Frowning, Sabra dragged her finger across the screen of her tablet and rewound the footage again. It all went as she remembered it—then, it didn’t: after pinning Pick to the ground with her fist, she spent thirty-seven seconds staring up at the ceiling. There was nothing else there, and that was the problem.

  She could remember the tone of her voice, the touch of her hand, the wrath in her eyes. It didn’t matter how many times she went through the footage, she never saw herself staring back at her—and never would. But then, she hadn’t expected to, not really.

  But it would’ve been more reassuring if her nightmare had been made flesh, if only because that was better than the alternative—that she was a waking nightmare, a hallucination so vivid that it had blotted out her senses for over half a minute and cost her an easy win.

  She was lucky that it hadn’t cost her more than that.

  The sun had risen at some point, and Sabra wasn’t sure when. The first thing she’d done after getting home was injecting herself with stims, and her skin still itched. But it did mean she didn’t have to sleep which, at the moment, was all she wanted. And then she watched the footage. Again, and again, and again.

  Sighing, Sabra set her tablet down and went to make breakfast. The stims suppressed her appetite, so, she forced herself to eat. She distracted her mind from the prospect of eating without hunger by listening to the news.

  There was nothing there about her excitement the night before, perhaps because the most pressing story involved a tomato farm up north, one which had been burnt down. Not one of the hydroponic hubs, but a little hobbyist place.

  The owners had been away, and no bodies had been found. The police weren’t treating it as suspicious, but it was all anyone was talking about. As Sabra poked at her cereal, she couldn’t help but wonder: how could a tomato farm burn down in the Swiss winter? But then, who on Earth would burn a place like that to the ground?

  There was a dream Sabra had. A regular one, unfortunately free from any premonitory sense, where she’d cook something for Revenant. Breakfast, probably. She’d wake up one morning and suggest something. Maybe pancakes, although she’d never made them before, and act like it was a spur of the moment decision and not one she’d been thinking about for six months.

  She’d leap out of bed and start cooking, and she’d put some music on and Revenant would follow her and stand at the counter and roll her eyes and say something like Aren’t you forgetting something, Kasembe? before she’d end up shoving her out of the way and taking over after she, oh, dropped an egg or something, and then they’d be the best pancakes they’d ever had.

  In her imagination, it was perfect. Sure, the fact that Revenant didn’t eat was something of a flaw with it, but that was why it was a dream. A tiny diamond she nestled near her heart, where it could endure heat and pressure and time. At least, that was what Sabra hoped.

  She didn’t finish her breakfast. She found her weights and put her body through its paces. Maybe, Sabra thought, brooding her way through reps and sets, she could send the helmet cam footage to Revenant. She could crunch the diagnostic data in seconds, and analyze the footage itself to see there was anything she’d missed. She moved on to her speed bag, and it bounced against her bare fists, and each tap brought clarity.

  She had to have missed something. Maybe some Splatterpunk who could influence her mind, dredge up a nightmare or two. But, no—then Revenant would know what she’d done, and she’d have one or two cutting questions and there’d be no good answers. Her knuckles throbbed and Sabra sucked at them. Yeah. No good answers was right.

  Her phone chimed. “Answer,” Sabra called.

  “Morning, Sabs!”

  “Julian, hey.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  Sabra paused. “In my apartment, why?”

  “It’s a long story,” he replied. “Come to my office. Things just got a bit more interesting.”

  Mythique was different during the day. No music and no crowds. Sabra was struck by the thought of walking through a ruin, tablet in hand. She found Julian just where he said he would be, in his office. He sat behind his desk, as radiant as ever, fist pressed against his jaw. Whatever interesting was, Sabra was pretty sure it wasn’t anything good.

  Pretty sure.

  “Hey, Sab,” Julian said. “Take a seat.”

  She did. “That bad, huh?”

  Julian’s head shifted. She was pretty sure he was looking at her, and that he wasn’t smiling.

  “Have you involved anyone else in this?”

  Sabra blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “To be fair, I didn’t forbid it in the terms of our arrangement, perhaps an oversight on my behalf, but I thought you might keep me in the loop when it concerned any, shall we say, subcontractors.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Julian. I haven’t even told my girlfriend about this.”

  Julian leaned forward. “The best part of my incandescent lifestyle, Sabra, is that no one can read my facial expression. But it has its drawbacks—I’m frowning at you right now.”

  Heat surged up her neck. No one called Sabra Kasembe a liar.

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  Julian tapped a button on his desk. The top of it melted away into footage. Sabra recognized the water treatment plant turned nightclub she’d been at the night before. The footage was from the air—a drone, perhaps.

  “You were watching me?”

  Julian ignored the question. “Watch, here’s you,” he said, and there she was. She walked to the door, was intercepted by the bouncer, and then headed inside. He pressed fast-forward, and a flurry of people came and went from the entrance. Timestamped minutes ticked past an hour, and then another.

  “And here,” he said, pausing the footage.

  At the entrance, were two more figures in power armor. Sabra recognized the lines, planes and plates of her own suit. But the color was different: matte black.

  “Same armor,” Julian said. “Did you call for backup after your expedition into the Rhone?”

  “Oh, Christ and Allah, you know about that, too?”

  Julian leaned back, steepled his hands, and waited.

  “I don’t know who those two are,” Sabra said. “As for the armor—I use a Dynazon model. It’s top-end, but not unique. I didn’t call for backup—that’s, what, two hours after I ended up taking a bath? I was home by then, check my helmet cam footage.”

  She set her tablet on his desk. Julian shifted forward.

  “What I like about you, Sabs, is that you’re a real heart-on-your-sleeve kinda girl. Excuse the suspicion, but I had to ask. And I had to ask because, and I’m really admitting something here, Sabs: I have no idea who these two are.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. I’ve put feelers out but gotten nothing. I was really hoping you knew, because they could be anything from a military black ops team to high-end corporate security. I know the PMC Firmament is in town, but I don’t think this is their style. The building is still in one piece, you see.” Julian tapped his nose conspiratorially. “So, what I do know is that there’s a third-party involved, and my guess is that they’re on the same trail we are.”

  “That’s good, right?” But, Sabra thought, there could be another possibility. That they were there because she had been there, and her trail had gone cold when the Punks had thrown her in the river.

  “Do we know what happened when they went inside?”

  Julian nodded. “They grabbed Pick and Choose. I don’t know if they still have them. If they don’t, then those two have gone to ground. Either way, they’re off the map. So, I’m really hoping you got something for me. Because right now I’m not sure these two are working the case like we are—”

  “Or tying up loose ends,” Sabra said.

  “Exactly. Like I said, interesting.”

  “Well, I might have something,” Sabra replied, transferring over the footage she’d been watching again and again. It was no different to any of the other times. Tell me! Tell me about the bomb! Julian, to his credit, said nothing about the fact she got her clock cleaned because she was staring at the ceiling.

  “There,” he said, twirling a finger. “Go back. About ten seconds. To when you got Pick on the ground.” At the same second Sabra looked up, Pick shouted something.

  “What was...” Sabra began. “Was that German?”

  “Kortanaer,” Julian replied. “Not German, no. Dutch. It’s a surname.”

  “One you recognize?”

  “One I’m aware of.” Julian turned his head up and sighed. “It might explain our two shadows. Have you ever read Ulysses?”

  “No. But my dad might’ve?”

  “‘A man of genius makes no mistakes,’” Julian quoted, “‘His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.’ It’s a classic, I recommend it.”

  “Kortanaer’s a writer, then?”

  Julian laughed. “No, Sabs. That was just an appreciation of serendipity. Ulysses Kortanaer is an executive for Heimgarde. A rich guy, and a bit of a recluse.”

  “What’s Heimgarde?”

  “A Swiss arms manufacturing company.”

  “So, guns.”

  “For the most part, yes.”

  “And he, what, bought the phasmite off those two? Then goes on to blow up a train station with it? Well, it’d explain why they didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

  “It also explains the cover-up squad,” Julian said. “If that is who and what they are. It does not, however, explain why he’d do it in the first place.”

  “So, now what?”

  Julian returned his attention to his desk. Tapped away at a few screens, swiped something.

  “I’ve just paid you for this part of the job.”

  Sabra pulled out her phone, glanced at the notification. “That’s more than we agreed.” Much more.

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Julian replied. “Consider it an advance.”

  “An advance, on what?”

  “On your next job,” Julian said, leaning forward on his desk. “If Kortanaer’s people have found Pick and Choose, then they must know he’s exposed. They might even know his name is already in play. If they don’t, Sabs, then I presume they soon will.”

  “Which means—”

  “Which means I’m improvising. Give me a few hours to track down Kortanaer’s address, and then, tonight, you’re going to grab him for me.”

  Sabra leaned forward, frowning. “I’m sorry, what? Christ and Allah, you want me to abduct a guy?”

  Julian nodded sharply. Sharp enough that Sabra saw it. “Precisely, Sabs. Talk to him first, by all means. Maybe he’ll even come clean and quietly. But otherwise, I’ll give you an address, and you will take him there, and he and I will have a discussion.”

  And then? Sabra thought. She couldn’t see Julian as a murderer, but there was so little of him she could see. Maybe she should’ve had Revenant build a dossier on him.

  “I’m not getting paid to break into someone’s house and abduct him,” Sabra retorted. But it wasn’t so much the morality of it, more how it already complicated the knot of things she couldn’t share with Revenant.

  “Sabs,” Julian said, “I love you, truly—but you don’t strike me as someone opposed to getting her hands dirty.”

  “Sure. But you don’t know he’s involved.”

  “I know we can’t hesitate. Either Kortanaer is cleaning up his mess, or there’s a third party who will be looking for him, too. He may not be working alone, either. In fact, I’ll put a thousand francs down that he isn’t. Kortanaer is safest under our watch, just for the time being.”

  “Fuck,” Sabra said, because he was right. “Just give me a moment.”

  He did, and so, Sabra cheated. She closed her eyes, settled back in her seat, and breathed in through her nose. The currents swamped her, like she’d been dropped into an ocean, and swept over her.

  The choice whether to abduct Kortanaer or not both led to the same liminality, and the same causal point—a man on the floor, with a bullet hole in his head, and she is shouting—

  But, no. There were other currents, weaker ones, choppier ones. The future wasn’t set, it couldn’t be set. Not if she wanted to turn aside her nightmares. She had been wrong before, once before, and she could be again. If she accepted.

  So, she did. And that choice echoed out across the causal abyss, the web of possibilities and probabilities, and returned with vertiginous certainty, and a whisper borne on the winds of apocalypse from a voice that might’ve been her own.

  You’re going to be too late.