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him. I moved in until our faces nearly touched.
    He never expected me to make it, he said. I knew that. Whoever goes down this pipe is expendable. Did he tell you?
    I had suspected it, but I shook my head.
    There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you, Lev said.
    He doesn’t trust me?
    You shouldn’t have told him about what you remembered.
    We hadn’t spoken of that in a long time. After reanimation, memories that had been erased would return. It’s why Ai feared us. But long ago when I awoke on the tanker, one particular memory had returned—a piece of the puzzle that never quite fit. As a detective, I’d processed one of them, a woman named Noelle Hyde. Back then, she’d tried to kill Fawkes, but she wasn’t ordered to; it was just the opposite. They’d killed her for what she’d done.
    They didn’t want Fawkes dead, I said to Lev.
    They lie. He thinks you give too much consideration to their motives.
    I know what I saw. At the time, I thought they feared something else, something besides Fawkes stripping them from power.
    Lev’s eyes just watched me from the murky darkness.
    I still think that, I said. Lev managed a nod.
    Maybe they do.
    “ . . . It will start here, but it won’t end here . . . ” Ai had said once. “Fawkes will destroy this city, and then one by one, the rest will begin to fall. . . . ”
    They need to be stopped, I said, but he should have listened.
    There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you. Just remember that.
    I will.
    Do you want to continue your existence?
    I think so.
    You think?
    The darkness that waits for me, I told him, it’s the only thing left that really scares me. I don’t want it to take me. I’m not ready for it to take me, not yet.
    You may come to terms with that someday, he said.
    Have you?
    A long time ago. He will shut you down, you know. Someday soon.
    I know.
    I wish I could stop it, he said.
    You do?
    Yes.
    I moved closer to him and hoped he could see my face. Using our private channel, I told him something I hadn’t told anyone else.
    I found a way to sever his command spoke.
    He didn’t respond right away. The shunt I’d fashioned over the years would work—I didn’t doubt that—but Fawkes’s reaction, if he knew, would be extreme. It would mean the end not just for me, but everyone on Fawkes’s network who knew of it.
    Will you run, then? he asked.
    Under my tongue, I felt the small glass capsule. Lev would have had one as well.
    Do you still have the Leichenesser? I asked.
    No. I swallowed it in the struggle.
    I placed one hand on the side of his cold face and the other over his Adam’s apple. Peering through his flesh, I found his command nodes.
    Good-bye, Lev.
    Good-bye, Faye.
    The blade pushed through his skin and into his spine. With a small twist, the command connections snapped. The circuit between us dropped as black blood bloomed out into the cold water, blotting out the light from his eyes even as they faded, and went dark.
    Alone, I brought up the memory he gave me. With no pathways associated with it, it wouldn’t last very long. I wanted to see it before it decayed.
    I looked into it and saw myself, alive. From the subtle distortion, I knew he’d been looking through a Light Warping field as he stood and watched me. I was in my apartment. My skin had color, and I still had hair. Real blood still pulsed through my veins, and I could almost sense sadness in my eyes.
    This is the night I was killed.
    The heat in my veins stood out as he’d watched me and monitored the steady beat of my heart. He kept tabs on a second heartbeat as well; my old partner, Doyle Shanks, was there with me.
    Target Shanks is here. The words appeared in the air, and though I realized he’d been talking to Fawkes, his stare remained fixed on me and not on Doyle Shanks.
    Kill them both, came the reply, but Lev had hesitated.
    I can remove the target and leave the other, he offered.
    Kill them both, came the reply, and the memory scattered. The ember, Lev’s last thought,