“I hate to break it to you, bro, but you’re dying.”

  “Thanks for letting me down easy.”

  He smiled, but it faded quickly. “The cancer’s spreading again. Just like before. The upside is that he said your diagnostics offered definitive proof that the more cancerous your cells become, the more chaos energy you can channel.”

  “That’s a terrible trade.”

  “Once this is over, maybe you can fix the restore sigil. You won’t need the construct anymore.”

  “Without the catalyst in my skin, the restore sigil will erase itself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not completely. It seems logical.”

  “Except the restore sigil in Keep’s skull hasn’t healed itself.”

  “It’s a different sigil. And maybe because it’s etched into bone.”

  “Maybe David could figure out how to etch one into your bone.”

  “I don’t really want to die at twenty-one. But I also don’t want to live to be a thousand.”

  “Fair enough. Even if the sigil healed itself, resetting your cancer would buy you a few more months, at least. Time to see the galaxy like we planned in the beginning. That feels like a hundred years ago now.”

  I smiled. “You may be onto something there.”

  “I totally am.”

  “We need to stop Blorb first.”

  “Right there with you, man.”

  “Speaking of David, is he still a mess?”

  “He’s hurting, but Sheri’s helping him through it. I think maybe she likes him.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why, because he’s not swole?”

  “Because he’s mentally weak. Sheri likes strong men. She used to have the worst crush on you.”

  “Until I cut my hair.” He smiled. “People change. You have. Bigtime.”

  “For the better, I hope.”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ve changed too.”

  “For the better, I hope?” he said, copying me.

  “The jury’s still out.”

  He laughed. “I knew you were going in for the kill. So, you’re awake. What do we do now?”

  “I’m going to get up, grab a shower, eat a burger, drink a beer. Maybe two. After that, I’ll meet with Volker.” I paused, cringing.

  “What’s up?”

  “I need to tell Grizz about his wife and kids.”

  “Emerald already took care of it.”

  “Emerald?” I cried, facepalming. “Couldn’t anyone other than Emerald have done it?”

  “From what I understand, she was actually pretty compassionate. Besides, I doubt he noticed anything else after she said she was sorry.”

  “I’ll make sure to give him my condolences too.”

  “So you’ll meet with Volker, and uh…” He trailed off, waiting for me to pick up the statement.

  “And get an update on the war effort. Specifically, where we can find Dominator.”

  “Wait. What? All of a sudden we’re ready to take on Dominator?”

  “You can wait until I’m dead, if you want?”

  “Hmm, no, thank you.”

  “Even if Blorb isn’t on Dominator, I bet Lyke knows where his evil lair is. It’s an obvious target.”

  “Maybe too obvious. They’ll be expecting us.”

  “What else is new? We’ve been a step behind the entire way. Rather than insanely expecting that to change, we should lean into it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to challenge Lyke to a duel.”

  “Is this like the last time when you were sure you were dreaming and thought we were all zombies? Because you aren’t dreaming. You just sound nuts.”

  “You don’t think she’ll accept?”

  “Oh, I think she’ll accept. And I think she’ll wipe the floor with us. And even if she doesn’t, she’ll cheat and bring in reinforcements.”

  “I agree with the last part. But so will we. The idea is to draw her out rather than trying to hunt her down.”

  “You’re making this all up as you go along, aren’t you?”

  “What if I am? If we confront her, we’re meeting on her terms. If we challenge her and she accepts, we have a little more control. We need every bit of extra edge we can get.”

  “We need a lot more than that. If Lyke knows where and when, she’ll bring every sigilship in her fleet along to take you out.”

  I fell silent, stymied by the statement. He was right. There was no way Lyke would agree to one-on-one combat and not bring in reinforcements, especially if the fight was going badly for her. But maybe we could use that to our advantage.

  “What if she thinks she’s winning?” I said. “She won’t call for backup that way.”

  “How do you propose making her think she’s winning when she isn’t?”

  “David’s new sigil. Reverse. She can be winning. She can even land the killing blow. David can undo it.”

  “Yeah, Quasar told me about that. She also said both sides get reversed and they both know it happened. The only reason it worked on the bad guys on Gloin is because they didn’t understand why they went backward. In their confusion, they stuck to their plan.”

  “Except for Coil. He nearly killed me.” I smirked. “I beat him without sigiltech.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I did!” I insisted. “Lucky punch.”

  “Nope. Still not buying it.”

  “Whatever. It happened.

  “The point is, she’s more aware of what sigiltech can do. She won’t fall for that and do the same thing twice.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But at the nadir of the reverse, we’ll have Dominator’s exact position.”

  Matt shook his head. “That’s a bad idea.”

  “Is it, though?” I replied. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Why don’t you go take care of your corporeal needs?” Matt suggested. “We can run this all past Volker and company later.”

  “The more I think about it, the better it seems. I knew rescuing David would pay dividends.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  I smirked as I threw off the sheets covering me, only to realize I was naked. “Please tell me Emerald didn’t undress me.”

  Matt laughed. “Even after the cryogel bath, you were still so hot, we figured we needed to give your body as much cool air as possible.”

  “So everyone saw me in my birthday suit?” I could feel my face heating up. “Wonderful. Thank you very much.”

  “Not everyone saw you naked. Only the people in the hangar.”

  “My sister?”

  “Don’t worry, she said it was gross and looked away.” I sighed. There was nothing I could do about it now. “And Emerald was more concerned with all the bruises. Honestly, the toilet closeup of your butt in the underlay was worse.”

  “Thanks, I guess. Clothes?”

  He reached behind to grab them and dropped them on top of my groin. “Much better.”

  “Get out of here. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  Matt stood up, still amused. “Try not to cook up any more crazy ideas in the meantime.”

  “It’s not crazy. But no promises.” He waved and left the room. I stood and glanced at Shaq, who was cleaning his face with his paws at the end of the bed. “You don’t think I’m crazy, do you, bud?”

  He buzzed noncommittally. “Not sure. With you either way.”

  “Thanks for the support.” I dressed quickly, my mind still going over the scenario. Not only might it work, but if it worked, there was a chance we could get the Star of Caprum back. And if it didn’t?

  I was going to die soon anyway.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Boo!” Emerald exclaimed when I entered the kitchen. She jumped up so quickly, she dumped her drink over. It swept across the table and ran over the edge onto Matt’s lap

  “Em!” he snapped in annoyance, leaping up himself to avoid the bulk of the mess.

  “Sorry,” she tossed back at him without slowing before she threw herself into my arms, hugging me tightly. “How are you feeling?”

  “My jaw’s sore,” I replied, hugging her back before separating from her. “But otherwise, I’m fine. Passing out just comes with the territory.” I circled past her to Asshole while Matt joined me at the counter to grab a towel.

  I was still a little shaken up after offering my condolences to Grizz. He had been polite in accepting them, but I could see he was heartbroken. I had offered him a transfer to Prestige so he could go home. He refused. He had nothing left to go home to, his pain growing into a small fire in my gut that wouldn’t fade until Blorb was dead.

  “You sure smell a lot better,” Matt remarked. “And blue is definitely more your color.”

  I had changed into my blue captain’s suit, figuring I should look as professional as possible when I spoke to Volker again. “Black and blue. It matches the bruising.” I touched the side of my face and worked my jaw around, still a little swollen from Coil’s punch.

  “You went toe-to-toe with Coil and all you came out with was a swollen jaw,” Emerald said. “That’s impressive. What sigil did you use on him?”

  “I didn’t. I beat him without sigils.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, right. Silly Ben.”

  “I did. I swear.”

  “Uh-huh,” she responded.

  “Why would I lie about that?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me.”

  “The thing that gets me is that he wasn’t blind anymore. But he didn’t have implants. His eyes were black as night, like a shark’s.”

  “Maybe he was a zombie,” Matt suggested. “You have a thing for zombies.”

  “He wasn’t undead,” I replied. “Just his eyes.”

  “Who cares?” Emerald said. “He’s dead and buried. Very buried.”

  “Along with too many Marines,” I agreed. “But it may have been worth it. I have an idea.”

  “Ooh, do tell!” she chirped excitedly.

  “I’ll go over it in our next briefing,” I replied.

  “Hey, Ben,” David said, pausing in the doorway. Sheri was with him, out of her armor and into a pair of sweatpants and baggy Supreme branded sweatshirt. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I answered, turning back to Asshole. “Cheeseburger, medium. Fried egg on top and extra potato chips. And a beer.”

  “Comin’ right up, fearless leader!” Asshole replied.

  I smiled. Either Meg or Leo had messed with the assembler’s speech algorithm.

  “Are you putting potato chips on a burger?” David asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “You should try it. Doritos are good too.”

  “I’ve got next order,” he announced.

  “I take it you’re feeling a little better.”

  “A lot better. I mean, I’m still totally bummed about my mom. But she saved my life. All our lives. She gave me a chance to make up for what I did. Helping Sedaya, I mean.”

  “Order up, fearless leader!” Asshole announced. I opened the cabinet to grab my food.

  “What about your laptop?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I mean, I could rewrite it all if I really wanted to. But losing it made me think more about what I was doing. How I want to spend my life, you know? I don’t want to trivialize what’s happening in this galaxy, but the whole experience really opened my eyes on a personal level.”

  He glanced back at Sheri. I took note of the way he was looking at her and grinned. Maybe she had opened his eyes to the existence of the opposite sex.

  “Asshole, can I please have a cheeseburger also. Medium-well, with lots of Doritos on top.”

  “You got it, dork,” Asshole replied.

  “Dork?” David said, laughing.

  “Did the twins add voice recognition?” I asked, sitting down beside Matt, who was back in his seat, mopping up Emerald’s mess.

  “Sure seems that way,” Matt replied. “Asshole called me Sexy Blonde.”

  “Why do you get sexy?” Emerald asked, sitting back down and grabbing the towel out of Matt’s hand to finish cleaning up. “I got Loco Cabesa. That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “I guess you don’t know any Spanish,” I replied.

  “No. It’s not that common anymore. What does it mean?”

  “Crazy head.”

  “What?” She made a pouty face before laughing. “Maybe I’ll get it tattooed to my rear.”

  “No comment.” I said, watching Sheri walk up to order her lunch. She stood there, looking like she expected Asshole to explode in her face. “What’s the matter, Sis? Not having your usual nachos heaped with Jalapenos and cheese?”

  “I don’t want to know what Meg and Leo think of me.”

  “How did they know I’m a dork?” David asked. “I only met them an hour ago.”

  “I guess it oozes out of your pores,” Matt joked.

  “Order up!” Asshole said. “Enjoy the grub, dork.”

  “Thanks,” David said, opening the cabinet and pulling out his food. The chips were piled high on top of the cheese, with more melted cheese on top. It looked unbelievable. “Wow. This looks great.”

  “I think Meg and Leo added some code to make Asshole more creative too,” Matt said.

  David paused before sitting, pointing to the last chair. “Sheri, do you want to sit?”

  “No, thank you. I’m going to take a nap. Enjoy your burger.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later?”

  “Yup.”

  He offered her a huge grin and sat down with Matt, Emerald, and me. “Your sister is so awesome.”

  “She is. And if you try anything with her, I’ll feed you to Asshole.”

  His face paled. “Uh…I…”

  “I’m kidding,” I said with a smile before quickly dropping it. “Or am I?”

  David swallowed nervously before turning his attention to his burger. He took a bite of his when I took a bite of mine. “You were right,” he said after he swallowed. “Doritos on a burger is amazing. So good.” He paused to wipe some cheese off the corner of his mouth. “So I’ve been thinking about you a lot the last couple of hours.”

  “That’s…creepy,” I said.

  “Not in a bad way,” he corrected. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me. About chaos energy and your guitar and all that.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I’m wondering if I might be able to write an algorithm that can detect chaos energy. But I’d need some equipment to build a neural interface to scan your brain.”

  “What would be the benefit?” I asked.

  He smiled, his burger momentarily forgotten in his sudden excitement. “Okay, so chaos energy is like music, right?”

  “I don’t know, is it?”

  “Yes,” he replied confidently. “Music is composed of notes. Chaos energy is composed of…I don’t know. Let’s call them wavelengths, for lack of a better word.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Actually, let’s call them motes.”

  “Notes and motes?” I asked.

  “Well, Chaos Energy is material. It’s composed of particles. Motes.”

  “Sure, whatever makes you happy.”

  “The motes are part of the atmosphere in the layers between timelines. This is all stuff my mom told me, by the way. I didn’t come up with this myself. She got this info from my father, who got it from Sucaath.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah, so motes are like carbon dioxide. Or oxygen. Or water. They have a crystalline structure, and there’s a ton of energy stored inside the crystals. Like, unbelievable amounts. It would basically turn most scientific theories regarding energy on their heads. But the thing about the energy is that each type of mote can only affect certain properties of the universe, and you need to combine the motes to make things happen.”

  “And sigils channel the motes in specific ways so that the archon doesn’t need to gather them directly,” I said. “Like funnels, only certain motes can combine to provide the desired result of the action.”

  Matt raised his eyebrow. “Who told you that?”

  “Suck-ass,” I replied.

  “Of course.”

  “That’s exactly right,” David said. “And it was also confirmation that my mother wasn’t bullshitting me. So when you tap into the Interdimension, you’re able to pull these motes into your body like you would breathe oxygen. And you think about what you want them to do or tell them what you want them to do with a focus word, and the catalyst draws the motes into the proper sigil and it happens. That’s the gist, anyway.”

  “I’m with you so far,” I said.

  “Okay, but you don’t have catalyst. Which means you’re drawing in the energy on your own. Part of it is genetics. I assume the other part is related to your cancer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because nobody else can do what you do. From what I understand, cancer is so rare out here they don’t have any treatments for it. And who back on Earth gets exposed to sigiltech? It’s simply a matter of logical reasoning and deduction.”

  “Dork,” Emerald said.

  David flushed. “Furthering that line of reasoning, I posit that by building an interface, we can capture the signatures of the specific motes, and maybe even get to the point where you can pick them out without music. Though it might require a neural implant to translate the signals. I’m not sure yet.”

  “I’ll ask you again. What would be the benefit?”

  “You agree sigils are like a funnel, right?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, so what happens if you try to pour too much of something in a funnel at one time?”

  “It either clogs or backs up,” I replied.

  “Precisely. So what if instead of a funnel, you had a firehose?”

  “You turn into Harry Potter,” Matt said, slapping me on the back.

  “Or Succaath,” I replied, not nearly as excited as Matt. “The cancer-ridden, dying version. It sounds incredible and terrifying. It also sounds like it would require a lot of time and effort, neither of which is something we have to spare.”

  David made a face. “It could be the difference between winning and losing.”

  “If I die first, we lose for sure,” I said.