My eyes moved down the line of them.
They were getting set. I could see it in the way the shaking had changed, spreading through the mass in a wave, hundreds of bodies loading themselves. The tremor that had been loose and continuous tightened into something sharper—shoulders locking, weight shifting forward onto the balls of feet that no longer needed the adjustment, the whole front rank finding a shared readiness that had nothing human left in it.
And they outnumbered us. Not by much. A hundred, maybe more.
Bagins breathed in and let it out and turned to me.
"What's next?"
"Make the final speech."
I switched my hearing on.
And the street filled up.
