80.

  Brick had become the most wanted man in the city.

  The news story played on loop: a police officer had been killed on the streets. I had muddled my way through the rest of breakfast with Marilyn, the food turning to ash in my mouth. I had made my excuses and left as quickly as possible, throwing probably two or three times the amount of money I needed to at Syd before sprinting back towards my flat.

  My mind was in a frenzy as I ran. Someone had been killed because of me! A police officer was dead because I had set Brick up. I thought I'd been so clever when I came up with my little plan. I thought that I was avoiding violence, that I'd actually figured out the smart way of taking down one of the most powerful men in London. Instead, I'd got someone killed, beaten to death while he was just trying to do his job. The thought made bile rise in the back of my throat. I ran so fast I could convince myself the tears in the corner of my eyes were because of the wind whipping into my face. But I didn't even make it back to my flat before I saw the consequences of my actions.

  I saw a crowd gathered near the old playground where I would meet with Sherbert, where the Gutter Mage graffiti was most prevalent. It had become almost a haunt for fans of the Gutter Mage, a symbol of open defiance against the Syndicate. The crowd was hushed. I saw women with hands over their mouths and men wiping sweat from their foreheads while staring at the ground. I pushed past them to see what they were looking at. The playground had been utterly destroyed. Equipment was defaced and broken. The slide had been chopped to pieces, as if with a heavy axe, and the graffiti looked like it had a sledgehammer taken to it. The only words visible now were spray-painted in red paint, and it said, "Dead Man."

  Brick was sending me a clear message. The psycho was wanted for the murder of a police officer, yet his only concern was me. I felt fear run down my spine. I'd heard stories about Brick. Everybody had said he was unhinged, but to beat a police officer to death with his bare hands and then have the gall to send public messages like this, terrifying the people of the Mulberry estate and letting them know that his spectre still cast deep shadows across their lives. It was a middle finger to them, to the police, and to me. I felt anger well up in my chest. This wasn't gonna stop until I stopped it. I had to find Brick, and if need be, I had to put him down.

  I walked back to my flat, gnashing my teeth and clenching my jaw until my ears hurt. Anger bubbled viscerally inside me, and I knew it wasn't just anger at Brick, it was anger at myself for getting an innocent person hurt and another one murdered. It seemed like no matter what I did, the Syndicate was a cancerous tumor that couldn't be surgically removed from the city. But maybe I had been going about it wrong. I was trying to beat the Syndicate, but when animals turn feral, they don't get told off or locked up, they get put down.

  I arrived back at my flat and went straight to my room. I stared at the space where the Codex was, and I knew, with certainty, that there was something in there, some power I could call upon that would put Brick down right now, wherever he was, from hundreds of miles away even. The whispers began again. I could kill him and end this now and the book knew how. The longer I stared, the louder the whispers grew, surrounding me, urging me on, telling me the answers were there, I just had to ask the question…

  “No!” I growled, turning my head away, the whispers ended abruptly and the darkness lifted from the room.

  I knew that that's what it wanted, that creature, that eyeless thing that wanted me to stray in the darkness. I was going to beat Brick, but I would do it my way, not his way, and certainly not that thing's way. I just had to find him.

  I had fallen into a fitful sleep, sitting at the edge of my bed, surrounded by bits and pieces of equipment. I'd taken to refreshing my bang Rock stock and my Chalk Bombs, fixing my gloves, cleaning my Grapple Cord, and my Grandad's bat. I tried to wash the blood out of my balaclava for perhaps the 30th time, and eventually, I fell into a fitful doze plagued by half-remembered dreams that left me shaking and drenched in sweat. I dreamt of darkness, eyeless monsters, and a dead police officer being swallowed whole by it.

  I woke with a start and looked out the window. Darkness had fallen, and it was time to hunt down Brick and put that mad dog down. I geared up as quickly as I could, not caring that my equipment was still blood-stained, sweat-covered, and stank of stale smoke from the night before. I pulled it all on as quickly as I could, jammed Chalk Bombs and Bang Rocks into my pockets, checked everything else was where it was supposed to be, and then pushed open my window. I stepped out into the cool night and took off across the rooftops of the Mulberry Estate.

  It took less than 10 minutes to get back to the destroyed playground. I just hoped I hadn't missed him. Sherbert and I had an agreement that he would check in at nightfall to see if I'd left any messages for him. However, the park had been destroyed, and the post we used to leave messages for one another had been burned, so I wasn't able to leave him one. I was just hoping I'd be able to catch him.

  I stood on the top of a tall building overlooking the park and suddenly felt apprehensive. Brick had obviously marked this out as a place where he could get to me, where he could find me. He might be psychotic, but he had a predator’s cunning. Maybe he left a trap for me, left some goons in the darkness ready to gun me down or tear me apart. I pulled down my see-in-the-dark goggles and looked around the park, across to the river, and down the dark alleyways adjacent. There didn't seem to be anybody around. I sighed, rolling nervous energy out of my shoulders, and hoped Sherbert would turn up and that he had heard something about where Brick was.

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  I'd waited maybe half an hour before I heard the familiar squeaking and rattling of a shopping cart overburdened with scrap metal. Then a dark, shambling figure came into view. He wheeled his squeaking trolley into the middle of the playground and made a beeline straight for the post, looking it up and down, then scratching his head. I peered at him for a few seconds longer, and it was definitely Sherbert. No one else had that unique build. I quickly made my way down the fire escape, leaped across to a light post, and slid down using my Magnetic gloves, landing with a heavy enough thump to draw his attention.

  Sherbert turned around and squinted into the darkness.

  "Mr. Mage," he hissed. "Is that you?"

  Sherbert was one of those ludicrously loud people who couldn't whisper even if they tried. His voice echoed and carried around the darkness.

  "Yeah, it's me, Sherbert," I said, waving a hand, and his eyes immediately grew wide. He sprinted towards me, waving his arms.

  "Mr. Mage! Mr. Mage, you need to get out of here now!" he said.

  "What, Sherbert? What's wrong?" I asked him. He was red-faced and sweating; it looked like he had run all the way here.

  "Mr. Mage, you don't understand," he panted. "Brick is gunning for you.”

  "Yeah, and I'm gunning for him," I said. "Have you heard anything? Do you know where he is?”

  "Forget that, Mr. Mage. You don't understand. You need to get off the streets, out of the Mulberry now!”

  "What?" I asked him. "Why?”

  "Because of the bounty," Sherbert said.

  "I know about the bounty," I replied.

  "No, you don't understand," Sherbert said, stuttering, his voice catching in his throat. It almost felt like he was in the middle of a panic attack. He stomped his feet and waved his hands, trying to cool himself down.

  "Easy, Sherbert," I said. "Tell me what's going on.”

  "He's put... he's put the bounty..." Sherbert spluttered again. "It's... it's more. It's ￡200,000!”

  "What?" I said, blinking.

  "It's 100k dead and 200 if they can bring you to him."

  I blinked in shock.

  "￡100,000 dead?" Sherbert said. "200k alive, Mr. Mage! He's put it out to everybody. It's not just Syndicate. It's every two-bit thug, jack boy, hard nose, and villain from here to Watford! They're all after you."

  I looked around over my shoulders, suddenly feeling very exposed.

  "They're all over the place," Sherbert said. "Where have you been? I thought they might have already got you."

  "They're here?" I said.

  "Yes!" Sherbert exclaimed. "They've been here all day! Black cars cruising up and down, gangs rolling around, bothering anybody that's even the right height to be you. You need to get off the street now before they find you.”

  I shook my head.

  "I can't do that, Sherbert. I need to find Brick.”

  "Forget Brick! The police will take care of that psycho," Sherbert said. "But you're not safe until they do. As soon as he's locked up, the bounty goes away."

  I shook my head again.

  "No, Sherbert. This is my problem. That police officer got killed because of me. I need to find Brick and make sure he doesn't hurt anyone ever again."

  "No, Mr. Mage, you can't," he said. "Brick's... Brick's crazy, okay? He's completely lost the plot. Last I heard, he's calling an army around him. Every Syndicate goon he's got. He's willing to go down shooting with the police. If you go anywhere near him, you're gonna get cut into a million pieces."

  "All the more reason why I've got to find him before more people get hurt and more people get killed," I said.

  "But Mr. Mage, what about…" Sherbert began.

  "Sherbert, I don't care what happens to me!" I said to him firmly. "My safety is not my concern, and it's not your concern. The only thing I care about is finding Brick."

  Sherbert blinked, his face going slack. He flapped his arms once or twice, as if he didn't know what to say.

  "Do you know where he is?" I asked.

  Sherbert hesitated.

  "Sherbert, I'm going and looking for him, regardless of whether you help me or not," I said. "But if you have any information and you do really care about my safety, then you'll give it to me. Otherwise, I'll spend the whole night wandering around these streets trying to find him on my own."

  I saw a pang of pain in Sherbert's eyes, and I felt bad about emotionally blackmailing him, but I had to find Brick by any means necessary. Sherbert sighed, and his shoulders went slack.

  "I only know rumors, Mr. Mage, and those rumors put him in 5 or 6 different places. But if you're really certain that you have to go after him…" he said, looking at me hopefully.

  "I am," I replied.

  "I can find out, but wherever he is, he's going to be super well defended. The police are everywhere, looking for him. They're hitting up all of his businesses and shutting things down. He's a feral dog being pushed into a corner.”

  "Thank you,” I said. “As soon as you hear anything…”

  Sherbert’s eyes widened and he leapt at me. His bulk bore me to the ground, and I was sandwiched painfully between him and the bitumen of the playground. But even as we fell, I heard the gunshots go off. It was the rattle of automatic gunfire and it sounded like there was more than one shooter. We hit the ground hard, and I used the momentum to roll Sherbert's weight from me. I lashed out with my Grapple Cord and pulled his trolley as hard as I could, skating it in front of us as more bullets were fired.

  I looked up and saw balaclava-clad goons coming out of the darkness. There were three of them, all with small automatic machine guns.

  "He's here! He's here!" one of them shouted, his voice muffled by the mask. "It's the Gutter Mage! Kill him!”

  I took off running. I had to draw them away from Sherbert. I couldn't fight them here. I heard more gunshots licking out behind me as I ran. I just hoped that Sherbert had gotten away. I looked over my shoulder for a split second and saw one of the goons had a phone out and was making a call.

  Shit, how far would these goons be willing to go for ￡200,000?.