Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher - Sample Chapters

slipped out first. Tony’s thin-soled sneakers slapped the cement floor as he shot for the station exit.

It was much darker up top than it had been in downtown, even though Tony lived, in theory, within the central city area. Pedestrians here were few and the street traffic was light. Tony wasted no time, and after a perfunctory check of the roadway, sprinted across it from the station steps to the almost entirely black shadow cast by the still-unfurled awning of his local grocery. Back flat to the plateglass storefront, Tony checked ahead, left, right.

All clear.

Tony waited a few more minutes. Two people emerged from the subway and walked off together in the opposite direction, but that was it. Tony counted to ten, then up to twenty, before finally settling on thirty. Holding his breath, he peeled off the window and headed up the street towards his apartment.

Tony slowed as he approached his building. He expected it to be fairly quiet – dead, in fact – at this time of night, but there was no need to burst into the lobby in any kind of rush, just in case. The safest place in the city was Tony’s apartment, and priority number one was getting up there in good time and with no suspicions raised.

Of course the elevator took forever. The building wasn’t particularly new, but then it wasn’t exactly a rundown dump – Tony had struck lucky finding the place, especially on his limited means. It was just a hair above average, in an OK area with a manage-