Rolling down the street toward them was a squadron of police vehicles. Armored officers ran behind the vehicles, shields up, energy weapons at the ready. It looked like a war, like an invasion, more than a police action.

Someone grabbed his arm and Kyle started, so intent was he on the oncoming police. “Joe, come on. Let’s go!”

It was Michelle, her brow furrowed with anxiety, her eyes narrow and frightened. “Michelle, what’s ... ?”

“Let’s go,” she repeated urgently. “Now!”

“But ... were we doing something wrong?”

She tugged at his arm again, then released it and started to back away. It was obvious that she was leaving, whether he went with her or not. Behind her, Cetra and Jackdaw waited with a couple of others Kyle didn’t know. She had given Kyle the chance—more of a chance than the others seemed comfortable with, judging from the worried expressions on their faces—and either he’d take it or not. Michelle met his eyes once more and then turned to run. “Wait,” Kyle shouted, but he ran after them.

He had expected Cetra ski Toram to be slow, but the old woman surprised him with her speed and agility. As they rounded a bend Kyle glanced back over his shoulder. Behind them, many of the people in the crowd either hadn’t been able to run away in time or had chosen to stand their ground, and the police were tearing through them. Their energy weapons emitted bright blue bursts that vaporized flesh and bone, and everywhere they shot, blood splattered. People were screaming, begging for mercy, but the police showed none. Those who weren’t shooting used their shields as rams or clubs, chopping and bashing with them. Some of The End’s residents tried to fight back, but they were outnumbered and outgunned.

Kyle stood there, rapt. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. None of those people had been doing anything wrong. Even if the competition had been illegal for some reason, no one had been hurt by it. It had been a party, a street fair, improvisational theater. Michelle tugged on his arm again. “If you stay here, you’ll die like those others,” she warned him. “Please, Joe, come with us. It’s the only way.”

He shook his head as if by clearing it he could make the horrific carnage go away. But it didn’t. The street ran with red and blue blood, mixing into vibrant purples, black where it vanished into shadow.

“Yes, okay,” Kyle said. He felt detached, in shock. As he ran hand in hand with Michelle he expected the Tholian flashbacks to start up again. But they didn’t. This fresh horror was bad enough on its own. Out of the light, they kept running, past buildings so dark and silent they seemed already to be mourning the fallen. Finally, Jackdaw led the way into a building Kyle had never seen before, a collapsing wretch of a place with boarded-up doors and windows. Jackdaw entered through a side door, where a flat object Kyle only recognized at the last moment as a bed leaned up against a gaping doorway. Jackdaw and Michelle slid the bed far enough over for them to gain entry, and then they pulled it back into place, disguising the opening from the outside.

Inside, they were met in a small, poorly lit room by a handful of others. Kyle recognized a couple of people who he had noticed in the crowd outside, and who must have run here faster—not bothering to wait for him. The other two he had never seen before. One was human, two Hazimotian, and the last barely humanoid but of no species Kyle had seen before. It had what was recognizably a head and what seemed to be legs in the correct places, but that was all he could make out; the rest was a gelatinous blob that seemed to have other life-forms moving about beneath it, like fish swimming in a thick semi-opaque sea.

Michelle clung again to Kyle’s hand. “This is Joe Brady,” she said to the others. “He’s new here.”

“And you brought him with you because ... ?” one of the Hazimotians asked. She was a female, from either Stindi or Wachivus, Kyle guessed, though without much certainty. Not Cyrian, for sure. Her voice was deep and threatening, and she looked as if she’d as soon shoot Kyle as admit him into whatever inner sanctum this was.

“Because he wasn’t part of what happened out there and I didn’t want to see him die for no reason,” Michelle said. “Besides, I trust him.”

Kyle was surprised by that pronouncement. He liked Michelle, but their relationship was superficial at best. She barely knew him, really. As if she could read his mind, she turned to him and said, “I size people up quickly, Joe, and I have a lot of faith in my own instincts.”

“What ... what the hell was all that about?” Kyle asked. He flailed his arm back toward the direction from which they’d come, as if anyone could see the carnage from here. “And what is this place? Who are you all?”

“Easy now, Joe,” Jackdaw said. He was a small man, whip-thin and nasally, and his thick mane of black hair seemed like it should belong to someone else. He talked fast, as if trying to get too many ideas out at once. “One point at a time, okay, and we’ll get all this cleared up. You’re a guest here, you know.”

“I appreciate that,” Kyle said, still agitated from the attack and wondering what was going on. “I’m just not altogether sure that I’m a guest by choice.”

“I had pegged you as a survivor, Joe,” Michelle said with a frown. “If I was wrong, I’ll be disappointed.”

“You have no idea.” Kyle tried on a grin but it didn’t quite work. “I definitely qualify on that count.”

“Well, if you hadn’t come with us, you’d probably be dead,” she said. “So you should just count your blessings and let us explain things to you.”

“Have a seat, all of you,” one of the Hazimotians who had been here from the beginning said. This one, a male sitting cross-legged on the bare tile floor, looked Muftrihan, like Cetra, but much younger, with pale yellow hair and tiny black eyes. “You’re making me nervous, looming around like that.”

The others had been sitting on ramshackle chairs, which were the only furniture in the place. It looked like a meeting room more than a dwelling, but with walls that had been shredded by time and misuse and a rough-hewn floor that squeaked with nearly every movement. The air. was close and musty smelling. Jackdaw and Cetra took chairs, while Michelle and Kyle joined the Muftrihan on the floor. Kyle couldn’t bring himself to relax—his heart was racing, epinephrine pumping, and he remained tensed to spring up and run at the slightest provocation. Fight or flight—he recognized the sensation well.

Michelle touched Kyle on the knee. “You’re upset, Joe, and probably scared. I don’t blame you a bit, and I’m sorry we had to run away from there before I could give you any kind of explanation.”

“Obviously there was a certain urgency to it,” Kyle admitted.

“That’s right. But now that we’re here and relatively safe, I can do the right thing. First, introductions are in order. You already know Jackdaw and Cetra ski Toram, I believe. This,” she said, pointing to the Muftrihan on the floor, “is Baukels Jinython.” She gestured in order toward the first Hazimotian woman who had spoken, the woman; then the human male; and finally the unidentifiable one. “That’s Melinka, Alan, and Roog. As I told all of you, this is Joe. He lives in my building, and I believe he can be trusted.”

“He has to be now,” Melinka said. “Or killed.”

“She’s just joking,” Michelle assured Kyle.

“No she’s not,” Melinka responded.

“I can be,” Kyle told them all. “Trusted, I mean. But I’d like to know what I’m being trusted with. And I’d like to know why the police came in and started killing people.”

“The two issues are interrelated,” the bulbous creature introduced as Roog said. Its voice was low and phlegmy, but if it had a gender, Kyle couldn’t ascertain it from that. “We are, you might say, a group that meets from time to time to discuss certain political issues. And the police were killing because that’s what police do, especially here in The End.”