Author's Note: Half update. The second half of this chapter should go up before March 15th.

As always: please, if you have the spare energy, drop a comment/review, or head over to r/rational and participate in the discussion there. I often don't have the resources to reply directly, but I read *every* single word of feedback that comes my way, and it is deeply, deeply nourishing. Especially now, as we close in on the end, your responses keep me going!

Chapter 47: Tobias (Part I)

"Tobias?"

I looked up at the ceiling—

—at the clear blue summer sky, as far as my eyes could tell, the already-vast chamber made to seem like it wasn't a chamber at all through holographic trickery. I'd realized after a few days that the ship didn't have to do the disembodied voice-of-god thing—that it would be perfectly happy to project a face, or create some human-sized holographic avatar for me to talk to.

But by that point, I was used to it. Star Trek, and all that.

"What's up, buddy?" I called out.

"Tobias?"

I don't think it was battle instincts. I don't think it was even street smarts. I think it was something deeper than that—something primal, the same part of your brain that just knows that someone is choking, or having a seizure—that understands, before you've even really processed what you're seeing, that something is deeply wrong.

The ship had said my name twice, in exactly the same tone—had ignored my response as if I hadn't even spoken.

That—

That was enough to turn my blood to ice, even as another part of me ramped up in counter-response—whoa, calm down, no need to jump to conclusions—

"Ship," I called out. "Can you hear me?"

"Tobias?"

Fuck.

There was a script I was supposed to follow, where I acted like I didn't know, went back and forth with the ship for two or three more rounds, pretending like I thought it was answering me—a who's-on-first rom-com bit I'd seen a thousand times.

You know, enough to be sure.

But I was already running. Not far—just to the other end of the chamber, which I hadn't left since the moment we'd cleared the undersea trench. But still I cursed the lost seconds, felt my heart in my throat as I thought about just how screwed we were if the ship were somehow broken—

"Tobias?"

I skidded to a stop in front of the cluster of twisted metal shapes, the chair-and-console setup that the ship had manifested for me when I'd insisted on a manual interface. Throwing myself into the seat, I reached out with both hands—

Thank god.

"Tobias?"

The lights in the chamber dimmed and brightened at the twitch of a finger. The wall in front of me shimmered into visibility, then went transparent, revealing a dense scattering of stars. I twisted one wrist, and they slid smoothly to one side as the ship began to rotate around its center.

Whatever was happening to the central computer, the ship itself was still responding normally.

"Tobias?"

Maninho, can you—

‹On it.›

I released one of the control levers and reached out to tap the console screen, pulling up the map of local space. There was the silhouette of the ship in the center, and around it—

"Tobias?"

I frowned.

Around it, there was nothing.

I pinched, zooming out, expecting to see flickers of light, something lurking in the darkness—

Nothing. Just the trio of Bug fighters a few thousand miles away, unmoving, still hovering in formation around the spot where the Howler fleet had emerged.

"Tobias?"

‹Fiveish seconds,› Maninho said. ‹Every time.›

I twiddled the controls again, and the transparent patch on the wall widened, spreading like a black stain across the holographic sky until nearly a third of my field of vision was filled with stars. I pushed the acceleration further, adding another axis to the rotation, Maninho easing my sudden nausea as the panorama lurched—

"Tobias?"

Nothing.

Nothing I could see, and nothing that the ship's computer was able to detect.

Or at least, nothing it was able to tell me it was detecting.

‹Could be sabotage?› Maninho suggested. ‹One of the passengers?›

I hesitated. There was one way to check, but I wasn't sure if I could pull it off manually, hadn't been paranoid enough to preprogram it in—had so thoroughly assumed that the computer would just keep working that I hadn't even realized it was an assumption—

"Tobias?"

I pressed a button on the console. "Logan," I called out. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes," came the reply, clear and crisp, the simulated Chee voice sounding like it was right next to me.

"Something's wrong with—"

"We've noticed," the voice said dryly, as the ship continued to call my name every few seconds. "There's a Leeran just outside the hull. It's—confusing."

"What?" I blurted, my original next question dropping straight out of my brain. "Where?"

"Outside the main bridge."

The main bridge that I had specifically avoided using as my command center, since it was exposed, vulnerable, a criminally obvious target—

Fucking Pemalites.

"How—"

"It's in a vessel cloaked with salvaged Chee technology—"

In the back of my mind, I could feel Maninho taking notes, making connections—so Chee sensor tech can't beat Chee cloaking tech.

"—there are eighteen of us currently within the field of effect."

Wait a second.

We were cloaked.

Or were supposed to be, anyway.

"How did it find us?" I asked.

"We don't know. Jake Berenson doesn't know, either."

"Jake?"

"He's on board with the Leeran, in bat morph."

What—

"Who else is with him?"

"No one else. No room—it's more of a spacesuit than a ship. But—it was built and sent by Visser Three. He and Jake are alli—"

I yanked my hand away from the console like it was a hot stovetop, abruptly cutting off the transmission.

He and Jake are allied.

I took a deep breath.

Then another.

Then another.

Maninho, I thought.

‹I get it,› my passenger murmured. ‹I do. But if there was ever a day when that might actually be a good sign—›

Maninho nudged my eyes toward the spinning starscape just in time to catch a glimpse of the crescent sliver of Earth before it vanished out of sight. At this distance—at a full rotation every twenty seconds—I couldn't actually see the thousands of fires burning across the surface, the thousands of Howler ships swarming like locusts.

But I knew they were there.

I struggled to recall what I'd seen in Rachel's memory of the Leeran, Maninho helping draw the conversations back into focus. Erek had been there—had been visible to her, been able to see her—so—

So Jake and the Chee are now equally compromised, if the Visser's done something to Jake—

‹If it works on robots, too, anyway.›

Could it have affected the ship?

Well, that was stupid, it had clearly already affected the ship. The question was whether the ship's mind was mind enough for Jake to be able to read it through the Leeran, whether it was vulnerable to some kind of persuasion or infection—

‹Rachel wasn't infected when it happened to her,› Maninho pointed out.

That we know of.

Suddenly, I realized that the ship had stopped calling my name—that it had been at least fifteen seconds since I'd last heard it.

"Ship," I called out. "You there?"

"Yes," the ship's voice answered promptly.

I felt a wave of relief, tempered by a guarded wariness. Let's not celebrate too soon.

"What—" I began, and then broke off.

What the hell was I supposed to ask it?

‹Don't ask it,› Maninho recommended.

"Ship, can you locate and communicate with the vessel that was just outside the main bridge?"

"Nope! Sorry!"

"Why not?"

"Can't see it! No signals!"

I sighed. "Can you ping the Bug fighters again?"

"Connecting!" the ship sang out cheerfully.

I placed my palm flat on the console again, feeling the strange mental tickle—so different from Andalite thought-speak—as the Pemalite comm system tapped into my thoughts. I'd been on hold with what I had assumed was some junior communications officer, waiting to be connected to someone with authority—had gotten up after ten minutes to stretch my legs, counting on the ship to let me know if anyone ever picked up—

‹Tobias.›

‹Marco?›

I wasn't quite sure how I knew. Something about the cadence, the tone—some familiar quirk of pronunciation that managed to make it all the way through the double-filter of thought-speak and long-range transmission—

‹Well, a Marco, anyway. There are a few of us now. I've been going by Magellan.›

I blinked. That—

That was information. Information that they probably didn't know I already knew, information freely volunteered—

To gain my trust?

‹Well, obviously it's to gain our trust,› Maninho remarked quietly. ‹Marco doesn't do random exposition for no reason. But, like, manipulatively, or—?›

I set the question aside.

‹Why is Jake outside my ship trying to catch me with a Leeran?› I asked quietly.

‹Oh. Did that not work?›

I blinked again. I'd been expecting a denial, or a frantic justification—

‹We thought it would be faster that way,› Marco—

—no, Magellan—

—Magellan explained. ‹I, uh. Sorry. I'm just now seeing what that probably looks like from your point of view. We're, uh. All a little hung over, maybe. Still getting our thoughts straightened back out.›

‹From your little powwow with Visser Three?› I asked pointedly.

‹Yeah, but it's not what you're thinking.›

There was the mental sensation of a shrug, and I glanced back toward the transparent wall, where the Earth was once again drifting past.

‹Enemy of my enemy, and all that. Visser Three has firepower. We could use some firepower right about now.›

Maybe less than you think.

I glanced at the spinning stars again.

‹He's with you?› I asked. ‹Where are you, by the way?›

‹He's—sort of with us. We've got one of his hosts on board. He, uh—›

‹Has a lot. I know.›

‹Right. Anyway. We're hanging out on the far side of the wormhole. Considering the angles.›

I glanced down at the map, at the trio of Bug Fighters flanking the entrance to the Z-space bridge.

‹Which are?›

‹Uh. Complicated? Listen, this would really go faster if you just—›

‹Fuck off, Mar—Magellan. I'm not about to let Visser Three drag his dick around the inside of my skull, no matter how highly you rate the experience after the fact.›

‹Okay, one, vivid, and two, Jake's not Visser Three.›

‹You did go through sex ed, right? Look, we can talk. Talking is fine. Speaking of which—where's Jake, and how do I get in touch with him?›

There was a brief silence, during which I couldn't help imagining Magellan pressing a phone to his shoulder while he whispered to someone else in the room.

‹He's hovering about a half a mile away from you,› Magellan said. ‹Uh. V3 noticed you spinning around like you were trying to shake him off, and pulled the pod back.›

To calm me down, or to stop Jake from getting swatted?

‹How do I contact him?›

‹You can't. The pod doesn't have comms, and even if it did, Jake is basically tripping balls right now.›

Right, the Leeran.

If only I could—

No, wait. This wasn't a problem at all.

‹All right,› I said. ‹I'm going to open up a docking bay in about two minutes. Tell Visser Three to go ahead and send the pod inside when I do.›

"Hi, Jake."

"Hi, Tobias. Long time no see."

The hologram was absolutely perfect—could even have been made to feel real, if I'd wanted it to, though I didn't see much reason to give holo-Jake the ability to physically attack me. As far as my eyes and ears could tell, he was standing right there in front of me, not ten feet away, his shoes pressing into the bright green grass.

But I still had one hand on the console—still had a telepathic link to the ship's internal sensors—and I knew where the real Jake was down to the millimeter.

It hadn't taken long to set up. I'd just instructed the ship to form a large, spherical chamber on the other side of the central reactor from my own—big enough that no part of the ship's circuitry would be anywhere within fifteen meters of its center—and had it hold the pod in zero-gee while a Chee drifted through the area-of-effect long enough to ask Jake to demorph. Then the ship had force-fielded Jake away into a separate chamber, out of range of the Leeran, and introduced him to a hologram of me.

Not that Jake knew it was a hologram. I'd waited to set that part up until after he'd already left the psychic bubble, just in case.

With the Leeran pod hermetically sealed away from the rest of the ship, and Jake in his own isolated space with independent life support—and with both of those spaces reinforced with high-power Pemalite force-field technology—we were about as safe from sabotage as we were going to get.

‹You know that's not going to cut it long term, right?› Maninho whispered. ‹I mean, at some point—›

I cut him off with a mental wave. "So," I said out loud. "You want to tell me what the hell is going on?"

Holo-Jake looked around, the real Jake seeing a holographic copy of the chamber I was sitting in. "Short version?" he said. "Visser Three has a virus that can kill every single Howler in about five minutes. We were just about to pull the trigger on it when Cassie came back from the dead and asked us not to."

I'll admit it—between the ancient Pemalite technology, and the sudden Howler attack, and the god-avatar thing showing up at random to freeze time or teleport us or whatever, I'd started to feel like I was immune to surprises. But that one still got me.

What?

I mean—WHAT?

"Did—did she say why?"

There were other questions, like what? and how? and seriously, what? A part of me automatically started weighing up the chances that it was a Visser Three fakeout, somehow—that maybe Jake was a Visser Three fakeout—but surely the Chee would have said something—

Could Leerans be fake? Hypnotic, instead of psychic?

But Helium had described them, back when he was just Ax—had seemed to think they were legit—

‹Maybe Visser Three mutated them? Made some kind of fake that's close enough that you wouldn't notice the difference?›

Meanwhile, Jake was answering. Sort of.

"Something something hope, something something genocide?" he said, shrugging. "I'll be honest, we were paying a lot more attention to where the argument was coming from than to how strong it actually was."

"How did she—I mean, how sure are you that it's—"

"Ellimist wizardry, as far as we can tell. She dropped out of a hole in the air along with that kid from the Yeerk pool. The one she ran back to save, remember?"

I nodded.

"She remembers leaving the pool, remembers getting shot out of the sky, remembers the meteor hitting. Then nothing. Helium's best guess is that the Ellimist just kept her real body on ice the whole time—kept her in the same little Z-space bubble the morphing tech put her in."

I leaned back in my chair, trying to figure out how to say it, how to frame things so that Jake wouldn't just reject them out of hand.

"You've considered the possibility that it's all some kind of Visser Three charade?" I asked gently.

Jake started to nod, then seemed to catch himself—broke off and shook his head, instead. "Well, not really," he admitted. "There's a level of being-screwed-with that we've kind of just—stopped guarding against?"

I tilted my head. "When did that start?"

Jake shrugged again. "Probably a while before we admitted it to ourselves," he said. "Maybe around the last time you and I were in the same room together."

Was I imagining it, or had he put just the tiniest emphasis on the phrase same room?

‹He does know you pretty well by now.›

"What happened after that?" I asked, stalling for time while half of my brain spun on the Cassie question.

Possibility one—Visser Three was faking it, which means he's probably faking his virus, too. A straightforward con—oh, look, I brought the briefcase to the meeting, but then somebody stole it from me before I could give it to you.

Possibility two. Cassie's real, regardless of whether the Visser is lying or not—was brought back by one of the players at a critical moment—

Why?

I thought back to the last time we'd seen the little blue avatar thing—the day it had taken Jake and the others away. It had actually mentioned Cassie, I was pretty sure—or Jake had, maybe. And then it had said—

The whole point is for you to be placed into situations where your decisions are philosophically relevant.

The memory unfolded, Maninho helping to draw it out of the fog, sharpening up its edges.

Situations where you are free to choose, where the constraints on your choices are primarily your constraints. Your morals, your values, your tradeoffs.

I opened my eyes as something Jake was saying caught my full attention.

"Wait, go back. Marco's mom?"

"Is Visser One's host, yeah. Was. Four of the Marcos took her in, using Quat's tech. It was just like you and Marco were saying—long-distance coalescion."

I'd known about the Marco hive-mind, thanks to Terra and the Chee. But somehow the detail that the Visser's former host was Marco's dead mother hadn't been part of the memo.

‹Well, allegedly dead,› Maninho cut in. ‹Same as Cassie. Which isn't all that wild, given that you've actually come back from the dead.›

Just like Jake. Just like Marco. In fact, if that really was what had happened to Cassie—if the gods had tucked away her real body and then just brought it back—that would make her the only surviving original Animorph.

Does that mean anything?

I wasn't sure. Did it not?

Jake's story was winding down.

"And so Visser Three pulled back because Cassie asked him to?"

Jake shook his head. "He pulled back because I asked him to. And I asked him to because of Cassie."

"Since when does Visser Three do what we ask?"

Jake fixed me with a steady, serious look. "Listen," he said flatly. "I don't know how much to trust my brain on this one. You've been gone a long time. But my brain is telling me something like Tobias is being stupid on purpose, don't put up with it. Not trying to be a dick, here. Just saying."

I felt my eyebrows draw together. "Say more?"

"I mean, it's the same thing I was saying a minute ago. Some levels of threat you just can't do anything about, so you stop trying. We can't break the gods, so we're playing along. We can't take on Visser Three head-to-head, so we're trying something else. And—and I'd be kind of surprised if you of all people don't, like, get this. Visser Three's decided that he can't outmaneuver the gods, and from his perspective it's pretty clear that we're at the center of this whole mess, so he's playing along. Trying to speedrun it. Hitting A through all the cutscenes."

"And you guys think that's a good thing?" I asked quietly.

"It's better than him setting off another round of bombs," Jake countered. "It's better than him helping the Howlers. At least you can negotiate with Visser Three."

"You think you can."

Jake didn't take the bait. "Yeah," he said. "I do. I've seen the way he negotiated with Quat—with the Leeran and everything. He's still keeping those promises even now—even after Marco shot Quat right through the chest. And—look—if it's all a scam, if this is all for show—if he's wasting this much time and energy just trying to trick us—I dunno. I kind of get how he feels about the gods, you know? Like, fine, whatever, let's go ahead and fall for it so we can get this over with."

Not in control, never in control.

"Okay," I said. "You're right. I get it."

"Great. Now what?"

I blinked. "You're asking me?"

"The cube is gone. The fleet's in revolt—Helium has the ships locked down remotely but it's exhausting and it can't last forever. The Howlers have been in orbit for—what—six hours now? Seven? Eight? We figure they're killing about fifty million people every hour, so by the time they hit China again they'll have taken out twice as many people as Visser Three ever did. We were going to pull the trigger on a quantum virus when Cassie showed up. We were in the middle of trying to figure out what to do about that when you showed up. So, yes. I'm asking. Got any bright ideas?"

A dying sperm whale, beached exactly where Garrett and I happened to be walking—

"Here's the thing," I said slowly. "I do have a plan. But it's not a plan for saving the Earth, and I'm not entirely stoked to loop Visser Three into it, either."

"At this point, I don't know if we really have a say in that."

"You could kill him. The copy of him you have on board your ship, I mean. Marco made it sound like there was only one."

Jake shook his head tightly. "There is only one, but killing it won't make a difference. He's got us tracked six ways from Sunday. Also, it happens to be inside an innocent guy's head at the moment."

"That's stopping you?" I asked.

"That a test?" he shot back.

Right. Cassie.

"It's occurred to you that—"

"Yes," he said flatly. "It has."

There was a long silence.

"I get why you're—cautious," Jake said, his voice a little softer. "I do."

His hologram stepped forward, reached out a hand, slapped the metal edge of the console. On his end, the real Jake's hand encountered a hologram made solid. In both rooms it made a dull, heavy sort of sound.

"Realistic," he murmured.

I shrugged.

"I get it," he repeated. "Teaming up with Visser Three is not a good look. And I get that there isn't much I can say to change your mind, at this point. So—I dunno. Do you have any suggestions?"

"For?"

It was Jake's turn to shrug. "You called us," he pointed out. "What were you after?"

I tilted my head, considering. In the back of my mind, I made room for Maninho to leave a thought, but he didn't take me up on it.

"Maps," I said, after another long silence. "The ones on this ship are about thirty-seven thousand years out of date. I figured the Yeerks might have more recent intel."

Jake's eyes narrowed slightly. "I see," he said.

He waited.

"I kept thinking," I continued, reluctantly filling the silence. "About what the avatar thing said. About none of this wrapping up quickly. About whether we'd rather be at the end of things, or at the beginning."

Jake gave a sad, twisted little smile. "And then surprise surprise, you found yourself in control of a giant spaceship, right at the moment the Earth started looking like a bad bet for the future."

‹Hey, uh. Not trying to intrude,› Maninho cut in. ‹But is there a reason you haven't brought it up yet?›

I ignored him. "Yeah," I replied. "Like you said. Figured I'd play along."

"So that's it?" Jake pressed. "You get the intel you need, and you're just—out?"

"Need is a strong word."

"What about the Earth?"

"You said the Visser has a virus, right?"

"Which we're not using, apparently."

"Got any other way to take out half a million Howlers?"

"Not really, no."

"Then maybe you guys should leave, too," I said. "I hear you've got a fleet."

"Not just a fleet," Jake said. "Visser Three's got a breeding population stashed away on his Mars base. Helium thinks we could be in and out in under two hours, given that they're all Controllers."

"So what's the problem?"

It wasn't a real question. Just a reflex, the words drawing themselves out of my throat by habit, to fill the silence. Jake knew, I could tell—gave another one of those twisted smiles, and said nothing.

The problem was, why two fleets?

If we were playing along—and it seemed, for the moment, that we were—if we were going to take seriously the idea that all of this had been prepared for us, laid out for us—that none of the details were random—

There wouldn't be two entirely independent arks unless we were going to need two entirely independent arks.

Or unless one of the arks wasn't an ark at all.

‹But if one of them isn't an ark, it's got to be theirs, right?› Maninho argued. ‹I mean, we're already loaded up. We've got Yeerks, humans, Chee, tech—all the seeds of a self-sustaining colony.›

All the seeds except one.

I had Garrett's—what, his pattern? His DNA? His morph scan, anyway. I'd made sure of that, before leaving the hospital, in case the worst happened. In case he didn't wake up, in case he woke up and got killed again—in case there was no other option.

This was his body, after all. Originally. Sort of. He'd loaned it to me, but in the end, if it was one of us or the other, I was going to give it back. That was—that was just how it was.

But I hadn't pulled the trigger yet. Was still hoping—

‹So ask him.›

No.

It was a vulnerability. One I'd have to deal with, eventually. But not one I wanted to call Jake's attention to. Not yet.

‹This isn't healthy, Tobias.›

It wasn't. There would come a reckoning, eventually. But sometimes you had to borrow everything you could today, and let the payments come due tomorrow.

And in the meantime, there was still the question of Earth.

Earth, which I had mostly written off, but which Jake—and probably Cassie—and maybe even the Visser, come to think of it—was still clearly factoring in.

"What about the Andalites?" I said, breaking the silence. "Now that we know there's a fast route into and out of the system—"

"No dice," Jake said. "There's not really an Andalite military to speak of, anymore. Visser Three's got bodies outside the system, too."

"What about him, then? Having him come in and clean up?"

"He could do some damage. But he's pretty tied up, too, and there are more Howler ships here than he can handle all at once, and there are a lot more Howlers that might decide to show up if the fight starts looking—interesting."

"What do you want to do, then?"

"Honestly?" Jake asked, looking the tiniest bit vulnerable. "My best idea was to get everyone in a room together. I mean, if this is a story—or a game, whatever—if what really matters is people's choices, their decisions—"

He broke off, shrugged. "Maybe something shakes out of that. Maybe together we spot something none of us saw alone."

And just like that, I had my opening.

‹Okay, but that doesn't make me wrong. You get that, right? That-happening doesn't change my point—›

"Garrett's alive, by the way," Jake said softly. "He's on the ship with us."

I wasn't ready. Felt my control waver, like a vase wobbling on a tabletop—felt Maninho reach out and steady the muscles in my jaw, hold back the sudden rush of moisture to my eyes.

Thanks.

"Do you—I dunno. Want me to call for him? Send him over?"

"Would you?"

Jake straightened. I could tell he'd understood my actual question—heard all the weight and nuance I'd tried to pack into it.

After all, once Garrett was on board my ship, there was nothing stopping me from just leaving. Taking the survivors and just getting the fuck out.

It was—maybe not quite right, that I felt that way. Maybe just a little bit shy of the moral standard I was trying to live up to. There were still a lot of people on Earth, and just because it seemed like I couldn't do anything to save them didn't mean they should count for literally nothing, when I weighed up my possible choices. Maybe.

But then again, maybe not. There was only one person I'd actually made a promise to.

"Yes," Jake said. Just the one word, no hedges or qualifiers.

I remembered him, standing naked in the pre-dawn light in the middle of the construction site on the day I'd taken Garrett out of Oak Landing. Remembered him ordering me to do what I'd just told him I was going to do anyway.

I don't get how us being enemies helps anybody but the Yeerks, he'd said.

That, or something like it, anyway.

But the Yeerks weren't the enemy anymore.

Who was? The Howlers? Visser Three? The gods themselves?

"Give me a minute to think," I said.

Jake nodded, and the part of me that had braced itself—

—one of the parts that was bracing itself—

—relaxed, a little. Jake hadn't said anything about there's no time, hadn't tried to rush, hadn't pointed out—uselessly—that every minute we spent meant thousands more people dying. Hadn't brought it up at all, the whole time we'd been talking.

We both knew it. We both knew it, and we both knew that focusing on it wasn't going to do any good at all, would just add weight and stress and pressure—

‹You were going to think about something?›

I drew in a deep breath.

‹Marco,› I broadcast, routing my thought-speak through the computer. ‹Or—whatever—Magellan. You there?›

‹Yeah. You got Jake?›

‹Yeah. Quick question. Ask Visser Three how many people he has on board my ship.›

I could feel Magellan's double-take—why are you asking if you don't plan on trusting the answer—but all he said was ‹One sec.›

Then—

‹He says zero. He says he's got a sleeper connection to the Chee network, checked it once Helium said you'd pinged us. That's how he found you.›

‹Thanks.›

I wasn't sure how my brain had made the connection, and maybe it didn't matter, since it had been the wrong connection anyway. I'd figured that Visser Three had tracked us through his hosts—that he'd managed to sneak a couple of doombots down to Brazil, and I'd picked them up myself. I had forgotten that he'd captured Erek and five other Chee on the day he'd killed my predecessor.

Killed, or just taken.

Jake hadn't said anything about spotting memories of torture or interrogation in Visser Three's memories. But then, that's kind of an awkward subject to bring up.

Hey, by the way, the original you isn't dead yet—

Actually, come to think of it—Logan had said something about salvaged Chee technology—

I shuddered.

Those might be Erek's bones wrapped around the Leeran pod.

‹And V3 might still be lying,› Maninho reminded.

Yeah. He might be.

But he probably wasn't, actually. Why bother, at this point?

"Okay," I said aloud, turning back to Jake. "Say we do a council of Elrond. Who's involved?"

"It—it really feels like it should be everyone," Jake said. "I can't tell if I'm being stupid, but this feels like the last chance. With Cassie coming back—with you showing up—"

"So that's, what—you, me, Cassie, Magellan—"

"We've got Marco Prime here, too."

"Garrett, Rachel, Helium, Visser One, Visser Three. Am I forgetting anybody?"

"The Chee," Jake said. "You've got some on board, right? They—they should be a part of this, too."

"Going to be tricky, with the violence stuff."

"We'll figure out how to make it work. Maybe send them out of the room for parts of it, or something."

"Well," I said. "If we're bringing in everybody, you can add Terra and Telor to the list, too."

Jake's eyebrows shot up. "Telor?"

I grinned—

—noticing on some level that it was possible to grin, now—that finding out Garrett was alive had dislodged some block in the center of my chest—

"Hey," I said. "You're not the only one who's been busy."