[MIDDAY]

Will

"Sam!"

He jerked upright, blinked at the sight of Fletcher's bedroom. The pale gray face of a demoness smiled blithely down on him. "I'm sorry, dear. It's only me."

Will sat up in Fletcher's bed, worked his neck one way, then the other. Rubbed the sleep from his eye. "Someone patch me up?"

Nyx was sitting in a chair by the bedside, hands folded in her lap. "He certainly endeavored to."

"Well, he must've done a pretty good job. I actually feel decent." There was only a low hum of pain, and his head felt clearer than it had in days.

"I'm glad to hear it." There was something vaguely doubtful in her voice.

Will looked down at his bare torso. "Oh."

He looked like something that had been tossed down a mountain, dusted off, and given a second trip for good measure. His stomach was wound up with layers of bandaging, but a large blotch of something sticky-brown had begun to seep through the gauze. His left shoulder sagged, and clicked badly when he tried to move it. The palm of his right hand looked… melted. The fingers wouldn't close properly. His right leg, splayed out stick-straight, was marred by a mess of twisted, inflamed scarring all along his thigh.

He didn't feel hungry or thirsty.

A numb realization was creeping up in the back of his mind. He tried to push it away, but there was no use denying it. He licked his lips. "I'm not better, am I?"

"No," Nyx replied with unusual softness.

"I'm worse."

"Yes."

His body had given up on preserving itself, on conserving energy. What he was feeling was some sort of terminal lucidity; a final burst of strength before death.

"How long have I got?"

"Master Hacksaw says a few hours."

Will stood up and put on some clothes that had been laid out. His old ones were nowhere to be seen, but he found his half-empty cigarette pack on the desk, and some kind soul had left a matchbox, too. He lit up a smoke, leaned back against the desk, and took a few thoughtful drags.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Around noon."

"Huh. I wouldn't have guessed." Outside the window, the sky was still dark and grim. If Hacksaw's estimate was anywhere close to correct, he'd die without seeing Sam again. That was a bit of a bummer.

Nyx pursed her black lips just slightly. "William, I would love to allow you time to grieve your own mortality, but I'm afraid there is a matter of some urgency at hand."

"Dying guy doesn't get a break?"

"In this instance, I'm afraid not."

"What seems to be the issue?"

"You brought a certain… diminutive creature home with you last night."

"Mmhmm. It's crazy, the things you find just lying around."

"Quite. Although I've been led to understand that the girl you found is a somewhat contested item. Commander Thorpe must want the little critter quite badly, because he mounted a full-scale attack on the Academy in the early hours of the morning. His commandos slipped inside undetected and went room-to-room in search of the girl, killing anyone who resisted."

"Death count?"

"Forty-four dead. No injured. They were efficient."

"Did they find what they came for?"

"Unfortunately for them, yes."

"ADAM?"

"He was awake, and killed several of the attackers while the rest retreated without achieving their objective."

Will eyed some badly rubbed-out bloodstains on the floor. "I dreamt I did a bit of killing myself last night. Guess that might not have been a dream after all."

"It was not. Considering the circumstances, you did your part admirably."

Will took a long, slow drag, tensing as he held back a cough, and exhaled through his nostrils. "Sounds like everything's under control, then. So why are you ripping me off my deathbed, demon?"

He imagined it had to be related to the sounds of urgent bustling and panic-edged shouting that echoed up from the lower floors.

"Thorpe did not stop at just the one attack, I'm afraid. Finding the Academy a tougher nut to crack than he'd expected, he changed tack, abandoned the stealthy approach and got himself a battering ram.

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"Lord Brimstone is still out there squashing anything that moves. Thorpe's commandos have spent all morning fighting him. All to the good, we thought—saves us the trouble of dispatching him ourselves.

"Visibility has been quite poor for obvious reasons, and almost none of the survivors are venturing outside the Academy at this stage, so we learned only a few minutes ago that the commandos have not been trying to kill Brimstone at all.

"They've been baiting him. Harassing him with long-range fire and retreating when he comes after, thereby leading him in whatever direction they choose."

Will blew out a sharp gray breath, dropped his half-smoked cigarette, and ground it out under his bootheel. "Let me guess. He's coming this way?"

Nyx gave a small nod, lip curling in displeasure. "Almost on top of us, in fact. In a few minutes the Academy will go from the safest place in the city to quite the opposite. We are organizing a full evacuation to lead everyone out of the city."

"But there's no time."

"There is not."

"You need someone to hold Brimstone off while everyone else gets away."

"Yes. Henri Saint Capitaine has already volunteered, but he won't be enough."

Will was already moving toward the door, limping slightly on his stiff right leg. Snatched up Anathema leaning against a wall and strapped it on. "Okay. I'm on it."

Nyx followed him out into the hall and down the stone steps, dogging him like an unnerving shadow. He looked down at his arm. His SP crystal was back, along with 11 AP. He grunted with grim satisfaction. As good as it was going to get. 10 AP left, once he'd taken out his medicine bag, downed painkillers, stimulants, and a healing draught, and stuffed the satchel back inside his Inventory.

"What have we found out about the girl?" Will asked while descending the stairs, speaking loudly over the approaching cacophony produced by more than a thousand scared people packed together in one building. "Do we know why Thorpe wants her so bad?"

"Nothing specific," Nyx replied, hovering at his shoulder, "but it's safe to assume that she is an asset of considerable value."

Will grunted vague affirmation. "Anyone Identify her yet? Her symbol was unfamiliar to me."

"Yes, Fletcher did perform a thorough scan, despite the robot's insistence otherwise. She is a… Mediator."

"The fuck is that?"

"I don't fucking know, William. As new to me as it is to you, I promise."

Reaching the second floor, Will found the stairs to ground level quite plugged by a shuffling, shoving, bickering mass of people. Evidently, enough survivors had made it to the Academy that they had begun spreading out onto the second floor, and were now trying to make it back down. He didn't much feel like spending his last moments waiting in line, so he jumped up and put a foot down on someone's wildly protesting head. One head to the next, he picked his way down, down, down, ignoring the outraged cries that followed, until at last he planted his feet on the ground floor with a firm clap.

Looking over his shoulder as he straightened, he found Nyx slinking through the crowds close behind him as though her body had the thickness of a sheet of paper, features distorting and elongating crazily until she stood before him and her shape snapped back into place. Those emerging from the staircase parted around the two of them in fear of the demoness.

"So there's an eleventh Profession, then," Will said.

"Seems that way." Nyx's ember eyes trailed over the disorganized mob that choked up the whole first floor, fed by a steady trickle from the stairs.

"Now there's a mystery I'd like to sink my teeth into. Shame, that."

Nyx glanced at him, and offered a tiny sympathetic smile. "Being mortal does sound fairly unsatisfying. You must all leave so many things undone."

"It is what it is."

"Would you like to leave a message for Samantha?"

"Tell her I love her. Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her I tried. Figure that's all there is to say." He could feel his clock ticking—could almost hear it in the back of his mind. There was no pain, but his stomach was uncomfortably tight. Rot swelling in his gut. Probably swimming in his blood by now.

Nyx nodded, looked off. "I'll pass it on. Don't worry, I'll pretty up the phrasing a bit."

Will snorted. "Thanks."

There was no time to stand around and chat, though. People had already begun streaming into the undercroft supervised by Fletcher. Probably meant to lead the survivors out via some secret passage rather than in plain view. Some were not content to wait, however, and simply ran out of the library's flung-open main doors. They headed across campus northward in a long column, kept just shy of all-out chaos through the oversight of Golden Boy's SPFL security people and pit fighters.

"Anyone else volunteer to fight?" Will asked.

"Unfortunately, nobody seemed too keen," Nyx replied, floating through the air on her back, above head-height so she was out of the way of the sticky little mortals below. "Even promises of money were not enough to entice."

"Guess wealth doesn't mean much if you don't think there'll be anything left to spend it on."

"Indeed."

ADAM was not difficult to spot in the crowd, a head taller than everyone else and with a literal chrome dome to set him apart. Will waded over to him through the crush. The robot wore a rifle on his shoulder and carried the child in his arms, all wrapped up in a thick blanket so only a sliver of her face peeked out.

"Leaving?" Will asked.

"Yes," ADAM replied flatly without glancing his way. He was moving quickly, forcing his way through the line with no regard for any squishy humans.

"Will!" Sunny exclaimed, thrashing weakly inside her blanket and wriggling her head back and forth to push through the face hole so she could see properly. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah," Will replied. "Much better, thanks." He took out the ugly stuffed animal looped inside his belt and lifted a fold of the blanket to set it inside, ignoring the suspicious glare ADAM had on him. "Here you go. Your monkey."

"Scrungleberry," Sunny corrected significantly. "Did he help?"

"He did," Will lied. "You know, I've got a friend who has real pet monkeys. Chimps, actually."

"Really?"

"Mmhmm. Maybe you'll get to meet them someday."

"Chimpanzees are not acceptable playmates for a human child," ADAM intoned. "They bite."

"The ones I'm talking about are only half-bad. That aside, is there any way I can convince you to stick around? There are a few trustworthy people around we could hand the girl off to."

ADAM did not dignify the suggestion with a response.

"Look at it this way. Don't know if you heard, but apparently she's Brimstone's daughter. If we don't put a permanent stop to him here, he's going to try and hunt her down."

"Then I will ensure that he does not find her."

"Thought you might say something like that."

"I do wish you luck, however."

"Thanks," Will said with a sigh. He said a brief farewell to the little girl and fell back, letting them disappear down into the undercroft. Another set of arms against Brimstone would have been nice, but he couldn't really say that he was too disappointed about ADAM's decision. He had already proven himself a competent bodyguard, and he'd be needed if Thorpe's men decided to strike at the survivors while they were exposed and vulnerable crossing the city. For all Will knew, getting them in that position might have been the whole point of the stunt Thorpe was running.

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