention to the stairs and whatever waited at the top of them. The bald girl was no longer visible from this angle.

Then back. Linn had reversed it, up on top now, driving her fist into Mercury’s face with her whole shoulder behind it.

The two of them rolled once, hard, and the street light caught the flash of Linn’s teeth as she drew back for another.

I moved in to separate them and Mercury flipped her again before I got there—hips, shoulders, the clean brutal efficiency of someone who had done this enough times that the body no longer needed instruction.

Linn hit the asphalt with a sound that was mostly air leaving her lungs. Mercury’s fist was already coming down.

Whatever those two had been carrying since the camp, they’d chosen this street to put it down.

The minutes continued to spend themselves. The silent bracelets continued their held-breath countdown against the bone. None of it reached either of them.

"Mercury, please—"

I got a hand on Mercury’s collar. The fabric bunched under my fingers. I pulled.

And looked down the road one more time.

One of them had turned around.

It stood in the middle of all those still bodies with its head up, facing us, absolutely fixed on the four people fighting in a street light two hundred metres away.

Damn.