Maggie was already moving before she knew she'd decided to.

  The rooftop edge. The drop. The cobblestones rushing up. She hit the ground harder than she should have, felt the impact sing through her knees, and kept running.

  The church had erupted. Screaming. Shoving. The Montagues surged one direction, the Capulets another, and the townspeople scattered between them like water finding cracks. The man who'd fired was already gone—swallowed by the chaos, anonymous again.

  Mark reached Martin first. Maggie arrived a second later, Locke at her heels.

  Martin was on his knees. The construct lay in his arms, still and pale, the red stain on her chest no longer spreading. Her eyes were open, fixed on nothing. Her mouth was slightly parted, frozen mid-word.

  "We need to go," Mark said. "Now."

  Martin didn't move.

  "Martin."

  "She's not—" He stopped. Swallowed. "She stopped."

  "The script ended. She has nothing left to follow." Mark's voice was flat. Practical. "She's not dead. She was never alive. But she's done."

  A shot cracked somewhere in the church. Closer than before.

  "We need to move," Maggie said. "They're going to blame us for this."

  Martin lifted the construct. She was light—constructs didn't weigh much—but he carried her like she was heavy. Like letting go wasn't an option.

  "Which way?" he said.

  Mark pointed. "Back. Through the sacristy."

  They ran.

  · · ·

  The alleys swallowed them.

  Mark led, cutting through passages that seemed to open as he approached and close behind them. Maggie followed, checking over her shoulder every few steps. Martin came last, the construct still in his arms, her head resting against his shoulder.

  The sounds of chaos faded. Shouts became murmurs. The city rearranged itself around their escape.

  Finally, Mark stopped at a small courtyard. Dry fountain. High walls. Cats scattering.

  "Here," he said. "We wait."

  Martin set the construct down on the fountain's edge. Carefully. The way you'd set down something fragile, even when you knew it couldn't break anymore.

  She sat where he'd placed her. Motionless. Her eyes still open, still seeing nothing. The wound in her chest had stopped being a wound—just a dark stain on fabric now, meaningless.

  "What happens to her?" Maggie asked.

  "Nothing." Mark leaned against the wall. "She'll stay here. Eventually she'll fade, or the story will absorb her, or she'll become part of the scenery."

  "Can't you give her a new script?"

  "I could. But it wouldn't be the same. The character Martin wrote—" He glanced at Martin, who wasn't listening. "—that's gone. Anything new would be someone else wearing the same face."

  Maggie watched Martin. He'd sat down next to the construct, close but not touching. Looking at her the way you look at something you're trying to memorize.

  "Give him a minute," she said.

  "We don't have a minute."

  "Give him one anyway."

  Mark didn't argue.

  · · ·

  Martin sat with the construct.

  She didn't move. Didn't blink. The warmth that had animated her—the script, the purpose, whatever spark Mark had given her—was gone. What remained was a shape. A reminder.

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  He took her hand anyway.

  "I know you can't hear me," he said. Quiet. Not for anyone else. "I know you're not her. You were never her." He paused. "But you helped me remember what it felt like. To say the things I should have said. To do the things I should have done."

  The construct stared at nothing.

  "When I wake up—" His voice caught. He waited. Started again. "When I wake up, I'm going to tell her. Everything. How scared I am. How much I don't want to leave her. How sorry I am for all the times I came home late and didn't say what I meant because I thought there'd be more time."

  He squeezed her hand. The construct didn't squeeze back.

  "Thank you," he said. "For letting me practice."

  He stood. Let go of her hand. Turned away.

  Behind him, the construct spoke.

  "I'll be waiting for you."

  Martin froze.

  The voice was hers—the same tone, the same cadence—but the words weren't from any script. The construct sat exactly as he'd left her, motionless, eyes fixed on nothing. But the words had come from her mouth. He was certain of it.

  He turned to look at Mark.

  Mark was studying the cats that had crept back into the courtyard. His expression gave away nothing.

  "Did you—"

  "Did I what?"

  Martin stared at him for a long moment.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "For what? The construct's script ended. Sometimes they echo. Fragments of input. Random noise." Mark shrugged.

  "Right." Martin nodded slowly. "Random noise."

  The silence between them said everything that didn't need to be said.

  Maggie watched the exchange. She thought about asking. Decided not to.

  Some things were better left unexamined.

  · · ·

  "Well," Martin said after a moment. "That could have gone better."

  "You changed a four-hundred-year-old story. What did you expect?"

  "Applause, mostly."

  Maggie laughed. Short. Sharp. Surprised out of her before she could stop it.

  Martin looked at her. Smiled.

  "There she is," he said quietly.

  Before Maggie could respond, a new voice cut through the courtyard.

  "Applause? For that?"

  A man stepped from the shadows. Slight, balding, pointed beard. Eyes that held four centuries of opinions. Elizabethan clothes—doublet, ruff, the works.

  "You," he said, pointing at Martin, "have done something I haven't seen in a very long time."

  Maggie stared. "Is that—"

  "William Shakespeare," Mark said. "Yes."

  "The William Shakespeare?"

  "There's only one."

  Shakespeare advanced on Martin, who had the sense to look uncertain.

  "Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy," Shakespeare said. "The lovers die. The families weep. The audience goes home satisfied. That is how it has always been." He paused. "And yet."

  "And yet?" Martin said carefully.

  "And yet you made them shoot the wrong person." Shakespeare's expression shifted—not quite approval, but something adjacent to it. "You made them so uncomfortable with an ending that wasn't an ending that they had to create one themselves. Badly. Desperately." He spread his hands. "That's not nothing."

  "They shot my Juliet."

  "Yes. Because you denied them their catharsis and they couldn't bear it." Shakespeare laughed—short, sharp. "Four hundred years I've been here. Four hundred years of the same deaths, the same tears, the same predictable grief. And then you arrive and make them feel something that wasn't on the script."

  Martin said nothing.

  Shakespeare studied him. "Your Juliet. She was based on someone real."

  "Yes."

  "Someone waiting for you."

  "Yes."

  "Then go to her." Shakespeare stepped back. "And tell her that William Shakespeare found your version... interesting." A small smile. "She'll think you're mad. But you'll know what it means."

  He turned to Mark. The calculating look returned.

  "The construct. You built her."

  "Yes."

  "From a photograph and a script, I'm told."

  "Something like that."

  Shakespeare's eyes gleamed. "I have ideas. New plays. Stories that never made it to the page—characters who existed only in my head before I could write them down." He spread his hands. "I've been here for centuries, watching my old works repeat and repeat. But new works? New creations?" He stepped closer to Mark. "That would be something worth seeing."

  Mark studied him. "I'll consider it."

  "Consider quickly. Immortality is tedious without fresh material."

  He turned to leave, then paused.

  "The construct," he said. "At the end. She said something."

  Martin went still.

  "Good line," Shakespeare said. "I might use it."

  He stepped into the shadows and was gone.

  · · ·

  Silence settled over the courtyard.

  "Was that real?" Maggie asked. "Was that actually Shakespeare?"

  "Real is complicated here." Mark pushed off from the wall. "Historical figures exist in the Dreamscape—created by collective imagination, shaped by how people remember them. He's not the original Shakespeare. He's what centuries of readers and audiences imagined Shakespeare to be."

  "So he's a character too."

  "Yes. But he doesn't like hearing it."

  Martin had recovered enough to stand properly. His eyes drifted once to the construct, still sitting motionless by the fountain, then away.

  "He seemed... less angry than I expected," Martin said.

  "Four hundred years of the same plays. Anything different is interesting, even if it's a disaster."

  Mark started toward the courtyard entrance. "We should move. The families will still be looking for—"

  He stopped.

  Something was descending from the sky. A shape, moving fast, heading directly toward them.

  Maggie tensed. But the shape wasn't attacking. It was slowing, circling, coming in for a landing.

  Johnny touched down in the courtyard.

  He was in human form—the muscular, blonde version he favored. But something was wrong. His usual grin was absent. His shoulders were hunched. He didn't bound over to greet them. He didn't shift forms excitedly. He stood there.

  "Johnny?" Mark stepped forward. "What happened? Is Jack okay?"

  "Jack's fine. He's recovering." Johnny's voice was quiet. No energy. No exclamation points. "I found someone on the way back."

  He looked up. His eyes were tired.

  "A stray."