“Did you get them?” Bell asked me—her voice came from somewhere above and next to me simultaneously, drifting through a fine net. The words slurred into each other even though I knew she was speaking normally.

I nodded. Didn’t trust myself to force words through my teeth—but as soon as I moved my neck I winced. Just that little shift of my head felt like the entire world slid into a wall.

I tried not to move much. Gave Bell a limp thumbs-up instead.

Bell made a small affirmatory noise and turned around. In the commotion both of the targets tried to separate themselves from Bell—with Sal almost at the door and Sally almost at the window.

They didn’t get far.

Bell barely had to tense and both of them dropped again, legs unresponsive. She simply walked up to Sally—who was completely immobile except for her face—and dragged her back into the dining room.

The side of my head was warm. I hadn’t noticed it before. Warm in the sense of heat, and also in the sense of a warm liquid—blood? My blood.

I shifted my hand up and cupped the spot. It was above my ear, below the crown of my head—and yes, it was bleeding. My hair was clumping up there.

I gingerly went to touch the wound—an impulse everyone has—and my whole head exploded into red fury so fast it made me lose the room again. I sucked in a breath and shoved it out and did it again and again until the pain had subsided enough for me to come back to where I was.

“…or you two are mush.”

Esther was gone. The Bell I knew was standing in her place.

So that was it for secrecy, I supposed.

Bell continued, speaking down to the immobilized pair. “I don’t think either of you give enough of a shit about this organization to die for it, but you’ve got one chance to prove me wrong. Either of you. Start talking. You know the questions. You’ve been preparing for them your whole lives.”

Sal did not speak. The agent got there first. “There’s a team of us. Six. One of them’s dead already. Outside of the guy Erika shot. How the fuck did she get him from that far away?”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer that. Was I supposed to crawl over there and be present? My name was called, anyway, but I wasn’t confident I could get over there even if I tried.

Step one would be getting off my back.

“I guess that explains that, then,” Sally said. “She’s the real deal, alright.”

“Explains what?” Bell asked.

I could only imagine what she looked like in that moment. Fragments of memories back from a time when Bell was the most powerful thing in the world.

She still is, isn’t she? Nothing, really, has changed. Kingdoms of flesh are nothing to her.

This war is unwinnable for them. Surely, now, they know. They never had a chance.

“Explains what?” Bell asked, again. Demanded. I heard the agent suck in a breath and I knew what was coming, but Bell had allowed the agent just the tiniest scrap of hand movement so she could tap the floor to make it stop—and she did, so Bell stopped and let her talk.

“The plan,” Sally said. “I don’t know what it is, but Erika’s the only one we have orders to take in alive.”

That confirmed it, then. I had my suspicions, but hearing it in the air—dense and foamy as the words were through my swimming head—changed the way I thought about it.

It changed a lot of things.

“Alive,” Bell echoed, and it echoed again in my hollow skull three times more. “The rest of us, I suppose, you thought you could slaughter.”

“The rest of you we were supposed to kill,” Sally said, slowly. “Yeah.”

“Knowing full well it couldn’t be done,” Bell said.

“Knowing full well,” she admitted back.

“They sent you on a suicide mission, then. I thought they might have.”

“The hope,” she said, without any semblance of such, “was that the sniper would kill you, and then we’d have time to knock out Erika or something before she could respond. The shock of it would paralyze her for just a second. I think that would’ve worked, still. We put Wester a mile into the woods, and she still got him.”

“She’s gotten targets from a mile out before,” Bell said.

“That’s fucked up,” the agent said, quietly.

I was being talked about—I had to be present.

I tried to sit up, and even the tiniest head movement associated with simply starting to move was enough to put my whole existence into stars and force me down again.

How long had it been since I’d been hurt? Had I ever?

The stone chunk—or was it a metal one? It was cold, that was all I knew—it ricocheted off something and hit me in the side of the head. I knew that much—it was lying in the corner somewhere, with a scrap of my blood on it.

It occurred to me, through a mask and filtered, that even for all my theatrics, I still almost died.

And it also occurred to me that I saved Bell’s life.

It must have only glanced off me. Anything resembling a direct hit would’ve crushed my skull for sure with the speed it was going.

I breathed, slowly through my nose, trying not to inflate my lungs too much. Lying very still.

There was no more breath coming from the agent. Bell must have taken her out while I was distracted. I went searching for her head and didn’t find it—there was a misshapen pile of flesh and bone-shards there much like what I’d turned the sniper—Wester?—into a mile outside.

Mouth shut tight. Don’t think about the smell.

“You can tell us where your boss is, or I can put you into a more mobile container and take you to the real Esther, who will drag it out of you anyway.”

And Sal said—to his credit, still perfectly toneless, “Is there any chance—any at all—that I make it out of this house alive?”

Bell paused. “Depends how good your information is.”

“Take my phone,” Sal said. “I’ll shut off the lock-screen for you. It should have everything you’d need on it. I’ve been to my boss’s place before. It’ll be in the Maps history. The number’s at 78, but I don’t remember the street name—should be enough to find it, though.”

His eyes flicked down to his jeans. “I can’t—I can’t really move, so…”

Bell crouched down and slipped her fingers into his pocket, pulling out the phone and dropping it onto his chest. “I’ll give you one hand so you can remove the lock from it.”

She fulfilled her end and he did his.

“This’ll have everything I need,” she said, looking at it. Standing again. “Good. Anything more?”

Sal paused. “There’s a layer of management above me that controls ground operations—that’s the person you’re looking for. Above her is the man himself.”

“And his name?”

“You’ll have to ask my boss,” Sal said. “I’m just a small nothing. I don’t know shit.”

Bell shrugged. “That’s fine. A lead’s a lead. Let me make sure this place is actually in your maps history before we part, hmm?”

She turned his phone screen on—and satisfied that there was no longer a lock screen—went into his maps app and looked for the last searched places.

“78 Gregor Road in White Plains?”

“That’s the one,” he said. “Weird building but there’s not much in it.”

She tapped the address and looked at the details of it. “This is a plumbing company.”

“That’s the front,” he said. “It’s a small building with a big basement. They normally keep an earth-key down there, since the whole thing’s concrete. Incidentally, there—there actually is a plumber guy who works upstairs. He’s innocent. He doesn’t know anything. Literally just a plumber. Please don’t kill him,” Sal said.

For once—not deadpanned. He might’ve meant that one.

“We’ll see,” Bell said, scrolling around the neighborhood.

“Give me your word,” Sal said, his voice suddenly hard. “God. Fuck. Give your word that just this once, you won’t.”

Bell looked up from the phone—or down, I suppose, given the scale—and said quietly, “What’s it to you what I do or don’t?”

“He’s just a fucking plumber,” Sal said. “I got coffee with him last Tuesday. He’s got a family. He knows weird shit happens in the basement but knows not to look and he doesn’t. Dude doesn’t know anything. He’s just a random goddamn plumber. He doesn’t even know about magic. God—he might be the only innocent one left. Please—just…whatever you do, tell him to get the fuck out before you knock the joint. Okay?”

Bell frowned. “Can’t guarantee I’ll be the one on this job.”

“Erika’ll be there, right?” He tried to sit up to get a look at me—presumably—and Bell slammed his head back down against the linoleum so hard I thought his skull cracked.

“Tell her,” Sal wheezed. His lungs weren’t inflating right. Bell wouldn’t let them.

For half a second, Bell turned back toward me—a nightmare silhouette in a shattered world.

Then she looked back at Sal and said, “I’ll forward that to the relevant parties. Anything else?”

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all.”

“I’ll going to put you to sleep now,” Bell said. “A crew will come by and get you when they clean up this house. You’ll be moved to a secure facility where Esther—the real one, not me—will scrub anything else relevant out of your head. It’s not her first time, you’ll be fine. After that we’ll release you somewhere in upstate. You’re not going to have much, but it’s better than being dead, and it’s better than being a part of this sinking ship. Those are the terms. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it,” Sal said.

“Noted. Good night,” Bell said—and with that, Sal’s breathing slowed.

Slower and slower and—

Bell was next to me. When did she get there?

“Erika—”

She was standing over me.

“Are you okay?”

It’d been some time, right? I could try speaking.

“I’m—I’m okay,” I said, but the words came out wide and soft. Pillowy.

She moved slightly over to my left side, looking down near where my wound was. “The cut’s not all that deep,” she said. Laying her hand gently on my forehead, she added, “Nothing’s broken. You probably just have a concussion.”

“A—”

“You’re going to be out for a little while. Prochazka’s probably got a protocol for this. I’ll give him a call on our way back to the motel. For now—can you stand?”

“My head hurts,” I mumbled.

“I know,” Bell said. “But you’re not in any extreme danger. For now, we’ve got to get back home before the clean-up crew gets here. I’ll help you stand. Okay?”

I took a breath. Deep, this time—and it hurt, it did, but it was okay.

I was going to be fine.

Bell took my arm and pulled me upright, and even though my legs didn’t quite catch at first, she held me up.

We stood there in the wreckage of the dining room, silent for a moment.

“Did the agent say anything about Benji?” I asked. zzMy voice was low. I didn’t want to move my jaw too much.

“She didn’t know,” Bell said. “The team was supposed to sync up after this.”

She surveyed the house, and then said to me, “Let’s go to the door.”

She took a step, and so did I—and nothing fell out from under me. I was fine. This was okay.

I was okay.

The steps were slow, but they were steps and we made them—and we got to that door, opened just a crack right where I’d left it.

Bell said to me, in a low voice to match my own: “Thank you for saving my life.”

0 0 0

It was slow going, but we made it back to the motel in one piece, without too many stares. After a while, and a bit of stumbling, I was able to walk under my own power. I was a bit nauseous, and everything I did felt rounded and numb, but overall, I was all there. It was a bit tough to talk, too, so I generally kept quiet. Not that that was all that different from before.

We got what we wanted. The information was in hand, and two of the six were down. Three, if Yoru was to be believed. That shadow-unit tailing us was real, and yet somehow felt completely inconsequential. Their efforts were completely in vain, weren’t they?

Were we not all invincible?

All of us except—

0 0 0

What came the next day didn’t come as a surprise to me. I knew it was coming. It couldn’t have been anything else, could it?

Every step Bell and I took toward the bus stop that next day, still woozy from the day before, convinced me more of that. He was dead. He had to be dead.

It couldn’t have been anything else, could it?

The feeling of responsibility I’d had two nights ago was gone. I was at peace with the idea that this was in no way, shape, or form my fault. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t have done anything. Saving Bell somehow absolved me of a failure to save Benji. I saved the one I was there for; therefore, I couldn’t be responsible for saving the one I wasn’t there for.

But maybe if he’d liked me a bit more—

He didn’t, though, and that was past. There was nothing I could do about it.

I was so certain of what was going to be said that when I felt Loybol and Eliza there in the bus stop, not looking at each other, Loybol’s hands folded in her lap and Eliza’s braced back on the seat raising up her shoulders in a perpetual shrug, I knew it immediately.

The switch flipped. The answer received.

She didn’t have to say anything. I could tell from the faces, from the muscles. This was it. The lights went down and the war-dance had begun. Yesterday was the prologue—this was the true performance. Everything before was rehearsal, everything before was trivial.

This was it. This was the thing we’d been warned of—the thing Prochazka dreamed of while the rest of us sat and waited.

Now—now—the show. The curtain is up, the band is playing.

Too late for stage-fright. Too late for second guesses.

The time is now. Not only now—the time had already gone.

It began when the bullet passed through his head.

Eliza didn’t acknowledge me when I came in. Loybol did, through a tiny eye-flick in my direction. That was all I needed. In that moment, I was the telepath I always wanted to be.

Nothing had ever been easier, despite the implication. Nothing had ever been clearer, despite my condition.

Bell and I stepped inside the glass enclosure and I asked Loybol, “He’s dead, isn’t he.”

Her face was loose. Expressionless. I felt her lips move, the tongue in her throat, before I heard her answer.

“He is,” she said, and that was that.

Our shoes clacked down hard on the stage. Beat one, measure one: go.

0 0 0

I did not cry for him.

Truthfully—I barely knew him and he barely knew me.

We had passed each other in the night and nothing more.