“It’s getting worse? The pain?”

A yes-blink.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I headed to the opening of the tent and flagged down a doctor.

The woman came inside. She looked spooked. Justifiably.

“Did Laserdream talk to you?”

“She’s talking to other doctors.”

“Nailfarer wants the heaters turned off—we’ll leave the one on by her head. She’s anxious about it.”

“The cold—”

“Isn’t hurting her. I don’t think the individual parts can even be truly damaged at this point. But it’s uncomfortable, and she would prefer to be numb. I get the impression drugs aren’t helping—”

The doctor shook her head. “Localized to certain parts, as far as we can tell.”

“Can we?” I asked, indicating the heaters.

In the end, the answer was a ‘no’, but it wasn’t a fearful or malicious no. They were wanting to load up the three victims and get them somewhere safe. I made my arguments, and after the doctors consulted, they settled on using a collection of ice boxes.

As the ice boxes were used, I could see Nailfarer’s eye and the area around it shift and change, her face reacting in small ways. When we’d found them, they had been paralyzed by the cold. That was only part of it, however. The parts that had been thawed could move, think more clearly, and felt the connections to the other parts elsewhere, but they didn’t always have the necessary parts. Nailfarer didn’t have every muscle and nerve that would communicate to parts around her damaged tissue.

“Keep the head and the right hand out of the coolers,” one doctor said—not one I’d been communicating with.

“She’d prefer to have her hand in the cooler, I’m pretty sure,” I said.

“I want her to be able to signal and gesture to communicate. The hand has some limited mobility. If she needs something she can raise her hand.”

“I have a communication system, I can stay with her and interpret—”

“Just keep it out of the cooler,” the doctor said, brusque. “Excuse me.”

I nodded, getting out of his way.

I looked around. I saw Vista, standing off to one side, stoic. Crystal was talking to the woman in charge and some doctors. Golem and Cuff were with Slingshot.

The atmosphere was heavy. It was an entirely separate and distinct feeling from the claustrophobic feeling that had settled in over the course of the last—

I checked my phone.

—the last thirty-five minutes. It had only been thirty-five minutes?

“Are you comfortable enough?” I asked Nailfarer.

Three blinks.

“Not with the situation being what it is, obviously. But is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

Two blinks.

“Just let me know,” I said. “I’m staying close.”

The fingers moved clumsily—not like a hand should. One finger tapped hard against the metal pan it had been laid down on.