Getting in and out of the Crucible Casket to down healing elixirs and then get back in that black hole of Death in was a bleeding hassle, but Warcry gutted it out. He spent the first part of every stint in the Casket forcing himself to breathe away the panic. It wasn’t just the tight confines that got to him. The taint of Death crowded what little space there was. Usually, he told Hake it was a stench, but that wasn’t the truth of it. Entropic supertypes were all overly sensitive. Warcry picked up on Miasma in a way that was as indescribable as a taste or a smell, and the sensation of Death was equal parts repellent, captivating, and melancholy.

  He finally finished the last rotation in the Casket at what the locals called black tide. According to the hotel’s loaner HUD, he still had a few hours before his alarm sounded at gray tide.

  Praying he wouldn’t have to get back in for some reason, Warcry pressed his forehead to the lid, bowing like his lad had told him, and was instantly kneeling on the swank carpet of his room. Unlike the previous times, the pressure on his knee didn’t instantly send jags of pain crackling through the joint.

  Across the room, Kest lay curled up with Bodhi on the couch. A pile of cleaned components covered the coffee table in front of them, half reassembled into Warcry’s Hindre. Looked as if Stumpy had fallen asleep showing the scag the pieces while she worked on it. Hyla must’ve finally given the kid up to rest her arms for a moment.

  Seeing him, the Hangman in question stopped abruptly in her tracks, halfway between the windows and the bed. She crouched in front of the replacement mini-icebox room service had installed, pretending that was where she’d been headed all along instead of pacing endlessly, refusing to sleep until she knew they were out of the muck on his leg.

  Part of him had expected her to be gone. That part had braced itself every time he climbed out of the Casket over the last eight hours.

  “Don’t eat all the meat sticks,” he snarled to cover it up.

  “Get stuffed.” She straightened up and bit off a piece of the one in her hand. “They’ll bring you more tomorrow when they refill the rest of this rubbish.”

  Their sniping woke Kest. She hugged the scag closer as if afraid she had almost dropped him. A ripple of panic crossed her skin in lacy capillaries, then disappeared as she realized Bodhi was still well in her grip.

  “You’re out?” With her free hand, she rubbed her big netskin eyes, then checked her HUD. “That was supposed to be the last round, according to the equation.”

  “Let’s find out, yeah?”

  Warcry stood and put some tentative weight on his leg. When he didn’t feel any warning signs, he put all his weight on it. Lifted the prosthetic from the floor. Bounced a mite on his toes.

  So far, so good.

  He threw a few kicks at quarter-speed. In the mirror, he saw Hyla pretending not to watch.

  No creaks, no tenderness, no hindered motion. His knee had the feel of an old injury so long healed that he’d almost forgotten about it. Like his elbow, hyperextended ages ago during his first Fight Month, or the scar tissue where his other leg used to be.

  “Pretty as you like,” he said. “Toss us a last healing elixir for luck, Hangman.”

  Hyla lobbed it to him.

  He tore the wax seal off and knocked it back.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Must mean there’s nothing left to heal.”

  Kest handed off the scag to his ma and came over to scan Warcry’s knee with a healery and distillery program she’d downloaded during one of his stints in the Casket. She’d been using it on him after every healing elixir. This time when she ran it over his knee, it rated all his ligaments as properly attached and strong and his kneecap as solid.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “All right,” she said happily, nodding. “You really are back to one hundred percent.”

  To make well certain, Warcry threw a few kicks at full-speed, then jumped into an overhand punch followed by a fiery roundhouse.

  Bodhi fussed at the flare of Spirit, but as soon as Warcry let the flames go, the scag settled again.

  “Savage. Say what you like about him, but the grav tipped us one with that Death necklace, didn’t he.”

  “Oh!” Kest got on her HUD. “I’ll message Hake and let him know he doesn’t need to stop off for more elixirs. Then we should all get some sleep. The championship bout isn’t until blue tide, but every little bit of rest gives us more advantage. Gleurah and the Scarlet Titan will be expecting us to be run-down, if we compete at all.”

  “Don’t fret it, Stumpy. You win your end of this electoral tournament, and I’ll thrash mine.”

  Warcry’s first order of business once the netskin was gone was to shower. He wanted the stink of Death off him, but he also hadn’t had a chance to clean up after the fight.

  Hyla was still there when he got out.

  “That choke was savage, Thompson. Proper brutal.”

  Warcry went on dressing as if the sole kind word he’d heard from her all week hadn’t landed like rain on scorched earth. Being honest with a spider like Hyla never ended well unless it was laced with hate. She couldn’t handle the opposite. She’d be gone in a blink and take the scag with her.

  So instead, he sneered, “Couldn’t let it slip with that Nameless harpy screaming in me ear from cageside, could I?”

  That had a better effect. Brought her in close. Coaxed her into staying.

  He loved the vicious bint. He loved how she pushed him, how she never accepted an excuse, how she fought on when anybody else would’ve thrown in the towel ages past and expected everybody around her to do the same.

  What fueled his Burning Hatred about Hyla was what growing up in the factory orphanages had made of her. That no matter what he would do or give for her, she would never accept it. She couldn’t. Even the smallest concession screamed lethal reliance and vulnerability to her.

  So he got what he could from her, and he showed her what he couldn’t say in languages she didn’t speak. He pored over her every move, looking for ways to out-grapple her at her own mind games. And always, he stayed alert for the hour she decided he’d run out of usefulness and left him with a heart somebody had curbstomped.

  That hour came at gray tide. She must’ve thought him well asleep. Gingerly, she eased out of his arms and slipped out of the bed. It was dark enough that he could watch her slender, athletic shadow make ready to go without his observation being noticed in return.

  If she tried to pack up Bodhi, then he would say something. Tell her that her Jianjiao bosses had decreed that the scag was Warcry’s sole property to be used only by him and see what she did then.

  Let her steal whatever pointless trinkets stuck to her fingers, but Warcry wasn’t giving up the scag. He’d sensed Bodhi was his the second he got within arm’s reach of the kid. He could feel himself reflected in Bodhi’s Spirit sea.

  Warrior at peace, Hyla had named him. What would the Thompson Hatred look like on a warrior at peace?

  She tied her shoes and rose up. Took a step toward the scag’s drawer-crib. Reached out.

  Warcry opened his mouth.

  Knuckles rapped sharply on his door.

  Not the hall door, but the one to the grav’s room.

  “Warcry?” Kest called. Her voice was muffled because he’d shut the door; he’d learned his lesson the day before.

  Startled awake, Bodhi started crying. Hyla scooped him up as if she’d been expecting this eruption all along and it was the whole reason she was even out of bed.

  “What do you want, Stumpy?” Warcry sat up and hit the lights, pawing at his face and blinking like he’d just woken from a sound sleep.

  Kest took his question as an invitation. She threw open the door and marched in.

  “Hake didn’t come back from the—” She glanced at Hyla. “—from his side gig last night. He was supposed to message me on his way. We were going to talk about something. He specifically said—”

  Warcry tucked the covers around his waist. “You’re not his nagging wife yet, reel it in. He could’ve stopped off to have a sip with some lads from work, couldn’t he?”

  Kest fixed him in a flat glare. “Someone destroyed a warehouse at the edge of the city. Multiple CPA agents were killed. It’s all over the hyperweb. No one’s coming out and saying it was Technols, but it’s so obvious.”

  “Find a Death cultivator in the rubble, did they?”

  Kest ignored his comment.

  “And there’s this.” She tapped her HUD screen. “It came in three minutes ago, from my dad.”

  Warcry scowled. The grav could handle himself. Warcry knew that. And yet something in the set of Kest’s mouth as she pulled up the message, the thinning of the black patterns in her eyes, fed the apprehension growing in his gut.

  “We need to talk, Irakest,” she read. “Get to the CPA hub on Mollusca as fast as you can. It’s about your boyfriend.”

  In the mirror, Warcry caught Hyla’s eye. She looked away immediately.

  If he left this room, the Hangman would disappear and she’d take his son with her.

  Hake had saved his life too many times. Warcry had lost count of how many times they’d near died for each other, him and the grav. He couldn’t leave his lad high and dry. Bleeding wouldn’t.

  Silently, Warcry apologized to Bodhi. Hopefully one day the scag would understand. This was what lads meant.

  He jerked his chin at Kest. “Get out so I can dress, yeah?”