Chapter 30 · Running the Blackout

The brass key was still warm from Garrett's palm when the loft door gave out behind me.

Wood splintered with a sickening crack. Somebody shrieked like a pig catching a blade. I took the fire stairs three at a time, the ridges of the metal biting into my skin, and I didn't turn around.

He’d ordered me not to.

Besides, I already knew what was happening back in that room.

*Make them bleed. Don't look back.*

First part was his job. Second part was mine.

Rain hit me sideways the second I broke onto the asphalt. Berth 4 was pitch-black. Not dim. Absolute zero, all the way to the breakwater. No dock floods. No mast beacons. The fish house went dead, the harbor cranes were frozen iron skeletons, and the channel marker’s red blink had vanished.

The entire fourth ward was down.

I froze in the downpour for one second, and my stomach plummeted straight to hell.

Saint Brendan’s is in the fourth ward.

Nobody drops a whole municipal grid by mistake. I’ve surveyed every easement along this waterfront. I know how a transformer blows—it screams, pops, stinks of ozone, and leaves a crowd of rubberneckers standing around.