Bliss lay with his hands behind his head on a cold metal bench. He turned his head just enough to see the bars of the jail cell that pretended to keep him contained. He already tested them with a light tap the second he was thrown in. Novrun’s ministry didn’t have the resources to get a hold of enough reality glue for full cell reinforcements. As such, everything that had happened was entirely under Bliss’s control. He was only there because he allowed it. He even tolerated the occasional whistle from the cells next to him.

  One of the guards that Bliss knew he could crush like a grape walked down the hall and stopped right in front of his cell. With his head still, Bliss moved his eyes to focus on the man. His shadow fell over his entire human body, as did most shadows across the galaxy. It was cute, amusing even, that any of them thought a shred of darkness could intimidate him.

  “Good morning, hero.” That tone. That tone was too good. He was already acting like Bliss had been disgraced. Like his reputation as a hero already crumbled into dust. They were all so adorable when they thought they were in control. “Your boss is here to see you.”

  He never thought he’d be happy to hear those words. Crux may have hated his guts and thrown him into the fire of his past on a near daily basis, but the man was good at what he did. Managing heroes when they fucked up was at the top of that list.

  Bliss hoisted himself up off the bench and followed the guard to one of the unmarked rooms in city hall’s basement. The door itself had no window, but the standard one-way glass panel disguised as a mirror was still present and making up the wall behind the interrogation table. It was an odd and likely illegal room choice for a meeting with a lawyer, but Bliss never really cared enough to look through the laws of every coalition planet. Perhaps if he actually attended hero lessons instead of flying around with Entropi, he would know exactly what he was in for.

  “Wait here. We’ll bring him down in a minute.”

  Bliss gave the widest, sweetest smile he could manage as the guard left the room. He suspected “a minute” would look more like an hour given the current situation. With the one-way glass staring back at him, it was entirely possible they wanted to let him sit for a bit just to watch him react, not even for political reasons, just because it was him. The galaxy’s beautiful human who was now sitting in a chair with blood on his clothes. A sight for bored eyes.

  Sorry, I won’t be giving you guys anything.

  The promised minute went by with no appearance from Crux. With his suspicions confirmed, he folded his hands over each other on the table and looked directly at himself in the mirror. He let his mouth settle into a neutral position with just the faintest curve upward. Enough to invite attention but leave so much more to be desired.

  Time hardly existed to Bliss in that state. He felt the glare of eyes being the glass bringing him out of his thoughts. Just the vacant expression of a polite hero was enough of a performance to keep him occupied. He could do it for as long as they wanted before they gave up and let Crux in, or until Crux hit them with enough legal threats that they had no choice.

  He didn’t know how long it had been before the door opened. Crux walked in with a heavy sigh, his shards of rock and ice looking less bright than usual under the oppressive light of the interrogation room. He sat across from Bliss and blocked his view of the mirror where his audience hid.

  “How much trouble did they give you?” Bliss asked.

  “Enough to cast suspicion on this story they’re telling me, but I’ll let you say it for yourself. What happened?”

  “I woke up with his severed body on my bed.” Bliss gestured to the blood on his suit. “What happened before that, I couldn’t tell you. Well, there was a whole thing with Lunai but that isn’t important here.”

  “Yes, Lunai mentioned that she left you by yourself. You were against the window?”

  Bliss’s eyebrows dropped. The fun part of his day was over. They were quickly veering into territory that he would’ve preferred to leave drowned under a bridge. “I said it’s not important, but yes, I did end my night against the window.”

  Crux took out his CellPulse and started writing. “Between you and agent Entropi, there’s been a concerning amount of time lost.”

  “I don’t think Entropi getting blackout drunk before a gala should take too much of your concern.”

  Crux sighed once again. It was a good thing rock masses didn’t get high blood pressure. “That’s the thing, agent Bliss. She didn’t get blackout drunk. I never told you, but my investigation of the restaurant she drank at revealed traces of flunitrazepam in her glass. The same human sedative Armageddon tried using on you. The one human traffickers use.”

  Any trace of calm left on Bliss’s face was replaced by wide eyes that matched his disheveled hair. His hands were now separated and turned to fists trembling on the table. “You’re just telling me this now?”

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  “Agent Entropi didn’t want me to. She said-“

  Bliss raised his fists and slammed them on the table. “I don’t care what she said! I was the target at that gala. Entropi being drugged was just an attempt to incapacitate her and get to me. You don’t think I need to know about that?”

  “We already have Armageddon in custody. You are not in any danger of being taken again; what do you think some no-name agent that slipped a tablet in Entropi’s drink could do to you?”

  Bliss pushed his hands against the table once again and forced himself up. “They could get some FUCKING REALITY GLUE! Armageddon is too fucking stupid to think about dealing with Entropi. That means he was working with a smarter person who knows she's human and is missing their big scary murder boy.”

  “Agent Bliss, sit-“

  The door swung open to the same guard that lied about Crux being there in a minute. “Do we have a problem?”

  “No, no,” Crux said, raising his palms towards the guard. “Sometimes Bliss can get a little…emotional. You know how humans are. We’re fine here, right Bliss?”

  A little emotional?! You’re describing me like you’re a man who hates his wife!

  “Yes, of course!” He put his sweet smile back on and sat down, accepting his mandated weekly dose of human humiliation. “It’s just the human brain fog popping up from stress, of course!” To really bring it home, he popped the corner of his tongue out and tapped the side of his head, something he’d never admit to doing in front of another living soul.

  “Mm.” The guard rolled his eyes and closed the door.

  “So they are watching us. Nice of them to confirm it, at least.”

  “They wouldn’t try to hide it. Novrun is within their rights to observe our conversation. They can observe any privileged conversation when it involves one of my agents. They are quite scared of all of you.” Crux turned to face the mirror. “Don’t worry, they’re not allowed to listen in, so they didn’t hear that nasty conversation about the sedative.”

  “Is that what they told you?”

  “Fair point.” Crux shrugged and turned back to Bliss. “I don’t feel anyone poking into our psychic conversation right now, so I can only assume they are keeping their word.”

  “How noble.”

  “Let’s just get back to the murder. Agent Bliss, can you tell me with complete and utter certainty that you didn’t kill your tour guide Igor?”

  Bliss opened his mouth prepared to say: why of course I didn’t kill him. I’ve been dealing with asshole for the last four years and I haven’t snapped yet! But then he remember the feeling of his forehead pressed against cool glass in the silence of the penthouse living room. His eyes drifting shut as if his body just gave up on being conscious. The strangely peaceful night. No green lights bothered him in his sleep, in fact, he didn’t dream at all.

  “I…I don’t know. I don’t know if I did!” Both of his palms reached up and grasped his hair. “I don’t think I did it? I don’t remember doing it. I was even starting to like the guy.”

  “You liked your tour guide?” Apparently Crux was too shocked by the indolent comment to focus on Bliss’s blackout.

  “He made me laugh…”

  He said it like he was the star of a bad romcom. It was still baffling how easily one small moment changed his entire perspective of Igor. Now that he thought about it, he was kind of sad the man was killed. That is, of course, if someone planted his body on Bliss’s bed and he didn’t make his own way there.

  “The way his body was positioned on my bed, it looked like-“

  “Yes, I know. I was already thinking about a self-defense argument. They threw reasonable force back in my face, saying you should’ve just phased through him or have done a myriad of other things you’re capable of.”

  “I don’t want a self-defense argument; I want to know what happened.”

  “Investigation does seem to be our only option right now. If I tried claiming you were too emotionally unstable for reasonable force, they’d just hit me with sanctions for sending out a loose cannon.”

  Bliss crossed his arms and chuckled. “Well, we can’t have that.”

  “I’ll get started right away, but I’m not optimistic about your chances at bail, given how easily you could leave the planet.”

  “I could easily leave the planet from in here!”

  “I know, I think that’s part of the power trip they’re pulling. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of this.” Crux stood up and started walking to the door, turning one last time with his psychic voice speaking in a whisper. “I hope you didn’t kill him. This will be a lot more difficult if you did.”

  The sound of the door closing rung through Bliss’s ears. It continued ringing long after the sound had subsided. Bliss looked at his hands and tried to keep his awareness of his surroundings, but it was slipping away along with his cold facade. A few tears dripped onto his hands, opening the floodgates for a full blown breakdown. He was having a lot of those that week.

  The guard came in and dragged Bliss out of the rooming, saying something into his ear that he didn’t quite process. He was dropped back in his room where he immediately fell to his knees. The cellmates on his sides were laughing, talking about something. Why couldn’t he hear what they were saying? He always, always needed to hear what people were saying about him.

  If he couldn’t make out the mumbling, he had to have silence instead. He jammed his index finger deep into his right ear, hitting it repeatedly until blood fell out of his ear canal and all sound was muffled. He did the same for his left ear and soaked in the wonderfully distracting pain. Tears were still falling, and he curled on the floor to hide them from the world.

  Pain. Pain. Just think about the pain. Ears on fire. Pain.

  Despite his attempts to tune the world out, he felt one small tug at his hand. He looked down to find a small scrap of bark pulling on his thumb. Once he found it, it moved to curl around his thumb.

  “Lunai?”

  The scrap squeezed his thumb in response. He wiped the tears at his eyes and moved into the corner of the cell where he could hide in darkness. The wood remained fastened to his thumb, absorbing any excess water he wanted to get rid of immediately. He looked down at it and laughed. It wasn’t the dignified laugh he reserved for the public, nor the insane cackle he used against the golden words. It was closer to the one he shared with Igor. Something with no strings attached.

  “You’re crazy. I can’t believe you…”

  The bark just continued holding his thumb, and for the first time in a while, he didn’t feel like he was facing the world alone.