Zane was perfectly still, a statue made of terror jammed between two slabs of fallen brickwork.
He didn't breathe or move, only watched.
The three Exterminators stood in the centre of the ruined street. They were clean, silent, and moved as one, their black-and-silver armor gleaming in the sick green pre-dawn light.
They were hunters.
Zane's heart was a cold hammer in his chest.
The lead knight, the one who had knelt, stood up, his faceless helm swivelling and scanning the street.
Zane felt the motion like a physical touch. He had nowhere to run because the sewer grate was twenty feet away, across an open, rubble-strewn street.
He couldn't fight them since Silas, a one-woman murder storm, had been scared of them.
He was a rat and they were exterminators. The name was literal.
He h
