Leaving only Rain, who was breathing hard, his expression hidden. Cretan stood to one side, his head periodically turning as he surveyed the high walls that enclosed Cradle’s fucked up little arena.

“I guess you win,” I told Cradle, my voice low.

“If he surrenders, and if you stay back, I’ll let you tend to your wounded. You’ve got a few. I’ll do what I need to in the next six hours, and then I’ll get somewhere safe. I have thinkers to ask, to make sure I’m not being pursued. Once that’s confirmed, I’ll disable the severing.”

“It can be disabled?”

“Yes or no?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t get a say?” Rain asked.

“Ra—Precipice,” I said, and my voice was firm. “Please.”

“One person is strapped to the railroad track, everyone else is strapped to the other. The trolley is coming, do I pull the switch?” Rain asked, bitter. “Except I’m the one guy. I’ve always been the one guy. I get people who say they care about me, but they always end up on the other goddamn track.”

“It’s not about that,” I said.

“Fucking feels like it. Fuck!”

I closed my eyes. I was aware that Cradle probably wasn’t keen on picking a fight with me because Lionwing had called his emotion power a kind of emotion reading or feedback response. If my resistance to emotion powers factored in, I might seem a little fuzzier.

Rain, who was the only other guy with emotion powers still standing, was part of that.

But if I fought—I couldn’t see a way through. Not when he had other mercenaries like Cretan, or anyone still outside the walls.

I had allies out there too, but the calculus…

I wasn’t sure I had another knock-down, drag-out fight in me.

“Yes,” I heard.

I opened my eyes. Rain had answered.

“Walk forward,” Cradle said. “Twenty feet ahead, hands up. No mechanical hands.”

Rain’s expression was hidden, but I could imagine his face twisting with emotion as his shoulders tensed and his head turned at a slight angle.

“I’m going to remove them.”

“Do it.”

Rain disconnected the remains of his machine hands—one mostly intact, the other broken at the elbow. He held both the pads in his hand, the arms folded up. He bent down to lay them on the ground.

“Throw them. Into there.”

Cradle indicated a leafy area where a bush jutted up against the side of one of the warped homes.

Rain discarded them, throwing them where they’d be hard to find again. Without being asked, he started walking, head down. Cretan trained a gun on him.

Cradle looked at me, and I raised my hands.