Chapter 13. Manny

Manny woke up feeling like his mouth was filled with cotton and his head was filled with spiders.

It took him a few long seconds to remember where he was and what had happened to bring him here.

He activated his deck and was shocked to see that more than a day had passed since he dropped into bed.

His first guess was that he was suffering some side effect from Skullfucker Mike's blood. He couldn't

think of any other times he'd slept that long, although he also couldn't think of any other

times he'd survived a drone attack and an intentional car crash in the same minute.

Mirda, he cursed, and then called out, Reggie? He looked over to the cot the journalist

had been sleeping on. It was dark in the little room Nana Yazi had provided. He could see the outline

of Reggie's empty cot and not much else. The room was just one ten-by-ten section of an old

shipping crate. Manny knew the only things in the room, besides their cots, were a table

with a built-in coffee maker and a pair of folding chairs. Mani sat up, groaned as every

poppable thing in his body popped, and then rose to his feet. As he stumbled to the door,

his deck started to populate with messages from friends and family back in Austin. By the time

his hand touched the knob, there were more than 50 translucent messages hovering

at the edges of his field of vision.

He blink selected a mass response template, filled it with the names of everyone who'd sent

him something, and typed out an update.

Not dead.

Details later.

He almost sent it, but then he noticed one of the names, Aisha Martinez,

Oscar's wife. He could only see the first few lines of the message without opening it,

...