Jack was still processing the implications of the gold-on-black business card when some guy, some friend of Sam’s, sat down across from him with the next round of drinks. It was good timing—by now, the good shit painkillers from the hospital had started to wear off, and the drug-driven disquiet of his body was turning into more of a throbbing ache.

  After leaving the hospital, Sam had taken him to their usual haunt: the Lucky Round. It was a dive bar, a cyst of Americana in the Genevan central business landscape. The sort of place that was decorated with a pre-war American flag, and a sign by the door that proclaimed REAL MEAT ONLY.

  Jack hated it.

  For her part, Sam had been holding court—or something like it. Here, among the various expats and public servants from what was left of the United States, the name Sam Holley carried weight. Weight enough that people bought her drinks, and traded war stories, and the proprietors were willing to look the other way and let Sam defy the Swiss smoking ban.

  Jack just didn’t have the faintest idea why. For three years, he’d known nothing about Sam. Now, he’d heard her trade enough war stories with some of the regulars at the bar to gather that she had been a soldier, and she’d fought in the war that’d split their country in half, but not much else. American history had never been a concern of his and he and Sam had always had an understanding—if you don’t pry into my shit, I won’t pry into yours.

  So, he didn’t. He drank his drinks and kept an eye out. In their usual spot, he could sit in the back corner and watch the front entrance—an old lesson of Monkey’s: never sit with your back to the door, Spots. Thinking of this evening as another job made it somewhat bearable.

  No one asked about his injuries—it had to be clear where they came from—and Jack didn’t want them to, anyway. When conversation turned to the bombing, as it frequently did, no one seemed to know anything more than he did. Something about that felt odd. The homeless man had been American, too. Jack ran that thought around his head, wondering if it meant anything. How many homeless Americans could there even be in Geneva?

  “Why do you think he did it?”

  It took Jack a moment to realize he’d asked the question. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been silent for. The half a dozen so other people glanced over at him.

  “Do you mean killing himself or blowing up the train station?” someone asked.

  “Both.”

  “Maybe he thought Swiss generosity was a little lacking?”

  A chuckle ran around the table but skipped over Jack.

  “I just don’t get it,” Jack said. “Has any phasmite gone missing? That’s military-grade. Like, a bunch of you work in the embassy, right? You’d hear about something like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe?” someone else offered. “It depends on where it went missing from.”

  “There’s always the black market,” Sam said.

  True. Phasmite may have been military-grade explosive material, but it wasn’t impossible to get. The Animals had always had some in their back pocket when they needed to get out of a jam. It’d been key to the Adriatic job, after all. Jack blinked and, in that split second, he was putting six bullets into Sabra’s father and Sam was falling, a smoking hole in her side, and Elias was spitting up blood, and he was shouting no as someone blew himself up for no goddamn—

  Movement at the bar, Jack’s mind snapped back to the present. A man pushed himself off and headed in their direction. He had broad shoulders and a powerful build, a lantern jaw. Moved with the casual awareness of his size that reminded Jack of Monkey, and made him aware he didn’t have his handgun on him.

  “Friend of yours?” Jack asked Sam.

  “I like to consider myself everyone’s friend,” Sam replied, and frowned. “Oh, shit.”

  “Well, if it isn’t Trigger,” the man said, in a gravelly tone that suggested mountains grinding together. “Been a long time since Benning. How the fuck have you been?”

  “Alive. Not sure anything else is important. Been a while, Reynolds. Thought you were dead.”

  “That why you didn’t write?”

  “No, that’s because you’re a worse conversationalist than my friend here.”

  Reynolds skimmed him with his eyes—he’d already judged him before he’d even come over. How long had he been watching them, Jack wondered. Jack skimmed him right back. Ink on his biceps, a distinct V4T. Where had he seen that before?

  Reynolds said, “Bit young for you, isn’t he?”

  “What, can’t a girl rob a cradle if she feels like it?” Sam replied, snorting. “We’re coworkers.”

  “You left the service? Shit, who’d ever have guessed that back in the day?”

  “Yeah,” Sam replied. “Who would’ve. You?”

  “Got discharged after that bullshit with those super soldiers, all that crap in Mexico. Working for Firmament now.”

  Not a name Jack recognized. But by the way Reynolds talked and held himself, that sharklike placidity in his blue eyes, he figured that was a good thing. Something conducive to remaining alive.

  “Pull up a seat,” Sam said, and Reynolds did so.

  “I’ll grab the next round,” Jack said.

  So, he did. A short while later, Jack made his way over to the bar and ordered another jug. The bartender had an easy smile and the face of a cartoon lamb, but he moved with a precision that told Jack he was a killer. That, or he was leaping at shadows. Or concussed. Or both. He distracted himself by gazing over the panoply of bottles with their colorful contents.

  “Hey, Spots.”

  It was a voice out of his nightmares. Jack turned his head and there, between him and the door, was a man, tall and broad-shouldered. He noted the auburn shade of his hair, the cast to his features that everyone called handsome and his mind, dizzy with the implication of it, refused to recognize.

  It can’t be.

  “Missed me?” Elias asked, and then pointed to the glittering ember in his right eye. The bullet Jack had put in there. “Guess not,” he added, grinning like it was a joke. Like they hadn’t tried to kill each other.

  Like he wasn’t dead.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Jack hissed.

  Elias put a hand over his heart. There were five bullet holes in his chest, blood draining from them. Somehow, he didn’t seem to mind.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Is this the greeting I get, after all this time? Spots...”

  “Last warning.”

  Elias grinned. “Or what? Well, I suppose I can’t blame you, really. I suppose you thought you’d seen the last of me.”

  “I have seen the last of you,” Jack said. “You’re dead.”

  “Dead?” Elias asked, sounding sad. “Memories never die, Spots.”

  The bartender returned and Jack paid, acting like nothing was wrong. When he looked back, Elias had vanished. Jack gathered up the jug and returned to their table, set it down before Sam. He thought about saying something, decided against it.

  “I’m going to head out,” Jack said.

  Sam nodded and tossed him her keys. “You good? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m good,” Jack said, but he just might’ve.

  The Lucky Round was about halfway between their apartment and their workplace. The night air was cold and crisp and Jack moved at a brisk pace. He’d walked the route enough times that he could let his mind wander. He needed to be alone. He needed to think.

  Monkey was dead. Jack had seen to it himself. Each of those holes had been from a bullet he had put there. Elias’ revolver, his finger on the trigger. Then, he’d sat there within the heart of the god-machine, held him in his arms, and listened to him die. He’d cried. He’d actually cried.

  When the mountain had come down, Elias’ body had been left behind. It’d been as good a burial as he could have ever hoped for. Elias had been touched by The Engineer, had held one of his transcendental artifacts, and that had left him changed. The IESA would’ve rendered his body down to its base components in some lab. Killing him had been a necessity. Anything else was just adding insult. He wasn’t in Geneva. He couldn’t be.

  But then—

  Jack hadn’t figured anything out by the time he reached home. The aroma of waffles and syrup from the vendor and her cart on the far side of the courtyard was almost welcoming. He paused there, at the edge of the courtyard with his hands in his pockets and his breath frosting before him, sparing a glance up at the broken Moon, lunar debris like a scar across the sky. He was pretty sure it’d been whole when he was a child but, much like the rest of his life before meeting Monkey, it was a blur of vague memories and half-remembered feelings. He remembered having feelings once. He wasn’t sure he had them now.

  There were a few people in the courtyard. A young couple laughing at something on one of the benches. A homeless man curled up on another, muttering and twitching to himself. Something about dogs. Jack moved past them all, heading for the far end of the square, toward the waffle cart and its solitary attendant. She looked up at him as he approached, recognized him, smiled. She had a little gap between her front teeth that reminded him of Sam, and the most startlingly blue eyes he had ever seen. Sam said they had to be contacts.

  Sam didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.

  “Hey,” she said. “What happened to you?”

  Jack shrugged. “Long story.”

  “You weren’t caught in that bombing, were you?”

  He didn’t know what to say, so, he replied with: “Just a waffle—the usual.”

  “Surprise you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Someone’s brave,” she replied, and set to work.

  “Or stupid.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say it.”

  He’d come here the first time because he was hungry, and he’d never had waffles before. The second, third, and fourth? Well, that was because it was convenient, and he’d developed a habit. Maybe he’d gotten sloppy, as Elias might’ve said. But he was safe in Geneva. Safe-ish. Safer than he’d been in a long time.

  “Guess so,” Jack said. He looked back over his shoulder at the homeless man. “Make it two, actually. One for my friend over there.”

  Something flickered over the attendant’s face—surprise, maybe. “Certainly,” she said. “Imagine if there were more people like you in the world.”

  “Yeah, imagine that.”

  Soon, he had his waffles. He walked over to the homeless man and passed him the paper plate. The man glowered at him but, after a moment, began to eat. Jack hoped it helped—he remembered starving, having nightmares about dogs. Then, for whatever reason, he made his way back toward the cart. To return the plate, he told himself.

  In the time he’d been there, only one other person had come by the cart. For some reason, he felt the urge to say something.

  “Not a good night for business?”

  “Not the best,” the seller replied, wiping at the top of her cart. She had an interesting tattoo on the back of her hand—something like a dragon and a water drop, almost an ouroboros.

  “Sorry to hear it.” Did he mean that? It felt like he meant that. He hoped he meant that.

  He wasn’t sure what to say then. He’d already gone far beyond the threshold of what he’d aimed for and hoped for.

  “Well,” he said, unsure of what to say, aware he was still holding the waffle he’d ordered. “Yeah. Thanks for the waffles and the conversation.”

  “Just doing my job,” she replied, smiling. “Bring your friends next time, huh?”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. Sam would never let him live it down. But there was something pleasant in that, the conversation. Of being, for just a few minutes, normal.

  Elias was waiting for him in his apartment, seated on the couch like he owned the place. “You’ve done pretty well for yourself, haven’t you?”

  Jack didn’t bother trying to make sense of it as he hung his jacket up. “You could say that.”

  “An apartment in the heart of Geneva,” Elias said, nodding. “A job with some small measure of authority. A new life established for you by your new friends at the Agency. Yes, Spots, I think I can say that. And all you had to do was betray everything you ever wanted.”

  “You’re one to talk about betrayal,” Jack replied. Elias shrugged and turned, looking out over the lights of Geneva. Unsure of what else to do but struck by the urge to do something, Jack wandered over the far side of the apartment and then back.

  It was like he was seeing it for the first time. The brown floorboards and white walls. The red rug emblazoned with the Swiss cross. Sam had called it a decent apartment, and he didn’t know anything about apartments. She’d been married once, so, that seemed as good enough of a reason to believe her. All that mattered to Jack was that it was a place to eat and sleep.

  “You still pace when you’re trying to figure something out,” Elias said.

  “Is that so?” He didn’t stop.

  Elias glanced over. “Is this what you wanted, Spots?”

  “This?”

  “This. This whole playing house act. You and Sam. All domesticated and being condescended to by bureaucrats. Getting all buddy-buddy with the rot at the heart of the world.” Elias turned his head to catch him in the corner of his eye. “Nice work buying some waffles for the homeless guy down there, by the way—bravo. One meal down only, what, three thousand to go?”

  “At least it’s something.”

  “It’s a waste of time,” Elias said. “You know as well as I do that charity can be cruelty.”

  The memories hit Jack like being thrown through a pane of glass, thoughts and feeling digging into his psyche like broken shards. Him and Elias and Latch and the others who came and went. Sitting around a fire under the M1 highway, hungry, starving. Living off the charity of others, resenting that it kept them chained. Scavenging, stealing.

  The way everything had changed when Elias found that revolver and then, again, the first time Jack had killed a man. And then, again, when he had said that they could aim higher than the petty gangs and warlords of rural Australia. It wasn’t them who let him and the others starve. It was the IESA. Then it’d just been him and Elias against the world, a two-man crusade. It’d all made so much sense then.

  “You’ve become one of them, Spots,” Elias said. “Telling yourself that you’re doing good because you’re letting that guy out there eke out one more night in the cold.”

  “You would’ve killed him—how is that better?”

  “Maybe,” Elias said, shrugging. “Maybe not. Besides, this isn’t about me. You’ll never know what I would’ve done, because I’m dead. This is about you, and what you do next.”

  Jack nodded. “You’re in my head, then.”

  “Sure. Where else are voices ever heard, buddy?”

  “So, you’re not real.”

  “I’m as real as any memory is.”

  “Right.”

  “You hold the power here, Spots,” Elias said. “I’m only in your head. Stop thinking about me and I’ll just pop out of existence. But you can’t, can you? Because you know, deep down, that I was right—and you killed me for it.”

  “So, you’re not Elias.”

  “Not completely. Something of me is. A bit of the Elias you remember, and a bit of the Elias you hope to see again. What I am, is the part of you that you’ve crushed and thrown away into the back of your mind. But leopards can’t change their spots.”

  Jack focused on the lights of Geneva outside his window, and Monkey blurred and lost cohesion and then, when Jack looked again, he was gone. Shaking his head, Jack finished his waffles and took some painkillers and brushed his teeth and slipped into bed. There, he stared up at the ceiling and tried to think.

  A homeless guy had blown himself up with military-grade explosives. Dozens dead. The authorities were in a quiet panic and seemed to know as much as he did, maybe even less. Revenant was involved because someone close to her (father, brother, creator?) had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. What had led someone to do that, and how had he acquired the phasmite?

  Elias had always said there was no such thing as coincidences.

  But Elias was dead. He had killed him. Only three people knew what happened within that mountain, and one of them was a robot. That left himself and Sabra, and this wasn’t her style. Whatever was happening here, it was happening in his head. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d talked to himself to work through perspective, to process his thoughts.

  It was just more intense.

  That, or maybe he had lost his mind. Pushed himself too far and split his psyche open. Maybe the head trauma from being blown the fuck up was worse than he thought, and he should’ve stayed in hospital. Maybe he’d just taken one too many blows to head. And maybe, horribly, Monkey was right.

  Elias may have been dead. But Monkey, that Wukong scion who dreamed of revolutionary mischief?

  Of that, Jack was less sure.