Chapter 6. Tank Brody's legs churned as fast as they could carry his substantial frame through the crowd racing along the street. Behind him he could hear the cries of men and women who had been unable to keep pace and had fallen into the clutches of the mechanical monsters that pursued them. He raced on, a small girl in his arms whom he had plucked from the street, terrified at the scene of horror that surrounded her.

Brody only knew one mission now.

He must get that girl to safety, and the crowd of panicked citizens for whom he had become de facto leader in the last ten minutes.

Two hours ago it had all been much simpler.

After the events of a few days earlier, Tank had continued to work out at Spiro's gym,

making enough small progress for the old man to keep him coming around.

Brody's natural disinclination toward violence had been overridden by his curiosity about his fellow boxer's activities and his need to learn more.

If anything, Spiro Poppus had been far too pleased

with the change in his star people's attitude to notice anything untoward. Brody arrived early and

stayed late and seemed to take a greater interest in everything about the gym than he had before.

What Spiro did not realize was that the big man was keeping a close eye out for Andy Parker,

Mack Tully,

or any of the other men he had seen leave with them the other night. The men who had somehow known about the attack on innocent people even before the police did, who had fought tooth

and nail to protect those same people, and who seemed to take orders from that remarkable

masked man whom Brody had glimpsed

at a distance.

Brody had managed to learn a thing or two about him, too, though just how much of it was

true he couldn't begin to say.

Brody had drifted to Toronto from the west.

His decline and fortunes had carried him across the prairies and into the heart of the great lost city,

like so many others who had been stripped of everything but hope by these dark times.

He knew few people in Toronto, and even less about its lore.

...