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Description
Leon holds perfectly still as the Peacekeeper at the door swipes his ID and scans his retina. The other man hands the card back to him with a faintly bored stare and waves him through. Score one for Todorov and Lazuli, he thinks, and enters IIB Headquarters with his back straight and his head held high.

He resists the urge to tug at his collar as he walks into the open lobby. Ill-fitting as it feels, the Peacekeeper uniform is his armor here, his first line of defense against the dozens of other Peacekeepers milling around him. Here he’s just another face, albeit one altered enough to allay any suspicions about his being a wanted fugitive. Here he’s safe, as long as he doesn’t draw any attention to himself.

Easier said than done.

He thought the rage in him had faded with time. Not extinguished—never extinguished—but quieted, however little. Enough to hide, enough to seal away behind a mask, enough to live, to let the smell of charred metal and scorched landing gear fade. Enough to forget the day he went up in a rebel jet and came down to find the world had been wiped blank.

He was wrong. Those years haven’t so much quieted the flame as they have compressed it, and now, surrounded by the enemy, it all comes roaring back to him.

He’s never had a good poker face. He never could hide anything from his parents when he and Isolde quarreled as children. Even Talgo had learned to read him like an open book before he’d learned to walk. For years, his smile and his words are the only things that have protected him, and there are no smiling Peacekeepers here, and certainly no chatty ones. So he walks, and keeps his head down, and moves deeper into the colorless halls. He’s here to do a job and do it right, and he may not have the tracking instinct of Smith or Duval, but he’ll have the will to see it through.

Bellasseau is in a meeting with a number of senior Peacekeepers for another ten minutes, or so Leon’s information tells him. Once that meeting adjourns, he will stop by his office to prep for another with Kane, who will be visiting Headquarters in half an hour. Kane, of course, will be dead by then, if everything goes right. The only man who will be meeting him in the conference room is making his way to the first meeting room now, unquiet rage burning under the Peacekeeper’s badge on his chest.

Tail him when he gets out of the first meeting, Ergo had said. Make sure he doesn’t slip away. We’re counting on you.

He’d resisted the urge to laugh then, dry and bitter. Do you know what’s happening to the last person who counted on me, he’d wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out.

Rhona will be all right. She has to be. Now it’s all he can do to push that last remnant of doubt from his mind. There’s no room for hesitation here.

And then Bellasseau steps out of a doorway, and Leon’s carefully-built calm crumbles.

His fingers twitch against the steel of his pistol. For a moment he can’t remember why it’s so godsdamned important he wait to kill the man. He has to remind himself forcibly of the three other Peacekeepers currently in the hall, of the other five officers exiting the same room Bellasseau was in. He wouldn’t be able to get a shot off before they take him out.

Instead he keeps his head down, and when Bellasseau starts off down the hall, he does, too.

Focus, he tells himself. Keep your mind on what’s at hand. It’s like driving, he thinks, or piloting. You only remember the cars that cut you off and the planes that try to shoot you down. But walk like you belong, stay out of the way, and nobody gives you a second glance. Around him the labyrinthine corridors stretch in all directions, busy with Peacekeepers, but he follows his target unerringly, trusting to memory and instinct.

Bellasseau doesn’t head for his office. Not yet. He makes a detour first, down another hallway, leans into an open doorway. Leon steps behind a water cooler and listens.

“Any sign of Duval yet?”

“No, sir,” says someone from inside. “It’s not like him to be late.”

Leon leans in a little closer. Duval mentioned he was Bellasseau’s protégé; if Bellasseau suspects anything, he could be in for it. But Bellasseau only laughs briefly, indulgently, makes a dismissive gesture with one hand. “He told me he was going to a party last night. Probably drank more than he should have. Well, let me know when he turns up.”

“Yessir,” comes the prompt response, and Bellasseau straightens, makes as if to start walking again, and then pauses, as if he hears something.

Leon doesn’t freeze, because sometimes that’s as bad as running. But he does lean down and get himself a drink from the water cooler, and by the time he looks up, Bellasseau’s started walking again.

It’s onward through the halls to another nondescript office—Bellasseau seems curiously reluctant to head back to his own—where he makes a brief inquiry about the status of the Tributes, and this time Leon leans forward just a little from behind his hiding spot, hungry despite himself for any news from the arena.

Carsten Welshrose is dead, killed by Garrett Lykke, and Leon sees his own surprise mirrored on Bellasseau’s face. Ame Gater from Five took out both tributes from Eight with a particularly clever party trick, throwing the bookies into an uproar the likes of which haven’t been seen in years. And Rhona Velaro—

Rhona Velaro is alive, and the Rottweiler is dead.

He doesn’t have time to process this information. Bellasseau suddenly glances down the hall, his expression sharp, and Leon stops breathing for an instant before the other man shrugs and looks away. Is he just biding his time? Does he know he’s being trailed? It’s impossible to tell—Bellasseau’s expression gives nothing away as he thanks his underling and turns to leave.

Leon exhales, gathers his wits about him, and starts to walk again. See? Worried over nothing. Your Tribute is alive and well, and she’ll stay that way until the rescue team arrives.

The sound of increased chatter reaches his ears as they round a corner, and the corridor suddenly opens into a bustling mess hall, which Bellasseau enters without further ado. Here it is harder to keep an eye on him; the man is short, easily lost in a crowd. Leon pushes carefully through the packed uniforms, searching for his target, and finally spots him speaking to a man seated at a table. It’s too far away to hear them from here, and Leon can’t get closer without arousing more suspicion than he already has.

Instead he keeps Bellasseau in the corner of his eye and surveys the mess hall itself. There are televisions up all over the room, all broadcasting live feeds of the arena. It seems like half the Peacekeepers in the city are crowded in here, their eyes all glued to the screens.

This is how he gets to watch, helplessly, as Rhona, her face streaked with dirt and pale with pain, draws a bright line of red across the throat of Judith Qian’s daughter. And then, abruptly, before he can process this new information, the feed cuts out, and there is only Maurice Rodman’s replacement, teeth shining white in a too-wide smile.

“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. Please remain calm—”

Nobody listens. Everyone knows immediately that something has gone wrong. Half the Peacekeepers are crowded at the doors, trying to fight their way out, pulling on holsters and coats and boots as if they plan to run to the arena themselves. The other half are shouting at each other, as if shouting will magically produce the person responsible for all of this.

There’s a crackle in his ear and then Ergo’s voice is there. It takes him a moment to recognize it, because there’s a thread of panic in it that he has never heard before, and it makes his blood run cold.

“Requesting assistance in the arena,” she says. “Is anyone there?” Someone must respond in the affirmative, because she continues immediately: “Cameras are down and they are not responding to our hailing. We have lost contact with the rescuers. I repeat, we have lost contact with the rescuers.”

A sick feeling settles in Leon’s stomach. No. The rescuers made it. They had to have made it—he saw—

“Negative,” she says in response to someone’s question. “Rescuing the children is a primary objective, we cannot afford to—” and she isn’t speaking loudly enough, why isn’t she speaking loudly enough to be heard over the Peacekeepers around him, doesn’t she know where he is?

He turns wildly, looking for a quiet corner, and suddenly Bellasseau is there in front of him.

And now Leon knows that the other man wasn’t aware he was being trailed. He couldn’t have, because you can’t fake an expression of sudden recognition, or the brief moment of near-ludicrous surprise that passes across his face as he sees through Leon’s disguise.

Bellasseau recovers fast. Men like him are trained to. The expression on his face resolves itself into stony clarity in under a second. But he doesn’t move.

“I presume,” he says, and it is astonishing how well his voice carries, “that you must have stolen into the lion’s den for a reason.”

In all the chaos, nobody takes notice of two men staring at one another: one with his hand on his pistol, one with his arms crossed in front of him. Not for now. But a single gunshot, Leon thinks numbly, would turn that tide against him. Every ear in the mess hall is well attuned to that sound.

In his ear, Ergo is shouting Is anyone there, I will send coordinates to the first operative who can clear a jet to the arena, and he tightens his jaw and he does not listen. He could shoot Bellasseau right here, right now. He wouldn’t make it out alive, but he could do it.

“I thought I’d see how you were doing,” Leon says, and lets that brazen smile flicker into life. “Say hello, wish you good luck now we’re down to the final four.”

Bellasseau’s expression doesn’t change. “What I am saying is this: Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you killed and be done with it.”

“Because I’ll do the same to you,” says Leon.

Bellasseau almost smiles. “I see,” he says. “Isn’t this a turn-up for the books. Well, what is this supposed to be—an execution or an assassination?”

“Both,” says Leon, and his knuckles whiten around the grip of his gun, but he doesn’t draw it out of its holster. Not yet. “Blood for blood.”

(“I have received confirmation of failure from Todorov,” says Ergo. “He is on his way back to the rendezvous point. Lazuli is staying behind to fight the counterhack—”)

Lazuli won’t have much time, Leon thinks. Not with the kid as reckless as he is. Minutes to keep the shield open. Minutes before the Capitol’s automatic defenses kick in. It would take a very, very good pilot to get a plane there in time. If he had a plane.

No.

“Don’t be stupid. You won’t make it out alive,” says Bellasseau. “Are you that eager to die?”

“I won’t make it out alive even if I don’t shoot you,” says Leon, and this, at least—this is rage, ancient and deep and familiar. He clings to it like a drowning man. “I may as well make it worth my while.”

“This is true,” says Bellasseau easily. “So why are you hesitating?”

Leon grins, feels the edges of it pull at his mouth in a way that is almost foreign to him. “Why are you?”

Perhaps his years in the Capitol have softened him. Perhaps he is unused to the interrogation being turned on him for a change. Perhaps he is simply not expecting the question. Whatever the reason, Bellasseau looks very nearly surprised before he shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts and dismiss the question.

“You’re in concert with the rebel faction after all.” Leon opens his mouth, but Bellasseau forges on: “Don’t bother. I saw them cut the feed. There’s a team breaking into the arena.”

Leon doesn’t respond. Bellasseau almost laughs.

“Of course there is,” he says. “They won’t have made it far. If the shield doesn’t kick in, the mutts will.”

(“General distress call to all operatives,” flares the voice in his ear. “We have just lost contact with our second rescue team. There appear to be unmanned drones stationed outside the arena. Any available operatives—”)

What did you see in the girl, Saclay?

Leon pulls the gun from its holster.

“I would have thought you’d be first in line for the rescue team,” says Bellasseau.

“I have my priorities,” Leon says, and tries to ignore the hollowness of his voice. He makes up for it the only way he can: another barb. “As did you, as I recall.”

Bellasseau is silent. If Leon didn’t know better, he would swear he can see a hint of doubt on the other man’s features.

“How does it feel?” says Leon, and there it is again, the constrained simmering rage that has not faded, has never faded, but can be packed into simple words like little boxes, like memories. “How does it feel to have all that blood on your hands? Are you proud?”

“It was necessary,” says Bellasseau, suddenly, sharply, as if he’s trying to convince himself.

And suddenly Leon knows the source of his doubt, knows why all those little needles about failing his Tribute has made him flinch. It ought to have been clear to him from the start. It isn’t because he regrets Garrett Lykke’s death.

It’s because he regrets all of their deaths.

It’s too little, too late, Leon thinks, because he has to think it. Regret doesn’t wash away blood.

Bellasseau says, “It was necessary, it will not happen again—”

“Again?” says Leon. “Again? It’s already happened once. That’s all that needs to happen.”

And then he stops short, because the next words about to leave his mouth are that is the nature of history.

(“There are mutts in the arena—we can confirm the first rescue team has failed—if you are available—all available operatives—”)

Kingdoms long divided will unite, kingdoms long united will divide. That is the nature of history. Old words, the start and end to so many old tales.

The world runs in circles, and the circles are patterns, and patterns will always repeat themselves. Tales about men who would not abandon their men to die, warriors who fought when it was stupid to fight, children who lived, children who died—

Tell me a story.

Slowly, deliberately, he removes his hand from the gun and flicks on his earpiece. “Send me the coordinates,” he says, his eyes never leaving Bellasseau’s. “I’m free.”

“Chen?” says Ergo. “Is your mission complete?”

“No,” he says, and it costs him more effort than it should to say it. In his head, old ghosts are howling. “Mission’s a scrub. Send me the coordinates.”

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen this many expressions on Bellasseau’s face before. Confusion, shock, and then—slowly—dawning understanding.

“Tell me,” Leon says, so softly Bellasseau has to lean in to hear him, “where I can get a plane.”

Description
Leon holds perfectly still as the Peacekeeper at the door swipes his ID and scans his retina. The other man hands the card back to him with a faintly bored stare and waves him through. Score one for Todorov and Lazuli, he thinks, and enters IIB Headquarters with his back straight and his head held high.

He resists the urge to tug at his collar as he walks into the open lobby. Ill-fitting as it feels, the Peacekeeper uniform is his armor here, his first line of defense against the dozens of other Peacekeepers milling around him. Here he’s just another face, albeit one altered enough to allay any suspicions about his being a wanted fugitive. Here he’s safe, as long as he doesn’t draw any attention to himself.

Easier said than done.

He thought the rage in him had faded with time. Not extinguished—never extinguished—but quieted, however little. Enough to hide, enough to seal away behind a mask, enough to live, to let the smell of charred metal and scorched landing gear fade. Enough to forget the day he went up in a rebel jet and came down to find the world had been wiped blank.

He was wrong. Those years haven’t so much quieted the flame as they have compressed it, and now, surrounded by the enemy, it all comes roaring back to him.

He’s never had a good poker face. He never could hide anything from his parents when he and Isolde quarreled as children. Even Talgo had learned to read him like an open book before he’d learned to walk. For years, his smile and his words are the only things that have protected him, and there are no smiling Peacekeepers here, and certainly no chatty ones. So he walks, and keeps his head down, and moves deeper into the colorless halls. He’s here to do a job and do it right, and he may not have the tracking instinct of Smith or Duval, but he’ll have the will to see it through.

Bellasseau is in a meeting with a number of senior Peacekeepers for another ten minutes, or so Leon’s information tells him. Once that meeting adjourns, he will stop by his office to prep for another with Kane, who will be visiting Headquarters in half an hour. Kane, of course, will be dead by then, if everything goes right. The only man who will be meeting him in the conference room is making his way to the first meeting room now, unquiet rage burning under the Peacekeeper’s badge on his chest.

Tail him when he gets out of the first meeting, Ergo had said. Make sure he doesn’t slip away. We’re counting on you.

He’d resisted the urge to laugh then, dry and bitter. Do you know what’s happening to the last person who counted on me, he’d wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out.

Rhona will be all right. She has to be. Now it’s all he can do to push that last remnant of doubt from his mind. There’s no room for hesitation here.

And then Bellasseau steps out of a doorway, and Leon’s carefully-built calm crumbles.

His fingers twitch against the steel of his pistol. For a moment he can’t remember why it’s so godsdamned important he wait to kill the man. He has to remind himself forcibly of the three other Peacekeepers currently in the hall, of the other five officers exiting the same room Bellasseau was in. He wouldn’t be able to get a shot off before they take him out.

Instead he keeps his head down, and when Bellasseau starts off down the hall, he does, too.

Focus, he tells himself. Keep your mind on what’s at hand. It’s like driving, he thinks, or piloting. You only remember the cars that cut you off and the planes that try to shoot you down. But walk like you belong, stay out of the way, and nobody gives you a second glance. Around him the labyrinthine corridors stretch in all directions, busy with Peacekeepers, but he follows his target unerringly, trusting to memory and instinct.

Bellasseau doesn’t head for his office. Not yet. He makes a detour first, down another hallway, leans into an open doorway. Leon steps behind a water cooler and listens.

“Any sign of Duval yet?”

“No, sir,” says someone from inside. “It’s not like him to be late.”

Leon leans in a little closer. Duval mentioned he was Bellasseau’s protégé; if Bellasseau suspects anything, he could be in for it. But Bellasseau only laughs briefly, indulgently, makes a dismissive gesture with one hand. “He told me he was going to a party last night. Probably drank more than he should have. Well, let me know when he turns up.”

“Yessir,” comes the prompt response, and Bellasseau straightens, makes as if to start walking again, and then pauses, as if he hears something.

Leon doesn’t freeze, because sometimes that’s as bad as running. But he does lean down and get himself a drink from the water cooler, and by the time he looks up, Bellasseau’s started walking again.

It’s onward through the halls to another nondescript office—Bellasseau seems curiously reluctant to head back to his own—where he makes a brief inquiry about the status of the Tributes, and this time Leon leans forward just a little from behind his hiding spot, hungry despite himself for any news from the arena.

Carsten Welshrose is dead, killed by Garrett Lykke, and Leon sees his own surprise mirrored on Bellasseau’s face. Ame Gater from Five took out both tributes from Eight with a particularly clever party trick, throwing the bookies into an uproar the likes of which haven’t been seen in years. And Rhona Velaro—

Rhona Velaro is alive, and the Rottweiler is dead.

He doesn’t have time to process this information. Bellasseau suddenly glances down the hall, his expression sharp, and Leon stops breathing for an instant before the other man shrugs and looks away. Is he just biding his time? Does he know he’s being trailed? It’s impossible to tell—Bellasseau’s expression gives nothing away as he thanks his underling and turns to leave.

Leon exhales, gathers his wits about him, and starts to walk again. See? Worried over nothing. Your Tribute is alive and well, and she’ll stay that way until the rescue team arrives.

The sound of increased chatter reaches his ears as they round a corner, and the corridor suddenly opens into a bustling mess hall, which Bellasseau enters without further ado. Here it is harder to keep an eye on him; the man is short, easily lost in a crowd. Leon pushes carefully through the packed uniforms, searching for his target, and finally spots him speaking to a man seated at a table. It’s too far away to hear them from here, and Leon can’t get closer without arousing more suspicion than he already has.

Instead he keeps Bellasseau in the corner of his eye and surveys the mess hall itself. There are televisions up all over the room, all broadcasting live feeds of the arena. It seems like half the Peacekeepers in the city are crowded in here, their eyes all glued to the screens.

This is how he gets to watch, helplessly, as Rhona, her face streaked with dirt and pale with pain, draws a bright line of red across the throat of Judith Qian’s daughter. And then, abruptly, before he can process this new information, the feed cuts out, and there is only Maurice Rodman’s replacement, teeth shining white in a too-wide smile.

“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. Please remain calm—”

Nobody listens. Everyone knows immediately that something has gone wrong. Half the Peacekeepers are crowded at the doors, trying to fight their way out, pulling on holsters and coats and boots as if they plan to run to the arena themselves. The other half are shouting at each other, as if shouting will magically produce the person responsible for all of this.

There’s a crackle in his ear and then Ergo’s voice is there. It takes him a moment to recognize it, because there’s a thread of panic in it that he has never heard before, and it makes his blood run cold.

“Requesting assistance in the arena,” she says. “Is anyone there?” Someone must respond in the affirmative, because she continues immediately: “Cameras are down and they are not responding to our hailing. We have lost contact with the rescuers. I repeat, we have lost contact with the rescuers.”

A sick feeling settles in Leon’s stomach. No. The rescuers made it. They had to have made it—he saw—

“Negative,” she says in response to someone’s question. “Rescuing the children is a primary objective, we cannot afford to—” and she isn’t speaking loudly enough, why isn’t she speaking loudly enough to be heard over the Peacekeepers around him, doesn’t she know where he is?

He turns wildly, looking for a quiet corner, and suddenly Bellasseau is there in front of him.

And now Leon knows that the other man wasn’t aware he was being trailed. He couldn’t have, because you can’t fake an expression of sudden recognition, or the brief moment of near-ludicrous surprise that passes across his face as he sees through Leon’s disguise.

Bellasseau recovers fast. Men like him are trained to. The expression on his face resolves itself into stony clarity in under a second. But he doesn’t move.

“I presume,” he says, and it is astonishing how well his voice carries, “that you must have stolen into the lion’s den for a reason.”

In all the chaos, nobody takes notice of two men staring at one another: one with his hand on his pistol, one with his arms crossed in front of him. Not for now. But a single gunshot, Leon thinks numbly, would turn that tide against him. Every ear in the mess hall is well attuned to that sound.

In his ear, Ergo is shouting Is anyone there, I will send coordinates to the first operative who can clear a jet to the arena, and he tightens his jaw and he does not listen. He could shoot Bellasseau right here, right now. He wouldn’t make it out alive, but he could do it.

“I thought I’d see how you were doing,” Leon says, and lets that brazen smile flicker into life. “Say hello, wish you good luck now we’re down to the final four.”

Bellasseau’s expression doesn’t change. “What I am saying is this: Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you killed and be done with it.”

“Because I’ll do the same to you,” says Leon.

Bellasseau almost smiles. “I see,” he says. “Isn’t this a turn-up for the books. Well, what is this supposed to be—an execution or an assassination?”

“Both,” says Leon, and his knuckles whiten around the grip of his gun, but he doesn’t draw it out of its holster. Not yet. “Blood for blood.”

(“I have received confirmation of failure from Todorov,” says Ergo. “He is on his way back to the rendezvous point. Lazuli is staying behind to fight the counterhack—”)

Lazuli won’t have much time, Leon thinks. Not with the kid as reckless as he is. Minutes to keep the shield open. Minutes before the Capitol’s automatic defenses kick in. It would take a very, very good pilot to get a plane there in time. If he had a plane.

No.

“Don’t be stupid. You won’t make it out alive,” says Bellasseau. “Are you that eager to die?”

“I won’t make it out alive even if I don’t shoot you,” says Leon, and this, at least—this is rage, ancient and deep and familiar. He clings to it like a drowning man. “I may as well make it worth my while.”

“This is true,” says Bellasseau easily. “So why are you hesitating?”

Leon grins, feels the edges of it pull at his mouth in a way that is almost foreign to him. “Why are you?”

Perhaps his years in the Capitol have softened him. Perhaps he is unused to the interrogation being turned on him for a change. Perhaps he is simply not expecting the question. Whatever the reason, Bellasseau looks very nearly surprised before he shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts and dismiss the question.

“You’re in concert with the rebel faction after all.” Leon opens his mouth, but Bellasseau forges on: “Don’t bother. I saw them cut the feed. There’s a team breaking into the arena.”

Leon doesn’t respond. Bellasseau almost laughs.

“Of course there is,” he says. “They won’t have made it far. If the shield doesn’t kick in, the mutts will.”

(“General distress call to all operatives,” flares the voice in his ear. “We have just lost contact with our second rescue team. There appear to be unmanned drones stationed outside the arena. Any available operatives—”)

What did you see in the girl, Saclay?

Leon pulls the gun from its holster.

“I would have thought you’d be first in line for the rescue team,” says Bellasseau.

“I have my priorities,” Leon says, and tries to ignore the hollowness of his voice. He makes up for it the only way he can: another barb. “As did you, as I recall.”

Bellasseau is silent. If Leon didn’t know better, he would swear he can see a hint of doubt on the other man’s features.

“How does it feel?” says Leon, and there it is again, the constrained simmering rage that has not faded, has never faded, but can be packed into simple words like little boxes, like memories. “How does it feel to have all that blood on your hands? Are you proud?”

“It was necessary,” says Bellasseau, suddenly, sharply, as if he’s trying to convince himself.

And suddenly Leon knows the source of his doubt, knows why all those little needles about failing his Tribute has made him flinch. It ought to have been clear to him from the start. It isn’t because he regrets Garrett Lykke’s death.

It’s because he regrets all of their deaths.

It’s too little, too late, Leon thinks, because he has to think it. Regret doesn’t wash away blood.

Bellasseau says, “It was necessary, it will not happen again—”

“Again?” says Leon. “Again? It’s already happened once. That’s all that needs to happen.”

And then he stops short, because the next words about to leave his mouth are that is the nature of history.

(“There are mutts in the arena—we can confirm the first rescue team has failed—if you are available—all available operatives—”)

Kingdoms long divided will unite, kingdoms long united will divide. That is the nature of history. Old words, the start and end to so many old tales.

The world runs in circles, and the circles are patterns, and patterns will always repeat themselves. Tales about men who would not abandon their men to die, warriors who fought when it was stupid to fight, children who lived, children who died—

Tell me a story.

Slowly, deliberately, he removes his hand from the gun and flicks on his earpiece. “Send me the coordinates,” he says, his eyes never leaving Bellasseau’s. “I’m free.”

“Chen?” says Ergo. “Is your mission complete?”

“No,” he says, and it costs him more effort than it should to say it. In his head, old ghosts are howling. “Mission’s a scrub. Send me the coordinates.”

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen this many expressions on Bellasseau’s face before. Confusion, shock, and then—slowly—dawning understanding.

“Tell me,” Leon says, so softly Bellasseau has to lean in to hear him, “where I can get a plane.”