"Sean Williams - Metak Fatigue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Sean)

returned to sleep.
He went to the bathroom, where he would not disturb her further, and opened
his mind to the insistent touch of the one who called himself Lucifer.
When curfew fell at midnight, he was leaping from rooftop to rooftop high
above the streets, hunting. And the silent man who had stood on the street
under his window had long since disappeared.
(HAPTER ONE
Saturday, 15 September, 1:25 a.m.
From the outside, it looked like an empty warehouse: its doors had rusted
shut; its windows were broken and -boarded up; its roof was slowly caving in.
@- Kennedy Polis had many such buildings. Once, six decades past, swift,
solar-powered ferries had shunted back and forth along the river, bringing
with them trade goods from nearby towns. The warehouses had been full, then,
and business brisk. Kennedy had shone like a
jewel in the North American Model City Project's crown. Completely free of
petrochemical fuels, selfsufficient except for a few basic raw materials and
equipped with the latest reclamation technologies, it had symbolised the new,
cleaner lifestyle promised by politicians for decades - a harbinger of the
NAMCPs utopian dream.
The War, however, had killed the dream, and the Dissolut;on that had followed
had killed most of the dreamers. Now the warehouses stood empty, rotting
slowly in the moist air drifting off the river. Some had become temporary
homes for refugees, others were taken over by the Mayoralty; the remainder
simply awaited the reopening of the city's self-imposed walls, if such ever
happened.
The years rested heavily upon Kennedy, and upon its warehouses in particular.
But it had not died.
Not yet. This warehouse was located on a deserted cul-de-sac not far from the
slosh and tumble of the river. A white, electric vehicle slid to a halt by a
rusted phone booth at the end of the street. The letters "RSD" were painted in
bold black down each side of the car and on its trunk.
The younger of the two people inside the car, a
woman in her mid-thirties with shoulder-length blonde hair and strong
laughter-lines, peered sceptically through the rain-spattered windscreen.
"You're sure this is the right place, Phil?"
The man beside her nodded. With a slightly receding hairline, a thick
moustache and a body that was past its peak without being infirm, he looked to
be only a few years older than his companion; perhaps in his midforties. He
was in fact much older. It showed sometimes in his voice. "This is it, Barney.
Trust me." He smiled, teasing. "You wanted to come, remember?" "Only
because you promised to buy me a drink." She pouted mournfully, and he knew
she was ribbing him in return. Barney Daniels and Phil Roads had been close
friends for most of her life, especially since her father's death, and knew
each other's games well. "Best bar in Kennedy, you said," she continued,
nodding disdainfully through the window at the derelict warehouse, no
different from the scores of others within spitting distance. "Doesn't look
like much to me." "Nevertheless." He locked the dash with his thumbprint and
keyed the car's security system. Thirty seconds. "Coming?" "Do I have a
choice?"
They stepped out of the car and into the street, pulling coats closer to