“It’s cool that it worked that well,” Kenzie said. “He could move around. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to let him do that. They can make micro-adjustments to have a slightly different pose or posture when they swap in.”

“Is that why you had the perpendicular set of high-distortion prisms?” Defiant asked.

“I thought it might grease the track if he wanted to move down it.”

“It’s a good idea. You do sacrifice some clarity.”

“I made so many mistakes early on, trying to get perfect clarity or better-than-perfect clarity. No, it’s not what we need. We need to be able to communicate with him.”

The nurse came back in. She had a syringe. She addressed us all, not looking the least bit intimidated about being surrounded by capes, let alone Defiant’s massive frame. “He scheduled a wake up this morning, but are you sure you want to do this?”

“We are,” Rain said.

She removed the tubes from his nose, the covers from over top of him, and the heartbeat monitor from his finger. It produced the tonal beep of a flatline as she disconnected it, a sound that made ten kinds of bad emotion jump all over the place in my chest and stomach.

She gave Byron the syringe in the shoulder, depressing it.

His eyes fluttered, opened, and he stirred.

“Change,” Rain said. “Swap out.”

Byron hesitated, then blurred.

A moment later, he was Tristan. He sat up, hopped down.

“Couldn’t talk,” he said.

“We know,” Kenzie said. “I can work on that. Next time.”

“It would be a lifesaver,” Tristan said. “It would mean a lot.”

Kenzie bounced a little with excitement.

“Can we look for Byron?” Tristan asked.

Kenzie nodded. “Sit on the bed? Pull your legs up. You have to stay within bounds.”

Tristan did.

She activated the machine again.

The blue motes appeared, and they coalesced into Byron’s form, partially curled up, lying just behind Tristan.

He looked to be unconscious.

Byron had sustained light brain trauma and more severe trauma to his body. The pair was trapped in a tricky dynamic now, because Byron went in and out of consciousness, something the nurses said was a consequence of the kind of healing he needed to do.

But he didn’t heal while Tristan was out and about. He had to be phased in, lying there, with people checking on him, for best results.

Tristan had been giving up extra time just to give his brother a shot at a faster recovery. And he was recovering, but it was slow.

And, apparently, while Byron was in that twilight state of recovery, Tristan was aware. There was no sleeping in sync like they normally did. Not for most of it.

“That makes this the first time in years he’s not looking over my shoulder,” Tristan said, sounding awed, or stunned, or horrified, if not all three.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Vista said.