Silently, Zilch held up the second tag. Finn stared at it, eyes round, and mouthed the words inscribed on the metal.
“He was in SkEye too?!”
“We were partners. Tasked with stopping the Chrysedrine epidemic. Took out the dealers. People who could do things they shouldn’t. If you want to fight a superhuman menace… you need agents. They snatched us off the street. Gave us a choice, work for them… or die.”
“You didn’t want to die, did you?” Finn asked quietly.
“No. We were scared. Kids.”
“I’d be scared too.”
“So we… worked. Brought people in. Some were just kids. Like us. Not criminals. A lot were dying already.”
“You could have brought me in any time you wanted,” Finn whispered.
“No. Quit by the time I met you.”
“You killed people like us.”
“I contributed to their deaths. Don’t expect you to forgive me. Or trust me. But you deserve to know.”
“I can’t believe it.” Finn shook his head, staring at the floor. “That’s how you know Eye in the Sky so well. And how to keep away from them…”
Zilch nodded, not looking at Finn. “They want me dead, too. Good thing I can change my face.”
Finn was silent for a long time. “You quit, so you wouldn’t have to hurt anyone anymore?”
“Story’s longer than that. But yes.” Their eyes slipped over to study Finn’s downcast face. When he didn’t reply, they went on. “I can't take it back. Just move forward. Do better. Help people instead of destroy them.”
“What did you do?”
“Went to the other side. Garrett Cole’s side. Worked against the Eye in the Sky. Taking them down, instead of each other.”
“I want to hear the whole story someday,” Finn said at last. “Sounds like there’s a lot more than what you’ve told me.”
“There is.”
“Good and bad.”
Their eyelids lowered. “Yes.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Finn studied their reconstructed face, so strange to most eyes but easily read by his. “You… didn’t really mean to tell me about Regan just now, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. Just going to tell you about me.” Zilch shut their eyes briefly, but their mouth twisted in the potentially-terrifying expression Finn recognized as a smile. “Can’t keep anything from you.”
“I figured you two had like, a history.”
Now they frowned. “Obvious?”
“Oh, probably not to anyone else! But I mean, I know you. And you’re just, like, different around him than you are with anyone else. You look at him and you’re… soft.” Finn smiled for the first time since his ordeal. “It’s like you’re looking at me.”
Zilch turned their head to look away and hunched far over, letting out a slow hiss between their clenched teeth. “I need to keep better secrets.”
“Can’t keep anything from me, remember?” He wasn’t even trying to smile. He didn’t need to force it; it was automatic as it always was with Zilch. “And you don’t have to. I mean, I see why you did. With what you used to do. But you don’t do it anymore, right? So it’s okay.”
“No. I don’t. Haven’t for years. When I met you, I was running missions for Garrett Cole. So was Chimera. Covert ones. Under the radar. Invisible.”
“Cool, there you go.” Finn nodded. “But… you still care about him. Chimera. Regan.”
Zilch’s eyes widened. They said nothing.
“And that’s still okay too.” Finn said, carefully watching the minuscule changes in Zilch’s patch-mosaic face as they continued to stare across the room. “He was important to you, wasn’t he?”
They went through the motions of a deep, calming breath. Somewhere, so did their lungs.
“And he still is, isn’t he? You’re trying to protect him. Just like saving me from the detention center, you’d do it a thousand more times, wouldn’t you? Some things change, and some things don’t.”
No answer.
“It’s okay, Zilch. It’s really okay if you still love him.”
“He doesn’t remember,” they said at last, whisper dry. “Hans. Took it. His mind. Memory…”
“I know.”
“And my heart. If I tell, if I—with words, or… I can’t.”
“That’s so evil,” Finn shook his head. “This is why you’ve been walking around like… I mean, seeming half-asleep all the time. You’re trying not to let anything show.”
“Don’t say anything.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“I know. I trust you.” Zilch hesitated. “But it’s not just Hans. I don’t… if Regan doesn’t remember… I can’t.”
“You don’t want to pressure him…” Finn trailed off. “Wow.”
“Yes. Wow.”
Finn thought for a second. “You could have told me about him. Not now,” he said as Zilch opened their mouth. “Before all this happened. Before Hans took your heart, or his memories, or anything else. I would’ve loved to meet him, and—it just would’ve been fine.”
“Like I said, he lived off the radar. Invisible. Didn’t talk to anyone outside Garrett’s circle, getting the job done. Had to, safer.”
“You still could’ve told me. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Zilch rasped, words falling out much faster than their usual slow, deliberate speech. “Trying to keep you safe. One dark, terrible part of our lives was over. But not all. You’re a civilian. You didn’t need to know.”
“Hey, I help! I drive my cab, which is a lot more dangerous than it sounds in Parole! I scramble signals for CyborJ’s networks, I help Radio Angel when she—”
“It’s different, Finn. We see things you don’t need to see.” They thought for a moment. “It wasn’t him I was keeping… separate. It was that life. Still dangerous. Deadly.”
“Were you ever going to un-separate it?”
“I… didn’t know how. Wanted to. You… you’re both…”
“It’s fine.” Finn shook his head. He wasn’t smiling anymore, looking down at the healing burns on one arm. “Maybe you’re right. You and… Chimera, I guess? You saw really bad stuff, didn’t you?” Zilch stayed quiet. “And now you’re working with CyborJ and Celeste and Radio Angel—and now Evelyn Calliope! I can’t believe it. You’re doing all this really good stuff. And I can’t really handle either, can I? So, you’re right. I don’t belong in your world. After… after what happened, I don’t really know how much more I can face.”
“Nobody does.” Zilch said slowly, dissonant voice just above a whisper. “There are different kinds of Hell. You’ve been through one already. But you’re stronger than you think.”
“It almost broke me down and turned me into… nothing. I felt nothing.”
“Feeling gets harder. But I’ll try to remind you.” A moment of their perfect, unbroken stillness.
Zilch looked up at the soft sob to see tears flowing down Finn’s face. They hesitated, then slowly opened their arms. Finn wordlessly fell forward to lean against them, and Zilch’s long arms encircled him in a slow, secure embrace.
“Lost my chance to tell him. But I can still tell you.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“You’re not nothing, Finn. You’re everything.”
Finn buried his face in Zilch’s shoulder and let the tears come. Crying never felt so good. Nothing broke the silence, but he didn’t mind this time.
❈
It was dark and still when someone slipped into the room where Rose slept for the night, and Hans’s body slept for a decade. A hand raised a syringe and flicked the needle. The sharp tip plunged into a vein that stood out blue and sick against Hans’s jaundiced skin. The door opened and closed again. Silence.
Then Hans wheezed and gasped, and an alarm on one of the life-support machines beeped, growing louder and more insistent by the second, its red lights flashing. Hans’s long limbs
began to shake and twitch, then full-body spasm.
Across the room, Rose blinked several times and propped herself up on one elbow. Jolted awake by the alarm and sudden noises, she stared half-asleep at Hans’s thrashing body. For one still half-dreaming moment, she almost thought her old friend, lost all these years and finally found, had finally woken up and was getting out of bed; she almost smiled. But as soon as it registered, she jerked upright—too fast—a lance of pain shot through her entire torso. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright with shaking arms.
“HELP!” Rose shouted even as lances of fire shot through her abdomen. Hans’s body was wracked with spasms and the monitor alarm screamed. “Danae! Lisette! Someone—help!”
Why wasn’t anyone coming? The EKG’s alarm cut through Rose’s sleepy haze, and a red light flashed, bathing the room in red. The metal bed frame rattled like an earthquake had struck as Hans convulsed, his face twisted in an agonized grimace.
Rose gritted her teeth and sat fully upright, and immediately her head spun. She shoved the covers off, forcing herself to stay conscious as the edges of her vision went dark. Pain shot through her entire body, and her solar plexus throbbed with nauseating fire. She cast a desperate glance across the room where her prosthetic legs leaned against the wall, then at Hans, caught in the throes of what looked from here like an intense seizure. There was no time. It would take a minute to re-attach them and get over to Hans, or go for help. Hans didn’t have a minute.
“Hello?!” Her voice cracked as she screamed. “Help! Emergency!”
Nothing. Hans was writhing in lockjaw agony, and no one was coming. Rose had spent ten years wondering whatever happened to him, then she and Hans and Danae had been brought here by some strange twist of fate—and now he was going to die right in front of her.
Something in the back of her mind erupted, like her ears had popped harder than ever before. A teenage boy with white hair was crouching on her bed beside her and screaming in her ear: “You do it! You’re the only one here, save me! Save me!”
Rose took a deep breath and leaned forward, flopping onto her stomach and clawing her way across the rumpled sheets. She peered over the edge of the bed…
“Hang on!”
Rose rolled over the edge and dropped to the cold linoleum, absorbing as much of the shock as she could with her hands. Panting with the pain and effort, Rose army-crawled across the floor, substantial upper-arm strength propelling her forward. She clawed at the sheets hanging from Hans’s bed, grabbed at the metal bar and mattress and yanked herself upright. Summoning every bit of determination she had, she pulled herself up onto his bed and fell beside him. Gasping from exertion and pain, Rose propped herself up and took a look at her patient. He shook and thrashed and Rose grabbed his wrists, holding him down.
“Help me!” The voice in her head crackled like an out-of-tune radio as Hans blipped in and out of the edges of her vision, and she just barely registered that his mental image at least looked exactly as she remembered from ten years ago. His screams jangled inside Rose’s skull, and her heart pounded with a cold fear that wasn’t her own.
“Tell me what’s wrong—”
“I don’t know! Rose, please just don’t let me die!”
White foam bubbled and poured between his clenched teeth, and she knew. Poison.
She lurched forward and tore the IV needles from Hans’s wrists, tape and all, then clawed frantically at the bleeding holes they’d left, using her fingernails to make them bigger. But it wasn’t working. In a flash of horrible insight, she grabbed the scalpel sitting on its metal tray and drew it across the papery flesh in one quick slash. Hans’s blood was dark and sluggish and Rose didn’t pay it any attention. She was closing her eyes and pressing her wrist against his, as tiny strings of green curled and bloomed out of the pores in her skin, reaching for the air and sun. They found the opening in Hans’s skin.
Rose slowly drew her arm back from his, but the connection of vines and stems did not break. It stretched and drew further out of her and into him, and the green faded where it burrowed under Hans’s skin. The tendrils sucked the poison out like straws and neutralized its power, vines dying and taking the venom with them before it reached Rose. The life-giving plants shriveled and turned brown.
Hans’s convulsing slowly eased, and the tension in his facial muscles and neck released. Rose wiped the foam away from his mouth and felt him exhale in a long hiss.
“Thank you…” Hans’s projection in her mind sobbed. He huddled in the back of her brain like a frightened child in a corner, and she didn’t know how to reach out to him. Already his presence was starting to fade away.
“You’re welcome,” Rose whispered. The dry, brittle vines easily broke off and floated to the floor. Her own cut healed over and she collapsed beside him. The alarm was still shrieking, and now someone rushed into the room. She heard a voice (Lisette, she vaguely registered) but Rose was too drained to understand the words.
Her eyes rolled back into her head and a deafening rush filled her ears. Her vines and powerful antibodies could cleanse his tainted bloodstream, and at any other time, all she would have needed to recharge would be a quiet afternoon and some hot tea. Now…
Within seconds, Rose fell into a sleep almost as deep as Hans’s coma.
❈
“Hey, Zilch. Can I talk to you?”
“Yes.”
Regan hurried down the long hallway to catch up; Zilch walked much faster than anyone would believe with their long-legged steps, even if they did appear slightly uneven. “Did you hear what happened to Hans?”
They didn’t answer, but inclined their head in a slow, stony-faced nod. Apparently they weren’t that broken up about it. Truly, neither was Regan. He was more curious.
“Pretty lucky he didn’t actually die, right?” Again, no response. Now he was curious with a slight edge of anxiety. “Because if he died… what would actually happen if he died?”
“My heart would be lost.” Their words were even more flat, brief and hollow-sounding than usual. “As well as…”
“My memory? Yeah, I figured.” Regan let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding in a fast sigh. “So… it wouldn’t really make sense for…” He glanced up at Zilch, but their face was impassive and cold. They’d slipped back behind their world-class pokerface, and even Regan couldn’t dig any kind of reaction out of that. “I sure don’t want him dead. Do you?”
“No.” They answered without hesitation, to Regan’s further relief. “I want him to stop playing games. But not die.” Their face twisted in a look anyone else would find ghastly. “At least not without giving me back my heart.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t try to kill him, Chimera. Don’t worry.”
“Okay, good.” Regan relaxed fully. His frill must have been twitching until this very moment, because it was only now that he noticed it had fallen still.
“But it crossed my mind.”
“I… yeah. Mine too.” There it went again, just from the memory of his throat constricting, the terrible, cold suffocation.
“Did you?”
“What? No!” Regan shook his head. “Hans is an ass, but I don’t want him dead. If he dies, my memories die with him. And I… would really like those back.” Zilch didn’t say anything else, and Regan thought for a moment before speaking again. “Out of curiosity, why do you ask?”
Zilch stared at him unblinking. “Because if you did, you’ll need help escaping.”
Regan stared back. “Are you joking again?”
“No.”
“You’d help me get away with… hypothetical murder?”
“Yes.”
He remembered the vision Hans showed him. The feeling of safety, belonging. When Hans showed him, he thought it might have been an illusion. A lie. By this point, Regan was ready to believe anything that came from Hans was a lie. But coming from Zilch, he’d hear anything and believe it was the truth. “We
ll, if we survive this, I owe you one. Hypothetically.”
“If we survive.” They frowned, entire ghoulish countenance darkening. The intensity at which they could glower was almost impressive. “Which remains to be seen.”
“Pfff.” Regan flicked out his tongue where it tickled Zilch’s nose. Like the strange déjà-vu feelings he’d been having more and more, he knew he’d done the joking, familiar gesture a million times before. “Have some freaking faith.”
Zilch didn’t move or even blink, but their expression slowly shifted from abject dourness to complete confusion. Slowly, their asymmetrical eyes crossed to stare at their reconstructed nose and Regan’s forked tongue. They remained perfectly still and said nothing, but after a moment the corner of their mouth twitched in a faint, lopsided but genuine smile.
Regan grinned, and slurped in his tongue like a long spaghetti noodle. “There. Feel better?”
They repeated something that had now become familiar, almost a Zilch-specific ritual: just taking a moment to look at Regan, eyes traveling over his face, before responding. “Yes.”
“Good. So, seriously, thanks,” Regan said, lowering his head and his tone. “That means a lot, you, uh. Being willing to cover up my potential murders.” His shoulders dropped as well. “Which… even I have to… wonder…”
“Don’t wonder.” Zilch said, voice monotone but kind. “Just survive.”
Regan gave them a sideways, searching look. “Didn’t you say before that Hans had to live, if we were going to live?”
“I said that. Once.”
“Before you… thought I was in trouble.” Regan looked up, but the patchwork face was an unreadable mask again. They stood there together for a few seconds, one smiling, one inscrutable. "Or maybe that I was trouble.”
“Are you trouble?” Zilch asked at last.
“No.” Regan fixed both eyes on them without blinking, rock-solid for once. “I might not know much about this place, but I can tell how rare it is to find anyone who gives a crap about you. And everyone here… seems to. About me. I’m not gonna throw that away.”
Zilch blinked slowly, just watching him with a steady gaze he knew logically he should find viscerally horrifying from the amalgamation of death, but simply didn’t. Regan almost thought was like looking at any friendly face, but realized immediately that it wasn’t. When he looked at Zilch, he hadn’t once felt a shiver of anxiety or worry that he was being judged and found wanting.
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