He freed the botfly to return to its appointed rounds. It would not be able to answer any of the inevitable questions resulting from this night, even in the unlikely event that anyone could trace it back to the honeycombed residential warren at 1423-150 Cushing Skywalk. Even now it could only remember a routine patrol along its prescribed transect; that was all it would remember, until a navigational malfunction sent it on a suicidal corkscrew into the no-go zone around Sudbury's main static-field generator. There wouldn't be enough left afterwards to reconstruct so much as a lens cluster, let alone an event log.

As for the bodies themselves, even the most superficial investigation would reveal telling indications of Trevor Sawyer's resentment over his forcible conscription into the Health Corps, and previously-unsuspected family ties to the M&M regime recently risen to power in Ghana. Nobody would waste time asking questions after that; those associated with the Madonna's New Order were notorious for their efforts in bringing down the old one. With Sawyer's hospital clearance and medical expertise, the damage he could have done to the law-abiding members of the community was incalculable. Sudbury was better off without him, whether he'd been killed by his own or whether some vigilant 'lawbreaker, near or far, had tracked him to his lair and terminated his terrorist activities with extreme prejudice.

It wasn't as though these kind of surgical strikes didn't happen all the time. And if some 'lawbreaker was behind it, it was—by definition—all for the best.

One more item checked off the to-do list. Desjardins wrapped Mandelbrot in his t-shirt and headed outside, cradling the bloody bundle against his bare chest. He was drowning in a vortex of emotion; he was empty inside. He tried to resolve the paradox as he ascended to ground level.

Grief, of course, for the loss of a friend he'd had for almost ten years. Satisfaction for the price exacted in return. And yet—he had hoped for more than this grim sense of a debt restored. He had hoped for something more fulfilling. Joy, perhaps, at the sight of Trevor Sawyer watching his wife and child burn alive. Joy at the sight of Sawyer's own immolation, flesh crisping from the bones, eyeballs bursting like great gelatinous grubs boiled in their sockets, knowing even there at the end, feeling it all, he'd never even found the strength to whimper.

Joy eluded Desjardins. Granted he'd never felt it any of the other times he'd balanced the books, but he had hoped for more this time. Certainly, the cause had been more heartfelt. But still: only grief, and satisfaction, and—and something else, something he couldn't quite put his finger on...

He stepped outside. Pale morning light rose on all sides. Mandelbrot was growing cold and stiff in his arms.