Before Krahe even left the safehouse, she had eaten more than her fair share from her test-run pie; as good as ekarone was, in its similarity to both pineapple and forest strawberry, the very thing that made it delicious also made it physically painful to eat after a while. This was not the case when it was cooked, so with a scalded tongue and full stomach, Krahe made for the shrine-clinic.

  As she entered the clinic, Krahe glanced sidelong at Firminus. In her best approximation of Tiengenzhen-Cantonese, which she knew he understood, she said to him: “I will not tell her vengeance bad, violence bad, live well, and similar. Would be wrong.”

  Just in case Juno could hear them.

  “I didn’t expect you to,” he responded, also in T-Cantonese. “I am not delusional. Steering her as best as we can is our only option. Suppression would just lead to an outburst later.”

  The grafter motioned towards a door which Krahe had not seen opened before. To no surprise, it led to a resident patient room. She stepped through the second door and saw Juno sitting there — not in bed, but in a lounging chair, leaned back, using a chunky tabletop eyebox to watch some thriller-drama that, for some arbitrary reason, was in black and white with the occasional bright highlight colour. The shot lingered, barely changing as one of the two characters spoke. That was all Krahe got out of it. She wasn’t paying attention to the projection, after all.

  The “visor,” as Firminus had described it, was similar to that which had been grafted to Seer’s head, only this one was held to Juno’s head by a halo-shaped, cushioned harness. Overall, it resembled a VR headset, only, it rested a bit too far from her face, and Krahe could see the cables coursing between the headset and Juno’s eye sockets. With her eyelids naturally closed, it created a macabre illusion of the wires entering directly into her eyeballs — though Krahe supposed it was no more macabre than reality. Juno’s hair, a ruddy brown, was tied back to make way for the visor’s harness, and it appeared to have been cut shorter. Statuesque, mechanical legs with shells of what appeared to be hammered copper protruded from under her sundress, and a corset-like harness surrounded her midsection, its securing clamps undone and a small power bank resting on the table next to her. Her left arm was, indeed, that of Aldritch, its proportions seamlessly altered to suit the frame of a 17-year-old girl. Using that left hand, she was incessantly scribbling away at a notebook, drawing a rough, but fairly good sketch of the thriller’s main character — a white-haired man with a scaly, beastly right arm, presumably that of a saurian.

  Almost immediately, Juno stopped drawing.

  “Whuh-” she uttered, turning to face the door head-on. A moment passed, then another.

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  Her face lit up.

  “Miss Blackhand! Does this mean it’s time for the execution?”

  Immediately, that was the first thing she thought of at the sight of Krahe.

  Krahe, holding back a chuckle, approached and took a seat, setting the ekarone pie down on the table. “Not just yet, but soon, if you think-”

  “By Zavesh, please, yes. I just want to…” she started, only to swerve mid-sentence. “...Get it over with. Oh, is that pie? I’ve been starving, how did you know?”

  “I get it, you want to kill them. Pull Aldritch’s eyes out. You’d do it with your own — formerly his — fingers, if you thought you could do it without bursting them. You’ve probably been itching for it since you got over the worst of the shock.”

  As she spoke, Juno, with no hesitation, reached for the pie with her left hand. It split open, and the bladed tendril whipped out, cutting out a small piece and lifting it out of the pan in one motion.

  Juno, now juggling the still-hot piece in her mouth, looked at Krahe as if expecting a lecture, a “vengeance is not justice” spiel, but Krahe didn’t give one. “There’s nothing wrong with scratching that itch. I’d make a hypocrite of myself if I said anything of the sort.”

  Perhaps subconsciously mirroring the girl, Krahe formed a Tar tendril and summoned a dagger from her Kenoma Pocket in the same act. The tendril emerged from a maw within the palm of her hand, already grasping the dagger, and she used it to cut out a piece of the pie in the same way.

  “Just… Take care that you don’t keep scratching to the bone. Once they’re dead, they’re dead. You don’t come after people who just so happened to be in the vicinity of the guilty, things like that.” Krahe added. Firminus, sighing in resignation that “his” seat had been usurped by Krahe, picked up the next-nearest chair and brought it over.

  “What of the people behind them?” Juno asked again. “I don’t remember much, but I remember enough. Enough to know they were going to send me off to some Helmeted Man once they were through with me.”

  “That’s another story. A story for later, once you’re strong enough to pursue them without walking to your death,” Krahe answered. She cut herself another piece, despite being full. She couldn’t help it. “I won’t tell you not to pursue that path because doing so would make me a hypocrite. But as you are now, you’re in no state to go after anyone like the Helmeted Man. I’m not entirely sure it would be a good idea for me to go after him as I am now. Wanting to go into the woods to track down and kill the man-eating beast is all well and good, but you’d better be sure you don’t get eaten. I can put this a hundred different ways, but you get it, you’re a smart girl.”

  “You’re right, I’m weak,” Juno agreed, her mood instantly turning downcast. Holding up her left hand, a pinkish piece of ekarone pie wobbling atop the bladed tendril. “When I was a kid, one of my classmates used to love these terrible pulps. This,” she nodded at the paused projection, “is supposed to be based on one of them. He’d always be doing pullups, quoting “Weakness is a sin,” at the others and challenging them to arm wrestling. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, except that in some way he wasn’t wrong. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up how I did if I’d had a gun and two reapers in my pocket.”

  She ate the piece of pie, and in an instant, her downcast expression returned to one of cheer. But Krahe could tell, and Firminus could too — on the surface, it was sadness, but at that moment, Juno’s voice had become filled with ice and murder.

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