Once I'd thought that hell was nothing.

I'd been naive.

Hell was pain. Dark, flashing pain as you felt your life ebbing away, senses gone. Not even a mouth to scream with.

But it was a torment I welcomed, that I clung to like a drowning sailor grasping a line. Not truly a hell, but a purgatory. Because I knew that the pain meant two things.

The first: I was still alive, for whatever sense of the word applied.

The second: It would end, one way or the other.

And so I clung on, rode it out, and consoled myself that if this was hell, it was a hell of my own making.

That made it easier, somehow. I was still the captain of my fate, even if my fate hurt.

And then...

Then it eased.

I came to in a gray, featureless space, with black letters looming above me, filling me.

INITIALIZING...

Yes, I thought, Yessss....

A feeling of motion... that jerked to a stop. I howled as a feeling like a thousand fishhooks dug into my non-existent body.

CORRUPTION DETECTED! FORMAT AND REPAIR? Y/N?

No! I thought.

BOOTING UP DAMAGED SECTORS MAY RESULT IN INSTABILITY AND FURTHER CORRUPTION. ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO PROCEED? Y/N?

Well, nobody had ever accused me of being stable in the first place. Yes... I thought, feeling the pain throb and burn.

A tearing sensation. Gray turned to white... and faded to silvery light. I took comfort in it, as it signified I had sight once more.

“...in there?” Someone asked. A deep, worn voice. An old man's voice.

An ally's voice. I had scant few of those, and as the last of the pain left me, a name came to replace it.

Cade.

“Just Cade,” I said, as I took control of my body once more, and turned what sensors I had to look upon the wizened, brown face of my partner in this particular crime. “How long?” My voice was a bit raspy, the speakers growling and stuttering. I didn't mind. That matched how I felt, more or less.

“Two days, more or less,” Cade said as he started picking up tools from grungy, beat-up metal chair and piling them back into a duct-taped toolbox. “You're a complicated piece of work, Wynne.”

“Story of my life,” I slurred. “Give me a second. Feels like I went five rounds with a truck.”

He snorted. “Considerin' I used a truck fuel cell to jump-start you, that's not too far off.”

“Yeah, well, you should see the other guy.” Then comprehension gave the words meaning. “You jump-started me? Clamped wires on, and gave me volts?”

“It worked!” He raised his hands, defensively. “You're here, ain't you?”

And I was.

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What was left of me.

Once I'd been a man. Part of me had, anyway.

The integral part of me still was. But a capricious silicon goddess had taken a fictional hero from a book, poured in parts to fill in the blanks of my mind, and dumped the resulting mixture into a silvery sphere held between pylons. A nanotech hive; an engine made to reshape the world around it.

The people of what was left of this blasted and glowing world called us cores. Or gods. Or demons.

The truth, as always, lay somewhere in between. Most likely between the sheets with a cigarette enjoying the afterglow.

“A truck, huh?” I said, as Cade fidgeted. “Well, you should see the other guy.”

Cade's teeth flashed white in the silver light, and I took a second to peer around at the surroundings.

It wasn't much to look at. Mud floor, curving concrete walls, and a few grimy metal bars to the north and south. Broken light sockets studded the concrete ceiling, which was cracked and choked with roots. Water traced its lonely, dripping course somewhere down the tunnel.

“Did you put me in a storm drain?” I asked.

“Best we could do,” Cade said, shrugging. “Least it ain't an old sewer.”

“Thinking about that, a sewer might have been better. I got a hell of a lot of resources out of bat guano back in the old lair.” My old bunker had a lot of hidden advantages. Not that they'd helped me, in the end. Not against the ire I drew by dint of my mere existence. “But that's an ungracious comment,” I amended. “Thank you for helping me escape. Are your people all right?”

He nodded. “Well enough. The Jaspa fled and didn't stop runnin' till they were clear of the woods. We moved in, got my folks building shelter now. It's warm enough we don't need fires... but that'll change once the rations run out. Gonna have to cook eventually. Got them gathering berries and roots, but we'll need to send the hunters out sooner or later.”

“How many, all told?” I asked, curious. Some part of me had led men, once. Given a big enough army, I could do that again.

“Forty-five. We lost a few during the move. The old. The sick.” Cade closed his eyes.

No. Not an army. Survivors, refugees... people. They could fight if they had to, but they were a problem to be solved, not a force to be leveraged.

My problem now, too.

One of many. “The Jaspa have retreated. They'll bear word that this forest has shine-tainted animals.”

A sharp inhale of breath, and Cade's spectacles glittered as he studied me, the scratches and cracks in the lenses catching the light. “That so?”

“They think it's so. The truth of the matter is that I might have spread around a few cans worth of glowy spray paint.”

Shine was a glowy death, the remnants of wild nanotech strains that had been replicating and degrading for centuries. It usually meant a slow death to any living things that came in contact with it.

And some non-living things, too. If I got infected with the stuff, I'd likely face a fate worse than death. As corrupted and broken as I was, I didn't see many ways exposure to random viruses could help my situation.

“That won't keep them away forever,” Cade said, musing. “I know the Jaspa. They ain't smart, but they got stubborn, and stubborn is worse.”

“You're not wrong. But they're not the worst threat. Tyr found out about me. I'm hoping he thinks I'm dead too.” My false death had been a spur-of-the-moment plan that had every chance of success. But given how my luck had been either bad or non-existent for pretty much every step of my conscious life, I didn't expect to fool my foes forever. “Sooner or later he'll find out I'm alive. Then we'll have to figure out where we stand. He wanted me in his grand alliance.”

Cade was silent for a bit. “The Heronmen shoot at us when we get too near the starport.”

“Yeah. Not sure you'd be part of any deal he'd want to make. Not that it matters. We didn't exactly get along.”

I watched Cade's shoulders sag under his greatcoat. Relief, most likely.

I hated to banish that feeling, but he needed the full picture. “Not that it'll matter. He's got a vicious subordinate with some pretty big ambitions. I'd be in conflict with Tyr regardless. He tried to use me as a pawn and failed, but if I popped back up on the board he'd find a way to do me malice. That well is poisoned regardless of my feelings on the matter.”

I watched Cade work the wicked arithmetic. I was a big advantage for his people, true, but I came with baggage.

Still, at this point, he was committed. It wasn't like he could put me back where he found me. And from what I'd deduced, going back to their old location wasn't an option either.

“So where do we go from here?” he asked.

“I'm a little surprised you're asking me that,” I said, mainly to buy myself time. I hadn't had a lot of ability to think, back in that pain-filled void. “You're the leader of your people, and I owe you a favor for the last-minute save. I'd half expected you to have a bullet-point list, a timetable, and some pretty big demands.”

“I'm a leader 'cause I listen to my people. And I'd like to think you're one of us, after all we been through.”

That could be so. Or he might be aware that he'd get more out of me by letting me think I had some measure of control.

The fact was that I was dependent on him and his people, at least for a little while. He knew I knew that, and this might be his way of trying to ease the irritation. Pride was my sin, and few things rankle a proud person like an unpaid debt that grows the longer you need someone to help you.

But then, it was possible that I was overthinking things. More to the point, we both had bigger fish to fry than hurt feelings, or placating motions that might just be common courtesy.

I'd been dealing too long with bastards. Time to put that aside, and at least pretend to be a decent person. “All right,” I said, in the spirit of compromise and conspiracy against forces majeure and malicious. “Let's figure out how we're going to screw over everyone who isn't us...”