After the last step, they threw Cole down and wrenched his arms up; somebody forced his knees under him and he tried to kick out—he shook his shoulders back and forth. When someone punched him in the liver, Cole bent to the side in agony. He thought of Molly—tried to focus on his love for her—pulling her face out of memory to have something solid to cling to.

Rough hands grabbed his head and forced his gaze up, while his arms were yanked against the restraints. He was having the hardest time remembering what Molly looked like. It heaped sadness on his despair. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to drown him inside his goggles.

A face swam into view. Not Molly’s, not the face he was trying to conjur, but one familiar. It loomed down in front of him, smiling.

Cole couldn’t make sense of it. He recognized the man, the thin face, the wicked smile. Cole blinked, trying to focus through his goggles, feeling like this was exactly how he’d seen him before: through a sheet of thick plastic. Or carboglass.

Dakura.

The man from Dakura who was after Molly! Cole couldn’t remember his name, wasn’t sure if he ever knew it, but he knew that face—

Byrne. He did know it. He remembered Molly saying it in horror. But didn’t they leave him for dead in that loading bay?

Joshua stepped forward and began whispering in Byrne’s ear. He waved his hands as he spoke.

Byrne’s smile grew. He stared at Cole, nodding his head.

Cole tried to focus on what was being said, then noticed the strange man was wearing a red band around his forehead. He wondered if it was his; he wondered if the man remembered him from Dakura.

Byrne whispered something in return to Joshua, who stepped back and relayed it to the people holding Cole. As Joshua stepped aside, Cole realized there was something different about the thin man, something besides the red band. Byrne wore the same outfit of thin canvas pants, a shirt with large white buttons, his wiry frame poking out at the shoulders—

But Cole could’ve sworn the last time he’d seen him, Byrne had been in possession of both his arms.

15

Cat eventually seemed to tire and make a mistake, and one of the woks fell and rattled silently inside the bubble. Molly tried to sense how long the beautiful and brutal display had been going on. Half an hour? Longer? Cat pulled her foot out of the way of the spinning wok as her arms continued looping in large circles. The strained grimace on her face was visible even from the balcony. She looked away from the remaining two mid-air objects and nodded to someone off-stage. As her head turned, Molly spotted a bright trickle of blue blood leaking out of the Callite’s ear and weaving its way down her brown neck.