“You can do that?”

  “Pozz. It is already done.”

  Nathan stared at the board. He wouldn’t have Pyro or Max with him to do the installation, and he didn’t trust anyone else not to screw it up. At the same time, the thought of losing the option to switch back to the plasma cannons during the retreat was anything but appealing.

  “I’ve got it,” Lutz said, standing up with a smile on his face. “General, I just need a couple of deputies to help me carry it out.”

  Nathan looked over at the engineer. “Nice work. Max.Take Lutz up to the bridge and show him how to install the board.”

  “General?” Lutz said, surprised by the request.

  “Ever flown a combat mission before?” Nathan asked.

  “No, General,” Lutz replied, his face turning white.

  “General,” Pyro said, about to try to argue.

  “I need an engineer who can swap the boards if needed. Chandra, I need you and Max here working on the interlink. Lutz, that means you’re it.”

  “Y-yes, sir,” Lutz said nervously. “I’ll do my best, sir. For Sheriff Duke. And for Governor Duke.”

  “I know you will,” Nathan replied. “Max, let’s move. We’ve got five minutes.”

  “Pozz,” Max said. “We’ll be done in three.”

  32

  Caleb

  “Sheriff, on your left!” Tora shouted.

  Caleb heard gunshots, loud booms that sounded a million light-years away, though the actual distance was less than a meter.

  “Got them,” Hayden said. “I’ve got six more straight ahead.”

  “They’re waiting to ambush us. How’s your aim, Sheriff?”

  “Tell me where you want the bullet, and I’ll put it there.”

  “There.”

  Another boom.

  “Standby. They’ll clear cover there and there. Be ready to shoot.”

  “Always am.”

  Silence in the middle of the chaos. Hands gripped him. Movement. Someone jerked him roughly, the sudden wave of pain causing him to groan. His eyes opened slightly, looking up at Hayden’s face, only centimeters from his.

  Hayden realized he was awake. “I’ve got you, Cal. We’re almost to the tunnel. We’re going to get out of this mess.”

  Caleb wanted to answer, but he was turned suddenly as Hayden shifted his weight again in the carry, aiming his revolver. The motion made him dizzy, the world beginning to spin. He closed his eyes, hoping that would make it stop.

  It didn’t.

  Gunshots rang out close to his head, dulled by the Skin so they wouldn’t damage his ears. What the hell was going on?

  We’re trying to escape.

  Trying to escape. Not escaping? How bad was it?

  Bad.

  He heard screams in the distance. The rumble of vehicles behind them. His stomach burned and he could barely breathe.

  Everything went black.

  But only for a minute. He came to again, eyes fluttering open. Something was different. Hayden was gone. A new man looked down at him, expression concerned but in control. A Marine officer. He had to be.

  “Caleb Card,” the man said. “Hold on. We’re going to get you fixed up.”

  “Fixed?”

  Caleb remembered. Ishek had shot him to break him free of Nyarlath’s grasp. Only the Advocate couldn’t fix the wound and he was bleeding out. Dying. He tried to lift his head, to look at the damage, but the man was holding him down. He realized his head was in the man’s lap, his body stretched across a seat and onto another’s stranger’s. A woman. She glanced over at him, smiling slightly. She was wearing a uniform. Another Centurion officer. He was cold. Too cold. They had taken off his Skin or at least rolled it down to his waist.

  “Hold on,” someone said nearby. The voice was familiar. So familiar.

  “Stacker?” he said. He tried to see, but his vision was a blur. His mind could barely keep up with anything.

  He heard echoes nearby and was pulled sharply to the left and then the right. The man and woman held him in place, keeping him steady.

  “Jason, be careful!” the man snapped.

  “Sorry, General,” Stacker replied. “It won’t help to be careful if they catch us.”

  “Card,” Hayden said from somewhere nearby. “Try to relax. We’re getting you somewhere safe. Just hold on. A doctor is waiting. It’ll be okay.”

  “Sheriff,” Caleb tried to say, the word coming out as a mumble.

  “Tora put him back to sleep,” the man said.

  Caleb was vaguely aware of someone behind him, leaning past the man with a needle in her hand. What was she doing? He started lifting his hand.

  Let her put us to sleep. They’re trying to save us.

  His hand dropped again, and he closed his eyes. He felt the needle pierce his skin, and then he felt warm again.

  Time passed. Caleb didn’t know how much, but when his eyes opened again there were bright lights above his face, nearly blinding him. He could only see out of the corner of his right eye, an unfocused vision of a woman with crazy hair and a nose ring leaning over him. He heard the heart rate monitor nearby.

  “Why the hell is he awake?” the woman snapped. “Shit!”

  He looked down. He was on a table, his chest held open.

  “It’s the Advocate,” he heard Hayden say. “Keep going. If he isn’t screaming, he can’t feel it.”

  He didn’t feel it. Any of it. Ishek was keeping him pain-free, helping them save his life. They had made it to wherever this was. They were getting him fixed, which meant they were somewhere safe for now.

  “Caleb, it’s okay,” Hayden said, coming into view in front of the light. “Relax. This’ll be over soon, and you’ll heal right up.”

  “Pozz,” Caleb said. He closed his eyes.

  He was aware of the doctor prodding around in his open chest, but it didn’t hurt, and he didn’t open his eyes again. His thoughts turned to Essex, to his friend Washington so many light-years away. If Wash could see him now, he’d be giving him a thumbs up in support. He smiled.

  His mind wandered away from Washington, toward Vyte and Nyarlath. His smile disappeared. He had felt something when she grabbed him. A reluctance. A resistance. Nyarlath didn’t want to kill him. The rogue Axon was making her do it, but she knew the only path to freedom was through him. Would she have helped him, given a choice?

  “I’m done,” he heard the doctor say. “The fragments are out. His guts are back in the right places. If you tell me that thing on his arm can fix him the rest of the way, I believe you.”

  “It can,” Hayden said.

  “It’s fascinating,” the doctor said. “I wouldn’t mind a worm latching onto me like that to get super-strength and super-healing.”

  “I don’t think he has super-strength,” Hayden said. “At least I haven’t seen it.”

  Caleb laughed at that. He could tell by Hayden’s tone he was only partly serious.

  “Congratulations, Colonel Card. You’re going to live,” the doctor said. “I’m putting you back to sleep. You need to finish healing up, and it’ll go faster that way. ”

  Caleb opened his eyes. The light was off, and he could see the doctor’s face more clearly, along with Hayden and the other man. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he felt the warmth of the injection run through his veins.

  It’s okay, Caleb. Let us rest for a while.

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” Caleb managed to whisper. Then he went out again.

  33

  Hayden

  “How long will we be safe here?” Hayden asked. He stood near the window of the cube, looking down at the passing pedestrians below. Being inside the domed city that looked so much like Metro brought back memories. So many memories. And some of them were only a few years old. They hit him like rapid-fire punches. To the face. To the gut. To the chest and heart. Especially the heart.

  He could look down at the people and see Natalia among them, hurrying from one block to the next with her satchel of tools, trailed by her subordinates as they went to repair another failing piece of machinery inside the old city. He could picture himself standing in view of her, watching her go to work with the smile of a proud husband who knew his wife was one of the main reasons the city survived.

  It had been like that on the outside too. Sanisco worked because Natalia helped make it work. Because she was tireless and focused on the job at hand, whatever that job happened to be. Sleep was always secondary. Some people thought family was too, but Hayden never believed that. For her, keeping the city alive meant keeping her family alive. The same way destroying trife nests had kept her safe.

  Until it didn’t.

  “I don’t know, Sheriff,” General Haeri replied. “Long enough, I hope. We lost them in the tunnels, and we ditched the car in A-District. But they’ll know we’re in the dome somewhere. We can’t hide that fact until Caleb can move on his own.”

  “And when he can? What’s the plan?”

  He turned around to look at the general. Haeri’s face was weary, but his posture remained confident and strong. He sat on a newer-looking sofa, leaning back casually and sipping at a glass of water. Colonel Nova Gray sat in an armchair across from him, while Tora was perched near the door, HRG in hand. Jason Stacker was outside the room, near the entrance to the block where they had brought Caleb to see the doctor.

  Hayden had been concerned about the place before they arrived. But the block belonged to the Organization. To Haeri. The people in it had scrambled to help them disappear and get rid of the transport they had stolen. Every resident he had come across—all of them armed—had worked together to enact a security detail and posted guards not only at every entrance into the building, but along the blocks leading into C-District as well.

  “I’d prefer to discuss the plan once he’s awake,” Haeri said. “Also because based on what you’ve already told me, and what he might yet tell me, the plan might change.”

  “Fair enough,” Hayden replied. “Then maybe you can tell me more about the Organization. I got bits and pieces through Rico but she died before I could get the whole story.”

  “I’m sorry again for her loss, Sheriff,” Haeri said. “It was never my intention to send her to Earth to be killed, especially by the Bennett. I didn’t know about the cloning facilities at the time, and now that I do I don’t have the power to shut them down for audit. Not until this mess is cleaned up.”

  “You call it a mess. I call it a damn disaster.”

  “Understandable, considering your losses. I’ve lost my family too, Sheriff. It’s a high price to pay to protect others.”

  Hayden choked back his emotions. Haeri had already told him about Chair LaMont, the Judici, Ghost’s Tavern and Fox. He had told him about his children, kidnapped and likely dead. His wife, taken by a khoron and used against him to get access to the Organization’s greatest treasures. One, a data chip containing the complete history of the group, along with all of their research, technological developments, plans and more. The other, a key for which even Haeri didn’t know the purpose. He just knew it had been passed down through generations with orders to protect it at all costs.

  Everything Hayden had been through on Earth, it seemed Haeri had nearly mimicked in some ways. Only the general looked much more even-keeled than Hayden felt. Calmer and more rational, while he was struggling to hang on. Hayden felt the tension and anger tight below his exterior demeanor—a dam threatening to break under the strain.

  “It is,” Hayden agreed.

  “That’s what the Organization is about. I’ve been in charge of things for over two decades now. I was hand-picked by my predecessor, Sharma, because of what I was accomplishing, first for the Centurion Space Force and then for the Trust. You see, the Organization doesn’t take any side but one—-the protection of humankind against external threats. I know the Trust is a criminal organization. As General of the CSF, I could have alerted the Judicus Department to any number of their schemes and gotten the whole thing shut down. But while that intention serves the people of Proxima in the short-term, it’s counterproductive long-term. The Trust provides a valuable service. They have access to resources the CSF doesn’t. Just like the CSF has resources they don’t. Yes, it costs lives sometimes, but that cost is balanced out over the years. A small price to pay for our continued survival.”

  “That’s not really what I asked,” Hayden said.

  “No. But the information you ask for might not be the information you most need. You’ve always impressed me, Hayden. From the first time I came to Earth, and you gave me Tinker’s key. It was like you could see right into me. All the secrets. All the lies. I’ve never respected or hated anyone as much as you.”

  “Hate?”

  “Because you have a natural talent it took me years to acquire, and even then I failed. If you had been here on Proxima these last two years, you might have seen this coming.”

  “You give me too much credit. I didn’t see it coming on Earth. I left my family alone to be victimized by an Axon with bad intentions. I don’t think I’m half of what you think I am.”

  Haeri smiled. “Regardless, you knew there was more to me than the CSF and the Trust. I know you did.”

  “I didn’t know what. I just never got the feeling you were a bad guy. And yeah, my instincts for that are pretty good.”

  “I’m not a bad guy. I’m not a good guy either. My chosen path dictates that I remain outside of myself, that I always meet the needs of the situation, not succumb to my own wants and needs. That’s one of the promises members of the Organization make, and we make it with all seriousness. We’re only as secure as the weakest among us, and everyone on the inside knows it.”

  “But that kind of secrecy is useless against the Relyeh.”

  “Exactly. We counted on remaining hidden on Proxima. The enemy didn’t know where we’d gone, and the planet is tucked away and not the best environment for us to live in. But the Hunger found out where we were anyway. I still don’t know how.”

  Tora stepped aside as the door to the cube opened and Caleb walked in. He looked better than the last time Hayden had seen him. He looked better than Hayden had ever seen him look. Healthy, rested and calm. He was wearing a simple t-shirt and sweatpants, Ishek’s shape visible beneath his sleeve. Jason Stacker entered behind him.

  “I know how,” Caleb said.

  34

  Hayden

  “And that’s why we’re here, General,” Caleb said, finishing his story. The short version had taken nearly thirty minutes in the telling, leaving Hayden with greater respect for the Marine than he had already earned. He had gotten some of Caleb’s story earlier, but like with Rico, there hadn’t been time for the whole thing.

  Not that there was a lot of time now, but Caleb’s story was essential to their current trajectory, and the combination of his history and General Haeri’s was vital to their approach going forward.

  “I told you mine,” Caleb said. “Now, why don’t you tell us yours?”

  Haeri was silent for a few seconds, still absorbing what Caleb had said. The others in the room matched him, all of them trying to absorb the story about Riley Valentine, the Deliverance and the colony’s new home so far away.

  “I can’t tell you everything, Sergeant. Or is it Colonel?”

  Caleb smiled. “I don’t even know anymore. What I can tell you is that Rico told us about the Organization and that you’re in charge of it. I noticed the people on my way up from the basement. The way they’re standing guard. The focus and resolve. The real belief in what you’re doing. I don’t have anything else, General. I don’t know how to be anything other than a Marine and a Guardian. A protector. I don’t want to be anything else. Give me whatever rank you want. Tell me to mop the floors and scrub the head with a toothbrush, I don’t care. But I want in.”

  Hayden was surprised by Caleb’s eagerness, but he also understood it. Caleb was one of the strongest, most-selfless people he had ever met. He had nearly died saving them from the enemy back at the Centurion base.

  “Being in the Organization isn’t like being in the military,” Haeri said. “In some respects it is, but not all. Tora there spent the last fifty years in hiding. A secret weapon waiting to be called upon with no guarantee she would ever be needed. What if I asked that of you?”

  “I would tell you that’s a waste of my capabilities, sir,” Caleb replied. “And you don’t seem like the sort of leader who operates with that kind of inefficiency. If Tora waited fifty years, it’s because she was the best asset you had to wait fifty years.”

  Haeri smiled. “Well said. The Organization does have safeguards and vetting procedures that we normally go through before accepting a new member. But given that you’re trying to provide us with the means to defeat this threat, I’m inclined to bypass SOP.” Haeri stood up and walked over to Caleb, who came to stiff attention with practiced precision. “Caleb Card, do you swear to give everything you have, including your life, in defense of humankind?”

  “I do,” Caleb replied.

  “Do you swear to follow orders unfailingly and unflinchingly, even if those orders may be counter to existing civilian and military law, and may include harming innocents in the name of the greater good?”

  Caleb hesitated, staring into Haeri’s eyes. Hayden didn’t blame him. He would never be able to agree to that himself, even knowing what the end result might be. He just wasn’t made that way.

  Apparently, Caleb was. “I do,” he replied, voice firm.

  “Are you making this decision with free will and of sound mind and body?”

  “I am.”

  Haeri put out his hand. “Welcome to the Organization, Colonel Card.”

  Caleb took his hand, shaking firmly. “Does that make it official?”

  “As official as we get. At least for now.”

  “Sir,” Colonel Gray said from her seat. “I want in, too.”

  Haeri turned and looked at her. “You were helping the Trust aid the enemy, Nova.”