“I asked you a question, Mickey,” I say.
“I can’t think about the forest! I’m still examining the tree! It’s astounding how your body flourished. Simply astounding, my darling. You’ve actually grown larger. How fare your pain receptors? Did the hair follicles ever grow irritated as I was concerned? What about the muscle contraction; do you find it above the average of your peers? Pupil dilation fast enough? All I heard for months was talk of you on the HC. They could not show the Institute, of course. But there were videos leaked on the holoNet. Such videos—you killing a Peerless Scarred. Taking some strange fortress in the sky, like a champion of old!”
He grips my shoulder desperately, his hand weaker than I remember. “Tell me about your life. What the Academy is like. Tell me everything. Are you still lovers with that delectable Virginia au Augustus?” He frowns suddenly. “Oh, of course you’re not. She’s with—”
“Mickey.” I grip him. “Calm down.”
He laughs so hard he coughs, turning from me to wipe his eyes. “Just good to see a friendly face. They don’t allow me kind company these days. None at all. Monstrous, really.”
“Shut up, Mickey,” Evey snaps.
His eyes slip to Evey, who now stands far from my reach, fingering the burner holstered on her hip as though it would protect her from me.
“Why are you on Luna? What is going on?” I ask. “Have you joined the Sons?”
“Much has happened,” Mickey murmurs. “I’m not here by—”
“He works for us, now, Darrow,” Evey interrupts coldly. “Whether he likes it or not. We took his little skin den apart. Used the funds he made from selling flesh to buy transport here and equip an army. We’re striking back, Darrow. Finally.”
“One Pink terrorist and a handful of Reds playing with guns,” I say without looking at her. “Is that your army?”
“We drew blood from the Golds today, Darrow. If you don’t respect me, respect that. I killed the son of Mars’s ArchGovernor. What have you done that makes you think you can come here and spit on what we’ve done?”
“You didn’t kill him,” I say.
She looks blankly at me. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I stare back, angry.
“But how … The bomb …,” she says. “You’re lying.”
“I got him out in time.”
“Why?”
“Because my mission is complicated. I need him. Where is Dancer? Who is in charge here? Mickey—”
“I am,” says another voice from my past, one with an accent like my wife’s, except this voice is poisoned and bitter with anger. I turn to see Harmony at the door. Half her face still blasted with that terrible scar. The other half is cold and cruel, older than I remember.
“Harmony,” I say mildly. The years have done nothing to warm us to one another. “It’s good to see you. I need to debrief. There’s so much to say.” I can’t even think where to begin. Then I notice the glance she gives Evey. “Harmony, where is Dancer?”
“Dancer is dead, Darrow.”
Later, Harmony sits with me in front of Mickey’s desk in an office of cheap, angular furniture and jars filled with hybrid organs floating in preservative gas. Mickey sits behind the desk, fidgeting with that old platonic puzzlecube of his. He sees me looking at it and he winks. He’s gotten better. Evey leans against a barrel of chemicals. I sit, utterly lost. Dancer had a plan for me. He had a plan for all this. He’s not supposed to be dead. He can’t be.
“It was Dancer’s last wish for Mickey to carve us a new army. One that will rival the Golds in speed and strength. We’ve taken our greatest men and women and put them to the carving. They cannot survive a Gold procedure like the one you endured, but some manage to brave this new program.” She waves out the glass where a hundred coffin-like tubes splay across the floor. Inside each, Reds of a new breed. “Soon we’ll have a hundred soldiers who can cut Gold deeper than any before.”
As if a hundred would be enough to fight the Gold war machine. My Howlers and I could likely shred any unit these terrorists put together. And we’re not even the deadliest Golds.
She gestures with a new arm, having lost the one of flesh and bone to an Obsidian, when raiding an armory for weapons. It’s a limb of metal now. Fluid and strong, with illegal blackmarket sockets for weaponry. Good workmanship, but nothing compared with Mickey’s carving. Of course she’d never let him work on her.
“So Mickey is a prisoner?” I ask.
“Slave, more like,” Mickey grunts with a small smile. “They don’t even give me wine.”
“Shut up, Mickey,” Evey snaps.
“Evey.” Harmony fixes the young woman with a tolerant stare before regarding Mickey. “Remember what we talked about, eh? Mind your tongue.”
Mickey flinches, eyes darting down to her left hand. There is an empty holster on her belt. Something Mickey is scared of. Harmony is behaving for me.
“You afraid he’s going to say how you beat him?”
She shrugs, dismissing my judgment. “Mickey sold girls and boys. Can’t enslave a slaver. Far as I see it, he’s bloodydamn lucky not to have a bullet in his brain. Could hire a Carver to give him horns and wings and a tail so he’d look like the monster he is. But I haven’t. Have I, Mickey?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, domina.”
The word makes me recoil in disgust.
“Dancer always respected him,” I say. “I respect him, despite all his … eccentricities.”
“He bought people. Sold them,” Evey says.
“We’ve all sinned,” I say. “Especially you, now.”
“Told you he’d be bloodydamn holier than thou. Acting like he doesn’t compromise his morality day in, day out. Finding excuses for wicked bastards like our Mickey here.” Harmony smirks to Evey, sharing a private joke. “That sort of attitude is all fine up there, Darrow. But you’ll learn we don’t compromise here anymore. That’s the past.”
“Then Dancer is truly dead.”
“Dancer was a good man.” She’s silent for too short a moment for it to count as respectful. “Half a year back, he hired a Gray mercenary team to hit a communications hub so we could steal data. I said we should kill them once the job was done. Dancer said … what was it again?… ‘We aren’t devils.’ But after the Gray captain collected his pay, he pissed off to the local Society Police headquarters and offered them Dancer’s location. Bloodydamn lurcher squad put Dancer and two hundred Sons in the dirt in two minutes. Never again. If they kill one of us, we kill a hundred of them. And we don’t trust Grays. We don’t pay Violets. They’ve lived off our toil for ages. We only trust Reds.”