DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

of the driver as he thrashed and tried to get free. People on the street stared as I punctured the airbag, jerked the driver free, and rolled his unconscious body out of the vehicle. I slid into the now vacated seat, and resumed driving. But not along the planned evacuation route.
    A knock from the back compartment, and I slid it open, keeping eyes forward.
    “Holy shit,” Martin said.
    “Hello to you too, Martin.”
    “Nearly didn’t recognize you, Dire.”
    “That was the point of the disguise.”
    “So, uh, thanks. What now?”
    “Ditch the van at the planned location, switch to a different vehicle, and drive to the safehouse.”
    “And then?”
    I stopped at a red light, turned to grin at him. “Then the real work begins.”

CHAPTER 2: THE LAIR
    “It's easier than you'd think to move around in public, even after your secret identity's been outed. Most people are bad at matching faces to photos. If you act normal and maybe wear some sunglasses or a hat or something to draw attention away from your face, you've got good odds of grabbing a pizza or whatever without people calling nine one one. Well, unless you're ten feet tall and green. Which is why my life sucks.”
     
    --Crocagator, during an in-prison interview with Channel Five News.
     
    Whaler’s Wharf was an older part of the city, back when shipping and fishing had been its major industries. Both ended up falling by the wayside after World War Two, and the infrastructure had suffered as a result. They had never completely gone away, however, and the open air stalls of Fishmarket were still the best place for fresh seafood in the city. A few long-established factories in Cannery Row still worked night and day to compress tuna and cod into transportable packages, and the great cranes of Dockside unloaded the big ships that found their way past Baltimore and Boston Harbor. On a darker note, though the Tongs of Dragon Street were long gone, eradicated by the Phantasm in the thirties, drugs were still an epidemic. No longer was the district host to the opium dens and speakeasies of a bygone age. Now the junkies chased cheap and dangerous thrills of betameth, and heroin.
    The overall impression was one of surly, stoic decay. Though not as bad as the slums where I’d first achieved consciousness, it was definitely a neighborhood where the money had fled years ago. Many baroque, older buildings were left boarded up, crumbling as time and tide wore upon them, exposed to the sea on the peninsula that jutted out from the southeast of Icon like a sturdy chin. The newer structures were all stainless steel and treated concrete, stained by oil and heavy use. A few nice houses on the southern shore, old colonials with widow’s walks and turrets, and tightly maintained little gardens in their postage stamp yards.
    The lair wasn’t in the residential sections, though. I’d rented a small warehouse through a false identity. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny for more than a few months, but I wouldn’t need it for more than a few weeks, if all went to plan. All I truly needed from it was a place to lie low and store my equipment, and it performed that job admirably. It was close enough to one of the wharves that the noise of the cranes muffled the industrial noises my welding and manufacturing gear produced, during the daytime, at least.
    Martin wasn’t impressed. “Shee-it, what a dump. Roaches or rats?”
    “Probably some vermin running around the lower level. Dire doesn’t particularly care, so long as they stay out of the living quarters above.” I slowed the Fjord Nina to a stop, ignoring the rattling from the suspension. It had been one of the cheapest cars I could find from a seller who asked no questions, and ugly enough that I didn’t fear potential theft when I left it out in the small lot behind the facility. Once parked, I hopped out, closed the rusty gate, and shut the padlock behind us. I measured the distance to the docks, nodded. Unlikely to be