In contrast, the second guy looked like any regular street punk, with a dark t-shirt, worn jeans and a motorcycle jacket. I saw a gun handle sticking out of his jacket though, and he held a second gun in his hands, what looked like some kind of custom-made automatic with more of that green metal woven into the barrel. If it wasn't for the high-grade military gun, he could have been a plainclothes cop, except he really didn't look like one. I only knew he was with the other two because he held the modified handgun on the seer, and I saw the guy in the military uniform say something to him while he ground his boot into that woman's face.

The third man, who looked to be in charge, wore an expensive-looking black business suit and dress shirt with a brick red tie covered in small yellow flowers. His sandy-blond hair had been pulled back in an elegant ponytail, making the thick features of his face even more severe when his fleshy lips frowned. From the wrinkles, I pegged him at maybe early fifties.

Whoever they were, they didn't seem too concerned about having an audience.

The guy in uniform held the seer's face flush with the sidewalk, so that she seemed to be having trouble breathing. All I could see was her profile now, and her hands held out in surrender. Although she otherwise looked human, I probably would have pegged her as a seer from those shockingly purple eyes, even without the collar.

"Whoever you think I am, I am not she!" the seer said in heavily-accented English. "I did not do anything! I am legal...as are my actions! I have done nothing wrong!"

"You icebloods never do anything wrong, do you?" the man with his foot on his neck sneered. "You're fucking model citizens, every one of you...isn't that right?"

"She didn't do anything!" I yelled.

"Allie, shut up!" Jon hissed.

The man in the suit was the only one who turned.

He smiled at me faintly, his eyes had that flat, unseeing quality that's always freaked me out. One of those, 'the lights are on, but no one's home' looks...or maybe that the thing steering the ship wasn't actually the man whose face I was looking at.

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Unconsciously, I took a step backwards, deeper into the crowd.

"We appreciate your compassion, ma'am," the man called out to me cordially.

His voice had a slight drawl to it, like he came from one of the Southern states but hadn't lived there in a while. I couldn't have said which state, though. Also, his tone made me think he more found my defense of the seer amusing than that he 'appreciated' it really.




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