I was barely on when he slipped the clutch and surged forward. Just in time. The roar of acceleration drowned out the first volley, the pistols mutely puffing out smoke and empty casings. My ears rang and I tasted blood. I’d bitten my tongue.

Normally, I’d have sat back as far as possible. Now, I could only turn my brain off, clamp both arms around Dark Boy’s waist, and tuck in to make a smaller target as the bullets screamed by. Lucky for us, their aim was crap.

Dark Boy swerved away into the curtain of smoke, running a crazy zigzag among the tents and stalls along the fringe, then out through the squatter camps. Startled residents leaped from our path or flung themselves headlong to duck the gunfire. Through every squealing near–crack up, each heart-stopping, two-wheel turn, Dark Boy kept us upright and racing forward. The eager set of his shoulders beneath my shuddering jaw said he relished this sort of mad race. I held on for dear life.

And fought off visions of Daniel laid down by a hail of gunfire, no one to help him. Bleeding. Dying. Already dead.

If this was really happening, it would end at some point and I’d deal with it then.

The park perimeter road was rutted but empty. The smoke thinned. Only a scattering of vendors fleeing the Souk with their goods in tow. The aura of dreamscape faded some as the wind battered my eyelids, but explanation danced out of reach.

Daniel and Dark Boy. What was the connection? Had Daniel taken him on as a project, aiming to reform a wayward rich kid? Like Rousseau with Jake and others, back in the day?

In the desperate clutch of my arms, through the silky drape of his upscale hoodie, Dark Boy felt slim and rangy, truly a boy. Not starved-skinny like most denfolk, but hardly filled out yet. I’d been too frightened to see it at the dock, or behind his glitzy shades and matching speedboat. Maybe fourteen, fifteen? Younger than the medics said I was, by four, five years at least. Only playing the role of hardened adult.

’Course, being young didn’t make him harmless. Something about the look of him still put me on extra-high alert. I shivered as memory stirred behind one very closed door. But he had to be safer than bullets.

Now they’d stopped flying, I needed some distance. I eased my grip and sat back far as I could and still stay on the bike. When we had 59th in sight, he slowed to keep the wind from tearing the words from his mouth.

“Need to ditch you, den rat. Got a safe hide nearby?”

“I can hide anywhere.” Least he wasn’t planning to drag me off to some dark corner.

“Time to lighten my load. I got . . . people waiting.”

“What about Daniel?”

“Told you. Not to worry.”

“You and Daniel are . . . friends?”