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Chapter 55: Hello, Leo
Darius visited his parents every night at eleven, because it was the only hour the ward was quiet.They were on the third floor of the city hospital now, in a long room with soft walls and twelve beds, where the nurses spoke in gentle voices and nobody was allowed to have shoelaces. Most of the beds held people the news had started calling the Walkers, men and women who had been found wandering through the city on the night of the deadline with nobody left behind their eyes. His mother sat in the chair by the window with a paper cup of orange juice in both hands, drinking it in tiny sips, and smiled at him the way she smiled at everybody."Hello," she said brightly. "Are you the doctor?""No, Mum," Darius said. "It's me."She nodded as though that made perfect sense, and went back to her juice.His father was asleep. He slept a great deal now, curled up on his side with his knees pulled up, and sometimes in his sleep he said Mr. Krell in a small, frightened voice. Darius sat between t
Chapter 54: Stay Down
Leo got Isla home to Eastgate in a cab without either of them saying a word.She had a thin red line along the side of her throat where the scalpel had rested, and she kept touching it with her fingertips as though she couldn't believe it was still there. At her door she turned round and looked at him for a long moment."You knelt," she said. "For me. In front of everybody.""Yes.""My dad used to say the only thing a man really owns is his knees." Her voice shook, and she took a breath before she went on. "He said you can tell who someone is by what they'll get down on them for." She reached up and touched his face, very lightly, the way she'd touched the cut. "Thank you, Leo."She went inside. He stood on the landing listening to her lock the door, and then he walked down the stairs and out into the evening, and he still couldn't get the cold of the concrete out of his knees.* * *The Grand Palace suite was dark when he let himself in. He didn't turn the lights on. He sat down on t
Chapter 53
Bram didn't know her.He was sitting by the window of his room on the third floor, in hospital pyjamas with his hair combed flat by some kind nurse, turning a silver ring over and over in the light and humming to himself. When Isla came in, he looked up with polite, cheerful interest, the way you'd look at a stranger on a bus."Hello," he said. "You're a pretty lady."Isla sat down on the edge of the bed. She had dressed carefully for this, in jeans and a soft grey jumper that clung to the full curve of her chest, with her dark-gold hair brushed out loose over her shoulders, and Leo understood that she had done it for her father, so that he'd see her looking nice."Hi, Dad," she said.Bram beamed at her and held out the ring. "Shiny," he said. "You can have it."She took it. She thanked him, and she let him show her how it caught the light, and she kept her voice bright and warm for twenty minutes, right up until they were back out in the corridor and the door had closed behind them.
Chapter 52
Leo couldn't see what she was seeing, but he didn't need to.He knew that face. He had worn it himself, on the worst night of his life, when a voice had spoken out of nowhere and gold letters had opened in front of him and told him he could be somebody. Isla's eyes were moving along lines he couldn't read, back to the start and along again, and her hands had gone still in her lap."It says it's sorry for my loss," she said. Her voice was very small. "It says Dad was its favourite. It talks like him, Leo. It calls me pet, the way he does." She swallowed. "It says it can give me everything he had. The shop. Something called points. It says nobody would ever be able to frighten me again, and it says I could find out who did this to him." Her eyes came to rest at the bottom of whatever she was reading. "There's a button. It says yes or no."Leo opened his mouth to tell her no, and found that he couldn't make himself do it straight away.He thought about the pool house at the Leroys', and
Chapter 51
At a quarter past two, Leo found Elena's envelope still folded in the inside pocket of his jacket.He was sitting on the step of the Gilded Magpie with a bag of frozen peas from Bram's little freezer pressed against his ribs, because every breath hurt where Fisk's crowbar had caught him. Aria had fallen asleep against his shoulder ten minutes ago, sitting up, with her cut hand wrapped in one of Bram's polishing cloths. He eased away from her, went inside to the counter where Bram had done his homework as a boy, and signed every page of the divorce papers with the jeweller's pen.A small panel opened over the glass when he wrote the last line.[Name restored: Leo Mercer.]He looked at it for a while. It was the first thing all night that hadn't cost anybody anything.Andres's black SUV came down the middle of the street at half past two and stopped near the corner where Bram had gone.Four of his boys climbed out of the back and stood around on the pavement looking at the broken door,
Chapter 50
"Ninety points," Leo said. "You need ninety points in nineteen minutes, or somebody above you has to fall."Bram nodded. He was still standing where he had put the broom down, very calm, the way people are calm when the worst thing has already happened and they're only waiting for it to arrive.[Bram Kettering: -48. Standing: 10th of 10.][Tomasz Wren: +40. Standing: 9th of 10.]Leo looked at his skills, though he already knew what they would say.[Sovereign's Decree: Cooldown. 22:11:40 remaining.][Leverage: Ready.]He had spent the Decree on Lola, and one Leverage wasn't going to find Bram ninety points.He called Kira. "I need any player in this city ranked below Bram, anywhere, and I need them on their knees in front of him before nine minutes past two. Get Andres's men out. Get everybody."His phone buzzed the moment he hung up.Aria: I'm in a cab. I couldn't sit in that flat and wait for it. I'm coming to you.A second message followed before he could answer.There's a van behin
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