She is falling, broken and bloody, her armor coming apart like Icarus’ wings before the might of the sun. All designs unmade, all hubris punished, all victories undone—and, in the dream, Sabra Kasembe is yet aware, even as she plunges toward mortal impact, that it is good.

  Sabra woke to an impossible contradiction: the feeling of her body breaking on impact, and the awareness of finding it upon a mattress. Christ and Allah, she felt the impact—and her arms, Christ and Allah, her arms! Then, something else—a touch at her shoulder, not-quite-skin on skin.

  “It’s okay,” Revenant said. “I’m here.”

  Sabra took a second to catch her breath, and let the prophetic abyss recede into the shadows and recesses of the room. Revenant could monitor her biometrics, knew as well as she did that the adrenaline was draining from her veins. She murmured something to her in Arabic. Sabra had no idea what she said.

  “The nightmares?” Revenant asked.

  “Yeah.” But that was a whole topic. “Did I wake you?”

  “You did not. I was assisting Lykos with the repair work, and having a conversation with my father.”

  Sabra sat up. “He’s here?”

  “No, Sabra. But I do have an appointment with him. At his residence in Cologny.”

  Cologny. Sabra knew about Cologny—she knew that it was rich. The kind of rich that’d been able to avoid Geneva’s rapid increase in density. Detached houses were rare enough in Geneva, just like Asclepion, and Cologny was a suburb of villas. She could guess what they were going to discuss.

  “I’m sorry that I made a mess of your investigation, Rev.”

  “Mm. It was not your error,” Revenant replied. “I should have anticipated that you would involve yourself in a crisis like this. Besides, it was Jack Harper who killed him.”

  “Should we go have a chat with him?”

  “Perhaps. I’ll discuss it with my father. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Sabra nodded. “It was just a bad dream,” she said, but if her lie couldn’t pass her own lips without feeling hollow, then it certainly wouldn’t escape Revenant’s sensors. The golden concentric circles of her eyes betrayed nothing. “Abacus.”

  Revenant nodded and rose from the bed. “Providing nothing else comes up, I’ll be back before midday. Make yourself at home, or head back to Geneva if you wish.”

  “I’ll hang around for a bit. Say ‘hi’ to your father for me, okay?”

  “Abacus,” Revenant said, and stepped out.

  Only then, did Sabra lie down again, and let her mind run through Blueshift’s exercises, peering through the causal silt, glimpsing the currents of probability, the channels of prophecy. And beyond them, the horizon—an infinitely dark thunderhead, a seething destructive mass. Sekhmet’s jihad. Violence and atrocity, her sword raised high.

  It was closer than before.

  Much closer.

  Sabra had always considered the apocalypse as a fixed phenomenon, if only because it had never leapt closer. A storm warning—close enough to forecast, but not close enough to see. She had known that like she’d known the rhythm of her heart—and now it’d skipped one hell of a beat. Would there be another warning, or would the next development be a full-on heart attack?

  Something had to have changed, but what? She splashed water onto her face and rubbed it into her wrists, if only to make sure that both were still there. Just for a second, the sweat-slicked features of her face felt like they belonged to a stranger. “Get it together, Kasembe,” she told the woman in the mirror. But it was harder than before, because this was the first dream in which she had died.

  Even now, there was the thought (the hope?) that she wasn’t a prophet. That she was merely insane. Somehow, that was more reassuring. But it was a lie. Neither Blueshift nor Revenant would humor the ravings of a schizophrenic. Neither of them would’ve considered her able to wield power, to be a threat, if it wasn’t true.

  And they weren’t the only ones.

  In Australia, when they were hunting down Elias Hawthorne, they had made the acquaintance of Promethea. Not one of the transcendent Seven, but close enough to that status that people wondered whether conventional wisdom was wrong and she was number eight. Somehow, Jack’s best friend and treacherous brother-in-arms had been granted an audience with such a being.

  Jack had wanted to meet with her, to find some clue to Elias’ whereabouts. Promethea had met with Sabra instead. And there, atop shifting sands in an elysian cavern filled with fruit trees, colorful birds and actual horses, underneath an artificial sun in miniature, the blinded seer had told Sabra that she had seen Sekhmet too—in the future, yes, and in her visage then. Your opportunities to elude the end of all things, she had said, are already fewer than you think.

  How few were they now?

  Sabra sighed. Blueshift would admonish her for being distracted by her imago. Her parents had thought her nightmares resolved before she’d graduated from high school. She couldn’t stress them out—not given everything, not when they were talking again. So, that left meditation.

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  Sabra pulled on the only clothes she had, her armor softsuit, even though the neural leaves were far too cold against her skin, and went for a walk. Stepping out of the chalet was like stepping out onto an alien planet. Verdant rolling hills as far as the eye could see. Massive trees that had to be older than both Asclepion itself and its empowered architects. The air was crisp and cold and snowflakes drifted to-and-fro.

  A cow called out toward the back of the property. A sound Sabra only recognized from recordings. Maybe a dozen or so shaggy brown cows lined the fence at the back of the grounds. She leaned up on the fence, and they didn’t back away—Sabra could respect that. One of them stuck its tongue up its nose. Sabra laughed. She could respect that, too. Maybe even be jealous.

  Then, back inside. Sabra wandered. The place was like a hotel, and the staff didn’t appear to be in. Everything was arranged with such striking precision. Sabra wondered how much time Revenant spent up here, whether it was enough to moonlight as an interior decorator. She had called it her father’s sanctuary, but Sabra found no trace of the man. From what little Revenant had ever said about him, it did not sound as if they had a similar demeanor.

  But what about her mother?

  Sabra nursed a protein shake as she tried to figure that out, looking at the crystal woman and her polished suit of armor. Hands on her hips, head turned upward. No, she didn’t think she saw anything there, either. Her eyes glided over the Latin inscription, fighting down the urge to touch it. “Sic luceat lux vestra,” she murmured.

  “‘So let your light shine,’” Alexander said, coming up the final step. He walked over, ended up next to her. His right arm was missing, only the bare mounting socket for his prosthesis visible at his shoulder. “Her motto. Good morning.”

  “Morning. Sorry about your arm.”

  “You said that last night. One advantage of working for Dynamic Horizons is the ease of replacement. I’m sorry for putting you in that position. Had Sian told us...” He chuckled, like it was a shared joke.

  “Well, she plays her cards close.”

  Sian. Sabra had heard someone call Revenant that once before, and it was just as bewildering now as it was then. It wasn’t her name. Her name was Revenant. Rev. Gothbot, if Sabra was feeling sassy. She’d called her Sian once, and Rev hadn’t spoken to her for four days. The response hadn’t just put the topic off-limits, but entirely amputated it.

  “That she does,” Sabra said. “You sound like you’ve known her a while.”

  “I’ve known her father for a long time. Since the Golden Age, if you can believe it. He always was one to try and make history. I’m happy enough to survive it. Sabra, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “That’s right.”

  “A pleasure. I’d extend my hand, however...” He shrugged his missing arm. “Bad joke.”

  “It’s fine. Hey, I don’t suppose you know what Rev’s meeting with her father about?”

  “As I understand it, you.”

  “Me?” But she’d said it wasn’t her fault...

  Alexander continued, “It’s her father’s work, after all. It’ll be up to him whether we can deputize you. But I’ve known Eddie for a long time, and in that time I’ve never known him to deny his little girl anything.”

  It was grotesque. Rev wasn’t human. She never had been. But maybe her father had called her his daughter, gave her a cover identity? Like a reverse superhero?

  “Wait,” Sabra said. “Deputize me?”

  Alexander nodded. “I believe she said something about keeping you involved would keep you from involving yourself.”

  Sabra grinned. “That sounds like me.”

  “That it does. What were you doing there?”

  She told him the same half-lie she’d told Rev, that of a concerned citizen looking into the bombing. He seemed to buy it. Sabra changed up the topic, turning her attention back to the Valkyrie of a sculpture.

  “Did you know her mother?” Sabra asked. “Rev never talks about her.”

  “I did.”

  Even Sabra picked up on the past tense.

  “They were close. But then, when...” Alexander frowned, trailing off. “Out of respect for the three of them, I don’t think it’s for me to say.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Sabra replied. “I’ll ask her,” she added, knowing that she wouldn’t.

  They spoke for a little longer about the weather, about Asclepion, about this and that. He gave her a rundown of the chalet and its facilities, welcomed her to treat it as her own home away from home, and to ask him if she needed anything. She could barely handle wait staff taking away her plate—calling upon Revenant’s family was something else entirely.

  “How’s the other guy?” she asked. “Lykos.”

  “He’s fine. You’ll see him come out of the basement for food, and maybe not even then. He’s giving your suit priority for the repairs.”

  “I’ll go down and thank him,” she said. “But, actually, that’s something. How’d you come so close to kicking my butt?”

  Alexander smiled slightly.

  “Age and experience trumps youth and exuberance?” He reminded her too much of Pavel Fisher. More to the point, she had it on good authority that she was pretty fucking exuberant.

  “Blindsight protocol,” he continued. “Something of a software hack to the Palatine. Crosses the on-board intelligence suite and threat detection heuristics with the kinaesthetic algorithms. You’re in the suit, but it sees things faster than you do. Hence the name.”

  She understood about half of that, but it was enough. The suit had read her like a book until she’d started scribbling prophecy all over the pages.

  “Didn’t know it could do that,” Sabra replied.

  “Not many people do. It’s experimental. Skims the boundaries of the IESA’s prohibition on AI research and development—”

  “Hey, Sabra, your helmet is beeping.”

  Sabra turned. There was Lykos with her helmet in his hands.

  “I’ve got a phone call,” she said, and he passed it to her. She headed back up to the room—her room, she supposed, if she was going to be brought into this investigation—and stuck the helmet on her head. Then shut the door, because she couldn’t shake off she looked like an idiot. “Answer.”

  “Morning, Sabsie. So you’re not dead?”

  “Julian. No, I’m not. What’s up?”

  “The fact I keep putting money on you makes me regret not being a gambler. What’ve you got for me?”

  “I’m not sure I can talk,” Sabra said, frowning. All it would take was Alexander overhearing a few words and innocently—or perhaps not—mentioning it back to Rev...

  “Ah,” Julian said. “Have you seen the news?”

  “Not yet, why? Has something else exploded?”

  Julian laughed. “Kortanaer’s residence, for one.”

  “Do you mean literally or...”

  “Not literally,” he replied. “Sabra, what happened out there? Kortanaer is dead, and you’re missing and not able to talk. Yet you are.”

  Sabra sighed. “Look, I can’t talk—really! I’m fine. Kortanaer was dead when I got there.” Easier than explaining the whole story. “I’ll drop by your office when I can.”

  Julian was silent. She wondered if she’d pushed him too far.

  “Then I look forward to it,” he said. “I’m all too eager to hear what you’ve uncovered. One moment, Sab. I’ve just released the payment to your account, as discussed.”

  That made her pause.

  “Really?” She hadn’t even brought Kortanaer back.

  “Really. The money’s insubstantial, Sabra. What isn’t, is the information I have on your mystery woman. See you soon.”

  Julian hung up. Perhaps Jack had put a bullet in his only lead, too.