His ankle thumped with a sickening pain as the first bands of a stitch tightened about his chest. He pumped his feet, kept his breathing in check, and skidded around another corner. More shouts from behind, louder, closer. This area of Brooklyn was filled with old warehouses, the tall, graffiti-smothered brick walls crowding in on either side. The ground was an assault course of cracked and peeling tarmac and loops of material bent into trip hazards ready to throw him to the floor once again. A rock shattered against the wall near his head, showering him in sharp fragments. Another street, more clumps of unemployed huddled in corners, shouting at him as he raced past. He cleared a mumbling, semiconscious woman in one long leap, fell down hard, boots sliding on black ice, then up and go go go. A scrawny hand grabbed at him from a doorway, missed. Red kept pushing, breath a leaden weight in his lungs, left foot, right foot, move .