I wasn’t sure that he would answer. The Major—Achilles—he was never one to open his heart, not in any version. He was my commander, and a king. He owed me nothing. Even if we had been friends, co-parents, I had lied to him these long years, pretending I did not hear his Greekisms, his invocations of Hades and the other deathless gods, his fear whenever his Lieutenant Aimer volunteered for some mission. I had lied by feigning ignorance; even if I said nothing, I had lied.

Achilles flexed his veteran shoulders beneath the pack and straps. “You know, even when it isn’t in my hand, I can always feel the rifle with me.” He stroked its stock, then reached out, grasping at something invisible in the air before him. “And the controllers”—his hand fell to his side now—“and the spear. I remember all three, not jumbled, three full lives. I remember growing up on the mountains with Chiron the centaur who taught me to hunt, and with Chiron the flight instructor who made me best pilot in the forces. I remember losing Patroclus three times. And Hector, I remember the feel of Hector’s blood, the stink of Hector’s corpse growing fouler day by day, three times, a different smell each time. I remember dying, too, Apollo’s arrow, Paris. Three times. More than three, so many versions.” He turned to me. “You know what else I remember? I remember the Odyssey. I remember when Odysseus came to see us in the Underworld, do you remember that part?” He paused. “We were all there, Tiresias who knew too much, and my Patroclus, and that blowhard Agamemnon. I said then that I would rather be the lowest man alive, breaking my back to plow another’s land for a starvation wage, rather than be what I was, the most honored of the dead. I meant it. Ten years I’ve been a tiny plastic toy babysitting a child in a gutter, and I’ve thanked the gods for every day. I think that’s why they picked me as guardian. I understood Bridger’s gift better than anyone. The dead want to live. Even those of us who never really existed in the first place, we want to live, not all of us, maybe, but most of us. We want it more than anything. Even if it means being a toy, or a slave, or suffering like you and I have, Mycroft, we want to live. That’s more important than the Hives and what might happen to this world, wonderful as this world is. Bridger would have given life to everybody, everyone who ever died, or will die, more, even to people who were half fictitious like me, everyone that anyone ever believed would want to live. We could have. They tested us, the Fates, the gods, your Providence, it has so many names. They gave us one chance to let everybody live. We failed.”

I had thought I’d mastered my tears, but Boo emerged now, sniffing for his absent master, his friendly, furry face confused but not yet sad. Halley came with him, Apollo’s long, green Pillarcat, abandoned at Romanova after Tully’s arrest. The U-beast had tracked us somehow, locked onto me perhaps or Bridger, seeking a familiar scent. I hardly had strength enough to speak as my tears flowed free. “You know Fate better than that, Achilles!” I had not intended the reproof to come out as a scream, but it did, sharp as the grief that spurred it. “Fate doesn’t taunt. This was all planned. Paris takes Helen. We lose Bridger and Apollo. The war begins. It’s all one Plan. You being here now in Bridger’s place, that’s the Plan too.”