OCTOBER, WHAT A MONTH. People in this world are so fascinated with their “holidays” that they set aside any remaining good sense and judgment they have to allow for fun and festivities. Fools. They make the tasks of the underworld disgustingly easy, even more so than in the days of the plague...
I answered the door myself, as I always did when the shelter had visitors after dark. The gaunt man on the doorstep swept aside his cloak with one hand. “I am Nikolai,” he said. “I haff come to take Lucy home.” More than his emaciated physique, the power of his stare gave him away...
“Listen, Exorcist, I’ve cracked it. I’m in. I’m in right now. You have got to see this.” On the other side of the world, the hacker Firestarter knew only as Exorcist laughed. They’d routed the VoIP connection through two anonymising proxies, which made the conversation annoyingly laggy...
The little cybernetic gadfly popped up as soon as I logged in. “Dave Miller,” it dutifully nagged, “you are now 15 minutes overdue for your appointment with the company fitness consultant.” Right. I clicked the ‘ignore’ button to kill the message and then continued with my morning routine...
Late one evening, the sound of fluttering wings disturbed a suburbanite who was sitting in his easy chair, reading a book. The man got up to investigate, quickly assessed the situation, and then yelled at the top of his lungs...
Sebastian Kane flew across the second floor of the mansion like his ass was on fire and his head was catchin’. His blue shirt was torn and bloody, his jeans were rags and equally as red, his chest would need an entire spool of thread to put back together, and he would be eating soup [&hellip...
