The woman looked excited too, and she threw her arms around him, embracing him in a long hug. David spoke to her for another minute before sitting back down. She turned to leave, giving me a half-second glimpse at her face before Shaq hid once more.

  “Son of a bitch,” I hissed, anger and confusion welling up as I swung my guitar into playing position, fingers reaching for the strings.

  “What is it?” Quasar asked.

  “Not what,” I replied. “Who. David’s mother is here.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “David’s mother?” Emerald said. “They took her hostage, too?”

  “No,” I replied. “David’s mom works for Sucaath. Or at least she used to. She looks like she’s working for Blorb now. Or maybe an Aleal got to her and is using her form to trick David. I don’t know. The last time I saw her, Alter had just knocked her unconscious in a Fairfield Inn in California. That she’s here at all is strange enough. But it also looks like David’s not making new sigils under duress. He seems pretty damn happy to do it.”

  “Even though they’re being used to kill people?” Sheri asked.

  “I want to believe he doesn’t know how they’re being used, or they fooled him into thinking he’s helping the right side. But David knew who the good guys were, and he knew Lyke wasn’t one of us.”

  “I guess we just need to kill him then,” Emerald said.

  “No. I need answers first.”

  Shaq kept the camera on David’s mother until she left the room. He scampered to the other side of the machine when David walked over to a different device closer to the rubble. The collapse appeared to extend the entire length of the room, with the secret passage behind only a small section of it. David tapped on the machine’s controls and stepped back. I couldn’t see much of the machine from Shaq’s perspective, but something in it created pulses of light bright enough to momentarily blind the camera. When it was done, David reached into the machine and recovered a ring.

  A hemolytic catalyst ring, etched with the sigil he had just completed.

  It was an immediate example of everything I feared about his captivity. If it was even captivity at all.

  “Team Hondo, we’re going in,” I said, launching into Comfortably Numb to draw in the chaos energy. Having seen the depth of the rubble and how easily Shaq had dug through it, I decided that separating the rock would be more efficient than transiting past it. Activating my construct, I executed the action, the dirt cracking and splitting open ahead of me. The entire wall rumbled slightly as it parted.

  Still wearing George’s helmet, I watched David slip the new ring onto his finger before fearfully grabbing onto the sides of the machine, reacting to my use of sigiltech as if it were an earthquake. Considering the condition of the wall, there almost certainly had been real earthquakes in the installation’s past.

  I walked into the gap between the separated rock while it continued splitting in front of me. The solid density created by the action supported the new tunnel, preventing a secondary cave-in. It took less than twenty seconds for me to break through to the other side, dirt and debris billowing out ahead of me. I entered the room wrapped in a veil of dirt, the others right behind me.

  I located David in the cloud of dust by the glow of his new sigiltech ring. “Vicissim,” I heard him say. Before I could react, I was moving backward toward the hole I had just made. But I wasn’t being pushed. From the way the debris moved with me, it was as though he had hit a rewind button.

  I stopped just as I reached the hole, before it could fill-in ahead of me again. Reality regained its forward momentum, leaving me standing in the opening. Except the dust didn’t billow out again. The reverse motion had sent it swirling in the opposite direction, entering the tunnel behind me. Without his helmet, George started coughing.

  Shaq slipped out of his makeshift harness and scampered up on David’s shoulder, poised to sink his venomous teeth into his throat upon my order.

  I stopped playing. The rest of Team Hondo moved into position beside me. All their rifles swung toward David.

  “Whoa.” He put his hands up in response, shooting a wary look at Shaq before returning his attention to me. “Ben?”

  Scowling, I removed George’s helmet, and without taking my eyes off David, I handed it back to George.

  He tilted his head. “Oh, George is here. Hey, George!”

  “Hey, David,” George replied grimly.

  “What are you doing here, David?” I asked.

  He almost grinned. “Isn’t that my line?”

  “We’re here to rescue you.”

  His grin finally bloomed, making him look more amused than relieved. “This is a bit overkill, don’t you think? You know it’s been like three months, right?”

  “I got here as fast as I could.”

  He nodded. “I’m glad you didn’t die, you know. In fact, I had a party when I heard you were alive because I knew it had to be my construct that saved you. Well, not a literal party. More like I pumped my fist and got back to work. But I appreciate your intentions by coming here. I really do. It’s just…” He shrugged. “I don’t need to be rescued. I’m right where I want to be. My mother is here. Can you believe that? We settled our differences. Everything’s great. Can I put my hands down now?”

  “Everything’s great?” Emerald shouted, ignoring his request and thrusting her rifle toward his face. “You’re helping Blorb destroy the Spiral!”

  “What?” David said, confused. “No, I’m not.” “You can’t be serious,” Emerald continued. “Do you have any idea what’s going on in the universe? Do you even know what’s happening outside this facility?”

  He shrugged again. “Not really. I haven’t had a lot of time to pay attention to things I don’t care about.” He turned his hand over, wiggling his ring finger. “Ben, what did you think of it?”

  “The sigil?”

  “Yeah. I call it reverse. I’ve been working on it as a way to heal injuries. It creates a sort of mini time vortex that can undo an event in isolation from the rest of the timeline.”

  “As in, you could reverse my cancer?” I asked.

  He made a face. “Well, no. It can only back up time about twenty seconds, give or take. You can imagine how much trouble it might cause to go much further. But like, I could eat a donut, and save one last bite, and then reverse the donut and eat it again. For example.” He paused. “Wait a second. I gave you restore in your construct. Why do you still have cancer?”

  “I broke the restore sigil so I could remove the catalyst without it healing the scars.”

  His face wrinkled. “Why would you do that?”

  “It’s a long story. I’m sure Sucaath could explain it to you. Since your mother is here, I assume he’s part of this bullshit, too?”

  His eyes went from my face to the guitar, his mouth opening in an O shape. “Ahhhhhh. I get it. I don’t believe it, but I get it. You’re channeling directly from the source, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know about chaos energy?” I asked.

  “Chaos energy? Is that what you call it?”

  “Yeah. What do you call it?”

  “I hadn’t come up with a name for it yet. I just know it comes from the layer of energy that separates timelines. Sort of like the layers of mascarpone cream in a tiramisu. Look, my arms are really getting tired here. Can I put ‘em down. Please?”

  “Not just yet. Who told you about chaos energy?” I asked.

  “Mom. Though I guess she got that info from Sucaath. Anyway, chaos energy is as good a name as any.” He paused. “Mom told me Sucaath can also channel from the source. Do you know…does he use a guitar too?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I replied.

  “So why do you need it?”

  “It helps me sense the chaos energy and pull it into the construct.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I love a good guitar solo, and Pink Floyd is awesome. But that seems really inefficient.”

  “Works for me. So Sucaath isn’t here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How did your mother get here from Earth, then?”

  “Oh, that. After Blorb captured me on Omega Station, she brought me to Duke Sedaya. We had a good talk about how the Spiral used to have sigiltech, but some people decided it needed to be destroyed, and that he thought it was totally unfair because there was a lot of good we could do with it. Sedaya said Keep lied to you and convinced you that he was the bad guy, when the bad guy is really Keep. He showed me a recording of Keep going to some woman’s apartment. When she opened the door, he shot and killed her. Sedaya said it was because she knew about sigiltech. Did he lie to me about that?”

  My blood ran cold at his description. I already knew Keep had killed innocent people to protect the secret of sigiltech. He wasn’t proud of it, but he also believed he had been justified in ridding the universe of sigiltech. I should have guessed Sedaya might use that against him. And against me. “No,” I admitted. “He lied to you about other things. He wasn’t lying about that. But Keep had his reasons.”

  “I can’t see any good reason to kill an innocent person like that.”

  “David, you need serious mental help,” Emerald said. “Your boss is killing hundreds of innocent people every second.”

  David ignored her. “I’m really sorry for what happened to you, Ben. And like I said, I’m happy you made it off Omega Station alive. But Sedaya totally wasn’t anything like what I expected based on what you said about him. He seemed like a pretty nice guy, actually. Anyway, he said he was sorry for kidnapping me and that he regretted having to leave you behind, but Keep’s brainwashing was so thorough you’d never accept the truth. He told me he would let everyone else go, and I could go if I wanted, but he wanted me to stay and help him save peoples’ lives and to end pain and suffering in the galaxy. He asked me if there was anything I needed, and I remembered Mom and how we had parted ways. She was afraid Sucaath would kill her for letting me get away, and I didn’t want her to die. So I asked him if he could help her. A couple of days later, he brought her to my room on his ship.” He shrugged. “We talked things over. She apologized to me. I apologized to her. And like I said, we’re copacetic now.”

  “That has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Emerald said. “You’re so full of crap.”

  “I might agree with you, Em,” I said. “Except David is the only person in the universe who’s a worse liar than me. David, why would you believe Sedaya was going to help people with your sigils?”

  “He promised he would.”

  “That’s it?” Emerald said. “Because he promised?”

  “He seemed sincere,” David replied, shrinking back from her fury.

  “David, have you seen your mother use sigiltech recently?” I asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Have you two talked with her about anything that happened in the past in the last couple of weeks?”

  “I don’t know.” He paused to think about it. “I’m really not sure.”

  “Has she given you any reason to suspect she isn’t your mother?”

  David swallowed hard, his face paling. “Do you think Blorb killed my mom?”

  “No, not Blorb. A different Aleal.”

  “I thought there were only two.”

  “Blorb’s been growing new ones. There are a lot more than two now.”

  “You think a different Aleal killed my mom?”

  “I don’t know for sure. If you haven’t seen her use sigiltech or talked to her about mutual memories, it’s possible.”

  “But Sedaya said—”

  “Sedaya’s dead, David,” I interrupted. “Blorb killed him, too.”

  David shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “You really have no idea what’s happening beyond these walls, do you?” Emerald pressed.

  “No. Mom got mad at me for wasting time whenever I tried to take a break from this stuff.” He paused, his arms going limp and falling to his sides. “That’s not really like her.” His expression fell, his lip quivering. “Oh, no.” Tears began to overflow his eyes and roll down his cheeks.

  “David, we don’t know anything for sure.”

  “I need to find out. I need to go to her.”

  “No, we’re getting you out of here.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “David, if you try to resist they’ll force you to make more sigils. Sigils they’re using to kill people. I swear to you that’s true.”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m helping people,” he insisted.

  “Nope. Wrong,” Emerald pressed. “A few hundred thousand are dead and counting. Thanks to you.”

  “Emerald!” I snapped. “That’s enough. David, you can help me stop Blorb. You can help me end this.”

  “Okay, okay. Just let me go find Mom, and then I’ll come back and we can leave.”

  “We can’t go back the way we came,” I said. “Besides, they’re holding three other people here. An older woman and two men. Have you seen them?”

  “I haven’t been out of this part of the facility since I got here.”

  “Do you know where they might be?”

  “No idea. Who are they?”

  “The family of one of my new crew members. Blorb used them as leverage to get him to try to kill me.”

  “And they’re here?”

  “I think so. Is your laptop connected to this place’s mainframe, by any chance?”

  “Of course. I need all the cpu cycles I can get.”

  I glanced at Quasar, who nodded and hurried over to David’s workstation.

  “Be careful with my laptop,” David said. “It’s got a lot of important data on it.”

  Quasar ignored him. Just as she set to work, the door into the room slid open. David’s mother stood behind it, a hot mug of coffee in her hand.

  “David, I brought you some…” She looked straight at me. “You!”

  CHAPTER 27

  The mug fell from the suddenly languid hand of David’s mother and shattered on the floor. Coffee splashed all over the high, rubber-like boots she wore over thick leggings that likely offered some level of ballistic protection.

  Her jaw dropped. “What the hell are you doing here, Murdock?”

  “Mom, it’s all right,” David said, rushing to get between the two of us. “Close the door.”

  She stared saucer-eyed at him for a moment before reluctantly doing as he asked, stepping forward enough for the door to slide shut behind her. “David, did you already forget what you told me about him?” his mother continued. “Did you already forget what happened on Earth?”

  “What happened on Earth was your fault,” I said. “Maybe if you had been honest with your son, all of that could have been avoided.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know more than you think. I know all about Sucaath.” I held up my guitar, showing off the paint job. “I’ve met him. We had a good talk. Where’s your collator?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she insisted.

  “Protostem, then.”

  She made a face before digging into the pocket of her short, dark coat, producing a small chunk of the material. “Satisfied?”

  “Not yet.” She wore three sigiltech rings on the fingers of her right hand. “Push me.”

  “What?”

  “Push me. You can use sigiltech if you’re still human.”

  She glared at me, almost smiling as she activated one of the rings, the action shoving me back hard enough to land me on my butt.

  Emerald rushed forward, shoving her rifle in the woman’s face. “That’s enough,” she snarled.

  The glow of the ring faded as David’s mom shifted her attention from Emerald back to me. “Are you satisfied now?”

  “That you’re still you, yes," I said as George helped me back to my feet. I smirked at her. “That you’re not an evil witch, no.”

  “Ben,” David said, taking offense to the indictment.

  “Hold on, David,” I replied, my eyes locked on her. “Tell me you don’t know what’s happening in the Spiral. Tell me you don’t know how David’s sigils are being used.”

  She didn’t answer right away, her eyes darting from me to David and back to me.

  “Mom?” David pleaded when she stood there tight-lipped.

  The defiance in her expression faded slowly, and she turned her attention back to her son. “I’m sorry, David. I knew how your work would be used from the moment you rediscovered the technology.” She looked up at me again. “Anyone with half a brain could figure it out, unless they’re as naive as my son. Anything with the power to hurt or heal will inevitably be used to hurt more than heal. It’s not the fault of the power. It’s the fault of the user. The human condition.”

  “It’s not just a human condition,” Emerald said.

  “You lied to me?” David said, crestfallen. “After everything we talked about? After you promised you wouldn’t?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Bullshit!” David spewed the word before I could.

  “If you’ve met Sucaath, then you know the truth,” she said to me. “You know what he wants and why he wants it.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to let him have it, especially without a fight.”

  “And die for nothing? Sedaya’s a cruel and powerful man, but at least he wants the Spiral to continue. He wants humankind to continue, as long as he’s in charge of it.”

  I couldn’t keep myself from laughing at the irony of the statement.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.