“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 each other. “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 coffinlike 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. “But good men tend to die first. 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.”

Evey shifts uncomfortably.

“There was another Red at the Institute,” I say after a moment. “Titus. Was he one of yours?” I glance toward Mickey.

“Don’t look at me,” Mickey says.

“How did you know Titus was a Red?” Harmony asks quickly. “Did he tell you?”

“He … let it slip. Small mannerisms. No one else noticed.”

“Then you found each other?” she asks, not smiling, but sighing free a weight she’s long carried. “He was a good lad. I’m sure you became friends?”

“He never discovered me. Did you carve him, Mickey?”

With Harmony’s blessing, he answers. “No, darling. You were my first. My only.” He winks. “I consulted on his carving. But an associate of mine did his procedure based on the successes you and I pioneered.”

“Dancer found you,” Harmony says. “I found Titus. Though his name was Arlus when we pulled him from Thebos mines. He didn’t care about keeping it.”

It’s fitting that Harmony would find Titus. Birds of a feather.

“What happened to him?” she asks. “We know he died.”

What happened to him? I let a Gold put him in the bloody ground.

I look stonily at the three of them, thankful they cannot read my thoughts. They know nothing. I can barely conceive of what they must think of me. They’ve such small perspectives on what I’ve done, on what I’ve become. I thought there was a plan, a long, large reason for all my toil. But there was nothing. I know that now. Even Dancer was just waiting to see what happened. Hoping.

I expected to be welcomed back with open arms. I expected an army waiting. A grand plan. For Ares to take off his infamous helm and dazzle me with his brilliance and prove all my faith warranted. Hell, all I wanted was to find them again so I would not feel alone. But I feel more alone than ever sitting here in a concrete room with these three pale people on rickety plastic chairs.

“A Gold named Cassius au Bellona killed him,” I say.

“Was it a good death?”

“By now, you should know there’s no such thing.”

“Cassius. The same one you have a bloodfeud with. Is that why?” Evey asks eagerly. “Is that why the Bellona want to kill you?”

I run a hand through my hair. “No. I killed Cassius’s brother. It’s one of the reasons they hate me.”

“Blood for blood,” Evey murmurs like she knows what the hell she’s talking about.

“We hit them hard today, Darrow. Twelve blasts across Luna and Mars. Dancer and Titus have been avenged,” Harmony says. “And we’ll hit them harder in the days to come. This cell is just one of many.”

She waves her hand at the desk and scenes rise as the holoDisplay comes to life. Violet news anchors drone on about the carnage.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I ask. “You’re as bad as them. You know that, yes? Never mind the strategy of it. Never mind you’re taunting a sleeping dragon. Evey herself killed over a hundred lowColors just hours ago.”

“There weren’t Reds,” Harmony says, and then adds, in an amazingly insincere afterthought, “or Pinks.”