Never trust an elf

Neko stood up straight, then made a stiff bow. Kham turned his back on the kid's damned Japanese formality. There were things he needed to get before he left. He ran for the stairs.

"Sayonara, Kham-san. "

Kham glanced back, but only for an instant. Through the smoke and flames he could not see if the catboy was still standing where he'd left him, or if he was doing the smart thing and saving his own hide. He hoped it was the latter; the kid was annoying at times and a little spooky at others, but he was mostly okay. Kham grabbed for the banister, but the flame-eaten wood came off in his hand. No more time to worry about the catboy. Time to start worrying about him-self.

Lissa cried all night, and so did Shandra and lord. Tully made like a man, but he still held tight to his father as long as he was awake. It wasn't till the boy was asleep that the tears began to flow. Kham neither cried nor slept. When the last of his family had drifted off to sleep, he went to the window and looked out.

From the upper floor of the abandoned tenement to which they had fled, he could see the hall, or rather the flames that clawed the sky. They lit the sky to the west, brighter than the approaching dawn did the eastern horizon. The plex firemen had finally arrived three hours ago, but it was only after the conflagration had spread to the neighboring structures. But this was the Barrens, and Orktown at that. Those brave civic heroes didn't bother to fight the blaze; they merely worked to confine it to a single block. Not much would be left of the block; the fire was well beyond what the local volunteer fire teams could handle.

Kham watched it burn, seeing his life and all he had built go up in smoke.

Sheila was dead. Like John Parker, she'd been one of his first runners. He'd lost count of the times they'd saved each other's butts in a hot run. She wouldn't be at his back anymore.

Ellie and Tump, the kids on watch, had been killed before they could sound a warning. Their deaths had been quick and clean, very professional, but they were dead nonetheless. Ellie had been barely ten and just coming into her full growth.

Cyg was gone, too. And Guido had joined his dad. Teresa. Komiko. Jed. Bill. Jiro. Charlie…

What was the point?

They were all dead.

Gone.

His nose suddenly picked up a faint scent, and he whuffed a couple of times to be sure. The creaky floor would have betrayed anyone entering the room, and the scent was nearby. That left only one spot. He craned his head around and looked up at the roof.

Above him a small, slender shadow crouched on the coping.

"Whatcha doing up dere, catboy?" "We need to talk, Kham-san." "Den get down here so we ain't making a spectacle fer anybody."

Neko began to fuss with something at his belt, and Kham stepped back into the room, away from the window, to make room. The next moment Neko swung through the window with a faint rustle of fabric, landing softly on his feet. A deft flick of his wrist sent a ripple along the line from which he had swung, dislodging the hook he had attached to the coping. Kham barely saw it as it whipped back into a small box the catboy carried, but he heard the whine of the automatic line reel.

"The cyber meres are dead," Neko said without preamble.

That made sense. If the bad guy was as dangerous as Laverty implied and if he wanted the orks gone, he'd want all the runners gone, all at once. That would be the best way, because it wouldn't give them any time to work against him. Still, it could be just coincidence that both the raid on the hall and the deaths of the cyberguys had happened on the same night.

"Howddya know it was dem?"

"How many pairs of twinned razorguys are operating in this plex?"

"Just dem, I guess."

"Seems likely. Therefore, it must be their bodies spoken of in the evening trid news."

Coincidence didn't seem likely any more. Any enemy that could arrange simultaneous hits across the plex was a powerful one. "What about Greerson?"

Neko's reply was hesitant, almost as if he were embarrassed. "I don't know. Cog thinks he left town."

"But he might be dead," said Ratstomper. She had come in from the other room. The rest of the survivors-all red-eyed from smoke, crying, and lack of sleep-were crowded in the doorway. New crying burst out as soon as Ratstomper spoke.

"Shut up, drekhead. You're panicking da kids." "I ain't worried about them, I'raovorried about me. If the halfer's dead too, we're all that's left." Ratstom-per's voice was shrill with fear. She'd never been one of the tougher ones. "They'll come after us!"

"I said shut up!" Kham cuffed her and Ratstomper stumbled back into the wall. She snuffled a few times and one tear rolled down her left cheek, but at least now she was quiet. The group's morale was too fragile to let her go on stoking their fears. "We don't know if da halfer's dead or not. We don't even know if it was da elves hit our place. And we don't know who did da chrome twins."