The creature moved towards Ray first.All it's four arms came forward at once and the air it displaced when it moved was enough to push Ray back a half step before he planted his feet and held his ground.It crossed the hall in four strides.Ray dropped low and went under the first swing, the upper right arm passing over his head close enough that he felt it, and drove his shoulder into the creature's midsection. It was like hitting a wall. A wall that grabbed back.Two of the lower arms closed around Ray's torso and squeezed.Ray felt his ribs flex and hit the creature's face twice with his elbow, short and hard, the angle the only one available. The grip loosened enough for Ray to twist and drop and come up outside the reach."Ray!" Zoe was already moving."Hold," Ray said.He didn't want her close to this yet. Not until he understood what it could take.He went back in.The creature swung all four arms in a combined motion that turned the space in front of it into something nobo

Ray walked back to Arnold and sat down.Arnold looked at him with the careful expression of a man who had learned not to show relief too openly."We work together, but on conditions." Ray said."Name them," Arnold said."My team answers to me," Ray said. "Not to you. Not to anyone in this facility and when I say we move we move and when I say we stop we stop.""Agreed," Arnold said."Everything you know about Wolfe's current operation gets shared with my people at the camp immediately and not filtered or edited, everything.""Agreed," Arnold said."And if at any point I decide this isn't working," Ray said, "we walk, no trackers, no gas and no arena."Arnold looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded."Agreed," he said. "All of it."Ray leaned back. "Then tell me about the lead."Arnold stood and crossed to the nearest screen on the wall and brought up a map with a few taps on the panel beside it. New York filled the screen, the boroughs spread across it in detail, and Arnold moved h

Charlie drove without being told where to go and Ray let him because Charlie had been navigating this city by instinct for three days and his instincts had been right more often.They ended up back at the hotel through a route they avoided at the two main streets Ray had flagged as compromised.It came in through the service entrance at the back that the hotel staff used for deliveries, the van fit through the gap with two inches to spare on each side.Ray helped Arnold out of the van.Arnold moved with the careful measured steps of a man that managed pain by controlling how much of his body he asked to work at any one time. The arrow was still in. Priya had told Ray in the van that removing it without the right setup would cost more than leaving it for the next twenty minutes.Ray had passed that information to Arnold who had nodded and said nothing and spent the rest of the drive with his hand pressed flat against his back and his eyes on the van ceiling.They got him up the stair

They all arranged and left the hotel before sunrise.Ray woke everyone up at four in the morning and nobody complained because nobody had been sleeping properly anyway. They moved around the hotel room in the dark, checking gear, checking weapons, checking each other the way people checked each other before something they weren't sure they were coming back from.Arnold was on his feet.Priya had told him to stay down and he had listened for exactly as long as it took for everyone else to start getting ready.Then he had gotten up and put his coat on and looked at Priya with the expression of a man who understood he was making a medical choice she disagreed with and was making it anyway.Priya looked at Ray.Ray looked at Arnold."You will slow us down, you just stay behind," Ray said. "No discussion.""Agreed," Arnold said.They went out into the city.******New York at four thirty in the morning was the closest it ever got to quiet.The streets in the direction of Thunder Land were

Ada forced the hatch open.She put both palms on the panel and pushed current through it and the lock released with a sharp click.Ray pulled it open and they went through one at a time into the maintenance tunnel beyond it.It was narrow and dark. The smell of old concrete and electrical wiring and the specific staleness of a space that existed for machine rather than people. Ray moved through it fast with his hand on the left wall, counting paces, tracking direction in his head.Behind him the group moved in single file.Priya, Charlie, Zoe and Saul with his head doing the tilt even in total darkness, reading what his eyes couldn't. Ada was the last, and she was pulling the hatch closed behind her.Arnold was in the middle.Ray counted eighty paces and the tunnel bent right and he took the bend and stopped.They heard sounds of boots ahead of them in the tunnel. It was not one set of boot but multiple sounds w d it was coming from the direction of the exit Mara had identified I