WHAT SURPRISES ME the most when I’m moving with the runners is that Nik Nik doesn’t demand deference during the run. All of the pomp and circumstance he’ll usually kill over—lowering your eyes when you speak to him, never questioning him—all of that goes away as we navigate the scaffolding of Wiley City. They use a construction elevator for thirty of the floors, but then we have to get off and take a dark stairwell from the sixtieth floor to the eightieth. If we weren’t dressed like runners, and if we weren’t about to commit a public disturbance, we could just take the public elevators up. Anything outside of the buildings is public commons, and access isn’t restricted the way it is in buildings like Eldridge.

About halfway through our climb my gasping is louder than the stomping of fifteen pairs of boots, and I can hear Dell lecturing me about physical activity in the back of my mind. We part ways near Adam’s land. The runner who will be leading the distraction grabs Nik Nik’s shoulder without asking. I expect the emperor to turn around with a backhand that’s heavy on the rings, but instead he returns the gesture, grabbing the man’s shoulder in a display of affection and a wish of good luck.

I didn’t understand how Mr. Cheeks could be so loyal to someone like Nik Nik, but the creature he obeys wears a face I’ve never seen. This Nik Nik—a man who is focused and sure, who issues confident commands and moves with the swiftness of the creatures he once hunted—this is the man Mr. Cheeks chooses to obey. Not the insecure, spoiled child who has choked me either once or a hundred times.

When we get to the edge of the garden that houses Adam Bosch’s mansion, Nik Nik holds up a hand to stop us.

“Follow my path exactly. Cover to cover, two at once.”

    He points to Mr. Cheeks, then me. Mr. Cheeks nods and moves beside me. We move through the yard in starts and stops, until the mansion is close enough that we can break for the door in a final sprint. We don’t break for it though, not yet. We’re all crouched, silent and staring at nothing, but I’m the only one who seems antsy. Just when I’m about to ask what we’re waiting for, I hear it. The screaming starts a moment before I see the smoke, then a chainsaw rages to life in the distance.

Nik Nik sprints from the brush and we all follow.

Adam may have turned off the biometric requirements for his party, but the door still locks automatically when it’s closed. Unfortunately for Adam Bosch, the door is metal and we’ve always known more about metal than city kin.

It takes me a moment to place the woman who moves to the front of the pack, but that’s because I’ve never seen Mr. Scales in glasses before. She rolls up a sleeve, revealing a gauntlet laced with magnets. She slides them along the exterior of the door, pressing her ear to it to hear the progress. Eventually, the door slides open. As she reattaches her magnets, Nik Nik touches her bare arm—not her shoulder like the others—and when she catches me noticing she looks away and so do I. She nods to him, then runs back to the perimeter while the rest of us duck inside.

Once we’re inside, the group begins to move down the hall, but I linger behind.

The emperor notices before Mr. Cheeks does, and his awareness, as always, makes me uncomfortable.

“Scared?”

I shake my head. “No, I want to find his room.”

I expect him to ask me why, but instead he just smiles wide with teeth like an oil slick. He pulls out a fob necklace exactly like the one he carries on 175. He pushes a button and projects a map of the mansion against the wall. “There, the far corner. If you aren’t out in ten minutes, they’ll notice you leaving.”

The others begin to make their way to the prototype held in Adam’s home lab, but Mr. Cheeks lingers behind.

    He waits until we’re alone to ask the question I’d expected from the emperor.

“Why?”

“I just want to see if there’s some evidence of what he’s done. I know enforcement is slow, but we might be able to give them something they can’t ignore.”

He shakes his head. “Man’s a genius. He’ll keep himself clean.”

“I’m just going to check.”

He’s looking at me like I’m lying. And I am lying. But he lets me have it and goes to meet the others in the prototype room.

Adam Bosch’s walls are lined with news projections featuring him. There are no images of his friends or adopted family. When I finally reach the double doors of his room, I realize I never needed Nik Nik to give me directions. Adam sleeps exactly where I would expect: in the rear of the house, with an entirely clear wall overlooking the desert in the direction of Ashtown. Does he miss it? I didn’t, but my upbringing and his were as different as gold dust and dirt.

I go through his things quickly, but the search is as fruitless as Mr. Cheeks said it would be. The only thing of interest is a digital filing cabinet mounted on his wall. It’s cut off from the network, safe from hacking, so I’m sure every file is encrypted. But there’s nothing to stop me from reading the menu. I have to take off a glove to scroll through the headings on the screen, but I use my palm just in case it’s a trap complete with fingerprinting. The screen is filled with options. Some file names I recognize as boring procedure, others read like math I don’t understand at all, but then I get to the impossible.

My name, my real name, is a file on Bosch’s personal server. Why? I open it, even though all the files inside will be password-protected. They are. I can’t open them, but I recognize the type from the extension at the end of the names—they’re from medical. Why is Adam Bosch getting copied on all of my medical workups? There are enough files to go back to before Jean died, before 175, almost to the start of my employment. Did he get copied on all the high-volume traversers, and now I’m just the only one left, or is he watching me specifically?

    I leave the filing cabinet alone and put my glove back on before surveying the room again. Even here there are no images of anyone who might matter to him. His space is as bare of sentiment as the emperor’s, and I wonder if it’s for the same reason. I tell myself that just because he doesn’t keep images of friends or family doesn’t mean there isn’t someone out there who loves him.

The Nik Nik I knew understood it was important to view your enemy as a whole person. Think of a traitor as a father and a husband too. He didn’t mean grant mercy. He meant when you kill him, know him well enough to know who might seek revenge. If Adam had studied Jean better, he would have known I’d end up in his bedroom, puzzling out the problem of his existence.

This is how I would kill him. In the place where he sleeps. According to Adam Bosch’s walls, there is no one who would seek revenge. Just like there will be no one to get revenge if—when—he has me killed.

Only Mr. Cheeks texting me that I’m running low on time reminds me that I can’t do what I want. I can’t wait here until he enters and turn him to bloody pulp the way he did Jean. Because that would start a war, and even though those hypothetical deaths feel distant and unimportant against the loss of my only friend, they wouldn’t be.

If we can’t get rid of Adam, he’ll just rebuild the hatch. The next one will be bigger and more protected and in a few years’ time Jean’s death will be a blip on the otherwise uninterrupted pattern of Adam’s greed. Only I’ll be gone, and there might not be anyone else who cares. I can’t let that happen.

When Mr. Cheeks sends me another, more irritated message, I’m in Adam Bosch’s oversized bathroom. I rush out into the hall and hear a gasp. I turn slowly, but I already know. I always feel it when she looks at me.

Dell is standing at the other end of the hall. She’s never looked more beautiful, and we’ve never looked more impossible. She’s wearing an evening gown, a sea of black crystals interrupted only by the bright V of her skin from collar to belly button. Her eyes are wide with horror, and a glass of Champagne hangs from gloved hands.

    We’re both wearing gloves. We’re both wearing black. There our common ground ends. Seeing her like this is like seeing a star from the mud. I can’t say this is a misunderstanding, that this isn’t who I am. I can’t lie the way I’ve been lying to myself for years.

I can tell from the hurt just beneath the shock that she recognizes me behind the bandanna. I’m not surprised. We’ve spent so many years together now, she could recognize me in the dark just like I recognized her scarred and covered in ash.

Before I can speak, before I can step toward her, Mr. Cheeks comes from the other side. He grabs me by the arm and drags me away. I look over my shoulder, but with the runner’s appearance her eyes have turned cold.

Nik Nik and the others are at the edge of the property. I take a second to empty my pockets and throw their contents and my gloves in a nearby incinerator.