Immediately, I took off, gripping him hard around the armpits with one hand, my other hand at his arm. It was a precarious hold and he seemed to realize it, because he made a prolonged, frightened sound that wasn’t quite wail or whimper. More of a ‘murrr’.

He was my human shield as I flew at the other gunman. I let go of him, and I let him crash into the other guy. Floorboards beneath them cracked but didn’t break like eggshells. The building between this spot and Nursery had probably absorbed the worst of the mist.

I half-floated over to them, half-stalked. With one stomp, I put the gun through the floor and into the meat.

“What the hell kind of money are you earning, that you’re willing to put up with this?” I asked. “You know one of your buddies got a fetus stuck in their ear, right?”

“Not money,” one of them said, crawling backwards to get away from where the ground was bulging, a soft wet mass crowning at the aperture. “Homes.”

“Homes?”

“On a safe world. Big houses with two servants each. Room for our families.”

I could hear Lord of Loss making his approach. The building next to us shuddered, steel girders disintegrating and bending beneath Lord of Loss’s mass.

“Next time, throw down your weapons. It’s not worth it. Someone else would have killed you.”

“If we die, our families still get the homes.”

“If they get those homes—” I started. Lord of Loss reached the edge of the building, metal screeching as it crumpled beneath him. He looked down at me. “—they’ll be living somewhere under the thumb of a guy who would throw away their loved ones without a second thought.”

“He has second thoughts,” one of the ex-gunmen said. “He was clear about the rules. The job comes first.”

“He’s better than others,” the other said.

Lord of Loss leaped down. I flew back around the corner to where the braided umbilical thing had been.

I wanted to have a long, long discussion with them, but I wouldn’t get that chance. When this was all over, we’d either be in Lord of Loss’s clutches or we’d be hurrying to help the other groups.

I really hoped for the latter.

In the lot, the braided umbilical thing was rousing, finding added length as it broke free of the container that had been Lord of Loss’s body. A tendril with a draping of placental sacs was reaching in from the building Lord of Loss had damaged with his weight, and the ground was dissolving into a morass of reds, pinks, and layers of veiny translucent films.