A dog howled in the distance. Another joined it, then another, and more, until the world was full of their mournful song. The sound made Brick's neck and arms prickle.

He remembered going to sleep in Thousand Cuts, but now he was somewhere else. Somewhere cool and clean, standing in grass that came up to his knees and rolled out as far as he could see, mounded in gently sloping hills, receding into a purple skyline. The chorus of dogs peaked and petered out, until all that remained were isolated yelps.

Brick was dreaming, but it was no ordinary dream. That moon, the hunting moon, hung low and pale in the sky.

A short distance away, the grass rustled. A pale, wedge shaped head poked over the stalks, its broad muzzle split into a grin.

"Pris..?" Brick said. He stumbled forward, picking up speed, until he was tearing across the field toward his dog. He knew he was dreaming, but he couldn't help himself. It was too vivid. Priscilla was there, right there, where he could tousle her down and pull her ears...

He stopped before he reached her. She hadn't moved, not an inch, not when he called her name and not when he sprinted across the field. Now that Brick was close enough to see her eyes, and saw that something was wrong with them. They weren't pale blue, like they had been—when she was alive, he reminded himself—but had become empty, glassy orbs. Moon-eyes.

All around, the grass shivered and parted, split by the hunched backs and domed heads of other dogs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all shapes and sizes. They all watched at Brick with empty eyes. He took a step backward.

The moon had driven the dogs mad. They had howled to it and it infected them, somehow, taking away their dogness, turning them into soulless meat.

As though it could hear what Brick was thinking, the moon turned toward him. It cast an unfeeling eye over his mind and rumbled with laughter when it found what it was looking for.

FASS.

The dogs leaped toward Brick. They streamed after him with uncanny grace and coordination, and he whirled around, stumbling, feet snagging in the grass, tearing it out by the roots. He could feel the dogs behind him, their hot breath at his back.

The ground before him shattered, ripped apart as something pushed through. It swelled into a tall, lumpy blockade, and Brick clambered up, desperate to escape the snapping jaws.

He went on for awhile before he recognized what he was climbing through. They were bodies. Not human, but alien: the guardians that had tried to stop Brick and his friends from opening the vault. As their corpses roiled upward, he gripped their glossy shells and planted his feet against throbbing, vascular spiderwebs, past bulging black orbs and spindly, knobby legs. Some were still twitching.

The dogs fell away, their howls dwindling. At last, Brick reached the top. He looked around.

More spires had thrust from the earth—Coral and cobalt, smooth and veiny—and Brick suddenly recognized them. They were the alien structures that dotted the Garden, the landscape which now curved out and away under his gaze. Squinting, he could make out figures far below, frolicking through fields and lakes with naked abandon.

Brick breathed deeply. Up here, the air was sweet, the sky ripe with stars, crowded together so thick that there was nearly more starlight than void.

"You changed your mind. You stayed in the Kingdom of Man," a voice said. The moon's voice. It didn't speak aloud, but echoed in Brick's head like his own thoughts.

"Yeah," he said. His head throbbed with a sick, feverish heat.

"Why?"

"The girls don't need me anymore. I...I fucked up."

Something was happening below, some commotion, and he watched the scene unfold. The naked figures had ceased their languorous hedonism. Now they tore across the fields, screaming with distant, tinny voices, and it took Brick a moment to see why. It was the dogs. They ran after the figures, pounced, dragged them down and ripped them apart.

Brick swallowed and looked away, up at the stars and moon.

Nothing at all to be done about that, he thought. He didn't speak the words aloud, but the moon heard him anyway. Of course it did. This was all Brick's mind, turned inside out.

"YOU CAN BRING HER BACK," the moon said, its voice changed. It had been low, intimate, but now it boomed. It filled Brick's head with pain.

He closed his eyes and saw Kindle's eyes—twin suns—emblazoned on the back of his lids, just like shape of the Hyperion chip was now burned into his hand. He would have given anything, even his own worthless life, to relight those suns, but it was impossible. A soul couldn't be hollered home. Shouldn't be.

A shadow fell over the moon. It waned, becoming a silver crescent.

I SEE.

"I want to go home," Brick said. He felt suddenly very young, very weak. The people below continued to scream, but the sound grew fainter as the dogs picked them off. Brick reached up to grab the key on his necklace, but he reached with the wrong hand- the burned one. He'd forgotten to treat it.

The pain shocked him, and he jolted...

...awake.

Brick dropped the necklace and sat up. He was twisted in the sheets, clammy and shaking, pulse yammering, but already the dream began to slip through the cracks of his mind.

His hand didn't hurt as much as it had in his dream, but ached enough to send him fumbling for the open bottle of nanite infused antiseptic. He found it under the blankets—where Rocko had been, though he'd slipped out sometime while Brick slept—and slathered a generous fistful into his palm.

He lay back on the mattress, holding up his hand. Sweat pricked his brow as he watched the red, puckered flesh smooth over, stretching taut over the muscle. It itched deep into the meat of his palm. Brick tried to remember the old superstition his daddy had told him, the one about itchy palms. That he'd be coming into money soon?

When the crawly sensation stopped, Brick inspected the new, pink skin. A few patches had been seared smooth, so the creases stuttered, leaving hollow places across his life and love lines—a creaseless crater where Mordecai had once planted a kiss.

The room smelled stale, like dust and mold, and Brick wanted to get out of there. But first, he retrieved the photograph of Stone and his daughter from where Rocko had stashed it. He studied their faces, trying to remember the girl's name. It was the name of some gemstone- Opal, or something like that. No, Brick thought. It was Ruby. Rocko hadn't told him about her. Because it was too hard to talk about? Or for the same reason Brick didn't talk often about Amanda or his dogs...because he felt responsible?

He tucked the frame back into the crate and climbed to his feet. He clipped his energy shield on his belt and holstered his Masher revolver—now the only gun he didn't simply digistruct—before crossing to the door.

He exited the cramped room, swallowing a deep, grateful breath, inhaling the strangely comforting smell of rubber and oily tang of metal.

"Rocko, babe?" he called, the syllables swollen by a yawn. He gave his belly a lazy scratch as he ambled into the main chamber. "You here?"

"I'm outside," Rocko called back.

Brick exited into the open shipping yard. Stark sunlight greeted him, and he squinted against its glare, waiting for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he was greeted by Rocko waving him over. The man slouched against a corrugated metal crate in the shade, his hair still sleep mussed and falling into his eyes. Bandits stood or perched around in a loose semicircle, and they parted to let Brick through. A few saluted. One gave a sloppy sort of bow.

Brick chuckled, shaking his head. "At ease, boys."

Rocko hummed a sleepy acknowledgment to Brick when he reached him, first pushing his hair out of the younger man's face and then kissing him. Brick heard a bandit scoff and his hand dropped to the revolver on his hip. The bandit took the hint, falling silent.

"Whaddya doin out here?" he asked Rocko.

"Just finding out about the Hyperion occupation," he said, tucking himself neatly against Brick's side.

"Yeah? And?"

"Don't know yet. I was about to ask. Hey, you. What's your name?" Rocko said, looking to the nearest bandit.

"Me?" the raider asked. When Rocko nodded, he said, "Bone. M'name's Bone. And Hyperion...they, uh...I donno. I mean...'s not a good location. Right? I mean, on the cliffs here, nothin for miles. They set up here a few months ago. Omar an' Raz tried to shake 'em loose, but, eh...they're tough. Tough bastards. Killed a lotta Slabs before the king gave it up. I-"

"Slabs?" Brick interrupted.

"'s the clan. This clan. Dang, man, you're the new king, and you don't even know that?"

Brick shrugged, a seismic display of nonchalance. "I know it now. You just told me. Anyway, you said there's nothin for miles. Why's Hyperion up our asses, then?"

"Beats me. Maybe they're hiding something. 's pretty remote. If someone wanted to hide a thing, they might put it here."

Brick stepped out of the shadows to get a better look at the Hyperion base in the south. It sloped up and away to the distance, half hidden behind a complex of guard towers and turrets.

"We're gonna pick up where the last king left off," Brick announced.

"But...last time-"

"You didn't have me last time. Though, Rocko tells me that you had him before," Brick said, turning to look back at the bandit.

He was mildly surprised to see the raider take a retreating step. "...Not me. Maybe some of these bastards, though," he said, gesturing around.

The other bandits sniggered or turned away, their expressions hidden behind masks, and for a moment Brick still didn't get it. Then he realized the double meaning of his own words. He'd only meant that the Slabs had Rocko in their clan, once, but the way it came out...

Rocko's hand slipped into Brick's and gave it a quick, comforting squeeze; whether it was to draw reassurance or to give it, Brick didn't know. Either way, it did nothing to calm the sucking pit that opened in his gut at the sound of the Slabs laughter.

He stepped forward. His hand fell again to his pistol, this time closing around the handle, but before he could draw, there came the clap of another gunshot. Bone's forehead was gone, replaced by a dark, gory pit. A bullet had punched through his skull, wiping out his shield and his life with one shot.

"What the hell!" said another bandit, who moved to get up from the barrel he'd been perched on. He was cut down by another shot. It laid him dead across the ground, brains sprayed against the wall behind him.

Pandemonium broke out as the bandits scrabbled up, tried to flee or draw their guns, but were picked off, one by one, with cold, calculated precision.

Rocko came to Brick's side, clutching him with curled, frightened claws and looking around for the assailant. Brick didn't have to search. He'd fought alongside the sharpshooter often enough to gauge his position, and his eyes went straight to the spot where he'd be. Sure enough, he found him atop the armory that had housed the Baby Maker.

It was Mordecai—a tom who's snuck into the junkyard to swipe a bone out from under the old dog's nose—crouched on the roof of the stash, his gaunt figure in sharp relief against the sky. He made no attempt to hide himself from view, and kept his eye to the sniper's scope. Brick could feel the crosshairs on him.

They eyed each other for a long, pregnant moment, before Mordecai lowered the rifle to his side. He held up his other hand, signing something. At first, Brick thought Mordecai was flipping him the bird. He nearly returned the gesture, then realized it wasn't Mordecai's middle finger he held up, but his pinky. A promise.

Mordecai turned and vanished over the roof of the armory.

Brick sprinted off without a word to Rocko. There would be time to talk later, but Mordecai was quick, and if he was trying to get away, Brick would have a slim chance to catch him. He lunged across the makeshift bridge, nearly toppling over the side as it pitched under his weight, but made it across and jogged up the ridge.

But when he reached the armory, Mordecai was gone. The stash's entrance was a dark, gaping maw, the electric fence deactivated, and Brick could make out the interior well enough to see that it was picked clean. The shelves had been stripped of the remaining weapons, either by other Slabs or by Mordecai.

He was about to turn away when a glint in the shadows caught his eye. He entered the armory and crossed to the crimson bauble that had attracted his attention, like the single beady eye of a skag. It was a gun, its elemental accessory glowing with faint luminescence. Brick bent and picked up the assault rifle, inspecting it from barrel to stock, and took it into the sun to get a better look.

Mordecai had made good on his word. The Draco had been reconstructed, as good as new.