“Barcode. Most of the time they deal in death. But they have contacts, the sort of people who might be out in one of Marquis’ cabins in the middle of nowhere, not wanting to be bothered. I don’t know for sure where those contacts are, though.”

“And?”

“And one of those is a striker. A dealer in human parts. They take people apart with physical blows as if they’re dolls. Takes an arm and a leg, literally, takes kidneys, hearts, genitals, whatever people are willing or desperate to buy.”

“No,” I said.

“If one of us steps out of line or try to game the system, he makes being swapped in just as miserable or worse than being inside—”

“No, Byron. Just—stop? Please. No details.”

“Mm.”

The car sped along a road, down a street that, even with the periodic streetlight, was mostly too dark to see. The city wasn’t that bright around us, with lights in windows easily confused with the light catching on the edges of raindrops and flecks of frost.

“What’s the procedure?” I asked. “Forget the consequence—it’s bad. I get it. How do you do it?”

“We meet up every few days. We confirm we’re okay, we swap. There are two or three people who show up, sometimes with backup, whoever they’re working with at the time. One is usually a thinker. They can read people. Read us.”

My phone lit up, brighter in my lap than any light outside or on the dash. It was Lookout. They were close to our destination.

“They read people. For altered mental states?”

“Yep. Drugs. Amnesia. Brainwashing.”

He put emphasis on that last point.

“So you would go. You’d swap over to Tristan—”

“And whether he cooperates or not, he’s under her influence. They come after me.”

I closed my eyes. “What if the thinker doesn’t show?”

“And Tristan doesn’t sound the alarm? There’s no guarantee he switches back to me, for one thing.”

“And the deadline?”

“Last night,” Byron spoke in the kind of monotone reserved for those trying very hard to keep their voices level. At my look of surprise, he elaborated, “We had the TV show. They were willing to delay.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Tight time limit,” Byron said, and his voice was tense. “I can maybe fend them off for tonight, we did say we were busy. I’ve been thinking about other options since after you and I had our skirmish.”

It was hard to think of the skirmish and not find the doubts welling, my mind immediately going to the perspective of how Byron was a problem first. The protocols didn’t jump immediately to mind.

“How did he even find these guys?”