Since time passed more quickly in the Crucible Casket than out, my plan was for Warcry to hop in, heal for a while, hop out, chug a healing elixir, hop back in, rinse and repeat until he was back in fighting shape.

  Hyla was the first to react.

  “Go kill someone else’s IFC future.” She waved a hand at the Casket. “There’s no Spirit coming off that thing, and there’s no construct built into it. It’s just an ugly piece of rubbish.”

  “It just looks worthless as a defense mechanism,” I told her. As a precaution against theft, unless you were a Death cultivator, the Casket looked like some janky emo necklace you could get out of a bubble machine at Walmart. “Warcry’s seen me use it. Heck, he got me into it once when I almost killed myself overcultivating. He knows it works.”

  “This is happening, Hangman,” Warcry said. “Get on board or pound concrete.”

  Hyla glared at him like she wanted to fold his knee backward again.

  “Another show of strong judgment, Thompson. As you like it. It’s your career to chuck in the bin.”

  The healer didn’t come around, reluctantly or otherwise. “I’m not expending any more Spirit or energy on this idiocy. I gave you my medical opinion. If you choose to flout it with something that goes against all accepted medical wisdom, that’s your problem. But you won’t do it here. The Pearl City Kokugikan won’t tolerate a liability like this.”

  Warcry told the healer what she could do with her medical opinion and liability.

  Which led to us being messaged an itemized bill and escorted off kokugikan property. And they took their wheelchair back.

  After Warcry apologized to the hundred or so rabid fans who had followed us out into the street for not being fit enough to take pictures and sign HUDs, we flagged down a rickshaw. We decided that Warcry and I would head straight to the hotel with Bodhi, while Hyla scoured the nearby distilleries for as many healing elixirs as she could buy on Warcry’s dime.

  I messaged Kest to let her know where to find us, then messaged the Black Pearl. The manager met Mr. Thompson at the base of the steps with a wheelchair.

  “Dude, remind me to drop your name the next time I want the all-star treatment anywhere,” I told Warcry as I pushed him into the elevator.

  “Ma’s lawyers’ll come after you eventually.” He leaned over Bodhi and punched the button for the twelfth floor. “Get proper use out of it before they do, yeah? Make it worth that return trip to Van Diemann.”

  In the room, we put Bodhi in his crib-drawer, and I helped Warcry onto the couch. Carefully, he propped his injured leg up on the coffee table.

  “All right, grav. What do I do?”

  “Just open the lid.” I slipped the necklace over my head. “You’ll appear inside the Casket. It’ll be totally black and kind of claustrophobic to start out with, so don’t freak out. After a while, it’ll loosen up. And once you’re inside, ask the Casket how long you need to heal before it’s advisable to drink more healing elixirs. It should be able to give us some stats so we know a timetable.”

  Warcry nodded.

  I held the necklace out.

  He hesitated.

  “What’s the deal, man?”

  “Well, you don’t just want to stick your hand in it, do you? Goes against your instincts.”

  He screwed his face up into a grimace, then reached for it.

  Something occurred to me. I snatched the Casket back.

  “Before you go in. There’s, uh, something in there. It’s a ring. For Kest. Just don’t say anything about it to anybody, all right?”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  It took a second for comprehension to hit. When it did, Warcry snorted.

  “Bleedin’ told you I knew it! Give me that, ya skinny ponser.”

  ***

  By the time Kest breezed into my room, Warcry had already been in the Casket for twenty minutes.

  She didn’t waste any time with preliminaries. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad,” I admitted, “but we’re fixing it.”

  I had explained the basic idea of how the Crucible Casket sped up time inside to her before, so it only took a quick explanation to get her up to speed.

  “How many hours pass in the Casket to every hour outside?” she asked.

  “Seventy-two.”

  Her lacy eyes went wide.

  I shrugged. “Warcry asked the Casket when he got in. From what it said, he should be good to drink a healing elixir every half hour.”

  Kest entered the figures into her HUD, then spent a few minutes doing calculations.

  “Okay, assuming we’re not underestimating the damage to his knee, and coupled with the effects of a low-tier healing elixir, this should take sixteen hours. If we move up to mid-tier, twelve. High-tier would obviously be ideal. He could be out and resting in eight hours. When does he get out?”

  I checked the time on the cracked screen of my Winchester. “Pretty quick here. I’m supposed to let him know as soon as Hyla shows up with the first batch. Hey, on a scale of one to ten, how bad would you say script tattoos are for you?”

  Kest frowned at the conversational pivot. “They’re not inherently bad for you. I guess they speed up healing beyond a body’s natural processes, which probably has some long-term effects. Organic material isn’t really my area of expertise. Arguably, the biggest danger is that having one changes the way you think and act, teaches you to be less cautious overall. Like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t survive without one. You’re too reckless.”

  “Oh yeah?” I turned my head and pointed. “Why don’t you say that into my good ear, smarty-pants.”

  But Kest wasn’t in the mood for dumb jokes.

  “Why are you asking about script tattoos?” She raised her SignalSong again, hand poised over the screen to start typing. “Did the kokugikan staff healer say we should search for a shop to get a healing script for Warcry?”

  “That’s a no-go. She told him it would ruin his leg and his career. She also implied that I’m a reckless doofus for asking.”

  “Fine, we’ll stick to the healing elixir equation for now and reevaluate if we have to.”

  The hall door’s lock beeped, then clinked open. The Hangman shouldered into the room, plastic sacks and brown paper bags rustling in both hands.

  “I fair cleaned out every distillery on Reef Row,” she said, dumping her haul on Kest.

  While Kest sorted through the brown glass vials, Hyla grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into my room.

  She slammed the door, then she slammed me up against it.

  “You best hope this works, Death boy. He just got his career back. If you wreck it for him…” She twisted her fist in my collar. “Back in the factory towns, we sorted anybody who came after our own. Got me?”

  “Yeah, you love him. I got it.” I tried to shove her hand off, but she had that lock ability engaged.

  “Shut your gob or I’ll give you your first run through the meatgrinder free.”

  “If you think I’m scared of you, think again,” I told her. “You might be a tsundere space-elf Amazon, but you’re a fluffy kitten compared to some of the psychos I have to deal with. You’re just a brat throwing a fit because she’s worried about her babydaddy—whose career it sounds like she screwed up the first time around.”

  From the snarl on her face, I assumed Hyla was about to punch me in the teeth, so I went ahead and asked.

  “Did Warcry seriously burn down that orphanage for you?”

  She let go like I was a toxic waste fire and shoved me out of the way, yanking the door open and stalking back into the other room with Kest.

  An incoming message stopped me before I could do the same.

  Directions to next target.

  I saved the location marker before the message disappeared, then told Donnie I was on my way.

  Back in the other room, the ginger was out of the Casket and chugging an elixir.

  “Out here bleedin’ screaming every word,” he said, massaging his quad close to the knee. The swelling hadn’t gone down much, but the formerly purple and yellow bruise was mottled with brown. “It’s like an amplifier in there. Don’t any of you lot have inside voices?”

  “Welcome to my Casket,” I told him. Then I addressed the rest of the room. “I’m heading out for the night. Everybody stay in where they’re unlikely to be assassinated before I get back.”

  “Wasn’t planning on going for a jog, was I?”

  “Especially Warcry,” I said just for that.

  At the foot of the bed, Kest was reading projections and adjusting a complicated healing equation that looked like Advanced Trig had had a baby with a geometry proof.

  “I’ll message you if we need more healing elixirs,” she said. “There’s bound to be an all-night distillery somewhere in this city.”

  I nudged her boot hanging off the edge with my leg.

  She blinked, then saw me standing over her.

  Her lips quirked up at the corners. “What do you want? Don’t you have a side gig to go do?”

  “If you’re still up when I get back, I want to talk to you.” I rolled my eyes toward the rest of the people taking up space in there. “Alone.”

  Her smile faltered, and I realized I’d just dropped the equivalent of a we need to talk on her.

  “Don’t worry,” I hurried up and said. “It’s good. You’re going to like it. I think.”

  Kest broke into a grin and gave me a little shove.

  “Then hurry back, you goof.”

  a major death-flaggy moment and they get to have a nice long talk about getting married and living happily ever after (it could happen!), you can

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