"I wouldn't recommend asking."

"Go scrub off in the decontamination tent once you get that thing inside. It's set up in the corner."

Threnody and Kerr carefully hauled the carrying case up the cargo ramp. Matron made sure to keep several meters' worth of distance away from them as the two secured the bomb in the cargo bay. The scavenger was already in the pilot's seat, readying for launch, when Threnody made it to the flight deck. She'd stripped out of her skinsuit and gone through decontamination. The clothes she wore now were from Matron's stores. Threnody sat down in the navigator's seat, strapped herself into the harness, and started pulling up information.

"Didn't know you could fly," Matron said as she put on a pair of reflective dark gla.s.ses.

"Most Strykers can pilot a shuttle," Threnody said. "I prefer not to, but you need a navigator and I'm leading this mission."

"With your power, I can't imagine why you'd want to fly."

"It's why I have Quinton." Threnody reached over to toggle some of the controls between them. "Lucas wants us back in Toronto."

"Why didn't he teleport you?"

"Didn't want to risk the bomb."

Matron glanced reflexively over her shoulder, but all she saw was the closed hatch. "Nice how he don't care about our a.s.ses."

"Let's get in the air. We need to stay clear of government flight paths."

"I know. Military is shooting down anyone who gets close and don't squawk proper ident. We'll go north, over the Arctic Ocean."

"Again?"

"No one's gonna be flying our route. Everyone's heading for Paris."

They were as safe as they could get with a nuclear bomb strapped in the belly of their shuttle, and that wasn't saying much. But Matron knew the uncharted routes between government security grids better than most people. They made the long, uneasy flight back to Canada beneath a cloudy sky all over again.

Hours later, they pinged against the security grid that surrounded Toronto, but no one on the government channels initiated an uplink. Someone in the Strykers Syndicate did.

"It better be you in that shuttle, Thren, do you copy, over," Quinton said.

Threnody jammed her finger down on the audio control, opening up the line. "Good to hear your voice. We're carrying precious cargo that needs delicate handling, over."

"You're clear for the rooftop landing pad, out."

The uplink cut off and Threnody let out a deep sigh, some sense of calm trickling through her now that she knew Quinton had made it back from his mission alive. Slouching in the navigator's seat, Threnody rubbed hard at her burning eyes. Teleporting across time zones, fighting to complete their mission, then flying back to Toronto had screwed with her inner clock. The chrono on the flight controls said one thing, her body was saying another. The headache pounding through her skull wasn't going to go away anytime soon, and her eyes burned with the need to sleep.

Matron made a soft noise in the back of her throat and Threnody looked over at the other woman. "What?"

"Never been to a city tower before."

"Really?"

"Government don't care for my kind. Not how they cared for yours."

"Given the choice, I would have preferred your freedom."

"It wasn't all that great."

Matron was a good pilot, years spent crisscrossing countries around deadzones and security grids forcing her to be. She landed the shuttle on the rooftop with precision. A small group of people waited for them beyond the illuminated safety lines. Threnody recognized them all.

She got out of her seat and palmed open the hatch. The cargo ramp was already opening, and Kerr was busy undoing the restraints that secured the carrying case in place. Novak was pa.s.sed out on a row of seats from exhaustion. Threnody left him for Matron to take care of and went to help Kerr with the bomb.

"You got it," Lucas said as he strode up the cargo ramp.

"Yeah, we got it," Kerr said as he kicked the anchor straps aside. "Was like a nightmare flying back with it."

"What did they get?" Jason asked as he came jogging up the ramp, Quinton hot on his heels.

Lucas waved off the question, attention focused on the cargo. "Let's get it somewhere secure first before we talk about what we're doing next."

"You got medical personnel in this place?" Matron said as she helped Novak to his feet.

"Got a whole level," Threnody said with a grunt as she finally pushed the release lever all the way down. The metal clamps used to keep the case in one place released.

"Good. They better work on Novak without complaint."

Jael? Lucas said, linking with the Strykers Syndicate's CMO. I'm sending someone down for your people to fix. Get him sorted, then come meet us in the command briefing room.

Give me ten minutes and I'll be there came Jael's response.

Lucas teleported Matron and Novak to the medical level's arrival room before focusing his attention on the Strykers. "Let's get below. We've got decisions to make."

Instead of teleporting, Lucas headed for the stairs. If anyone thought it strange, no one said a word. Threnody and Kerr handled the carrying case with a careful wariness that told Quinton and Jason the cargo wasn't ordinary.

The Strykers Syndicate was filled with a new sense of urgency, with fewer humans manning posts than ever before. On their way through the command level, Threnody noticed the empty terminals first and the Strykers second.

"The virus worked?" she asked as they pa.s.sed by half-empty monitoring rooms.

"We didn't get everyone," Quinton said tightly.

She heard the guilt in his voice. Threnody tilted her head in his direction as they walked. "Did you get most of them?"

"As many as we could."

"If you're going to dwell on numbers, then focus on the positives, not the negatives."

Easier said than done, and they both knew it.

The command briefing room was as streamlined as every other room in the Strykers Syndicate. The company wasn't about comfort, but about security and making money. Threnody wondered if that would change when this was all over.

Keiko and Aidan were already waiting for them. The two officers were studying a command window of information, the touch screen that filled the entire length of the table filled with a grid map of the world. Threnody didn't know enough to make sense of what she was seeing without being briefed, but she could guess.

"What is that?" Aidan asked suspiciously as Kerr and Threnody carefully placed the carrying case onto the table. Threnody touched the control panel nearby, freezing the local screen and shuffling the data around the carrying case.

"A difficult answer to a difficult problem," Lucas said as he pulled a seat out and sat down. "We'll start when Jael gets here."

Nine minutes later, Jael arrived. "Your hacker is going to need brain surgery, Lucas. What the h.e.l.l did you have him do?"

"He helped get that." Lucas pointed at the carrying case sitting on the table between Threnody and Kerr. "Sit down, Jael."

She took the seat farthest from Lucas. "Where's Ciari?"

"She's not coming," Lucas said.

"Why not?"

"Because Ciari is dead. So is the World Court. Nathan killed them all in the Peace Palace."

Keiko's telekinesis slammed against Lucas's s.h.i.+elds with enough strength to rattle the conference table. Threnody and Kerr both reached for the carrying case, holding on with white-knuckled grips to keep it steady.

"Stop!" they both yelled, the fear in their voices causing Keiko to pull up short.

The j.a.panese woman was half out of her seat in a rage. Lucas slammed her all the way back into it, leaning forward in his own. "Ciari went to The Hague to die," he said. "She went while she still understood the choice she could make."

"You f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Jael said harshly. "You took Ciari there to kill her, didn't you? To get her out of the way so you can take control of the Strykers Syndicate."

"As always, your imagination is impeccable, Jael. But, no, I took Ciari there so she could offer Erik a way out of this mess. He vehemently declined." Lucas pinned Jael with an angry look. "You know her mind was breaking. What you did to save her from that aborted termination broke her. She wasn't going to last much longer, not as the Ciari you knew anyway. She was too old to survive something like that."

"So you put her out of her misery, is that what you're saying?" Quinton said.

"I'm saying I let her die how she wanted to."

"But not how Aisling wanted?" was Jason's sharp question.

Lucas pressed both hands flat against the table, data streaming away from his fingertips. "Aisling doesn't concern you."

"Like h.e.l.l."

Lucas ignored him. "Ciari knew what was at stake. Why do you think she did all this? Why do you think she gave me the four Strykers I needed in order to break the government's hold on you? Ciari knew exactly what she was doing when she was sane."

"What about when she wasn't?" Keiko demanded.

"You have Jael to thank for that, not me."

The Strykers Syndicate's CMO flinched with her entire body, but Jael didn't protest his accusation.

"Ciari set all of you free," Lucas said, gaze sweeping over everyone. "She made it possible to get the neurotrackers taken out of your heads. She made it possible for me to have a child not beholden to the rules that run my family. Be grateful for that. I know I am."

"So is that it?" Aidan asked. "We're free and we let the registered humans leave without a fight?"

"No," Threnody said. "We're not letting them leave."

"Why not?" Keiko asked. "Let them have Mars Colony. They can't touch us anymore."

"Maybe they can't, but their descendants might."

"You're seriously going to force a fight over something that might happen?"

"Lucas isn't working on a timeline beholden to might," Jael said, speaking up. Her hazel eyes were steady as she stared at Lucas. "Are you?"

Lucas ran a hand through his pale blond hair, shaking his head. "I should have known you couldn't kill your curiosity."

"It's my job to look after the collective health of Strykers."

"I am not a Stryker."

"No, you're simply taking over for Ciari, whether we like it or not."

"I'm not going to live long enough to rule you people."

"So you're leaving it to your daughter?" Jael frowned in his direction. "How can you be sure she'll be strong enough for the job? She won't be a high-Cla.s.sed psion. We breed low on the scale when psions breed at all. We need corrupted human DNA to build off of."

"It's rare, but it happens." Lucas pointed across the table at Jason. "My genes are stronger than most. My daughter will be a Cla.s.s I triad psion, she just won't have my exact attributes. Jason is changing her Cla.s.s and her telekinetic power."

"Into what?"

"Into a more stable version of what I am," Jason said. "I'm a microtelekinetic, remember? I can manipulate cellular structure on the atomic level. Do you know what that means?"

Jael didn't have to think too hard on the answer. Her words came out in a raw whisper. "We could live a human lifetime."

"If we find psions before they're born, then yes. Not only that, but we can work on cleaning up this planet," Lucas said. "It might take a few thousand years, but we have the means to do it now, both in technology and genetics. The humans left behind will need guidance. We're losing so many people who had knowledge on how this world works that we psions will have to pick up the slack. The registered humans who didn't make the launch won't take kindly to psions taking over, so what better way to prove our right to lead than to show them what we're capable of?"

"They used us without a second thought," Quinton said. "They can work with us to rebuild or find a bunker near a deadzone to live in for all I care. We don't need to prove anything to them."

"Hating them isn't going to help us," Threnody said.

"Then let it benefit the next generation of psions. I don't give a d.a.m.n about those people. I'd rather worry about the ones in the street."

"They aren't the only ones you have to worry about," Lucas said. "What we're planning won't last if we let Nathan leave with everyone on those shuttles."

Jael tapped her fingers slowly against the table. "Aisling told you that, didn't she?"

"No," Threnody said. "She told me."

Quinton jerked his head around to stare at his partner. "Come again?"

"Aisling said if we let them leave, they would come back, and we wouldn't win that fight. Nathan's Warhounds have more higher-Cla.s.sed psions than we do, courtesy of the Silence Law. Even if we give it a decade and they return, we'll still be at a disadvantage. Nathan is filling half those shuttles with people not in the Registry. He'll have the means to breed psions on the Ark, if not Mars Colony."

"Are you certain?" Keiko said.

"Aisling is a precog," Threnody said slowly. "I believe in what she said."

"So she's alive?"

"No," Jael said with a sigh as she folded her hands together on the tabletop. "Aisling Serca died during the Border Wars. Her death is in the Registry, ancestral genetic proof that the Serca family's DNA was supposedly clean. They wiped most of the psion markers from her genome, but a few remained for me to note the distinction between Aisling and her older brother."