They've got IR capability, Shad realized, and he tried to eat every bit of heat in the air, soak up every photon. Tachyon gave a convulsive shiver inside her blanket.

The turret gun fired. Water flew skyward ten yards off the port bow.

Too close. Shad swung the Zodiac madly to starboard. Whatever happened to the rules of engagement? he wondered.

The chopper blasted overhead. It had stubby wings and what looked like jet-engine pods.

The Zodiac bounced madly in the tidal swirl as it entered the Kill Van Kull. The chopper turned again, heading right for them. Shad wondered frantically if they had radar that could detect them.

"Fuck this!" he shouted to Tachyon. "I'm just gonna surrender, okay? Don't tell 'em who I am. And I'll slip out of custody when I can."

Tachyon looked blindly in his direction and gave a nod. The chopper fired, rockets this time, one blinding-white streak after another. Concussion slammed the boat. A world of white water fell like Niagara into the boat. The Zodiac kicked high from an impact, and Shad found himself flying, tumbling through the air, air blown from his lungs by the power of an explosion…

Freezing water boiled around him. He screamed and held his hands over his ears as more concussions battered him. Water poured down his throat. He kicked out, broke surface, shook water from his eyes…

The boat was careening on, heading for Bayonne with no one at the tiller. Shad caught a glimpse of flying blond hair, heard a distant scream, and then the turret gun opened up again, filling the water with white fountains.

A wave exploded over his head, and when Shad came up, he couldn't see the boat. He sucked heat and light from the water and struck out for the shore. The roar of the chopper faded.

The water was frigid and the swim endless, but the tidal swirl was heading in the right direction and helped. Finally Shad climbed up a deserted pier on Staten island, and as the breath rasped in his lungs, as he looked out on the Kill Van Kull from a position much higher than a wave-tossed boat, he saw what it was all about, why they'd been so desperate to stop anyone leaving the Rox.

Ranked in the sheltered waters of the Kill Van Kull, hidden from Ellis Island by the sprawling turmoil of Bayonne, were quiet rows of ships in wartime camouflage. Landing ships, supply craft, a small helicopter carrier with its craft parked on deck. The helicopter that had attacked him was only one of several patrolling the ship channel. Trucks, their headlights lined up as far as Shad could see, were offloading combat-ready troops on the piers, and the soldiers were marching onto the landing ships.

They were going for the Rox, and they were going soon. Shad stood dripping on the pier, watched the soldiers moving up the gangplanks, felt his ribs ache, and tried to add up wins and losses.

He'd been to the Rox and back, but the person he'd come to rescue was drowned or blown to bits. He'd broken the jumpers' extortion scheme, but the police weren't going to forget what his jumped body had done to them. He'd lost Chalktalk, and he'd lost Shelley, and the jumpers hadn't lost anybody.

Fuck it. He'd lost. There wasn't any winning in it.

And Shelley had lost, and Tachyon, and if the invasion force was anything to judge by, so had the jumpers, and Kafka, and Bloat.

Time to hid and figure out what he was going to do next. Shad turned and limped down the pier, and the night raised its welcoming mask and swallowed him.

Lovers

V

Tachyon lay on the oil-stained sands of the New Jersey shore and vomited up what felt like several gallons of polluted water. No Takisian is a good swimmer-the home world was too cold to encourage that particular sport-and in her present condition Tachyon was about as lithe as a wading hippo. So she was amazed and delighted to find herself once more safely ashore, however dirty and depressing the vista might be.

She rolled onto her back and waited for her heart to slow its desperate pounding. Illyana was sending out waves of puzzlement over her mother's distress. Tachyon sent back images of black water, trying to show the baby the reason for her fear and the fact that it no longer existed. Illyana's confusion deepened, and Tach felt a burst of pleasure from the fetus as she contemplated her watery home.

That brought a laugh to her lips, and Tachyon sat up. "All right, you little fish, so I'm an irrational coward. But you won't be so smug once you've joined the rest of us out here on dry land."

Sometime during that nightmare dog paddle, she had lost or kicked off her shoes. Water squished through the thick material of her tube socks as she stood and tried to get her bearings. Walking was going to be difficult, and her clammy clothes…

She realized what she was doing and throttled the complaining thoughts. "Burning Sky," she said with disgust. "You're free. Free, and you're bitching about wet socks."

Tachyon threw back her head and let out a whoop of joy. "I'M FREE! FUCK YOU, BLAISE! I'M FREE!" The joyous words echoed oddly among the rusting cranes and rotting piers that lined the New Jersey coast.

It was all the celebration she allowed herself. She was still dangerously vulnerable, and dangerously close to the Rox. She had to make her way back to the clinic, and quickly. As she paused to get her bearings, the moldering skyline suddenly gave her a heart-squeezing sense of deja vu. Strange, because she had never in her life stood on this shore at the edge of the leprous bay, gazing across the cancerous rot of industrial parks.

Someone else's memory.

Despite her former body's formidable powers, she had not made it a habit to walk through the private parts of people's minds. That narrowed the possible owners of this particularly intense memory. And since only the Great and Powerful Turtle lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, it was a safe bet the memory was his.

Tommy. Yes! Tommy could get her home without the dangers attendant to hitchhiking. And if Blaise came after her, Turtle could handle him. Now all that remained was to find the junkyard that hid the Turtle and housed the man inside the shell.

It was like having due north embedded in the cortex of the brain. She matched junkyards against the memory compass in her head until at last the images merged. Beyond the twelve-foot-high chain link, abandoned cars formed steel glaciers. Tilted piles of tires, like a giant's collection of rotting donuts, loomed against the light haze that was Manhattan. The problem was the fence.

She cast along the fence like a hunting dog until she found the gate. An enormous and well-oiled padlock leered at her. Hefting it in her hand, she wished that somewhere in her misspent youth she'd learned to pick a lock. Great fantasy-totally useless. Even if she_ possessed the knowledge, she lacked the tools. Crowbar. Same problem. No tool, probably not enough strength.

She reluctantly dropped the lock, and it fell back against the gate with a crash that set the metal to shivering and ringing. A dog began to bay. Tachyon considered just standing outside the gate and bawling like a hurt steer until someone emerged. But what if this was the wrong junkyard? And what if the proprietor emerged with a shotgun and didn't notice the gender and condition of his caller until he'd replied with both barrels?

She returned to a section of fence that sagged between the uprights. That left a two-foot space between the rolled barb wire and the top of the links. Monkeylike, using fingers and toes, she began to climb the fence. It was almost impossible with her belly in the way. She found a way to make it possible though it put enormous strain on her back.

At the top. Eyeing the points on the chain link. The rusting barbs. She went wriggling through, feeling hot burn as several barbs opened lines on her back. The stabbing pain in her stomach and thighs from the chain link. Now the hard part, maneuvering around to find a toehold…