Skidoo’s tentacles tightened around Atlanta, patting her back, smoothing her hair. It was like being inside a multipartnered hug, somehow infinitely soothing, the existence of an infant content in someone’s arms. She forced herself to take deep breaths, to slow her thoughts and arrange her sentences, before she pulled away. At the motion, Skidoo’s tentacles released her but stayed looped around her, a reassuring pressure as she took one more deep breath.

“Last killed him,” she said.

Instead of exploding into the barrage of angry questions she had expected, Talon drooped. “Are you sure?” he said. “Really sure?”

“Yes.”

“Lassite?” He turned to the Sessile, demanding some solution, some revelation that this event was not what it said it was, that somehow Fate had tucked his brother offstage, to be produced again at some opportune time.

But Lassite shook his head.

“Did you see this coming?” Talon demanded. “Why didn’t you warn us?”

“If I had, you would have resisted, and been killed for it,” Lassite said flatly. There were moments he anticipated with joy; this was not one. In some of them, Talon swung at him, broke his eye socket. He braced himself, but in this timeline Talon yielded to Dabry’s firm grip and was pulled into the corner, where Gio and Milly squatted on either side of him, leaning into him as he stared off into grief-stained space.

Lassite looked to Atlanta. She had buried her face in her hands, Skidoo still clinging to her form. In other timelines, she had said things to Last that made him kill her. She was essential to the Golden Path, an integral part of its purpose. He was reassured to see she was still alive and intact.

19

Milly was the next called.

“Well,” Niko said as the door shut after Turo and the drones, “at least soon we will be done with this particular stage. Knowing him, he wants me to be unnerved by the thought.” She shrugged. “And I am unnerved. I’m not entirely sure if we’re going to get out of this.”

“Sir,” Dabry said.

“I might as well be candid with them, Sergeant. This is not the time for bullshit.” She looked around at all of them. “Don’t mistake me. I intend to go out fighting. If I can, I’ll take as many people with me as I can manage, and I expect you all to do the same. Make the fuckers pay dearly. But I want you to know that while I haven’t served with all of you in the Hive Mind…” Her eyes rested on Atlanta for a moment. “I value all of you. It’s been an honor serving with you.”