“Jess,” Thomas whispered. Even with the beard, the hair, the changes in him, his smile remained gentle and kind. His eyes had an odd shine to them, and it took Jess a moment to realize it was tears. “They took our machine. They destroyed it.”

“Never mind. You can build another,” Jess said. His throat felt tight and his eyes burned until he blinked his own tears away. No time for that nonsense now. “Let’s get you out of there.”

He bent to the lock, but his fingers felt clumsy and his reasoning felt suspiciously slow. I have to do this, he thought. I have to get him out.

And then Khalila tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a ring of keys. “From the last guard,” she said.

Maybe I do have a cracked skull, he thought, and almost laughed. Three tries before he slid the key into the lock, and then the catch clicked open with a crisp sound that seemed to echo around the stones. Jess heard his friends letting out held breaths, and grinned despite the ache in his head and shoulder. He swung the door open and rushed in to kneel next to Thomas.

He had to pause, because Thomas was looking down at him, holding out his shackled hand. “It’s good to see you, Jess,” Thomas said, and his voice faltered. It sounded different now. Tears blurred his eyes. “Mein Gott, I thought—I never thought you’d really come. I didn’t think any of you knew. They told me . . .”

His voice faded away. Jess ignored the hand and grabbed him into a hard, fast hug. Best Thomas couldn’t see his face. Then he went back to the work of freeing him from the chains.

Scholar Wolfe was still outside the bars, and Jess realized he probably couldn’t bear the idea of stepping inside ever again. Wolfe said, “They told you we were all dead, didn’t they?”

Jess felt Thomas nod wearily, and blotted moisture from his eyes with the back of his sleeve as he worked the stubborn lock. Until this moment, he’d thought of Thomas in the abstract, just as he’d last seen him. Unchanged. Seeing what they’d made of him brought things home in ways imagination couldn’t.

“They described it,” Thomas said. “For every one of you. How you died. I tried not to believe it, but . . . but it’s hard not to here. This becomes all you know.”

“They lie.” Wolfe’s voice sounded low and silky, dark as midnight. “It’s their favorite tactic—I know it well—to break your mind and your spirit. I’m sorry it took so long to get to you.”

“If we’d tried to come earlier, the lies might well have become true,” Santi said, just as Jess clicked the last shackle open. He winced when he saw how raw Thomas’s ankle was beneath.

“Can you walk?” Jess asked. Thomas, for answer, stood up. And even though Jess knew how tall his friend was, it surprised him to see him towering over them again.