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“Hold her down.”
    They heard Marie grunt and exhale loudly. Whatever they were doing to fix her wound, they were not doing it gently. The doctor’s eyes darted once to the bolt gun on Liam’s belt. Then they went back to Syd. “Let’s get you checked out,” he said. “To be on the safe side.”
    “Really, I’m fine,” Syd told him, sitting all the way up and dangling his legs off the cot. “I need to go talk to the Council.”
    The doctor set a hand on his shoulder and stopped him from getting up. “Humor an old doctor. As long as you’re here, we might as well make sure everything’s in working order, no?”
    Syd looked at him. The doctor looked back, unflinching. He was determined to examine Syd and Syd decided the easiest way to get out of here quickly would be to let him. He relented with a nod.
    “Please remove your clothes,” the doctor instructed.
    Syd looked at Liam, cleared his throat. “A little privacy?”
    Liam hesitated. Syd pointed.
    “I’ll be on the other side of the curtain,” Liam said.
    “Oh, how will we ever bear to be apart?” Syd replied.
    “Don’t run off again,” Liam added.
    “Or what?” Syd asked.
    An answer formed on Liam’s lips, but he didn’t say it. Staring at him, Syd could swear his bodyguard mouthed the word “waterfall” to himself, then turned and passed through the curtain.
    Once Liam was gone, Syd peeled off his clothes and submitted to an entirely pointless medical exam.
    He wasn’t sick and he knew it. He was disgusted.
    For that, medicine had no cure.
    • • •
    On the other side of the curtain, Liam scanned the room. On the cot, Marie lay staring at the ceiling of the tent, while three medics worked on reconnecting the tissue of her shoulder that his bolt had severed. Although most tech had been banned by the Reconciliation to prevent the germs of greed, sloth, isolationism, and inequality from spreading, medics still had some more advanced items. Left without a little old tech, Marie would never have been able to use her arm again. Liam knew how to disable a person.
    Through the medical tent, he saw the vague outlines of the Purifiers moving around as people began to gather. Word must have gotten out that Yovel himself was inside. Liam would have to get Syd away from here as soon as possible. The area wasn’t secure enough for his liking and this cadre of Purifiers wasn’t well trained enough to contain an overexcited crowd, even if there were no Machinists among them.
    The people outside formed an indistinct mass. As the breeze blew the gauzy mosquito netting, it distorted their silhouettes. They bent and twisted, looked like a monstrous horde, like another wave of feral nopes shambling in from the wilderness.
    The city was changing so much faster than Liam could process. All his life it had been little more than a military installation and Liam didn’t like all these new people coming in. Now that the revolution was the government, they saw fit to rebuild Old Detroit and evacuate Mountain City. The people came in as refugees by the tens of thousands. The streets were cleared of jungle debris and filled with human activity.
    And with the people came the nopes.
    He’d fought them when they were Guardians, of course. That was part of his job. He’d snuck into the Mountain City and tried to outsmart them, outrun them, and outfight them. They were fearsome opponents. Liam flexed his metal hand. He hadn’t always won those fights.
    But now they weren’t Guardians anymore. They were basically dead already. He’d seen them hauling rocks or turning pistons to power spring loaders. He’d seen them fall from the dam construction project and not even make a sound as they fell. Now they were carrying some new disease. It didn’t bother Liam to see them put down. Good riddance.
    But it bothered Syd, who had no doubt known them better than Liam ever did, who had suffered at their hands and the hands of the system they enforced far more than Liam