He couldn’t help but think about how Bryde’s little dreamt orb would have let him walk out untouched. How Ronan’s sundogs spilled from the bottle would have emptied this apartment instantly. Such power. Such power for just a very few people to hold.

Oh, Ronan, he thought, suddenly angry that his brother could never see the bigger picture, the long game. What are you going to do now?

Jordan, who loved Hennessy, was walking from her studio to Declan’s apartment, head down, eyebrows furrowed, reading a news story on her phone. It was about a massive Boston street race that had sent seven drivers to area hospitals in critical condition. The chief of police had given a statement urging drivers to remember that life was not a video game or a movie franchise; actions like this had real consequences. She wondered if the play against Bryde had worked; Declan wasn’t picking up his phone.

I wish you were dead, Hennessy had told her.

Jordan’s cheeks felt hot as she walked. Fiery. Her chest ached and burned. She didn’t know why Hennessy had to be like this. If they were still living together, they would have talked it out by now. Hennessy would have calmed down, gotten sad instead of mad, and eventually just gone limp, giving up. They would have once more reached equilibrium. Well, not they. Jordan was rarely the emergency. Hennessy was the emergency.

Hennessy, thought Jordan, why didn’t you give me all your memories?

None of them guessed the fate of the afternoon was currently playing out inside the minds of the dreaming Zeds.

The Zeds moved inside a shared dream that jerked from one thing to another.

First it was the Lace, jagged and hateful.

Then it was the Smith Mountain Dam with a slow, sentient fire picking away at its base.

Then it was the Game, with each Zed in a different car jockeying for control of both the race and the dream.

It was a studio, it was a farm, it was a parking lot dumpster with opera singing sweetly, it was a teen girl in a gallery looking for Hennessy, it was a fire dragon exploding over a car, it was a bullet in a woman’s head, it was Bryde crouched next to Lock’s body in a featureless field.

“This game of yours,” Bryde said to Lock’s body, “this game of yours will only end in pain. Take a look. The rules are changing. Do you understand? Do you understand what we could do? Leave my dreamers alone.”

“Bryde,” Ronan said, but Bryde didn’t attend.

“Thanks for the focus. I couldn’t do that without you here,” Hennessy said. She stood by the invisible car, watching Bryde plow through his lines from the memory. “God! Remember when you told me to kill my clones? And then we basically ran away with yours?”