“Saladin Canner,” Croucher repeated. “So Mycroft’s ‘scary friend’ does have a name.”

Papa spun. “You’ve seen them?”

“I think so,” the soldier confirmed, “only very recently. Dominic found Bridger’s cave, so Mycroft sent this ‘friend’ to take Bridger off to a safe house. A savage with no tracker, wearing Apollo Mojave’s stolen coat and clothes, with a killer’s instincts and no hair or eyebrows. He said they burned off in an accident in childhood.”

“Eureka! That confirms it! Hahaha! Saladin!”

How, reader, can I describe the tone, the face, the fervor of Papa here? If Fate had set all the treasures of this world before him, the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, the Armor of Achilles, Asclepios’s wand that raises loved ones from Hades’s hall, Papa would have chosen this. In fact, Fate had offered him those treasures, and more, anything he could imagine Bridger might create, but, within the room, only Thisbe seemed to remember that.

“This is all very fascinating,” she began anew, “but significantly less important than a child with the powers of a god.”

“That’s your opinion,” Papa snapped.

She picked at a tangle in her ink-black hair. “I didn’t expect you to actually be as insane as Mycroft makes you out to be. What idiot made you Commissioner General anyway? You’re not good at being a cop, you’re just good at stalking Mycroft.”

“Commissioner?” The others could not hear the timid voice which called Papa back over his tracker, but they could see the Commissioner’s eyes go wide. “Mycroft Canner’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“We moved in on Canner’s tracker signal, but their tracker’s on someone else, another Servicer who’s wearing both Mycroft’s tracker and their own at once.”

“Why didn’t you tell me there was an interruption in Canner’s signal?” Papa snapped.

“What?”

“There must have been an alarm at the change in heartbeat when they slipped their tracker onto another person. You’re supposed to investigate a blip like that coming from any Servicer, especially Canner!”

“Easy, Papa, deep breaths,” one of his fellow cops urged—drugs and doctors may let Papa forget his hundred years, but his men do not. “There was no interruption. I’ve gone over Canner’s recorded heartbeats and there’s not a single blip since yesterday, when you personally verified they put their tracker back on.”

“Then where is Mycroft Canner?”

“I don’t know, Papa. Should I arrest this other Servicer?”

Rage rose in Papa now, deadly as a volcano, worse, for a volcano razes only its neighbors, while no corner of the Earth is out of reach of the Commissioner General. “Yes, arrest them. All. Round up all the Servicers that have been with Mycroft in the last day. Arrest Thisbe Saneer, and take their boots, and, while you’re at it, get some polylaws started working out what legal hoops we have to jump through to arrest President Ganymede, and Director Andō, and Danaë Mitsubishi, and Casimir Perry, for that matter all the Mitsubishi Directors, and every single associate of Perry’s coalition in the European Parliament.”