“Didn’t expect it to be you, Anna,” the speaker said. She recognized Sliv’s voice behind the static.

“It’s Mistletoe.”

“What is?”

“My name.”

“I forgot. Pretty fancy arm cannon you got there. Been doing some shopping?”

“Something like that.” She opened her fist and the weapon retracted. “Listen, Sliv, I need your help.”

The speaker spit out a burst of white noise. She cringed.

“Can I come in so we can talk?”

More static. The insect and the speaker disc retreated into the darkness. She waited a few minutes for some kind of further instruction and had just begun to press on down the hallway when she heard the echo of footsteps approaching.

Sliv stepped into view. Mistletoe covered her mouth to keep from crying out. The flesh on his left arm was gone, exposing an inner clockwork of thin metal pistons like the camera-insect’s legs. Instead of a hand, three gleaming silver gears slanted toward one another, creating a hollow point.

“Nice to see you, too,” he said.

She realized her eyes were probably wide with shock.

“It’s nothing new—I always wear long sleeves out there,” he explained, nodding toward the entrance to the tunnel.

“But your hand…”

He indicated a series of oversized bullets dangling from his belt. He pulled one off and fitted it to the gears at the end of his arm. The domed casing slid back, and flesh-covered fingers bloomed out. He wiggled them.

“You made that?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “Wasn’t hard.”

“Topside tech?”

He leaned against the wall and brushed the shaggy brown hair from his eyes, smoothing it back behind his ears. “Big time,” he said. Mistletoe squinted at him. Was the headlight casting a shadow beneath his nose, or was Sliv trying to grow a mustache?

“This is all my original skin,” he said, pointing at his face.

She looked away and thought of Ambrose in his business suit, his floppy blond hair and perfect teeth, and realized that she had just compared Sliv to him without even meaning to.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be.”

She pulled the burned wristwatch from her pocket and handed it to Sliv. “Any idea what this is?”

He scrubbed away the blackened ash with the front of his shirt, revealing the rest of the label: ESCU. Then he loaded another dangling bullet onto his gear hand. A set of screwdrivers and miniature wrenches fanned out in place of fingers. He pried the cover off the square face. Mistletoe leaned forward, curious.

“You’re blocking my light,” he said without looking up. She backed against the wall to wait while he attacked the insides of the watch with a tiny screwdriver. A few seconds later, he snapped the cover shut and pressed one of the silver buttons.

An explosion like a pre-Unison flashbulb set the tunnel ablaze with white light. A luminescent jumble of sparks blinked and froze in the air between them. Sliv shook the wristwatch and slapped it once against the cement wall. The sparks reshuffled into tiny blocks of white text on a light blue externalized page.