“I’ve seen enough to say you get a bit of a pass,” Matryoshka–Valentin said. “Tough home life. You’ve bled more times in a week than many people do in a lifetime. I can see it.”

Rain looked at nearby crystals.

“Rain,” Gilpatrick called out. “We need to make all of this worth the lives we lost. Is this conversation going to get us there?”

“I’m trying to stop something terrible from happening,” Rain said.

“Let us work,” Matryoshka–Valentin said, accent turning the ‘work’ into a ‘vork’. “We don’t have long either.”

“The work you’re doing is dangerous!” Rain insisted.

A nearby island was fused into place. In that flash, Gilpatrick worried he could see the silhouette of a Titan.

“I’m worried,” Colt said.

Rain turned her way.

“Rain,” Gilpatrick said. “I’ve been asking you why you want to do this. Separating the Titans is good, it’s… critical. But we can do more.”

Rain clenched his fists. “Why are you worried, Colt?”

“I think you understand all of this from a…” Colt grasped for the word. Gilpatrick hated every second of delay. “…handyman perspective. I’m—”

“You’re a dreamer, you’re approaching this from an abstract angle,” Rain said.

“Exactly!” Colt said. “Intuition. I understand the dreams in the dream room, I can mess with them, because the power is so close to me. And by that same feeling and understanding, I’m getting a sense of what she’s doing, by the…”

Again, grasping.

Gilpatrick was tense. He glanced back at the pair sitting in the forest clearing, hands poised near crystals. “She who?”

“Fortuna,” Colt said. “The Titan. The one who’s knitting together this landscape and making more Titans as we speak. She wanted the damage to be done the way it was done.”

“She wants this,” Rain said. He looked at the two Case Fifty-Threes. “You guys see her as an enemy?”

“Yes,” Matryoshka–Valentin said.

“You’ll never forgive her? The Case Fifty-Threes who you’re planning to fix? They’re never going to stop seeing her as an enemy?”

“Never,” Matroyshka-Valentin said.

“Then there is never going to be a way this isn’t playing right into her hands,” Rain said.

The words hung in the air. Light flashed in the distance. Islands knit together. Expanses of crystal bright enough to be more red than black showed reflections of the world on the other side. Sections of city falling into chasms that opened wider.

“By that logic,” the doll girl said. “There’s absolutely nothing you can do that isn’t playing into her hands, either.”

Rain seemed stricken by that.

“We should try anyway,” the doll girl said.

But Matryoshka, hand poised near a crystal, didn’t move.

“Shouldn’t we?” the doll girl asked, hopeful.

“It would be too tidy a way to execute too many of her direct enemies. He’s right,” Matryoshka said.