I dropped the shield.
The charge collapsed in a single clean motion. The blue edge vanished. Ordinary night air replaced it—colder, carrying the residual smell of burned fabric and the continuous low sound of hundreds of bodies still filing toward the building.
We stood out on the open road with the last of them still moving past us, and not one of them turned its head.
"Wait here for me." Bagins was already heading back down the road toward the abandoned column. "I'm getting my equipment out of the car. Max will love this."
He carried the same excitement he'd had when I agreed to work with him. He'd simply moved all of it onto a blond man he'd never met, in under four minutes.
I walked out to the middle of the road and looked up.
Can he see me from there? Does he know it's me down here?
