He could also hear the sounds of the swamp. Those sounds were closer.

“Where am I?” he said.

He was still tripping. He still had no shoes, and his shirt was torn and wet. The tie was still around his neck, knotted too tight. The room around him was moving. The bars of the undersized cage in which he was locked did not move.

His question received no answer. Just the sound of faraway brass, and crickets that sounded like they were inside his head.

“I knew I should have left town,” he said.

“You should have never come,” said Slider.

Slider had peroxide-white hair now. He also had some new tattoos, one of which, the image of some kind of cosmic coyote pounded out in luminescent ink, looked to be moving independently of Slider.

“I knew it,” said Donny. “How’d you do it?”

“My squad helped me, just like they helped me spring Heather last night,” he said. “And Heather paid off two of the guards, told them she wanted to split. I needed to disappear, or they were going to disappear me.”

“Good to see that bribery still works even in a propertyless society.”

“Only because they had the stupid idea to let the lawyers in,” said Heather.

Donny saw her now, in the background. She was sitting at a table, working on something Donny couldn’t see.

“Joyce says you killed the guards who disappeared your parents, Slider.”

“Joyce is almost as big a liar as you,” he answered. “I didn’t kill anybody. Kind of wish I had now. But she wouldn’t even tell me where to find those guys.”

“What do you mean?”

“They found a trove of documents from the camps,” said Heather. “Some of the secret blacklists of prisoners tagged for the detour, and the names of the guards who killed his parents.”

“I have those names,” said Donny. “The names of the guards.”

“Not their new names,” said Heather.

“New names?”

“New identities. Names, birthdays, Social Security cards, jobs, hometowns.”

“Some of them even got new teeth!” said Slider. “So they could fake their own deaths.”

“Joyce has all this info?”

“She’s sitting on it,” said Heather. “Says she wants to build cases to prosecute them all here, since the other courts won’t do it.”

“She’s wrong,” said Donny. “I was doing it. There’s a way. Let me out. I can persuade her.”

“Haven’t you fucked enough shit up already?” said Slider. “If you would just mind your own damn business, I wouldn’t have to grab you in the first place.”

“I’m just trying to keep my promises,” said Donny.

“Yeah, right. Promises to your banker, maybe. You’re a sell-out, dude. Taking her dad’s dirty money. And then fucking up our whole deal. We just want to be together. Can’t you understand that?”