The Angel said tightly, “Don’t you dare touch them.”
“It’s for your safety, ma’am. Don’t watch.”
“It’s goddamn superstition.”
“Yeah, well, Aunty always told me it was ninety percent superstition and ten percent for the fun of it.”
Big booted footsteps clomped over to Nona. This was too much, even if Cam had always told her to play dead until she couldn’t. Nona sat bolt upright in terror. Someone swore and there was another big pop and she was thrown forward by a huge brief light in her chest like pain, much quicker than the headache, spreading through her ribcage briefly and wetly before it went away.
She shrieked from the floor, “You shot me again! That’s twice!”
Then there was the Angel saying, “No. No. Stop. She’s alive, stop, that’s an order—that’s a direct order! Nona—Nona,” and there was the Angel, rolling her over, her face wet with tears, saying: “I’m sorry—God, Nona, I’m so sorry.”
But Nona was not in the mood. She struggled free from the Angel’s grasp and looked for Camilla. Camilla was lying very still on the floor, faceup, eyes half-closed and staring sightlessly at the ceiling: her front was all over blood and her hands were clutched into stiff claws over her chest, as though she had clapped them there in a panic. The amount of blood was astonishing. Nona didn’t think people could even bleed that much. It was more gross than frightening. Nona crawled over to her as the Angel was saying, “Hold fire, hold your damned fire,” and Nona peeled up Camilla’s eyelids.
Even in the dark Nona could see that they were bright, clear grey. Camilla said calmly, “It’s fine, Nona. You’re fine. Back up,” and then Camilla opened her hands and two bullets were there, shining in her fingers. Then she said, “Update?”
Nona looked up. There was the Angel, sitting on the floor, looking as though she had seen two ghosts. Near her was the new person—a compact, medium-sized person with a machete strapped to each thigh and a small, heavy gun in their hands, not wearing an air mask, not wearing a hat. A mask hung around their neck as though they’d been in a hurry and hadn’t pulled it up yet. Their face would have been fierce and handsome if it hadn’t been puckered with shrapnel scars on both cheeks, across the nose that should’ve been flattish but had been broken once, in a peppery storm of burns at one temple. These scars meant they weren’t fierce and handsome; they were super-cool and fierce and handsome. Their hair had been buzzed short on one side and kept longer on the other, the long part dyed a shriekingly electric blue, and their brows were dark and their eyes were darker, smudged with camouflage makeup above and beneath. And Nona had known who they were the moment their body moved, but the machetes helped. It was Our Lady of the Passion, for the first time unmasked.
“Pash shot us!” she wailed. “And my teacher! Palamedes was talking to the Angel and someone shot us through the window and now the carpet’s gross! This is the worst day of school ever!”
Camilla sat up, and she and Pash stared at each other. Pash’s handsome features screwed into an expression of stupefied loathing. Camilla’s betrayed nothing at all.
“Did you shoot us?” asked Camilla, whose left hand had tightened minutely.
“No—that was fuckin’ Merv Wing,” said Pash, looking as though she was sorry about it. “How the hell do you know who I am? Crown’s been squealing, right?”
“No,” said Camilla, who had relaxed her left hand minutely. “Why weren’t we told she was one of us?”
“That’s they to you,” Pash said, “and you’re not one of us either, zombie.”
The Angel said urgently— “Pash, I retract the liquidation order, we can deal with this later. The circumstances have changed. Is there any way you can call Merv off?”
“No—they were ready to go for you the other day when they thought Suffer was putting more of her own people in. Which was—you, wasn’t it?” Pash turned to Nona, who was wringing clots of blood out of a completely messed-up braid. “You made the radio call to Crown two days ago, you were the one Crown was with. What the fuck’s going on, you little creep?”
Nona was deeply injured. “I didn’t make a radio call, it was a pretend radio call, and don’t call me a creep, because I’m not.”
The Angel said helplessly, “That was the Crown you’re always going on about? Nona, what are you? What is she?” and Pash barked, “I told you! You’re looking at the fucking Lyctor project, Aim! Your dog was getting walked by the fucking Lyctor project, and you just called wipe protocol on the fucking Lyctor project.”