“H-how did you get out of the train car? You should be suffocating right now.” Rosemary’s heart was racing, but she took a few deep breaths and tried to calm herself. Don’t worry, Rosemary. If you just stay calm you can kill him. His heart’s beating fast right now—faster than the girl’s even. You just need to calm down, Rosemary thought before the blinding fast uppercut of a metallic glove struck her in the jaw, sending her stumbling backwards, hostage still luckily in her grasp but even more blood spilling down her face now.

“It doesn’t matter how I got out. What matters is I know you can’t hurt that young woman. Not as long as I’m here.” He took another step forward towards Rosemary. “Pouring through my memories of our battle again, I realized the clues to figuring out how your Civ worked were right in front of my face. And this battle sealed the deal.”

“What are you talking about?” How is his heart beating so fast?

“Well, it was mostly the ‘her heart is beating fast enough’ line. But I made some intelligent guesses too. As long as my heart is beating faster than hers, you can’t touch her.”

“But I can still touch you! Wirebaby! Finish what I started eight years ago!” she screamed, and what looked like fifty red threads buried themselves in Thomas’s suit.

But she felt nothing. Then, she felt a hand ram through her abdomen, sending a final spurt of blood out of her mouth. “H-how . . .?”

Thomas Finn was standing behind her, his glowing fist rammed through her spine and out through her stomach. “I did what I did last time. Creating a phantom heart not only slowed down my own heartbeat but gave me something I could use to draw in your fire. I’d been breathing through a phantom trachea I created that I weaved out of a hole in the train. Blair had left some of her blood in the car from when she spilled it, but even though I was filled with gasoline, Blair was able to explode the train car with it and restore me with her blood as well. You were so busy talking to this sack of phantom limbs inside of my suit that you didn’t even notice.”

“Th-that’s some . . . stupid . . . bullshit. How the fuck did you come up with that? That was so dumb. How was anybody supposed to follow that?” Rosemary groaned.

“I know, right?” Thomas smiled, feeling a bit too proud of himself for coming up with all that. “To be fair, we did have, like, an hour before we actually fought, so it gave us both some time to think. But yeah, normally my plans aren’t nearly as good as this. It’s a lot of just punch ’em real good, you know? Actually, my last few have been pretty good. I’m kind of on a hot streak.”

“I-I . . . hate . . . y-you . . .” Rosemary muttered through clenched teeth as Thomas shoved her off his arm and onto the ground, dead as the concrete she lay on.

Thomas quickly put on his mask and returned his heart to himself in order to hide his identity, before waving to the shocked populace and sputtering bouncers before walking over to the hostage who was sitting on the ground gasping for air.

“So, kid, has this experience inspired you to become a vigilante and protect the streets?” Thomas asked, patting her on the head as he would a young fan.

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“Are you kidding me?” she answered, still rubbing her neck and wrists. “This was awful. I’m going to need a lot of therapy. Who are you anyway? I’m calling the police.”

“My name is Phantom—wait, the police? Don’t tell them I was here, okay? Please?”

* * *

The oldest and youngest Krokodil sisters had spent that night breaking into the Neonight Southern Morgue. “We’ve started needing to do this a lot more now,” Celine whispered to the younger one. “It’s because of Thomas.”

“I don’t understand why you hate him so much. I mean, yeah, the Phantom Limb part isn’t great, but you were hating Thomas since before you knew they were the same person,” the younger one said, pulling out a tray with their sister’s disfigured body stretched across it. Celine was carrying a garbage bag of something that smelled terrible, dragging it behind her on the linoleum floor.

“It’s because he’s responsible for all of this. The stress he caused.”

“I don’t know about that. Pass me an arm.” Celine complied, fishing a human arm from the garbage bag and handing it to her sister to let her Civ do the work. “Any longer and she wouldn’t have made it. Any damage to the brain would have been permanently fatal. Or the heart. Even the lungs could’ve done it. You know I’m not a miracle worker, right? Please don’t keep relying on this. Of Sorrow.”

Suddenly, Rosemary sat up.

* * *

Piotr still hadn’t returned to Blair’s place by the time they got there.

“Geez, where’s Piotr? Any longer and I’m going to go looking for him,” Thomas said, throwing Blair’s backpack onto the couch.

“He’s probably just out getting his life back together. He’s been in prison for ten years, right? And he’s probably lying low to avoid trouble. I wouldn’t worry. If he shows up, he shows up.”

They absolutely should have been worrying about Piotr.

“Maybe you’re right . . . but still, I’m not going to risk it. Something feels wrong about him not being here. He’s an old man,” Thomas said, sitting down on the couch next to one of Blair’s cats.

“I’m going to go have a shower, okay? Don’t break anything. Jeez, I forgot how nasty vigilante work can get,” Blair muttered as she walked down a hallway and out of the living room.

“ ‘Don’t break anything.’ What does she think? She’ll turn around for ten minutes and I’m going to make some irreversible life choice? I’m not stupid.” Thomas laughed, doing his best impression of Blair for her line. An impression which admittedly wasn’t all that good. Suddenly, a visual appeared on his unit. It was a message.

I’m outside. We need to talk. Sent from a contact marked “Boss”. He knew exactly who it was.

I don’t live there anymore. Thomas responded. And I want nothing to do with you.

I know. Both of those things. Look out the window. Helena answered, messaging the most ominous line you could possibly send somebody through text.

Thomas hesitantly followed her demand and looked outside the living room window to see Helena standing on the sidewalk, staring right up at him. Thomas, against his better judgement, went out to meet her.

“What are you doing here? How did you find this place?” Thomas asked, furrowing his brow at Helena and keeping his tone short and curt.

“I know where you’ve been staying because the Krokodils know where you’ve been staying. Listen, Thomas, I made a bad choice sending Celine. But this isn’t about me right now.”

“I don’t want any part of this, Helena. You should know that.”

“This isn’t my idea, Thomas. I’m just a go-between. And like I said, I know where you live because the Krokodils know where you live. They’ve been making plans to kill you and that friend of yours.”

“I know that, and we can take them.”

“I’m not entirely sure you can. They have someone on their team, Thomas. They’re ruthless, and I don’t know how to stop them. Please just hear me out, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Two of the sisters are dead, Helena. What could they—”

“No. They aren’t. That’s what I’m trying to say here. They’re invincible. And they’ve agreed to let you and your friends live if you follow their orders.” Thomas’s face was filled with horror. He looked up at Blair’s apartment and saw her standing in the window, looking around for Thomas. “They want you back as an assassin. Nothing evil, just some work against a rival gang. And all will be forgiven, they said. And if you say no—”

“They’re going to hunt us down to the ends of the planet and kill us.” Thomas didn’t take his eyes off the window. Didn’t stop thinking about Piotr. He knew he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t keep this up for the rest of his life, and he didn’t know how to beat somebody who could heal like that. Everybody who leaves this business either comes back . . . or leaves everything. He thought about Dominic.

Thomas had things he didn’t want to leave forever.