Five’s single eye holds mine. He’s locked in on me, totally ignoring everyone else. I know he’s baiting me into something, I just don’t know what. Sam’s right that we shouldn’t be wasting time here, but I can’t help myself.

“What’re you saying?” I ask him grudgingly, knowing that it’s exactly what he wants.

In response, Five takes off his shirt.

The simple action seems to take a lot of effort, like it’s hard for Five to lift his arms. The shirt snags on something as Five pulls it over his head and he yelps. It takes me a moment of looking at his chest, metal-plated just like the rest of him, to realize there’s something wrong.

Five has a piece of steel sticking out of his sternum. It looks like a broken-off pole from a street sign. He turns to the side slightly so that I can see the jagged other end poking out through his back. Each end comes out only a few inches, and both are twisted and warped like Five had to shorten the pole by ripping it with his hands. It’s straight through and, at the very least, has to be puncturing one of Five’s lungs and part of his spine. The steel pole could even be right up against his heart.

“I was already in my metal form when he drove it through me. That didn’t stop him, though,” Five explains, wheezing his words a bit. He looks at Nine with something close to admiration. “My instincts kicked in. I used my Externa in a way I hadn’t before, made the metal part of me. I can feel it cold inside me, Four. It’s weird.”

Five seems almost casual about this. I take a tentative step towards him and he smiles.

“I’m tired and I can’t hold my Externa forever,” Five says. “So I wanted it to be up to you. You’re the good one, John. The reasonable one. And you were always right in front of me in the order, keeping me alive all those years, whether you knew me or not. So what’s it going to be?”

I take another cautious step towards him. “Five . . .”

“Live or die?” Five asks, and then, without warning, he turns himself back into flesh.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

FIVE CHOKES ON THE NEXT BREATH HE TAKES. A bubble of blood spews from his mouth. His skin, no longer covered by a layer of steel, goes pale in a hurry. His remaining eye goes wide and, in that moment before I watch it roll back in his head, I see fear there. Maybe Five thought he wanted this. But now, looking death in the face, he is scared.