The man came up out of the stairwell. He was an average-sized fellow, a little taller than Rector and forty pounds heavier, and he wore some kind of protective jumpsuit that zipped all the way from his crotch to his mask.

“Hey, you. What are you doing up here?” he asked. “You’re not supposed to be here…”

He reached toward a cargo belt that swung low on his waist, and Rector’s heart nearly stopped. The man was going for a gun—he was absolutely positive of it—and as soon as he had it in hand, everything would be over. He and Houjin would both be dead, both failures, both casualties of somebody else’s problem.

For all his adolescent philosophies to the contrary, Rector decided at that moment that he wasn’t interested in dying right now—much less at the top of a tower in a poisoned city, inside a wall, at the hands of some stranger. The whole thing felt undignified, and maybe Rector’s life thus far hadn’t been too big on dignity, but it’d be a shame if he died as ignobly as he’d lived.

All of this flashed through his head like a bolt of lightning. He didn’t have time to reflect, and he didn’t have time to second-guess anything; he only had time to charge.

He hollered, because that’s what you do when you charge. He swung the ax at a wobbling, frenzied pitch, and within two seconds he’d crossed the open expanse of floor between him and the man at the edge of the stairs. Houjin was right behind him, waving that sharpened iron bar as though it were a sword and they were the cavalry and this were some kind of heroic last stand—though Rector hoped with all his might that it wasn’t.

They ran at the stunned man, who remained stunned enough that his hand stopped at the edge of his belt and he took half a step back.

The half step either saved him or killed him, and the boys didn’t know which.

Before Rector reached him, the man toppled backwards and downward. He flailed, waving his arms and desperately reaching for some sort of balance, but he didn’t find it. He only found the stairwell hole behind him … right where he’d put his left foot.

This didn’t stop Rector, who was on fire with the zeal of self-defense.

He brought the ax back and punched with it, knocking the off-kilter fellow even farther off-kilter; and when Houjin joined the fray, the weight of the Chinese boy’s heavy iron stick took the right leg out from under the intruder (or were they the intruders? Rector didn’t have time to care).

The man in the jumpsuit went tumbling backwards, down the stairs.