“So,” Dani said. “How does it feel being the masters of Pinchon? You two are setting this city on fire.”

  Weeb shrugged. “Dunno. I was already a master before this guy brought me into Hotai. Just wasn’t the master. I know. That doesn’t make much sense. You see …”

  Weeb rambled on, but Ya-Li paid him little mind. He felt a discomfort in the back of his neck. First, it was a pinch. Then it seemed to extend down his spine until …

  “Ya-Li! Ya-Li!”

  Now it made sense, although a counterpart’s arrival never opened with so much pain. Sebu allowed him in.

  The boy wore a gray cloak with the hood thrown over his head. He slung a huge canvas bag over his left shoulder and appeared to be walking with great urgency through a forest at night. Someone just outside the halo’s narrow field of vision led the way with a glow lamp. The boy seemed taller. Was the facial hair new? Though Ya-Li had not heard from Sebu since the gala, relative time dictated that weeks might have passed in his universe.

  “I’m here, Sebu. What are you doing?”

  “We made it, Ya-Li. We’re ten miles outside the fence. We’ll be in the first free town by sunrise. I escaped. I wanted you to know.”

  “I’m proud of you, if this is what you truly want.”

  “You’ve been telling me forever to take command of my life. I’ve seen what you accomplished. If I can have even a small amount of your happiness, I’ll live a good life.”

  “It’s what you deserve, Sebu. Is anyone chasing you?”

  “Not for a while. They lost us. I don’t think they’re good trackers. I probably could have escaped any time I wanted.”

  “Did you bring your violin?”

  “It’s in my bag. I’ll have to play for my dinner, I suppose. That’s OK. At least I can play what I want whenever I want. That’s the last thing I told Elders Bo and Clim.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They used to be our spiritual leaders. I guess the Elder Council will have to appoint new ones now.”

  Ya-Li did not like the boy’s tone.

  “Why? What happened to them?”

  Sebu grinned and reached inside his cloak. The dagger he revealed was long and red. Red?

  “I didn’t give them a choice, Ya-Li. Bo put up a fight, but I was stronger than I realized. I forgot to wipe off the blade.”

  Some part of Ya-Li was not surprised. Still, he refused to sound judgmental. Nor was it his place to be.

  “Was there no other way?”

  “I wish I could have put them on trial, but there wasn’t time. I made it fast. They didn’t suffer. At least, I hope not. I didn’t check their pulse. Should I have checked their pulse, Ya-Li?”

  “I’m sorry it came to this, Sebu. You were too good to …”

  The pain ran the length of his spine. Now something else hurt. His stomach? His appendix?

  “Sebu, the next time you’re .. we need …”

  “Ya-Li? Ya-Li? Are you there? Are you there?”

  Ya-Li broke away from his counterpart into a fit of coughs. His chest was on fire. The room was spinning, but not too quickly for him to see Weeb and Dani suffering the same misfortune.

  “What is …?”

  “Ya-Li, I can’t brea …” Dani coughed up spittle.

  Then he smelled it. Sulfur intermingled with another chemical he didn’t recognize. And then …

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Distant voices. Unintelligible. Unfamiliar.

  The fire in his chest disappeared. He coughed but only to clear his throat. His eyes felt heavy, but he opened them and sat up. Was it a dream? There was no pain in his neck nor along his spine. He was …

  Ya-Li’s eyes fell upon Weeb, who sat up in the high-back chair where he was last seen drinking sanque and smoking. He did neither of those now. He leaned forward, his hands balled into a fist. He said nothing, but Ya-Li saw his tremors.

  Weeb was terrified. He wanted to yell out. He wanted …

  A new shadow entered his field of vision. Ya-Li shifted his eyes to a tall man with a thin coat of hair wearing body armor. The man was familiar, yet not. Ya-Li didn’t want his mind to make the connection. He didn’t want to believe.

  The man aimed a laser pistol at Weeb.

  “Good to see you again, Ya-Li.”

  “No. You can’t be. How …?”

  Ryllen Jee took three steps toward Weeb.

  “It’s the craziest thing, Ya-Li. Every time I come to your estate, I kill a bunch of people.”

  “RJ, please. We can …”

  His eyes moved with the laser pistol and then to Weeb, who looked like the timid little druud Ya-Li met all those years ago.

  “Ya-Li, I …”

  Weeb said no more.

  The laser blast took off the side of his head.

  45

  C LOSE MY EYES. BREATHE. IN AND OUT. It’s a dream. I had too much to drink. I am Ya-Li Taron. This did not happen. This will not happen.

  He opened them. Weeb Lowe lay slumped in the chair, painted red with his brains. Ryllen Jee stared at the body with disinterest.

  Ya-Li’s chest burned again, but this time for non-chemical reasons. He knew it was over. Everything was lost. How? How was this even remotely possible? How long before …

  Dani.

  He turned. There she was, on the far end of the sofa.

  For a second, he hoped.

  Her eyes were open, staring into nothing and everything. The burn marks covered most of her chest.

  Ya-Li found the rage and unloaded.

  “Why?! Ryllen, why? She wasn’t a part of this.”

  “You know what they say, Ya-Li? Bad timing will kill you just as good as a laser blast.”

  “Why have you done this to us? Why are you here? I thought I was your friend.”

  “Lots of people have claimed to be my friend until they shitted on me. Of course, I don’t think we were ever exactly friends. When I was across the divide, I could only talk to you through Bonju. First time I met you was two days before your wedding when you laid out who I was supposed to kill. Then we had a final exchange of ideas and the Splinter. I won’t recite what’s happened to me since then because you already know most of it. You’ve done more than I could have imagined since I left here. I knew you were an ambitious piece of shit – all you elite pricks are, even the ones who won’t admit it. But damn. You’ve been working.”

  “Please, Ryllen. I don’t understand why you’ve done this, but there has to be a way we can sort this out. How did …”

  He held up the pistol.

  “I’m going to stop you right there before you turn dumbass. Ya-Li, you’re going to try to buy some time, figure out what kind of leverage you have, and use that to bargain. You’ll hope your security comes to the rescue. Or maybe the KumTaan. That would be ironic. Just put this crap out of your head. I’m not here to make a deal, and no one’s coming to the rescue. Turns out, it’s not hard to gas an estate from above, knock out the perimeter security without firing a shot, and then send the gas through the house. Just takes the right blend of a stealth ship with a Worm engine, a private army of killers, and a Shin Wain.”

  Ya-Li fell back into the sofa. Every nagging piece of the mystery made sense. He was looking in the wrong direction. The warship with Ham Cortez and Kara Syung was never the threat.

  “Shin brought you here?”

  “We met a couple of days ago. I had a spear in my chest. His people took it out, I mended, and we talked. Wow, did we talk. I learned so many things. The irony warps the mind.”

  “Whatever Shin told you had to be lies. He has never trusted me. He’s jealous because the Inventor favors me.”

  “The last part is true. He told me himself. He also told me the Inventor ordered him not to harm you. That’s why Shin is not on the estate. Amayas won’t be happy with him, but he didn’t disobey the order. Technically.” Ryllen sighed. “Look, I’m not going to drag this out. Two things need to happen here. What do you say we deal with the first? I want the Splinter. Now.”

  Come on, Ya-Li. Think fast. Create a way out.

  “It’s not here. I keep it in a vault at Hotai.”

  “No, you don’t. It’s here. Punch in the combination. Hand it over.”

  What choice did he have? As Ya-Li approached the secret vault, he remembered what else was stored inside. His own pistol was off to the side. He tried to picture it. If he reached, he’d need to find the trigger button fast. He had to move like the wind; Ryllen was a soldier.

  He punched in the code and reached for the lid.

  “Nope.” Ryllen waved him back. “I don’t need your hand where I can’t see it.”

  Ryllen retrieved the box and glanced down.

  “Clever boy. Not clever enough.”

  He slammed shut the lid.

  “I gave you the Splinter because I was stupid enough to think you’d be a reasonable caretaker. Research it. Figure out how it was made. That’s what Bonju told me you were planning; but that guy, as it turns out, is as much an asshole as you are. Then again, he is your counterpart. Makes sense. Anyway, I never expected you to unleash this thing on the population.”

  “I have a plan, Ryllen. It’s a good one. It will make Hokkaido great. You grew up here. I know you want the best for our people.”

  “I used to, but they’re not my people. They never were.”

  “But you fought with Green Sun. You were trying to …”

  “Enough of that shit. I know what I was doing. I also know what it cost me. Time to move on to the second reason I’m here. Follow me. I don’t like the vibe in this room.”

  “No.”

  Ryllen chuckled. “You’re saying no to the guy with the pistol?”

  “You tell me here. Out with it.”

  Ryllen set down the box and reached into a side pouch on his armor. He turned a hand-comm toward Ya-Li.

  “Look closely.”

  Ya-Li recognized the faces on the shaky screen. He felt the same terror seconds before Weeb died.

  “Please. Not them.”

  “Didn’t you think it was weird how Park Doon called off dinner at the last minute? Good thing we got to them first or …”

  “Please. They have a tiny daughter.”

  “She’ll live no matter what. But Park and his wife? If you don’t follow my instructions, they will be executed. Too bad, really. From what I’ve seen, Park Doon might be a fine president for Hotai Counsel if something happened to the current one.”

  Ryllen put away the hand-comm, grabbed the Splinter, and started for the double doors. Ya-Li’s mind blanked. There were no contingencies. No clever back-door strategies. He followed Ryllen into the great hall.

  He saw three bodies. The first was Burr Sheong, shot through the head. The others were staff. They took one blast to the chest.

  “If it makes you feel better, they never saw it coming. We took them out before they revived. My new friends should be finishing off the rest by now.”

  “What? You .. you can’t be serious. Ryllen, you’re killing everyone on the estate? My staff weren’t part of this. They were innocent.”

  “The simple reason? They’re potential witnesses. When I leave here, no one outside this estate will have a clue what happened. And, if you recall, I am officially dead. Probably best if I stay that way. The more important reason is complicated. Follow me. I’ll need to leave soon. Shin gave me a time limit.”

  Why bother? Why not just fall on the carpet and demand for him to end it? Ya-Li knew why Ryllen was here. At some level, he always worried if that bit of history might wrap around someday.

  For the sake of Park and Cho Doon, he followed Ryllen down the long hall to the giant gallery of family portraits dating back centuries. Ryllen stopped at the portrait of Ban-Ho and Pina Taron in their youth.

  “This one struck me the last time I was here,” Ryllen said. “I recognized the face because I killed him on stage. Do you think they were in love?”

  “What? I don’t know. I …”

  “It’s hard to say, isn’t it? The artist probably told them to look like they were in love. I checked the records. They were married for sixty-five years. I think they loved each other.”

  “I’m sorry, Ryllen. I am. I’m sorry about all of it.”

  “I was a throwaway kid. I was thrown away by whoever created me on Earth. I was thrown away by the Jees because that was their easy button. And then, I was found. Somebody offered me his hand and a place to sleep. You don’t know what that means to a throwaway. You lived your life in a palace.”

  “Ryllen, if you’ll listen to me, I think you’ll understand why I did it.”

  Ryllen ignored him, shifting his eyes to other Taron couples.

  “I knew what Kai was. I knew he wasn’t the best, but he cared about me. After a while, he loved me. Whatever else he was, that shit didn’t matter. Before long, I loved him, too. It wasn’t about gratitude, either. We were perfect together. We were never going to have giant portraits made of us, but we could have been together for sixty-five years. We should have been. Would have been.”

  Ryllen let go of the paintings and focused scornful eyes on Ya-Li.

  “He meant nothing to you. Not Kai or the other eight brothers and sisters who died in Ronin Swallows. Not them. Not your own family. And for all the damn rings, not me. Bonju told you what would happen because I already told him my story. You knew I would lose my mind after Kai. You knew I would drive myself insane with grief and run into the Splinter. You sentenced me to die in the ocean. Shin was the one who shot me down. You gave him the time and coordinates. You sentenced me to cross the divide. You sentenced me to six years of war. Then you pretended to be my friend.

  “You and your cudfrucking counterpart. You destroyed the only pure thing I ever had and then demanded my thanks for bringing me back to knot that damn loop. Is he there now, Ya-Li? Is Bonju listening? If he is, then he needs to hear this. One day, I’m going to cross the divide again. I’m going to settle my account with that bastard, too.

  “As for you? I’m not sure what else to say. Well played? Congratulations? You fooled us all, and you almost … almost … got away with it. But you need to ask yourself, Ya-Li, who’s really the big winner? Why did Bonju come to you so many years ago? Why has he been nudging you along? What does he get out of all this? I’ll bet he’s been promising to see you at the Origin someday. And you believed him.

  “That’s what assholes like us do. We’re led around on a leash and we obey so long as the master makes us think he loves us. Then one day, he looks at us kind of funny and throws us away. At first, we don’t understand why. When we do, it hurts even more. I’m done being the dog.”

  Ryllen holstered his weapon and retrieved the hand-comm, which he spoke into.

  “Let them go.”

  For an instant, Ya-Li felt the improbable taste of hope.

  “Thank you, Ryllen.”

  “No reason to thank me, Ya-Li. Somebody will need to run your company. I don’t care about the assholes in the penthouse, but there’s a quarter million Hokkis on the leash. I don’t want them losing their jobs. Wow. All of a sudden, I’m a man of the people. Good night, Ya-Li. You won’t see me again.”

  What now? Is this a trick? It has to be.

  Ryllen reached the glass door through which Ya-Li’s wedding party passed thirty-four days ago. He grabbed the handle.

  “I debated whether to tell you, but I’ll go with the fun option. Ya-Li, I killed you while you slept. The drug should do its job in about another ten minutes. Maybe fifteen, if you’re lucky. You’ll feel fine until your heart explodes. But you will have a luxury Kai Durin never had. You’ll be able to say goodbye.”

  Ryllen Jee disappeared into the night.

  Ya-Li collapsed in the great hall. He didn’t try to run. He didn’t try to find help. It was pointless. Ryllen would never leave him an opening to retaliate, now or in the future. And retaliate he would have.

  “What are you thinking?” Bonju said.

  “I don’t want to die. I’m afraid.”

  “You tried, Ya-Li. You reached for the impossible. For a time, you held it in your hands. You tasted it. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  Even in his despair, Ya-Li made note of the sudden shift in tone.

  “Was he right? Have you been playing me all this time?”

  “Playing is an ugly word. It implies I didn’t care, which is not true. You and I are genetic counterparts. I have loved our journey. I loved Myka. I’ll continue to love Sebu, though I fear you might have taught him too well to stand up for himself.”

  “Why, Bonju? Why did you do this?”

  “There’s more at stake than you will ever understand, Ya-Li. I was hoping to explain, but now it appears there’s not enough time. I have loved you, and I’ve been honored to know you. Find peace. Goodbye, my dear friend.”

  He called out, but Bonju did not respond.

  He searched for Sebu, but the boy was quiet.

  Ya-Li wanted to cry, but where were the tears?

  Was there nothing left?

  46

  Hours later

  In transit

  R YLLEN DIPPED HIS HAND INSIDE the grow tube and coursed his fingers through a brown gelatinous mass. His nerves tingled. He felt a second heartbeat. When he retracted his hand, the mass covered his skin evenly to the wrist. A glove, but three times as thick. At close inspection, he saw vibrant activity, like platelets swimming through blood.

  “Will it form a hard shell?”

  “No,” said Shin Wain, opposite the tube. “It must breathe. If it hardens, it will die. Then it will be no use to anyone.”

  “How long will it sustain the body?”

  “If it has an atmosphere? Weeks. Perhaps much longer.”

  “How close is the prototype?”

  “We’ll be testing soon. I’m sure Amayas will move you to the front of the line. Dressing it onto an immortal will improve quality control issues. Do you volunteer?”

  “Can’t wait. This feels incredible.”

  “A new armor for a new brand of soldier.”

  “I’m going to be their general.”

  Shin groaned.

  “Time will tell, Ryllen.”