Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

CONALL WARNER

The rain washed the blood from my face as I stood on the pavement, waiting for a cab. The gutters were flooded, but the rain continued to hydrate. When the cab came around, it splashed water over my new shoes. The cab driver didn't seem to mind.

His windshield wipers made a terrible noise. It screeched against the glass. His air conditioning was unnecessary, it was already cold outside. His accent was difficult to understand, his capability to understand basic English was unprofessional. But I told him to go to the vineyards and mentioned grapes, and he acceptingly drove and was exceedingly fast.

The sky was grey and behind it was the night. I couldn't see the raindrops anymore, they became pallid until they hit the windows. The rain slid streams across the glass, shining from streetlights. Conjoined, they were heavier and picked up speed, slipping out of view and replaced by more drops.

When we got there, I told the driver to wait. I ran into the vineyard, keeping low as if beaten down by the rain.

The ground had become mud, the brown desolate quicksand that kept me slow. My shoes dug into the mud. I left a footprint to create another footprint. The vines and grapes were drenched, dripping buckets.

I reached the grape crusher and made a left from there. Into the maze of vineyards to find what Yaegar had meant for me to find from the beginning. I slipped and face planted into the mud. I spat roots and vine leaves out. I grabbed at a trellis to pull myself up with muddy hands.

The wind was also blowing hard, turning the rain into pellets and rushing plastic bags into my face. Lightning struck behind me, the thunder reaching my ears as quick as the lightning had flashed.

The storm was close. The storm was here. I am in the eye of the storm. I am the storm. The storm is me.

Then I found it. In the middle of a clearing. It was a rock with a wet note on it. The note was blowing in the wind, about to tear off from its heavy base. The words were smudged but I held it close to my face, under my hood, after tearing it off from the rock.

The note roughly read:

GO TO 6825 ARDLEIGH STREET

It was where the police computer had tracked Dorothy's car down to. I was certain it was an ambush. But it was the only lead I had of their whereabouts. They wouldn't be able to gun me down in the middle of the street, even if it was raining at night. It was too risky. And how could they have ambushed me before, if I had gone to this street and they were at the company building? Or was it a throwaway before to get me off their scent while they worked, but now they chose to use the location to ambush me? There was only one way to find out.

So I reconvened with the taxi driver, throwing the note away. I told him to go to Ardleigh Street. He was mildly amused at my mudface treatment. Angrier than anything because I was getting his backseat messy.

Ardleigh Street was a one-way street, but I couldn't see Dorothy's car parked anywhere on the road. He stopped in front of house number 6825. I paid the cabbie his well-earned money and told him to have a good night.

He drove off at a moment's notice, possibly to chase another monetary gain. It was not going to be a good night for him at all, I realised. But it would be a good payday. He has sacrificed his leisure for necessities.

I looked around one last time at the street with the dim streetlights and big houses, untouched by convergence. Barely any families lived on this street, even though all of the houses were uniform and two-stories for a reason. The families that did, didn't feel safe enough to park their cars on the road.

But on the way here, I had glimpsed at the description of this particular street in Philly while researching on my phone. A while ago, a conflagration had spread across this part of the land, sweeping bent homes and crooked grounds.

There were casualties. Being so close to wide bushland, it was expected in the summer. But people did not listen to warnings and resisted evacuation and they burnt to death in their living rooms playing cards.

Now, having been rebuilt and restored and renovated, no one wanted to have a house on Ardleigh Street. Frightened of the bush which had regrown somehow from smog and ashes, parallel to construction of housing, but also scared of the dead that had become the thick air.

I took a deep, healthy breath and turned around to head up 6825. My phone rang when I was on the porch and my finger was close to the doorbell. It was an unknown number. I answered it.

"Who is this?"

"Don't go in." It was Bimbo. I hadn't heard him talk in 36 years, but it only sounded a little deeper from what I could remember.

"I'm not," I said, "I'm ringing the doorbell."

"There's no one inside."

"Why? You want me to turn around so you can put a bullet in my head from 50 metres away and see my face go limp when I die?"

"You just have to trust me."

"I would never think of it," I said.

"You push that doorbell, the house explodes."

"It's rigged. By you."

"I've changed my mind. Meet me at Fiume." A car pulled out from the side of the house and drove off. It was Dorothy's car and Bimbo was the only person inside. It was strange to see Bimbo without Yaegar commanding his every move and very existence.

I had instinctively reached for my gun at the sight of the sallow-faced man who had killed children. I did not pull it out and shoot, but I should have.

But then I would lose Yaegar's location in the process. And he was the puppetmaster whose head I wanted hanging on his own strings.

Fiume was a bar, a couple of minutes drive from here. He had chosen a public place to meet which was acceptable. Fiume was famous for enacting a veto to save their street from being demolished by the government.

I called another taxi. The same cabbie returned with a friendly smile on his face.