I looked around the neighborhood, still drenched in continuous freezing rain. People were looking out of windows and standing in open doors, now that it had all gone quiet, all rounded off with an explosive musical solo.

Easily forty thralls that hadn’t slipped away or escaped by some other means.

The prison. After this, whatever she was up to, whatever Teacher was up to, the pharmacist would be putting it into motion now.

Gleaming 9.6

“Reality is on fire,” Jester said it in a very matter of fact way, before adding, “purple fire.”

“Is it spreading?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Shrinking, but slowly, and it looks ominous.”

“It’s around the door thing?”

“Is that what that was? A door? Yeah, it’s mostly around some tech stuff at the base.”

“Then it’s fine. Get people to stand back, in case it blows.”

“We already did,” Jester said. He didn’t move from his spot underneath the shelter of the bus stop.

The street was now crowded with police cars that didn’t match each other, Jester’s Patrol bus, and two ambulances. My hand was bandaged, and the Malfunctions were being looked after. The Patrol had done its work, and Jester was keeping me company, under the guise of getting updates on the situation. That had taken two minutes, really, he’d stepped away to report to others, and he’d just come back.

As for the rest—it was only in the wake of the event that I could really take stock of just how much of a battlefield this neighborhood had become in a very short span of time. There were a lot of combatants, disabled or otherwise not putting up a fight, who were being put in the Patrol bus.

“Are you okay? Really okay?” Jester asked me. “I know we’re not close, and that’s a very personal question, but…”

“We worked together.”

“For a bit over a year, and even this week, I was going into work and thinking I could bug you about some power classification thing or something I saw online. I forget what.”

“You miss me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged, shoulders straining against the straps of his vest—the stripped-down PRT armor with the identifying marks scraped off. In the cold weather, he was wearing a jacket over the vest. His tattoo wasn’t visible beneath the long sleeves.

“I kind of miss you guys too,” I said.

“That’s a very nice generic, ‘you guys’. A deft deflection from saying you miss me in particular, Miss Dallon.”

I smiled.

“Is that your way of saying you’re not okay? You miss when things were simpler?” he asked. “Because holy shit, um, I told Gil to wake me up or pull me in if your team ever needs anything, and I keep getting brought in for really messed up shit.”

“You don’t have to,” I said.