He was in a small, windowless room, and the light was harsh, but only because he had been so long in darkness.

He heard movement around him, then the bag was ripped from his head. If I go deadish, that’s not going to help you, is it?” But this was not a friends-and-family sort of kidnapping this was the real thing-and although he had no idea who his abductors were, he knew what it was about. As a birthday surprise, or as an activity on some adventure vacation. Porous enough for him to breathe, but thick enough to make him fight for every breath.Īlthough he had no idea where he was, he knew what this was. Not because of any injury, but because he was restrained. He tried to move his wrist, but found that he couldn’t. His arm had healed by the time he awoke-which meant he must have been out for hours. With the last of his consciousness fading, he had no choice but to surrender to the momentum. There was an open door, and then he was out into a blustery night. He was lifted up and carried through the air. There were too many hands around him now to let him hit the floor.

He was overwhelmed by a chill in his veins, and the world seemed to spin in the opposite direction. A slender flash of silver in the darkness before it was jammed into his shoulder. “You couldn’t make this easy, could you?” said the attacker. Even with all the painkillers in him, the feel of that bone-grating grasp made the rest of his body too weak to resist. He careened between walls, trying to maintain his balance, until he ran right into one of his attackers, who grabbed him by his broken wrist. Now the ground beneath his feet felt like a shifting fun-house floor. What a terrible thing for his mind to lose its edge when he needed it most. His nanites were fogging him in, making it hard to tell up from down, much less left from right. He would have run toward the voice, but he was unsure where it had come from. He stumbled forward, gripping his arm so his wrist wouldn’t hang at a horrible angle. It was his nanites, he knew, flooding his bloodstream with painkillers. By the time he rose to his feet, the pain was subsiding and his whole body felt warm. He felt the bones in his right forearm snap. He turned in the dark, knowing there was a staircase to his right, but misjudged, and fell headlong down the stairs, smashing his arm on a granite step. He called for help, but it was too late for anyone to be alert enough to make a difference. “It will be worse for you if you do.”īut he did anyway-and managed, even in his half-awake state, to tear out of their grasp and run down the hall. “Don’t struggle,” someone whispered to him. One moment he was asleep, and the next he was being rushed through the darkness by people he didn’t know. Chapter 1: Surrender to the Momentum 1 Surrender to the Momentum

The toll 3 arc of a scythe