Lynn sat in the shadows in a corner of Michel's apartment, a black figure huddled in darkness. The setting sun poured through the window above her, filling even shadow with a little of its amber warmth. She let herself melt to the floor, stretching her long frame and relishing the burn of lactic acid in her legs. Black ringlets of hair, still soaked in sweat, coiled on the carpet beside her head.

"Lynn?" Rick's voice spoke through the computer which sat on the floor across the room. Everything sat on the floor in Michel's apartment. Michel preferred carpets and pillows to chairs and beds; now that her brother had his own place, he refused to have any furniture at all.

"Here," Lynn said. She rolled over on her back with her feet high up on the wall. If Rick wanted to see her today, that would mean another bike ride, though probably not a long one. The two-hundred kilometer ride from Wilmington had been more than enough for today. But to get back on her bicycle at all, she'd have to work at resting her legs quickly.

"I'm glad you stopped at Michel's, rather than going on home," Rick said. "Do you have plans for tonight?"

"Rest." Lynn massaged her legs, squeezing the blood and the ache from them.

"Meet me at the Brickyard tonight. I'm going into the library. Want to come along?"

Jesus, Lynn thought. Since Interputer had bought North Carolina State and shut it down, she'd avoided the campus--mostly because of people like Rick, who were turning the campus into a wasteland. Angelique had liked the sense of danger there, as much as Lynn hated it. But if Rick wanted her tonight, she couldn't say no. Rick was her only connection to Angelique's death. "What time?"

"About eight or so. You remember where my camp is?"

"I'll find it." Eight was good; it gave her three hours to eat and rest.

"See you tonight." No "be careful" or anything, but this was Rick.

Lynn grunted. She dropped her legs to the floor and turned to lie beside the wall, hidden within the shadows. The rugs she'd piled beneath her felt luxuriously soft.

"Bullet," she said to Michel's computer. "Make sure I'm awake in two hours."

"Yes, Lynn," the machine said.

Lynn left at a quarter to eight, still dressed in her black skinsuit, which was protection enough against the light chill of the evening.

"Bullet," she said on her way out, "tell Michel I was here." Even with a place of his own, home for Michel was a place to be away from.

She rode through darkness from Michel's apartment on the east side of Raleigh to the east end of the campus, where decay was only beginning to take hold. Parking her bike here was a little risky, but its security was keyed to her thumbprint; she felt safe enough about leaving it here. The restored orange Colnago was her last gift from her grandfather before he died, earlier in the year.

She found Rick's camp near the edge of the Brickyard. It was empty.

Shadows danced in the Brickyard, long shadows with heavy feet, circling the campfires and skipping over bodies and battlements. Lynn watched them merge and scatter until they seemed to devour their masters. She kept her own shadow close; together, they huddled by her fire. Rick should have been back by now, unless his shadow had drawn him away, or perhaps sold him to the dark.

Lynn leaned against her wall and closed her eyes to the shadows. They were not whole as long as she kept her back to the library. The harsh, blue glow from its windows weakened the shadows, gave substance back to their owners. Turn the other way, and shadows merged with their masters, save only masters with fires. Turn the other way, and the blue glow would hide a shadow where shadows liked most to hide.

Lynn hated the blue. Fire kept it away.

Fire kept everything away, except strangers. With his shadow behind him, he stepped over a low spot in her wall and sat, across from Lynn. She pulled back as far as she could, but her long legs had nowhere to go. Her black tights stole warmth from the fire, adding to the suddenly cramped feeling of her enclosure.

The stranger faced the library, but close enough to the fire that his face flared amber, scorching away the blue-gray cast of the night. In the firelight his face might have seemed warm, but his long nose and black eyes remained cold, and his swept-back white hair caught the blue from the windows.

"Evening," he said, his eyes flicking up at the library and back to Lynn.

"Leave." She nodded back in the direction of his arrival, and black ringlets of hair fell into her eyes. She shook her head to clear her eyes, while her hand probed the depths of her coat, searching. Her pocket was empty. Rick had it.

"Free country." Again, he glanced at the library. "Even here."

"Got a stinger," Lynn said. She pushed her hand deeper into her pocket, and waved her hand at her guest. "Go."

He stared back at her for a moment, then leaned against Lynn's wall, settling in. "I don't think so." He folded his hands across his lap. "Pocket's empty, isn't it?"

Lynn wavered. Her pocket wasn't quite empty; her hand was in it. But the stranger knew she wasn't armed; stingers were too rare. Her threat might have been credible if it were real. "What do you want?" She kept her hand up, pointed at him, inside her pocket.

"To learn. That's all I've ever wanted." His eyes stayed locked on Lynn, but seemed to soften a bit. "I've learned how to read a bluff. You might as well put your hand down; it can't hurt me from there."

Lynn relaxed a little. She'd lost her bluff, all right, but the stranger didn't seem threatening. She kept her hand in her pocket, and used it to wrap her coat around herself. "Rick will be back soon," she said. "I don't think you'd like to meet him."

"And Rick has your stinger, if you really have one," the man said. She shrugged. "Well, there's no need to get defensive; I'm just passing by. I like to see what's being taught here, now that the school's closed down. For instance, someone taught you to threaten strangers. Who was that?"

"Angelique. She died here." She died, and I don't know why. Only Rick knows, and he won't say. Lynn shrugged again. "You taught at State?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, looking away from Lynn. She followed his glance, and saw again how the plaza was divided up by low, irregular walls, each surrounding a fire, each providing cover for some small group. "Yes, back when people came here to learn, when there was something to learn here besides survival."

"I remember that," she said. It was involuntary; she knew better than to give away information.

His eyes flicked back to hers, black eyes, eyes that swallowed up the warmth of the fire and flashed with cold heat. "You don't look old enough," he said.

"I was little then." She looked away; he seemed safe enough that she could do that, and she didn't want him to see her own eyes. "This place was flat. Paved with bricks."

A blue flash lit the Brickyard, so bright that even fires paled to white. Behind her, a scream, near the library. On Hillsborough Street it would go unnoticed, but the Brickyard would be empty soon. Here, the smell of burning flesh could still drive people away. Already they stood, looking about, but Lynn had to stay. Rick had her stinger, damn him, and he had all that remained of Angelique. Until he returned, she had to stay, had to listen to the scream even if it stopped.

Her stranger looked up to the roof of the library. "The guardians of knowledge," he said, and snorted. "Defending their kingdom."

Once again, Lynn followed his glance, up to the machines on top of the library, machines with long snouts and single eyes that surveyed the ground around their building, already looking for their next victim. She couldn't make herself watch. She'd seen them the last time they attacked, when Rick and Angelique tried to sneak in. On that night, rods of blue heat blazed down to the ground; they found Angelique and burned her alive.

Tonight, the rods had rained down again. The stench filled her brain, seeping into her nose from the inside out. Soon, it would come back again, outside in. Too soon, and she had to stay. Lynn shuddered, and her skin pulled back from the touch of her own clothes.

She looked back her guest. His long nose was drawn up now, wrinkling his face into deep furrows that cast shadows up from the fire, pulling his face into a blackened mask which hardened as she watched. His eyes, focused on the guardians, had forgotten her. She lost track of time, watching him watch the machines, until the stench hit them both and she knew what smell had filled his mind. He looked back at her across the fire.

"What do they want?" she asked. The blue glow from the windows burned into her back.

"What the machines always want-steal everything we have, and sell it back to us." He looked back to the library, and again shadows ate his face. "It's not enough that they've taken every other university in the state. They had to take this one, too." With that he stood and walked away, leaving Lynn with her shadow and the stink of Angelique's ghost, which still screamed with someone else's voice.

Other people left, hurrying, deserting their fires. The Brickyard became a maze, brick walls that turned and joined and split without reason, separated by dusty clay. It was better when the bricks were still pavement, red pavement with designs in white; the bricks ought to have stayed in the ground. But the walls were her safety; without them, the Brickyard would be a street party, an extension of Hillsborough Street, only a block away. She edged closer to her fire, and knew that there were worse places than here, even beside a library full of the computers that had killed Angelique.

Unattended, fires flickered and died, turning the night into a smoky haze inflamed with the blue. Lynn stirred her fire, keeping it alive, and waited. The scream that was not Angelique was gone now; she had watched an ambulance come, and men in white (reflecting blue from the windows) had taken him away. The computers on the roof had watched the med-techs, but had not interfered. She got a glimpse of tonight's victim, enough to know that it wasn't Rick. There was still a chance her stinger might come back.

Her own fire was nearly gone when Rick returned. He jumped down from the tallest part of their wall--an easy hop for him, while most people had to climb.

"You missed the excitement," she said. She was angry at having to wait, pinned beside the fire with only the stench of the burned man for company. But this was an anger to be savored, nurtured, invested.

"No I didn't; Donnie and I were right there." As he sat, he looked at the rumpled blankets beyond the fire. "You have company tonight?"

"Yes. Old man, said he used to teach here." Of course Rick saw the attack; he couldn't have been anywhere else. "Who was it that got hit?"

"Don't think you know him. It was Sed Barnes; he tried to get in just by running. Now, Donnie and me, we think we know how to get past those lasers." He grinned, showing two rows of uneven teeth.

"Rick, don't do it." The air was clear, now, but inside her head the rank odor remained. She tried to wait him out, but he grinned back at her, nodding his head. "All right, do what you want. I'm not going with you."

"Sure you are, Lynn," he said. "Look, I know you're upset about Angelique. But we'll get in, see? All we need are some big mirrors. We just hide under them and walk right in."

She shook her head and stood up. Wasn't he upset? Another anger, stashed away. "What do you think is inside? You think they won't have anything else waiting for you?"

Rick shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. Worry about that when we get there, you know? I mean, that's why we want to go in. Anyway, Donnie's going to start finding those mirrors tomorrow."

Lynn picked up her blankets, folded them and stuffed them in her backpack. "Rick, I'm going home tonight. See you tomorrow." If she stayed, he'd try to talk her into his scheme to get inside the library. For Angelique's sake, she couldn't risk letting him win. By tomorrow he might forget if she weren't there to keep him talking about it.

"No, Lynn; it's late. It'll be after one when you get there. Why don't you go tomorrow?" He got up, leaving his own blankets, and followed Lynn as she walked away.

"Somebody has to tell them I'm still alive. Angelique's gone, and Michel can't go home any more. Who else is there?" As they moved away from the Brickyard, the blue glow faded, and night became black again. Rick walked backwards, facing her. "I'll be all right if you give me my stinger. I almost needed it tonight."

Rick pulled it out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She nearly missed it in the dark, a black bulb in black shadow. It nestled into her hand, and her thumb searched for the soothing feel of its trigger depression. The trigger tingled slightly under her touch, letting her know it still had its charge, and that it still remembered her.

"Hey, I could have needed it, too," he said.

"Then get your own." It was a struggle to keep her anger out of his reach.

Yours is the only one I ever saw. Shit, wouldn't do much good to steal one; I couldn't use it."

"Yeah. Maybe you can talk someone into giving you one." And not mine, not again, she thought. She hesitated before giving him a quick kiss. "Good night, Rick."

"Well, good night, then." He stopped and watched as she turned to leave him. "Hey," he said, grinning. "As long as you're out riding tonight, take a spin up Hillsborough. There's something new in the Hump; you might like it." He turned, ready to walk backwards again, back toward the Brickyard.

"No, Rick. There isn't anything on Hillsborough Street that I want to see."

"You don't have to see anything, Lynn. Just ride up the street. That's all."

"All right, Rick; I'll think about it." She turned, too, and walked to her bicycle, parked a few blocks away in the remains of an old stadium near the bell tower.

She was tempted to skip the ride up Hillsborough. She didn't want to go through Hump Town; it took a different sort of woman to go there. Besides, she was still under-age. The sane thing to do was to go straight home. The place she'd parked gave her easy access to Western Boulevard, where she had to go anyway to get out of Raleigh. But Rick would ask tomorrow, and she'd already left him alone for the night and refused to discuss his idea for breaking into the library. Going home by way of Hillsborough Street was a small point she could let him win. Letting him win once in a while kept him talking, and sooner or later he might say what that she needed to hear, something about Angelique's death. She thumbed her bike lock, tied her backpack to its rack, and rode out of the lot.