Silence, punctuated only by the normal sounds of the city. In the distance a siren wailed – drawing closer. For the cops, any gathering in Jokertown was a potential riot. Tachyon realized she had to get the crowd dispersed and order restored before the police arrived. She swung her leg over, and slid off the shell.

Cody reached her first. Tachyon glanced briefly up, but she couldn’t meet the level gaze from Cody’s single dark eye. She turned her back on the older woman and walked toward Finn and Troll.

“Take me to my office. Tell me what terrible things the jumper did in my place. Then take me home.”

Cody was at her elbow. “You haven’t got a home. We thought you were dead. We let the apartment go.” She shrugged dismissively, but Tachyon could sense the pain she was hiding.

“Softer might be better,” suggested Finn softly to Cody as he joined them. His eyes kept drifting to, then jerking away from, the swell of her pregnancy, and Tachyon felt a bone-gnawing need to break something… kill something.

“Better just to get it all out,” replied Cody stubbornly.

“Better for whom?” asked Tach.

Cody’s one eye stared at her with the desperation of a dying animal. “I couldn’t help. They held me for months. Chris thought I was dead. They stuck my kid in a foster home.” Tachyon couldn’t tell if Cody was looking for comfort or just babbling randomly. “Then Blaise told me he’d killed you. I believed him. I didn’t mean to fail you.”

In a low, flat voice Tachyon said, “I cannot handle you. Your presence. Your words. Deal with my clinic, deal with your own pain, and leave me alone.”

It was said without a glance to the stricken woman. Cody stiffened, wrapped herself in her pride, and walked back into the clinic. Troll and Finn stared at Tachyon.

Troll said quietly, “She’s been through some terrible times.”

“And she deserved better. Yes, I know. I cannot provide it. I cannot face her… I cannot help her… any more than she helped me.”

Tach suddenly turned and bolted back to Turtle. Laid her cheek against the steel plates of the shell.

“I’m frightened.”

“IF YOU NEED ME, I’LL BE THERE. YOU KNOW HOW TO FIND ME,” Tommy said.

Tach nodded and walked back to join her staff.

“Then Cody vanished – missing/presumed dead, and you – well, we thought it was you -” Troll corrected himself. “Retreated into a bottle and eventually resigned from the clinic. We limped along. Then suddenly Cody returned with word you’d died, and the fake Tach vanished. I wanted to go to Ellis Island and search -”

“Only by then it was called the Rox, and nobody could get there,” Finn broke in.

“Oh, you can get there,” Tachyon said softly as she remembered the lonely, frightened, dreaming boy who held sway over the joker kingdom that now occupied Ellis Island. “It’s just a little like never-never land… Her voice trailed away.

“Never more than now. A fucking castle has appeared out there. This Bloat’s issued a statement to the American government that he and all the jokers are seceding from the United States. You know what happened the last time somebody tried that? It was called the Civil War,” Finn said.

“Who cares about all the political shit? I want to know what happened to the Doc.” Troll pressed. “What did happen – after Blaise kidnapped you, I mean?”

Tachyon sat silent until Finn said uncomfortably, “It’s a little obvious, isn’t it?” Troll glowered. Strain was definitely showing among the staff of the Renssaeler Clinic.

Seven months of hell passed with sickening ease through her memory. The kidnapping, Blaise, the transfer of her soul and mind into the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, the rape. Weeks of utter darkness in a basement cell. Another rape. The pregnancy. The aborted escape attempt, and yet another rape. Finally rescue. And now despair.

“Who’s the father?” Finn asked.

Tachyon rose. “My charming and psychotic grandson, Blaise.” As their faces registered shock and disgust, Tach smiled thinly. “Don’t look so shocked. Incest is an ancient and revered tradition on Takis.”

“It ain’t much, but it’s home,” Finn said as he tossed the keys onto a table in the entryway.

“It’s a penthouse,” Tachyon protested.

“Yeah, well, it sounds good even if it’s not true.” Tach followed the young man into the living room. “I’m a joker. Daddy’s a rich Hollywood producer-director, I figure I’m entitled to a few perks.”

The room was spacious, and furnished almost entirely with large throw pillows. There was one sofa.

“A concession to two-legged critters,” Finn said, following her gaze.

Curious now, Tach peeked into the kitchen. About what one would expect from a kitchen, but the cabinets and counters were all set much lower than the standard.

Back in the living room Tach discovered the bar. She stood and contemplated a bottle of Courvoisier with the hungry eyes of a starving refugee.

“No, boss,” came Finn’s voice from behind her. “Try this instead.” She turned, and he proffered a glass of milk.

“No, thank you.”

“Drink it.” He pressed the glass into her hand.

“I hate it,” Tachyon said. “When you fuss. When you force me to take care of myself. When you make me feel that this” – an accusing finger pointing at her belly – “is more important than I am.”

“It is you.”

Tach stared up at Finn. She touched her face, lightly combed her fingers through her hair. A feather-like brush across the swollen belly. “This is not me. It’s not, Bradley.” Her voice was tight with strain.

Finn guided her to the sofa, pushed her down. “Boss, it’s gotta be said – this may be you. What I mean is the femaleness, not the pregnancy. Blaise is gone. Your body’s gone. If it can’t be recovered, you may have to spend the rest of your life -”

The rest of this hideous, rational, and perfectly logical speech was lost to the ringing of the doorbell. Finn trotted away to answer and so didn’t notice when Tach began to shiver. The glass slipped from her numb fingers, spilling milk across her lap. Pressing both hands to her head, Tach gasped for air. Clammy sweat was breaking out at her hairline and along her upper lip, and her vision seemed to be narrowing to a tunnel with blackness to either side. Cool fingers gripped Tach’s wrist and felt for the pulse point.

Her eyes snapped open, and she stared up into Cody’s lovely, beloved face. Embarrassed on a host of levels, Tach looked away, but in that brief glance Tach noticed the wisps of silver among the ebony cap of Cody’s hair, and that the lines about her single eye had deepened. Clearly the suffering of the past months had not been limited solely to Tachyon. There had been plenty of grief to go around.

Tachyon, when she had been a he, had desperately wanted to make love with this woman. The emotion, the desire was still there, but there was no testosterone to fuel that drive, no penis to deliver on the passion.

“Don’t!” shrilled Tachyon. She struggled wildly to get up off the sofa, cursed with vexation when her ungainly body refused to cooperate.

“Anxiety attack,” said Cody calmly. “Get my bag,” she threw over her shoulder to Finn. He complied, and as she fished out the hypodermic, she said conversationally to Tachyon, “I’m going to give you a light sedative. I don’t normally approve of this for a woman as advanced in pregnancy as you are -”

“Get away from me! You shame me! I am humiliated beyond all measure! I cannot live like this! I will not!”

Cody reached up and straightened the black eye patch that covered her missing eye, sighed, and said, “Let me in, Tachyon. Stop closing me out.” Cody’s calm, husky, womanly tones set a sharp contrast to Tach’s girlish soprano. She filled the hypo. “And by the way, you may not have the luxury of a choice.” She slid the needle beneath the skin of Tach’s upper arm and depressed the plunger.