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Wayne charges up the ballroom steps thinking, of course, Wax would want him to fight the evil version of himself while Wax takes the easy one — except Wayne's evil twin had her face half blown off earlier today and looks the worse for it. The ballroom is wide and red-carpeted under a skylight, no furniture, no cover, no obstacles. Wax does an obvious steel-assisted flying leap to the top because of course he does. Wayne pretends to angle for the woman, then breaks left at the last moment and tackles the Coinshot to the carpet.

Dumad's cologne smells terrible. They wrestle. Wayne knows how to fight beside Wax, which translates fluently into fighting against one of him: stay close, never let him fly up high and shoot you neat. Dumad Leeches the bendalloy out of Wayne's stomach, mistake one — Wayne palms another piece and pops it. *You're too handsome to be a copy of Wax,* he tells him. *You ought to get a scar or something.* Dumad explains Autonomy's doctrine through gritted teeth: when several people fit the same slot in life, only the strongest survives and ascends; Wax and Wayne were the impostors in slots that *rightfully* belonged to the doppelgangers. A metal button on Dumad's coat tears free as a Push-bullet — *did you steal that trick from Wax?* — and Wayne tosses up a speed bubble and repositions, fighting not Wayne the miscreant but *Wayne Terrisborn, filthy rich snob with way too much money to burn* through bendalloy.

Wax meanwhile breaks right against Getruda before she can use her distance, surprising her. *Oi! That's not fair. Fight someone your own size — or at least your own stench.* She throws up a speed bubble; from outside it she is a blur. He has spent years beside Wayne and his gut tells him exactly how far to be from her so he is just inside the bubble's perimeter if it appears. She has too much stored health for ordinary bullets to slow her, and the Hemalurgy book Death sent has him looking for a metalmind in her arm or leg rather than her core — easier to embed, easier to strip. She lands a vicious cane hit on his leg. *Oh, that pain. That pain is delicious. Get in here.*

Wayne runs his trick of dropping his bubble and tackling from a different vector; Dumad Leeches his stomach again and starts punching, face red. *Were you worried about contamination?* Wayne asks him. *By pretendin' to be Wax, you might've accidentally ended up doin' something useful.* The Coinshot pulls aluminum handcuffs from his pocket — actually a clever idea, since locking Wayne to something would let him shoot at leisure since cutting one's own hand off would be the only way out — then unleashes a duralumin-fuelled super-Push that rips the carpet up by its staples and sends Wayne tumbling. But Wayne sees him afterwards take a covert hit from an aluminum flask of metals to replace the spent steel. *Now I know where you keep that flask, friend.*

Back to back briefly with Wax in a borrowed speed bubble: *How're things?* *Could be better.* They swap weapons — Vindication to Wayne with the hazekiller chambers locked out, a dueling cane to Wax — and the change-up confuses Getruda enough that Wax lands a strike on her thigh and her side, hunting for a metalmind that turns out not to be in either thigh. Wayne fires Vindication at Dumad; Wax smiles at the sound — not at the action but at the wound that has finally healed in his friend. She is better at the cane than he is though, and after a rib-bruising hit he calls the trade back. He turns to something older: a metal doorstop, Pushed at her like a bludgeon, breaking her arm and her foot, kept bouncing back to his hand and on into her, mixed with Pushed bullets so she cannot rest. Her quips trail off. He cuts her on each side, then drives a bullet into her arm — and catches the gleam of metal in the wound before it heals. He has found it.

Dumad takes Wayne into the air to seize control of the fight, Wayne dangling. They smash through the skylight; a shard of glass cuts Dumad's arm and the wound does not heal — *so you aren't a Bloodmaker too.* On the rooftop among the construction, Wayne glimpses the rocket — long and sleek, Telsin beside it among engineers, mist held off her in a bubble of invisible glass, hands clasped behind her back, staring into the dark. The cuff snaps onto Wayne's wrist; Dumad dislodges him with two short Pushes back onto the rooftop. Wayne runs for the broken skylight to drop down and help.

He arrives in time to be tucked back-to-back with Wax inside another bubble. *Fightin' you is rustin' hard.* *Likewise.* They pivot back out; Wax turns to the woman, Wayne to the man. Wax asks Getruda why, asks her to walk away, tells her *someone out there misses you.* She grins, says she got into *their* heads first, and comes at him. He turns Vindication a fraction of a degree and delivers a hazekiller round into her right shoulder; the secondary detonation rips her arm off and the metalmind with it. The wound does not heal. He delivers a coin-Pushed bullet into her skull.

Above the ballroom Wayne gets cuffed on by his own ploy and lets Dumad launch them straight up through the broken skylight on a duralumin Push. At the top of the climb he picks Dumad's pocket. *I suggest taking up pickpocketing,* he calls. *It's rusting useful.* He flicks the aluminum flask away into the dark. They fall together, faster and faster — *when you meet Death…* — and crash through what is left of the skylight to the floor below. Everything goes black. Wayne wakes a minute later, barely, his Bloodmaker healing spent down to the last ration. *Aw, man. We dropped too fast. I didn't get to say my awesome line.* He kicks the corpse and says it anyway: *when you see Death, tell him he owes me fifty clips.*

He wanders over to Wax, who is pulling metalminds from Getruda's severed arm — stories tell of Compounding Bloodmakers regrowing whole bodies from a piece, so Wayne suggests pulling spikes too. Wax says the bomb first. Telsin is up there with the rocket, Wayne warns. They cross to the skylight, both spent, Wayne asking why Wax stayed close to fight her instead of high. *I couldn't. She would have run out the time.* They take their positions in the centre of the ballroom to launch up through the open skylight toward the mist falling like a ghostly waterfall.

But Wax pauses. He fishes the small bent-nail earring from his pocket — a Pathian religious icon and, for him, much more — hooks it into his ear, and whispers something.