"The human condition in Bosch's world was caught up in pessimism, folly, and evil," the penguin shrugged. "Bosch snared the visions in his fevered imagination and made them real. Can you make your dreams real, fatso?"

I "Yes!" I was shouting, but the heat from the Manhattan fires was stifling now and very close; the flames seemed to mule my roar. The snow was melting everywhere; the ice thinned underneath the penguin as it laughed at me. The toad-Blaise had stopped his torment of Tachyon to look at me with evil, calculating eyes.

Suddenly, the ice of the pond cracked with a sound like breaking glass. The penguin silently disappeared into deep black water. It waved at me as it did so, unperturbed.

I woke. I was where I'd always been since I'd come here, in the lobby. The building was dark and silent. In front of me, I could just make out the larger darkness that was the Temptation. The room was cold on my face, though I felt nothing past there.

I wondered if it was snowing outside.

After the penguin dream, I slept, and woke again a few hours later. I'm not sure what time it was, but it was still pitch black in the lobby. I knew something was wrong, though I thought it was just another dream. But it's not like I could pinch myself to see if I was awake…

I guess I'm joking because I don't know how to say any of this. It's all still so unreal… as strange as the nightmares I'd had the last two weeks. But it was real. I can't fucking deny that. Every damn bit of it was real…

I felt faint proddings against Bloat's Wall and the first whisper of unknown minds. A massed hatred. A group fear. A common abhorrence. Nats, all of them.

I turned my attention to the Wall. I couldn't tell exactly how many there were-maybe fifty or sixty, from the reports in the Times later. Most of the minds I sensed were scared, too, frightened of what they were about to face, shivering because they'd heard about my Wall and the jumpers and the rogue aces and jokers. They'd heard that the Rox was hell given life. Individually, none of them would have made it through. My Wall would have taken their paranoia and used it as a weapon against them. The Wall would have turned their bowels to ice water, set their teeth chattering loose in their jaws, and scattered them back to the city in a panic.

I was hearing all kinds of voices jumbled together: the kids know some- I hear that the bay's -they're just kids. Man, thing's up with Daddy full of skeletons, all I got a teenager no even the little one. around Ellis. People older than them. The

God, I hope Nancy's who didn't make it past lieutenant can say not having a bad night the wall. They kill "shoot to kill" all he with them them, the jokers do, wants, but I don't send 'em down for fish know if I can turn a food gun on some pimplefaced kid like my Kevin-

Yes. I laughed. All of them I could have turned if they'd hit the Wall one by one.

But they weren't alone. That was the problem. That's what made me doubt myself, really it was. They were a big group, all coming at once, maybe in nine or ten boats and two, three choppers, hitting my Wall from all sides simultaneously.

They'd taken one other precaution too. In each boat, in each chopper, there was at least one mind so angry, so dedicated, so goddamn determined to kick some joker ass that I could feel the Wall stretching and thinning like a rubber band.

Amy's fucking son no goddam joker's you want to stop the was there in that gonna stop me. I'll whole wild card problem bank when they show them my forty- just wipe 'em out. jumped the woman. five caliber wild card. Real simple. Just take

They gunned down Shove it right – down the whole frigging my own nephew. Man, their slimy joker useless lot of them and it's gonna give me throats bury 'em pleasure to pay that back

I grated out Kafka's name. I felt the joker's mind shaking off his own dreams. He asked me if I was having a nightmare again. I told him one thing only. "They're coming."

Kafka didn't answer, but I knew he understood. He snapped his fingers at my guards, making sure they were alert, then scuttled away. A few moments later, I heard the low growling of a siren from the roof of the building. The wail throbbed along the girders and walls; I could feel it shivering everywhere in my body, like a howling banshee.

In the darkness, I tried to push back with my Wall, tried to bring it under conscious control and focus its strength where it was being penetrated. I think it almost worked too.

But I'd already made my mistake. I just didn't know it. It sounds like something Latham would throw back at me, but, man, I'd never had to run a battle before except when I played D amp;D. Maybe I should have known better.

But I am just a kid.

I could have handled it myself. I still think that. Hey, they were just a bunch of cops and park rangers. They weren't really trained for this; they'd never worked together.

They didn't even really hate us-they were just doing what they'd been told to do: Go get the joker squatters and teenage delinquents off Ellis.

I could've_ sent them back. Yes. Hell, they were just plain people, like my dad or Uncle George or Mr. Niemann next door back in Brooklyn.

I know from the news reports that two of the boats and one of the choppers did turn tail. I did that much at least. But whoever was in charge had been at least a little smart. They'd made some plans to get through the Wall. The pilots were those with a strong sense of duty and a violent antijoker prejudice, the ones already boiling mad at the way the Rox thumbed its collective nose at the "normal" world. The pilots were all guarded by like souls, so that even if the cops and rangers panicked, they couldn't overpower those in charge. None of the weapons, from what I understand, were to be given out until the Wall had been breached.

Even so… Even so, I don't think more than one or two boats would have made it. The papers said several cops jumped overboard. Three rangers leapt from their copters into the bay. If only one or two made it past the Wall, they would've had to turn back simply 'cause there wouldn't have been enough of them.

It would have been a bloodless rout. Except that I'd already been stupid.

Kafka's alarm had roused the island. Lights snapped on in the Administration Building; I found myself staring full at the Bosch triptych. Jokers were rushing all over the lobby floor and along the high balcony. There was lots of yelling, internal and external, and all of us could hear the sullen thut-thut-thut of the helicopters.

The nats were still circling, though, still hitting the Wall and retreating again, like wasps butting against a glass door. They weren't moving in toward the Rox anymore. They couldn't get past my Wall. I could feel the paranoia and fear rising among them, like some infection. A few more minutes, and they would have turned tail and run back to New York or Jersey or wherever they'd come from.

I wasn't paying too much attention to the voices of the Rox. Look, no one can make sense of hundreds of people all yammering at you at once. No, you have to shut some of it out, or you just go crazy. I'd let the Rox fade to a background static while my powers stalked the Wall.

Another mistake.

I felt it happen behind my mental back, sorta.

"No!" I screamed, startling everyone around me. Someone jumped back at my shout and nearly knocked over the Temptation. It wobbled and finally steadied. "No!"

The mindvoice of the park ranger guarding the pilot was suddenly gone. There was only a silence where it had been, and then a new voice was there, one I knew: the jumper called Red. I could hear his thoughts as he spoke to them… safety off "Welcome" magazine in "to the" and let 'er rip "Rox, assholes!"

The mindvoices in the copter came at me all overdubbed and confused.