I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but the clenched fist he showed me looked normal enough. There was nothing deformed or unusual about it. Nothing, in fact, particularly red about it.

“It looks like a hand, Vasquez.”

He clenched the fist even harder and then something odd happened. Blood began to trickle out of his grip; slowly at first, but in an increasingly strong flow. I watched it spatter on the floor, scarlet on green.

“That’s why they call me what they do. Because I bleed from my right hand. Fucking original, right?” He opened the fist, revealing blood pouring out of a small hole somewhere near the middle of his palm. “Here’s the deal. It’s a stigma; like a mark of Christ.” With his good hand he reached into his other pocket and pulled out a kerchief, wadding it into a ball and pressing it against the wound to staunch the flow. “I can almost will it to happen sometimes.”

“Haussmann cultists got to you, didn’t they,” Dieterling said. “They crucified Sky as well. They drove a nail into his right hand.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Shall I tell him?”

“Be my guest, Snake. The man clearly needs educating.”

Dieterling turned to me. “Haussmann’s cultists split up into a number of different sects over the last century or so. Some of them took their ideas from penitential monks, trying to inflict on themselves some of the pain Sky must have gone through. They lock themselves away in darkness until the isolation almost drives them insane, or makes them start seeing things. Some of them cut off their left arms; some even crucify themselves. Sometimes they die in the process.” He paused and looked at Vasquez, as if seeking permission to continue. “But there’s a more extreme sect that does all that and more. And they don’t stop there. They spread the message, not by word of mouth, or writing, but by indoctrinal virus.”