As a professional delinquent and occasional trafficker in illicit substances, Rector had access to a great deal of information that wasn’t strictly common knowledge—including the often disbelieved truth that people still lived inside the city … and the fact that most of them weren’t very nice.

Some of the city’s least nice residents lived and worked in King Street Station, which was ruled like a small, wicked kingdom by a mysterious Chinaman named Yaozu. Rector had never personally set eyes on Yaozu, but his imagination suggested an enormous, evil-looking man in billowy black clothing and a gas mask set with spikes. He might have tattoos on his face, or fingernails filed to points, or a terrible voice that sounded like it came from the chest of the devil himself.

No man who rules by the power of his name could be anything less than fearsome.

Rector knew roughly how the world worked, and he had no interest in meeting the monstrous Chinaman or his army of minions. Even if his empire had been built on sap, and even if his Station was where most of Rector’s drug of choice was presently made. But somewhere in the back of Rector’s head—bouncing feebly among the parts of his brain that still worked the best—he was prepared to admit that he had considered asking Yaozu for a job.

Of course, this would only come up if he survived his little quest, which he didn’t expect to. Which was fine by him. And even if he did survive, there was always the chance that Yaozu wouldn’t be in charge very long anyway. Nobody in the Outskirts except the chemists cared whether or not Yaozu managed the flow of sap that oozed out of the walled-up city. If some newcomer came along, up from Tacoma or Portland, or even from as far away as San Francisco, or wherever Harry was talking about …

Rector cared only insomuch as it might affect the supply chain, but he didn’t give two small shits if the operation was run by a Chinaman named Yaozu, or an Irishman named Hark O’Reilly, or a New Yorker named Louis Melville, or a Californian named Otis Caplan. Let them fight over it all they liked. Just let the best man win, and let the sap flow.

Let the whole world burn, for all Rector Sherman cared. After all, it had no place for him.

Chapter 4

Four

Rector’s quest was fuzzy, but it was not altogether ridiculous: If he could find his way into the city, locate his deceased friend’s corpse, and treat it with a smidge of dignity, he could perhaps be freed from the nagging phantom that dogged his waking dreams.