I stopped the Zandkat on the street right outside Walker’s brownstone and yanked on the parking brake. Anyone who stole it from here deserved what they got.

“Here we are. Finally,” I huffed, tilting the wheel up so I could climb out of the oversized bucket seat.

“Your boss’s office? Nice place,” said Alvar, looking up at the façade as he got out.

“Yeah, I guess it is.” It was actually meant for human habitation, which put it pretty high on the D-block real estate scale, but I didn’t think that was what he meant. Maybe all the old buildings had already been bulldozed uptown.

“Yes. In fact, it looks like the sort of place that might have a bed or two inside.” Arc was as subtle as ever.

“We can ask. We will ask. ” I led them up the steps and inside, both of them giving the floors a surprised look. Even under countless layers of re-applied varnish, we could make out the warm brown of the hardwood boards. It was a bit of a shock that nobody’d ripped them out and sold them, now that I thought about it- even wood with a couple hundred years of bootprints on it was worth a load of deng. Maybe it was Walker’s way of flexing.

Yeah, right. More like, he didn’t want any of that ‘newfangled plastic shit’ in his building, or he’d just never noticed.

We barely made it three steps inside before Mrs. Sanverth- no, Rouenn- stuck her head out of her office.“Who’s there- Sia’s grace, Sharkie! Sit down and let me get the first aid kit.”

I blinked at her reaction before remembering the state I was in. Too beat to argue, I pulled a chair away from an empty desk and sat. Arc and Alvar followed suit a moment later.

“Sharkie- Oh, kings!” We got a repeat performance from Dezi a moment later. “And you two don’t look too good either! No offense.”

“None taken,” Alvar said quickly. Arc just shrugged.

I gave her a tired smile. “Hi, Dezi. This is Arc and Alvar, my, uh, new friends. Arc and Alvar, Dezi.”

“‘Hi, Dezi?’ Seriously, that’s all I get when you show up looking like this? And you- you’ve got a bullet hole in your arm!” She whirled on Arc, glancing about for the first aid kit that Rouenn had already gone for.

“It was only a bit of buckshot,” Arc muttered. She actually sounded embarrassed.

Dezi rolled her eyes. “You sound like Sharkie- wait. Are you the one who cut her leg open a little while ago?”

“A regrettable incident, but, ah…yes.” She leaned back from the force of Dezi’s glare- between them, those two could probably light a burner just looking at it. Alvar just shook his head, looking not at all surprised.

I made a simmer-down motion with my hands. “We’re good now, Dezi, I promise. She’s not going to cut anyone up. Anyone friendly, I mean.”

“She’d better not.” Dezi eyed Arc over her glasses a moment longer, then turned back to me. “Can I get you anything while we wait for Rouenn?”

“Honestly? If there’s somewhere Arc and Alvar could crash, that’d be-“

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing at a little side room. “Yeah! There’s a couch in there. I mean, it’s pretty ratty, but-“

Alvar lurched to his feet. Unlike me and Arc, he wasn’t too beat up. “Honestly, Dezi-?” She nodded. “If you have a dry patch of floor without too much broken glass on it, I’ll be just fine.”

Dezi’s expression shifted as she realized just how exhausted we were. “Don’t worry, it’s not that bad, Alvar. All yours.”

“Thanks.” He gave Arc and I a wave, looking a bit surprised with himself, then shrugged and headed to his well-earned bed. We heard him flop onto the couch before the door finished closing.

“Where did he come from?” Dezi asked, lowering her voice.

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling kind of awkward. “We took him hostage, and then I felt bad, so…”

She covered her mouth, trying not to laugh. “That’s, um- that’s very like you, Sharkie.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rouenn saved her from answering by returning with the first aid kit. Probably a good thing, too- Arc had spent the last minute or so staring into space. I probably should have considered her gunshot wound before I took us out for lunch, but she hadn’t complained. Hadn’t even asked me to cut the steak, now that I thought about it. She was tough.

“Who’s first?” asked Rouenn, and I pointed her to Arc. The older woman wore loose, baggy slacks and a flowing, light tan blouse today, but she got to work without any care for blood and grime. After a quick look at Arc’s arm, Rouenn chivvied her into the bathroom to better rinse it out with warm water and alcohol. I watched just to double check that Arc didn’t pull anything out of the blue- and maybe, I had to admit, to see if she had anything to match my bones.

I didn’t notice anything like that, though- just queasily torn-up muscle. Rouenn dumped in some pain-killing stop-leak powder and covered both entry and exit wounds with a pressure-sensitive dressing. It cinched down slightly as she tore off the activation strip, maintaining just enough compression. Arc tensed slightly, but otherwise showed little reaction. She did look pretty out of it.

“And done. You’ll want to have a real doctor look at that soon, but that ought to be fine for now. How does it feel?” Rouenn asked.

Arc peered at the bandage, flexing her fingers. “Just fine. Thank you, ah…”

“Rouenn’s fine. And you are?”

“Arcadia. A…relation of Sharkie’s.”

She put out her hand and Rouenn took it, having to look up to meet Arc’s eyes. “I can tell.”

Arc cracked a smile at that. “Yes. Is there anywhere I could follow Alvar’s example? Now that I won’t leak all over wherever I lay my carcass.”

Rouenn blinked and looked around. “Oh. I hope he was alright. Yes, I’ve got a cot around here somewhere…”

“I got it.” Dezi went back into the office, and after a few seconds of shoving things around and muttered Sovish curses she returned with a folding cot like you might see in a military hospital. She heaved it into another empty office room and after a few hissed chyorts and svoloches got it unfolded and locked into place.

“All yours,” Dezi said with an ushering motion. She was still pretty suspicious of Arc, and I guess I couldn’t blame her.

“Thank you.” Arc gave her a gracious nod, went into the office- and faceplanted onto the cot without even taking her boots off. She started snoring immediately.

“Well then,” muttered Rouenn.

Dezi gave the scene an unimpressed look before turning back to me. “Are you going to pass out on me too?”This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Probably shouldn’t. Concussion.”

“Of course you’ve got a concussion,” she sighed.

“I’ll be fine. Sawadas are built tough.” I rapped my knuckles against my head and tried not to think about whoever’d actually built me.

“Not that tough,” said Rouenn with a raised eyebrow. “Let me get a look at you.”

For the next few minutes she helped me get a variety of butterfly stitches and sticky bandages onto my various cuts. I had several on my hands, face and forehead along with a deeper one on my shoulder.

“That one will need real stitches, I think,” Rouenn muttered half to herself. I sat back and let her fuss over me while Dezi watched and looked worried. I had to admit, it was nice having people concerned for me like this.

“There’s the major leaks, at least. I can’t do much for your concussion, or for that.” She glanced at my wrist, bruised and swollen where the Mask had tried to crush it. The lines where the PIN had stitched me together were livid white amidst the gray and purple. “It doesn’t seem broken, considering you can use it, but…”

“I’ll see what happens.” I swiveled my hand a few times. It felt weak and a bit clicky in the joint, but hopefully that would go away with time. I had no idea what I’d do if something actually managed to damage my bones. At this point I didn’t think a truck shop would have big enough tools, let alone a surgeon. “Same for this, you think?”

She and Dezi both inhaled through their teeth when I showed off my calf. It was already turning crazy colors, a smear of purple and red and gray covering one whole side of my lower leg.

Rouenn marveled at it. “Stride’s iron bones, Sharkie. All I can prescribe for that is a warm bath and a few stiff drinks.”

“I figured.” I slowly pried myself up out of the chair, every bruise and ache making itself known. “Thanks, both of you. Seriously. But I have to go see the boss. Are my friends…”

“They can stay as long as they need,” Rouenn assured me.

Dezi nodded. “We won’t bother them as long as they don’t bother us.”

“They shouldn’t. Probably. Just shoot them if there’s a problem.” I wasn’t sure how much of a joke that was myself. Dezi and Rouenn didn’t take it as one, by the way they looked at each other.

“Right,” said Rouenn firmly. “And you tell Clyde that you’re taking some time off. For real, this time, or he’ll have a problem with me.”

“And me!” Dezi stage-whispered behind her, and I had to try and keep from laughing so I didn’t hurt myself.

“You got it. And thanks again, Doc.”

She waved that off like it was nothing. I just smiled and headed up to Walker’s office, feeling at least as creaky as the stairs. The door was shut, so I knocked first.

“Who the fuck’s that?” he instantly snapped from within. Great. He was in a good mood.

“Walker, it’s Sharkie.”

“Well damn, took you long enough. C’mon in.”

Instead of getting mad at that, I laughed out loud opened the door. He had no idea.

Walker sat behind his desk, several comslabs and larger tablets scattered across its top. They were joined by a couple of coffee mugs- one empty, one steaming- and an ashtray made of the misshapen skull of some glasslands creature I wouldn’t want to meet in the flesh. His hat and leather jacket hung on a coatrack in the corner, and the sleeves of his khaki work shirt were rolled up past his elbows. My dad used to tell me that you could tell a lot about a person by their hands, or arms in this case.

Walker’s were sinewy, their veins prominent, their skin made tan and leathery by long days under harsh lifelight. A pale, shiny smear of scar marked his left forearm, maybe an old chemical burn. His fingers were knobby-jointed, one nail bruised black, and his hands broad and calloused. Their tendons stood out like taut dragline cables beneath their scarred skin. Though they were clean now, they were the sort to have grease under their nails, dirt worked into their calluses. They looked like tools, but the heavy and dangerous sort that could easily maim or kill if disrespected.

He glanced up as I entered, some joke dying on his lips as he saw the state of me. His jaw dropped enough I thought he’d lose his burner.

“Kingsdamn, Sharkie, don’t I sound like an asshole! What happened?”

“That’s gonna take a minute or two to tell you,” I said as I slumped into a chair. I dropped a little too quick and it made my head pound.

“Fuck me, I feel like one of the soul-jacked old wall bosses I used to talk shit on. You need a doc? I can get Laggard to make a house call if you need ‘im-“

He was already going for his slab when I- carefully- shook my head. “I’ll be- kof!- I’ll be good for a few more minutes. Rouenn got me patched up downstairs.”

He nodded at the bandages on my face. “She must like you, then. Last time I staggered in here with a knife in my arm, I seen her think real hard about it before she got that first aid kit down.”

“Probably because she’s told you off about that kind of thing before.”

“Once or twice,” he muttered. “But- damn. Didn’t I tell you to get out if things got sketchy?”

“Walker, this time the sketchy came to me.” I wasn’t Arc or Dezi, but I still managed to give him a Look. He had the good grace to shrug a little, like, ‘yeah, dumb question.’

“So, I got out there fine, just followed the nav. But when I did…” I explained how I’d run into Arc, how she hadn’t tried to fillet me this time, and how she’d run into a few Blue Div hitters already staked out where the signal was coming from.

“The Blues were already there?” Walker leaned back, smoke leaking from his nose.

“Yeah. That’s what Arc said. She killed ‘em just before I showed up.” I was kind of surprised that was what he fixed on rather than Arc herself, but I supposed he had different priorites. “One of ours had to have clued them in, right? Whether they planted the signal, or they were just waiting for whoever showed up…huh.”

When I’d first run into Arc, it had seemed obvious that the signal was something the Blues planted to lure me out, or someone else from the Bones at least. That, or someone on the inside had leaked to them that someone was coming out and they’d quickly laid an ambush. All that was before I’d seen everything below, though. Maybe I was making myself too important, here.

“Could be,” mused Walker. “Or could be they found out somethin’ was up over there another way. But go on.”

His eyes widened as I described the VTOL attack and waking up partway down the chasm. “Wait, wait- an’ how did you survive half a rack’s worth of rockets? I mean- I ain’t pissed you did, but-“

“Arc is…different. Like, my type of different.” I didn’t want to be more specific without her permission. Hell, if I had to guess she’d proudly tell Walker what she could do, but I’d leave that to her.

Walker just blinked slowly at that, still except for the flare of his cigarette. He looked very tired, like he wished all this was above his paygrade. There was at least as much gray in his dark brown hair as in my dad’s, I noticed.

“Alright, then,” he said after a pause. Smoke escaped with his breath. “Alright, then. Go on.”

Feeling as wall-eyed as he looked, I continued. Even talking seemed to tire me out further. “So, we wake up in some old wrecked warehouse…” I took him through our couple of skirmishes with Macomb Security contractors, killing that first Mask, and meeting/capturing Alvar.

“Macomb, huh? Seen ‘em in the pits a few times. Never took ‘em for top-notch soldiers, but they were always less dickheaded than Argent Fist or Yak Patrol.” He seemed glad to be on more familiar ground, though he couldn’t stay there long. “And you took out a Mask?”

“Me and Arc, yeah.”

“Another killer. Hm.” Who he meant as the first one was obvious. He stubbed out his cig in the already-full ashtray and took a sip of coffee, mug close to his face. “Aw, fuck. Sorry. You want some, Sharkie?”

I hadn’t even thought of that, but it sounded heavenly. “Kings, yes.”

“My ma would smack me for that, takin’ so long to offer. Fuckin’ war’s got me run ragged- not that I ought to bitch in the same room as you, eh, Sawyer?” I snorted, honestly beyond caring, and watched him go to the coffee pot perking in the corner. “I tell myself sometimes, ‘Quit whinin’, Clyde, you know damn well someone’s havin’ a worse day than you.’ And today, that someone is you, Sharkie.”

I almost laughed but ended up just heaving in a breath. “Hey, man, just glad I could help.”

Walker chuckled and poured me a chipped mug full of black gold. It was covered in bandanna-wearing cartoon cats riding motorcycles, and if I’d had the energy I would have bantered with him about it. He fished a bottle full of clear liquid out of the cabinet and waved it questioningly at me. I nodded and held my finger and thumb close together, like ‘just a bit.’ He gave my mug a generous belt anyway and handed it to me. I took a sip, savored the bitter heat of it, and stirred the steam rising from the mug with a sigh of satisfaction.

“Better?” he asked, and I nodded. “Right. Dead Mask. Captured merc. Mysterious helper packin’ so many blades she’d sink in a paste vat. Just another day on the job in D-block, right?”

“Mmm.” I was too busy sipping to say more for a moment. “Yeah. Punch in, punch out. So. We talked to Alvar- he’s downstairs too- and…”

Walker looked a little skeptical that I’d brought Alvar here, but stayed quiet as I described our sneaking into the old gun factory and the mysterious cold waves. He leaned forward in his chair when I mentioned that there was a real-deal Vitroix samurai on site, green as the sarevna might have been. He just shook his head when I told him that Arc and I had killed a few more Masks between us, though he seemed interested in how I was able to use the PIN to fight.

“We ended up talking to the chief chalkhead- all the other ones died when someone hit their ‘kill my captured scientists’ button- and she told us what they were after.” I paused to get my wind back. “She- she was the same one I saw in the Park. Think I told you about that. What they took from there…it was a piece of Ironstride.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped instantly. He sounded mad at the absent Hesypha for feeding me such a line, not at me for reporting it. “What do you mean, a piece?”

“Phalange. A fingerbone. And I think…think it was legit. They were after some kind of field effect. Meta-entropy. Measuring radioactivity…reducing it when they turned this field on.” Another pause for me to pant. It felt like I’d just climbed out of the Chasm without the elevator. I really was beat. “They killed the Winnower with it too. Hesypha wasn’t stupid, Walker. She really thought it was Stride’s flip-off from beyond the Mandala. And Stride or not, it worked. What else could’ve done…done the Winnower like that?”

Walker had his elbows on his desk now, and rubbed slow circles into his temples. “Right. Dead fuckin’ Kings comin’ back to haunt us with their misplaced fuckin’ bones. Why not, by Rik. This chalkhead say anythin’ else?”

If he was hoping for a return to normality I’d have to disappoint him. My breath, when I pulled it in to speak, was slow and rough. “Didn’t…We didn’t…get anything else out of her…” I had to stop again, panting. My eyelids fluttered, vision going dim.

Walker started to get up. “Damn, Sharkie, you alright over there?”

I was almost done, for fuck’s sake! I could sleep in a few minutes. Just had to finish, but I couldn’t catch my breath. “…she got killed…Praetor showed up…”

“No, Sharkie, you’re way too fuckin’ out of it. Let me call Lag-“

It was the last thing I heard before the darkness at the corners of my vision swelled and I passed out.