" Scheisse," Phoebe hissed. " Sein Kopf. Sein verdammter Kopf! "
"Go!" Sam yelled.
"His head…" said Iapetus, numb, aghast. "Clean off."
"Go!" Sam repeated. "He'll be coming back for another of you. It is a trap. Go! Split up! Run! As fast as you bloody can — run!"
45. RUN
T he four Titans scattered, Iapetus northward, Cronus, Phoebe and Rhea west. At the first intersection they came to, Cronus and Phoebe continued west while Rhea turned south. All four of them used road as well as sidewalk, slaloming between people and cars, going wherever a gap presented itself. Pedestrians yelled in protest as they were accidentally bumped into or barged aside. Drivers slammed on the brakes and honked their horns as black-clad figures shot by in front of them. Taillights flashed. Headlights flashed. Some very ripe language erupted in each Titan's wake, as if they were farmers sowing quick-sprouting seeds of profanity. For every person who was alarmed or startled to see an armoured, paramilitary-looking figure rushing past at astonishing speed, there were ten who were simply annoyed or indignant. "Hey, asshole, go shoot your goddamn sci-fi movie somewhere else!" "Extreme sports is California, dude!" "Fuck you, buddy!"
New York.
"Where is he?" Cronus yelled. "Where's Hermes now?"
"No idea," Iapetus replied. "Bastard's got to be chasing one of us."
"Somebody look over their shoulder."
"Not me, mate. Too busy running. At this speed I've got to concentrate on where I'm going, or — shit! See? Nearly hit a mailbox just talking to you."
"Peripheral expansion mode," said Sam. "All of you."
"It's even harder to run in a straight line when that's on," said Rhea.
"Just do it. Keep looking forwards, blinker out the rest. I'll be the eyes in the back of your head."
One after another the visor-cam images jumped into warped widescreen. Buildings on either side ballooned from the vanishing point then tapered off again to the edges. Parked vehicles, railings, front doorsteps, shop windows, passers-by — everything swelled and shrank away as though viewed through a crystal ball travelling rapidly a few feet off the ground.
A quick scan of the screens told Sam all she needed to know.
On the far right-hand side of the feed from Cronus, and the far left-hand side of Phoebe's, there was a tiny, pale shape in motion. Sam could make out arms pumping, legs flickering, the gleam of streetlights reflecting off a shiny silvery helmet.
"Cronus, Phoebe, it's you. He's on your tail."
"Dammit!" Cronus spat. "Dammit all to hell!"
"Just keep going, both of you. You can outrun him."
"No, we can't," said Cronus. He was breathing heavily already, and Phoebe had begun panting hard, perhaps in panic. "Hermes has a top speed of well over fifty. We can barely manage forty."
"The suit goes faster the faster you go. Pour it on. Run flat out. Sprint."
Cronus and Phoebe accelerated. Their tachometer readings crept up above 40 mph. 45, 46, 47…
But Hermes was still gaining.
"Why doesn't he just teleport ahead?" Ramsay wondered.
"He can't do both at once," Patanjali replied. "It's not safe for him. He can only teleport from a standing start. Otherwise, when he reappears his stored momentum could carry him slap-bang into a brick wall or whatever and splatter him to pieces."
"And that would be a shame."
"Quite."
"Base, I'm going to double back." It was Iapetus. "I've got a lock on their whereabouts. Maybe I can intercept."
To Patanjali, Sam said, "Where's the GPS map? Why's it not up? Pull it up."
"No sooner said than done," the computer programmer said, and did.
A blue-on-black street map of Manhattan winked into life, with four moving red dots tracking the four Titans' positions.
"All right, Iapetus, try," Sam said into the mic. "Judging by your relative locations, I don't think they should count on you making it, though. Cronus, Phoebe," she continued. "I have you headed along West Eighteenth Street. You've just crossed Sixth Avenue. Now, if you continue on that course, you're going to run out of city and hit the Hudson River in a couple of minutes."
Cronus groaned.
"No, it's all right. Just listen. You can't attempt evasive manoeuvres yet. All the turns here are right-angles and you can't afford to slow down as much as you need to in order to take one without wiping out. Hermes will catch up for certain if you do. But once you hit the edge of the island there's an expressway, the, er, the West Side Highway it's called, also known as the Joe DiMaggio Highway. There's bound to be sliproads onto that, or some kind of broader junction to help you get on it without decelerating too much. It'll give you more room to run and a bit of breathing space. At some point, though, you're going to have to stop and turn and make a stand."
"Hermes is too fast a target for us to — "
"No, Cronus, listen. This is not negotiable. This is just how it's going to be. I know we weren't planning on dealing with Hermes today, which is why no one's packing the relevant armaments. Yes, he's fast, he can teleport… but his only tactical weapon is that caduceus of his, and it's only useful at close quarters. You two have guns — long-range capability. That's your edge, and it's going to make all the difference. It's going to save your necks. So keep moving, keep running. I don't care how tired you're feeling, how much your legs ache or your lungs hurt. You can do this. Phoebe? Do you read me?"
"I read you," Phoebe said, between gasps.
"I'm going to get you through this, both of you, I promise. Your side of the deal is simply to keep listening to me and do exactly as I say."
She covered the mic with her hand.
"Fuck. How am I going to get them through this?"
"You're doing great, Sam," Ramsay said. He was reaching out to touch her, but remembered himself in time. "Stay with it. Don't lose your nerve."
"But look at him." Hermes was less than 50 metres to Cronus's and Phoebe's rear, although distances were hard to judge in the fish-eye distortion of peripheral expansion. "And Kerstin's flagging. Her speed's dropping."
"Keep talking to them. That's what they need the most — your voice, telling them to be cool, everything's OK. If they lose it, they're gone."
"Base, Rhea. Anything I can do?"
"Hold on, Rhea, let me think. Yes. Sorry, but I want you to go back to Gramercy Park and retrieve Coeus's body. It's not the pleasantest task but it has to be done, and now, before someone else gets to it. I'd be surprised if Hermes is the only Olympian in New York at the moment."
"Roger, base. I'm on it."
"Base, we've just passed… Ninth Avenue, I think," said Cronus. "How much further to the… expressway?"
"Quarter of a mile. Less."
"I'm really… getting winded."
"You're fine. You and Phoebe, you're both staying ahead of him. Although, Phoebe, you might want to pick up the pace a fraction."
There was no reply from Phoebe beyond rasping ins and outs of breath, but her tachometer registered a slight uptick in speed. Other readouts indicated that her suit's battery life was down to 25 % and the servos were hotting up, although their temperature remained within tolerable levels for now.
Her visor-cam showed Cronus in front of her, to her left, and Hermes now just a few paces behind her. Hermes ran with all the lean, sinewy grace of a top-flight athlete, the scissoring of his arms and legs sublimely co-ordinated, no part of him moving a millimetre further than it needed to. He seemed a thing designed to be at speed, furnished for it by nature, like a cheetah — biomechanical perfection. Every joint, every muscle, every tendon meshed precisely and for just one purpose: to propel him forwards, fast, without fail. It was something Sam couldn't help but admire even as she loathed the lethal intent behind it. The wild fixity in Hermes's eyes as he inexorably shaved the distance between him and his quarry, the bared, clenched teeth, the rhythmic flaring of his nostrils — these all spoke of a man who had never come second in a race and of a predator who was never unable to overtake his prey. Hermes the Luck-Bearer. Hermes the Ready Helper. Closing in.