Black Man / Thirteen

A dozen shit-scared cudlips. Good odds for the lottery guy.

You’ll show them.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered.

Drag the armchair aside, crack the door, and peer out. He couldn’t see anybody, hadn’t expected to really. But they’d come in sooner or later, to check on the man who gave them their orders, told them what to do, kept them fed.

I’ll see you in the garden.

The whisper ghosted past his ear again, behind him in the gloom. This time he heard it for sure. It lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. Carl nodded and reached back with his left hand, cupped the place on his neck where the voice had touched. He looked one more time at Onbekend’s incandescent corpse, checked his weapons one more time, nodded to himself again.

Deep breath.

Then he went out into the sun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard K Morgan is the acclaimed author of Woken Furies, Market Forces, Broken Angels, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that also won the Philip K. Dick Award. Morgan sold the movie rights for Altered Carbon to Joel Silver and Warner Bros. His third book, Market Forces, has also been sold to Warner Bros. and was wi