Dusk melts into a starry summer night when Raoul has time to wonder where Katze is. He takes a glass of wine and wanders out onto the terrace to gaze over the light-hazed city. The fading heat of the day seems to muffle even the noise that rises from the busy streets before a cool evening-breeze brings some relief. The wine tastes stale. Raoul stares out into the darkness and wonders why he is missing the reek of cigarette smoke and the fire of sharp retorts. He feels alone.

xxx

Katze feels grit press into his bare knees and shuffles to ease his position. Guy steps in front of him. He is in a dirty grey tee, one sleeve empty, and grubby jeans with burnholes and tears. He also wears ankle boots, laced up to mid-calf. He stares down at Katze who glances up, his eyes narrowing against the white sky and the glare of the sun. He can't see much of his surroundings because before his vision is hazed with red, and he feels like he's been drugged.

"What do you want?" It is a logical question. It falls tired and weary from Katze's lips, and he thinks he knows the answer anyway.

The steel-capped boot kicks his stomach and he collapses, retching and struggling for breath. He drops and coils up, puking out what little he has eaten that morning. The second kick hits him in exactly the same spot, and this time he screams. He can hear his ribs crack, a sickening grinding of bone on bone, and the white heat of agony that won't die down. Guy steps onto Katze's face, grinding it sideways into the puddle of vomit.

"This," Guy says, angry satisfaction in his tone. "I've wanted this for a bloody long time. Almost forgot how it feels." He takes his boot off Katze's face and stoops to rake black-edged, chewed nails down the redhead's cheek, ripping the papery skin of the scar. His fingers are studded with thick rings made of old steel nuts, rusty and oil-caked as if straight from the scrapyard. His backhand splits Katze's lip and cracks two teeth. "You look good like that," Guy says, leaning closer to inspect the damage. Through the thick fog of pain, Katze sees him smile, and suddenly the dirt, the anger and the meanness all fade away. Guy looks young and fresh again, a man in love for the first time.

xxx

Time slips. There is nothing but light and heat, laced with the smell of cigarettes and the sour stink of puke. Sweat runs between Katze's shoulderblades. He can feel his face swell up, the skin tightening over bruised bones and around his eyes. It is unbearably hot. He is sliding and there is nowhere to hold on to.

xxx

He can see a wall. His arms are pulled up above his head, his face is pressed against hot, sooty concrete, with a vertical crack from which a single stalk of grass grows. Grey and yellow, the hues of a summer day with the smell of exhaust fumes and baking dust, and something else he cannot quite place. He can feel the grainy surface, and slowly he registers his body, limb by limb, by the pain that throbs through him. Different kinds of pain, some dull, some sharp, some deep within his chest, telling him about bruises and broken bits, about sorrow and regret.

Nothing hurts more, it drifts through his mind, than regret. Did you say that, Iason?

He tries to shuffle his position to relieve his numb shoulders and feels the rough surface and the heat of the sun beating down on his back. Without surprise, he realises that he is unclothed. Sweat runs between his shoulderblades. It stings his skin, raw with sunburn. Tilting back his head, he heaves with a fresh knot of nausea, and his broken ribs make him yelp, but he can see a steel eyelet welded to a torn girder and a thick black plastic cable tie.

"Where are we?" he rasps, trying to find out whether Guy is still around.

"Doesn't matter," comes the hoarse retort from somewhere behind him. "Funny. You still do it. You still got Black Moon on you. And a gun. Nice piece that, nobody's gonna hear shit when this goes off." The clack of the security catch makes Katze feel ill. Whack. The bullet hits the ground between his feet. He can feel the explosion of dirt and concrete splinters. They prick his ankles, and blood runs, warm and sticky, where they cut his skin.

"It's not gonna help." His voice is a scratchy whisper, and he can feel his throat like a lump.

"What?"

"It's not gonna bring him back to you."

The silencer tears into him the moment Guy's body slams against Katze's back, knocking his face into the concrete. "I'll make you pay," Guy hisses, "you and your fucking owner."

It's coarse and blunt, and it works. Reminding Katze of his past and that Guy has what he lost a lifetime ago.

Freedom. The real thing. And all his bits. Never mind the arm... Katze bites his tongue. But I have no owner. I'm free now. Free, free... He wants to laugh, and it's an effort to beat down the wave of madness that washes through him. The taste of blood and dirt fills his mouth, bitter and cloying. The sleek barrel nails him, reminds him of other things, stuff that's worse than what Guy does to him, and he thinks that it could have torn him if he hadn't been with Raoul the night before. The thought makes him sick and he clamps down on it before it can swallow him whole. He concentrates on the pain instead. He is hurting everywhere, inside and out, his head feels thick and swimming, and he is unspeakably thirsty.

Guy leans on him. "Nothing to say, huh? He gonna come after you? Maybe not. I don't care." Another thrust rocks Katze to his toes. "Wanna shit yourself? Go on then."

The gun leaves, and Katze sags against the wall. His arms hurt in a strange, stringy way, his hands feel cold and his wrists are smudged with blood where the plastic straps have rubbed through the skin. "You're not gonna do it," he mutters.

Guy laughs. "Smart. Would be good to blow your guts out, but I won't." He lights one of Katze's fags and takes a deep pull.

"Wonder how Riki would like this," Katze says, squeezing his eyes shut in expectation of the next hit. It doesn't come.

"Riki!" Guy snarls. "You! It was your dirty business! You took Riki away, you dragged him back to this sick bastard!"

"You don't get it," Katze says, trying to keep focused when his brain wants to go to sleep and his body is a sea of pain. "He wanted to go back. And you left him no-"

"Shut up!" The steelcap kicking into his groin makes Katze blank out.

xxx

Raoul puts the empty glass on the desk, next to the almost finished bottle and the untouched glass next to it. He checks his messages, then the grid of the city on his computer, but there is nothing that asks for his attention. It is not unusual that Katze doesn't turn up, sometimes he stays away for days on end without saying where he goes or what he does during that time. Raoul never asks. Some things are best left unsaid. He tries to understand what unsettles him this time, an undercurrent of disquiet that makes him restless. His glance passes over Katze's side of the desk, to the open bedroom door and back. Katze's laptop sits still and dark on its place.

And then it strikes Raoul that the laptop would be gone too if Katze was working elsewhere.

xxx

There is no sign of Katze anywhere. The police, unsurprisingly, can't find him. He is not Raoul's only link to the world beyond the city but nobody has seen him, and the blanket of silence unnerves Raoul. Surprised, he finds it difficult to stay calm, and when he seeks focus in Jupiter's hall, he feels nothing.

Halfway through another night he makes his decision, ignoring Jupiter's silence.

xxx