Mattias had also been brought to the skyscraper HQ. He’d been given his own room, near the nurses’ station. It had clearly been someone’s office, before. The artwork still on the walls had a bit more personality than expected, and one of them looked to have been made by a child. All the furniture and other signs of humanity had been stripped out. There was one medical bed, one television, one set of IV poles and monitors hanging near the bed like the world’s most expensive scarecrow. Mattias sat in the bed. Hawk had thought he’d be allowed clothes, but no, he was still in a hospital gown. He had a large number of bracelets on one wrist. One of them said, fall risk in large, clear letters. He was working frantically over a set of notebooks, his hair lank and pale white. He looked to have aged a decade in the time they’d spent in the Rift.

  “Hi, Hawk,” he said. Okay, not Mattias, but Henry. “Hi, Alex.” And then he winced. “Sorry. Not-Alex.”

  Hawk, now fully aware of just how much that confusion must grate on the Shadow, said, “How are you doing?” and stepped forward, shielding him almost.

  “Not great. I’m dying by inches.” A pause. “Or, at least, I should be.”

  “Because you’re only here due to Mentaphen?” she said.

  He looked up sharply. “Where’d you hear that name?”

  She could lie or she could tell the truth. Well, lying had dug a deep hole for both herself and Shadow, hadn’t it? She chose the truth, and tried to sound light about it. “Turns out Kaiser did the same thing with Alex. I don’t know when he got a spinal tap or how, but—” she shrugged. “He made a serum that he claims will work on the Shadow the way it worked on you and Mattias.”

  Henry, in Mattias’s body, looked sharply at the Shadow. “Did you use it?” he said, bluntly.

  She shook her head. She wanted to say we’re not that stupid, but the Shadow did want to use it. She didn’t have the heart to tell anyone that, by his own choice, the Shadow’s days were numbered. Unless I can figure out how to talk him out of it. She was trying to find towers of rhetoric, mountains of persuasion, and coming up empty. Maybe because she didn’t understand her own misgivings. Was it just because she’d fallen for the Shadow? Had she really chosen him over Alex, in less than a month after his destruction?

  “Good,” Henry said. “Because the stuff he gave me isn’t Mentaphen. Mentaphen…I just heard rumors about it.” He shifted and triggered a sudden flood of papers off his lap. Cursing, he chased them, and Hawk and the Shadow both rushed to the hospital bed to move the papers, notebooks and folders into a more stable position. Henry wrung his borrowed hands, and said, “Sorry. I’m trying to get as much of my knowledge down on paper as I can before…” He gulped.

  “Before you fade,” Shadow said.

  “Yeah.” Pause. “Except that should really be happening already. You usually get one or two really viable days, and then you start trailing off. It’s not Mentaphen. Mentaphen is supposed to be the permanent version of this stuff. Last I heard, it wasn’t ready. I don’t know who they experimented on, or how, but everything I heard suggested that it was nearly lethal to the host, and the implant still fades.”

  And that made her gut lurch harder. Permanent. Someone would be permanently erased using this shit. And that was only if it worked! Oh, her brain had just made a mistake: she could identify this emotion now. Sheer and perfect loathing. She hated Mentaphen. But why? And why should she have to articulate the reasons why she felt this way? Shouldn’t the fact that her entire body was reacting like a scream be enough?

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  It's his choice, you idiot. A harsh internal critic that served only to rise the panic, another part of the puzzle, another scream in the void.

  “Anyway…I’m not fading. Which makes no sense. I felt it yesterday. I’m not feeling it today.”

  The Shadow’s expression sharpened, became more leonine, as if he’d spotted prey on the veldt. “Come here.” He said, and negated his own command by walking to Mattias’s bedside. (Or did it count as Henry’s bedside now?) He reached out and put a hand to the shared head. “Relax,” he commanded, and then stood there, quiet, while Henry closed Mattias’s eyes and waited.

  Hawk could feel her own heartbeat, catastrophic in the silence.

  Shadow abruptly dropped his hand, cursing. “Damned old fool,” he said, at last, and there were tears in his eyes. “That’s not what I taught him. That’s not what he should do!”

  “What?” Hawk said.

  “Mattias knows a little power. He can make cold-light. I taught him that. I also taught him some mind-tricks he could use to safeguard himself from Nasheth and her Archon. Ways to keep our connection secret, to hide his own defiance. They could have cracked his mind open like an egg, otherwise.

  “He’s using the tricks I taught so that he, and not Henry, is the one to fade.”

  It hit Hawk like a jolt. “He’s going to die?”

  Shadow ignored her. “Can you bring Mattias to the fore? I want to speak with him.” A pause. “I want to yell at him.”

  Henry shook his head. “I’ve…actually been kind of trying to do that. And I can’t. Every time I try it’s like I get…lost. I start remembering things I haven’t thought about in years—like baseball games and homecoming dance—and I…forget. It’s not my fault!”

  “Of course it’s not. It’s a trick I taught him to use against Nasheth. He can hide his thoughts behind a maze of memories. She would have to actually venture into his mind to…” And Shadow’s entire stance changed. He seemed radiant. “Of course. That’s how we’ll do it.”

  “Do what?” Hawk said.

  “Retrieve Mattias. I’m not going to do this if it destroys my friend. What I felt in Henry’s mind suggests that what Mattias has done to himself is permanent, unless he chooses otherwise. He has chosen to die so a good man can live,” Shadow said this last hastily, as Henry’s shared mouth was open as if in protest, “and that is commendable. It’s just unacceptable.”

  Kind of like what you’re proposing with the Mentaphen, Hawk thought. She probably should have said it out loud, but her pithy internal commentary didn’t translate through blinding grief and panic. God, she was so tired. If she could just get some rest…real rest, real sleep, not the fraught nonsense she’d managed since…well, since the first time she saw Glass. Maybe, when this new crisis was over, she could throw his own words back in his face? No, he didn’t deserve that.

  “What are you going to do?” Henry said.

  “It isn’t want I am going to do. It is what we are going to do. You and I. I’m going to venture into your mind and find my friend, bring him back in full, and then we’re going to get you out of his head and back in your own body before you fade any further. But I’m going to need your help navigating your memories.” He paused. “I’ll need both your help.”

  “Wait,” Hawk said. “You’re proposing we mind meld with Mattias? You can do that?”

  “Only with permission…but yes. I can. I cannot take anything, or change anything, but I can experience a memory. It will be as if we are standing in it, walking around as if it is just another room in a great house. There will be little risk.”

  Hawk, who had heard that voice say similar things for most of her adult life, said, “You’re lying about the risk.”

  He wheeled on her, sharply. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re lying about the risk,” she repeated. “There’s something you’re not saying.”

  He had the grace to flush a bit, and look down at his feet. His bare feet. She realized these were also an inhuman violet, clawed and a bit scaled. She couldn’t remember if they’d been like that before his injury or not.

  “Fine. Yes. There is a risk to our minds if we are inside of Henry and Mattias when they have another seizure. We would be caught in it and likely would suffer damage. But these are happening less and less frequently, yes?” He said.

  Henry nodded, but added, “Less frequently doesn’t mean they aren’t happening at all. They’re maybe two, three hours apart. And I’m due for another one, I think.” He swallowed. “I’m feeling muzzy. I can’t focus and my hands are shaking.”

  Shadow accepted this. “Then we will have to wait. We will wait until you have had a seizure and survived it, and then Hawk and I will go within.”

  And he wheeled around on heel and stalked from the room, as abruptly as he had entered, leaving Hawk behind to clean up the pieces of a somewhat shattered Henry Dyson.