"I'm no scientist," Jason said. "I don't even know what I did to save Threnody. And you still haven't told us what this mission is."

"You're a psion and a hacker. That is all I require of you." Lucas glanced over at Threnody. "We won't be able to extract the neurotrackers like we do in the Serca Syndicate following a retrieval. What we're doing is simply turning off the kill switch. The signal will remain active. Strykers will continue to show up on the government's security grid, but they won't die. An extraction takes time, something we don't have right now, so we had to get creative."

"Meaning what, exactly?" Threnody said.

"You built a virus," Jason guessed, looking to Lucas for confirmation. "You're going to infect the neurotrackers on a wide scale."

Lucas nodded. "They're bioware with a system that can be hacked, housed in the best biological ent.i.ty this planet has ever made. The nanites Korman programmed will infect only the neurotrackers with the virus and nothing else. Every other biomodification will be spared."

"Are you sure? Nanites are tricky to program and the neurotrackers have some serious defensive programs built into them."

"My family created this technology. It's why we could unlock the neurotrackers without the government's a.s.sistance when we retrieved Strykers." Lucas shrugged. "The government has the code to fully deactivate the neurotrackers, which is different from the code that activates the kill switch for termination. My family knows both. We supply those codes every two years."

"If an encrypted pa.s.sword is the only thing keeping those things in Stryker brains, why hasn't anyone tried to hack them before this?" Novak asked derisively.

Lucas gave him a cool smile. "The encrypted pa.s.sword for deactivation is two hundred digits long."

Jason whistled. "That would be a problem."

"Not for too much longer. The government might want the Strykers dead, but I don't."

"How are you going to administer this virus?" Quinton said. "The Strykers know we defected and they've got standing kill orders for each of us."

"There are ways around that." None of the Strykers looked as if they believed him, but Lucas didn't care. Pointing at Fahad, he said, "Get your people and your gear. Novak will fly you out of here. You will follow Samantha's orders to the letter."

"About f.u.c.king time," Fahad said, shaking his head. "One more week in this place and I'd have gone mad. Been here three months too long."

"You get used to it," Zahara said.

"To the dark, yeah. But to the cold? Never."

Fahad and his two a.s.sistants left the room, followed by Novak and Everett. Samantha leveled her brother a cool look as she let Kristen go. The empath trailed after the humans, tapping at her recently set and swollen nose with one finger.

And when we're finished? Samantha said between them alone.

I'll find you, Lucas said.

It was a threat as much as it was a promise. Samantha left without a backward glance. Matron spat on the ground in her wake.

"Your sisters ain't got your back, Lucas," Matron said.

"I have them, which is all I'm concerned about," Lucas replied. "Korman, I want you to consolidate your work on the virus-carrying nanites, then prep your operating room. Jason needs to familiarize himself with the virus, and Quinton is going to need replacements for his biotubes. Matron, go help him."

Korman and Matron left the room. Kerr looked around at everyone who remained and said, "Got something to say you didn't want anyone else to hear?"

No one missed how Lucas glanced at Threnody. Quinton sighed. "Thren, you keeping secrets again?"

"Wasn't a secret Lucas shared until last night," Threnody said.

"Is that where he got the swollen lip?" Jason asked.

"As amusing as this conversation is, we've got business to discuss," Lucas said. "Tomorrow, Jason is going to teleport Threnody and Kerr to the Strykers Syndicate and retrieve my daughter."

Jason gaped at him. "I'm going to-what?"

"You have a daughter?" Quinton said.

"She's not born yet," Threnody said calmly, the only one other than Lucas who wasn't shocked by the announcement. "Lucas, I thought we'd get more time?"

"We can't afford to stay our hand. I want my daughter, Threnody. I trust you to get her for me."

"Who's the mother?" Kerr asked.

"Ciari." All three men glared at Lucas, who only shook his head. "It didn't happen like that. I didn't rape her."

"You wouldn't need to. You'd just have to mindwipe her."

"Shockingly enough, we discussed this issue as adults."

Kerr grimaced. "Ciari got brought before the World Court. How do you even know the fetus is alive?"

Lucas touched a finger to his jaw. "As Threnody so thoroughly pointed out last night, Ciari wouldn't risk her own child. Given the chance to save her, Ciari would take it. I have to believe that."

Maybe it was the quiet way he said the words. Maybe it was the faint hint of uncertainty in Lucas's voice when he had only ever been arrogantly a.s.sured. Either way, the Strykers didn't argue. Plans weren't set in stone and even Lucas wasn't immune to chance, despite Aisling's orders.

"We won't kill fellow Strykers," Threnody said.

"You handle this mission as you like, so long as you don't return empty-handed."

"I'm going with them," Quinton said.

Lucas shook his head. "You're getting biotubes put in tonight and you'll need a bit of recovery afterward. Jason can only help so much with that."

"Then put me in a biotank. I'm not staying behind."

Threnody stepped closer to her partner, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Quinton, no. Don't argue. I'm planning this mission, so you don't have to worry about me, okay? Things will work out."

If it were Lucas pressing the issue, Quinton would have argued. With Threnody giving the order, he kept his mouth shut. Shaking his head angrily, Quinton left the lab. Threnody gave the microtelekinetic a pointed look and Jason reluctantly followed Quinton.

Then it was just the three of them. Lucas picked up his datapad. "I need to show you something."

Threnody and Kerr approached with slow steps. Lucas tapped at the datapad for a few seconds before handing it to Threnody. Kerr looked over her shoulder, both of them staring down at the screen with its listing of encrypted files and several hundred names. The one highlighted was her own. The one above hers was Lucas's. More names were listed after hers. Carefully, she tapped the icon beside her name, and a command window popped up, asking for a pa.s.sword.

"What is this?" Threnody said.

Lucas leaned back and braced himself against the table. "Aisling."

Both Threnody and Kerr shot Lucas identical incredulous looks. He met their stares without blinking. Weeks on the run, following where he led, told them this wasn't a joke. Lucas didn't have a sense of humor.

"What's the pa.s.sword?"

Lucas shrugged. "I don't have it. That's your file, Threnody. Only you can unlock it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Type in the pa.s.sword. You know it, whether you realize it or not."

Threnody stared down at the datapad, studying the blank command window. She raised a finger to the keypad image, but didn't touch the screen. "What if you don't like what it reveals?"

Lucas shrugged one shoulder, but the tension in his body was impossible to miss. "It doesn't matter."

"Lucas."

"Threnody. It doesn't matter." When she looked up at him, he held her gaze. "I'm not going to ruin what Aisling started. Maybe someone else will, or did, but it's not going to be me, and it's not going to be here. Not this time. I'll follow what she says, like I always have. Even if I don't like it."

He gave Threnody a strained, lopsided smile. "She told me to find you and you've been a right pain in the a.r.s.e, Threnody. But I'm listening."

Threnody nodded slowly, then tapped out a string of numbers that represented the date of the first time Quinton was introduced as her field partner. The first time she got someone she could call family after becoming a soldier, even if it was only in the deepest part of her mind.

It was a wild guess, but the encrypted file unlocked. Opened. Began to play.

The camera was focused on a small table in a white room, with a woman on one end and a child hooked to machines on the other. The caption pinned to a corner gave a date and a location that made Threnody swallow hard. Kerr sucked in a sharp breath. In the room, the child turned her head to stare at the camera, and the image magnified on its own until bleached-out violet eyes were staring directly at them.

"h.e.l.lo, Threnody," Aisling said over the sharp whine of machines.

Threnody almost dropped the datapad, too shocked to make sense of what she held in her hands. Kerr steadied her grip with his own hand, the pair of them looking at Lucas with horror in their eyes. Lucas stared them down, his gaze unwavering.

"She'll tell you what she wants," Lucas said. "And we'll listen."

It wasn't what they expected.

That didn't mean the knowledge hurt any less or that they had the right to walk away.

FIFTEEN.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

TORONTO, CANADA.

"Are we really doing this?" Jason asked. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, shaking his head. "Are we really going to break in to the Strykers Syndicate and steal some unborn baby we can't be certain is even there?"

"I don't like it any more than you do, but it needs to be done," Kerr said. "How's Quinton?"

"He made it through the surgery without any problems. Threnody's with him right now." Jason rolled his eyes. "I told her I sped up the recovery time, but she didn't believe me."

"She believed you. She just wanted to see him for herself."

The two were in the station's small cafeteria, eating one last ration bar before they started their mission. They no longer wore skinsuits beneath their clothing. They couldn't carry any trace of their recent activities with them to Canada. They wore clothes borrowed from Matron's scavengers, all of them black, none of it traceable to a single environment. They carried no physical weapons, forced to rely on their powers alone for this mission.

The amount of downtime everyone had managed to grab wasn't enough to bring any of them up to full strength, but they were healing. Since leaving Buffalo they'd been eating as much as they could, sleeping whenever they got a chance, just trying to mentally heal enough so they wouldn't collapse under the stress. As if being forced to fight Strykers all over again wasn't stressful enough.

"For the record, I still don't like it," Jason said.

"For the record," Threnody said from behind him, "I don't care."

She sat down in a chair and Jason handed over a ration bar without asking. "How'd Quinton take being left behind?"

Threnody tore open the ration bar and took a bite. "He's not happy about it."

"You know he said he'd kill us if you came back with so much as a scratch? After all the effort I went through to boost his healing, that's the thanks I get."

"Thank you," Threnody said, the quiet sincerity in her voice impossible to miss. "I know it can't be easy to work on any of us. How are you holding up?"

"I'm hungry all the d.a.m.n time and I've had more headaches since my s.h.i.+elds came down than I did all last year. At the rate the side effects are growing, I'll need to start limiting use of my microtelekinesis if I want to live through the next few years."

"I told Lucas we needed more rest, but he's right. We're not going to get what we need until this is over, and waiting helps no one."

"Have you decided where you want to go in?" Kerr said, leaning back in his chair.

"Medical level," Threnody said.

"Logical. If Ciari took care of the baby before going in front of the World Court, then she probably had Jael do the extraction procedure."

"Her lab." Threnody kept talking around her food. "That's where the gestational unit has to be. Jael wouldn't risk leaving it unsecured where anyone could tamper with it."

"I can't teleport into her lab. That s.p.a.ce changes all the time," Jason said.

"I know. I'll settle for the arrival room on the medical level."

"Her lab is halfway across that floor," Kerr said. "It's going to be a hard run to get there."

"I'm hoping we won't be doing a lot of fighting. It's the medical level. There's bound to be Strykers recuperating from Buffalo. I doubt they're up to our strength right now, c.r.a.ppy as it is, and I doubt everyone else would be willing to fight us around the injured. They don't have Jason and we're not aiming to kill anyone."

"Kind of sick of being the answer to everyone's problems," Jason said. "Kind of sick at the thought of using Strykers as human s.h.i.+elds."