@station72

[iuno]

PLAYER INFO
Name: Isa
Contact: dragonstrike / isa#2727 on discord
Are you over 18?: 22!

CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Juno Steel
Canon: The Penumbra Podcast
Canon Point: Between 2x02 and 2x04

Appearance: brooding model pose + shiny new cybernetic eye
Age: 38

Setting:

The short version: in the distant future, humanity has colonised the galaxy, and Juno Steel still manages to live in a film noir dump.

Socially and technologically, the setting of the Juno Steel stories in The Penumbra Podcast is highly progressive. Sexuality, gender identity and expression are a free-for-all that nobody ever questions, and it's up to par for any space-faring sci-fi setting in terms of its technology. Morality and economy are where it goes wrong, in that money-making is generally the top priority at the expense of all else. Mars is where Juno has dug his heels in, so that's where we get all our information about, and it doesn't paint a great picture. Crime runs rampant and sometimes it's legally sanctioned or encouraged; politics and law enforcement are both equally corrupt. And Hyperion City, which is a significant part of Juno's identity, is a fast-changing neon city up to the peaks of its highscrapers in crime, and Juno is just bailing water out of a sinking ship.

History:

PRE-CANON: Juno's history is kept deliberately vague at this point, but what we know so far is this: he grew up in a bad neighbourhood of Hyperion City, with his mother Sarah Steel and his brother Ben. He had a happier childhood initially; but after his mother was fired from her job, she took a turn for the worst. Juno avoids talking about her, but he's said that she "didn't kill him, though it wasn't for lack of trying" and tells Nureyev that she did kill his brother. From there, Juno's life was defined by one bleak tragedy after another. He was a violent kid, and got into his fair share of fights and trouble, bluffing his way through school instead of studying. How he clawed his way out of that life and into the Hyperion City Police Department isn't established yet, just that the HCPD didn't last long for him either and there's no love lost there. He became a private detective instead — easier to operate by his own rules.

SEASON ONE: His first case in the series brings him into contact with Peter Nureyev, at the time disguised as Special Agent Rex Glass and working for Dark Matters Investigations, aka the space FBI. The case is dealt with easy enough, even if it doesn't get all the culprits behind bars; Min Kanagawa gets away with setting her step-daughter up for murder and prison because Juno doesn't have the evidence to prove it. But Nureyev lingers, at least for Juno. After Juno catches him as a fraud and a thief, he escapes with an ancient Martian mask recovered from the case, and leaves Juno behind with his real name and a lot of longing. Rex Glass had slid in under Juno's defences easily, and Nureyev had made wistful promises for a future Juno could have enjoyed with him. It lingers.

The next few cases for Juno pass — not more smoothly, but they pass. First another ancient Martian artifact gets involved in a murder mystery, this time some kind of pill, which Juno tracks down with the help of Alessandra Strong, another PI tangled up in the case. They recover it; Juno swallows it to keep it out of the wrong hands. This was a bad idea, on account of the pill being a device for ancient Martian telepathy. They solve the mystery of the case and get out alive, though, so Juno puts that to the back of his mind. He makes it through a Dark Matters test on his old friend Sasha Wires, a nightmarish event that drags up old memories of the day he, Sasha, and Mick Mercury were responsible for the death of Sasha's younger sister. He saves Valles Vicky from a murder attempt by a criminal ex-girlfriend of hers. He gets Vicky to call in a contact of hers that can help him get to the bottom of whatever is going on in Hyperion City with these ancient Martian artifacts.

The contact just to happens to be Peter Nureyev. Nureyev tells Juno the score: his employer is after an ancient Martian superweapon, he knows how to get it so that it can be kept out of her hands, it's a two-man job, and there isn't much time left. With no other choice, Juno teams up with Nureyev to steal the weapon off a high-speed train that never stops. It takes a risky gamble to do so, which pushes Juno to inadvertently start using his newfound telepathy, but it pays off; they get on the train, get what they need, and get back off. Unfortunately, their escape doesn't go so well. Once they've retrieved the weapon, they're picked up by Nureyev's employer, a scientist by the name of Miasma who wants to use the weapon — a bomb — to cleanse Mars of all other life so that she can populate it with copies of herself.

But Juno has the telepathic implant she wants, so she needs to keep them alive until she can get enough data on it to extract or replicate it. Miasma takes them to an underground ancient Martian structure, the Final Resting Place, and forces Juno to undergo tests of the implant's capabilities, torturing Nureyev to get him to comply. In the meantime Nureyev plans an escape. He doesn't want to leave without giving Juno a reason to trust that he'll return, though; before he slips out, he asks Juno to look through the entirety of his memories, to understand who Peter Nureyev really is. Juno looks, and understands, and trusts Nureyev to come back for him.

Nureyev comes back in time to save Juno's life, but not in time to stop Miasma's plans. Having gotten everything she needs, she makes to seal herself in an airlocked bunker while the bomb is delivered to the surface of the planet. Juno and Nureyev pursue her and realise that they aren't going to be able to stop the bomb from going off now that it's primed; instead, Juno tricks Nureyev into leaving the bunker, and locks himself inside with Miasma and the bomb. He has to stay inside to delay Miasma and keep the bomb where it is, and despite all of Nureyev's pleas for Juno to open the door, Juno has made his choice. With his last words, he says that Nureyev is the best thing that's ever happened to him, a gift he doesn't deserve, that he wishes they'd had the future together that Nureyev offered him.

The bomb goes off, and Juno lives.

In the aftermath, he comes to the conclusion that the bomb wasn't a weapon of mass destruction. Because the ancient Martians populated the planet by cloning, the bomb was designed to target Martian biology in a mass suicide. So Juno comes out of the ordeal alive, though not whole, having pushed the telepathy implant too far trying to dig information out of Miasma's head; the thing bursts and takes his right eye with it. But he lives, and he goes from the Final Resting Place with Nureyev. When they're safe back in Hyperion City, Nureyev makes the offer again for the two of them to travel together, and Juno chooses to leave Hyperion behind and sail off with Nureyev into anonymity. They spend the night together, and both confess to having fallen in love.

And then Nureyev wakes up alone, Juno having slipped out in the middle of the night, unable to detach himself from Hyperion City and too afraid of the uncertainty of happiness or hope. He returns to his office and his detective work, and resigns himself to more of his standard miserable life without Peter Nureyev ever in it again.

SEASON TWO: Missing an eye and a broken promise, Juno ends up in a slump and a period of deep depression. He turns legitimate cases down and he snaps at everyone who tries to talk to him. Eventually, his secretary Rita gets tired of his attitude, and she pushes him to take on the first case that comes to their door: Maia King and her cat.

The case is a strange one, and although Juno saves Maia King from an attempt on her life via a bomb implanted inside a recreated copy of her cat, he dismisses it as a failure because he couldn't get to the bottom of who and why. Not until he's contacted by Ramses O'Flaherty — a politician with no past on record who's running for mayor of Hyperion City, and who Juno thinks might be the first person in a long time who actually gives a shit about making Hyperion a better place. Ramses has the same opinion of Juno, and he makes an offer of employment that Juno reluctantly accepts. His job as Ramses' personal PI gets him one significant bonus right off the bat: a cybernetic eye, to restore his vision and supplement his sharpshooting skills.

And then Juno has to leave Hyperion City behind — the place he chose over his one shot at happiness with Nureyev, what he built his entire identity on — and come to Station 72, his cybernetic eye uncomfortably new and his nerves still raw from everything that's happened to him so recently.

Personality:

JUNO: Ask any kid on Mars who the greatest hero of all time is, and they'll give you the same answer without blinking: Andromeda the Chainmail Warrior, the hero without a home. The lady on all the best lunchboxes. Every kid goes through a phase where they like Andromeda. Some even go through a phase where they want to be Andromeda. One of those little saps grew up to be Juno Steel, Private Eye. Back when I was a kid, I used to put a colander on my head and wrestle my brother for hours while he roared like a dragon and spat all over my face. I always felt invincible back then. Like nobody'd ever take me down. Like I could do no wrong. So you could tell I wasn't a very smart kid either.

At heart, what Juno Steel wants is to be a hero. That's the way it's always been. He grew up idolising the heroes in children's stories, and he can still remember the kinds of catchphrases that defined him then, about justice and how the good guys always win. That hasn't changed in thirty eight years; the worse the world around him gets, the harder Juno digs his heels in and pushes back in case by some slim fucking chance he can make things just a little better than they were the day before. He can't help everyone, can't help anyone half the time, but he also feels a desperate need to do whatever he can, even if that means tethering himself to Hyperion City — a place full of bad memories and worse people. And detective work is the only way Juno knows how to help, so he puts every last bit of himself into it.

The hero complex doesn't exactly shine through to the surface, though. Firstly because he thinks it's embarrassing to still hold onto any shred of that stupid kid he used to be, in a galaxy where he knows for a fact heroes don't really exist. And after a lifetime of bad experiences, Juno has buried everything good about himself beneath a thick wall of cynicism and sharp words. He's the typical noir detective archetype: bitter, jaded, and kind of an asshole. He doesn't waste his time on manners or niceties, and he says whatever is on his mind, which is usually straight from his running monologue of miserable pessimistic bullshit. The way Juno tells it, the galaxy is a cruel place and everyone in it is either a victim or some kind of bastard. Every day is an opportunity for things to be worse than they were the day before. He works for the people, and he doesn't have faith in a single one of those people, as individuals or as a collective.

All of this combined does not a balanced lady make. He's a cynic whose only motivation is a desire to save the world; the result is someone who knows he can't win, and keeps going anyway, no matter how miserable and self-destructive it makes him. He has no patience for optimism because as far as he's concerned, expecting too much from a situation just means you're not prepared to make the necessary call when the time comes. "You can't save everything," he insists. You do what you can, and most of the time it won't be good enough and you'll hate yourself for it, but that doesn't matter. It's chipping away at a mountain so slowly that no one will ever notice the difference, and it's what Juno has to do to keep getting out of bed in the morning.

And he isn't just a cynic. His list of bad traits can go on for a while, in fact. He's sullen, moody, and deliberately uncooperative most of the time no matter what it is he's refusing to cooperate with, whether it's a life or death situation or neglecting the physical therapy exercises he's been assigned. His lack of faith in people means he's distrustful of just about everyone, and has a tendency to be critical and insulting even to the ones he does trust. Half of what he says is sarcastic, and the other half is angry shouting. He tries to make jokes out of everything to deflect as much as possible, to make himself seem aloof and unaffected when really he's often one bad day away from a meltdown he only escapes by drinking himself unconscious.

Still, he isn't as good at keeping distance as he'd like to pretend he is. If someone can get under Juno's skin in the right way, there's a lot of vulnerability there, exposing him as someone tired and afraid. If someone gets under his skin in the wrong way, there's more sharp edges to be found than even he usually shows. He will viciously bar off any line of conversation he doesn't want to engage with by any means necessary, from shouting to making threats to storming out entirely. He'll get cruel about it, too, dredging up anything personal he knows about a person or using the worst parts of himself as trump cards and bludgeoning tools to win an argument he doesn't want to have. He's so ridiculously avoidant that he won't even acknowledge things he doesn't want to think about in his own head, much less out loud; he refuses to refer to sore spots, such as Nureyev or Sarah Steel, with names or specifics in his monologues.

MICK: You don't like to work with other people because you want all the glory when you win, and you don't wanna be able to blame anyone but yourself when you don't. You've always been like that. When we were kids, I'd come up with a stupid idea, and when we got in trouble for it, it'd be all about you, how you messed up, how you should take the hit. Even though they were all my dumb ideas!
JUNO: I'm not some selfless hero, Mick!
MICK: No, you aren't! You're full of yourself!

Nearly everyone who sees through Juno Steel's bullshit — whether because they've known him long enough, or because they just understand what kind of person he is — has called Juno selfish at some point or another. Sasha says that it's "always about him"; Mick says that he's "full of himself"; Nureyev calls him "self-aggrandising." It's not about his prickly attitude or lone wolf mindset, but the hero complex he thinks he's buried deep enough to hide.

At some point in his life, Juno began to cope with the world by seeing it as a story where he's the main character, self-centred in a very specific direction: bad things that happen around him are his fault, and bad things that happen to him are some kind of karmic narrative consequence, which satisfies him in an awful way. Sometimes it does become a matter of ego. As Mick says, Juno tends to think that he's the only one who can solve a problem and that it's his to solve. But you can't save everything and he blames himself for what doesn't go right. It comes off as a form of survivor's guilt, and it probably started with his brother's death; now, Juno doesn't know how to cope with bad things other than assigning the blame to himself and seeing every bad thing that happens to him as karmic punishment for his wrongs, rather than a consequence of his choices, or worse, a tragedy that he had no hand in and couldn't have affected no matter what.

RAMSES: Your delight at throwing yourself into harm's way implies more... self-loathing than self-sacrifice. Great heroes risk great things. You risk only yourself, and as far as you're concerned, that's very little on the line.

With a mindset like that, it's easy to see that Juno is incredibly self-loathing. His heroic motivation is founded on a base of guilt over every bad thing that's ever happened in his life, every mistake that he internalises as his fault alone. And because runs on this cycle of guilt and penance, he's desperate to collect more of it, to prove that he really is just as bad as he thinks. It's a large part of why he leaves Nureyev; even when the world won't deliver the punishment he deserves, he'll make it happen himself, and the more dramatic the consequences, the more satisfied he'll be by the hurt. Everything is his fault anyway, so if he has to, he will make sure it's his fault. He needs closure, but his version of closure is the weight of his sins coming back to hit him full-force.

His self-loathing results in recklessness, as Ramses says; a complete lack of regard for whether or not he might get killed in a situation at any given time, as well as a tendency to volunteer himself as first sacrifice when it comes down to it. "The pricetag," he calls himself to Nureyev without any hesitation, "the cost of a fresh shot at the world." It comes through in scathing monologues about himself, and always rises to the surface quickly when he loses his temper. If anyone has to bear the weight of Hyperion City on their shoulders, Juno thinks it might as well be him, because he can't possibly get any more broken than he already is, and it's his responsibility anyway. It's that awful self-centred perception again, like he's the worst thing that's ever happened to the galaxy. "More broken before I got here?" he hisses at Mick, when Mick tries to suggest that the world wasn't utterly ruined by Juno Steel's dumb mistakes as a kid. "You idiot. You idiot."

It also results in a fear of anything else. Because his entire identity has been founded on guilt and self-loathing for three decades, Juno can't imagine himself any other way. He doesn't want to, because then he wouldn't be suffering and the guilt over having what he doesn't deserve to have would eat him alive. That's the other reason he runs out on Nureyev; he's terrified of the thought that he would be happy in that life. He doesn't know who he would be if he was happy and he's scared to find out. When he wants something, he can't have it, because if he gets what he wants then what's left for him? He's so afraid that the awful cloud of depression that's defined his whole life will just eat away at his happiness and in the end, it won't have changed anything, because that's just the way Juno Steel is, isn't it, some black hole where no light can ever exist.

JUNO: "Feel better"... Heh. People have been telling me I'll "feel better" for years. Exercise, you'll feel better. Get some sleep, you'll feel better. Go out and meet someone, you'll feel better. And look, I've thought about it a lot, and here's the thing: I'm not sure I care about feeling better. I care about doing my job. Fixing the little part of this city I can get my hands on. And in the Maia King case, I failed.

The thing is: Juno is depressed. He's lived nearly his whole life dragging the weight of it around, the product of a shitty environment and a lot of trauma. And he's gotten comfortable with it, with the world being this deep deep hole he can't climb out of, to the point that he refuses to leave it. He does nothing to improve his life or change his ways; when he gets the opportunity to do so, he backs out as soon as he commits, and just absorbs the guilt of that decision like he does everything else. Juno considers his stubborn refusal to let go of Hyperion City as a point of pride and identity, and in some ways, it is. He really does care. It's not that he should give up on the last shred of hope he has. But he's stagnated so badly that he can't consider any alternative, and so he keeps digging himself deeper into that hole, well aware that even if, by some miracle, the world does get better, he's made himself a grave that he'll die in.

Canon Abilities/Skills:

DETECTIVE SKILLS — Juno has been a detective for a long time, from the Hyperion City Police Department to an independent PI. It's not a boast to say that he's a good one. With the amount of time he's had to sharpen his skills, Juno is a valuable resource for more than just his self-destructive determination, and he's got a mind for most kinds of problem-solving. He's good at gathering information, putting clues together, knowing where to look and what might be valuable for a case; he's also got plenty of experience keeping calm under pressure and working on a tight deadline.

SHARPSHOOTING — The one thing Juno is proud of is his aim. He's shown his accuracy with a blaster on several occasions during canon and he's not modest about it. His sharpshooting is so much a part of who he is that he falls into an even more poisonous self-loathing than usual when he loses an eye and his accuracy along with it; fortunately, that's since been meliorated by a cybernetic replacement eye.

CYBERNETIC EYE — Other than restoring his vision, and with it, his lethal aim with just about any kind of gun, the cybernetic eye that Ramses gifted Juno has plenty of other benefits built into it. In fact, it has so many capabilities that Juno doesn't actually know what they are yet. Thea, the virtual assistant programmed into his eye, is the only reason Juno can really do anything with the eye's more advanced functions, offering him suggestions in certain situations. Thus far, Thea has proven to have a number of useful utilities for a detective, including the ability to improve Juno's aim and reaction speed; detect heat signatures; analyse materials; record video and audio; activate night vision.

ON STATION 72
Symbiote Specialization: Rho — Barrier/Force-Field Manipulation
Symbiote Ability: The symbiote allows the host to create psychokinetic barriers that absorb (and later deflect) incoming damage, drawing on the host's mental strength to do so. It requires focus to create and maintain a barrier, which encourages the host to hang back and use the power to shield others.

RANK 1 ( beginner )

( + ) The host is able to put up a single barrier with a surface area of up to 3x3 metres. A barrier can protect against any incoming damage, as well as being able to stop an object in motion.
( + ) The barrier can be maintained for up to five seconds at a time before the mental strain causes the host to lose focus. Another can be created approximately two minutes later, as long as the host has regained their concentration.
( - ) A fraction of the damage absorbed will always be transferred to the host. The extent of physical pain caused is dependent on the amount of damage that struck the barrier, but it typically results in aches and bruising. Heavy damage can cause internal bleeding and broken bones, and in extreme cases, permanent injury such as nerve damage.
( - ) Only three barriers can be used in a day, and use results in mental backlash; migraines, fatigue, and a worsening mental state. The host's existing flaws (ex. anxiety, paranoia, depression) will be exacerbated until the host recovers with rest.

RANK 2 ( intermediate )

( + ) The host is able to put up a single barrier with a surface area of up to 5x5 metres.
( + ) The barrier can be maintained for up to fifteen seconds at a time. Another can be created approximately five minutes later.
( - ) Only five barriers can be used in a day. Mental backlash from strenuous use is worse and can take multiple days to recover from.

RANK 3 ( advanced )

( + ) The host is able to put up a single barrier with a surface area of up to 8x8 metres. At this rank, the host can choose to create the barrier as a curved dome that can shelter themself and allies, rather than a flat wall.
( + ) Any incoming damage is reflected by the barrier, bouncing it back in the direction it came from. The host's body still absorbs a fraction of the impact.
( + ) The barrier can be maintained for up to thirty seconds at a time. Another can be created approximately fifteen minutes later.
( - ) Only eight barriers can be used in a day. Strenuous use can result in a week of mental backlash; continuing to use abilities to their full extent before recovering from existing strain can result in a permanent worsening of mental state and a susceptibility to frequent migraines.

Inventory:

- current set of clothes (a black turtleneck sweater, tan trenchcoat, black slacks, black boots)
- wallet, mostly empty
- one (1) PI licence
- one (1) laser pistol, set to stun
- one (1) plasma-blade box cutter
- a comms device that is now useless

SAMPLES
Samples: test drive thread + an extra

Rescue Write-up:

Juno has been in his apartment for long enough to toss his keys at the coffee table — they miss, and he's too tired to care about that — when the windows explode.

He hits the floor hard, cursing. Working for Ramses barely a matter of weeks and it's already coming back to bite him; god, this is just what he gets for letting himself be dragged into politics in Hyperion City, but he'll yell at Ramses later. There's glass all over, crunching underfoot as he hauls himself back up, and in his head Thea is running exit strategies, chirping advice and questions at him—

"Just call Ramses," Juno snaps. He doesn't need a computer telling him what to do all the time. "And tell him he's footing the bill for this, I don't care if it cuts into his campaign funds."

Ground level won't be much safer, he thinks on his way down the emergency stairwell, but it should at least give him a clear shot at whoever's trying to murder him in his own home. His head seems like it's buzzing almost too loud to hear the clamour of the rest of his apartment building starting to react. It is the Ramses job, isn't it? As far as he knows, he hasn't done anything lately that would have anyone else out for his head. That doesn't rule out the possibility. It's not unheard of for his past to come swinging back around at him with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball, someone unsatisfied with one of the many black marks in Juno Steel's ledger.

Things aren't pretty on the street, all rubble and smoke and still no sign of an actual perpetrator. People are panicking, cars stopped in the streets and their drivers fleeing through the lines of them like ants, which is why Juno ignores it when someone collides with him.

"You need to leave," they say to him.

There's nothing here. What the hell broke his goddamn windows? "Yeah," he responds absently, scanning the nearby buildings for anything suspicious. "I wasn't exactly planning on standing still, but thanks for the tip."

Apparently, something about that doesn't satisfy the stranger; they grab his arm when he tries to move away, and they have an iron grip. You're overdoing the concerned citizen act, he means to say. Get them to leave him alone, to go take shelter somewhere away from him, the epicentre of whatever chaos is going down this time. They get a word in before he can:

"Juno Steel," the stranger says, and now he's paying attention, "you need to leave this city."

"If that's a threat," he says, "I've heard it before." — or tries to. He feels the words in his throat but doesn't hear the sound of them beneath the roar that seems to shatter the whole street at once. Not the sound of a bomb going off; more like a monster, if you believe in that sort of thing beyond the philosophical bullshit.

The thing pouring out between buildings towards Juno is compelling evidence for it. It's a storm, a dark writhing mass of something that shatters glass and flings cars aside and tears up the pavement where it moves, and Juno — well, for a second, Juno thinks of Miasma. Her cold black presence in his head, her reaching appendages, the single-minded focus of her snarling thoughts: I will get what I want. Just hunger; not a scrap of humanity in her.

Then he starts running.

Whatever it is, it's fast, and it only takes him a block to realise he's not going to be able to outpace it. If he gets inside, maybe; finds a place to take shelter and wait this thing out, hoping the building doesn't cave in on him. He's thinking about where to go when something shoves him, and he goes staggering into an alleyway.

It's the stranger standing in front of him when he gets his footing, and Juno can't see the street behind them. Nothing but darkness.

"This is really not the time—" Juno shouts over the deafening sound of the nightmare passing them by. They can't hide here forever, and this isn't the kind of thing he can bluff his way through. This is — this is insurmountable, apocalyptic. It looks like it's going to turn Hyperion City into glass.

Maybe that's why he listens when the stranger leans in and hisses, "Listen to me." Their fingers are digging insistently into his arm and their expression is hard, determined. "That thing, it's here for you, Juno."

"What—"

"It's here to get you," they say, "and it's going to tear this whole city apart to do it if you don't leave right now."

He'd like to argue. He doesn't want to believe that could be true for so many reasons that the words hit a wall in him and he has to go back and go over them again. He'd like to say that it's ridiculous, that it doesn't make any goddamn sense; he could believe almost anyone being out for his blood, but a monster? And one that wants him dead so badly it'll flatten a city beneath its hand to reach him — seriously, what the hell does Juno Steel matter in the grand scheme of the galaxy? He isn't worth hunting like this, he's never been able to make a dent in anything.

But he saw what it did to those buildings. He can only imagine what it did to the people in those streets. It actually makes a twisted kind of sense too, doesn't it, that this could happen and it would be all his fault. He's always telling people that all he ever does is make things worse in the world, and here's the fucking proof of it. It feels... hell, it feels right.

His heart's been racing this whole time, and the adrenaline seems to drain right out of him. He feels empty all of a sudden.

"You're serious," he says to the stranger, hardly even a question. There's something caught in the back of his throat. They nod, and Juno finds out what that something is: hysterical laughter, high-pitched and grating. He starts laughing and it just keeps going, because it really is funny. Of course that's what it is. Everything he's done for Hyperion, everything he's given up for it, and in the end, what it needs more than anything is Juno Steel to be gone. More broken before he got here — ha. It looks like he has Mick beat after all.

Under the sound of his own laughter, he hears Thea chime in: Incoming call from Ramses O'Flaherty.

"Juno," Ramses says when he picks up. He sounds less composed than he usually does, and Juno kind of likes that. It's always good to hear a politician get rattled by something. "What's happening over there? There are reports of buildings collapsing, the streets are in ruins—"

"Sorry, Ramses," Juno interrupts him. He has a bad track record with goodbyes, he realises as he says it. "It looks like I'm gonna be out of town for a while. Might have to miss your Election Day speech. But good luck with the campaigning; I'll be rooting for you in spirit."

"Juno—"

It feels a little like being back in the tomb, hanging up on Ramses in that moment; like being on the inside of an airlock with Nureyev slamming his fists against the door on the other side, all his clever tricks gone under the tide of desperation. There's that same weird clarity in Juno's head, for one thing. He wonders if that isn't a sign he's making the right decision. But maybe it's just the weight of resignation so heavy it compresses all his black coal thoughts into a diamond, sharp and straight-edged and perfectly crystalline clear.

"Juno," the stranger says, insistent, and Juno shuts his eyes. The humour of the situation has passed. God, he really — he gave so much, dug himself in so deep because he thought he really could do something to save this city if he just kept working at it. Turned down the only thing that ever made him happy, with his sharp teeth and sharper smile, because he couldn't bear to uproot himself, and in the end he's going to do it anyway. In the end, this is what it comes down to: trade Juno Steel for Hyperion City.

It's not a hard choice to make. It's not even a choice at all.

"Let's go," he says, knowing that most of him won't be leaving with them. Just like it says on all the postcards: Left my heart in Hyperion City. Not much of a heart, but even so. "Before I change my mind."