“Adelina,” Milo said. “A new friend.”
Henry nodded, looked in the same direction as Milo. “I don’t see her, but I believe you. After what’s just happened here – not to mention what’s happening to me right now – I’d believe anything.”
Adelina said, “He might see me soon, Milo. I hope he does. It would be an honor.”
Milo frowned at that, but his mind was having enough trouble keeping up with recent developments, so he just made a quick mental note to ask her later what she meant.
Milo looked at Faye, saw how frail and worn-out she seemed. “Tell her I’m sorry, would you, Henry? This was the only way I knew of reasserting myself in the physical world.”
“Milo says he’s sorry,” Henry said to Faye. “If he wasn’t dead, he’d offer to buy you new things.”
Faye didn’t respond. She was in no mood for humor. She was in no mood for anything. Her eyes were glazed, and she appeared to be breathing very shallowly. She sat completely still and just stared ahead into the middle distance. Seeing nothing. Not wanting to see anything.
Henry turned back to Milo. “She’ll come around.”
“Tell him what I told you now, Milo,” Adelina said. “It’s very important that he know.”
“Henry, listen,” Milo said. “Adelina says you can’t leave the apartment. At least not yet. She says they’ll kill you. Apparently, people know about you, that you’ve begun changing.”
“Palermo has men keeping an eye on this place,” Adelina said, clarifying. “You were careful, but not careful enough. They’ll know if you move, and where you’re moving to. There’s no point in going anywhere right now. We need to figure out our next move, then proceed very carefully.”
Milo related Adelina’s words to Henry, who stood nodding, then said, “Well, that’s fine. I’m not going to pretend I have any idea what’s happening to me, why Palermo wants to kill me, or what’s going on in a larger sense, but one thing is certain: someone is going to come looking for Steve. His ambulance is parked behind this building. And we need to do something about the body.”
Everyone looked at Steve’s cooling corpse. Everyone but Faye; she continued to stare at nothing, subconsciously fiddling with a loose thread in her pants.
“Why did you do that, anyway, Henry?” Milo asked. “I know he was going to take a picture, and that obviously wouldn’t have been good, but this was… unnecessary.”
“I know,” Henry replied. “I know. I don’t know why I did it. It happened very fast, and I didn’t feel like I was in control of myself when my arm shot forward and just…” He shook his head. “I felt like what was inside me – what makes me who I am, what makes me Henry – was the wrong version of me. Disconnected. Lost. Replaced by something… else.”
Slowly, like sunlight filtering down through murky water, something Henry said finally penetrated Faye’s exhaustion and confusion. “Wait a minute,” she mumbled, her eyes refocusing. “Palermo?”
“Edward Palermo,” Henry said, moving toward Faye. He put a hand on her shoulder. Again, gently. Gently. “The head of the Runners. Why?”
“He visited me outside the hospital not long after I’d helped you home in that cab. Gave me his card, told me to call him if you got in contact with me again.”
“So he’s known about me that long?” Henry said.
“You’re a terrible fugitive,” Milo said.
Henry tried to smirk. Wasn’t sure how it settled on his face, but it felt right. “So if he’s known about me and where I am all this time, why hasn’t he just gotten a pile of guys together to take me in?”
Adelina said to Milo, “He missed his window to contain Henry right at the beginning and, by the time he knew where he was, he was probably already too much for Palermo to safely handle. Now he knows you’re powerful, but he doesn’t know how powerful. At this point, I suspect he wants to see what you become before he makes a move.”
Milo relayed her words to Henry.
Henry frowned. “How does Adelina know so much about all this, anyway, Milo? Who is she? How do you even know you can trust a word she says?”
“Palermo’s my father,” Adelina said quietly. “Henry’s becoming what I was supposed to be, but never fully became.”
Milo stared at her. “Palermo’s your father?”
Henry echoed Milo, astonished: “Palermo’s her father?”
She nodded. “I was the first to ascend, or whatever you want to call it. No one had ever done it before me, so there’s no proper term for it, but yes, full lead content. I achieved it years ago. My father… hid me away so no one would know.”
Milo repeated her words to Faye and Henry, then said, “Why would he do that?”