The seizure happened nearly ten minutes later. Hawk was not there for it. Exhausted and at the mercy of an exasperated doctor, she had negotiated her way from bed rest to food and a stretch of calm. There was a small mess hall here, where her mother was sitting and eating what could charitably be described as slop. It smelled like chili and did not taste too bad, but it had the consistency of wallpaper paste. Hawk, aware of the doctor glaring at her from across the room, got a bowl full of chili and fritos. Frito pie, she thought. There was also a small salad. Iceberg, three tomatoes, one lonely slice of cucumber hanging out on the edge of the bowl like the last soldier in the apocalypse. She poured Italian dressing on it, and it did not improve.

  Then she walked over to her mother and sat down. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Haven!” her mother said. Like most mothers, she clung to the name she’d awarded her daughter at birth, completely unaware of how much Hawk hated being called Haven. It was, Hawk suspected, her mother’s one true gift: the ability to completely ignore any facet of reality she did not like. It would have been easier if April had been awarded any measure of self-insight, any sort of awareness of her own behavior. But April sailed on through every storm of embarrassment and chagrin, avoiding all but the worst storms, and had somehow manifested here, in this makeshift hospital on the upper floor of a skyscraper, and she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself.

  “That Mulligan. He’s a looker, isn’t he?” April said, and added “Too bad he’s married,” just before Hawk had a full blown conniption.

  “I hadn’t noticed. I’m married, too.”

  And then she started to cry.

  Her mother immediately left both her lunch and her fecklessness behind, and said, “Oh, Honey.” She put her arms around her daughter and held her against April’s chest. She did not say anything. No, “There, there”, no “It will be alright.” Just arms around her, embracing her, giving her a structure to hold the darkness at bay.

  After a few minutes of helpless sobbing, Hawk felt the pressure inside herself ease. April put one hand beneath Hawk’s chin and turned her face upwards, so that she could see her mother looming moon-like above her. “Is it really as bad as all that?”

  “I think so,” She said.

  “I noticed something was wrong with Alex. Don’t worry, darling. He loves you. You only have to look in his eyes to see that. Same way I only need to look in yours to see how lost you are in him. You’ve always been head over heels for that kid, even when he wasn’t worth your time.” She stroked a loving hand down Hawk’s hair. “He’s not going to leave you.”

  But that’s not the problem at all! She wanted to scream. I’ve fallen in love with the wrong version of him, and now…

  “I’m losing the man I love,” Hawk said, at last. “I’m losing him twice.”

  “Honey, he’s alive, isn’t he? Yes, something’s happened to him—I saw his hands, his feet and his eyes. Something is badly wrong there. But he’s alive. And I know that man, love. If he’s pushing you away, it’s because he feels like he isn’t worthy of you.”

  Duh, she thought.

  April continued, “You remember that old O’Henry story, right? The Gift of the Magi? You two are so much like that story, it’s a miracle you ever got together at all. I thought for sure you were both going to pine for each other until the heat death of the universe, until you grew a spine. Have faith in him, darling. It will all work out.”

  “But he’s making a mistake!” She said, thinking of Mentaphen. “He’s going to do something…something bad, I think. Something dangerous. And he’s so caught up in his own self-loathing, he can’t see the risk. All he sees is a way out.” These words ripped themselves from her psyche like the bones of a prehistoric beast. She was speaking, and observing her own words at the same time. And yes, she thought, yes, all of that was true. She did think Mentaphen was a huge mistake, and that he would pay a terrible price for it…but what could she do about it?

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  “Sometimes people have to make their own mistakes.” A pause. “Look at me. I keep digging holes for myself and I can’t see how until the hole is already over my head. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how often you rescue me.” A gentle smile. “Which I am grateful for. But we’re talking about Alex, not me. Whatever is shadowing him, it won’t be permanent. All you can do, darling, is keep him from doing something permanent until he comes out of it. And he will come out of it. He’s got you to drag him out of the hole.”

  Keep him from doing something permanent. It was an important thought. She should have given it the respect and urgency it deserved. But at that moment a voice over an intercom shouted, “Code blue,” and gave Mattias’s room number. Hawk stiffened.

  “What is it?”

  “A friend,” She said. “Hopefully not dying.”

  ***

  The seizure was over shortly after, and a nurse—this one actually in scrubs; they had tiny apples on a background of gingham—came to get Hawk. Peeling herself out of her mother’s embrace, she gave April everything but an explanation, and followed the nurse down the hall to Mattias’s room.

  She’d expected the person on the bed to be Mattias now, for Henry to have retired. But the hollow-eyed body was still occupied by a distressed and frightened looking Henry, who also insisted that he should be Mattias now. “This isn’t how this stuff is supposed to work.”

  But Shadow was more concerned about Henry. “Come here,” He said, and helped Henry sit up. Long, taloned fingers touched Henry’s forehead delicately, reading something in the lines of Mattias’s age that Hawk could not see or understand. Then he cursed in the Holian tongue and said, “You are still fading, Henry. It isn’t as fast as it was when both you and Mattias were warring over this flesh, but you cannot hold this ground.” A pause. “Mattias is sacrificing himself for nothing.”

  “I’m not nothing,” Henry said, bristling.

  “Of course you aren’t. You’re the man one of my better friends is dying for. But his death should have meaning and the circumstances will make it utterly meaningless. The destruction of both minds, the death of both men…likely this was Kaiser’s goal. Look at how much it has occupied us. We focus on Henry, not Kaiser, and he gets further away at every moment.” A pause. “No matter. We must do this, and do it quickly.”

  At Shadow’s insistence, two extra beds were brought to Mattias’s room, and Hawk was told to choose one and lay down. “I will take it from there,” he said.

  “Take what from where?” Hawk said. “I’d like to know what you’re doing before we get there.”

  He gestured at the beds. “We shall all three of us sleep. It will be as if we are sharing a dream. A real dream. You’ll have control of yourself and your perceptions. Mattias is somewhere inside his own memories. Lost, for whatever reason. We will follow him down into the dream-world he’s created and then…” He stopped.

  “Then what?” Hawk said.

  “We will try to persuade him to come back to consciousness. Or, at least, to start fighting for his own body again.”

  “Why not pull Henry out, first? Use the piece of your orb to revive the body, use the mind as a template, and then start worrying about Mattias?” She said. It seemed the more logical path, to her.

  But Shadow was already shaking his head, sending his dark smoke hair into night-ripples that she wanted to touch. She wanted, in fact, to bury her face in it. “If Mattias has surrendered his body to Henry—and I suspect that’s what he’s done—then when we remove Henry from it, that dream-state will end and the body will die. Perhaps the devices and powers of this world could keep him going, for a while, but the dream-state will be gone, and Mattias’s mind with it. Henry is maintaining it now. That is why he feels his own memories as a maze. We will need you,” he said this to Henry, “as both a guide and, I am sorry to say, a battery. You will be the dreamer. You already are.”

  After that speech, there wasn’t much to it but to lie in the bed and wait. Shadow first had Henry lay his borrowed body upon the bed. Taloned fingers touched Mattias’s temples, Henry’s now, and nearly immediately, he slumped into unconsciousness. And then the magic began, for lack of a better term. Shadow lifted his violet hands, and fine threads of something spread out from the slumbering man’s temples. He gathered this with a twisting motion, as if he were drafting and spinning it into yarn. Now he walked to Hawk, and she watched him from her position on the bed. It canted the entire world, forcing an off-center perspective. She felt as if she were about to fall.

  “It will be harmless, for the most part,” he said. “The highest stake will be losing Mattias…or Henry. The second highest will be losing yourself. The dream-state is protective. I taught Mattias how to weaponize it. We will likely be lead astray, multiple times, and brought into danger. Be prepared to face the things you normally deny yourself.”

  Great. Hawk thought, and refused to let the sarcasm reach her voice. “Alright. Plug me in. I’m ready to go.”

  She felt the light touch of his fingers on her temples, and then she was falling.