Excerpt: Entropy

Nuborica—the city that never wakes. The entropy that hung over it was like the black fog that accompanied it, as much a living thing as its denizens. All seemed to share the same face, of utter indifference to all but the tasks before them, an entirely rigid and blank existence. There was no room for deviations here. Not out of harsh rule but out of tradition.

Lucia hated Nuborica. It was one big senseless, faceless mass, every bit of it. The steel buildings, the people, the heavy, low power lines, the blazing headlights and stop lights, and every other kind of lights, it was all one thing. Identical. Any square inch of it was just the same as any other. It was disgusting.

And cold. Granted her heavy wool coat kept most of the wind from scraping against her skin, and a hood kept her eyes down on the concrete sidewalk, the monotony still clogged her sight. The mindlessness. It was in the air she breathed, being sucked into her very being and dictating her movements. She pushed back against the oppressive entropy, replacing that omniscient bad feeling with one of her own creation, a hatred for it of the same power, that trailed off behind her little bubble of approved hate.

She would get out of this god damned city as soon as she could.

Her mission was a simple one. In a continuance of her past deeds, a devastating blow against the very conformity of the entropy that was threatening to squeeze the sanity out of her, she would kill the Czar of this Time. His gift was Syntropy, the power to traverse time, as easily as anyone could read the entropy of another. This power, in any hands, was a wicked one; he undoubtedly misused it.

Mitch Gallibrae would die within the next twenty-four hours.