Lacey nodded. “That pardon’s the only thing I’ll take with me from this City, then,” he said, “besides my mind.” He slipped the powergun from beneath his tunic and laid it on the smooth floor. His toes sent it spinning toward the frozen Commissioners. At the door, Lacey called over his shoulder, “Careful of that. There’s still one up the spout and two more behind it.”
The door closed behind him.
* * *
The six-year-old was blind with tears as she ran into his legs. Lacey lifted her one-handed. “Can I help?” he asked.
“The street fell!” she blubbered. “I can’t go home because the street fell!”
“Umm. What building?” By now the gas would have seeped back into Underground, but a windrow of blackening bodies kept the thoroughfare empty. The dead did not touch Lacey any more. Only the living mattered.
“Three-oh-three-oh forty-ninth street level ten,” the child parroted, her arms locking about Lacey’s neck.
“Sure, Level 10, no problem,” the Southerner said. He glanced around to get his bearings. “Your parents’ll be looking for you, so we better get you home, hey?”
Humming to himself and the girl, Lacey skirted a wrecked truck still lapped with burning alcohol. Lacey was alive, maybe for the first time in fifteen years. It was going to take work, but he thought he liked being a human being again.
THE END