8.
 Later, dressed in the long dark coats and scarves of working folk, they walked down the streets of the teeming city. Two million people were said to live here, and they came out in the day to throng the narrow streets of the old city.
"We'll have to leave the City tonight," Kanon told her as she walked beside him. She seemed distant and kept her hands in her pockets.
They came to Culture 45 Pyramid and entered the vast lobby. The floors here were marble, the walls brushed steel, the pillars square and shiny. Plants dotted the corners. Private security in purple uniforms vaguely resembling poliz walked about with their hands behind their backs; retired poliz took jobs like these, Kanon knew. He wore the mini-carbine on his right thigh, the gutting knife on his left under the coat.
They took an elevator up to the 50th floor. Everything here was sparkling and clean, filled with smells of soaps and disinfectants like slightly overripe fruits.
They got out on the 50th floor, she clinging to him and he holding his arm around her back. This was the Office of Archeology's exhibit area. "They have offices and strong-rooms on the other side of the building," he whispered.
Ten minutes later, they came to a wall. "That's as far as we go," he whispered. "Stay cool." He produced Ember's key and walked slowly along the wall. "Make sure no guards are following us."
"I'm watching," she whispered back, a small figure lost in her huge coat that hid all of her except her boots and the paleness of her neck. Her hair looked silver, her eyes gray, and Kanon thought she did look righteously attractive. The key bucked in his hands, diverting his attention to the wall. He staggered a bit at the power coursing through him. He leaned against the wall, gasping short of breath, and traced an erratic path along the wall with his finger. The key was seeking its way to where it wanted to be. When it found that spot, it locked on. "See anybody?"
"Nobody," she whispered. "Take me in with you."
The key came out of his coat, pulling his hand along, and slipped right into the wall. There had not even been a crack there. Quickly, Kanon gathered her to him as a doorway materialized. He pulled her with him. The door closed. They were in a dusty room lit only by a harsh bar of sunlight that dropped through a thick window pane in the slanting wall of the pyramid. The walls here were naked granite. Thick dust roiled in the air, and Kanon and Rin coughed. "There!" he said, pointing along the dust-choked, abandoned display cases. He saw the faint glow of the sphere. "We have to be quick now."
He had the gutting knife in his hand, and punched its hilt through the glass case. He dropped the knife and lifted the sphere. It came willingly, like a child hopping into the arms of its father. He would hawk it to a fence, who would make him rich for the rest of his life. Wealth meant power. And maybe he would keep Rin along. Maybe he could heal her...
A light came on. "Not so fast." A man in a wheelchair burst through a side door. A woman poliz pushed the wheelchair. Another woman poliz stepped around and leveled a gun at Kanon.
Kanon's mini-carbine came up and barked four, five timeS. The two women dropped.
The man in the wheel chair lifted a gun and fired. Kanon felt his midsection go numb. Dropping the mini-carbine, he flew back landing on the display cases which fell over in a great shatter of glass. When everything was done rocking and spattering, Kanon lay helplessly amid the glass. He had no feeling from the chest down and his arms lay uselessly at his sides. Blood was slowly seeping amid the shards of glass as if they were specimen slides. His fingers looked bloody as he examined himself.
Where is Rin? Must be hiding.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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