"You're not up to playing stevedore, Thren," Quinton said, glancing over at all the cargo strapped down in the shuttle.

She bristled at the implication she couldn't pull her weight. "Watch me."

"I have. You're going to undo everything we've done to keep you breathing."

"He's right," Lucas said. "You're not helping with this, Threnody. Get inside the station. Korman needs to look you over."

"Korman?" Threnody said. "That doctor with biomodifications for eyes?"

"The very same."

"I don't need to be operated on again."

"Which is good, since he's probably drunk." Lucas shrugged at Quinton's angry expression. "He'll be coherent enough to run some tests."

Quinton shook his head. "You want me to trust some G.o.dd.a.m.ned drunk with Threnody's life?"

"No. I'm telling you to trust me. Now get to work, Quinton. Threnody? Get inside."

Lucas walked away. Kerr drifted over, giving Threnody a sympathetic look. "You can't really argue with him. He got us this far."

"Yeah," Threnody said as she started down the ramp. "Makes you wonder how much further he's going to take us before he finds a reason to discard us."

Kerr nodded. "Come on, Quinton. Let's do this."

As Threnody headed for the nearby station, Quinton and Kerr moved to join the scavengers, all of whom had separated into small groups charged with operating gravlifts and a dozen old-style cargo sleds hooked up to ancient-looking machines with flat tracks in place of wheels. They joined a work queue, adding their strength to hauling out boxes of seeds and other items, and organizing them into piles for teleportation into the dome.

The cold-storage units in every shuttle were unbolted and gravlifts used to pry them out. They were transferred onto cargo sleds, stabilized with heavy metal chains and hooks, then driven down a brightly lit icy path. Kerr rode along with the first load into the snow-covered dome. The entrance looked as if it had been carved into one side of the dome, the road they were on canting downward at a slight incline. They drove through the entrance at the bottom, the way braced by walls of ice whose weight Kerr didn't trust.

Zahara and Jason were still looking the place over, Jason needing to know the dimensions of the dome and the placement of everything inside to form a safe teleport. It looked as if various rooms had once existed inside the dome before the scavengers tore the interior apart to form an open s.p.a.ce. Kerr jumped off the vehicle and let the scavengers start unloading the cold-storage unit.

"Are you going to be all right, Jays?" Kerr asked as he approached Jason.

"I'll be fine," Jason said as he squinted up at the geodesic ceiling. "This needs to be done. I can do it quicker than the machines."

"If you're sure."

"What, you don't trust him?" Zahara said, arms crossed over her chest.

Kerr stared her down. "This doesn't concern you."

"The h.e.l.l it doesn't. The South Pole is ours, not yours."

"I'd like to see you use that argument on Lucas."

Zahara scowled, but kept quiet at the pointed reminder of who was really in charge. "You ain't worth the people we lost," she said before walking away. "Hey, Rex! That thing don't go in the d.a.m.n middle of the dome. Move it to the f.u.c.king side."

"She's got a mouth on her like Matron," Jason said as he finally turned toward his partner. "Strong genes."

"There are those who would argue that conclusion," Kerr said.

Jason shrugged. "Let's get to work. The sooner we finish, the sooner we sleep."

Jason wrapped his telekinesis around the both of them, exhaustion forcing him to go slow. Beside him, Kerr watched as Jason struggled for a second to find a balance that had s.h.i.+fted permanently off-center. Kerr swallowed, his mind empty of the solace Jason's s.h.i.+elds once gave him through the now-broken bond.

"You okay?"

"I don't see the world like I used to," Jason said. "It's strange."

"I can only imagine."

Jason's power finally steadied, and in the blink of an eye they appeared outside again, off to the side of the airfield so as to not arrive in the way of anything or in anything. They fell a few centimeters to the ground, feet hitting against hard snow.

The two separated, Kerr returning to help load up the cargo sleds and Jason moving to the nearest pile of seed boxes stacked haphazardly in the snow. Kristen was leading the work crew nearest him, and it was almost funny how the scavengers were keeping their distance from her.

"Humans are so easy to scare," Kristen said as Jason approached, her voice cheerful. "It gets boring after a while."

"I don't think Lucas would appreciate you killing anyone here," Jason said, eyeing her warily.

Kristen gave him a sly look, her mind briefly brus.h.i.+ng against his mental s.h.i.+elds. "Lucas doesn't like cleaning up my messes."

Jason didn't know how her damaged power functioned and wouldn't trust her, no matter what a.s.surances Lucas made. The dysfunctional empath rarely left her victims breathing, but Jason was still alive. The mental pattern of his natal s.h.i.+elds must have been enough to stabilize her, to show her how to build her own. He wondered how long her sanity would last.

"Stay out of my head," Jason said. He placed a hand on top of a wide stack the scavengers had created in the twenty minutes he'd been gone.

With a slow, methodical wink, Kristen answered, "Maybe."

Jason gathered his power and teleported the boxes of seeds with him to the dome, the first of many teleports. It was less weight than the cold-storage units or the various pieces of disa.s.sembled terraforming machines, which was easier for his mind to handle. He'd have to deal with the heavier items eventually.

An hour later, but what felt longer due to Jason's headache, a commotion around one of the shuttles caught his attention. Quinton was yelling instructions at scavengers as they painstakingly s.h.i.+fted one piece of the terraforming machines out of a shuttle's cargo hold. Jason swore under his breath and jogged over to that area, holding his power in reserve.

"You should have called me for this," Jason said.

Quinton shrugged. "You were busy with the seeds."

"Of everything we brought out of Spitsbergen, these machines are pretty f.u.c.king important." Jason took a step forward and raised his voice. "Hands off, I've got it."

Telekinesis stabilized the heavy weight of the piece, the final product something he couldn't fully envision. Lucas had the diagrams downloaded and stored in a datapad, stolen from the Arctic. The terraforming machines could be rea.s.sembled, but more would need to be built eventually. Learning to reverse engineer that technology was going to be integral to rebuilding the planet. The terraforming machines were capable of cleansing and cloning with the aid of nanites on a level that could jump-start a previously uninhabited planet such as Mars. Fixing Earth came with government interference, and in the past no one had been willing to fight it for the sake of everyone. Even now, it was anyone's guess how long the machines would last.

"Just don't drop it," Novak joked as Jason carefully settled the piece of machinery on the flatbed of the cargo sled.

"Novak, shut the h.e.l.l up," Quinton said. He followed a step behind Jason, keeping an eye on the telekinetic. He didn't like the strained look on Jason's face. In the back of his mind, Quinton could feel the push and pull of power not his own, and it made him a little dizzy. He wasn't sure when the bond would settle, but he hoped it would be soon.

"You need to find yourself a sense of humor, man," Novak said.

"Give me your lighter and I'll show you what I do for fun."

Novak didn't offer it up.

With a shuddering groan of cold metal, the transfer was complete, and Novak climbed into the enclosed cab of the yellow vehicle, flat tracks rimmed with snow.

Jason bent over to rest his hands on his knees and breathe. "How many of those are left to move?"

"Two more pieces for this set," Quinton said.

"I'll move them, but I won't be able to teleport anything afterwards."

Quinton nodded and watched as Novak started the engine of the snowcat, carefully pulling out into the small road that linked the airfield to the station and the dome, joining the work caravan that was departing and returning in a steady loop. Headlights mingled with taillights while the aurora australis moved across the night sky high above them.

THIRTEEN.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA.

Dr. Isaiah Korman was a pockmarked drunk, but he could still see straight when jacked into a system. The biomodifications that had replaced his eyes s.h.i.+fted in his metal-lined eye sockets, their observations fed directly to his brain through neuroports. Korman took a sip from a metal flask and swallowed as he studied Threnody's test results.

"He wants the impossible. Did I say that already? You get stuck down here and you're screwed."

"Are you done yet?" Threnody said from where she sat on the metal exam table. After four hours of tests, she was done with him.

Korman rubbed a hand over his face. His fingers skimmed over the wires that cut out from his eyes and back into his skull through his temples. Half his skull was metal plating, tapering down to his spine. He seemed to have more cybernetic replacements in his body than Matron did.

"Your nervous system is intact. More than intact. If your synapses were talking to each other any louder, they'd be screaming."

Threnody scratched at her bare arm, fingernails moving around the needle stuck into the crook of her elbow. "Doesn't feel like it."

"You said he tanked you?"

"Yeah."

"Huh." Korman took another sip from his flask. "Lucas must have found an upgraded program, because you're healed. Fully functioning body. It's a d.a.m.n miracle."

"I was nearly dead."

"Well, I can officially upgrade your status to living. Congratulations." Korman let out a bark of laughter that grated on Threnody's ears and toasted her with his flask. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I could use a biotank like that. It fixed you faster than any of the ones I've got here. I hope Lucas brought it with him."

"It wasn't just a biotank that did this," Threnody said, splaying one hand over her knee and thinking about someone else's power in her body.

"Your psion physiology probably had something to do with it. You've all got complicated genomes. You people can take more damage than us humans and survive it."

Korman tipped his head back and poured what remained in the flask into his mouth. What was left of his skin, already blotchy, got redder. Threnody slid the needle out of her arm. She wasn't going to stay in the presence of someone intent on drinking himself to death. She got to her feet, bootheels touching the floor as the door to the small lab opened.

Lucas stepped inside, gaze moving over the two. "Korman. So glad I caught you mostly sober. Diagnosis?"

"Mostly sober?" Korman snorted and tossed his flask onto the nearby counter. "I took the nanites out of her veins. She's got no lasting damage from trauma. More like she wasn't damaged to begin with. What am I supposed to do with her?"

"Nothing." Lucas walked over to view the vidscreen, a.s.sessing the information in silence. "Interesting. Looks like all my efforts saved your life, Threnody. Care to thank me?"

"No," she said.

"Smart girl," Korman muttered. "He's worse than the d.a.m.n World Court when it comes to torture. Best to keep your mouth shut."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Strykers Syndicate's OIC got terminated on a worldwide news stream the other day. They left her second as Acting OIC."

Korman was telekinetically yanked out of his chair and slammed against the wall. Dangling with his feet off the ground and struggling to breathe against the pressure wrapped around his throat, he clawed uselessly at Lucas's power.

"They did what?" Lucas snarled.

For the first time since they'd teamed up, Threnody heard actual, real emotion in Lucas's voice, saw it on his face. Shock and fury drained all the blood from his face, the dark circles beneath his dark blue eyes standing out sharply.

Surprised, Threnody cleared her throat and said, "He can't answer if you kill him."

Abruptly, Korman fell to the floor. Threnody never saw him land, too busy staring at Lucas's shaking hands. She took in all the tiny details of how he stood before turning her head to look at Korman.

"Get out."

The doctor obeyed her in record time, stumbling out of the room and slamming the door shut behind him. Threnody walked over to lock it. Turning, she put her back to it and crossed her arms over her chest. She knew she wouldn't be able to stop Lucas from leaving the room, but judging by the way he looked right now, he wasn't going anywhere until he got himself under control.

"Is this about the Silence Law?" Threnody said, refusing to look away from Lucas's gaze.

"No," Lucas said, taking a deep, steadying breath. Some color started to return to his face. "No, it's not."

"Then why are you worried about Ciari?"

"It doesn't concern you yet."

"Yet." Threnody let out a harsh laugh before moving away from the door to stand in front of Lucas. "We are here because of your G.o.dd.a.m.n concern, Lucas. Don't lie to me."

For one brief moment, something alien filled his eyes. Alien because Threnody never thought she'd see fear inside Lucas.

"I should have taken her with us when we left Buffalo," Lucas said. "She was only in Toronto. I had time to get her down here and have Korman perform the extraction."