To Armadas: That is absolutely correct! Also, I think you submitted your review before finishing it.


"I really don't want to do this," Bri complained, sighing heavily.

"So… don't do it," Felix suggested, arching an eyebrow. "No one is forcing you to do it, are they?"

"I mean, not really?" She started to say something else, but she thought better of it, giving Felix a meaningful look. He sighed heavily, draping his arm over her shoulders, and pressed his lips to her forehead. She leaned into his embrace, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

Anne rolled her eyes. "Seriously, girl? You're treating this like some major crisis! So you don't want to go and help fix up the space-planes. Why should you have to go? They have other people to do it, right?"

She nodded. "Biladurang is there, and she knows them inside and out. Plus Kightowl is going to be there, too…"

"So what's the problem?"

She pursed her lips. "She also agreed to let Mecha-Man – or at least his designer–" she made a face "help out with it, too." She raised an eyebrow at Felix. "You know what he's calling himself?" she demanded. "'The Engineer', apparently." She scoffed and spat on the bare ground of their tent. She and Felix sat together on her cot, Barkk curled up beside them. Anne leaned forward on the empty wooden crate that they had salvaged from the dump to use as a nightstand; she had moved her cot into Chloe and Sabrina's tent after their return from Hy-Brasil. With the heat of the afternoon sun beating down on them, they had folded back the tent's flaps, allowing the cool breeze off the ocean to pass through the tent, chasing away the humidity and evaporating their sweat. Bri felt a shiver run down her spine and leaned into Felix reflexively.

Anne shook her head. "He's nowhere near the engineer you are, sis: between the two of you, you're the one who can actually pilot your suit! Besides, yours is way cooler than his."

Bri gave her a grateful smile. Ever since learning about her father, she had wanted nothing more than to prove herself to be the better engineer, to use her skills for good, where he used his for evil.

Felix shook his head in disbelief. "Why do they want him involved in this?" he wondered.

"I mean, he did design the sonic cannons," Bri began, shrugging one shoulder.

"Wonderful," Felix deadpanned. "So?"

"So he thinks he's the best person to install them and make sure they work right."

Anne shrugged. "Maybe that's the case. So what?"

"What if he puts something into them so they don't work right? Or so they suck all the power out of the planes? Or so the planes ping him with their location, compromising New Atlantis? Or–"

Felix squeezed her shoulder, cutting off her rant. She turned to face him, eyes wide. "Bri," he asked her quietly, "do you really think that's something he would do?"

"Well, he is one of the bad guys," Anne pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "I wouldn't put it past those Lynchpin-ions to make a right bags of everything, just so we look bad."

"You're not wrong," Bri muttered glumly. She sighed heavily. "I don't know," she admitted. "A part of me still wants to think that he's being genuine, that he really wants to help us out. After all, Paris is his home; why would he put it in jeopardy from more destruction by the Tarasque?" Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Anne giving her a funny look. Felix hugged her tighter. "But at the same time, he's been hurting Paris – or at least the people of Paris – for at least a year now, so…" She shrugged helplessly.

"That still doesn't explain why you have to be there," Anne replied, raising an eyebrow. "Why should you have to be there?"

"Because I'm the only one who knows his work well enough to tell if he's messing with it."

Felix nodded firmly. "Well, I mean, if you think you need to go, then go." He gave her a worried look. "Do you want one of us to come with you?"

Anne nodded fervently. "If you need me, I'm there," she offered.

She shook her head. "No, I–I'd rather not subject you to that. I appreciate it – both of you – but I'll be okay on my own, I think."


Slowly Iron Maiden lowered herself onto the left wing of the space-plane, as close to the fuselage as she could manage. Under her helmet she frowned, her brows furrowed in concentration. She adjusted her power level carefully, hardly daring to put her full weight on the wing itself.

"Oh, come on, girlie," called Biladurang from the ground below, laughing. She turned off her torch and pushed up her welding mask, shaking her head ruefully at Iron Maiden. "It's not going to break on you!"

Iron Maiden allowed herself a chuckle as she killed her jetpack and landed on the wing with a metallic thud, dropping to kneel just beside the sticky elevator she had noticed while landing in Angola a couple nights ago. "On me, probably not," she agreed, grabbing the edge of the elevator and slowly working it up and down to test the resistance. "But I'm going to take a wild guess that you designed this thing to support humans, not mechanized suits!"

Biladurang passed her a long-handled wrench. "I didn't design it," she reminded her, her lips twisting around. "It was…" her shoulders slumped "… Pegasus."

Iron Maiden frowned, her own shoulders slumping within her suit. Surreptitiously she looked around to make sure that Sabrina wasn't anywhere nearby. They had moved both surviving space-planes to the far side of the refugee camp, into a large cavern that Delwer had hollowed out for the purpose, well away from the rest of the refugees. But Sabrina's range extended at least this far. Anne, Chloe, and the others were supposed to be with her right now; all she could hope was that they were distracting her. Looking back down at Biladurang, Iron Maiden sighed. "Yeah… I miss him, too."

"By all accounts, your Pegasus was rather brilliant," noted Knightowl, looking up from the schematic he had laid out on a stone worktable in front of him. "I'm sorry I didn't get to meet him except in passing, back when we first arrived in Paris."

"He was," Iron Maiden agreed somberly. Even though they had worked together the most via email and only met in person a handful of times, she had almost felt as though she knew him as a friend. After the therapy week back in the autumn, she and Sabrina had started talking on the phone almost weekly, if not more. And while Sabrina hadn't talked about him every time, she had always sounded especially excited and proud when explaining Max's most recent invention, or his latest idea for his video games. She swallowed. Back when they first started, she had wondered at the way Sabrina lit up while talking about her boyfriend; having experienced that for herself now with Felix, she no longer had to wonder. Her stomach churned.

What would she do, were she in Sabrina's shoes? She had nearly lost it in Hy-Brasil when she thought the Vicar was going to murder him; what if it had actually happened?

"Adversaries though we were, I always felt a level of respect for Pegasus," the Engineer – Bri's father – commented. He selected one of the many pieces of scrap metal that Mecha-Man had scrounged up from a junkyard in Luanda and started pressing it into a conical shape with a metal press that Elettrisicario had delivered the previous day. "The way he entirely shut down my second Mecha-Man suit… brilliant."

Iron Maiden's jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed. The metal wrench in her hand creaked as her fist tightened. What right did he have to talk about Max like he knew him, like he was saddened by his death? He had fought against him! He had built his Mecha-Man suits so he and his partner could rob and hurt people. He had lost all right to act like he cared when he started working for the Lynchpin!

And yet – looking down at him, Iron Maiden felt a weight in the pit of her stomach – this was still her father, still the man who had taught her and inspired her. Who would regale them with explanations of the complicated systems behind their new refrigerator after hooking it up. Who had bought an Erector set for her and then taken away the instructions so she would have to be creative. Who had constantly pushed her to excel. He was still her father who had picked her up when she fell off her bike, who had consoled her when no one had asked her to the dance at the end of collège. Finally she sighed. "He was really brilliant."

Biladurang sighed heavily. "It will not be the same without him," she observed. "But we will honor his memory."

Iron Maiden nodded firmly. "Absolutely."

"You know, these space-planes were his babies," Biladurang continued, giving the Engineer a look. "Almost everything about them was his idea – all except these new cannons," she added.

"It was not just my idea," the Engineer replied, sliding the cone into its housing and twisting it around to check the fit. He nodded to Knightowl. "It is a group effort."

Knightowl nodded slowly. "Make sure you get the angle as precise as possible," he instructed, making a few markings on a chart, stroking his chin. "In testing, that was the one that showed the most promise, and I suspect that we will require every possible edge in this fight." He hummed. "It's a pity we only have the two space-planes…"

Biladurang frowned darkly. "Well, we had four of them," she pointed out acidly. "Unfortunately, the Tarasque took out two – along with several of my teammates."

Knightowl made a strangled noise. "I apologize," he responded immediately. "I only meant that the more platforms on which we can deploy this sonic cannon, the better our chances of success."

Biladurang hummed.

Carefully, Iron Maiden tested the elevator once more: it moved smoothly, without the jerkiness that had been there before. Shifting her suit's controls to access the plane's remote piloting system, she ran it through a series of simulations and tests, all with the same result. "We're good here," she announced, walking slowly out further on the wing, toward a spot where the outer layer had been punctured, leaving the framework beneath exposed. Adjusting her energy cannon to the lowest setting, she activated a magnet built into her free hand and held the skin in place while carefully welding the two sides of the hole back together with the other hand. This wasn't going to be enough to fix it forever, but for the sake of this upcoming fight? Anything that could keep the plane in the air was a good thing. They could use all the help they could get.

Finally the Engineer straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "I think the first sonic cannon is completed," he announced. "Although I would recommend testing it out first before installing it in the plane."

Iron Maiden scoffed derisively. "Trust me: we are going to test it thoroughly before installing it on one of our space-planes."

The Engineer frowned. "I realize that you do not like me – or my employer," he told her. "I can even understand that you do not trust me. But I assure you, you can at least trust my intentions on this front. I have no desire to see the world devastated by this Tarasque. I want to stop it. I want to return to Paris. And I am not about to sabotage our ability to defeat the Tarasque."

"Family?" asked Knightowl.

The Engineer nodded. "Wife and daughter. My daughter, at least, I know is safe – she wasn't in the country when it came."

"That's good," Biladurang mused. "I wish my daughter hadn't been here. But she's a miraculous user, so…" She shrugged. "I'm proud… yet terrified."

"Fine." Iron Maiden sighed heavily, glancing over at the Engineer. She dropped down to the ground directly in front of the sonic cannon, which was almost as large around as she was tall, designed to be mounted inside the space-plane's cargo hold and pointed out the loading door. "Maybe I believe you." Carefully, she activated the control panel mounted on the side of the cannon, which lit up immediately, only for the lights to turn off in a cascade. Furrowing her brows, she started prying open the cover protecting the wiring, which formed a spectacular nest of confused wires. She reached inside and pulled out three wires.

The Engineer groaned. "It – um – it is wired in–"

"I know," Iron Maiden interrupted him, quickly running through the wires and finding the problem wire – a red wire that hadn't been attached to anything.

"You will want to–"

"–I know," Iron Maiden interrupted again in exasperation, quickly reattaching the wire where it was supposed to go, looping it around two other wires and twisting it to keep it in place. Sliding the wires back inside, she took out another set and did the same. Finally she moved back and gestured toward the wires. "That's what you wanted, right?"

"Huh." The Engineer leaned forward and stared at her work, his jaw hanging slightly ajar. He turned slightly to examine her more closely, blinking. "Yes… that's exactly how I was going to suggest that you do it."