Dane’s eye. They looked something at each other. Dane vaulted the fence, his wound not slowing him at all. He fell fast, but not at gravity’s idiot control. The paper tried to disrupt him, but he twisted as he fell. He fired and killed an engineer. He sprayed bleach on his way down, streaming it through papers that instinctively flinched away, at Grisamentum.
His aim was predator perfect. But Byrne stepped into the way. She took the liquid across her front. It cut colour like an invert Pollock assault, her clothes fading under the spattered line. She shoved an old-fashioned perfume nebuliser into Dane’s face and squeezed the bulb.
Billy clenched. He closed his fist, tightened his stomach, tensed everything he knew how to tense. Nothing happened. Time did not pause. Byrne sprayed dark vapour into Dane’s face.
Dane staggered. His face was wet with dark grey. A billow of Grisamentum into him. Dane could not help breathing him in.
He retched, tried to puke Grisamentum out. Billy aimed at Byrne with Dane’s pistol, which he had no idea how to use, but in any case she dipped her fingers right into Grisamentum and shook them in front of her. The air around her closed, and when he fired his bullet ricocheted off nothing.
Dane was down. His body rilled. Grisamentum filled him, shaped himself on the Dane’s alveoli. Wrote bad spells on the inside of Dane’s lungs. Billy watched Dane die.
THE PAPERS ENCASED BYRNE IN AN ARGUMENTATIVE FLURRY, LIKE feeding birds.
“You’re sure?” Billy heard her say.
She poured the last of the dark liquid pulped from the Krakenist library into Grisamentum. He swirled. It must be giving him psychic indigestion to do this so fast, but he needed the final teuthic wisdom. He had to understand his quarry. Byrne stirred him and flicked the dipstick all around her. The papers eddied faster as the pigment splashed them. Older dried-up blots of Grisamentum were overlaid with less ignorant stains.
“It has to be close,” Byrne shouted. “Find it and send some of you back here to tell me where. I’ll bring the rest of you. Go!”
Dane had thank God stopped moving. Billy wanted to rally the last of the krakenbit, to destroy the gunfarmers and paper-swirl monsters. But he saw the chaos, his side’s rout, in the chamber. He climbed back out of the window.
Outside, Londonmancers and antibodies stood off against gunfarmers and a devil of inky paper. Littering the ground were bodies, and spots of troubled perspective where London functions had fallen. Krakenbit wheezed like fish in air, or lay still, brine dripping from their bodies. Billy saw one still fighting, with, at last, his left hand replaced with a twenty-foot hunting limb, which he dragged and flailed.
“Saira!”
She smiled to see him, even as she shook with war. She tugged a bit of London claylike into a police riot shield, crouched behind it, crossed the combat to him.
“Billy.” She even hugged him. “What’s happening?” He shook his head. “Dane?” she said. He shook his head. Her eyes went very wide. Billy began to shake.
“Disaster,” he said at last. “We couldn’t get close. He’s just, he’s doing the last of the knowledging now. Where’s my guardian angel, eh?” He was striving to speak to his headache again, as he had the last time the angel was near, but this time it was only pain.
“Billy …” It was Wati, groping to vague consciousness in his pocket. Billy said his name.
“He’s alive?” Saira said. There was a massive sound. From the building’s roof, a flock of black-stained papers streamed batlike out. They rampaged across the sky.
“He’s going,” Wati said. “He’s …”
“They’re covered in him; he can knack them more,” Billy said. “He doesn’t care. We forced his hand. He’s going all out. He’s looking for the kraken, and when he’s found it, Byrne’s going to milk it, and …” They looked at each other. “Can you find them? Get a message to the lorry?”
“They’re Londonmancers.” Saira nodded. “And so am I.”
“Tell them to get out of here. Tell them to go … Wait.” Billy held out the Kirk figure, its little plastic eyes watching him. Billy thought and thought, as fast as he could. “Wati.”
“Yeah,” the Kirk said.
“We’ve got as long as it takes for Grisamentum to find the lorry,” Billy said. “And you saw how many of him there are. Wati, I know you’re hurt, but can you wake up? Can you hear me?” No answer. “If he doesn’t wake up,” he said to Saira, “we’ll have to