"You killed me," Shea says, but Nykesha's voice slides from between her parted lips, out of her mouth hanging slack. "Didn't mean nothin' to you. You let them kill me. You killed me." Shea's eyes, glassy and wide but by no means unseeing, fix on him and don't let up. Nykesha's voice, rougher and deeper than Shea's, sounds as dead and buried as Shea looks. "You chose them. You killed me."

And he means to beg forgiveness, to cry protest that he had no idea and he played no role, but instead he runs from what he sees in Shea's empty eyes. Everything is scarlet with blood. Hands reach for him out of the shadows, but those shadows vanish in a flash of gold light and Sue's silvery laugh.

Ann sags against a blood-splattered wall, in her jersey and not much else, her face smeared with dirt and maybe a few other things. "You raped me," she says, but the voice is not hers, the voice is deeper and strangely accented. "You knew what was done. You knew what was said. You raped me." Her face is as dead as Shea's, blank and expressionless, but her brown eyes have the fire and fear of a trapped animal. "They said it wouldn't hurt. They said I'd be better for it. You raped me." For a moment, the voice is a child's; for another moment, the voice is Asjha's.

More than he can bear, because it's only partially false, because he doesn't feel as much guilt as he knows he should, because the blood seeps down Ann's legs and stains her skin scarlet. There's nothing left he can do, and he runs again, faster now, and the pleading voices out of the shadows- he recognizes them without hearing them, Barbara and Ketia begging him to help them somehow- fade and die under Diana's maniacal laughter. The light blinds him, but he forces his way through, because there has to be someone left he can save, someone who needs him, someone he can help.

Maria, screaming and screaming, but by the time he finds her, she's gone and there's another body on the ground, dark-skinned and scarlet-clad, cornrows spread like a nimbus around her head, face set and eyes staring, just like Shea, just like Ann. She speaks, though her face does not move. "You let me die," she says, her voice unfamiliar and dry as desert sand. "She was the favorite and the dream come true. You let me die for her."

And he knows this is true, truer than anything else he'll ever confess to, even when he wakes. Kathy sleeps next to him; he's kept her insulated from these hellish politics that play out off the court, but even she wonders why he doesn't talk to Diana anymore. He can't explain it to her. It's hard to explain even to himself. So many of his guys are gone, changed into people he doesn't recognize- or people he does, which is even worse- and the rest of them he's pretty much had to disown for what they've done.

The damnedest thing is, when he forces himself to watch the pros, he knows his guys without looking at the numbers or the names. AB's defensive stance is still the same and sticks out on that showboating roster; Tamika still calls the Lynx team meetings; Keesh might be blonde now but she's still the last one out on the floor; Charde's first step still comes damn close to a travel; AJ is as quietly efficient as she ever was; Ketia will still beat anyone in a footrace. Doesn't matter who they say they are now.

The damnedest thing is, these days he's gotta look twice to recognize Bird and Taurasi.