Free Painkiller by Robert J. Crane Page A

about this guy screamed, “Vintage!” except for his skin, which was a really good sign that he was an older meta.
    He looked at me, and I looked back at him, hovering, ready to strike. I couldn’t see his eye color from here, but I could see him making the calculation: Should I run?
    He ran.
    Actually, he didn’t so much run as he pitched himself sideways over the railing and dropped the ten feet or so down the onto the ramp below. He landed adroitly and then sprinted into the faded wooden planks that blocked off the pedestrian walkway under Lake Shore Drive. He smashed right through them without letting it slow him down and disappeared into the darkness within.
    “Why is it always idiots they send me after?” I wondered aloud. That wasn’t really true, though. I’d run across plenty of people who hadn’t been idiots, who had in fact given me a run for my money in the badass department, that had laid well-crafted traps that had occasionally cost me limb and once even life. Still, I had this thing in me where I couldn’t let myself quit, so every time someone ran from me, I would doggedly run their ass down and refuse to let them escape, even if it caused me pain. Which it often did.
    I shot after him and blasted through the hole in the wood with a fury. I figured he was panicked, running, maybe he knew my rep for chaos and destruction and would wisely want to get the hell away from me regardless of how dumb running from someone who could fly actually seemed on a logical level.
    But that was before I flew headlong into his fist, which was waiting for me on the other side of the wooden barricade, along with the fugitive himself.
    It halted my momentum in a flash, that punch, took me from sixty to zero in about 3.2. It was like a clothesline from hell, and I felt it on my chin, my jaw, my cheek, and all along the rest of me as I spun off and hit the concrete wall after busting some more boards with my legs.
    I landed in a heap, stunned, with more than a few broken bones. If I’d been able to speak, I might have said, “Well, that was stupid.” Because it was.
    Instead I lay there, on the edge of consciousness, not quite able to summon up Wolfe to heal me, when a shadow appeared above me, looming with a grey sky behind him, the light silhouetting him and robbing his features of clarity.
    “You’re going to die,” he said, his voice low and quiet, and my eyes fluttered closed.

10.
Harry
    Harry stared down at Sienna Nealon, who was bleeding out of her nose and her ears, her right leg broken and pointed off at a sickening angle. A cavalcade of emotions thundered through him as he stood there, but stunned horror was probably right at the top of the list.
    The fact that she was here, in Chicago, was not unexpected. The fact that she was here, right here, right now, where he was—that was alarming, concerning, worrisome—he was pretty sure he’d need a thesaurus to fully express the level of UH OH he felt pouring over him.
    She was out, that much clear by the fact that he was still breathing, but the fact that she was there, that she could—she could heal, she’d be fine from this once she woke up—that was … well, he was down to disquieting.
    None of this was any good.
    The professor had needed to die last night. Needed to. But this? He stared down at her, scarcely trusting to believe his eyes. This was …
    Frightening. Disturbing. Where was that thesaurus?
    Harry didn’t even know what to do, but he could feel help coming. He looked back and knew it was seconds away. He jumped over her insensate body and ran, smashing up through the walkway on the other side with perfect timing as her backup came in through the ramp on the other side.
    She’d caught him because he’d been moving too fast on foot. Well, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He surveyed the area for a second as he burst out onto Michigan Avenue and then walked three blocks, casually, before stepping into a store for five minutes. He