Molly screamed, yelling for the world to stop, for the Wadi to stop, but both kept crawling forward. The deputy sank to his knees, quiet now, pawing at his neck with one hand. The other one brought the gun up and pressed it to the vibrating shape below his chin. It wavered there, contemplating the ridiculous: an end to them both. Molly clawed the air and continued to scream, drowning out the flow of cursing from the neighboring cell. The sheriff dashed forward, his pretend gun put away, his hand nothing but a hand. It swiped sideways with dizzying speed, and when the gun went off, a puff of smoke leapt out of its barrel, and a matching cloud drifted down from the wounded ceiling.

Molly collapsed from the suddenness and shock of it all. She sank to her knees and leaned against the bars with her arms wrapped around them. Hugging them. The sheriff stood over the gurgling deputy, a smoking gun in his hand. The Wadi jumped off and ran in a brief circle around the sheriff’s feet.

“You go on back,” the sheriff said, waving the Wadi away.

The Wadi dutifully obliged, scurrying toward Molly and leaving behind a trail of tiny red prints.

Sheriff Browne turned to her. He slowly placed the deputy’s gun inside his empty holster, then patted it fondly like a son returned home from war. Molly looked up and saw him tip his hat in her direction. The Wadi climbed her shirt and curled around her neck. She could feel the creature vibrating with energy, or fear—maybe even excitement.

“We got us a no-pets policy for a reason,” Sheriff Brown said. He nodded at her Wadi and tapped his temple. “Wouldn’t be so paranoid about critters reading my mind if I didn’t know what was in here, myself.”

48

Cole sat up on the operating table and moved his arm in slow circles. He grimaced from the soreness in his back, his other shoulder, and all the other and older parts of himself.

Penny watched him from behind the tray at the foot of his bed. “Looks like you managed to get that new shoulder you always wanted,” she said as she gathered up surgical instruments and power tools—both specked with blood and hydraulic fluid.

Cole looked up, expecting to find her smirking at him, teasing him, but she wore a solemn, sad, expression.

“Would’ve saved it if I could,” Arthur said. He glanced up from his portable computer. “And the next time you overpower the limiters, it’ll be your collarbone and ribs that give way. So please—on behalf of my spares cabinet—don’t do anything like that ever again.”

Cole nodded, suppressing a grin.

Mortimor walked into the operating room with a towel in one hand, his hair sticking up from having recently been soaked and then dried off. “You are one crazy sonofabitch,” he said, shaking his head.

“We were just going over that,” Arthur said, “and attempting to cor-rect some personality defects.”