“We didn’t know they were there,” Javid-Lee yelled. “Your butt-ugly bitch cousin Delphine ran there after you warned her. Perigine was on his way to hit her kid. What? You think I was going to ignore you whacking Riek and firebombing my fucking club? You took it up to this level, you fuck, because you have no respect for me. So your ratfuck nephew—the little shit that started all this—his ass is mine, and you know that; you know that’s the price you gotta pay. Only you’re too chickenshit to stand up like a man. Your whole family hides and runs like pussies. That’s what you are, gaping fucking pussies.”

Rayner yelled wordlessly and spat at Javid-Lee through the mesh.

“Enough,” Alik said. His finger lined up on Javid-Lee. “You were hunting Alphonse?”

“ ’Course we fucking were. Perigine’s good. He tracked the kid and Delphine to the Lorenzo place, and that’s when it all went to shit.” Javid-Lee glared at Rayner. “Which is your fault because you’re a fucking coward. Now look where you’ve put us.”

“You?” Rayner smirked back. “Put you, pal! Me, I’m cooperating with the feds. I’m outta here.”

“Fuck you!”

“Okay, then,” Alik said. “I believe I got everything I need.” Shango opened the back door for him.

“Hey,” Rayner said. “Hey, wait! What about me?”

Alik paused. “You have my personal thanks for your cooperation.”

“No! No, that’s not the deal. You get your ass back in here and you unlock this motherfucking cage! You hear me?”

The door closed, and Alik stepped down onto the muddy ground of the Lewis County environmental processing site in upstate New York—a patch of rural ground covering six square kilometers, dominated by an impressive atmospheric cleansing plant. Five massive concrete hyperboloid air tunnels stood together in a line, each one sporting a necklace of molecular extractor filters. Three pulled carbon monoxide out of the air, while the remaining pair collected carbon dioxide. Both gases were stored in big high-pressure tanks, ready for disposal.

As reduction efforts went, the Lewis County site alone wouldn’t have much effect on the global greenhouse gas legacy that was still uncomfortably high even after a hundred years of scrubbing the excess out of Earth’s atmosphere. But there were more than five hundred similar plants dotted all over the planet, and between them they did make a difference. So much that in another hundred years the experts claimed the world would be down to pre-twentieth-century levels.

Alik could hear Javid-Lee and Rayner yelling obscenities at each other inside the Black Mariah. It was parked in line with six other equally ancient, identical vehicles.

Marley Gardner and his team were waiting in a four-by-four to one side. Alik climbed in.