Entromancy Read Free

the hall, and a faint light flickered from the chamber closest to the stairs.  I moved down the corridor and sidled up against the first doorway, trusting in my shadow shroud to keep me hidden from all but the most observant of spectators.  I ducked my head in and out of the room, allowing my lenses to record its contents.
    I felt my breath catch in my throat, and a terrible premonition began to snake its way through my subconscious.  Hurrying to the next doorway, I quickly peered inside and felt my stomach tighten in response, either from the overpowering smell, anxiety, or both.
    I crept back towards the open window, scrolling through my digitab to find the right contact and tapping a button.
    “The hell you want, Nightpath?” Striker’s voice greeted me after a few beeps.  “Don’t you have a job to do?”
    “Piss off, Striker,” I retorted through clenched teeth.  “Downtown doesn’t match briefing intel.  There are people here, a lot of them, all ragers.”
    “The hell does that matter?  Do the job, man.”
    “Damn it, Striker!” I clipped, looking around me to make sure I still hadn’t been noticed.  “I’m saying it doesn’t make sense.  Why would the revs blow up their own?”
    “You get paid to ask questions, or you get paid to shoot people?” Striker’s voice buzzed.  “Do the job.”
    “Not innocents, prick!” I could feel my patience dissipating into anger.  “Listen to me, Striker.  There are kids in here.  Something’s not right.”
    “Do the job, Nightpath,” Striker repeated, and the digitab clicked.
    I growled incoherently at the closed line, taking another cursory look around me and noting the time.  21:12:04.
    “Piss.”
    Two rooms were filled to the brim with people in various states of consciousness, vibrant in my lenses’ IR spectrum with the telltale fever of the rage plague.  Aurics mostly, with a few humans here and there tending to them or keeping them company.  Adults, children, elderly, young.  By the size and number of rooms, I’d estimate over fifty people sedated and being held on the brink of lunacy.
    “Piss,” I said again.  The revolutionaries were known for their guerilla tactics and tenacity, not for their brutality.  If the building was set to explode, the auric king would have blood of his own kind on his hands, which signified a new depth to his desire to control the city.  It was a big play, but it didn’t change my objective.
    I pocketed my digitab and crept down the corridor, back towards the stairwell.  The building was stifling, hotter than the outside world with no hint of a breeze.  I could feel a nervous sweat dampen my clothes under my arms and at the small of my back.  I sidled past several other rooms and approached the lighted room next to the stairs.  A faint murmuring drifted out from it and into the corridor.
    Just as I reached the room’s open doorway, a tall auric dressed in street clothes and dangling with piercings walked out of the room, head down as he counted a wad of crumpled paper money.  “Later,” he called over his shoulder as he turned the corner and trotted down the stairwell, oblivious to my presence.
    I waited several beats until I heard a door close downstairs.  Peering around the corner and into the room, I could clearly make out several figures in the dim light, my brown eyes picking up on tusks and horns while my lenses picked up the rest.  Five aurics, all conscious, with no signs of the rage plague.  Two human-sized pairs sitting at as many tables, with one gigantic troll of an auric propped up against a corner wall, all absorbed in their digitabs, which provided the room’s only meager illumination.  Their superior vision wouldn’t need any more than that.
    I pressed my back against the wall, mentally preparing myself for what was next.  I didn’t have time for a protracted battle, and the stakes had just become infinitely higher with the presence of innocent people.  Shaking my coat