“Leaving what behind?” Carlyle stepped forward, bold, though not without glancing to silent Dominic—for what, reassurance? “What’s supposed to happen to the world after you destroy it? You haven’t thought about that, have you, Father?”

“Don’t call me that!” Kraye snapped. “I have no interest in talking to the poison that started all this.” He knocked Carlyle aside. “This is about us, Andō. Me, and you, and your mad, psychotic whore, and their whore brother!”

“Kraye!” The Duke broke free of Andō’s grip at last. He seized the Prime Minister by his embroidered lapels, and pressed the hairpin’s point against his throat. “You can’t have thought this would end any other way.”

Kraye smiled. “It ends with everyone going down together. Us first.”

Kraye’s hands locked like a bear trap around Ganymede’s shoulders. They toppled, Kraye’s maniacal strength crashing them both against the great window, which shattered like spring ice. They fell. Razor rain followed them, and Danaë’s scream despairing as a siren, out into the void of laughter and chandelier light over the Flesh Pit four stories below. Screams multiplied like thunder, the shattering too, couches and banquet tables toppling as the guests below scattered like pigeons from the tumbling shards.

For all my speed, I had not even time to think if there was something I could do. MASON and Kosala gaped. Spain hid in the comfort of Madame’s arms. Andō seized Danaë, dragging her back as she threatened to follow her brother, who tumbled, bright as if the sun had fallen in Icarus’s place, with Kraye still locked around him like chains around a prisoner cast into the yawning sea.

Sniper caught them. With a swimmer’s form and fencer’s aim, Sniper dove under the pair and padded the Duke’s head and fragile shoulders with its chest.

“¿Are you all right, Member President?” Sniper wheezed, winded as the three lay supine together on the Flesh Pit floor.

“¿Sniper?” The Duke kicked Kraye’s stunned weight off of them both. “¿What are you doing here?”

“You told me to come.” Sniper’s right arm had strength enough to help the Duke off it, though its left arm hung at an unnatural angle. “I wish your message had been more specific. ‘Rescue me upstairs’ or ‘rescue me from falling’ might have helped.”

The Duke inched back, wincing, trying not to touch a blade of glass which jutted from his arm. “¿Rescue me? ¿What are you talking about? ¿What message?”

“ ‘Madame’s, 18:00 UT, Sniper rescue me.’ The order came through with your executive code.” Sniper’s winded whisper dropped to an even lower whisper. “Same message that told us to go through with you-know-what.”

Ganymede gasped. “¿You did the hit?”

“We failed. The police and the Utopians were waiting. They knew we were going to strike. Cato says they must have hired a set-set.”

“I sent no such message.”

“Then it must have been Director Andō, or…”

Sniper’s eyes awoke with fear as the second figure who had fallen with its President brushed blood from his familiar face, and smiled. “It’s over.”