A tracked robot buzzed by at forty miles an hour, rattling the crate under Jama’al. His hand went to the recoil pistol lying beside him but stopped. If they knew he was up here, they would use the noise of the robot as cover for an attack; but if they didn’t, the sound of the pistol charging up would give him away. So his hand hovered over the grip as the robot passed below his perch, high atop a fifty-foot stack of crates in the crowded, endless warehouse.

It was a standard stockroom robot, with rubber tracks six feet apart and a thin body comprised of a multi-stage hydraulic cylinder with two spiked arms. It could extend to fifty feet to retrieve the plastic shipping containers from their stacks, which it would balance on its head as it raced back to the fulfillment center. The containers were big—eight feet on a side—and could weigh several tons. A loaded robot shook the earth like a freight train.

The robot faded into the distance. Jama’al counted to five, then relaxed, withdrawing his hand from the pistol. He turned back to the bullets, which were slotted inside a thermal container. He pulled his sleeve over a gloved hand and drew one out, then slid it gently into the breach of his rifle. Wisps of condensation rose from the barrel, which clicked softly as the metal contracted. The bullet’s explosive tips were unstable; they had to be kept well below freezing until used.

After he had loaded three bullets, he closed the case and slipped it into a black pouch on his belt. He wore black from head to toe, his face covered but for a strip across his eyes.

He planted a hand and rotated up to his knees, then slid the rifle’s telescoping legs to the edge of the crate. He eased forward, pressing his eye to the scope, and aimed the rifle down. They were still there, five stories below: three large rats.

Jama’al was an exterminator—pest control—just like his father and his father before that. His grandfather had started the business with money he had earned by running black ops in Africa for the CIA. It was nothing to be proud of, but Jama’al found it reassuring that soldiering was in his blood, even if it was two generations back.

He had grown up working for the family business and, when his father passed, took charge. These days, their single biggest client was FOODex Direct’s Staten Island storage facility. It was the largest food repository in the world, a massive warehouse that stretched four miles in both directions and was loaded with enough groceries to supply the company’s four million customers for a week. It had been steady, easy work until this latest batch of rats had arrived. The damage they were causing was excessive, egregious even, and Jama’al was in danger of losing the most lucrative extermination contract in all of New York. And all three of his exterminators had failed—and failed hard—to remove them. So, for the first time in eight years, Jama’al had been forced to suit up himself. Jama’al didn’t like working alone, but he didn’t have the money to hire anyone else. And in this business, you paid up front—fees and insurance. But if Jama’al didn’t like it, his wife liked it even less.

“Look at yourself,” she had said, poking the bulge in his gut. “Thirty-five years old and flattering yourself you can still handle field work.”

She had a point, Jama’al knew it, but if he couldn’t get rid of these rats, FOODex would hire someone who could.

The warehouse seemed endless in the dim light, and was nearly silent in these early hours. Three-thirty, Jama’al guessed. Around five the orders would start rolling in and more robots would come online—five thousand at the day’s peak. It would be chaos then, dangerous, but for now the scant few were easy enough to avoid. And that was when the rats came out. The smart ones, anyway.

The three Jama’al was looking at now were facing away, breaking into a container stenciled “EGGS.” Two of them dug at the plastic shell with their claws, but the third had a pry bar the size of a butter knife. That would be the leader; Jama’al targeted him first.

He thumbed a small dial on the gun’s stock, zooming the scope until he could see the rat’s greasy gray-brown hair. Despite the explosive power of the bullets, there were only two guaranteed kills: the heart and the brain. Since his target was profile, Jama’al aimed for the head. He needed a kill on the first shot, and he needed a second kill before they could react. Without the element of surprise, one rat was the most he could hope to handle.

He drew a breath and released it slowly, squeezing the trigger. The gun gasped and the bullet flew though the air, catching the rat above the ear. It was a perfect hit; the rat’s head vaporized with a flash.

Jama’al swung toward the next rat as his rifle whirred gently, chambering the next bullet. The rat turned as he yanked the trigger; it saw Jama’al and leaped into the air. The bullet caught its foot, blowing it clean off, but that wasn’t enough. Both rats scurried from sight, no doubt heading his way. It was time to move.

Jama’al fired his third bullet into the egg container, which puffed out and sprayed yellow goo from its seams. The damage would be deducted from his fee, but it was suicide to carry a gun loaded with explosive bullets.

He rolled onto his back, pointed the rifle up, and flicked a tab on its side—the barrel slid into the stock, shortening the gun by half. He slung it over his shoulder into a Lycra holster, the stretchy material holding it fast. He snatched the recoil pistol, which hummed to life, and leaped off the container into the five-story cavern of stacked crates.

He controlled his fall by bouncing between the two sides and shoving upward with his legs. It felt good—the rush of blood, the burn in his muscles—but then his foot slipped. He plunged fifteen feet and his back slapped against the cement floor, forcing out a groan.

He snapped the pistol up, gripped in both hands, and aimed at the container from which he had just leaped. The rats would be there by now, and maybe one of them would be dumb enough to look over the edge. He could use a little luck.

He waited five, six seconds. Nothing. He rolled to his feet and sprinted away.

He moved randomly through the maze of containers, turning as often as possible. His shoes were soft, padded with two centimeters of foam, and his thick cotton mask muffled both the sound and the smell of his breath, but that wouldn’t fool the rats, just slow them down.

He turned into a hallway so long and straight that the walls seemed to meet in the distance. His legs were already stiff and he was breathing hard—he kept in shape, but it was still a lot harder than it had once been. He knew he couldn’t outrun them; he needed a decoy.

Still running, he holstered his gun and pulled a motorized car from his belt—a child’s toy, but with flat spots filed on two of the tires. He set the car down and stopped hard. The car continued down the hallway, tires thumping like footsteps.

Jama’al pulled out two explosive charges, liquid in thick foil pouches. One side was camouflaged with shipping labels, the other was adhesive. He pressed them to crates on opposite sides of the passage, then slipped around the corner and scurried up a column made from a heavy I-beam. The tips of his gloves and the points of his shoes were coated with gecko-like microfibers; they clung to the metal when pressed flat, then released when rolled upward.

He was exhausted by the time he was twenty-five feet in the air, unable to climb any farther. He was exposed, but fortunately most rats didn’t think to look up—it was against their nature. At least, it used to be. The only thing Jama’al was sure of was that each rat would be tougher and more cunning than the last.

Rats have plagued New York City since the first barn was raised on Manhattan. They are a pestilence, universally despised, but difficult to eliminate and, all in all, harmless. Or they had been.

Twenty years ago, a genetics lab in Brooklyn made a shocking discovery. It wasn’t their research—their progress had been slow and steady, boosting the strength, endurance, and intelligence of lab rats with an eye toward applying these techniques to humans. But what they found wasn’t under their microscopes or on their dissection trays, it was in an old closet: rats’ nests. Hundreds of them.

The lab had been infested by wild rats.

At first drawn by the food, the wild rats had mated with those in the lab. By the time the nests were discovered, it was too late: their offspring had already found their way back to the sewers.

These genetically jacked rats were a Darwinian no-brainer. They dominated the gene pool, mixing their augmented traits, growing smarter and bigger. And bigger rats meant bigger appetites. Soon they ventured into the streets, invading grocery stores and mini-marts in broad daylight.

For the first time in decades, the sound of gunfire was common in Manhattan. Human casualties, mostly police, racked up. The city poisoned the sewers and sent in armed robots, but succeeded only in weeding out the weak—thereby accelerating the rats’ evolution.

People avoided stores and groceries were delivered in armored vans. The mayor banned food storage inside the city, and mega-warehouses were constructed across the harbor on Staten Island. These facilities were fully automated—robots were expensive, but the work was simply too dangerous for humans.

The largest and most expensive of these warehouses belonged to FOODex Direct. It was a fortress, with three-foot-thick walls of steel-reinforced concrete and a two-foot cement slab for a floor. High-voltage electric fences, thirty-feet tall and buried ten feet underground, surrounded the building. The fifty yards of no-man’s land between the fence and the building was patrolled by an army of robots armed with military-grade weapons. It was meant to be impenetrable, but this was a rat’s paradise. The best of them found a way in. And once they did, the only way to get them out again was to kill them. And that’s what Jama’al did.

The work was more dangerous than that of his father or his grandfather, but it was still the extermination business. Times had changed and Jama’al had evolved. And if the work was harder, the rewards were higher—if he walked away now, his fee for just the one rat would keep his company in business for a month. But he wouldn’t walk away from a job unfinished. More to the point, they wouldn’t let him.

The toy car was long gone and still no sign of the rats. Too long, Jama’al thought, but he didn’t move. He had played his gambit and could only wait.

A shadow appeared. Jama’al took a breath and held it. Stay loose to stay fast, he recited, clamping his teeth on the edge of his tongue. A hint of fur appeared at the corner, then withdrew. Does it know I’m here?

In a blur, the rat zipped to the next corner and disappeared. It crept back into view, flattened against a crate opposite Jama’al. Jama’al held rock still; the rat didn’t look up, but peered down the hall where the car had gone. Looking, but not following.

The rat rose onto its hind legs and nibbled its paw thoughtfully. Not so long ago, you could just wait a rat out. Stay out of sight and it would go back to its business. But the new breeds were smarter. They knew if you got away, you’d come back. They knew to hunt you to your death.

Jama’al drew a shallow breath, fighting the urge for more. The more he breathed, the farther the smell of his breath would travel. But he was suffocating.

The rat pondered the hallway, took a couple steps, then stopped. It was still too far from the explosives, but there was no more time. Jama’al pressed a button on his belt and the containers blew apart.

Jama’al had forgotten to put in his earplugs. The concussion pierced his ears and then there was silence. He watched crates dissolve, the stacks above them toppling like demolished buildings. Tens of thousands of dollars in food scattered over the floor.

The rat stood dazed as a container dropped forty feet and shattered on its head. It fell and the rubble piled over it.

Jama’al yanked his feet loose and slid to the floor, drawing the recoil pistol from its holster. He sprinted forward, reaching the rat just as it burst from the debris, leaping toward him. He thrust the pistol to its chest and fired.

A hodge-podge of metal shot from the pistol’s two-inch barrel, everything from buckshot to razor-thin caltrops. Different ammo worked with different rats, so the idea was to blast it with everything. The shrapnel ripped through the rat—its back arched, and it went stiff.

Two down, Jama’al thought, but then pain seared through his body and he was jerked backward.

The final rat had attacked from behind, leaping onto his back and sinking its broad front teeth into the place where the shoulder meets the neck. Jama’al’s carbon-fiber vest cracked open, exposing the flesh underneath. The rat drew its head back to strike and Jama’al knew he was dead. But instead he was slammed from the side.

He flew through the air, crashing head-first through the side of a crate. A thousand vacuum-packed breakfast cakes exploded around him, their crumbs like snow. Jama’al passed out.

A terrible racket woke him—a grinding noise Jama’al couldn’t place. His mask was lopsided; he ripped it from his face and tried to push upright, but the gash in his shoulder screamed in protest. He rolled to his side instead, feeling his broken ribs rubbing against each other. He grabbed the rim of the hole he had made coming in and pulled; there was a sucking sound as he came free of the breakfast cakes’ jam filling. He peered out.

A stockroom robot lay on its side, mangled, its tracks spinning in the air. Not just spinning, but stopping and turning; the robot ran its program as if nothing was wrong. It was blind, directed through the warehouse by RF positioning. It wouldn’t have known Jama’al and the rat were in its path, and the two of them had been too shell-shocked to hear it coming.

The rat stood over the robot, wavering drunkenly on its hind legs. It growled at the machine, a paw held to its blood-matted head.

The rat was bigger than he remembered, the size of a large dog or an adolescent bear. Its fur was short, a coat of gray velvet over bulging muscles. The creature balanced on one leg, using its thick pink tail as a crutch. Its other leg was just a stump, coated in that ridiculous red of fresh blood. The rat growled louder, as if arguing, and bared its teeth at the robot. It hadn’t seen Jama’al yet.

The recoil pistol was gone, and his hands were too shaky to load the rifle. So instead he pulled an eight-inch Bowie knife from his boot, its channeled blade gleaming in the dim light. It was an impressive knife, but a fool’s weapon against the monster in front of him.

When was the last time someone had killed a rat by hand? he wondered. Ten years? Fifteen?

Jama’al eased a leg out, probing for the floor, but a piece of the container snapped off in his hand. The rat turned, its eyes narrowing at the sight of him.

He saw now how badly the rat had been wounded. Half of the skin on its face was gone, exposing skull, jawbone, and glistening red teeth. It advanced.

Jama’al dropped from the container and raised his knife, making the meanest face he could. The rat coiled, arms wide, claws outstretched. Jama’al crouched, pointing the knife forward.

“Come on!” he bellowed. The rat leaped.

The injured rat was just slow enough that Jama’al got his damaged shoulder forward, sacrificing it to save the good one. Teeth cut through his flesh and cracked the bone beneath.

Jama’al swung for the skinless cheek, aiming between jaw and skull, driving into its mouth. The tip sunk in and the rat reared back, slipping on its bloody stump and tumbling backward onto Jama’al. Jama’al was knocked to the floor. The rat crushed his ribs, its putrid fur grinding into his face.

Jama’al brought his arms around the rat’s head and grabbed the protruding knife in both hands. He flexed his arms, pulling the knife toward himself and forcing it in. The rat bucked, pounding Jama’al against the floor. Fluid poured into his lungs and he coughed violently, spraying blood and gasping for breath. He made one final pull and the knife slid in, its hilt catching on the roof of the rat’s mouth.

The rat clamped its jaw, its teeth grinding on Jama’al’s hand. The pain was excruciating. He couldn’t pull free. But the rat slowed, stopped, and lay still.

Warm syrup poured over Jama’al’s chest—either of their blood or both. He levered the carcass with his elbow, rolling it off, then wedged his knee into the rat’s jaw and withdrew his hand. It hung limply inside the glove; he was glad he couldn’t see it.

He worked himself to his feet and stumbled down the hall. It was a good mile to the operations room, the nearest place he could get help. He smiled despite the pain, proud. He had killed three rats—one of them with a knife. And he had saved his family’s company. Even his wife would have to admit . . .

Jama’al’s legs buckled and he fell, getting his hands up just in time to keep his head from cracking against the cement floor. The room was spinning, growing dark. One last expense, he thought, reaching for the emergency call button on his belt.