spotting it one evening in the Manhattan dockyard was chilling enough.

Now it rumbled down the quiet street, drawing eyes to every suburban window. Gargantuan tires could flatten every middle-class sensible car on this block into sheet metal. Black smoke billowed from high smokestacks jutting from its back end, exhaust pumped from the colossal engine. Grease dribbled

down its pipes, leaving an oily snail trail wherever it rumbled.

“This is overkill,” Doc said.

Aziz sighed hard, a static sound through his gas mask. “Overkill is ABP’s favorite.”

Doc hoped hard that Yaya had stolen money from Bryant and taken that hypothetical bus. She needed to get somewhere ABP would never find her. Not if she wanted to live.

14

The day eventually ended. Doc had to remind herself it was over when she stopped at a Jumpies on the way home, though she’d yanked off her gas mask and banana suit an hour ago. Traffic was garbage, and she and Aziz had needed to run Bryant’s body to the lab on Warren Street before they could commute their separate ways.

Neither spotted Greenwich. He was probably prowling the streets in the Predator Engine, its smokestacks cutting years off the lives of every pedestrian.

The sky was dark now; the Predator Engine would glow amber wherever it went.

Doc remembered Yaya worked at Jumpies. Not necessarily this location, but a Jumpies nearby. All checks confirmed she hadn’t worked since Saturday.

Now, it was Friday again, and she must’ve been fired. She wouldn’t be working at any Jumpies anywhere.

Doc left with a plastic bag swinging from her wrist, a package of sour candies inside. Her free hand clutched her keys as she crossed the parking lot. A text message vibration made her stop one foot behind her car. She wrenched the phone from her coat and glanced at the screen. Keys in one hand, phone in the other, plastic bag slung over her wrist, accosted by all sides of life.

GREENWICH: Samples match. Report to analysis. Board demands pursuit of unique specimen.

Doc stared a moment. They wanted her back at Warren Street again. What was she supposed to do that a team of agents couldn’t? ABP’s bureaucracy left constant gaps within its system, a masochistic block of swiss cheese armed with a power drill. The Board demanded Yaya right now. Something the lab had found made the Board presume her biologically significant—which she was—

and more importantly, profitable.

Doc was going home to sprinkle pepper onto otherwise flavorless pasta and chase that meal with enough sour sugar to burn her tongue. Only Greenwich couldn’t seem to understand that ABP shouldn’t own every aspect of their lives.

Too many hours in the gas mask.

She began texting him that she wasn’t heading back out, that the Board could stuff it for now, and after her appointment tomorrow morning, she would

—

Fingers brushed down her lower back. Her muscles twitched, an involuntary tremor along her spine. The touch was cold, lifeless. She would’ve assumed she’d imagined it until a glance over her shoulder caught a broad shape skulking past, his pale face glancing over his denim jacket’s shoulder to stare at