Daniel stepped out of the office, his heart a heavy timpani line. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He was here for his own ritual, one last act to balance the scales of the Eisenbergs’ deaths. The corridor was empty, but somewhere in this stone prison, Kreutzer waited. Maybe even Himmler himself. Any one of them would do.

The drumbeat heightened as he drew closer to the end of the wing—the laboratories the Unterführer had mentioned. Where Kreutzer wove his vile magic, where his victims gasped for air but breathed in only shadows as Kreutzer and Pitr infused them with energy from another world. A bass line underpinned his heartbeat now as he moved closer, rising and falling, over and over. One hand closed around the doorknob, the other around his knife. He wrenched it open, not knowing what horrors would await him on the other side—

Kreutzer looked up from the body spread before him. His white lab coat was thin and too starchy; it had been washed too many times, with too many blood stains leaving behind a faint yellow residue. And the body—it hurt Daniel’s eyes when he tried to focus on it. Shadow and smoke and fast-twitch muscles, a pained shudder of breath—

“Ah. Herr Doyle’s accomplice, aren’t you?” Kreutzer asked. “A pity he didn’t come himself.”

Daniel lunged forward, knife raised. He aimed for the doctor’s throat, mottled with puckered burn-scar scabs—

The body lurched up from the operating table: shadow and smoke and emptied-out stare. It socked Daniel square in the gut, dropping him to his knees, then shot out a foot to kick his knife away. Kreutzer snapped his fingers, and the soldier wrenched Daniel’s arms behind his back with impossible speed.

Kreutzer stood before him, fresh burns glistening with puffy skin along one side of his face. It was almost enough to make Daniel smile, the memory of the Kino fire Liam had set. He crouched down low, the machine behind him humming with the alternating frequency to open the rift, and regarded Daniel with a smile scalpel-sharp.

“Don’t worry. I think I have a use for you yet.” He turned to the soldier. “Take him to the dungeons while Herr Černik and I prepare.”

The soldier dragged him away, his failure weighing him down, heavy as shackles. His cell was tiny, closet-size; the door slammed shut with a finality that stung. He curled into the corner to wait. He could almost hear Rebeka scolding him for trying to be such a hero, such a fool. His traitor brain conjured up memories of the pale field of Liam’s throat, his muscles tensing and relaxing as Daniel’s fingertips charted them. Had he felt that passion still, when he found Daniel’s note? Had he awoken with regret and felt only relief to know Daniel would trouble him no more? For Liam’s sake, Daniel hoped so.