The security exec’s shout became genuinely agitated. “Why? Because, Kovacs, whoever this is—and it’s not Quell—whoever this is, she’s brought back a plague from the Uncleared. A whole new form of death. You ask her about the Qualcrist Protocol when she wakes up, and then ask yourself if what I’ve done here to stop her is so terrible.”

“Boy!” It was my younger self, elbows crooked under Sylvie’s knees, hands spread expressively wide beneath. “Are we going to load this bitch, or are you going to stand there talking about it all night?”

I held his gaze for a long moment, then lifted Sylvie’s head and shoulders carefully up to where Sierra Tres waited in the swoopcopter’s cramped cabin. The other Kovacs shoved hard and the rest of her body slid in after. The move brought him up close beside me.

“This isn’t over,” he yelled in my ear. “You and I have some unfinished business.”

I levered one arm under Sylvie Oshima’s knee, and elbowed him back, away from her. Gazes locked.

“Don’t fucking tempt me,” I shouted. “You bought-and-paid-for little shit.”

He bristled. Brasil surged up close. Aiura laid a hand on my younger self’s arm, and spoke intently into his ear. He backed off. Raised one pistol finger and stabbed it at me. What he said was lost in the wash of the rotors.

Then the Harlan security exec was shepherding him away, back along the parapet to a safe distance. I swung myself aboard the Dracul, made space beside me for Brasil and nodded at Sierra Tres. She spoke directly to the pilot and the swoopcopter loosened its hold on the parapet. I stared out at the other, younger Kovacs. Watched him stare back.

We lifted away.

Beside me, Brasil had a grin plastered across his face like the mask for some ceremony I hadn’t been invited to attend. I nodded back at him wearily. Suddenly, I was shattered, mind and body. The long swim, the unrelenting strain and near-death moments of the climb, the tightwired tension of the face-off—it all came crashing back down on me.

“We did it, Tak,” Brasil bellowed.

I shook my head. Mustered my voice

“So far, so good,” I countered.

“Ah, don’t be like that.”

I shook my head again. Braced in the doorway, I leaned out of the swoopcopter and stared down at the rapidly shrinking array of lights from the Rila citadel. With unaided vision, I couldn’t see any of the figures in the stone garden any more, and I was too tired to crank up the neurachem.

But even over the rapidly increasing space between us, I could still feel his stare, and the unforgiving rage kindled in it.

THIRTY-THREE