"You're actually right," Mercury said, and moved further out into the street.
They were standing the way a crowd stands when somebody has pressed pause on it. Same posture, all of them and nothing moving anywhere. The quiet sat on the road like a held breath.
"Something's holding them." Venna came out alongside her. "Look at it. They aren't a threat like this. They aren't anything. Somebody's hand is on all of them at once."
"Maybe Max found an answer."
Mercury stopped in front of one.
A man, forty maybe, with a small wound at the side of his neck. Teeth marks. The edges already darkening. Taken in the crush outside the CGI building within the last hour, by the look of it.
"On the Fallen City mission a boy died because he tried to touch an infected's breast."
"Then he deserved it," Venna said.
"Nobody deserves it."
Mercury put her hand on the man's shoulder. "Can I be straight with you?"
"About what?"
"About why I went to that execution."
