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partner's groin. Slash-twist-pull-and-recover, and his eyes widen first in surprise, then narrow in pain. His high-pitched, womanlike scream makes my ears ring as I pull away my blood-drenched hand, watching him clutch the dark stain spreading across his crotch.
    I turn to finish off the soft-hearted guardsman.
    His mouth works soundlessly as clumsy fingers try to block my knife.
    But he can't do it. I may be a butcher, but—

    —I was one of the best in the Section, and I'd been one of the old woman's favorite utility fixers for the better part of five years and two promotions, one of which even shows in the star I wear on each shoulder.
    Still, I am definitely the kind of person who has to carry an exit-pill when he's carrying more knowledge in his head than is safe. I know a few iron men, several who can go through unbelievable agony without it showing on their faces. Dov is like that. The Sergeant, sure. Zev, sometimes. Benyamin was, too. I've seen pictures of Benyamin standing next to Dov, and I know that my brother wasn't as much of a giant, but that's not the way I remember him.
    Benyamin was a hero.
    I'm not. I threw back my head and screamed, until I thought my lungs were on fire.
    The thing about physical therapists is that they just don't care. She pushed down, and I pushed back with my leg, until the chorus of agony reached a crescendo that made me think the whole universe was going to split open.
    At that moment, the phone on the wall chimed twice, then three times.
    "My signal! My signal!" I shrilled, suddenly a child excused from a spanking.
    "Ten seconds." With a skill that came from years of practice in handling barely-compliant flesh, P'nina eased me back to the table with one hand and strapped my knee down tightly, while another snatched up a cotton ball and bottle of alcohol from the porcelain-topped stand at her side. She quickly cleaned and sterilized a spot near my knee, dropped the bottle back on the white table, tossed the cotton ball toward the recycler, brought up, readied, and stuck in a needle.
    I know it was a sharp needle, expertly applied. But NoGain turned what should have been a brief pinch into an awful stabbing—

    —knife rises and falls of its own volition, drinking blood, stabbing down into what had been a face, again and again, all concentration, all skill gone.
    Skills come and go, when it's real. In the final analysis, everything fails us.
    The knife falls from my hands; I crouch there in the blood and the mud and the shit, and weep.
    Reflexively, I clean my knife on a dead man's shirt, then, using the kinder guardsman's spear as a crutch, I pull myself up. Balancing on my good leg, I hobble off into the night, not stopping for a moment to bid the corpses farewell.
    Gestures don't belong in Section. We are what we are.
    Sometimes, though, I just don't know what I am. Sometimes, it feels like the part of me that was little Tetsuo Hanavi has vanished—

    —which quickly vanished, as a warm glow spread from the spot where the needle had gone in.
    There are no nerves for pleasure, but I'll tell you what pleasure is: it's when pain goes away in a spreading cloud of warmth.
    I basked in the glow as I snapped my fingers and pointed to the phone.
    "You can get it yourself in a moment. Be good for you." She unstrapped me, then folded her ample arms over her ample bosom.
    I glared once. It's called command presence, and something even an imitation general is expected to be able to produce upon demand.
    Surprising both of us, it worked: she uncrossed her arms and tossed me the phone.
    "Tetsuo Hanavi," I said, gesturing at P'nina to leave the room. "I'm not alone; wait a moment." If it was important enough to interrupt me in PT, it was something P'nina didn't have the need to know.
    She slid the door shut behind her. In the waiting room outside, there were other patients. A lot of us need putting back together; four of them were waiting for their turn in P'nina's gentle hands.
    "We're