She lowered her eyes to stare at the side of my neck. At the twisted-wire pendant that still hung there.
The motors roared louder under us, filling my skull with their white noise.
All was lost.
It wasn’t a long wait before the truck jerked to a halt again. The motors died, and I could hear the creak of the cab doors and the crunch of boots in the earth.
“Are you awake?” Danae whispered quickly. “I have to tell you something. Something I realized as soon as I woke up here.”
“What?”
“I knew you before.”
“What do you mean? Before what?”
“You know what I am,” she whispered to me. “I’m the sum of many people. Many different lives and memories. I’ve had many names and faces that were not this one. And one of them . . . one of the people I was, and still am—”
“Eryn,” I heard myself say. Eryn. I twisted, searching for her in the dark, wanting desperately to see her now—but all I could make out was a dim glimmer of light on her eyes in the pitch black.
“I remember the night I gave you that. I remember you now. Our promise.”
“Eryn!”
The doors were thrown open, and two people climbed in to heave us one by one into the blazing late-afternoon sun. The hot sand stung in my wounds. All I could think of was wishing they would turn me so I could see her.
The bounty hunters stood over us. Jenna lit a cigarette with a shaking hand and said, “Well, honored guests, we hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with us, but all good things must come to an end.”
“Give it a rest,” somebody said. “They’re here.”
“We got a plan for this exchange?” somebody asked. “They’re not going to be happy about the brain-dead one.”
Jenna flicked her barely smoked cigarette away and glared at them all in turn. “You want a plan? Shut your ugly faces and let me do the talking. Wavers primed, safeties off. That’s the plan.”
I could barely bend my neck to see anything. I heard another vehicle skid to a halt on the sandy ground. Doors opening. I could just barely make out three blurry silhouettes, about ten meters away.
“That’s close enough,” Jenna said. “Squid. Now.”
I held my breath and listened hard, and in the windy distance I heard another woman’s voice. “Do I look that stupid to you, chum? I inspect the merchandise. I see it’s intact. I verify it’s the same merchandise I came here to buy. Then I pay.”
That voice sounded vaguely familiar, but before I could place it my thoughts were scattered by the concretely familiar sensation of a wave pistol’s emitter being pressed against the side of my head.
“Don’t push us, fish-fucker,” Jenna shouted. “Even if we didn’t have you and your thugs outgunned, Duke put out an eight-figure bounty on these people, alive. That makes me think he wants them pretty bad. Bad enough that you’ll be in a real tight spot with your boss if you screw up this hand-off, and we have to toast their heads right here in front of you. Follow me? Cash! Now!”
“We do want them pretty bad,” said the Medusan woman, mocking their inland accents. “Bad enough that we’ll lower ourselves to coming out here. Not bad enough that we intend to let you stick us with just any three sorry fuckers you found to fit the description. Give me some shred of proof that these are the people we’re after, and that they’re alive. Otherwise we walk, and you stay poor.”
An unbearable silence set in. I swallowed hard and twisted for a better look.
“Fine,” Jenna finally said. “Knock yourself out. Just you! Your goons stand back.”
The pistol lifted from my head. Footsteps crunched carefully toward us until a shadow fell over my eyes again. I squinted up into the formless black silhouette that knelt over me.
“Still kicking?” she asked me—and when she eclipsed the sun, I saw her in the flesh for only the second time in my life.
“The night is young,” I whispered back.
I stifled a cry of relief. I heard Danae do the same in perfect symmetry behind me: she knew as clearly as I did what was about to happen.
Kat Mandu cleared her throat and straightened up, resuming her performance. “Okay. I’m satisfied. Money. Getting the money now.”
“Hurry up,” Jenna barked. “You think I don’t see you whispering to your henchmen there? Push me a little farther and see what happens.”
I heard a rover door swinging open and closed.
“Look, I’m fine, you’re fine, everything is fine,” Kat said. “Here’s your payment. I’ll just. . . .” She trailed off.
“What is that?” Jenna murmured.
From somewhere I heard the sound of another set of tires in the gravel.
“I said what the fuck is that?” Jenna demanded.
“I could ask you the same thing!” Kat yelled. Her question was a deception, but her panic was real. It could only be the real Medusas.
“Stay back!”
Rough hands thrust into my armpits and dragged me hurriedly behind the cover of the bounty hunters’ truck, ignoring my groans when my wounds scraped on the ground. From where they set me down, I was able to squint past the truck’s undercarriage at the incoming rover, painted with the purple and red insignia of Medusa Clan. It rolled up and jerked to a halt twenty meters away. I waited. Everyone waited, but the rover didn’t move.
“Who the fuck is that?” one of the hunters hissed behind my back. “What are they waiting for?”
The doors opened, and two Medusas stepped out into the searing light—but my despair gave way to confusion as more figures climbed out after him. One wore a business suit and a hat and looked very out of place in this desert. Another was a wastelander with mercenary gear, short and bald. Then there was a teenage boy. Their five faces were all emotionless—somehow eerily so.
Then they
