A half-dozen anti-burst gun towers ringed the swollen black sprawl of the city, half again as tall as its two minarets. Most of the gun towers were charred husks. Heaps of debris littered the roadway. Rhys and Nyx walked with their hoods pulled up. Geckos skittered across their path. They passed a contagion sensor along the road, tilted at a hard left angle. The light at the top flashed yellow; the whole thing was covered in locusts. The sun was low in the sky by the time they made it past the burst guns and into the city. It was dead quiet, like the streets around a magicians’ gym before a fight. Rhys saw some moths under the eaves of the tenement buildings, blasted-out archways riddled with bullet holes. The city was teeming with wild and tailored bugs; they made Rhys’s blood sing. Swarms of flesh beetles darkened the sky. A few ragged people stared out at them from the ruined buildings. Rhys saw a couple of scabby kids digging in the sandy basin of what had once been the city’s central fountain and asked them where everybody was.
