Dusty winds from the valley raked against the metal walls of Kiva Noon, bubbling them like ship sails and causing the fortification to buckle and pop. It stood, a rusty brown and grey battlement rising high above the desert floor, like a jagged crown of chipped knives. Seeing it waiting in the shimmer of heat made Krav remember what he learned of it from Greenblatt. No longer was it the rampart walls that he, Rufus, and Lenny camped in front of for a week. Now it was the chop shop, the defiling den, the abattoir. The crusted city of gore and metal.

  Greenblatt halted the pack beast upon the horizon and had 001 fetch him a spyglass from one of the chapped leather satchels hanging from its hips. He peered through it with one naked eye, clucked his tongue, then said to Krav, “When you were here last, was that gate closed?”

  Thankfully, it had been. Lenny wouldn’t have been able to stomach the things he had witnessed dwelling beneath the robes of men who traded away flesh for wires and gears.

  “That’s not good,” Greenblatt said. He passed the spyglass to Krav. The boy looked through it backwards, and the warlord adjusted it for him. “The gate’s only supposed to be closed in times of war. “

  “Where are all the people?”

  “I would assume inside.”

  “No. They weren’t allowed in.”

  “I’m hungry,” Mac complained. She was hanging upside down from the back of the pack beast and staring west, away from Kiva Noon. The two ignored her.

  Greenblatt squinted past the desert. A closed gate didn’t bode well for them, and he decided it would be smart to approach with caution. The Black Thumb clan were splice doctors by trade, but passionate tinkerers in all forms. A mile in any direction from the city, booby traps could be laid, and they could range from snapping cages to crude landmines. From here on, anything could be waiting for them beneath the sands. He tugged the bridle of his beast, and it slowly began the trek.

  001 and 002 prodded the land in front of them ten paces at the vanguard. They were a field’s length away from the city before one of them found something. 002 had his poleaxe deep in the sand when the group heard a click and the bodyguard froze, awaiting an order. Greenblatt gave it, and the bodyguard withdrew his weapon. When nothing happened, he gave the order to dig. They didn’t find landmines or pit traps, but instead a skeleton. A plated, artificial leg was sutured into one femur, looking more like a boot than an artificial extremity. That must have been what 002 had struck.

  Greenblatt acknowledged it with a nod, then ordered his bodyguards to continue their sweep ahead of him. Krav stopped to inspect the skeleton. The person who had died here must have lost their leg cleanly below the knee. That, or whatever blaspheming surgeon that had operated on them had taken care to shave down the mangled parts into something more akin to such a wound. The prosthetic fit snug against it, and it even had screws where it once had been secured to skin. Krav tried to imagine what kind of man the skeleton must have been to garner the replacement, but it was clear such musing were better left undelved. It was bones now, and dust tomorrow. It didn’t matter who he was in times long past. The femur would make a decent club, though.

  There were no traps set along the dunes leading into Kiva Noon. Greenblatt was sure at least one of the bodyguards would need to be screwed back together after a nasty encounter with a landmine. Fortune had been on their side, he thought. Fortune and good karma. All at once he found himself beneath the shadow of the gates of his very own city. He gave a nod, and 001 banged his fist against the gate.

  “What was it like when you were last here?” Greenblatt asked. He didn’t turn his head. Instead, his goggles remained ever locked onto the upper edges of the gate.

  Krav was dragging the femur through the sand, trying to clean it of yellow and grey bits of rotted flesh that the sand mites and scavengers hadn’t finished. “Quiet. There was a bunch of people outside, but they wouldn’t let them in.”

  “What about your trio? Were you allowed in?”

  “No,” Krav said, looking up at the rusty gate. “Rufus said they were charging a toll that we couldn’t afford, so we just camped outside for a bit.”

  “What toll?”

  Krav shrugged. It was beyond him to figure out the musings and directions of Rufus. The old man was the leader of the group, and his word was final. It didn’t matter what the toll was, if Rufus had decided it wasn’t worth paying, then who was he to argue.

  “The last time I was here, they welcomed us with a great feast!” Mac said. She stood atop the pack beast and tried to find a hole in the gate to peak through. “They probably didn’t want to fight the king of the world.”

  “Will you stop calling him that?” Krav said.

  001 pounded against the gate again. There was a bustling on the other side, like the city was alive within the heated metal skin. But nothing came. The only answer they received was the billowing metal as it bent against the wind. Greenblatt whistled, and the other bodyguard approached.

  “The horn,” said the warlord. From the trunk where they kept the misshapen arsenal, the bodyguard produced a chrome device. It was shaped like an oxen’s horn but it was cast in a metallic sheen. Intricate engravings were carved into it, and they depicted a scene of a large gate being opened by an army of people. Greenblatt touched the device to his lips and blew.

  The noise of the horn was irritating static. Krav and Mac clapped their hands over their ears and winced. The sound blurted out like hissing technology roused in anger. It rumbled in Krav’s chest like a storm of insects, and as it echoed against the gate, he felt like he was going to pass out. Greenblatt held it to his lips, blowing through it until he was sure his lungs would collapse. As soon as the noise faltered and faded, the gates answered him.

  They sprung to life, ancient machines that cracked and groaned as they grinded the sand from their joints and forced themselves to wake. They were out of sync, the first creaking open in a smooth rhythm, the other jittering and trying to catch up. Two warriors stood on the other side to greet Greenblatt and his guests, but upon closer inspection, they were very similar in frame to 001 and 002. The warriors stared through their face coverings with unblinking eyes and waited.

  The town beyond them looked like it was a busy marketplace just moments before, but now all eyes were on the gate. The people here were wiry and half exposed to the sun. Thin needles that replaced fingers perused through stalls and delicately held onto perspective trinkets. Machinery groaned beneath cracked robes that flapped whenever unseen exhaust systems hummed to life. Red lighted eyes stared at the new arrivals, scanning each of them until their eyes met the horn. If they could have widened, surely they would have.

  A man pushed past the warriors. He was young, not much older than Krav, but he wore a uniform that suggested authority over the gates: a long navy-blue overcoat with chords of small rope tied over one shoulder. Dirty blonde hair whipped like a field of grain in the wind. He marched over the sands, then stood at attention before the solicitors. Something bulged in his sleeve, a hidden weapon. “You three, what in the hell was that?"

  “A skeleton key,” Greenblatt answered. With a tug of the reigns, he began to lead the pack beast inside the walls. He was stopped when the concealed weapon slipped from man’s sleeve. His arm was augmented with a pronged taser at the end of his wrist. It crackled as sparks arced between two prongs at the end. Greenblatt’s bodyguards stepped forward, and the two warriors followed suit.

  The warriors were armed with the curved swords Krav had seen only a week ago. They were more than capable of slashing through flesh, but they looked too delicate to break what had been inside Greenblatt’s bodyguards. The masterfully crafted poleaxes weren’t only capable of hacking and slashing, they could also break bone and pulverize metal with enough strength behind them. They squared off against each other like chess pieces waiting to be moved.

  The blonde gate guard spat on the sand in front of Greenblatt, but before the glob of saliva could reach it, one poleaxe turned downwards at lightning speed and caught it. The Gate guards eyes widened. “Your men are well trained, and you look familiar,” he said, pointing to Mac. The girl waved enthusiastically. “Are you with the warlord Jackmaw Yapyap?”

  “Yes!” Mac said.

  “Fuck no!” Krav said.

  Greenblatt pulled the goggles and stared at the guardian with tightened black eyes. “I am Albert Ibram Ao Dominus-Greenblatt, warlord of the Black Thumb clan. You will allow me into my own city.”

  At the mention of the name, the two warriors dropped their guarded stances and relaxed. They ignored any orders from the gate guardian with stony faces and stared at the warlord like he was their god made manifest. Without protest, Greenblatt led them all through the gates.

  Kiva Noon was a tinker’s heaven on earth. Most stalls were machine shops covered in screws, plating, and oil. Bellows heated forges full of fiery slag where metallurgists worked with soot covered faces and scorched hands. Everywhere they looked, Mac and Krav found evidence of the industry Kiva Noon was known for. A stall that jingled with prosthetics swinging in the wind like chimes. An advertiser barking about a fresh stock of glowing eyes. A tent whose flapping entrance revealed a poor soul mid surgery.

  Large huts that sheltered entire generations of Black Thumb clan members were erected from scrap and made to be as tall as the pointed walls that surrounded the city. Children crawled around them like troglodytes, eyeing the strangers with curious faces. The elders in charge of them stared as well, their bodies kept alive by unholy prosthetics hidden beneath fraying fabrics. It was the elders that made Krav the most uncomfortable. Almost nothing about them was human any longer.

  Greenblatt led them to a tavern. It was one of the only wooden structures in the whole town, but it was lit with the miracle machinery the Black Thumb clan created. A glowing sign hurt Krav’s eyes as he tried to read it. He expected a pun, something like “The Oiling Hole” or “Wired”, but it was a simple name: Patty’s Place. The warlord tossed Krav a bag of coin.

  “We found this on you. Why not get yourself and Mac a drink? I recommend a green shot; they named it after me.”

  “Where the heck are you going?” Mac asked. She was trying to take the bag from Krav, but he kicked her in one shin, and she backed off.

  “I have to meet someone.”

  “I’m not going in there without you. What if they try to turn me into one of your fucked up robots?” Krav said.

  “Then hit them as hard as you like.”

  “Yeah... I can do that.”

  “Let’s get a drink!” Mac said. She passed through the batwing doors of the tavern and disappeared into a crowd of drunks.

  Krav watched Greenblatt as he tied the pack beast to a post and secured his trunk of rusty toys. He wandered through the market towards an enormous tent in the center of town, his guards trailing him. Krav considered following him, then decided that a drink sounded nice. He forgot about the warlord and went after Mac.

  Wood creaked beneath his boots, but he couldn’t hear it over the loud chatter all around him. He caught a few eyes staring over their drinks, but they weren’t looking at the boy, they were locked tightly on the skull tied to his hip. Krav squeezed up against the bar, stuck between Mac and a large man without any augments. One of them stank like an animal, and he couldn’t tell which one it was.

  “Two green shots!” Mac yelled at the bartender. He was all the way across the bar, helping another customer. He waved, acknowledging them, but Mac was impatient. “I said, two green shots!”

  “I heard you the first time, ma’am. I’ll be right with you.”

  “What do you think a green shot is?” Krav asked her. He was looking over the bottles on the shelf behind the bar. Some were full of dark liquors and covered in dust, others were almost empty. He caught one with a green liquid inside and a label he couldn’t read. He pointed up towards it. “Is it that stuff?”

  “A green shot? How old are you, kid?” said the man beside Krav. His face was red with drunkenness, and he swayed as he tried to focus on the boy. He was a behemoth, his thickly muscled arms crossed over his large gut. A strange pendant swung around his neck and clapped against his leather vest. It looked like a horned skull made of gold.

  “Old enough. You know what it is?”

  The stranger laughed, his breath reeking. “Of course I know what it is! It’s like… uh..." he paused and strained to think of the name. Then he snapped his fingers. "It’s alcohol.”

  “Fermented plant juices! I would bet it's made of cactus, judging by the color,” Mac said. She was leaning over the bar and reaching for the green bottle. “One sec, if I can read the label I’ll tell you.”

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  “I wouldn’t do that,” the stranger said. “The barback here can be a real dick.”

  “We’re with the warlord, it’s cool.”

  “Warlord?” The stranger scratched his beard and leaned back, almost falling from his stool.

  The bartender came running over just as Mac had snatched the bottle. “Alright! Alright! Two green shots, coming up.”

  To Krav, the drinks tasted like foul piss. Fermentation was a terrible process if it turned something as tasty as a cactus into the thin liquid he had just swallowed. It swam down his throat, burning all the way down. When it touched his empty stomach, a well of acid and bile stirred and threatened to hoist the liquid out like the refutation of an unwanted guest. Krav put a fist over his mouth to keep it down, swallowed what had already worked its way back up, then sighed as he sank back into his stool. “That was awful.”

  “More!” demanded Mac. She clapped the bottom of her cracked shot glass on the bar. The other patrons were beginning to stare at her now rather than the skull. The bartender hadn’t been far, but he was pouring a drink and trying to ignore her. Every time her glass struck the wood, he would wince like he was the one who was struck, and more drunks looked up from their own drinks.

  Krav put his glass back on the bar and pushed it away. He couldn’t stand to even smell another whiff of the substance. He would rather be smoking mock root or downer. Kiva Noon could keep its green shots.

  Just as he had decided that he couldn’t bare any more booze, the drink began to take effect. He watched Mac’s glass pound up and down, the outline of it lagging behind the rest of it. At one moment, he could have sworn she had three arms and five glasses as he watched them rise and fall out of sequence. He shut one eye to focus on what he was seeing, and only then did the number of appendages and shot glasses return to normal. His arms felt light, and he couldn’t feel his legs as they kicked back and forth beneath the stool. Maybe he could handle one more. Just to see what would happen.

  “Bartender!” Krav shouted.

  “Bartender!” Mac sang

  The stranger leaned close to Krav, and now he was sure it was him that smelled like an unwashed animal. The boy nudged him away with his elbow, convinced the drinks had been too much for the stinking giant. Krav was a little jealous, he wanted to be on that level. But the stranger’s red face was scrunched into a confused look, as if he had just been reminded of some pertinent mission he had long forgotten. He grabbed Krav’s robes and bunched them up behind his neck.

  “Hey!” Krav yelled. His hands flew to the back of his neck and wrenched at the stranger’s fingers. As the stranger lifted him from the stool, the collar of his robes began to choke him like a frayed noose.

  “You said you know the warlord?” The stranger shook him when he didn’t answer with anything beyond gagging. Krav tried to kick at the stranger’s chest and face, but he swatted him away with every attempt, stumbling as he did so. “You expect me to believe you know Sinestra Mode?”

  “Who the hell is Sinestra Mode?” Krav tried to say. It came out in the croaking, ragged voice of a gasping frog. The room was beginning to spin, and the bile was stirring again.

  “You said you know the warlord!”

  “I know Greenblatt, scab head!”

  The rest of the bar had crawled from their drinks on skittering mechanical legs and thumping boots. All around him, Krav could hear the squeal of chairs as they scraped across the dusty floor. They all blended together, and in the haze of alcohol, he couldn’t tell how many there truly were. All he could see was that they were approaching at the mention of the warlord. Maybe they were with this erratic brute.

  It came out of nowhere. The red-faced stranger pulled Karv close and inspected him like a dog sniffing a corpse. The patrons were closing in, the stranger was too close for comfort, and Mac had stopped screaming for the bartender. Instead, she had grabbed the dusty brown bottle and smacked the stranger in the back of the head with a loud ping. His face flew forward, and he and Krav collided against each other’s forehead, sending blinding pain into either combatant. The boy kicked the stranger in one knee. He fell and dragged the boy down with him to the splintered floor.

  The stranger’s hands wrapped around Krav’s neck as he mounted the boy. Mac wound up the bottle and swung downward, smashing it over the back of his head. He faltered, but only for a moment. Soon, he was back to leaning into Krav’s throat. Blood and booze dripped onto the boy’s face, and he felt like he was trying to suck air through a kinked straw.

  The patrons joined the fight now. One with needle-like fingers jammed his hand into the stranger’s chest, managing to pierce his skin, but getting caught on his ribs. The stranger threw an elbow back and shattered the patron’s metal arm, slashing his own skin open as he did so. The backwards blow doubled as a windup, and he sent his fist back down into Krav’s face, splitting his brow.

  Mac slashed downwards with the broken neck of the bottle, but the stranger caught it and stripped it from her hands. It looked like he might try to jam it into Krav for a moment, but then he flung it into one of the charging patrons. It stabbed into his shoulder, and he went down screaming and gripping his wound.

  The new cut across Krav’s eyebrow was pouring blood over one eye and into his hair. Throughout the chaos, the stranger had been forced to loosen his grip as he combatted the entire bar. Eventually, Krav had gotten his fingers under those belonging to the stranger, and he was able to lift his hand enough to push it over his chin and into his jaws. He bit down until the blood gushed like a backed-up hose.

  Soon, the stranger was pulling up and trying to wrench his hand free of Krav’s bite. The boy bit hard enough to lock onto the bone. He could feel the hand in his mouth crack and pop against his teeth. The stranger was pulling away with so much force the boy was being lifted off of the ground. Krav found his footing and shoved the stranger. He stumbled backwards, tucking his bleeding hand into his shoulder as he continued to fight off the rest of the bar.

  Mac grabbed Krav by his wrist and tried to find a way out of the brawl. Metal arms built like rugged pistons were pummeling into the stranger, and he took them in stride, delivering his own blows in return. Soon, it was four augmented men pushing him into a corner and trading punches with him. Mac and Krav dove over the bar and crawled amongst the broken glass.

  The girl took the lead, wading through the booze slaked floor. throughout the whole bar bottles were crashing, drinks were flying, and Patty’s Place groaned beneath the brawl. They were making their way toward the cowering bartender at the far end of the counter, and still, the stranger was fighting off the entirety of the tavern. A robed patron flew ahead of Mac and Krav, slamming into the glass shelves that held up the assortment of multicolored bottles and sending them crashing to the floor like unlit Molotov cocktails. They exploded all around the two.

  “All this because you couldn’t wait for seconds!” Krav said. He was bunching up the ends of his garments around his hands to keep them safe as he brushed broken glass from his path.

  The girl continued on, a million microscopic cuts forming in her palms. “Me? You picked a fight with the drunkest guy here!”

  “He picked a fight with me!”

  Mac peeked above the bar and ducked back down just in time to avoid a brawer as they crashed against the bar with a sickening crack. The stranger with the golden skull pendent was holding him down and beating his goggles into his eyes. An arm made of coiling metals wrapped him by the breast and heaved him into a suplex. Mac was more cautious this time as she raised her gaze over the bar. Krav followed.

  The stranger looked like he had been in the center of an explosion just moments ago. He was collapsed on the floor like a starfish, surrounded by a group of locals who were able to put a stop to him. A mixture of blood and oil slicked his skin, and every appendage was sliced or bruised. Perforated skin dotted him in random intervals. Sliced muscle exposed a layer of yellow-white fat. Still, he sucked in a lungful of air and laughed.

  Krav shook Mac and pointed towards the batwing doors. If they were quick, they could escape. The girl had other plans. She dug amongst the wreckage, reading labels and taking the bottles of drinks that she liked.

  “We’re dead if we don’t get out of here, scab head!”

  “They’re distracted. Besides, that guy won’t do anything about it.” She pointed at the bartender. As soon as Krav looked at him, he cowered. Krav shrugged and helped her stuff the bag.

  One of the locals approached the stranger and stood over him. The man on the floor was still howling with laughter. The augmented patron kicked him with one boot, and the stranger turned his head to vomit an evening’s worth of drinks that he had consumed in the last hour.

  “Don’t do that,” grumbled the stranger. He smiled with teeth drenched in bile and saliva. “I think I went over my limit.”

  “We’ve had our eye on you all day. What do you need with the warlord?” growled the local. The way his body moved beneath the robes indicated he was heavily augmented, perhaps even no longer arranged in the shape of a human. He hunched over the stranger.

  “I came here to kill that bitch.”

  Patty’s Place filled with mocking laughter. Machine parts growled in the chorus, mixing into a cacophony of delighted engines. Krav and Mac had filled her satchel and were creeping past one side of the bar. The locals were pulling the stranger to his feet and getting ready to continue their questioning. It was the perfect chance to get away, and they took it. Like the world's worst ninjas, they crouched from table to table, knocking aside more glass and even a chair at one point. As fate would have it, none of the locals bothered to turn their attention to them. They were all locked in an intense scrutiny of the would-be assassin. With the batwing doors in sight, Krav grabbed Mac by the wrist and made a break for the scorching heat outside.

  They had just pushed past the doors when they were stopped by the sight of a pointed spear aimed right for Krav’s throat. The commotion had drawn in the lobotomized warriors that guarded the town. A dozen of them stood at the ready, each with their spears tilted towards the bar. Among them, a woman with two red glass eyes stood imperious and authoritative. She looked past Krav and Mac, right at the stranger inside. Without taking her eyes off of him, she ordered her army of enslaved cyborgs. “Take all of the foreigners to the cells. Sinestra will be pleased to know her enemies have volunteered themselves into servitude so willingly.”

  Greenblatt dismissed his entourage and walked alone through the dusty roads of Kiva Noon for the first time in a decade. He couldn’t remember what it was like to be on his own. Without the aid of either bodyguard, he felt naked and exposed. But here, in his city, it was akin to being naked with a lover. He felt free for the first time in a long time. He feared no assassin, no crazed wasteland wanderer, no raider. A faceless man in a sea of featureless beings, he found himself pretending he was nobody special. Hands filled his pockets. His back straightened. He even whistled an old tune into his leather mask.

  He had found what he was looking for almost immediately. A large metal building, heavily guarded by the cold stares of lobotomites. A smaller addition to the building was connected to one side as if it had been tacked on as an afterthought. He smiled beneath the mask as he made his way for it. As he came close one of the palace guards turned to meet him. To his surprise, it spoke. His creations weren’t even capable of that.

  “Halt,” it said. The voice was monotone and lacked any conviction. If it were a normal man, Greenblatt would have pushed past him without issue. He knew better than to try that with this creature. If it could talk, there was no telling what else it could do.

  “I am the warlord Albert Ibram Ao Dominus-Greenblatt. You will grant me access to that which is mine.”

  The lobotomized thing stared for a moment. A series of clicks could be heard behind its eyes as they shifted like conflicting gears. It couldn’t blink, but the scars where its eyelids had been fluttered as if it were trying. “Claim registered. Identity class: Warlord. Access: Denied. Error. Facial recognition failed. Requesting reanalysis.”

  Greenblatt pulled his leather mask down and revealed the tribal tattoos. To the layman, they were simple curves and swirls that caressed his hairless jaw. To the lobotomites of Kiva Noon, they were a master code. The feature was read by the palace guard, and a series of clicks again sounded behind its eyes.

  “Facial recognition passed. Identity class: Warlord. Subclass: Iron Baron. Access: Granted. Compliance.”

  The guard shifted to one side and allowed Greenblatt to pass. At the polished chrome double doors to the small shack connected to the palace, two other lobotomites grabbed at the handle of either of side. They weren’t armed like the rest. Instead, they were hunched, lowly things. Their heads were covered with sack hoods that hid the machinations beneath. They operated on some sort of approval network. When the guards had cleared the palace guests, they acted as automated gate operators. Greenblatt approached, and the two sack-headed cyborgs pulled aside the screeching doors in perfect unison. They waited patiently for the warlord to enter before closing the door behind him.

  He found himself in the familiar workshop that he had once called home. A decade of travel was a long time to leave such a sanctum to rot, and it was unrealistic to believe that it would have been left to stagnate in wait of his return. Evidence of new tenants littered the place: unfamiliar instruments, half finished projects, and research notes that weren't in his handwriting. Still, it was left in dust and decay, as if it had been reinhabited at one point only to be abandoned all over again. Greenblatt went to each of the new additions to his workshop and inspected them with the eyes of a man who finds his home full of squatters.

  The throne room was through a doorway at the far end of the workshop. He took a deep breath before turning the knob and stepping through it. Even then, he was afraid to look up from the cold stone floor. It was enough that they had defiled his workshop. If they had changed much of his palace, he feared that it would be nothing more than an alien construct that he knew long ago. He stepped in, tilted his head to one side, and was surprised to see that the place was immaculately preserved.

  Where the workshop had been reinhabited, the palace itself was left eerily similar to the way he left it so many years ago. The stone floor gleamed with polish. Hanging braziers bathed the halls with their warm light. Portraits drawn with greasepaint and charcoal stared down at him like fragments of time locked to the wall. Pillars of bronze mirrored him as he passed them, and he made his way to the throne. It was bathed in an arc of sun that blasted in from a skylight, and to his dismay, it remained empty. It meant her condition hadn’t gotten any better. He hadn’t expected it to, but after ten years he wondered if she was still alive to greet him.

  Behind the throne was a circular room that once held his bed. As he rounded the empty throne, he wasn’t surprised to find they had removed the wooden bedframe and finely woven blankets. His jaw did drop when he saw what they had put in its place. A large sarcophagus lay in the center of the chamber. Tubes and wires ran out from it in all directions like snakes and worms in an incredible array of shapes and sizes. A machine beeped in time with his heartbeat, and as he approached the coffin, he could read the engravings that covered it.

  “Her majesty, Sinestra Mode. Savior of Kiva Noon. Holy mother of the machine. May the weakness of her flesh be overcome by the strength of iron and steel. May she reign for an eternity.”

  Greenblatt touched the sarcophagus. It was cold, but it hummed with the low rumble of an engine. He worked up the courage to find the latch and undo it. It had been vacuum sealed and took all of his strength to break the rubber mold that sealed it shut and kept the inside airtight. As the lid rolled back, a hiss of air sounded, and misty steam wafted outwards. It smelled like a corpse left to rot in a bog, and Greenblatt had to step away momentarily, pressing the leather mask into his mouth to keep the foul stench out.

  When he returned to the coffin, his heart dropped. A pale blue light illuminated half a corpse. Her gaunt form was naked and defiled. The front of her torso had been carved away, her ribs sawed down, and yellow skin pulled aside. The various tubes fed into her, replacing every vital organ she had once had. Her appendages were stumps chopped off at the elbow and knees, save for her right arm that still possessed a few bony fingers. A sack in her chest rose and fell rhythmically. He caught a glimpse of her face and recoiled, only able to return to her after he steadied himself. Her hair had thinned to the point where it was a sparse forest of vanishing strands of white. Her cheeks were sunken into her teeth. Dull red monocles were screwed into either eye socket. A tube fed into one nostril, and another hung from her split lips.

  Greenblatt reached into the coffin and took her hand. He stroked it gingerly as tears welled behind his goggles. He knew he would be too late, but he would have preferred they just let her die. This was... this was far too much.

  “Sinestra?” he said, his voice no more than a timid child’s whisper.

  The red lenses flared to life. The sack in her chest rose higher, as if she was stretching into the waking world from a deep sleep. Her shoulders clicked as she moved them for the first time since he perhaps left. Her neck was bent like a broken heron’s, and the smallest hint of a smile touched her lips. “I’ve had this dream before. Every night since you’ve left.” Her voice was a croaking wine of shredded vocal cords aided by machinery. “Albert, my love. Have you really returned?”