The clouds were an angry, steel gray underlined with black and the low rumble of thunder shook the windows even as lightning bleached the visual purple from Sabbath's eyes, destroying her night vision anew at five second intervals. She didn't react, leaning against the edge of the window and staring out into the pouring rain. This was what Ice had wanted, and the fact that it was here drove home the fact that they had come to the end – it was now or never. Either they did this or… or what? Or they died? They ran away? They bowed down and allowed themselves to be assimilated into The One's collective consciousness? She didn't like any of those options, though she had to admit that any and all of them were likely to happen when they engaged The One anyway.
Behind her, an analog-tuning radio played a fuzzy rendition of 'Unwell', by Matchbox twenty, and something about listening to the song made her want to cry. She wouldn't, of course. She was better than that. "But soon enough, you're going to see a different side of me…."
"What's that, your intestines?" Schuldich wondered with a nasal laugh.
Sabbath didn't respond, mouthing the words absently under her breath. The glass of the window was cool against her forehead, which was throbbing in time with the pounding of her heart. Oh, yeah. She was scared. She forced herself not to mentally berate her heart for thumping so loudly, since Schuldich would doubtlessly overhear it and take it as another invitation to chisel away at her self esteem.
Schu watched her watch the storm, catlike blue eyes narrowed in appraisal. He could taste her fear like the metallic musk of blood on his tongue, but that wasn't exactly sending him into spasms of joy. After all, she was the one this entire godforsaken farce of an operation centered around. He didn't know exactly what her plan was to destroy The Core, but she'd made it clear that she was the only one who could do it. Magick and psionics, it would seem, did not mix.
And then there was the little matter of her eventual fate.
Crawford had been less than informative on the subject, though Schuldich knew that was deliberate. Eszet had a hand in this directly, somehow, and they didn't want the rest of Schwarz knowing their plans. Why was that? Schu doubted that it was because of him. He didn't care one way or another what happened to the witch. Nagi was a bit soft on her, perhaps, but he didn't see Nagi making a stink about anything Eszet chose to do. Farfarello, then? They had to have something truly drastic in mind for that to be the case. He listened more than most people knew (it was his job, after all) and he thought he might know. If that was the case, he couldn't help pitying her just a bit.
Rosenkreuz was a fate he wouldn't have wished on his worst enemy.
He didn't doubt that she would fight their efforts to steal and clone her power. He also didn't doubt that she would eventually be broken. He knew what it was to be under Eszet's knife, and if it hadn't been for Crawford, he might have suffered a great deal more before they were satisfied with his subservience. He still retained the capability of independent thought, which was quite an accomplishment for any Rosenkreuz graduate. He doubted she would be so lucky. Granted, she was a born survivor. But Eszet had broken worse.
None the less, it was the fate she had chosen. And if she had hoped he would figure out her hints and somehow rescue her, she was going to be sadly disappointed. He wandered toward the window and leaned against the opposite sill, also eyeing the storm that was, apparently, about to be their primary weapon. "Having second thoughts?" he wondered silkenly, unable to hold back a wicked smirk. "After all, there's no happy ending for you, is there? Either you lose your soul, you lose your life, or you lose your freedom and your mind. Such lovely choices. I'm surprised you picked the latter, given your beliefs, but who am I to judge…?"
"I feel like doing something disgustingly sentimental," she said, her voice low and dead. "Like asking you to take good care of Farf after I get shuttled off, or saying something noble about how I don't hate you even if you hate me. It feels like if these are the last minutes of calm before the storm, I ought to be doing something significant with them."
He lit a cigarette, watching the flame's reflection on the dripping windowpane, and pocketed the lighter while inhaling the sweet scent of nicotine. "Well, for the record, I don't hate you. You're not worth it. And I don't care if you hate me, because again, you're not worth it. As for Farf, he takes care of himself just fine and I somehow doubt he'll mourn you."
She chuckled. "I'm not right for him anyway," she said with an apathetic shrug.
Schuldich snorted. "Is anyone?"
"You might be."
"Hn." He couldn't resist smiling at that. "Well, I suppose anything is possible. And it WOULD be nice not to have to leave the house for sex anymore…."
She chuckled. "There's always that."
They stood in silence for a moment. Schu would have loved to pick apart her thoughts, but her mind was unusually blank. It was as though her thoughts were smothered by a heavy blanket. No wondering, no dreading, no anticipating, no strategizing, just… waiting. Waiting for the hammer to fall.
It fell in the form of the apartment door swinging open and smacking into the wall behind it. Ice strode in, and Schuldich spared a moment to ogle his half-naked body and the tattoos that so perfectly graced his chest and shoulders before the rest of the Inconnu filed in.
"We're ready when you are," the Isa Cell leader purred, and Schuldich smirked.
Bradley, he sent, his mental voice sweet as sugar, Your troops are assembled.
Don't call me Bradley, Crawford sent back instinctively, even as he set down whatever he'd been doing and headed for the living room.
Meanwhile, Sabbath slipped back into the bedroom. Schuldich got the distinct impression that she didn't want to speak to her cryokinetic friend.
"Severe thunderstorm warnings in effect for the Five Burroughs," Ice said as he crossed to the window, obviously relishing the downpour. "Flooding, downed power lines, total chaos…."
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Schuldich sidled away from the window and flopped onto the couch. "Watch the rats scramble to escape a sinking ship…."
"Rats are survivors," Ice said negligently, fingertips pressing against the dripping glass. "There'll be more than enough of them left when the storm passes."
"Wow, so complimentary, the both of you," Rel said, straddling the arm of a chair and bouncing up and down on it. She was still smiling. "You'd think you hated non-psis or something."
"Frankly, my dear, I hate the entire human race," Ice said dryly. He glanced back outside, unnaturally blue eyes narrowed. "A flood wiped them out once. Is it so much to hope it might happen twice?"
"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," Rel sing-songed, still bouncing on the chair. "From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire…."
"BUT," Ice interjected with a smirk, holding up one finger. "IF it had to perish twice… I think I know enough of hate to know that for destruction, ice is also great, and would suffice."
"It's a flawed metaphor," Farfarello said softly, causing several of the Inconnu to jump, startled. Ice merely flicked those frigid eyes in his direction. "Desire and hatred can go hand in hand, but fire and ice will cancel out each other." The Schwarz berserker stood against the doorframe of Sabbath's room, clad as usual in black leather. Pinkish foam tinged his lips and a sliver of metal protruded from between them at intervals as his jaw worked.
"Fortunately for them," Schuldich put in, smirking broadly at Farfarello's appearance and waving a hand toward the window that looked out over the city, "desire and hatred only mix in combustive amounts in true psychopaths. I love you, I hate you, I want you, I want to kill you… round and round the mulberry bush, eh Farfie?"
"Desire is a more base form of love, lust the twisting of God's gift to mankind. To mix it so liberally with pain and hate…" he drew in a slow breath as if savoring a scent only he could detect. "It must pain him so…."
It would have been a very creepy moment had Rel not chosen that instant to fall off the chair with a thump and a squeak. "I'm okay!" she announced brightly as she bounced to her feet and plopped right back onto the chair. Schuldich stared at her as though she had suddenly grown a second head, while Ice and Catria chuckled to themselves.
The apartment door opened again and the living room, though spacious, began to fill up as all the available seats were quickly taken and spots found on the floor. Deciding that enough of them were assembled to warrant some effort on his part, Ice placed the confiscated maps on the coffee table and spread them out as the Inconnu huddled around them. Crawford arrived then, politely working his way through the swiftly-growing crowd until he could sit near the table. He gamely ignored the soft fall of raven-black hair at the edge of his vision as Fell peered over his shoulder, and eyed the markings the Inconnu had made on the map.
"I assume you've made your plans," Crawford said dryly, and Ice inclined his head in affirmation.
"We'll take on The One with everything we've got. Jake will go along with you and Sabbath to hide you from The One, hopefully enabling you to strike deep and avoid casualties. We thought this tunnel," he said, fingers brushing quietly over the map. "Limited side access and, if we send in teams here, here, and here, it will be flanking."
Crawford eyed the map for a moment while Ice eyed him, then withdrew a pen from his pocket. "Here's what I'd rather do…"
As the two self-appointed generals argued over the niceties of their respective plans, Nagi slipped past the cramped gathering of psions and pushed open the door to Sabbath's room, dodging an inquisitive glance from Farfarello as he stepped inside. Pulling the door shut behind him, he looked around the room, wrinkling his nose as the scent of frankincense made him want to sneeze. The door to the bathroom was shut and he could hear her moving around inside, and when she stepped out, he smiled in confusion. "What's that on your forehead?"
"Something that's going to help make me Kali," she replied succinctly, striding across the room to where her leather bomber jacket had been tossed carelessly on the rumpled bed.
"You look like a gang member," he said quietly, eyeing her red and black leather attire. "And what do you mean by 'make you Kali'? I thought Kali was a goddess."
"Gods and goddesses," Sabbath said as she thrust her arms into the jacket and pushed the sleeves up, "are not people. They are names to put onto forces of nature, because what you can name, you can control. They are faces and personalities behind greater concepts. Kali is not a person. Kali is a state of mind."
"But you said you talk to her," he said, having difficulty processing what seemed to be a very abrupt change in beliefs. "You said she…"
"And she does," Sabbath cut him off, "because, just as a person can become an ideal, an ideal can also become a persona. And now, that persona is an ideal that I am about to take as my own. In the hope that somehow, somewhat, it will do me some good."
"Which is why you have paint on your forehead."
She swept up a small crystal box from the bedside table, wrapped an elastic hair tie around it, and dropped it in her inner jacket pocket. Even though Nagi only saw the thing for a fleeting second, in the brief moment it registered on his retinas, a low THRUMMMM echoed through him. It seemed to come from the soles of his feet and vibrate its way up his body, and he gave himself a shake to be rid of it, eyeing the bulge in Sabbath's jacket with suspicion. "What is that?"
"It's too late to be asking questions," she said with a sigh, patting his shoulder as she brushed past him. "We're committed… all that's left now is to go forth and do."
"Are you afraid?"
She paused in mid-step, hands almost to the doorknob. "Really truly?"
He didn't see a reason to reconfirm that, so he merely waited.
"Yes. I've been thinking it can't be good to be this scared for this long, because sooner or later my heart will explode from the stress. But the anticipation is the worst part, the wondering and the waiting and all that. If we could just get out there and do it, I think I'd be okay. Adrenaline… it's an amazing thing. When you're pumped on it, a lot of things that should matter, like pain, or living, or dying… just don't matter at the moment."
"It's going to be a slaughter," he said truthfully.
"Then I guess I'm going to be really well acquainted with death," she said with a heavy sigh. "And it's more than I ever wanted to be, but hey. That's life." She scuffed a thick-soled boot against the carpet and shrugged. "What can you do except take what comes?"
"And what are you going to do when the dust settles?" he wondered.
She grinned. "Why? Planning to ask me out for coffee?"
He frowned. "I'm serious. So we go out and we defeat The One. What next? I know where we go from there because we have a standing appointment. But you…."
"Oh, don't worry about me," she said, just a bit too flippantly to set his mind at ease. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."
"What about Farfarello?" he asked quietly.
Sabbath paused with her hand on the door knob and eyed him, a wry and somewhat sad smile on her face. Nagi suddenly noticed that one cheek bore a slight discoloration, the blue tinge of a bruise. He wondered when she had gotten it, and who from, and how long ago. "Look," she told him in a very maternal tone, "this entire fiasco with all of you has been one hell of an adventure. Something I never thought I'd get to be part of, I guess, my big chance to save the world and be a hero. But I realized something recently – the reason heroes are so scarce in our world is that they're not as wonderful as the storybooks make them out to be. Kill the dragon, rescue the princess, live happily ever after. But what about the next dragon? And the next? What about your new bride, waiting at home and wondering when you'll come back, or if you'll come back? What about injuries? They never show the knight returning home without one of his arms or legs. What if the knight decides to retire with his wife and raise children? All the people will resent him for it, because he selfishly chose his own happiness over theirs. Heroes, by their very nature, are constantly forced to make hard and dangerous decisions. Fairy Tales spread glitter over the old stories, but it's not that easy, and I… I have never done anything to deserve any sort of prince. Not that Farf is that. Maybe at the beginning, I was looking for a happily-ever-after."
"Not anymore," he ascertained, eyeing her steadily.
She shrugged. "What does my happily-ever-after matter in the grand scheme of things? I could selfishly grab onto all the shiny things you guys brought into my life. I could set myself up as some sort of leader, or genius, or heroine, and try to live my life on the edge of the blade. But ultimately, that sort of life would just revolve around me, and I'm only one of six billion people who are no more and no less important. And maybe someday, you will tell this story to YOUR kids, and they'll ask what happened to me after we slew the evil psychics. And you'll say 'she lived happily ever after'. But it won't be the truth, just like it's never been the truth. It's a device to give people hope that there is peace at the end of all things."
"Don't you think there is peace?" he asked softly.
Her dark eyes met his cerulean blue ones and softened. "In life, I don't think there will ever be true peace, for anyone. In death, though…."
"You think you're going to die."
"It doesn't matter if I do," she told him firmly. "If I live, I'll take that path. If I die, I'll take that one."
"But YOU think you're going to die."
She looked down. "I think I'm going to be faced with the unpleasant consequences of my tough choices. But you talk about death as though it's a bad thing. I'm not afraid of it."
"Then what's scaring you about this? They can't steal your body. You told me, it wouldn't do them any good."
"We all do things in our lives for which people remember us," Sabbath explained quietly. "Things that make us immortal, or give meaning to our names. I'm going to die someday anyway, and leave behind this name and this body. But as a matter of pride, I'd really rather NOT have people say 'she died a failure'. It would set a bad tone for my next time around."
Nagi didn't look at all comforted by any of this, but he remained quiet when Sabbath pulled open the bedroom door and stepped out into the living room, shutting him in with the dim light of a stormy evening and the pungent scent of frankincense.
X-X-X
Cross poked Calan and sat up straight, peering out the window of the coffee shop they'd chosen to set up surveillance in. "Heads up," he said quietly, reaching for the large duffle bag at his feet. "Schwarz is leaving with a crowd."
Calan, who had been reading a newspaper and drinking hot tea, glanced over and quickly folded up his paper. "Some of them look familiar…."
"They've been slipping in in groups of two and three for the past several hours," Cross realized, black eyes narrowing as he pushed his chair back and picked up his empty Styrofoam cup. "Damn. Look at this… it's an ARMY. Where do you think they found an army?"
"I'd be more concerned with what they need an army for," Calan said blandly as he also stood up and hoisted a matching duffle bag. "You drive while I change."
"Done." Cross dropped his cup in the trash on the way out, and Calan followed suite as they made a mad dash through the downpour for their vehicle.
X-X-X
Schuldich stepped out into the driving rain. The streets were almost deserted thanks to the water that stood several inches deep between opposite curbs, and the bits of hail that pelted down along with the water. Schu didn't know who Dylan was, but the boy had certainly outdone himself with this little display. He drew the hood of his raincoat up over his feathery hair. He could FEEL the electricity in the air, electricity that spiked briefly as lightning split the blackness of the sky and brought with it an ear-popping crash of thunder.
Farfarello didn't mind getting drenched, and stood easily next to Schuldich, a pale ghost clad in black leather and Kevlar. The rain trailed over his lean muscles, detouring across his scars in a way that only made them more stark. Schu flipped his wrist over and checked his watch – it was nine. They needed to be in position and moving in at ten o' clock. The movement of nearby bodies and the echoes of the minds that went with them only lent to his sense of being lost in a storm of chaos. Somewhat unconsciously, he slid closer to Farfarello, whose quiet and alien mind was the only familiar thing in the cacophony of falling raindrops, thunder, and thoughts. He could hear the metallic sound of rivers flowing into the sewers, and thought with a smirk that Ice wouldn't have much trouble causing a flood.
He felt another familiar presence behind him and turned, only to laugh at the sight of Crawford dressed almost to match Farfarello. He wore heavy pants and Kevlar with a many-pocketed jacket over it, and Schuldich reminded himself that Crawford was a trained Eszet field agent, fully capable of mounting an assault or defending against one. Crawford wore suits so often that Schu sometimes forgot that he was as lethal with his hands as he was with his advice.
"The Rambo look is a good one for you, Bradley," he cackled, as Crawford shot him an annoyed glance. "I like it. Very urban jungle."
Crawford adjusted the twin shoulder holsters in which he carried his firearms and then straightened the cuffs of his jacket in a fastidious way that was so like him, it made Schuldich laugh again. "Let's get going," he said shortly. "We only have an hour to make it to The Bronx in this weather."
"As much as I hate to be the one to point this out," Schu drawled, draping an arm around Farfarello's shoulders, "we're missing one crucial element."
"I'm here," Sabbath said firmly from behind him, and Schuldich turned.
"Oh. There you are. Forgive my overlooking you, but you are rather… short…."
"Bite me, Schuldich," Sabbath said cheerfully. Schuldich rolled his eyes at the poor come-back, then did a double-take.
"What is THAT?"
Sabbath hiked a dry eyebrow. "After living in Japan for as many years as you have, I would think you could recognize a katana."
"But why do you HAVE it? Don't tell me you know how to use it," he sneered, thinking of Fujimiya Aya and his extremely… well, 'straightforward' would have been the kind way to describe his style. The word 'reckless' would probably have been even more accurate.
"Not in the slightest," she admitted a bit sheepishly. "I always hoped to take kendo lessons, but never had the money or the time. But I couldn't help feeling like it'd be stupid to go down there unarmed, so I'm bringing it with me."
"This isn't a video game," Crawford said severely, frowning at her. "If you don't know how to use it, you're better off without it. We don't have the luxury of starting over if you make a fatal mistake."
"I won't cut off my own foot," Sabbath shot back, hugging the wood-sheathed blade close to her chest. "Or yours."
"You don't even know how to CARRY it," Schuldich pointed out, upper lip curled.
Farfarello pivoted gracefully on one foot and brought the other down on Schuldich's toe, prompting a string of very colorful swearing. "We're wasting time," he pointed out, and Crawford, with one more disapproving look at Sabbath, sighed and relented.
"Then let's move on before we drown," he ordered, stepping off the curb and into the shallow river that the streets of the island had become.
As the Inconnu spread out and hurried toward their posts, Jake Delano, in torn jeans and an equally torn-up denim jacket, fell in beside Sabbath. She glanced up and him and smiled slightly, knowing very well that he was sticking close to her as the only bastion of familiarity and reliability amongst the wild card deck that was Schwarz. He moved uneasily, obviously unwilling to trust them, his eyes on Farfarello's back as the pale Irishman moved liquidly next to Schuldich's sauntering figure.
Sabbath slid her arm through his and swerved to bump against his side. "It'll be okay," she assured him under her breath. "They've got as much at stake as we do."
"A snake stands to lose as much from a drought as a mouse," Jake told her. "But I wouldn't trust that snake if I was staring it in the eye."
"You know how to watch your back," she said, smiling firmly at him. "All you have to do is get us in and get out."
"And hope I can get back to my team before it's too late."
"Lupe's as good a leader as you are. They'll be fine." They ducked under the sheltering roof of the parking garage where their rented car was kept, Crawford drawing from his pocket the remote start mechanism and triggering it. From across the garage, the car gave an answering chirp and the engine turned over obediently. It was a simple black four-door sedan, but Jake eyed it as if it was his figurative snake. Sabbath elbowed him with a smile. "Just get in. Leather seats are nothing to be afraid of," she said before piling in himself.
It's not that, Jake wanted to say, but climbed in anyway and very unhappily found himself squeezed between Sabbath and Farfarello, who was chewing on a slender knife blade with an unsettling gleam in his amber-colored eye. Just where he hadn't wanted to be.
"Uneasy, Inconnu?" Schuldich shot at him, leaning back over the edge of his seat with a wide smirk. He sprawled in his space like a cat, looking so effortlessly powerful that Jake found himself momentarily bristling. "You should be. Here's the cub in the lion's den…."
"Shut up, Schuldich," Crawford told him sharply as he put the car into reverse and swept out of their parking space. The engine growled in protest as he pushed it to greater acceleration before they left the garage.
"Hmph." Schuldich faced forward again and was quiet, and Jake relaxed with a slight smirk.
"Seems like there's always a bigger lion around," he murmured under his breath, hearing Sabbath chuckle in response.
"Satan prowls the earth like a roaring lion, seeking those he may devour," Farfarello breathed, a drop of blood trailing from the corner of his mouth to the almost delicate point of his chin. "All hail the lion of Judah…."
Sabbath reached across Jake and patted his knee. Farfarello ignored her completely and watched the spray driven up by their wheels as Crawford steered them toward the bridge.
They made excellent time, thanks mostly to Crawford's skillful driving and a few mental nudges on Nagi's part to keep them from hydroplaning. Anticipation made the silence thrum with energy and Sabbath's palms sweated even though the car was not at all warm, making her grip on her wood-handled katana slippery. She rubbed her hands on the soft leather of her pants, but it repelled the moisture just as it was supposed to, and frustrated, she pressed them against Jake's knee. He shot her an amused look, but said nothing. The quiet was too heavy to be cut by words.
The Triborough Bridge was almost deserted, even though its gentle rise made either end of it far more dangerous than the middle. After passing over Ward's Island and several more stretches of tumultuous water, they emerged in Hunt's Point. Crawford put them on the expressway and the tension grew. Sabbath wondered how her fellow Inconnu planned to make it this far. There was no entourage, no train of warriors riding north to conquer. She trusted that they would BE there, but the conditions were treacherous.
The seat of all America's visualizations of urban decay closed in around them, with its leaning project buildings and weedy sidewalks. It was a place of dull browns and grays, not at all conducive to hope. In the Bronx, it seemed, there was no brighter tomorrow, just the same gray day over and over. Row after row of projects stretched skyward and rusty, abandoned playground equipment served as makeshift entertainment for the children who grew up in the tenements. No one was outside. Even here, it was storming violently. She wondered briefly what meteorologists would make of the phenomenon the next day, and couldn't hold back a snicker. She could just picture Dylan tossing his dark head and smirking his post-canary-cat smirk, and silkily remarking that it must have been an act of God, his one remaining eye shooting a wink at whoever caught the double entendre.
He might die on this venture. They all might. She had never found much comfort in the idea of going down fighting, but at the moment, she almost did. If The One had more juggernauts like that one (oh, GODDESS, Jordan and Griss… her eyes filled…) they'd be in for the fight of their lives, and somehow, being smashed down kicking and screaming suddenly seemed much preferable to simply falling into eternal night.
Crawford guided the car into a parking space along the side of the street, and she realized they'd left the expressway long ago. He turned off the vehicle and for a moment they sat in silence except for the pounding rain. Then, with a decisive movement, he threw open his door and stepped out into the rain.
The rest of his team quickly followed suit. Crawford consulted his watch. "We have plenty of time to walk to the location," he said crisply, and began making his way down the sidewalk. They fell in behind him, still unwilling to speak and spoil the moment as anticipation made them all tense.
"Here," Crawford said as they came to an intersection that looked very much like all the rest, his eyes resting on a bent and rusted street sign. "Now, we wait."
"We're on schedule," Schuldich remarked, his eyes heavy-lidded and slightly unfocused.
They ducked under the awning of a closed local market and waited. Sabbath pinpointed the darker circle of a manhole cover against the cracked asphalt of the street. It was a heavy thing for a normal person to try to pry up, but to Nagi, whose mind could topple skyscrapers, it would be nothing. She shifted from foot to foot as another car engine rumbled in the distance, blending with the thunder.
"Ten o'clock," Crawford said quietly. "We wait ten minutes, and then we go down."
"They're moving," Schuldich murmured, his mind still elsewhere, riding with their vanguard as the Inconnu invaded the sewers. "The other tunnels are frozen over."
"A battle is won or lost in an instant," Farfarello breathed, fondling the blade he'd been chewing earlier and accidentally (or maybe purposely, it was hard to tell) slicing the side of his finger open. "A single heartbeat can mean the difference between eternal silence or that same heart beating again."
"Ten minutes is an eternity," Sabbath ascertained, working on a way to carry her katana in her belt loop to leave at least one hand free.
"An eternity in ten minutes," he agreed.
"It will be an eternity if you two don't stop parroting each other," Jake said testily, but before he could close his mouth, it dropped slightly open again, breath freezing as Farfarello's blade came to rest against his throat. His fist clenched and he almost lashed out, as the shadows around them suddenly darkened in hue. But Sabbath seized his jacket and yanked him back away from the blade, her other hand attempting to bat Farf's aside. He was much stronger than she was, however, so she ended up simply holding her forearm against his. "Stop it," she said coldly. "Neither of you is expendable."
"We are all expendable," Farfarello countered. "Any sacrifice is useful, any blood spilled another blow to…."
"To God. I know. We all know," she said sharply. "Leave God out of this, would you? He's older than the concept of time. He can wait."
Farfarello eyed her appraisingly for a moment, head canted slightly to one side, then stepped back and lowered the blade. However, there was something in his face that made Sabbath think she hadn't won. She turned away and stood up against the market window, eyeing the rows of shelves, packages of food bearing foreign script. Her throat swelled and she hummed quietly under her breath. At first, 'Uninspired' by Eight-Stops-Seven drifted through her head, but that was a thoroughly depressing song, so she switched to Billy Idol's 'Dancing With Myself'. Before long, she was singing it under her breath as she swayed back and forth in front of the window.
"Apparently, she took the wrong bus," Schuldich muttered. "This isn't American Idol."
"Leave her alone," Nagi said miserably, hands stuffed in the pockets of his raincoat, collar pulled up around his chin.
"When there's no one else in sight… through the crowded lonely night…I'm waiting so long for my love vibration, and I'm dancing with myself…."
Schuldich sighed in a remarkably put-upon manner and sent his consciousness spiraling outward again. And stiffened. "What…?" he hissed, but then Crawford stepped past him into the street, pushing him aside. "It's time. Let's go. Nagi, get that plate up."
Nagi's eyes narrowed and focused on the manhole cover, and it rattled in its frame.
Schuldich's dark blue eyes narrowed. "Brad…"
"Quit worrying about the nasty things you'll get on your coat and GO," Sabbath advised, bounding out into the street with Jake at her heels.
Schuldich almost forgot what he'd been about to say in a wave of annoyance, but even as metal scraped against metal and the manhole cover lifted up and settled elsewhere on the street, Farfarello appeared at his side, golden eye narrowed.
"What do you hear?" he asked.
Schuldich paused. It had been fleeting. He wasn't even really sure if… "I think we're being followed."
Farfarello's head twisted around, peering into the thick curtains of rain that masked the street from which they had come. "Enemies."
"Maybe." Schuldich started to reach outward again, seeking that odd tranquility he thought he'd felt for an instant.
"SCHU." Nagi was staring at them from halfway into the manhole. The others had disappeared already. "Come on. You're holding us up."
"Fuck. I'm coming," Schu told him, releasing the effort and heading toward the dark hole in the street. "If they want to come after us, they can slog through sewage just like us," he muttered as he spun and started to climb down the ladder.
Farfarello simply dropped down, landing in a crouch and unfolding like a switchblade to steady Schuldich's descent. "Who?"
Schuldich eyed the manhole cover even as Nagi started to slide it back into place. "Schwert."
X-X-X