Crazy = Genius
(Narancia)
You wanna hear about the time I almost died? I mean, there's been lots of times, but this time it 100% was not my own fault. Okay, Bucciarati did tell me to stop firing, but it wouldn't have helped much at that point. Like only by about a dozen bullets, anyway.
Getting pummeled by all of Aerosmith's machine gun bullets at the same time was NOT FUN. I really thought I was toast. But I pulled off my tanktop and there wasn't any blood and I just started laughing my head off. Laughing hurt so bad, I almost passed out on the spot. But Giorno was right there, yelling my name and cradling me in his arms, and I really do have a thing for blonds.
"Wanna see something cool?" I gasped. My lungs really, really hurt. I started coughing and my ribs really, really hurt.
Giorno wiped bloody foam away from my mouth. "Narancia, no, that isn't cool. Stop doing that."
"Not that," I whispered, spitting to clear my mouth. Ouch. I reached up – my shoulder really hurt, too – and I pulled down my radar scope. "Look."
"But you already said you can't see anything in this wind," Giorno said, angling for a way to put me down among all the seats he had turned into trees. "Are you delirious? Are you reacting to shock? Maybe you have a concussion?"
The train was still rushing onward at full speed. The transformed car we were in swayed and rattled on the rails. Every movement sent spikes of pain through my bones, but my RESOLVE was stronger.
"Narancia!" Bucciarati leaned in. He ran featherweight fingers across my chest where big purple bruises were starting to bloom. "Great God in Heaven, I thought you died for certain! No, don't exert yourself – don't tell me you're still flying Aerosmith!"
"It's not so bad–" I started coughing again. Was it just my aching head, or was the train swaying more than ever? "Hurry up and look."
Aerosmith was flying really high and the tiny glimpses I got from my stand's senses were telling me major news.
Giorno disappointed me, raising his stand instead to feel me all over for, I don't know, life force. Fucking whatever. No, stand hands don't do it for me. I'm not gonna kink shame, if that's your thing, cool, you do you, but trust me, I was disappointed big time. I just wanted him to be a little bit impressed with my radar, okay? Whatever, if you don't get it, you don't get it.
The point is, Aerosmith was spiraling way up and I gasped, because I saw it before it happened. Before it happened to us, I mean. Trains work that way.
Bucciarati gasped too, because he fucking listens to me and he was looking at my radar, so he saw the huge carbon dioxide plume from the locomotive just go swooping sideways. Yep. Train wreck.
"Narancia–!"
I don't know what Bucciarati is made of – like, spider webs or chewing gum or something – but somehow he managed to wrap himself around me and Giorno and the nearest tree before everything went sideways and the noise started.
For a heartbeat, we were flying and I was breathing in pure joy.
Then we were falling and Sticky Fingers was unzipping shit like, insane, you don't even know. There were tree branches snapping, metal shrieking past us. The sky was down and then it was up again. We were swinging out sideways on a long zipper ribbon and then Bucciarati zipped open the roof of the next train car as it came at us and we were inside. Seats everywhere, broken glass coming down over us like sun showers, crunch after crunch and this long metallic groan as everything shuddered to a stop.
We had finally landed and we were hugging some leather seat cushions to keep from falling more, just listening to the creak and pop of metric tonnes of metal settling, when the door at the top of the train car – I mean the far end, but it was up now – well, someone heaved it open and Fugo, Abbacchio, and Mista tumbled down on top of us.
My whole body was ONE. BIG. BRUISE.
Among all their shouts of relief, my heart went stuttery and not for warm-and-fuzzy reasons. My head was swimming and my vision blacked, and that's when I saw it. It was just a glimpse from my stand. I told you, I get those little flashes every second or two, but usually I can't really look. But with my vision wiped out, it was like a magazine photo. Crazy bright. I can still see it when I close my eyes. I think. Yeah, look, I totally can!
I saw the ice guy stalking toward Trish behind the wreck of Giorno's forest train car creation. And Trish was trapped in ice.
I didn't even wait to get radar on him. I swung Aerosmith into a nosedive straight at him. Next glimpse and he was bending over Trish. The back of his neck was wide open – right where that puff of carbon dioxide had been.
I delivered the perfect shot. And no goddamn ricochets for me this time, fucker! Aerosmith swooped up and spiraled out of everyone else's range. Except maybe Abbacchio's because I still don't know his range. I felt like a fucking majestic eagle.
I wanted to check my radar to see if I got the guy, but my hands were made of Jell-O. And someone was scooping me up, screaming my name. My head was drooping in his arms and – you know the way you feel after a really awesome rollercoaster? Not the good part. The part where your head is exploding and your eyes flutter, you need to throw up but you can't put together an actual heave, so this hot panic just creeps up your throat all slow and deliberate instead?
Screaming my name…
"Fugo! Put me the fuck down!" I screamed back. But it came out as a gargle. I was choking on my own blood. Coughing fit. Red pain, black pain, white pain – passing out, phasing back in, glitter filling my vision and this sweet rushing sand sound in my ears…
As the waves of my own pulse receded, I heard them talking above me.
Concussion, I heard. Rubber effect. Bruising, capillaries, damage. Fluid. Lungs.
But I needed to tell them–
Cool hands pushed me back gently, as my chest started hitching into a new coughing fit. I thought I might drown in my own lungs before I could tell them anything!
"The ice guy," I whispered. "I got him."
(Giorno)
"What's that?" I leaned over Narancia, cradled in Abbacchio's arms. "Guys. Can we quiet down? I can't hear Narancia!"
"–not some kind of experiment!" Fugo shrieked in my face. "No way I would ever let you–"
"Fugo," Bucciarati cut in, steadying him with strong hands. "Please. I'd like to hear from Narancia."
Fugo glanced down at the small spasming body and I saw the fear reflecting behind his fury. Sympathy shot through me. Leverage, Gold murmured in my head.
"He said he took down Ghiaccio," Abbacchio said, brushing back Narancia's tangled hair with surprising care. "Are you sure, child?"
Narancia tried to nod. Tried to whisper. Triggered another coughing fit.
He has minutes to live, Gold hissed in my mind. You should let me try. If it doesn't work, we lose nothing. It's the perfect opportunity. Why are you holding me back?
I ignored him.
"'Yes,'" Abbacchio said, tracing the word on Narancia's lips. "Just breathe. I can tell what you're trying to say."
"Incredible. Great work, Narancia." Bucciarati squeezed his hand. "Thank you for showing me the train wreck starting on your radar. You bought us the chance–"
Narancia's lips were moving. Another soundless whisper.
"What?" Bucciarati looked to Abbacchio.
"'Not that.' Narancia, was there something more?"
I caught Narancia's words this time: They're coming. Dozens.
Abbacchio bundled him into Fugo's arms. "Take cover! Enemies! Narancia saw something on his radar, before the crash–" That familiar whir, but Abbacchio's enigmatic stand did not appear. "Shit, shit, shit–"
VCR, Gold commented. That's what the whir reminds you of.
"What's the situation out there?" Bucciarati pushed in front of Fugo and Narancia. Sticky Fingers glowed just under his skin. "Mista, guard Leone!"
Mista gestured with his handgun. Flitting tiny and golden, Sex Pistols took up positions overhead.
"What kind of enemy?" Was that me? Shit. Gold, we talked about using my voice!
But if Narancia can tell us–
"Back off," Fugo snarled. Narancia spasmed in his arms. "His radar doesn't pick up details like that, anyway."
"I count at least fifty," Abbacchio muttered, eyes closed. What. "They're on motorcycles, pulling up on the roads on either side of this train. We'll be surrounded soon. Hostile. All women, I think."
"The Americans?" Bucciarati asked, pulling himself up to one of the shattered windows that tilted overhead.
"Get down!" Abbaccchio pulled him back–
They tumbled down next to me as semi-automatic fire rioted through that window, mangling the plastic ceiling that tilted down opposite. Fugo swore and scrambled to pull Narancia out of harm's way. Mista fired a shot straight up then kicked it out the window with two of his stand.
"Mista, no!" Abbacchio reached for where Mista had been seconds before – "Oh, fuck."
"Sync up," Bucciarati snapped at him, disentangling himself and standing up.
"There's no time–"
"Stand users!" Sex Pistols wailed. "Mista! The bullet stopped! It's stuck in a wall of air!"
"Get out there and kick it," Mista said, shooing half his stand back out the window.
"Stop! Mista, stop! Oh – too late. Thanks for giving away our position, asshole." Abbacchio dropped his head into his hands. "Bruno, we need to get the team out of here right now."
"What does it look like I'm trying to do?" Bucciarati shot back. What was he doing? He had zippers open all over his body, hands and stand hands plunged into four of them, tossing out a bizarre assortment of stuff.
I picked up a pistol, a clip of ammo, and a Danish. It was crusty and stale. "What do you carry all this for?"
"Not the time," Bucciarati muttered. "Keep those, kid, you might need them. Damn, damn, where did that turtle get to?"
"The hell good is a turtle right now?" Abbacchio dusted himself off and checked the remaining throwing knives stowed inside his jacket. "They're converging on this train car, thanks to Mista. Bruno, can you get us to the other end of the train? Then if Narancia's Aerosmith – shit, no, if Mista can–"
"The boss put us to a lot of trouble to get the key, and then the turtle–"
"Turtle?" Fugo asked. "Wait, the device we've been risking our lives for – the device that's supposed to keep us safe for the rest of this mission – it's a FUCKING TURTLE?"
"God fucking damn it, Fugo, why now?" Bucciarati shoved past Abbacchio, past me – "Leone, get them to safety. I don't care how. Fugo, hand me Narancia."
Oily smoke was coiling behind Fugo, trailing down from his shoulders – no, that was a stand coalescing. A sinister knight, saliva dripping from its stitched-shut mouth. Not an enemy, Gold whispered. His own stand.
"Fugo, hand over Narancia now."
"Catch up to us when you can. Call me." Abbacchio was already pushing Mista to the far end of the train car. "Giorno, are you fucking deaf? Come on!"
They're going to die when they step across to the next car, Gold told me, sounding bored. And Narancia has seconds left. This is stupid, let me try my idea.
I hesitated. Bucciarati's back was to me. Fugo was staring wild-eyed at Narancia shuddering in his arms. Mista had his stand gathered over his head. Abbacchio was staring straight at me, but he was too far away to stop me… as far as I knew, his stand had no ranged attacks…
It doesn't, Gold said. Now let me move!
Outside, a voice on a megaphone blared something about coming out with our hands up. In English.
"Fugo." The patience in Bucciarati's voice was as thin and tense as spider web. "You have to let go now."
"Giorno!" Abbacchio yelled. "Let's move! NOW!"
Narancia was perfectly still.
Gold flowed through me and I moved.
As Fugo's arms moved robotically to pass Narancia into Bucciarati's care, I reached beneath his inert body and jabbed upward with the black iron throwing knife I'd pocketed off Abbacchio earlier.
Stabbing was much harder than doing dissections. This was no scalpel, and this flesh was not softened by decay or formaldehyde. But Gold drove the knife in and I felt the transformation take hold as I let go.
Iron disintegrated. Under my stand's impossible power, the nuclei of iron atoms slid apart – reinvented themselves as carbon, oxygen, miniscule hydrogen spinning madly away. Electrons swarmed and danced, bonding the atoms into intricate branches and chains. Molecules. Cells, water, tissue.
Knife became blood, muscle, nerve, capillary. A flowering of tissue reinforced the ruined organs of Narancia's torso. Gold wasn't making a creature. He was making about a tenth of a human, integrated into the rest of the human. It took my breath away. Flawless myelin sheaths. Precious alveoli. The tricuspid valve, fluttering in the wake of a heartbeat.
Heartbeat. The glow of what I'd achieved–
"Fucking hell, Giorno!" Bucciarati rounded on me, freshly created blood staining his hand. He stared at it in absolute horror.
Clink. Buzz. Behind my back, Gold Experience had intercepted a thrown knife midair. As my stand opened his hand, a dragonfly rose and veered lazily back toward Abbacchio – who was charging toward me from behind, issuing a wordless scream–
In front of me, Fugo's face was a mask of hatred. His stand drew back a fist–
As Mista yelled my name–
As another round of gunfire pounded into the slant of ceiling above our heads–
As Bucciarati curled around Narancia and sank to the floor, gasping for breath through, most incredibly of all, a wash of tears–
Narancia drew a long, wheezing breath and let loose a squall of laughter.
"Oh my God," he gasped, "I really thought that was it! I mean, I saw the fucking light and everything! I was flying toward it like night into day. It was so fucking cool! Bucciarati, you should have… you should have seen it…"
Wonder. Tears. Fury transubstantiated to shock.
Narancia trailed off, looking between the frozen faces of his team. Behind him, Fugo dropped to his knees. His stand evanesced in a wisp of smoke.
"Bucciarati, did I do something wrong?" Narancia's face fell. "I'm sorry!"
Bucciarati seized him into a hug so tight that Gold prodded me to intervene. He'll crush my masterpiece!
"Careful. He's still delicate," I said, tugging at Bucciarati's sleeve.
"Giorno, you brilliant goddamn sociopath," Bucciarati murmured through Narancia's cloud of hair. "I will never forgive you and I owe you my fucking life for this."
"What the hell did you do?" Abbacchio demanded, stowing yet another knife as he ducked below the shattered windows to join us.
"Exactly what I promised," I said. "I had one of your knives, so Gold transformed it into the tissues that Narancia needed repaired. And a blood transfusion. Those bruises indicated leaking capillaries. Internal bleeding, a lot of it."
Abbacchio blinked twice and turned away.
"Hit the deck, we've got incoming!" Mista yelled.
Gold's fists transformed the nearest bullets into cherry blossoms. Sex Pistols kicked several more aside. With a wave of his arm, Bucciarati zipped open the air in front of the broken windows above our heads. The next pulses of gunfire went into that void and did not come out.
"Pocket dimension," Bucciarati said to my expression of wonder. As if that explained it. "No, Narancia, don't you dare send Aerosmith out there!"
"Oh!" Narancia exclaimed. "Why don't we try the turtle? It's supposed to save us!"
Fugo's laugh was piercing, hysterical. "Aww, come here, you insufferable dumbass. That's the stupidest thing you've said all day! I love you so. Fucking. Much!"
(Fugo)
"It does what?" I was certain I'd misheard. "But that makes no physical sense."
"Neither does Bucciarati's ability or mine," Giorno commented. Ugh, such a know-it-all.
"Fuck physics." Bruno set the turtle down and gestured at the ruby key lodged in its shell. "Climb in. I'll carry us out of here."
Mista made a swan dive at the floor. I wanted to laugh, but he stretched and shrank and the ruby swallowed him in. Impossible. Narancia giggled and leapt in after him. Giorno followed. Just the three of us now, like old times…
"Bruno, wait–"
"Leone, I don't want to hear it. My stand gives me the best safety, you'll just die and get us all killed if I let you take this one–"
"Not that. Trish."
We all stared at each other.
"Shit."
Abbacchio blinked. "Located. Under the next train car."
"Where we fought Ghiaccio? Wait, under?"
"Yeah. Don't ask me how."
"Fine. I'm on it. Now withdraw your stand before–"
"I fucking know, Bruno!"
"God damn, sorry for caring!"
"Guys." I put one hand on Bruno's shoulder, one on Abbacchio's. My only two friends. "I care enough for both of you, okay? Thanks for putting up with my – I mean, just now – whatever. I'm sorry."
"Hey." Bruno pulled me into a hug. "It's okay."
"Yeah. Thanks. Don't die out there."
"Take care of Narancia."
Bruno released me and offered his open arms to Abbacchio. A look crossed my friend's face. Just this once, he stepped in and wrapped Bruno in his arms.
Gunfire overhead again. The megaphone outside, something in English. Last chance, surrounded, blah blah blah.
Abbacchio pulled away, wiping his face in his sleeve.
Bruno gripped his hand. "Keep my team safe, Leone."
Returning his grip, Abbacchio nodded.
"Okay," Bruno told us. "Time to go."
Abbacchio gripped harder and shook his head. Bruno shot me a panicky look. His knuckles were white under the pressure. He couldn't get his hand free.
"Leone, there's no time. You have to let go."
"I can't. Not again. I'm coming with you."
"Hell to the no! Get in the fucking turtle!"
"Abbacchio–" I began, resting a hand on his back.
He backhanded me right across the face. Stunned, I stumbled into my stand's waiting arms. A surge of aggression from Purple Haze answered Abbacchio's instinctive fighter's stance–
A clank and metallic squeal. Someone had wrenched the door open at the far end of the train car. Out of time!
A lightning-fast combo from Sticky Fingers and Abbacchio was falling toward me, Bruno's zipped-off hand still gripped in his. His eyes flashed shock, betrayal. Then the turtle's ruby swallowed him.
One-handed, Bruno scooped up the illogical reptile. "Ready, Fugo?"
"Yeah." Shouting, boots, enemies entering. Tears shining in my friend's eyes. "I'll take care of him."
"Tell him I'm sorry. Really, really goddamn sorry."
"You got it, Bruno."
I made my dive for the turtle's ruby as Bruno took his first running step. As the nearest door squealed off its hinges. As Sticky Fingers lunged past me. As a red aura engulfed me.
Inside the turtle's ruby was a stately lounge room. Wainscotting, framed art, a gilt-edged mirror, a whiskey cabinet, plush armchairs, an oriental carpet.
No one was there but Abbacchio and myself.
The vacant chairs, the mirror revealing only our two stupid faces – the whole ornate room seemed contrived just to mock us.
"What the fuck!" I yelled, rushing to check inside, behind, beneath the furniture. "Where's Narancia? Mista? Giorno!"
Wordless, Abbacchio just shook his head. He was still clutching Bruno's abandoned left hand. Moody Blues was pacing every inch of the floor.
"I'm going back out. We have to tell Bruno."
Abbacchio pointed urgently at the ceiling. Through the ruby gem, there was nothing to see. Darkness. Swirling darkness.
"The turtle is inside one of Bruno's voids."
He nodded.
"Fuck." I threw my head back, trying to think. "Okay, I'll text him. Let's see if there's cell service inside a stand-using turtle inside a pocket dimension."
Click. Whirrr. Abbacchio had his hand up, his eyes on Blues.
As we watched, the stand flickered and morphed, picking up the figure of a stout, stoic-eyed little man.
"Signor Pericolo." I'd never met him before this morning, but I knew the trust Bruno placed in him. The only capo who cared if we lived or died, Bruno had said.
The capo delivered his message, showed us a photo, burned it and–
The gunshot echoed in my ears.
Blues winked out.
Abbacchio folded in on himself, cradling Bruno's lost hand and gasping for breath. I hurried to ease him into an armchair, fumbling as I tried to remember and avoid his sensory triggers.
"Water?" I asked. He shook his head, face curtained in his hair. "Got your Xanax on you?"
Shaking his head again.
"Fuck. Me neither."
I glanced behind me at what was obviously a whiskey cabinet. "Maybe a drink?"
His hands shook. It didn't take long before he nodded assent.
I grabbed one for myself, as well.
"Okay." I sat across from Abbacchio, watching tremors pass through him and wishing there was more I could do. If it was Narancia, I'd stroke his arms like wings and whisper nothings into his hair. If it was Bruno, I'd hold him and rock him until the tide went out again. If it was me, Abbacchio would sit me down with chamomile tea and a magazine and leave me in a quiet room until I was safe to be around. But for Abbacchio, there was only time or Xanax, and we didn't have either.
"Texting Bruno," I said, flipping open my phone. "Listen. We know he's alive because we're in one of his voids, okay? If anything… happens, we'll just wink out. No time to mourn. No time to feel it. Okay? So at least we've got that, friend."
I glanced up from my incomplete message on the tiny gleaming screen.
Abbacchio was not there.
A stranger stood behind his empty seat, chin resting on his fist. A dumb hairstyle and bad fashion sense announced his likely membership in Passione, but this was not someone I'd met.
"Fugo, right?" His voice was warm and good-humored. "Hey, I'm sorry to drag you into this, kid. It's really simple actually, but the others are not cooperating. Abbacchio always said you're super smart, right? So I'm sure you'll see reason."
"Clearly you don't know the first thing about me," I hissed. "Purple Haze!"
My monstrous stand was not at my side.
Movement caught my eye and I glanced up. The gilt-edged mirror on that wall showed not my own small and helpless figure, but my stand – flailing, equally helpless, in an empty room.
I knew exactly who this stranger was and how useless it would be to fight him.
(Abbacchio)
We were not in one of Bruno's voids anymore. The ruby ceiling was dark, but not wavery. There was a gradient of light, distorted by the gem's facets but motionless.
And when I looked down again, Fugo was not seated opposite me.
A moment later, Purple Haze shrieked into existence beside his empty seat, furious and aimless. Uncontrolled.
Blues shrilled in my mind like a flatlined ECG. Only a few stands that I knew of could have made that happen and all of them were far beyond Blues' ability to counter. My only option was to run, survive, come back to this prepared.
Survive for what?
I felt as hollow as I ever had, but a feeling stronger than RESOLVE lifted me like a puppet and made me fling myself out of the turtle's stateroom.
I emerged sputtering in muddy water, pooled in a round hole under the overturned train car where the fight with Ghiaccio had played out. I dragged myself out into the waning daylight. Ghiaccio's corpse was nowhere in sight, and neither was Trish. Blues gave me no trace of either.
The train was not surrounded by an armed motorcycle gang of ruthless American blondes.
Something was very, very wrong with the world I'd emerged into.
I closed my eyes and spread Blues' senses to their full radius.
Bruno.
I took off toward his trace like a hound unleashed.
Blues found Bruno for me on the roof of the train – in pieces. The zippers released when I fitted him back together, but his heart had stopped. He wasn't breathing. The bottom dropped out of my world and I spent the next minutes in freefall.
I learned CPR in police academy. It's not for the faint of heart. I won't bore you with the gruesome details – just this. They taught me that if you're not crunching some cartilage, you're having zero effect, and be ready because they might throw up in their mouth while you're giving breaths. So. Nothing like the romantic television depictions, but definitely cathartic. If you're desperate to save someone's life but you feel like breaking their ribs for dying on you in the first place, CPR is a two-for-one deal.
The hardest part is keeping going. It's fucking exhausting and the whole time, you know it's not gonna be enough. CPR doesn't typically restart the heart. It just keeps the blood moving until you can do better. You're gonna need a buddy to switch off with and EMTs on the way, or else you brought your own fucking defibrillator.
I had Blues. And it should have been child's play to get a defibrillator on a train in modern Italy, but there was this asshole with a fishing hook stand who wanted to fight me.
(Bucciarati)
I woke up to the strangest kind of kiss, and then Blues went right back to pummeling my chest. I started coughing right away and my ribs hurt so bad, I nearly passed out again.
Thank God for Blues. It's basically Leone's subconscious. It took a second for Blues to break out of this CPR replay, but then it was helping me roll over and holding me up with strong mauve hands while I choked out vomit. God, that was vile.
Lesson learned: You're not supposed to stop your own heart, even if you're escaping from an enemy who is tracking your heartbeat. Because how the shit did you think that was going to play out? Hearts don't spontaneously restart just because the pieces are reassembled. You can't save yourself while unconscious. You get six minutes to lie there passed out before brain damage sets in. Longer than that and you're gone. Those are the rules and no amount of RESOLVE can change them. Leone gets that. Three broken ribs and this faint, stammering pulse said I didn't.
But there was no time to dwell. Not even time to swish some water or have a quick gargle. We were still on top of a fucking train wreck, still under attack by the hitmen squad. I looked up to find Leone dancing with that fishing line stand that had impelled me to dismember myself in the first fucking place.
Leone was not winning.
The stand user was somewhere below us, casting his unreal fishing line through the train's roof like we were underwater and the surface was at our feet. We weren't underwater, of course, but it would explain why breathing hurt so much.
Leone was parrying with his horrid butterfly knife – wielding it purposefully, which looks so different than the lazy, hypnotic play he uses as a distraction. Fast, vicious strokes. The knife flashed from hand to hand, changing shape on its double hinge: scimitar, scissor, scythe.
An ordinary knife shouldn't even connect with a stand, but this was one of Risotto Nero's blood creations and sometimes those have special properties. Still. This fishing line stand was bad news. I knew from my own chance at fighting it that the line reflected all its damage onto the attacker.
So when Leone caught the hook, wrapped the line around his forearm, and cut it, I was unsurprised that the line dematerialized and left a crosshatch of bloody gashes where it had touched him. No, this did not surprise me at all. Both his sleeves were in tatters and there were rips across his chest, back, and thighs. There was blood everywhere – saturating his sleeves, slicking his hands, smeared over his face and hair where he'd wiped the sweat from his eyes. He looked like a madman, which, if he'd thought he was losing me, he certainly was.
An instant later, the hook struck upward through the roof again, trying to catch Leone from behind. He spun on his toes and knocked it aside with his blade – but even with his stand freed up from reviving me, there was little more he could do. Blues had leapt into the dance, but without a second stand-empowered weapon, all it could do was grasp at the line, which only ran through its fingers like so much sand.
Undeterred, unnatural, the hook turned in midair and came lancing back down again, again, and again. Clink, chink, snip – and I saw the shock go up Leone's arm, the damage invisible this time. Again, cutting the line bought him less than a breath of respite before the hook returned on another scathing run.
Imagine life as a thick, twisting cord of rope. Imagine cutting the individual threads of that rope, one at a time. Each one is a nerve. Each one is a capillary. That's the dance Leone had been doing while his stand worked against the odds to resuscitate me. He couldn't win. He was never going to win. All he could do was buy time. The price of even a few seconds took my breath away.
But we had a team. Where the fuck was our back-up? Buy me one more second, Leone. I pulled out my phone and flipped it open.
It was glitching. The tiny screen was displaying all its text backward.
Fuck technology. I knew Fugo's number by heart, so I punched it into the… number pad. That was backward, too.
Every single digit was printed backward on its key.
The red and green call buttons were reversed, too.
This was so much worse than a tech glitch. I suddenly knew why the Americans had all disappeared when I tossed the turtle into the pool of water.
Why Ghiaccio's corpse had instantly disappeared too, when I looked up from my own beleaguered expression. My reflection. In the water's surface.
Immediately before this fishing hook stand struck from inside the train: an enemy ambushing me from the place I'd just passed through. It had made no physical sense and I'd only kept running after that. But now, using more of Leone's priceless seconds to think, I understood the true danger we'd stumbled into.
This stand fight was happening inside Illuso's mirror realm.
A fresh spray of Leone's blood spattered my ankles and shoes. Fucking hell. I knew the mirror realm had a time limit after which you became a permanent occupant there. More immediately, though, this combat was placing a time limit on Leone's life. A really short one.
I had to stop this quickly – but how?
I unzipped the roof and looked down. Crawl space. I reached down and unzipped the ceiling, but the user was nowhere obvious in the car below.
At the corner of my eye, I saw the fishing hook hover, twitch toward me; had it sensed me? How the fuck did a fishing hook's senses work, anyway? That was so unfair!
Fast as treachery, Leone snagged the line on one of his knife's twin handles and wrapped it tight. Blues grabbed a fistful of line, but was helpless to hold it. The hook arced around and buried itself in Leone's palm; he couldn't parry without losing the line caught on his knife handle, so he didn't even try.
Leone threw the butterfly knife to Blues, which somehow caught it by the handle amid that razor-edged flutter. Blues pulled the line taut and the hook stopped its journey up Leone's arm. How long would that hold? Would this stand actually obey physical limitations like length?
I saw my opportunity and took it. Against all my body's protests, I scrambled to Leone's side and slapped some zippers on the worst of his wounds. He tried to push me away, making gestures of urgency. It occurred to me that he had stopped speaking.
"No," I told him. "This is important. Your survival is important to me!"
God, there was a jagged gash up his other arm, all the way from his wrist to his shoulder, where he must have torn the hook out once before – parallel to the artery, so damn close. My heart clenched and I wanted to hold him close, but he was such a bloody mess. There was nowhere to put my hands – hand. I still only had one. Leone would never just forget to give back my left hand. He must have left it inside the turtle.
Outside the mirror realm, if I was right.
Along with the team.
But then how had Leone gotten in?
I pushed those unsolvable puzzles aside. No time to be wandering in my own thoughts. Stay with it, Bruno. Focus!
"Okay," I told Leone, slapping shut my last healing zipper. "I know it doesn't hurt any less, but you won't lose liters of blood with every step. Now let's get after him."
It had only taken seconds. Beyond where Blues held it, the line bucked and curled, but the wrap on the knife handle had held. Just long enough.
I punched the line.
The hook fell out of Leone's wrist, leaving a zipper. I dismissed it. It left no scar.
The butterfly knife clattered out of Blues' hands and off the train's curved roof; the entire fishing line was activated with my zipper effect, so it sliced through the knife and left Blues holding only a handle.
The fishing line fell in coils on the train roof, opening up a tangle of zippers.
But none of that was the point.
The point was, there was now a small zipper at the point where the line emerged from the rippling roof surface. And all down the length of the line, there would be a trail of zippers every time it passed through a wall, ceiling, or any other surface. All the way back to the user.
Moody Blues isn't the only stand with a tracking ability. And this trick did not cost me those vulnerable, eyes-closed seconds of searching for a location to begin.
The line winked out of existence. Our fisherman was both clever and fearful, then.
"Come on!" I tugged open the first zipper and reached with Sticky Fingers' senses to find the next one. Not far.
Leone followed me, holding the remaining knife handle.
The fishing line had run several meters through the crawlspace in the train's roof before dropping through the ceiling into the passenger area. But why was it so dark down there? I opened the next zipper cautiously, revealing a small, dim box of space. With a latch. A luggage compartment. But it was empty. There was no next zipper; the fisherman had hidden here, but he had made his escape when he discerned my zipper trail ploy.
My angle was awkward as I leaned down into the compartment, and in the dim light, I didn't see the surface rippling. A hook tore straight into my heart – perfect aim, right between the ribs.
I yelped and tumbled into the luggage compartment, but my stand reacted immediately, punching the line to send another wave of zipper effect up and down it. The hook slipped free and I sealed my wound instantly, but like a snake, it struck at me again, going for my throat. I couldn't dodge in that cramped space; hot blood surged past my hand, and the hook was coming back for more. Claustrophobia choked me. Releasing my throat, I zipped open the bottom of the compartment – falling into the seating below, jarring my broken ribs most painfully. My vision blacked for a second; I clamped my hand to my throat, sealing first the artery, then the skin, with delicate zippers. The alarming flow of blood ceased. I wiped my sticky fingers on my blood-soaked collar. So many regrets.
Leone dropped down beside me, landing on his toes, already parrying that wicked hook with the remaining black iron handle of his knife. The luggage compartment above us creaked with weight and something moved up there; prone across the seats and struggling with blood loss, I fought a wave of terror before realizing it was Moody Blues. Leone had activated a replay. A location was all he'd needed; there was no running or hiding once Blues was on the trail.
"But your stand is defenseless," I objected. Speaking hurt; I resolved to do it less.
Leone shrugged. During a replay, he's free to defend his stand with his own surprising dexterity and wits. He's only fully defenseless while searching for a location.
Besides, the hook had vanished. I was certain it would return for an ambush. Our enemy was risk-averse, but adept at finding the point of greatest advantage.
Leone pulled me to my feet. I listened the blood in my ears, like so many waves on the shore. I was lightheaded after my foolish little no-heartbeat trick earlier, but there was no time. Leone couldn't have been faring much better, considering his injuries at Pompeii this morning and then the fresh bloodletting from his bout on the roof just now. We braced against each other and set out, following Blues' replay.
Blues had taken on the shape of a most singular enemy. His hair was green and sprouted from the top of his head like a wilted leek. His jaw receded almost entirely into his throat, giving him bulbous double chins reminiscent of a fish's gills. But he wasn't fat; he wore a sort of full-length leotard under an open, fur-edged trenchcoat – very much revealing a wiry, muscular body. Yet he hurried down the train car with a shuffling gait. The murder in his eyes failed to extend to his movements.
Presumably another member of the hitmen squad. Leone's former teammates.
"Do you know this one?" I asked.
Leone shook his head. Then with a tilt of his chin and a certain cut of his eyes, he suggested: weakness, pity, derision. We don't have a psychic link, Leone and I, but sometimes we come close. The words flashed through my mind: new recruit.
I saw in the way he hitched his shoulders, Leone didn't want to kill this one, but he was fully resigned to it. Passione did that to us.
As we crossed to the next car, that hook came sailing down at us, straight into Blues' back. It takes guts to attack your own image; I gave our enemy that.
Leone dropped to his hands and knees, coughing blood from his stand's injury. Blues paused, flickering like a VHS. One-handed, I had choices to make. And that hook wasn't about to let me hesitate. Ripping out of Blues' back – to a spray of blood from both bodies – the hook circled around to target my throat again.
I needed a minute. I zipped open my throat, letting the hook and line pass through, then sealed it around them without releasing the zipper. He yanked the hook back viciously, but instead of tearing through flesh, it caught on the zipper's tines. Sure, he could dismiss and recast his stand, but I had a few instants while he figured out what had happened.
I knelt beside Leone. I worked as fast as I could, though the wound went deep. There was torn lung down there somewhere, bubbling up a rosé froth of blood. This was getting bad. Zipper after tiny zipper, I knit the layers of flesh back together. Blues was easier; Leone dismissed the stand and restarted it, taking his opponent's shape. And his opponent had no wounds.
Anger was an icy riptide, cold in my veins.
"He's on the roof," I said, indicating the arc of the fishing line where it emerged from my throat.
Leone shook his head vehemently and fast-forwarded his stand. We continued our pursuit.
I wasn't gagging anymore; that was better – no, that was terrible! The enemy had realized how I'd caught his hook and dismissed it. It could return at any second. As we sprinted into the next car – how was Leone sprinting on a torn lung? – the hook shot down at us from the ceiling again and again. We dodged; Leone parried, I unzipped us time and again to let the hook pass through, closer every time.
"Fuck if I'll let him keep this up!"
I ripped a zipper through the ceiling. Hooking my stump arm into the crawlspace, I slammed my fist against the roof above with all of my stand's strength. A second zipper tore open the full length of the car, letting the roof sag inward.
Leone was right. Our enemy was not on the roof.
And Leone paid for my mistake. As he parried left, the hook shot around to the right and ripped open his chest. I wasn't there to open a zipper for it to pass through. I heard a horrible crunching noise. My love crumpled to the floor. Landing beside him, I saw his sternum had splintered. Damn, was that stand getting stronger? There was bone and blood and shiny wet tissue everywhere, all torn and out of place.
I'm so bad at jigsaw puzzles.
Go, he mouthed at me, unable to draw breath. We're so close.
"I can't read lips!" I snarled at him. "And you're not dying in someone else's stand dimension!"
I released a volley of machine gun blows, one-handed, slicing my love's chest into thin, manageable slices and hitting the fishing line at intervals so that it only left harmless void-zippers wherever it struck us now.
"Blues!" I yelled, as the fishing line trussed me in a tight diamond pattern, ready to dice me with the zipper effect I'd given it. "Save him!"
Leone and Blues are fucking boss at jigsaw puzzles.
Before the line could pull tight, I threw the zipper I almost never throw: one that opens the space directly around me and pulls me into a skin-tight void.
I closed it and disappeared on the spot. The fishing line pulled tight around the empty space I'd left behind. I envisioned it tangled and knotted on the floor.
The darkness was perfect and it hugged my skin, holding me motionless.
No time for claustrophobia. No time for memories, or ragged breaths, or this fluttering pulse. If I passed out in here, there was a terrible chance that I would dismiss the void with the zipper closed and erase myself. No, Fugo was right, that was no way to be thinking. Just focus on the task at hand.
I concentrated on the zippers I'd left outside. Ordinarily, my sense of my zippers is as faint as starlight – but with nothing else to see or feel, that sense seemed radiant.
Blues had already pushed four zippers together; finished with those slices. I released them, felt their edges merge seamlessly. Using my stand to heal felt so satisfying, when so often I used it to cause harm.
Blues was fast. Its nimble fingers worked the edge of the next zipper, pulling bone and tissue into place. When it moved on a fraction of a second later, I released the zipper, letting one more layer of flesh join the rest. I felt a shudder against my remaining zippers. Leone was breathing again, under his stand's clever hands.
What was the fishing hook doing? Apparently my zipper effect blows had stacked; what a bizarre twist. The fishing hook stand was still in zipper mode, slashing across Blues ruthlessly. I released each zipper as soon as it manifested. The effect was harmless.
Halfway through mending Leone's ruined chest. Only a few seconds.
The enemy took a new tactic, trying to slice out a circle of floor around where Blues worked. Not a chance! From inside my void, I sealed that zipper as it opened.
Now it tried a crazy new pattern, attacking the walls of the passenger compartments further down the train car. Zigzagging fast, the enemy created a jumble of walls and debris that I couldn't easily reassemble from here. What was that for?
Releasing the zipper on the last slice of Leone, I spent one more unbearable instant in my void, seeking out that furthest zipper – the one that marked whatever hiding place our enemy had now holed up in. There. As long as I didn't lose it, we wouldn't need Blues to track him now.
Moving my stand in the cramped space within myself, I opened the zipper on the bodysuit void that held me. I uncurled and stepped back into real space.
Leone was pulling himself to his feet, relying heavily on Blues.
Denied. I threw my fist at the nearest passenger compartment and shoved Leone and Blues through the zipper with my stump arm, closed them in there. Not without pickpocketing Leone for that knife handle as I retrieved my fist, though.
Walls were little protection against this fishing stand that treated all surfaces like water, but hopefully Leone would take the hint and stay out of harm's way. For all the seconds he'd bought me, I could buy him a chance to recover from that last vicious hit – if he would accept it.
The hook quested toward me. It struck for my heart and I let it strike – a phenomenal risk to buy Leone's safety. That was a money shot, straight into the heart. The enemy wouldn't be dismissing his stand until we finished. It was just too damn good, the chance I was offering him at killing me in a single move.
Just as quickly, I reeled his line onto the handle of Leone's blood-knife, as I'd seen Moody Blues do before. The smooth groove for a thumb-hold caught the line neatly and I held it at arm's length, keeping the line into my chest taut but not tugging. If I stumbled, or if the line slipped, I had just a millimeter of grace before it would tear out my heart.
Beyond the knife, the line bucked and pulled furiously, testing the strength of Sticky Fingers' arm. With one finger, I ran a zipper into the knife. I slipped the tight coil of line into that and released my zipper, letting the metal seal smoothly around the line so it couldn't slip. One less way to die. I was ready.
Now I let the stand user reel me in, since he so desperately wanted to. Holding the line just so with Sticky Fingers' firm hand reinforcing my grip, I danced and tugged like a fish, forcing the line to play out just a little as I swung to the left, only to let myself be hauled closer as we swung right again.
I had not lost the location of my furthest zipper, the one that marked the fisherman's hiding place.
But it was on the far side of this jumble of debris that he had created while Blues and I were healing Leone. I was going to be dragged through it, and if my hand slipped just a little, I could end up tearing out my own heart with the length of line I held myself.
I was fighting one-handed, thanks to the tangle of my own mistakes – a years-long history of betrayals large and small – that riddled my relationship with Leone. If I'd gotten even one thing right in my treatment of him, he would have been able to let go of my hand and follow the team into the turtle's stand dimension. We could have trusted each other to fight our separate battles with peace of mind. We'd be two whole people, not two broken ones holding each other's pieces.
My one hand was occupied in holding the knife handle precisely forty-two centimeters from my heart. I couldn't throw new zippers without weakening my grip. I braced my feet against the first scrap metal of this zipper-ridden heap of rubble. The fishing line tugged harder, forcing me forward. How would I cross without stumbling?
I didn't dare free up that hand. If I gripped the knife handle under my stump arm instead, the enemy would have slack in the line to tear his hook sideways between my ribs. If I moved the knife handle to my teeth, he could dart that hook up to cut my throat instead. And with each step closer, the strength of his stand was increasing.
I couldn't throw new zippers, but that didn't mean I was helpless to affect my surroundings. My anger was ice, soothing my pounding head and steadying my adrenaline-infused limbs. I braced myself and concentrated on my stand senses: the dozens of zippers riddling the heap of metal, plastic, and wood veneer that blocked my path toward the enemy.
That one. I allowed a zipper to close, up and away to my right. That lifted a metal bar in front of me, so that a bank of seating slid down. I stepped over it.
One zipper after another, I shifted the heap of debris so that I could pick my way through, always finding a new foothold to brace against. If the fishing line's frantic tugging caused me to overbalance even once, it would likely prove fatal.
At last, I found clear space on the other side of the debris. The strength in the line was immense, since I was so close to the user. We were only three-and-a-half meters apart now.
My enemy made one last attempt to trip me up, letting the line go slack suddenly so that I stumbled backward. But I had Sticky Fingers' legs under my own, already bracing each step through the rubble, so I recovered my balance easily.
I was looking up when I spotted my final zipper – and the sign directly above it, printed backwards, of course. Danger: High voltage. Do not open panel. Use extreme caution.
That's right. Italy's trains run on overhead electric lines. Every car is wired. Therefore every car has a panel behind which the controls and wiring for high voltage electricity are safely locked away.
My enemy had taken cover within one such panel. How he had opened it was obvious enough; the keys, stolen off a conductor, were still in the lock. But if I opened that panel door, I would expose my face and torso to a point-blank attack.
If I somehow freed up the hand that held the line to my heart, I could throw my fist from a distance and open the door with a zipper. But a thrown fist could easily land amid the dangerous live wires that panel contained.
If there had been no other stakes, I would have waited him out. I couldn't hide, with his sensory line lodged in my heart, but most enemies collapse under pressure before I do. However. My stakes were untenable: Leone barely stable, my team and Trish presumably taken by the Risotto's most elusive operative. I had no time to waste.
The fisherman tugged experimentally on the line. My plan was goddamn stupid, but I was under pressure and it would have to do.
Using fingertip zippers, I secured the knife handle in the wall beside me. As long as I stayed exactly forty-two centimeters from that point, my heart was safe and my hand was free. I could release myself anytime by punching a zipper effect onto the line, but that would release the hook as well. My opponent could also dismiss and recast his stand, but I thought he'd prefer to keep me restrained.
I took a coin from my pocket – was it the same one I picked up while taunting Giorno, upon our first meeting yesterday? I used my stand's enhanced aim and strength to throw it at the keys in the lock on the high voltage panel door.
My aim was true. The key turned. Slightly overstuffed, the panel door swung slowly open, revealing:
A metal panel covered in switches and labels.
Below it, a jumble of wires insulated with thin plastic sheaths.
Beside these, a narrow inset closet where tools and coils of wire were stored.
And of course, barely fitting inside the closet, my enemy.
His stand was literally a fishing pole. I'm not sure why I was disappointed by that. It appeared to require two-handed contact, but I guessed he could reduce it to one if he caught the reel against his thumb. That did suggest the stand was not self-minded or insightful; more like my Sticky Fingers, less like Moody Blues or Sex Pistols.
As I took in the prospects for throwing my first punch, his eyes took in the situation with the knife handle, his fishing line, my one free hand. He could easily see that I was fixed in place and that suited his purposes. He'd be shooting fish in a barrel if he had any other weapon on him.
"You're not the one I was after," he told me, aiming for casual but coming up tense. Maybe he didn't have another weapon? "I'm not here on orders. Illuso let me in here with you because I begged him for the chance to avenge my Bro. I told him not to pull me out, either, until it's done."
"Ah," I said. So helpful of him to mention it! "And who was this bro of yours?"
I saw his jaw tighten. Tightly wound, this one. Noted.
"Prosciutto of the Execution Squad. His stand was the Grateful Dead."
"Never heard of him," I lied.
He looked like he might assault me bare-handed. That would be a piece of luck, wouldn't it?
"Your associate killed him this morning," he snarled through clenched teeth. "I'm here to kill the traitor and avenge my Bro. You have nothing to do with this. If you stop interfering, I might even let you live."
I had nothing to do with protecting Leone's life? Avenging your "bro?" Get out of that closet, kid! I examined my opponent. Under the murderous mask, he looked not much older than Narancia. That was a thought. If Fugo died on this absurd mission from hell, would Narancia be gunning down hitmen squad members and wearing that look of derangement? Yes, I thought so. It was already obvious how I'd respond to threats against Leone's life. It was a pity that we were enemies, considering this kid's age and the motives we shared. Nonetheless. This young fool was hellbent on killing my love and my only answer to that was lethal force.
I didn't tell him any of that. All I needed was his rage.
"Big talk, little man."
In a flash, he tossed a coil of loose line around my neck and jerked it tight. If I hadn't punched it with my zipper effect, it would have cut straight through me.
As it was, my head zipped off and I immediately sealed it back on.
"Point taken," I said. "What else did you have in mind?"
"I'll kill you," he roared.
He hauled on his reel, allowing his newly zipper-infused fishing line to slice right through the knife handle that I'd used to secure it to the wall. The loop of line around my neck had been a ruse to gain a bit of my powers. I cursed myself for falling for it.
I took the only choice left. I leapt at my enemy, matching the speed of his reel, until I clasped his fishing pole's tip directly to my heart, leaving no room for the tearing he intended.
"You're not supposed to say that until I'm dead," I admonished.
We were eye to eye, chest to chest, with his fishing pole jammed upright between us. He grappled my good arm, but Sticky Fingers isn't in that arm. It only seems that way when I'm using it closely, as I'd been doing throughout this fight. My stand stepped out of me and pummeled my opponent one-fisted with hard, fast blows.
As his face peeled apart, my enemy grinned at me. He sidestepped.
I couldn't shift Sticky Fingers' targeting in time.
The next punch went past my opponent and landed on the switchboard, peeling open the metal and the wires' insulation and crossing several wires against each other.
Short circuit doesn't convey the violence that resulted.
I was flung against the opposite wall. That was the only mercy. I'm given to understand that direct current electricity will lock you in contact, while alternating current will fling you away. So some peace-loving engineer somewhere deserves my gratitude. I hope he wasn't killed by someone like me.
I came to seconds later on the floor with my enemy standing on my throat, just starting to press down.
His face was in bloody ribbons, hanging all down the front of his leotard, so he was in no shape for talking, but the slow pressure of his wing-tipped leather shoe said it all: I was quite possibly his first kill and he definitely intended to enjoy it.
But I know very well how to gain advantage from others' pleasures.
I had just a few breaths before my windpipe would give way. Those breaths were an asset. I focused on that.
Moving my arm was agony. I knew from the smell that I'd taken third-degree burns. The muscles moved with jerky contortions, suggesting they'd been burned through in places. My heart was shuddering and pattering in turns. It's not recommended to induce heart failure, slit an artery, and electrocute yourself in the same twenty-minute span. I was only alive thanks to Leone. I was probably only conscious because of the vitality boost that stand users enjoy. It sure as hell wasn't thanks to my paper-thin plot armor! Fuck this shitty deuteragonist gig.
And fuck dying in a side plot, facing down some nameless mook with subpar character design in a weakly defined stand dimension!
I set those thoughts aside to concentrate on moving one arm. I had to start my stand as close as possible to where I needed it, because I'd only be able to sustain it for about a second at this point.
"Sticky Fingers," I wheezed, barely audible.
Above me, my enemy began to shake with a horrible rasping noise. I realized that he was laughing at me through his disgusting wreckage of a face.
Ever faithful, my stand rose out of me like an aura. I twitched its fist against his ankle, making the smallest of incisions before my stand faded out.
I'd cut a tendon. My enemy squealed in surprise as he twisted and went down.
In a new cascade of agony, he sprawled crosswise across my lacerated and burn-riddled body.
Before he could scramble away, I plunged all my remaining RESOLVE into one final blow: I flung my stand-empowered arm across his back, landing an ill-aimed but heavy punch against his spine.
The zipper spread and slowly ripped open – a space, not a void. Hot guts spilled over me. His torso toppled to one side, flopping helplessly. His hips and legs rested heavily on me, paralyzed into stillness.
"How?" he gasped. "How did I lose?"
I wasn't going to tell him he hadn't lost yet. He'd lost his diaphragm, impairing his breathing, but his lungs were oxygenating freely from exposure to air. He had until they dried out. If he'd cast his stand at that moment and nicked open my throat, I would have bled out in a matter of seconds and that zipper would have closed, restoring him. I was entirely vulnerable and trapped beneath him. The only thing that could decisively turn the tables in my favor would be…
The thud of a knife into flesh, with – quietly – the crunch of a delicate bone.
My enemy's forehead dropped against the floor and he was still.
…Leone.
"You want to tell me to be careful, and this is how I find you?"
With Blues' strength, he rolled the enemy off me, then cleared away handfuls of entrails.
"Good thing you've still got that mysterious immunity thing from eating some stand-user chef's traditional Italian food back in the day," he muttered. "You're bathing all your cuts in someone else's blood right now. Jesus Christ, Bruno, what the hell happened to your arm?"
As Leone helped me sit up, I got my first look at the electrical damage to my right arm. It was a horror straight out of hell. I closed my eyes and focused my entire will on not throwing up, because I didn't think I could live in my cracked ribcage if I did.
I nodded toward the electrical panel with my chin.
"You punched that? Fucking why?"
"Didn't mean to."
"That's no excuse," Leone chided mockingly. "'If you won't value your own life, then at least value mine. You know I have no interest in living without you,'" he quoted – those were my lines from our quarrel on the road out of Pompeii. "'If you get yourself killed, I'm right behind you.'"
"Damn your memory," I muttered.
"That was two hours ago, Bruno, and you were dramatic. Anyone would remember it. Never a dull moment with you, amore mio."
I don't know how long I rested there, sitting on the floor, leaning against Blues. Leone must have badly needed the rest, too, or he wouldn't have let so much time pass us by in Illuso's mirror realm. Or maybe it wasn't long at all.
My consciousness came and went in varying shades of lucidity. At a certain point, I realized I'd started shaking. I was cold. Colder than fury, as cold as Ghiaccio's ice. It felt like I'd never get warm. That goaded a memory of what shock amounts to and where it leads. I started into motion again. Undirected motion.
"Water," Leone reminded me. "You were using your stand to retrieve the water bottles you carry."
I had been. My hand was already tucked into one of the voids I keep on my person, like deep pockets. I finished the familiar gesture and came up with two water bottles. Leone took over from there.
"Up," he said a minute or two later. Or maybe it was more. "We need to get you warm and get that arm clean. After that, we need to figure out if this is Illuso's dimension or someone else's, get the hell out, and find the team. And Trish."
"And Giorno," I muttered, as Leone propped me up between Blues and himself to get me walking.
Leone snorted. "Damn traitor. Gave away our location. Why do you think Risotto's entire squad converged on this train?"
"The van," I said.
"You think they followed our highly inconspicuous van all the way from Pompeii, and you and I were so attentive, yet we didn't even notice them?" Leone glanced at me and watched his sarcasm sail straight over my head. He sighed. "Yeah. You're probably right. Actually, Illuso's probably been watching us all day. Giorno's probably not plotting against us. He did save Narancia's life. I'm willing to take a few more risks if he can fix this hellspawn arm of yours, for example. Oh, and here's this for you."
He produced my missing left hand from one of his inner jacket pockets.
That startled me into full alertness.
"You had that all along?" I zipped it back on and flexed it. It was dead numb, but mobile. The fiery pins and needles would come later.
"Yeah. Sorry. I was going to put it back on when I found you, but your heart took all the time I had. Your zippers aren't easy when you're unconscious and that fishing guy attacked me straightaway. Did you ever find out his name, by the way?"
I shook my head. I almost retorted that Leone could have given me my hand at any time throughout the encounter. I almost pointed out that both of us had nearly died, multiple times, because I'd been fighting one-handed. But then I thought about who Leone was and I decided to carry my own guilt. After all, it was my own damn fault. And it didn't matter now.
What mattered was escaping from Illuso's realm before we became permanent residents, and saving our team from whatever the hitmen squad still had in store for them.
Guilt crept up my chest and prickled my throat – the only kind of shame I'm willing to acknowledge anymore.
My fault that we almost died in this horrible one-armed fight.
My fault that we were stranded with no idea what was happening to our team.
If I had to serve in Passione and I had to be a capo, at least I wanted to be a capo like Pericolo. I wanted to never lose a single operative. Yet here I was. What would he say if I lost my entire team on my first day as a capo?
Leone swung me down to the summer grass between the sprawled train cars, so careful of my many cuts and burns. Following lightly, incredible after the bone-shattering injuries he'd taken at Pompeii just hours earlier, he hitched me onto his shoulder again and laced his fingers through the numb fingers of my restored left hand.
"What's that for?" I mumbled, staring at his strong, elegant hand wrapped around mine. I realized moments were disconnecting from each other. Single details, like the ring on his finger, stood out in a sea of disorientation.
"You're spacing, aren't you? …Bruno?"
I nodded. Fugo would call it dissociation, but Fugo has a penchant for pedantry.
"So you might or might not remember this. I guess I'll take a chance." Leone paused in our limping trajectory toward – what? Toward the turtle, right where I'd left it. Had Illuso chosen to dismiss my team from his realm, but keep the turtle, Leone, and me – just for that fight? But Leone was speaking. "…like you said earlier, you spend every day with me and it's no fucking honeymoon, but you're there for me no matter what. And then finding you dead like that, Bruno, it made me think, what if… I mean, what if we die and I've never kissed you again? Can I accept that?"
I stared at him. I felt the numbness receding and the pins and needles beginning.
"Just can't stop thinking about it. After the sculptor's prediction, and then today– Sorry, I'll… figure myself out. It's not your problem." He tried to slip his hand from mine, but I was not letting go despite the blossoming pain in my hand. "Bruno?"
When I black out and stop forming memories, I get clingy, flirtatious, giggly. This used to save my life on the regular back when I was a pretty, helpless young thing, coerced into the mafia and surviving at the whim of men much older and crueler than I. These days, it's pure trouble. At least Leone knows not to take it personally. I think.
Whatever sultry physical impossibility I whispered in his ear, I don't remember and he won't tell me. I only remember his wan smile.
"Let me think it over, darling. Maybe sometime when you don't look like a Batman villain and you know what the fuck you're saying."
This is followed by the vivid memory of the taste of his lips and the flutter of his eyelashes near mine, but it could easily be just that – a much older memory taking hold when my connection to painful reality cut out.
My memory resumes in the turtle's stateroom, ensconced in one of the couches with extra cushions piled over me for warmth. I checked my arm; Leone had found the gauze in the first aid kit and bandaged it handily. Something held the pain at bay, probably fine Italian grappa. I was wearing a clean suit that I must have somehow retrieved from my voids, though I couldn't remember doing so.
Leone had cleaned himself up, too. His blood-stained hair was pulled back in a tight bun, most uncharacteristically, and he'd even managed a change of clothes somehow. He was talking quietly on the phone. I did a double-take; yes, the turtle's stand dimension included a landline telephone. Behind Leone's armchair, Blues had wrapped an arm around him and was stroking his hair lazily, wearing a form I seldom saw – a man I'd never met, though I wished I could have. He looked like nothing much but he had the kindest eyes. Leone twisted the ring on his finger, an old, old habit that I also seldom saw.
When Blues noticed me noticing, it shifted into its own mauve form and walked over to check on me. Leone paused his conversation, eyes on me. But I was already drifting off.
The last thing I noticed was the pieces of that awful butterfly knife on the coffee table in front of him. I dreaded the task of mending it, even just touching it, but I knew it was a tool that Leone relied on. He'd gone back for those pieces – how much time had we spent in Illuso's realm already?
No one else was around. Alarm was distant, quiet as a lullaby. Sleep was a powerful undertow. No time for regret as I slipped beneath the waves again.