“Any sign of our boy?” asked Toys.

Violin looked around. For a moment, it seemed as if she were about to say something, but then shook her head.

Suddenly, a new series of explosions rippled through the building. And then an absolutely massive detonation lifted the entire roof off and hurled flaming chunks of concrete across the parking lot. The police scattered, but most of them were caught by the blast or knocked down by flaming debris.

“Christ!” gasped Toys.

“We need to help them,” said Violin.

“We need to find Joe,” said Harry.

“No,” said Toys, “she’s right. We need to help.”

And the car drove into the parking lot.

CHAPTER 111

SCANDIC BERLIN POTSDAMER PLATZ

GABRIELE-TERGIT-PROMENADE 19

BERLIN, GERMANY

First thing I did was find a public trash can on a deserted city street, pull over, and dump the remaining bee drones and my MindReader gear into the metal can. Then I stripped off my own body armor. Last, I activated four blaster-plasters that I hadn’t needed to use. I raced back to my car and was halfway down the block when it all blew up. It was a big and very hot fireball that I knew would completely incinerate everything. All anyone would find was slag. Nothing was traceable to begin with, but now it was not even remotely recognizable as what it might have been. While I drove, I muttered apologies to Doc and Bug.

Then I took a long and complex route back to my hotel in Berlin. I stopped my car on a different side road halfway there and spent some time changing out of my combat rig and into a nondescript suit with a drab tie and fake eyeglasses. Cleaning the blood off Ghost took a while, and he whined and glared as if I were doing something truly awful to him.

“Stop being a big baby,” I scolded, and he replied with a loud and eloquent fart.

My hands shook as I worked. Partly it was the adrenaline still trying to get my nerves and muscles to fight or flee. Takes a lot longer for that to wash out of the bloodstream than it does to inject it in. Comes with a bit of nausea, too.

Mostly, though, I was scared. And … relieved?

I’d done the whole mission without the Darkness taking me over. And that was something I had to actually think about to make sure I was correct. But there were no memory gaps. I could map out every minute of my time inside the processing plant. So … yay?

On the other hand, I’d seen ghosts. Spoken to ghosts. To my brother, Sean.

If it had been Sean.