The interior of the ambulance was crowded; Drake himself took up even more space than the pair of paramedics that hovered around him. The big booster was supine on a collapsible stretcher, looking up at the ceiling. Faces of the treatment team danced in and out of his field of view and he caught flashes of their conversations.

“...thickness burns...” he heard as a young blond woman flashed a light into his eyes. It was like staring into the sun, and he tried to blink away the brilliance. For some reason, his eye would not close. He pulled to his right, angling his head away from the light.

“We have a job to do,” said the tuxedo-clad chimpanzee Drake was now facing. “It requires that you cooperate.”

“Ain’t you supposed to dance or throw barrels or something?” Drake muttered to the furry creature. His words were distorted and slurred.

“Stop fighting,” the chimp urged. Drake snorted in derision. He was making no attempt to fight, and knew that if he were, the chimpanzee would be obliterated.

“I don’t get it,” murmured a soft voice. “I always thought he knew better than that.”

“Trash that one and get another.” The words seemed to be drifting in the air, and Drake could not determine their source or even its proximity to him. He gnashed his teeth, wondering why his arms did not seem to work when he tried to raise them and fend off the medics that leaned over him.

“What the hell?” he asked aloud. No one seemed to notice that he was speaking.

“He’s crashing again!” shouted a distant voice. Drake wondered where the speaker was. The inability to move his head more than fractionally was frustrating him.

“Where am I?” he demanded. His eyes rolled in their sockets, and he saw a myriad of images, none of which made sense to him: a dog stood on hind legs beside a bus bench, a newspaper clutched in his paws and a smoking pipe clamped in his mouth. As Drake’s gaze passed over him, the dog seemed to smile, the pipe shifting slightly in response to the motion. A second later, he released one side of the paper and waved. To the dog’s right, a frozen waffle seemed to be engaging a lamppost in a philosophical discussion. Tiny espresso cups steamed on either side of a table between the two. The chess board on that table showed evidence of a match, but since neither the lamppost nor the waffle had hands, Drake was at a loss to explain how the pieces were manipulated. His viewpoint swirled past them, glossing over the anime-styled cartoon cyborg that appeared to be picking the pocket of a cigar-smoking nun, and on to a swirling mass of color that held no continuous shape.

“This just gets dumber by the minute,” Drake said. He raised a hand to beckon to the colors. In the distance, he heard shouts. The colors pulsed rhythmically as he looked at them.

“Hey, slick,” he said to the shifting mass. “Name’s Drake.”

“Drake,” replied the colors, the acknowledgement seeming almost to be a call to him. The voice was oddly familiar, and yet somehow Drake could not place it. “You need to stop fighting.”

Drake shrugged his shoulders and half-raised his hands to indicate his lack of aggression. “Not fighting.”

“Damn it all, stop!” ordered the colors.

“Stop what? You’re tripping, slick, and I ain’t playing your game,” Drake replied. He snorted and turned to leave.

“Hold him,” he heard. Chains materialized from nowhere, wrapping with sinuous grace around his arms and legs. He found himself affixed to a wall, quite unable to move at all. Growling, he tugged against the chains. The refused to budge, no matter the force he threw against them. He could not seem to get his head into a good position to use his breath weapon against the bindings, and the inability to free himself was angering him. His jaws snapped open and shut.

“Watch his teeth,” he heard.

A flash of pain ripped at him. He felt as though his chest were being attacked with a radial saw and he closed his eyes once more. When he opened them, he was no longer in the ambulance, nor on the street with the swirling colors. He was still lying supine, though this time he was staring upward into a low-intensity set of track lights. They shed less light than a hand-held flashlight, but he blinked and tried to avoid it anyway.

“Welcome back,” greeted a voice from his left. Slowly, trying his best to ignore the fiery pain the movement caused, he turned his head toward the sound. He was pleasantly surprised to see the jumpsuit-clad form of Sala seated beside him, her chair turned backward in a manner reminiscent of how he was forced to sit. “Before you ask, Monster is fine. Stay chill, man. You’ve had us all worried.”

“Us all?” he asked. His voice was a hoarse croak of sound. Sala nodded and gestured away from where she was sitting. Drake swivelled his gaze around, noting that he was in some kind of hospital, reclining on a bed. Judging from his surroundings, he was in a critical care ward. At the foot of the bed, standing with her back to the reptilian booster, Colleen Hart was conversing quietly with Angelo Salvatore and Emile DuChamp. The chromed female form of Soundstage stood beside them but separate from their group, silently holding a silent vigil near Drake’s right calf.

“Ain’t this a bitch?” Drake muttered and all the faces turned to see him.

“Hey, pal, how you doing?” Angelo asked, a grin splitting his features.

“I had the stupidest dream,” Drake said, blinking dry eyes. He raised a bandage-wrapped hand and pointed. “And you were there, and you, and you... Hart, I think you were but someone threw water on you and then, well, never mind. You probably don’t wanna know.”

“Nice to see you have not been adversely affected by the brush with death, Agent Drake,” the suit-clad woman said dryly.

“What? Brush with death? Who... What?”

“The van was booby-trapped,” Soundstage told him, her voice modulated at a level scarcely above a whisper. “Preliminary analysis shows a mixture of medium and high explosives. Minimal shrapnel, though the parts of the van that were blasted across town made good on that. Simple electrical switches attached to the doors.”

“So when I opened it...”

“Boom. Yeah.”

“Figures,” Drake said. “Dumbass like that’d rather get blown up than caught.”

“Omega One was neither blown up nor caught,” Hart corrected as she shook her head. “No evidence of any human or metahuman remains in the wreckage of the van.”

“Which is kinda stupid, if you think about it,” Sala interjected. “I’d have at least put a dead guy inside there or something. They find bits and pieces, maybe it’ll be a while before they start looking for me, you know? There were enough of the Feds sprawled around out there that they could have put one inside.”

“Your compassion knows no bounds,” Emile said softly.

“Pragmatism runs in the family,” Sala countered, shrugging. She snagged a Styrofoam cup and took a sip from the straw. Angelo arched an eyebrow and tilted his head slightly toward the booster occupying space in the bed.

“Sorry, big guy,” Sala said, extending the cup. She guided the straw toward his mouth. “I wasn’t thinking. You want a drink?”

Emerald lips closed around the tiny tube and cool water flooded across his tongue. For a moment, Drake allowed himself the luxury of reveling in the sensation of wetness that soothed the raw feeling in the back of his throat. He pulled away from the straw and nodded a silent thanks to Sala. She grinned and finished her own drink, winking at Angelo.

“How’d they do this?” asked Drake, holding up his left arm. An IV rig was connected in the hollow of his elbow.

“Electric drill,” Sala explained. “Punched a hole through your scales and fed the spike in through it.”

“They drilled... a hole... n my arm.” His tone was incredulous.

“Yeah. Cute part is it was the janitor who heard them arguing over how they were going to get a line started. He brought them a drill and a diamond bit. Well, that’s what the docs were saying, anyway.”

“No one knew about the roof of the mouth thing,” Soundstage said. “We were all too late coming in on it to explain.”

“So the van was empty. Does that mean Omega One got away?” Drake asked quietly after a moment. His head fell back onto his pillow.

“For now,” Hart said. “We have an agency-wide alert for him. All surrounding law enforcement agencies have been advised.”

“What about the rest of the town? What happened there?”

“Eleven citizens dead and fifty-six hospitalized,” she said, her voice flat. “Thirty-nine members of Humanity First dead; another twenty-plus in custody. An additional two dozen are in various hospitals under Federal guard.”

“How’s Boris?”

“Recuperating. It will be some time before he can walk again.”

“If ever,” Angelo added in a somber tone.

“The XYZ’s?”

“A few minor injuries,” Hart said. Her eyes narrowed. “I have, however, been presented with a fairly lengthy list of expenses and demands. They say you told them that the Department would make good on these?”

“I did,” he said with a brief nod. “They earned it.”

“In the future, Agent, I would appreciate it if you did not simply promise that the Department would -“

“Next time Humanity First tries to wipe out a whole damned town I’m sure he’ll check with you first,” Sala said, cutting her eyes dangerously at the brunette woman. “Might want to keep in mind if he hadn’t done what he did we’d probably have been looking at a lot more than eleven dead.”

“I am aware of his sacrifice,” Hart said simply, her tone remaining carefully neutral. “I am simply reminding him that there are other ways in which he might accomplish his goals in the future.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Drake said, raising a hand. “I got it. My bad. Make good on it, though. Please,” he added, taking a moment to look Hart directly in the eyes. She looked back for a moment, then glanced away, uncomfortable in the face of his solicitous nature.

“Um, yes. That is, I mean, certainly we will see to it that we deliver on the promises made,” she said. She rubbed at her temples with the outstretched fingers and thumb of her left hand, then sighed audibly. “I, uh, I have to go,” she said, turning her back and starting for the door.

“Hart,” Drake called out.

“What is it?” she asked, not turning around to face him.

“Thanks for checking on me, Director,” he said. “It means a lot,” he added as she whirled to look at him, the color draining from her face. He grinned and let his eyes drift closed for a second.

“Sorry about that,” he said, making shooing motions with one hand. “Must have been, you know, some little bit of that psycho conditioning crap left up there in my head or something.”

“Hurry up and get out of bed, Agent,” she said, stepping to the door. “You are expending a great deal of resources here.”

“Thought she’d never leave,” he quipped as the door closed, making certain that he got the phrase out in time for her to hear it.

“I was pretty impressed,” Angelo told Drake. “She’s been in here since the whole thing wrapped up. Did most of her business out in the hall on her cell phone.”

“She even talked to me,” Emile said with a grin.

“She threaten you?”

“Amazingly, no,” Emile replied, stepping forward a half step and resting his hands on the steel rails at the foot of the bed. “She is rather concerned for your welfare, it would seem.”

“She needs someone else to push her dirty work on,” Soundstage said, bitterness clear despite the mechanical nature of her voice. She spread her stance out a bit and turned her crystalline gaze on her friend. A gleaming metal gauntlet sought out his scaled hand and gripped it cautiously, as though she was concerned she might break it.

“Probably got my next couple of assignments lined up already,” he agreed with a toothy smile. He turned back toward Angelo. “So what happened, anyway?”

“Well, the first reinforcements from Metahuman Response showed up about ten minutes after the van blew up. Tommy D from up on the Colorado - Wyoming line hit the scene first and started working his way through. Tin Man and Larry Leopard were next. After that, there was a new arrival about every ten or fifteen minutes. They started hitting the Firsties, and hitting them hard.”

“Firefight was stilll in the middle of it, too,” Emile said, a grimace marring his features for a second. “Hart told you there were thirty-nine dead? Firefight made twenty-six of them that way, according to her own count.”

“Judging by the immolated bodies, I’m pretty sure she was short in her count by two,” Soundstage said. “Although more than one citizen used some version of Molotov cocktail in their own defense, so it is possible that my data is incorrect.”

“That girl does have a way of dealing with folks,” Drake noted.

“A little more violent than most,” Angelo said.

“Yeah, but you can’t argue the results,” Drake said with a chuckle.

“Good to know the whole ‘Nice-Guy Drake’ thing went away,” Sala said.

“Hey, I’m just saying.”

“No, man, I’m just playing,” she said, waving off his response. “I’m actually glad. You were weirding me smooth the hell out back in the house.”

Memories rushed back at him and Drake groaned aloud. “What about Vertigo? Did she make it? he asked.

“Sadly, yeah. She’s in a hospital too. Mostly flash burns and concussion damage. Word is she’s already back to being her own... let’s call it her unique self. Probably getting more than her share of sedatives just so the staff won’t try to kill her.”

“Small loss,” Emile said.

“Now come on,” Sala teased, pointing at him and glowering with mock disapproval “Who was it that was talking about compassion?”

“For people,” he said with a mischievous grin. “She does not fit that criteria.”

“And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, calls to order this meeting of the Vertigo Fan Club,” Drake said. His laugh transformed to a coughing fit that ripped pain all the way up from his toes through calves and thighs, leaving him gritting his teeth once the fit had subsided. His chest felt shredded inside. Every breath was agonizing.

“Get some painkiller in here, please,” Angelo requested, hanging his head out the door to address the nursing staff.

“I’ll be okay,” Drake rasped, swallowing past a throat gone dry and painful once more. He started to reach for the Styrofoam cup of water when he realized that his claws were tangled in the bed; fingers becoming laced within the thin mattress upon which he reclined when he had clenched his fist in response to the coughing. He shook the hand a bit as he lifted and it came free with only minimal struggle.

“Yeah. I can tell,” Sala said with a snort. She leaned over, a paper towel in her hand. She dabbed it along the lines of his jaws, removing it before he could get a good look at what she had cleaned off him.The quick flash of it he got showed it to be stained red. When her hand came back up it held the cup of icewater. He sucked greedily at the straw, trying to ease the ache in the back of his throat.

“So how are we?” asked a voice from near the foot of the bed. It came from the nurse who had just stepped in from outside the room. Her jaw was set in a forced smile as she looked at her patient. For once, Drake figured the expression and the overly cheerful tone were not some reaction to his appearance, but for the benefit of all her patients. She held a fresh cup of water and a tiny paper cup.

“Don’t know about you, miss, but I’ve been better,” he admitted. His voice was rough and gravelly.

“I’ve brought you some pain medication,” she said. “You are mister Drake, right?”

“That’s me. Drake comma Francis, one each.”

“Any allergies?”

“Yeah. Strychnine, lawyers and golf on television.”

“Well, I don’t think this has any of that,” the nurse said. Her prearranged smile seemed to fade, being slowly replaced with the genuine article.

“Please tell me it’s flavored like coffee,” he told her. She chuckled slightly.

“You want some coffee, mister Drake?”

“I’d kill for some.”

“It won’t be hot,” she warned. “Burn hazard.”

“Trust me, that’s not a problem.”

“It’s policy.”

“However you have to bring it,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can scare up,” she told him, passing over the tiny cup. The pill inside would have proven difficult for most people to swallow, but Drake took it easily, chasing it with the small quantity of water in the Dixie cup.

“Thanks,” he said, smacking his lips. “So tell me, am I ever gonna play the violin again?”

“You seem to be recovering well,” the nurse declared. She paused, eyes flicking up and right as she considered her next words.

“Go ahead, ma’am,” Angelo urged, his casual smile back in full force. “He can handle it.”

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. A small sigh escaped her lips before she continued. “It really should be a doctor explaining this, but... You were caught in the deepest part of the explosion. Your lungs were damaged, mostly due to overpressure, and they started to fill with edemic fluid. That’s why we’ve had you here as long as we have. From what Ms. Hart has told us, you will eventually heal on your own, but the need to monitor you for respiratory problems precluded removing you from the ICU. The effects of the concussion on your eyes and ears were extensive, but you seem to have recovered quickly from those.”

“I heal well.”

“So it would seem. Anyway, we have you on a course of pneumonia treatments, and if all goes well there we’ll get you into a normal room within a couple of days. After that, you should be able to go home pretty soon.”

“Is that a couple of days in people time or in my healing time?”

“Well, it’s a variable,” she said, cocking her head to the side and shrugging slightly. “We always estimate for the long term, then hope that you can get out by this evening. How’s that for vague?”

“Well, I figure there’s bound to be someone needs this bed more than I do,” he said, taking another sip from the water cup.

“Not right now, but we’ll let you know,” the nurse said, patting him on his right foot as she turned to leave. “You call if you need anything, mister Drake. I’ll see if I can find you some coffee.”

Grinning despite the grinding sensation in his chest, Drake leaned back on the bed. Soundstage and Sala were barely visible in his peripheral vision. “Sorry I ain’t much company, folks,” he muttered.

“I’m just glad they’re in the mood to bring you anything,” Angelo noted. “Way you fought with the treatment team and all.”

“What?’

“Yeah. You kept fighting them, even when you were knocked out. When they tried to do anything, you were lashing out. I finally had to hold you still for them.”

“Yours was not the worst,” Emile added, his voice low and soft. “Boris was in the room also, and his injuries were not so pleasant even as yours.”

“He had a shoulder blown open, I think,” Drake said, closing his eyes and replaying the scene in his memory.

“Word is you dragged him into cover, yes?” Angelo asked. Drake nodded.

“Yeah. Used his shirt to bandage him.”

“Sometime after you left the fight heated up out there.”

“It was about fifteen minutes after you left our house,” Sala reported. “Had some rockets and grenades cooking off. We could hear ‘em from in the house.”

“Well, one of them apparently hit the spot where you left Boris,” Angelo said. He spread his hands vertically and then brought them together with a smacking sound. “House came down on him.”

“Aww, damn,” Drake said, sighing. “I thought I had him -“

“Not your fault,” Angelo hastened to add. “Just how things went. They happened to hit the house at exactly the right angle.”

“How is he?”

“Not too good,” Angelo said. “He flatlined three times on them. They’ve got him stable right now, but it’s touch and go.”

“So chalk up another one for the monkey that got away,” Drake said. He licked at his lips again, and then took another sip from his cup. A liquid gurgling sound from the straw echoed in the small room. Sala picked up a pitcher of water and refilled the cup without speaking.

“We’ll find him,” Angelo promised.

“No,” Drake said, shaking his head. “I’ll find him.”

“Lay your ass back down,” Soundstage ordered as Drake attempted to sit up. A shining hand pressed firmly against his chest, holding him in place. “You try to get out of that bed right now and I’ll trank you... Or maybe just hit you in the head hard enough to put you out.”

“You need to recover,” Angelo reminded him. “Stay here, pal. Let somebody take care of you for a change.”

Drake let his head fall back onto the pillow with a muttered curse. “I don’t like laying here like this while someone else goes out and does my job,” he groused.

“Ain’t like you’re the only booster out there, you know,” Soundstage said.

“Everyone will be looking for this Omega One person,” Emile said. “When the time comes that he is captured -“

“When that time comes I wanna be there,” Drake said, eyes narrowing. “I owe him.”

“We’ll see what we can work out,” Angelo said. He snatched at his belt in response to a low-frequency hum, snapping open a cell phone. He held up a finger to indicate he would be back and quickly slipped out of the room.

“Filthy machines,” Emile muttered. He paused, face flushing as he looked at Soundstage. A grin spread slowly across his face. “No offense meant, of course,” he said.

“None taken,” she assured him. “This is just a suit. I’m human - or at least humanoid - inside it. As for the phone, I have three of them and I hate them all.”

“What do you do with three telephones?”

“As little as possible,” she confessed. “Half the time I shut them off and say that they’re charging. Austin PD’s got a line hardwired into the suit, and the people who really matter? Well, they’ve got immediate access capability.”

“Such as Hart?”

Soundstage made a noise that could be described as a snort, though the mechanical nature made it sound different to anything those in the room had heard before. “Hart didn’t call me,” she said. “Never met her before today. I didn’t know about the safehouses getting hit ‘til I heard y’all discussing them. My call was of a more personal nature.”

Emile looked back and forth between the standing metallic woman and the supine booster, one eyebrow arching slightly. “I see,” he said with a slight nod.

“Don’t go gettin’ that look on your face, Frenchie,” Drake said, jaw set tightly. He sat up slightly in the bed. “It ain’t like that.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I said nothing,” Emile said, spreading wide his hands and smiling innocently.

“You had a look.”

“What look? This is my face. How else can I look?” After a moment he paused and sketched a half-bow as if in regret. “I am sorry. I should not tease you so at such a time.”

“Don’t mean nothin’,” Drake replied with a shrug that wrinkled the bedsheets. “Coming from you it ain’t so bad.”

“Plus, it sounds kinda cute, what with the accent and all,” added Soundstage.

Emile laughed quietly, a soft friendly sound. “Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle.”

“Aww, damn. Now I know I’m in bad shape,” Drake said. “I’m hearing everything in French!”

He shook his head as though trying to clear it. The action resulted in a sharp stabbing pain, settling in as a dull pain at the base of his skull. He stopped the motion, grimacing as he was brutally reminded of where he was and how he had come to be there.

“If only you spoke it as well, then your life could be complete,” Emile told him.

“You’re killing me,” Drake said. The amused chuckle that rocked his form brought searing pain in his chest, but he was unable to help himself. He followed with a deep, shuddering breath. “Or maybe I am.”

“It’s the lungs,” Sala said.

“Guess I’m lucky they didn’t try to crack my chest or some such.”

“Lucky they didn’t crack your head, you mean.”

As Drake tried not to laugh, Sala handed her cell phone to Emile and showed him how to operate the camera attachment. She leaned in close to Drake, using her fingers to peel back his lips in a parody of his usual grin. She matched it with a grin of her own, sticking out her tongue playfully for the camera. There was a brief flash.

“I have seen better,” Emile reported, looking at the tiny screen. He made a face. Sala looked at the image and shrugged.

“Wouldn’t have been so bad if Drake wasn’t in it,” she said. “Anyway, I’m e-mailing it to Monster’s nurse so he can see you’re doing okay.”

“Tell him I said remember to wash behind his ears,” Drake said. He sniffed hard on the cannula in his nose, feeling an almost desperate need to fill his lungs with oxygen.

“Well, well, well,” Angelo Salvatore said as he re-entered the room. The expression on his face was difficult to read. “The interrogators are finished with Deanna Hochek.”

“Did they break her?” Drake asked.

“Hopefully somewhere around the lower lumbar region,” Sala said, a malicious grin playing across her lips.

Angelo sighed and scratched his chin. “First thing they found, if you’ll pardon what is to become an obvious pun, is the DNA tat on her right wrist.”

“She’s a Firstie?” Sala asked, half-rising from her chair.

“Thought they didn’t take boosters in their ranks,” Soundstage added.

“Apparently she was a full member long before she Emerged. Stayed with the group afterward and used her abilities to track other boosters for them. Guess she also used it to make sure she didn’t get caught, ‘cause she started singing when the interrogation team told her they would pass her secrets along to Humanity First as soon as she stopped cooperating.”

“She’s more scared of them than us,” Drake said. He was beginning to feel a sense of detachment; the medication was beginning to take away the edges of his pain.

“Not for long,” Sala added in a whisper.

Angelo consulted the viewscreen of his phone for a moment, scrolling through some text there before continuing. “According to their reports, Hochek got in your head for the counseling session, Drake, and when she uncovered the thoughts of the safehouse town, knew what a perfect target it would make. She tried to discern its location, but apparently you weren’t free with that. She says here that she was impressed with how well you walled that information away, by the way, so looks like you did good there.”

“Yeah? Still found it, didn’t she?” Drake asked, sounding disgusted.

“Not from you. The interrogators say she couldn’t get you to let it slip, so she sent a package home with you.”

“Tracker,” Soundstage and Sala said simultaneously.

“Yep,” Angelo said, looking once more at the phone. “Some kind of video she sent? There was a bug in it that broadcast your location.”

“That would be the one that told you how to make new friends and be popular, right?” Sala asked with a wink

“Something like that,” he answered, his voice still bitter.

“Hey, ain’t no thing,” she assured him, slugging him playfully in the shoulder. “We’ve all been taken at one point or another.”

“Yeah, I know. Still pisses me off. You know how many years I worked with one telepath or another? You’d think I’d have some kind of resistance.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Angelo said. “Remember Atlanta? That moron China and his mind tricks? He got you and Emile both, and managed to whip the crowd into a frenzy at the same time. This chick’s just a little smoother. More subtle.”

Subtle, D,” Sala said, leaning in close. “That’s a new word for you. It means using skill. Not being obvious.”

“Bite me,” he said, raising a middle finger and grinning.

“Anyway,” Angelo said, stressing the word to interrupt the interplay. “Hochek wormed herself in by using her movies. She -“

“Yeah,” Drake said, nodding. “Lance already explained how the bitch works.”

“Lance?”

“One of the XYZ Kids. He’s their ‘brain guy’, I think they called him.”

“Ah, okay. Well, what I was saying is that the control she uses is so slowly-implanted and insidious that it’s much harder to detect. So the fact that you didn’t see it coming or some such doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Too hard on myself or some shit,” Drake said. He scratched at the side of his snout, filling the room with a sound like a file on stone. “That’s just my way of dealing.”

“You need to take some time,” Angelo urged. “Get away from the chasing and shooting stuff.”

“Leave the game behind you,” Emile added, nodding in a manner that reminded Drake that the slight man had been in his shoes not that long ago. “The feeling is liberating.”

“Every time I try it they find me anyway,” Drake said.

“This time you silence your telephone.”

“Gotta keep it on,” Drake protested. “That’s how Sala can get in touch with me if something happens to Monster.”

“First thing,” Sala interjected, “I ain’t letting anything happen to him. I mean, if something did, you’d be getting the call from whoever found my dead body. Second, why not take a few days to get better over at Hurst? I’ll be taking Monster there once we can get his health plan set into motion. Then you can kill the phone, hang out with Monster, and just chill.”

“It’s true,” Angelo said. “The kids’d love to have you back, I know. Got a couple that were heartbroken when you left.”

“No accounting for taste,” Sala quipped.

“At the Academy at least you can relax,” Emile said.

“We’ll have your back,” Angelo told him.

“Or at least be there to laugh at you,” Sala said.

“Wow. Feel the love. Thanks, guys.”

“It would be a good idea, Drake,” Soundstage prompted. “Get away somewhere and take a little time to decompress.”

“All right, all right,” Drake said, waving his hands in surrender. “Everyone can stop telling me I need a vacation! I know I do.”

“In all seriousness, Drake, we could use you there for at least the first week of Monster being with us,” Angelo said. “It’ll help him adjust.”

The nurse returned, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hands.

“You are an angel,” he whispered to her with a smile. She had not lied. The coffee was barely room temperture. Still, it raised his spirits to drink it, and he turned a much happier grin on his friends once he had done so.

“Fine. I’ll go,” he agreed. “I ain’t posing for no yearbook pictures, though.”

“Cameras don’t like you anyway,” Sala told him.

“Aww, man, and here I thought they broke on their own.”