“Oh no,” Vista said, as she moved close enough to see Rain. She hurried to my side.

“There’s no point,” Cradle said.

I was undoing my belt, a faux-gold band that I’d used to add some color so my costume wasn’t too top-heavy. The process was hard, complicated by the fact that my left arm had a hole in it and my hand wasn’t cooperating as a consequence.

I needed to refresh myself on things—I’d learned about tourniquets from the Patrol block, but in the moment it felt like half of what I’d learned was that tourniquets were a complicated, complicated thing. Compartment syndrome, damage from long-term use.

“You bastard,” Capricorn said.

“I’m not the bastard here,” Cradle said. “He is. Everyone we’ve told the story to has agreed it’s fair. When the bad guy is shitty enough, it stops being revenge and starts being justice.”

“That’s not right at all,” Sveta said.

Cradle sighed.

“Does ‘everyone’ include Tattletale?” I asked.

“I don’t see how that matters,” Cradle said. “This is done. He’s done. Things have come full circle, telling you would only…”

His machine’s hands moved. Everyone, myself included, tensed.

One hand moved, palm upward, elbow pointed down. A one-armed shrug.

“…multiply the grudge,” Cradle finished his sentence.

Rain’s hand and one arm were my focus here, as I grit my teeth and tried not to be distracted. He was cut up pretty badly—defensive wounds, with the degree of damage hard to discern. The way cloth draped and the hand-coverings he wore obscured things. Like his teeth, the blood ran between the decorative elements of his glove.

His other hand had cuts, ones I might have called serious, if not for the fact that I was having to look at things in totality. If Crystal had cut her hand like that on an ordinary day, in some hypothetical universe where she tried and failed to use a real knife, I would be rushing her to the hospital. As it was? Low priority.

There were cuts on his chest—I’d look at those after. Vista was tending to his leg, which was as bad as the arm.

“Multiply the grudge?” Capricorn asked. He stood between us and Cradle.

“You’d walk away wanting to kill against me and against any co-conspirators I named. You go after me, after them, and assuming they have friends and contacts, assuming you succeeded, those contacts would go after you. Each time, it becomes something bigger, until one side gets wiped out. Let’s end it here.”

“What do you think is going to happen, Cradle?” Capricorn asked. He was incredulous as he asked, “You really think I’m going to walk away when you’ve done this to my friend?”