There was quiet for a while. Manny could feel the pain in the pause, and see it on everyone’s face. He didn’t want to say anything. He was pretty sure there was nothing worthwhile he could say. But then he spoke anyway.

“Can you tell me about the others? The other two who were captured?”

Another of Mike’s friends, a tall Black woman in a bright blue shark onesie, nodded and replied, “Rick’s a little dude, great painter and pretty good pyrotechnician. He’s no kinda fighter but he’s got a real sweet way about him. He puts people at ease. So he goes out on a lot of these delegations to be a good face for the city. Marigold’s always the main negotiator, but we sent Tule out too. She’s newish to the city. Used to be an activist in Albuquerque, before the King took over and started boiling people. She’s a good talker, we had her studying under Mari so she could pick up some of the load in the future.”

“They’re all good people,” Finger Man added. “Marigold saved my life a few times, back during the Revolution. She helped found this place. It started out as just a big caravan of RVs and mobile hydroponics units. She’d find isolated communities, bring ’em food and such. No government was much use back then, so for a lot of folks Mari’s caravan was the line between life and death.”

“Ayep,” said Skullfucker Mike. “She’s the one who found Topaz and me. After the Boss went missing, we were pretty lost. Doing a lot of freelance violence but not making anything. Not building a damn thing. Marigold told us her vision for this big stupid city, got us hooked on the idea.”

Manny noticed tears at the corner of Skullfucker Mike’s eyes. That felt somehow wrong to him. Someone so powerful and inhuman shouldn’t be able to cry and make it look so normal. But there he was, crying.

And then, for the first time in the trip, the thing Manny had most feared happened: he thought about Oscar. He remembered a picnic he’d taken with the stringer, his wife Aisha, and their two kids. It had been a lovely spring day, one of the dozen-ish days a year in Austin where the air felt good on your skin. They’d drank cheap beer and eaten hot dogs and watched the kayakers roll along the Colorado River.

I sent him out there. I sent him there and now he’s probably dead.

“Y’know, there’s something we share,” Mike said, his voice low and somber. “We’ve both spent way too much of our lives feeling helpless.”

Manny cocked a disbelieving eyebrow up at Skullfucker Mike.

“Yeah,” the chromed man chuckled, “I know what you’re thinking. But you’d be surprised how often the fancy hardware doesn’t matter.”