Chapter Text
"It's definitely the Abbey," Aleksander yells. "Only Overseers aim that badly." The sentiment is undermined by the bullets whistling past their heads, but Popinjay pops up from behind the barricade and fires off two bolts with a cackle.
"It was the shiny empty heads that did it for me!" he crows, shooting another Overseer through the eye as Aleksander yanks him down by his coat.
"Keep your head on, doctor..."
"Aww officer. You know I don't have one." Even so, Popinjay leans out cautiously. "Hm-hmhm. I spy with my dark vision eye five Overseer bodies."
"I assume these are living bodies." It's Aleksander's only gripe with dark vision; the gift is low on specifics like 'how dead is the thing.'
"Living, incoming, walking - wait one." Popinjay snatches up a plank at their feet and with a hard swing bats an incoming grenade back at the Overseers. The explosion rattles even the stairs behind them; Aleksander hears a muffled curse from the Whalers below as something goes clanging down the steps. When the smoke across the street clears, he can see starlight through the hole blasted in the opposite building's wall.
"Well." It's the first time Aleksander's seen a grenade's work firsthand. "That...certainly slowed them down, doctor."
"Mm, and hopefully destroyed some music boxes. I hate music boxes." Popinjay shakes himself like a dog drying off and drops the plank back on the bridge. "Noisy."
Aleksander blinks to a better viewpoint and scans the area, dark vision tinting the world yellow. "Lots of patches of bodies." He's surprised they can be blown into pieces that small. "I think they're staying down."
"No worries. There'll be more." Popinjay rearranges the barricade's planks. "There're always more."
"We just blew up an entire squadron, doctor. The Abbey has no reason to send more here."
"The Abbey has no reason to send even one here. If there's one there's more. Five more at least. I know it. Right there." Popinjay taps his left ear, the one permanently deafened from a music session at the Abbey. "The bridge will funnel them through, unless they're stupid enough to try wading the river. Think you can pick them off on your own up here? I must see if there are any patients down below."
"So long as you come back if they start swarming through."
"The bridge will complain about it loud enough. See the slats? All rust. I should ask Daud to have us add oiling duty to our roster when he comes back. I hate rust."
"Well then." Aleksander makes a show of checking his wristbow. "I'll try not to get too much blood everywhere."
"An allowance of my tastes. I approve." Popinjay flicks Aleksander's shoulder in his odd version of a brotherly slap, and disappears in a gasp of smoke. Aleksander remembers one of the others saying the shoulder flick is how Popinjay usually feels how long someone's been dead. He's never asked if it's true.
Faint wisps of transversals come down from overhead as Popinjay directs the other Whalers to vantage points. A quick scan in dark vision shows the flooded street below is clear; the Overseers are coming, as predicted, by bridge.
The slats ahead of him suddenly creak, rusted panels groaning like a nightingale floor. Aleksander sights an oncoming Overseer and takes aim, right at that gleaming, empty head.