Rat Runners Read Online Free Page B

from Brundle, and the unmistakable, dull thud of a body hitting the floor. Then there was silence. Nimmo leaned harder against the wall, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Don’t get involved, he told himself. This is none of your business. Don’t draw attention to yourself.
    His conviction held for about another minute. But then he was swinging open his front door. The door to the lab was standing open. Watson Brundle was lying on his front on the floor just inside. He was deathly still, his head turned to the side; his eyes were half open and vacant, unblinking. Nimmo checked the man’s neck for a pulse and then swore under his breath, gritting his teeth and looking up and down the corridor. Darting towards the stairs leading to the roof, he bounded up them, pushed open the door and jumped out. There was no one out there. Either the murderer was blindingly fast, or they had gone out another way. Nimmo trotted around the parapet encircling the roof, looking down in every direction, trying to spot Brundle’s attacker, but saw no sign of them.
    Perhaps the murderer was playing it cool, taking their time leaving the building. Nimmo raced back down the steps and along the corridor to the main stairwell. He didn’t know what the attacker looked like, but if he found them, he’d see something about them that would give them away, he was sure of it. Descending the steps three at a time, he looked along the fifth-floor corridor and then continued on down. There was no one in any of the hallways, and he didn’t come across a single soul on the stairs. This wasn’t surprising, seeing as a Safe-Guard had passed through only a little while ago. People would be staying out of the way.
    “Jesus, who is this guy?” Nimmo muttered to himself as he hurried down the last flight of stairs. “The pissin’ roadrunner?”
    He wasn’t used to being outrun so easily. How could this scrote have disappeared so quickly? Nimmo was steaming over this as he ran through the lobby to the front door, throwing it open to find himself staring straight into the tinted visor that covered the face of the Safe-Guard.
    The figure in front of Nimmo was only a little taller than him, but seemed much bigger. Its head was covered by a graphite-colored helmet with a long smoked-glass visor, behind which Nimmo could just make out a mask of lenses and sensors. The helmet was mounted on a sturdy shoulder harness, able to swivel right and left, to save the guard’s neck from carrying the weight of all the apparatus. The only marking on the helmet was the WatchWorld logo on the front, and the square white digits of the Safe-Guard’s identification number—L489I—on the sides. The logo was made up of two silver, stylized hands on a black background, encircling a red sphere, forming the image of an eye. There were vents in the sides, allowing the figure to hear, but also to detect sounds and signals inaudible to the human ear.
    Its height was exaggerated by the length of the visor, and by the long blue-gray cloak, the seams marked in lighter gray in vertical lines. The cloak hid the Safe-Guard’s arms and covered its legs down as far as its ankles. There were epaulettes on the shoulders of the harness, also bearing its ID in steel numbers, and a WatchWorld badge on the left breast. But otherwise the cloak had little in the way of features. The Safe-Guards were not meant to be eye- catching. It was their job to see others.
    Nimmo had seconds to think. Bursting through a door, breathing fast and looking like you’re going somewhere in a rush was the kind of thing that got noticed. Doing it not long after a death on the top floor of the building—a death that would be discovered before long, even if he didn’t report it—would set alarm bells ringing in WatchWorld Control. Best to get it all out in the open. Or a version of it, anyway.
    “Muh boss is dead!” Nimmo panted, letting his face go slack and his eyes go dull. He let his lip hang as he