Read Chapter 28: Vinny's Redemption

The shockwave from the exploding generator sent Mack sprawling across the grated floor of the South Ferry station, the four fragments—three of them bundled in his oil-stained jacket—skittering loose. He scrambled for them, fingers closing on cold metal and warm stone just as a raider's boot slammed down an inch from his wrist.

Mack rolled. The raider's crowbar whistled past his ear and sparked against the concrete. Mack drove his shoulder into the man's knees, and they went down together, a tangle of grime and desperation. His father's badge dug into his ribs, a constant, sharp reminder of why he was here.

*Where's Elena?*

He craned his neck, caught a flash of her red hair behind a pillar of crumbling tile. She was fending off another raider with a length of pipe, her movements precise but tiring. And beyond her, the Warden stood on the upper mezzanine, his coat rippling in a wind that didn't exist down here. His face was a shifting patch of darkness, but Mack felt the weight of his gaze.

"The boy with the old man's name," the Warden called, his voice sliding through the station like oil on water. "You brought me all the pieces I need, and still you resist. Lay them down. It ends quicker for you."

"Go to hell," Mack spat, shoving the fragments deeper into his jacket.

One of the raiders lunged, a wiry man with a shiv of sharpened rebar. Mack sidestepped, grabbed his wrist, and pivoted—the same mechanic's trick he'd use to torque a seized bolt. The man yelped as his arm twisted and he dropped the shiv. Mack hooked his foot, sent the raider crashing into two more charging toward him.

But there were too many. They swarmed from the tunnel mouths, a tide of stained jackets and hungry eyes, and Mack was only one man. A raider caught him across the back with a lead pipe, and pain exploded through his spine. He staggered, went to one knee. The fragments in his jacket clinked together like fate's dice tumbling.

Elena screamed something he couldn't make out over the roar of the fighting.

A shadow fell over him. Mack looked up to see a massive raider lifting a sledgehammer, a grin splitting his scarred face. Mack had no time to move. He braced—

The raider's grin vanished. His eyes went wide, and then his head snapped sideways as a crescent wrench connected with his temple with a sound like a hammer on a bell. He collapsed, the sledgehammer clattering to the ground.

Vinny Salucci stood over Mack, breathing hard, a duffel bag slung crosswise across his chest and two more wrenches sticking from his belt like a gunslinger's holsters. His face was polished-carapace red, his jaw set.

"Vinny?" Mack choked out.

"You owe me six grand, Riley." Vinny hauled Mack to his feet by the collar. "I'm not letting some sharp-suited psychopath collect that debt before I do."

"How did you—"

"I've been tracking you since you crawled out of that fissure," Vinny said, pulling a third wrench from the bag—a monster of a pipe wrench with a head like a fist. "You think I didn't notice you were in trouble? I got a nose for people who run on bad decisions. Yours was ringing alarms for blocks."

A raider charged. Vinny didn't even turn. He swung the pipe wrench in a looping arc, and the man's momentum did the rest. The impact echoed off the tiled walls, and the raider joined his unconscious kin on the floor.

"I'm serious about the money," Vinny added.

"Double it," Mack said, grinning despite the blood dripping from a cut above his eyebrow. "When we find what's down there, I'll pay you double."

Vinny's eyes narrowed into doubtful slits. Then he shrugged, cracking his neck. "Fine. But I'm billing you for time and materials."

They moved like a single engine then, Mack and Vinny back to back, a whirlwind of wrenches and pipe and desperate momentum. Vinny fought like a brawler from a hundred barroom back alleys—no style, but devastating efficiency. Each swing of his pipe wrench cleared a circle of raiders, and Mack followed through the gap, scooping up fragments and kicking down anyone who got too close.

"East platform!" Mack shouted. "The tunnel we came through!"

They pushed toward Elena, who had cornered herself against the turnstile bank, wielding a piece of torn railing like a quarterstaff. She was holding her own but flagging, her breathing ragged.

"Move!" Vinny bellowed, smashing a raider aside like a bowling pin.

Mack reached her first. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the tunnel entrance. "The Warden's not everything he seems," he said. "The shadows—"

"I know," she gasped, clutching her side. A dark stain spread through her fingers. "I saw him move through one when they took Salazar."

*Salazar.*

Mack whipped his head around, searching the chaos. He spotted the old Gatekeeper near the far wall, locked in a desperate grappled with a raider twice his size. Salazar's wiry frame was shaking with effort, his face purple with strain, but his eyes found Mack's across the station and he shouted something—lost in the din of screams and metal.

The raider threw him. Salazar slammed into the wall and slid down, gasping. The raider raised a blade.

"Salazar!" Mack started forward, but Elena held him back.

"Mack, we have to go!"

"I'm not leaving him!"

"You can't help him if you die!"

Salazar's voice cut through the noise, sharp and clear. "The fragments, boy! Get them away! He must not—" A shadow curled out of the mezzanine above him, tendrils elongating like fingers reaching for prey. Salazar looked up and saw it. His eyes went wide. Then they hardened.

He moved faster than Mack thought possible—springing up from his slumped position and catching the raider with a headbutt that sent the man reeling. Then Salazar lunged, not at the escaping Mack, but *toward* the Warden, his body interposed between the shadow's approach and the tunnel mouth where Mack and Elena stood.

"You've held your leash too long," Salazar roared. A glint of something round and worn appeared in his hand—a small medallion, glowing faintly in the gloom. "We are not all for sale, Warden!"

The shadow stopped. It seemed to draw back, tentatively, as if Salazar held a brand.

Then the Warden laughed, a sound like grinding stone. "That trinket is a thousand years expired, old fool."

He gestured, and a spear of pure blackness shot from the mezzanine.

It took Salazar in the chest.

The old man made no sound. He simply looked down at the shadow-wound, then up at Mack, his mouth working around words that wouldn't come. His eyes softened. For a moment, he looked almost proud. Then the medallion clattered from his fingers and he fell, crumpling onto the stained tiles.

"NO!" Mack's scream was raw, tearing out of a throat that had forgotten how to make any other sound.

Elena wrenched him backward. "Mack! Now or never!"

The fragments shoved into his arms, his father's badge over his heart, and Mack ran. He ran like the dead were giving chase, and in a way they were—Salazar's ghost, his father's ghost, all the debts he owed and could never repay. Vinny brought up the rear, swinging his wrench in arcs that kept the raiders at bay.

They plunged into the tunnel mouth, and the dark swallowed them.

Behind them, the Warden's voice slithered through the pipes. "The Long Stairs have seen generations of fools. They will see you all returned to dust."

Mack didn't answer. He couldn't. He ran, clutching the fragments to his chest, Elena's hand in his and Vinny's heavy footsteps at their back, until the station faded to a point of light and then nothing at all.

In the stillness of the maintenance tunnel, three refugees from death stopped to breathe.

Vinny broke the silence first. "So. I'm going to need name and account details for when you said 'double.'"

Mack laughed. It was a broken, hollow sound. But it was something. The fragments were warm against his chest, and his promise to Salazar burned just as hot.

"I'll get your money, Vinny," Mack said. "From the bottom of that city."

He didn't add what he was thinking: *And Salazar's debt will be paid in shadows.*