Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

know the man was afraid of almost nothing.

So when the laugh died off, Rory said, ‘Okay, what the fuck is up with you?’

King looked at him. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He could see the man’s silhouette clearly. Again, he said, ‘This isn’t good.’

‘It’s been five minutes.’

‘But soon it’ll be ten. Then it’ll be an hour.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘They sent out an emergency alert.’

‘Which means?’

King rubbed his brow. ‘That they’d been expecting everything to go to shit.’

‘You can’t be sure.’

‘I work for the government.’

‘You’re an independent contractor. You don’t know anything about what happens behind-the-scenes. You told me that yourself.’

‘But I know what will happen if this lasts any longer than a couple of hours.’

‘It’ll be okay.’

‘There’s twenty million people in the New York Metropolitan Area.’

Rory lapsed into silence.

Thinking.

Finally he said, ‘It’s still only been five minutes. You need to relax.’

King said, ‘Phones will be dead within a day. Flashlights and radios will go, too. There’s not going to be any running water.’

Silence.

He said, ‘How long do you think it’ll take people to start panicking?’

Rory looked around.

Manhattan was dark.

The man said, ‘Not long.’

‘And when it starts, it’ll spread like wildfire.’

The tendrils of a breeze whispered down the alleyway. King shivered in the night.

Rory said, ‘Yeah, okay, this isn’t good.’

‘If this goes for any longer than an hour it’s going to be bedlam.’

‘Surely New York can stay calm for longer than that.’

‘One person starts looting and everyone will join in. It’s the mob mentality.’

‘After an hour? Surely emergency services will maintain—’

‘Think about how many people are trapped in elevators right now.’

Rory said nothing.

King said, ‘And that’s just the start of the problems.’

Silence.

‘Hospitals.’

Silence.

‘Gridlock.’

Rory said, ‘What do we do?’

King didn’t respond. In that moment he understood his insignificance. Together they could maybe help a dozen people. There were, potentially, twenty million who would soon be thrust back into something similar to the dark ages if this situation didn’t resolve itself. Twenty million people living in the modern age, most of them completely dependent on cellphones and meal delivery services and…

‘Shit,’ King said.

Rory said, ‘You should call your girlfriend.’

‘Yeah,’ King said. ‘I should.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I … don’t know.’

Rory offered a hand.

As a gesture of farewell.

King stared at it.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘This isn’t my world.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Do you need me?’

King paused.

Then said, ‘I guess I don’t.’

And shook his hand.

‘If this lasts as long as you think it will,’ Rory said, ‘then there’s going to be panic. Just like you said. We both know what that leads to. You’re going to be needed.’

‘Are you sure you—?’

‘I train fighters. I don’t fight. Especially not in the real world. People have guns and knives in the real world. That trumps what I do.’

King didn’t respond.

Rory said, ‘But not what you do.’

King nodded.

Rory said, ‘I’d just get in the way.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will I still see you next week for training?’

Rory tried to smile.

Once again, it was hollow.

But he said, ‘There’s that familiar optimism.’

King said, ‘We’ll figure this out. Don’t worry.’

‘Oh, I’m worried,’ Rory said. ‘Because I’ve never seen you worried.’

Then he turned and walked off into the darkness without another word.

Leaving King to his own devices.

Leaving him alone in the city that, for the first time in years, had gone to sleep.

12

No one immediately panicked.

Everyone was drunk, and alcohol had the uncanny ability to make you nonplussed about future consequences. As Slater lost his vision the drunken haze peeled away, replaced quickly by pure adrenaline, but to almost every other patron in Palantir the lights going out was a mere inconvenience. There were laughs of derision, and half-hearted aw-shucks complaints, and excited murmuring between groups. Slater’s ears whined in the sudden silence, still affected by the thrumming music that had cut out only moments earlier. He heard a couple of particularly drunken customers start whooping and hollering in the darkness, but it was muffled. It’d take a few minutes for his hearing to fully return.

Serena was gripping him tight around the waist.

Maybe she’d sensed the fact he was on edge.

She said, ‘Are you okay?’

He couldn’t see her. It was pitch black. His mind immediately wandered to potential dangers. Had one of Rico’s friends or business associates cut the power? Were there sicarios lunging toward him right now with switchblades in their hands?

He reached back, felt the cool touch of the Colt against his waist, and placed his hand gently on the grip. Then he stood still as a statue and stiffened, waiting for the slightest provocation. His eyes were wide as saucers. He fought to acclimatise to the darkness, but there wasn’t a window in sight to let in even a sliver of natural light. There would be no adjusting.

The inklings of panic started to drift through the crowd. He felt the atmosphere palpably shift. It never took much. Maybe one person had started to hyperventilate in the corner of the room and it had set off a chain reaction. No way to know for sure. But suddenly the murmurings became more concerned. Some people raised their voices. The whooping and hollering stopped. There was a smattering of requests for an exit. First quiet and noncommittal, then louder.

Then, louder still.

Suddenly everyone was squirming and shuffling about, pressed against each other on the dance floor.

Slater hadn’t sensed anyone trying to bullrush him.

He started to realise this wasn’t a deliberate ploy to catch him off-guard.

Not everything revolves around you.

By now he was close to dead sober, despite the mountains of booze in his system. He could tap into the cocktail of stress chemicals at will — it was second nature to him. Right now the alcohol served no purpose, so he thrust its effects away as adrenaline rushed through his system.

He whispered into Serena’s ear, ‘I’m going to need to handle this.’

She said, ‘What?’

He said, ‘Don’t get frightened.’

Then he stepped away from her, waited for the briefest lull in the crowd’s volume, and then screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Everybody quiet!’

When he needed to, he could roar like