No need to stick around to see what he wants. I plunge into seedy mean streets. Gone are the lean-tos, the meat-sellers and the drug-pushers. The alley is empty of people and the walls have massive chunks gouged out of them and are pockmarked with what look like bullet holes. Bricks and mortar are strewn in the road. I run hard, through flurries of red ash. No idea where I am, where I’m going, or how to escape the labyrinth of alleys. Each leads into another, and yet another. I glance over my shoulder. Nothing. It’s only me and the sound of my trainers scrunching through the muck and my heart booming in my chest. I skid around a corner and jog down yet another dark alley. Dead end. Brick wall.

I lean against the wall and catch my breath. On either side of me stand decrepit, bombed-out buildings—hunks of bricks, torn out of the walls, lie in scattered piles on the ground, all covered in a red frost. I listen. A bin clatters. A bottle breaks.

Something stinks here. It smells like a dead thing hidden in the bins. Far away, a rattling staccato sound, like fireworks. Distant, thunderlike guns and explosions.

Then quiet.

Now the crunching of boots and a shadow falls across the wall.

For a second, I think I see a pair of wings.

Then it’s gone.

But here is a figure now, cloaked in the red mist. I look beyond him to the alleyway entrance, heart thumping, and see nothing but a ruddy murk. I take a shaky breath. I feel the roughness of the bricks behind me. I’m trapped.

The man is big and lit by flashing neon lights. He’s wearing a dark suit and a black coat. Maybe I can make it past him. Maybe I can run up the wall and flick over his shoulder and somersault away like some Free Runner. Maybe.

He advances, watching me. Blood pounds in my ears.

I guess he weighs maybe ninety kilograms. I weigh less than fifty. He’s about thirty years old. I’m seventeen. He’s about six foot four. I’m five five.

Still he says nothing.

And I say nothing.

I click my neck and make a plan in my head, a map of where to hit him.

Throat—a good place to start. I’ll smash him in the larynx with the back of my hand. But if I miss and connect with his chin, I reckon the bones in my hand might break—so a fist won’t work. Not on him. Groin—one punch. He’ll feel it. Knees—a sharp side-kick and he’ll drop. It doesn’t matter how big they are, a good kick to the knee and they all go down. My improvised plan will require speed and finesse, and a load of luck. And I think: Where is it from, this sudden knowledge?