He woke up in a hospital, and that was where he spent the night. The hospital bed was about as stiff and uncompromising as the food, but the painkillers made it the best sleep he’d ever had.

  Come morning, Jack found himself in a paper gown and that much of him had been patched together with bandages and gauze. Shrapnel, one of the doctors had explained, when they dropped in a few minutes later. The robots may have shielded him from the blast, but it’d ripped them apart and filled him with shrapnel. Enough of it, they said, that it was a miracle he’d not ended up with a punctured lung or severed artery.

  When he nodded and said he felt well enough to leave, despite the dull ache and the dizzy spells, the doctors insisted otherwise, citing everything from abrasions and contusions to cracked ribs and head trauma. But if that was the worst of it, and Jack had said as much, then he’d gotten extremely lucky.

  That, and he knew why they wanted him there. As far as he knew, he was the only witness to the bombing. He had the sardonic satisfaction of being right when the authorities showed up maybe thirty minutes after he’d woken up—a pair of officers wearing the uniforms of the Swiss federal police.

  They were polite, and they were professional, and they had no idea who they were dealing with. When they asked if he was Perseus Jones, Jack Harper nodded and answered in the affirmative. But Jones was counterfeit. When Jack had saved the world, Jack Harper—the infamous Leopard—had vanished somewhere between Melbourne and Geneva by way of the Caucasus, swallowed into some IESA black site, and Perseus Jones had taken up a job with Fiveaces Security.

  Leopard never would’ve talked to the cops—death first, Elias had always said—but Jones did. And maybe Jack did, too. Because that’d been before someone had blown himself up, and dozens of people were dead, and somehow Jack had emerged from the wreckage with little more than a concussion and a few stitches and no fucking idea why someone would do such a thing. He wanted to tell them what he knew, he just had nothing to say.

  Then, one of the men had said they were from something called TIGRIS, and he had an emblem of a tiger on his uniform, and that’d given the proceedings a strange, surreal edge. When Jack had started laughing at it all, he had to explain it away as the concussion. Then, they left, and he was alone for a time.

  Now, he wasn’t.

  “Mister Jones?”

  The latest man to step into his room wore a nondescript suit, no tie, and was older than all the other visitors he’d had. His face, sharp and chiseled, suggested an effigy worn by time. His short hair was neatly combed and the color of steel. His left eye, Jack noted, was an expensive cybernetic prosthesis. Not a cop. Maybe a superhero, but probably not a cop.

  “Yeah?”

  “Good afternoon. My name is Alexander Sinclair. I’m the head of Dynamic Horizon’s internal security division. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you’re up for it.”

  “I’m up for it,” Jack replied. “Thing is, I think I’m done talking to cops.”

  “I’m not police.”

  “Yeah, you’re worse.”

  Of course, so was he.

  “I’m just someone looking to understand what happened yesterday,” Alexander said. “The same as you, I imagine. You’re the only direct witness to the deadliest mass casualty event Switzerland has seen since the 1800s.”

  Wasn’t that telling? There was a joke Jack had heard once: in Geneva, the end of the world was something that happened to other people. Switzerland had basked in the highs of the Golden Age, and somehow evaded the crash that followed. So many others hadn’t. He hadn’t.

  “I’ll give you an idea what I saw,” Jack replied. “Take some mince beef, go up to the top of this hospital, and throw it down to the street. Stare at it for thirty minutes—what’d you see, what’d you learn? That’s what I witnessed.”

  “Mister Jones,” Sinclair said.

  “I told those tiger guys everything. Go ask them.”

  Sinclair clenched his jaw then, turned around, and left. Shut the door behind him, so, that was something. Jack fell back against his pillows and sighed. A Dynazon VIP almost gets blown up, and the head of security couldn’t even deliver a thanks. Not like he’d expected anything else. The door opened again and Jack sat up, bracing himself for another petitioner, and saw, of all people, Revenant.

  When they’d worked together to save the world, she’d looked like a surly teen with an affinity for heavy make-up and symbols of mortality. Skeleton motifs and a whole lot of black.

  She was still wearing black, but it was a more professional ensemble. Jacket and skirt with a golden pin on her lapel, hair done up in a neat bun, the eyeliner more subdued. Her body, deceptively humanoid, concealed enough weapons to lay waste to an armored column. Jack watched her enter like a leopard peering through the underbrush.

  She kept the boots though. Business formal ended at the knee, apparently. Everything below that was armored and angular, like it’d come off a combat mech. Revenant caught him staring. The last time her eyes had caught his like that, she’d almost killed him. He might’ve been a leopard, once, but she was a stealth bomber. The only tactical assessment he merited was in the collateral damage column.

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  But he knew where they stood with each other. He appreciated that.

  Revenant stopped at the end of his bed and went at-ease, clasping her hands behind her back.

  “Jack,” she said.

  He nodded, unsure of what else to do.

  “Been a while,” he replied.

  She didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. Didn’t blink. If she wanted to hurt him, and given what he had done he suspected on some level that she did, there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop her.

  “Keeping out of trouble?” she asked.

  “Trying to. I didn’t have anything to do with that explosion, if that’s why you’re here.”

  “I know. I’ve reviewed the footage. Doctor Yang sends along his thanks—and you have my gratitude, as well.”

  He’d never heard her say such a thing before. He nodded again, as if he wasn’t trying to process that.

  “You refused to speak to my associate,” Revenant said. “I’d like to know what you saw.”

  Jack shrugged as best he could. “I saw a man blow himself up.”

  “Elucidate.”

  “I saw a man blow himself up. I saw a homeless guy, in the grip of a psychotic episode or just out of his mind on carvite, blow himself up with enough military-grade explosive to crack a supercarrier in half. That’s what I saw, and it doesn’t make any fucking sense!”

  It was almost funny. Six months ago, he and Sam and Elias and everyone, had used a fraction of that much phasmite to run a job on a Dynazon-contracted freighter, the Poseidon Adriatic, as it came into port in Asclepion, at the behest of someone they should’ve known better than to deal with. All in all, it had not gone as they had hoped.

  Since then, he had wondered what they had done to get someone like Revenant on their tail. She’d caught up with them within Asclepion’s Citadel and had been, at the time, the scariest thing Jack had ever seen. Even now, making polite conversation, he didn’t feel like revising that assessment. It was like her contempt for him and his people had saved him more than the orders to apprehend them had.

  They had picked the wrong ship, and now some poor motherfucker had picked the wrong station.

  “What did he say?” Revenant asked. “The security footage lacked audio. You spoke with him.”

  Jack sighed. She was relentless. He had no idea how Sabra made small talk with her, much less everything else.

  “I tried to talk with him,” he replied. “Tried to talk him down. He was just... I don’t know, babbling.” What had he said? Jack tried to cast his mind back, but there was nothing there beyond a flash and an adrenaline haze.

  “I don’t think he wanted to do it,” he continued. “But he did. Do you know who he was?”

  “Not yet. Did you see anything suspicious before or after the explosion?”

  “No. I don’t think so. But he was there before I was.”

  “Did you see any signs of empowered involvement?”

  Now, there was the million-dollar question. Jack considered that, and shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Revenant, but if someone wanted to make him do that, then they would’ve had to be in line-of-sight. Maybe while he was out on the platform, sure, but once he was in that hallway?”

  “Correct.”

  “And if people thought that was the case, I’d be talking with the Guard or with SOLAR. Not the federal police. Not you.”

  “Correct. But I am entertaining all possibilities.”

  “If I knew more, I’d tell you. Really.”

  Revenant blinked once, owlishly, as if matching him.

  “Hey,” he said. “How’s Sabra doing, anyway?”

  “A menace—to herself, others, and especially me.”

  “But she’s okay?”

  “She thinks she can take on the whole world before breakfast, so, she’s fine.”

  “Great,” he said, “I’m glad.”

  “Are you,” Revenant replied, more cold than flat.

  He was pretty sure he was. Still, there was that feeling again—of being a leopard, that old part of him, of recognizing a predator through the underbrush. They’d saved the world together, but it didn’t make them friends.

  “Still doing the superhero thing?” he asked.

  “Mm. She wants to join SOLAR, if you can believe it.”

  He absolutely could.

  “Think she can do it?”

  “I think she doesn’t understand what such a thing entails,” Revenant said. “I have attempted to explain it to her, but sometimes I think she does things purely to vex me. How’s Samantha?”

  “She’s fine, girlbot,” Sam said, stepping through the door with a bag in her hands—he hadn’t even heard her open it. There was antipathy there and Jack wasn’t sure why. Revenant had saved her life. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was because she kept calling her by her full name.

  “Did you get my gift?” Sam asked.

  “We did,” Revenant said, regarding Sam over her shoulder. “Now, with the token small talk dispensed with, I will take my leave.” Revenant marched over to the bedside table, reached into her jacket, and set something down there. A business card? She had a business card?

  “Your amnesia may fade in time,” she said, staring at him. “Call me when it does.”

  “Sure. Say hi to Sabra for me.”

  She left without another word. Sam watched her go, then turned back to him, tossed her bag down at the end of his bed. “You ready to blow this joint?”

  “Wait, before that—what was that about getting her a gift?”

  Sam grinned, scrappy and crooked. “More of a couple thing.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry I asked.” He had no idea what you’d buy a couple like that. He didn’t want to know. “But yeah, I’m ready. Providing I’m not walking out of here in this paper gown.”

  Sam nudged the bag. “Don’t say I never think of you. Pretty sure I got your size. Get dressed, and take it slow. If you fall over and start shouting, it’ll be about a minute before I decide I can hear you.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  She tossed a little half wave-half salute over her shoulder as she headed out into the hall.

  Jack slipped out of his bed and crushed his eyes closed at the vertigo and the pain. Tipped forward onto his toes, caught himself on the bedside table, and pushed himself back onto his heels. Maybe the doctors were right, and maybe he’d had worse.

  Scooping up Sam’s bag from his bed, he took it step by wavering step to the bathroom. Stripped off the gown and pulled on what he found in the bag—a t-shirt, jeans, and sweatshirt. Disconcertingly, she really did nail his size. He looked into the mirror, and decided he looked like shit. His face was red, his eyes blackened, and his brown hair scorched grey in places. He splashed some water on his face, and that didn’t seem to accomplish much beyond making it look like someone had tried to drown him after blowing him up.

  Okay. Maybe I haven’t had worse.

  Still, he felt better. He grabbed Revenant’s card from the table, shoved it into his pocket, and found his footing by the time he was out into the corridor. Only after they’d handled the paperwork, where he’d had to sign that he wouldn’t sue them if he died after checking himself out (and why would he), and they were standing out in the afternoon chill, as Sam was talking about buying him a drink because this was the first time his habit of doing something stupid didn’t make her want to put a bullet in him, did Jack figure he should fish the card out and look at it.

  There, embossed in gold lettering on jet-black card stock, was the Dynazon suncog, a phone number, and the words SIAN YANG, EMPOWERED SECURITY OPERATIVE.

  Oh, Jack thought. Shit.