“You need to sign in to see her whole profile,” Rai said.

“I don’t have an account.”

“Just make one.”

Sao dabbed sweat from his brow.

Rai’s car had not been sticky like the bus. Nor was it stuffy - how could it be? The thing had countless gaps between the rust and old crooked parts which let air rush through freely as they flew down the highway. Combined with the howling air conditioning, it was not unlike facing a wind tunnel. Adding to the cacophony was Rai’s shouted attempts at tutorial, to get Sao familiarized with Neocam, Orchid’s favored social platform.

“Look, we should try to learn as much as we can about her. And she’s got years of videos and photos just sitting there, begging to be seen.”

Sao’s ears were still thrumming when they pushed through the hospital doors and entered the waiting area. It looked to be a busy day. All viable seats were occupied - these being seats that weren’t in direct path of the sunlight beaming in through the glass walls and skylights. He opted to stand by one of the large pillars in the center of the room, fiddling with his phone while Rai went to arrange their meeting.

“The woman who’s a head,” he heard Rai clarify at reception. Sao recognised the pigtailed attendant behind the desk as Axelle, who’d given them some valuable support on a previous case, some time ago. It had been during the winter; snowy skies and frost on the ground. What a sweet memory to recall from the hellish depths of summer.

Axelle had been a treat herself. She caught his eye, gave a small wave. He waved back, smiled. She dropped the pen she’d been twirling, blushed and ducked to retrieve it. Rai rolled his eyes. Sao smiled at him too, and went back to his phone.

Rai shuffled into the shade of the pillar beside him. “How’s it going with Neocam?”

“I’m still verifying emails. I’ll admit, I don’t like this sort of thing,” Sao sighed. “Feels like an invasion of privacy.”

“Anything on the public profile, Orchid uploaded specifically for people to see. She ran the show by herself. An independent production, not like she had a company forcing what she made.”

“In that case, I’m not sure what can be gleaned from watching a fabrication…”

“Subtleties. Inconsistencies. Mistakes happen. Seeing holes in facades is your wheelhouse, isn't it?”

Sao raised a brow silently.

“And relationships. For this talking head phenomenon, it would be useful to know if there was anyone close to her who knew magic, for example.”

“I wasn’t aware of any magic like this.”

Neither of them were. He nor Rai had any notable experience with magic usage, though if his Life Fountain heritage hadn’t occluded him, no doubt Rai would have jumped at the chance to take the military-manned courses. He just sighed. “Are you logged in yet?”

“Yes. It’s bugging me to connect with friends.”

“Add me, then.”

A silence that seemed unduly tense. “I see, you can search by name. Yes, I found you. Oh-”

The tension seemed to lock up Rai’s face. “What?”

“A bit misleading that they use the term ‘make friends’. When you look at the profiles themselves, there’s only ‘following’ and ‘followers’... alright, onto Miss Orchid. Shall I follow her too? Oh – hmm. Does Neocam freely allow explicit content?”

“That’s just a swimsuit.” Rai sighed, again. “Don’t be like this when we talk to her, okay? Remember, she hasn’t been in the best state of mind for a while.”

“Of course.”

He could sense Rai on the brink of a flare-up, but before either of them could say more, a call from behind the reception desk summoned them to their meeting.

—

Though bustling with activity, the patient ward was cool and hushed. Cadmus met them in front of one of the staff lounges, a windowless room with lockers, a couch, and a snack-covered table which consumed nearly all available floor space.

“She’s in a room just down that hallway,” Cadmus said. “She’s stable. Awake when I last looked. I thought you should hear about the treatment we’ve tried before heading in.”

“Tried? If she’s stable does that mean, you know…” Rai made a vague gesture at his own neck.

“Her head is still detached.” Cadmus checked his watch. “Sit down and have a bite. Her doctor will be here in a minute.”

Reminded of their lost lunchtime, Sao helped himself to a sandwich cookie.

Cadmus was, from what Sao was told, Rai’s guardian and mentor. From him, Rai inherited his severity, endless drive, and ability to form an impeccable scowl. While Rai often grumbled in Cadmus’s presence, there was the sense of him being a child simply trying to prove himself, and at heart he deeply respected the man (grandpa, as Rai sometimes called him) who had raised him when his mother could not. In return, Cadmus was unexpectedly gracious when it came to investigations that required the hospital’s assistance - though not without a bit of obligatory grumbling of his own. There was affection, but they didn’t feel the need to make a meal of it. That was an enviable quality, Sao thought, for any relationship.

Though his expression was typically grim, there was something undeniably, ironically, rosy about Cadmus’s appearance. Crowning his head was a whip of curls the color of cotton candy, and his Life Fountain aura came in the form of flecks shed from his skin that resembled the petals of a blooming tree, though he restrained them when Sao was around. He and Rai could have been pegged to be similar ages at a glance, but Cadmus was in fact a 300 year old full-blooded Life Fountain, and a fixture at the hospital.

Under Cadmus’s guidance, Life Fountains gradually had been placed in hospitals around Central over the course of a century, making use of their healing auras and creating a place for those ordinarily solitary individuals, some centuries older than Cadmus himself, to socialize. Mainline Hospital itself had a rather amusing Life Fountain aide on its staff in addition to Cadmus.

As if he’d been reading Sao’s mind, Cadmus said, “You’ll probably want to talk to Trae later, too.”

Rai began to ask why when the door flew open and in walked another familiar figure.

“Cole. You remember Rai, and Sao.”

“Right, right, was it back in January?” Sharpened gray eyes and a refined little smile were flashed their way. “The investigators from the Fleming case.”

Cole, a surgeon, had been interviewed along with Axelle during that investigation. He looked the same as he had then, except for a prominent bruise that all but consumed his right eye.

“Yes. Thanks for your help, doctor.” Rai nodded, stood up, hand outstretched.

“Hope we can help each other again this time.” Cole shook Rai’s gloved hand heartily. “You two planning an arctic expedition?”

Before leaving the office, Rai had pulled on heavy black gloves to cover his glowing hands, as he often did. Then he’d gone and put on one of his leather jackets, to match. Sao had pulled his jacket off the coat rack as well. So there were the two of them, both in jackets and one in gloves, on one of the hottest days recorded in the last decade.

“That’s an exaggeration,” Rai said. When Cole approached Sao, holding up a hand, Rai added, “He has a condition.”

“Ah. The skin - or was it touch - aversion? I remember something about that too. Well, not a worry for the interview. Orchid won’t be asking for a shake.” Cole sat, and gathered a handful of cookies. He had an unnervingly colorless appearance and wore nothing but monochrome; in conjunction with his angular features he might have been mistaken for a stone statue if not for his ceaseless tiny movements - flicking off crumbs, clicking his teeth, fingers jittering over the cookies like he were flipping through a rolodex. “Sorry,” he said, “I should have gone over all your details, but it’s been a hectic morning.”

“Not a problem. We’re here to get your thoughts on what you’ve seen. You’ve been treating Orchid, is that right? How has it been going?”

“How, indeed. I have to admit I don't know; I'm only in charge because I volunteered. Not to many are keen to get near what appears to be the living dead. Someone even tried to send the non-talking portion of the body down to the morgue without checking for a pulse, drugs in the system, anything. Not even out of fear, just no interest whatsoever. I was actually looking forward to this meeting because I was hoping you'd shed a little light on the situation - seeing as I'm no expert.”

From his vantage point by the fridge, Cadmus added stiffly, “none of us are.”

“Yea. What I do know is that it's not Life Fountain-related interference. There was no biological explanation that we could come up with. And magic…” He expelled a hot puff of air. “Nobody who matters in that field ever wants to talk. I just did what I could to make the patient comfortable. That’s all. You can take it to the papers.”

“We won't talk to the media,” Rai said.

“Sounded like you managed to stabilize her,” Sao offered.

“Not entirely my doing.” Cole chipped at one of his cookies. “When she was brought in, the hemorrhaging had already stopped. There was some substantial clotting where, well, you’d expect blood loss from a decapitation. Only the substance doing the clotting wasn’t blood, but some kind of thick, dark gray slime, and where the open wounds would have been, the slime had gathered into thick black bulbs. Liquid and gaseous forms of the substance are running all through the circulatory and cardiac system, by some… independent, let’s say, magical force maybe - coming from the bulbs. This is what's keeping the heart and lungs going. In both the body and the head. In other words, both parts are technically alive with the substance making up for missing pieces.”

Rai gave Cadmus a look. Cadmus nodded. “That’s why I said you might want to talk with Trae later. But he went nowhere near the girl until I asked him to check on her this morning.”

Cole finished his cookies while Rai and Cadmus had their staredown. “Yup, it was just me and one brave nurse. So we did some basic checks first, blood tests, and asked how she was feeling… She was in surprisingly chipper. No need for sedation. Though, her vigor might have had something to do with the amount of stimulants in her system.”

“She was on some sort of drug?”

“Drugs. Not a mixture I’d advise taking, but it was recreational substances; nothing outrageous. Nothing that’s caused zombification in its numerous other users, I can say with certainty.”

“Zombification…” Rai was a bit too enchanted with the word.

“She wasn’t bleeding, and she appeared to be lucid so we positioned her - head above the body - on a bed and let her rest. Twenty minutes later, and we hear screaming and yelling and come in and see the black fluid coming out of the neck trying to… I don’t know, stick. Reattach.”

Rai’s eyes were burning like coals. “Was it working?”

“Didn’t look like it. For one, the head was being pulled on at the wrong angle, the neck was nearly 90 degrees off, sealing itself just behind the cheek. And the patient was in extreme distress, it seemed she couldn’t breathe anymore, the gray fluid was coming out of her mouth and nose, and spurting from the wounds, all over the bed and floor. For the lower segment; that is, the neck down; her limbs were convulsing violently. That’s how I got this.” Cole pointed at his bruised eye with a crumb-dusted finger. “We opted to separate the parts - they weren’t too firmly attached, the slime came apart easily - and keep them separate.”

“How did Miss Orchid respond to that?”

“I really can’t fault her for her attitude. She seemed relieved, and slept for a few hours. When she woke up, she asked us to try the attachment again. But it didn’t work.”

“Same thing happened?” Rai asked.

“No, nothing happened. We left the neck segments correctly positioned this time, in close proximity for - it must be six hours now. There are no signs of reattachment at all.” Cole’s hands stopped mid-motion. “I tried a controlled infusion of stimulants, to see if recreating the conditions of the night before might help. Zilch. And now, the body appears to be deteriorating. Circulation’s weakening and there’s some decay in the extremities… I don’t fully understand why, but I’d say she isn’t looking good.”

He sat motionless for all of two seconds in gloomy contemplation, before springing up and making for the water dispenser.

“Did she have any explanation for what happened?” Rai asked.

“None at all. For how chatty she got, she really didn’t want to talk about events leading up to the beheading situation. Cadmus even had a go at her. Not much luck there, either.”

Cadmus grunted. “She said very little to me at all. I didn’t address her condition, only asked if she wanted to contact anybody. Any family, for instance.”

“That may have been an uncomfortable topic for her. It’s confirmed she decapitated herself in a suicide attempt, on an online live show. While preparing for the act, she described the loss of her mother as a trigger.”

The look that overtook Cadmus’s face was appropriately mortified. But Cole only smiled, faintly, at his reflection in the water cooler’s metal plating.

The ghostly smile remained when he faced them again. “That really changes perspective on our little zombie, doesn’t it?”

Cadmus ignored him. “I had no idea it was such a sensitive issue. I’m sorry, Rai.”

Cole tossed his cup into the sink and dusted his hands over it. “It’s evident at this point, you know as much as we do, if not more. So let’s not keep her waiting any longer.”

—

Orchid had an entire room to herself. She lay - if that was the word for it - on a cushioned bed, her head on a pillow, and what must have been her body covered by a sheet. The head was several inches away from the top of the body, lying on its side. Sao stalled in the doorway. This did not look like something alive - it barely looked like something dead; there was simply something strangely inanimate about the whole setup. Rai only made it in a few steps further than he did. Cole strolled past both of them. “Morning, princess.”

There was a cough, seemingly from nowhere, that made Sao jolt.

Cole continued, placidly, “Orchid, the investigators are here. I’ll leave you to it in a minute, just need to check some things.”

The head had its face turned away - looking out the window, Sao supposed. He was surprised to see her autumnal hair again tied in a braid, though it looked slightly shorter than it had been in the video. Hanging below her chin, he thought for a moment there was a second braid. But no - the exposed cross-section of her neck was actually covered in damp, tar-like substance which ran off the pillow in strands to the mattress, where an accumulated glob of the same material lay, pulsating.

“You moved?” Cole asked.

“It wasn’t connecting,” she replied in a low rasp that seemed to vacate the room of oxygen. “Don’t bother putting me back.”

After adjusting the various tubes and wires attached to the body under the sheet, Cole slid aside and grinned. “I’ll be right outside, so just yell if you need anything. And don’t badmouth me too hard, alright?”

“Should have thought of what the cops might think before you manhandled my corpse.”

“I was administering lifesaving care.”

“Do I look like I was saved by a doctor?”

“Providing comfort, then.” With a chuckle, Cole left the room. Sao had to step fully inside to shut the door. Rai took that as cue to approach the bed.

“I was kidding. Guy’s a gentleman.” The head shifted. “You’re cops, huh? Lucky you. They’ve been turning away all the other would-be fans.” She looked much paler than she had been in her video, freckles faded to a faint beige, but her eyes were bright and focused, their oceanic blue vivid out against the pallor. “Someone’s precious little boy made it into the room, almost snapped a picture, but they kicked him out just in time. Fucking kids.”

Rai took a seat on the bed opposite. “We saw your video. You cut your hair.”

“The nurse cut my hair. It was getting in my eyes and stuck to everything. They wanted to shave it all off but I said hey, I’m awake, I’m sane, I know I don’t look so hot but can’t I get a say in what happens to my own head? It’s not like they were going to try brain surgery. They barely tried anything at all. I made Cole re-braid it.” She studied Rai, her head laid sideways, donning a half-smile. “Hey – you look a little familiar…”

Rai rewarded her with a blank stare. Orchid’s head shuffled in place, as if trying to nod. She appeared deep in thought. The bulb attached in place of her neck throbbed.

“We hear you’ve been doing well,” Sao ventured.

“Wonder who came to that conclusion.” Her voice raised to answer, nearly to a shouting pitch, but she didn’t look at him. Perhaps, Sao thought, he was too far away. He inched closer.

“How are you actually feeling?” Rai asked.

“Oh, I feel just fine, believe it or not. I think this has been a really effective form of detox. Although, maybe all that crap is still in, you know, the big piece under the blanket…”

“Who would have thought? Of all things to come out of a meme suicide - you really never know of things will turn out.” Rai leaned forward, fingers steepled. To Orchid, near-immobile and turned on her side, his leer must have been bone-chilling. And to speak of distasteful–

“I know, right?” Orchid barked with a grin. “That was always my fear, when I thought about it before. Just don’t know how it’ll turn out.”

“So you’ve attempted suicide before? Or thought of it?”

“I…” her smile flickered. “I guess you’re not a longtime follower.”

“Sorry. I’m old and out of the loop - never caught on to any streamers. Last night was the first time I saw anything of yours.”

“Hell of a first time.” She laughed, and the tar sack hanging from her neck wriggled alarmingly. “How old are you really…?” She looked at Rai, then squinted at Sao. Then back to Rai - sans squint. Sao wondered if she was comparing them. It didn’t appear he was being judged favorably.

“So, you’d previously streamed…?” Rai asked.

“Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of what the shrinks called ‘suicide ideations’, public ones too, because I’m a god damn idiot. Talking about slitting my wrists while my tits are out, trying to hammer some amusement out of a shitty laggy mobile game. Fuck, the things I’d take back. The problem was, I couldn’t be sure I’d die… you know, get stuck in a coma or, like...”

“Or wind up with a lifelong handicap.”

“Yeah, like something that needs all kinds of expensive wheelchairs and physicals and medicines. So I thought but never tried - out of cowardice. And well, laziness. I guess.” She sighed. “I’ve always been kind of a fuck up when it came to mental health. Things were never great at home...”

“Did anyone ever contact you about these thoughts? Offer advice, help?”

“Ah! There it is. You need me to rat on someone? You think I was murdered or something? I film myself saying I’m gonna hang myself, I do it, and I’m telling you now that’s what happened - what exactly is the problem here for the police?”

“It’s less of a problem, and more of a potential revolution in medicine.”

“Oh, you think how I am is a good thing. A good thing to share with others. If only everyone had the privilege.”

“I’m only wondering how you’re still here talking, with your head successfully removed from your shoulders.”

Her dried lips pursed in a pout. “Well, I don’t know. I tried to die for real. And woke up like this. That’s all I can tell you.”

“I thought so. But I still had to ask.”

“The doctors couldn’t figure it out for themselves?”

“They’re working on it. The end goal is to reattach your head, of course.”

“Ah. Because that will fix everything.”

Rai raised his eyes to the window. If Sao didn’t know better, he’d say Rai looked bored. “So, what I asked before - meet anyone interesting in relation to those… ideations?”

“I made a few friends during my time on Neocam.” For the first time since they’d begun, a clear frown marred her face. “There’s no shortage of troubled people online. We do what we can for each other, that includes protecting each other from the real bad stuff in our lives. Try to keep it light, you know? Nobody there drove me to anything. Not even the gross trolls. It was the real life stuff that did it.”

“Your mom?”

“That was it. Part of the reason I had to take care of myself was for her. She’d wouldn’t be able to handle me fucking myself up for good. But she died anyway… She had cancer for the longest time, I can’t even remember when it started. She was getting treatment and I was god knows where. We talked on the phone, but I only started seeing her again last year. She lost all her hair… We stayed with grandpa, and my channel was taking off, so I thought I could help.” There was a head-only approximation of a shrug. “It finally got the better of her, two weeks ago. Doctors let me know it was genetic. Handed me some pricey funeral leaflets on the way out. Fucking bastards.”

“Sounds lousy.”

“That was the trigger, I guess.”

“Were you able to get any support?” Sao asked. “From friends, or…”

He regretted almost as soon as he’d spoken. Orchid rounded on him with remarkable agility for a disembodied head.

“Is this an attempt to get me to snitch on something again, or are you really that dense? You mean did I ‘seek help’? Did I ‘get therapy’? I was in therapy the whole fucking time, psychologists and psychiatrists and drugged up, the whole deal. But shit’s not free. How do you think I got started on pills?” She gave a grunt. “I was already playing to catch-up when I started counselling. Trying to rehabilitate myself for the ‘trauma’ of having a childhood where I had to take off my shirt for strangers online to afford food. While presently having to take off my shirt as an adult to pay for the privilege of telling someone about that. Oh, and I needed a car, or the wherewithal to mash myself into a bus to get there. Have you ever been in therapy? I don’t doubt it can fix a person who’s perfectly primed with the time and money to be fixed. But if you’re not - it can make hell into a worse hell. I had to do it though. You think I could get away with trying to kill myself if I said I hadn’t tried everything? I have a friend who went through at least sixty–”

She stopped. Still staring at him, breathing levelly, but she was quiet.

“A friend went through…?” Sao pressed, his voice shakier than he intended.

“You know, you wear a lot of makeup for a guy.” Orchid was glaring at him. There was something eerie about her expression, uncanny and familiar. For a sick moment, Sao saw Rai’s head glaring daggers up at him instead. “People probably don’t look at you much from below, but man, that stuff looks caked on.”

“Orchid,” Rai said.

“Whatever. I don’t expect a guy like that to understand.”

“What is there to understand?”

“How it is. I don’t know how I got like this, okay? I don’t even really know I got the way I was when I was alive. Oh sure, I knew how it would be diagnosed, the words I’d use to get other people to understand; childhood trauma, neglect, attention deficit and anxiety and bipolar and compulsive… fun words to throw around to help everyone get a good handle on me, but me. Maybe that was the problem. I learned how to give the best tutorials to others on how to deal with me, but I didn’t learn a damn thing about dealing with myself. I did try, and when other people had their breakthroughs or managed to sell me something, they told me I was doing great. And being ‘great great great’ just began feeling increasingly like shit. That made me want to kill myself. In the end I couldn’t even do it myself…”

Rai opened his mouth, but thought better of it just in time. Blue eyes gleamed - she had been drawing them in. Sao thought of the wire’s edge.

“So I called up a friend to do it for me - is that what you want to hear? No, dumbass, I realized I couldn’t do it myself when I woke up and realized I’d tried to go it alone and totally fucking failed. Maybe next time I’ll actually get someone to lend a hand.”

Rai stood - and with more forbearance than Sao was expecting from him, and set a hand gently on the bed frame by Orchid’s head. “No need to consider that right now.”

She looked up at him. “This isn’t as nice as I made it out to be. I can’t smell anything. And I can’t move my hands. I want to check my phone, damn it. Maybe there’s more to consider, but fuck it. I don’t want to think about the future. That was always my mistake. Trying to fix myself a future.”

“Gotta just appreciate the little things now.”

“Yep. At least this bed is comfy.”

She seemed about to flip on her side again, but didn’t have the energy. She suddenly looked very frail, frailer than she had moments ago. Sao was surprised how strong she’d been thus far.

Rai gave her one last cryptic look and slouched away. “We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else.”

“Hold on. Your name’s Kir?”

Rai paused. “My last name. Did I not say?”

“Yeah. I remember now, your dad was one of the first big hits on Neovision way back when. Not streaming, uh, video logging. Those were the days. Man. My classmates passed around USB sticks of his greatest hits in the computer lab. We had his deleted vids, uncensored stuff that got leaked.”

Rai might been holding his breath.

“The guy had no shame. I mean that respectfully - you could say he was an inspiration for me. Him and his wife - oh - your mom?”

“We need to go now, Rai,” Sao whispered loudly. “We have another appointment, remember…?”

“And… sorry to keep bringing this up. So I watched his stuff in middle school. That was about ten years after he died. You’re not old after all - I’m older than you are.”

“If you started watching after the fact, you know how it ended, don’t you?” Rai said.

Orchid hummed with thought and broke off mid tune. “Oh, he isn’t - I’m so sorry.”

Rai turned and smiled. Sao felt a chill. There was nothing obtrusive about this smile. It lacked the bitterness and shadows that always plagued Rai’s face, which made him who he was. It was a strange, yet utterly normal smile that looked like it had been stripped off someone else, hollowed out, and plastered on. It was tender.

“You get why the case is so important to me then, Orchid. You remind me a little of my dad. He died on camera too. Of his own free will. For all the world to see. It was helpful, though. It’s how they found out what happened to him. And because of that, they exonerated my mom, and that’s how I’m able to be here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Appreciate the present, right?”

“But I am sorry, though. Like, really. Not for him - he’s dead - for you. Being born to all that was something that you didn’t have a choice in. I shouldn’t have…” Her voice was perfectly gloomy. But, Sao thought, the sentiment didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You get it. Good luck.”

—

“Is that really the reason you took interest?”

“Huh?” Rai had taken off a glove, was prodding at his phone. “Look, I’m gonna see if we can drop by Orchid’s house for a look around...”

“Your father. Is that making you feel obligated to this case?”

“What? No. The reason I took interest was the screaming severed head.”

“Ah.” Sao dropped onto one of the benches. Though his stomach was unsettled, he was hungry. And tired. “You connected well with her. I have to say, I couldn’t keep up with you two. I won’t underestimate online research ever again.”

“I didn't learn that much from her Neocam profile.” Rai slumped against the wall by the bench and hooked his hands in his pockets. “She just reminded me of… some girls I knew in school.”

“You must have been quite the charmer.”

There was a sputter of laughter. Sao smiled at the small - if clumsy - dose of validation and dropped his head back on the chair for a catnap. The plan was nixed by what felt like an approaching earthquake.

“There you are,” Rai said drily.

A mass of fabric and hair slid to halt in front of them; slow motion, like some giant aircraft plowing on the brakes. Trae was one of the largest men Sao knew, magnified by his favored full-coverage coats and enormous mop-top, the back of which was long enough to reach his waist. He was also one of the most powerful, in more than a physical sense (Trae was naturally strong but it was not from his devotion to fitness; a magnificent gut protruded from his coat). He was the second of the hospital’s treatment-providing Life Fountains, and Sao had seen his massive quantities of dark, smoky aura in action more than once, capable of stabilizing a body in its death throes.

As if exhausted by the weight of his own existence, Trae’s face sagged in a permanently drowsy expression which (unfortunately for Trae) automatically put him at odds with his sleepless cohort, Rai. Where Rai was taut and focused, Trae was dreamy and loose at the seams. Over his mouth he wore a cotton mask soaked with sweat, with a black stain near the right cheek.

“I was just going for a run,” Trae said, with a somewhat forced tone of lilting innocence. “And maybe a smoke. I wasn’t out long.” Sao had often wondered if Trae’s childish nature was a front. For what, it was hard to say. “I was afraid I’d fall asleep before you called. Cad said you were going to call me.” He gave an awkward bow in Sao’s direction. “Good afternoon, Sao. Did you have lunch yet?”

“Trae,” Rai said, “I wanted to ask you about Orchid. You saw her this morning? Anything you wanna tell us?”

“Me? I’m not her doctor. I wasn’t allowed to do anything to her.”

Rai glared - rather harder than he needed to, Sao thought.

Trae snuffled out a casual apology. “I knew you’d think I did something, with all the black stuff coming out of her. I didn’t even try. What she’s got - what's leaking out of the cuts - isn’t aura. You felt it, right Rai? It felt like poison. Cad thought the same thing. He asked me if I wanted to try anything, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. She’s too, erm, unsteady.”

“He asked you?”

“Yeah. Did he tell you it looked like she almost fixed herself up on her own last night? It didn’t work the second time, though. That’s why they decided to ask me.” Trae shook his uneven mane. “I could have forced the neck together, if I tried. But it’s bad for the brain when I use too much aura. And that would have taken a lot. She wouldn’t have been the same person if I did. So….”

“Alright. Just checking.”

“She wasn’t worried, but the body…” Trae scratched under his mask. “It’s alive, but not with aura. So it can’t heal. It might be worse than it looks.”

“She actually seemed quite gregarious for someone whose head was recently separated from her body,” Sao said. “But I suppose I don’t speak to many severed heads.”

“First time for everything,” Rai grunted.

“It’s not your first time,” Trae said.

In a synchronized motion, they both turned to face him.

“Me. You’ve talked to me! I was a severed head, once.”

Sao searched Rai for an explanation. Rai threw his hands up in defense. “This is the first I’ve heard. And anyway, I’m not sure you count.”

“Why not? My head was off, I just put it back on. It’s not as easy as you think it is.”

“I don’t think it’s easy...”

“When did this happen?” Sao asked.

“Not that long ago. A little before I moved to Central. Uh, someone I knew did it. A friend, a really good friend. We had a fight.” Trae looked puffed and proud, but his face had lost its angelic muster. His grin suddenly didn’t look quite so weighed down, so drowsy. Sao reminded himself, as he often had to, that Trae was a full fledged Life Fountain, borderline immortal. He was nearly as old as Cadmus but his history was far less transparent. Nobody knew where he came from and he rarely volunteered information. This fight must have been one for the ages.

And to take the head off a being of perpetual healing (even if temporarily). Sao was fascinated by this supposed ‘friend’.

Trae was feeling the scrutiny. He smoothed his mask over the bridge of his nose and reset his bashful tone. “But it all worked out. I think I won.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rai said, still struggling to regain composure.

“The cut is almost gone.” At this, Trae pulled down the collar of his coat. Etched into his neck was a faint but undeniable line of puckered, discolored skin, bisecting his throat and circling around like a choker necklace. “I kind of like how it looks. I’m worried when it’s gone, I’ll forget what happened. I don’t want that. I like remembering.”

In the dim light of the hospital hall, Trae again smiled - gloated - at whatever memory this brought him, his crumpled brow and substantial dimples trapping tiny shadows like prey.

Absently, Sao touched his own face. His scars, under the mask that Orchid had so aptly seen through. Visible from below. They were reminders of his naivety - in both past and present, it seemed. If only he could be so proud. He felt a surge of envy.

“Thanks for that.” Rai said, ripping through the reverie. “I need some coffee.”