“I etched the construct on my own.”

  “So you could save us.”

  “I handled Usari on my own.”

  “Pfft,” Shaq spat. “Was there.”

  “That’s right, you were. I beat Coil on my own.”

  “Come on, Ben, give it up,” Emerald said. “Nobody believes that.”

  “It’s true!” I pushed.

  “Nopesss,” Ixy countered.

  I paused, trying to come up with another example. I couldn’t. For as long as I could remember, I had been fortunate enough to never have to do much of anything alone. First there was Mom, Sheri, and my brothers. Then Matt, who had always been there for me from the first day we met. And since coming to the SpiraI, I’d had Alter, Shaq, Quasar, Keep, and the rest of my crew. My whole life before this moment played out in an instant. I remembered the times I’d succeeded with a little help from my friends, and the times I’d been there to help my friends succeed. It felt wrong to abandon them just to play right into Lyke’s hands.

  Let her stay on the sigibellum waiting for me to arrive while we brought Dominator down around her.

  “Yeah,” I said, turning away from the sigibellum. “You’re right. Let’s—”

  “Going somewhere?”

  I whipped back around, my eyes settling on Admiral Lyke. She stood in the passageway just outside the sigibellum, looking as smug as ever. The door into the room was open, though I hadn’t heard it or seen her emerge. Had she been invisible, watching and listening this entire time? I glared at her, hands sliding slowly back to the strings of my guitar.

  “Don’t bother with the bridge,” she continued. “The controls were transferred down here weeks ago. All you’ll find up there is a bunch of flashing displays and a lot of dust.” She chuckled like a hyena. “You really don’t know when to quit, do you, Murdock? Though I have to admit, I never expected you to find a way to undo your death. I know there are a lot of sigils I’ve never heard about or seen, but that one is something else.”

  “Do your lips keep moving because you know I’m going to kill you as soon as you stop talking?” I asked, drawing a laugh from Emerald.

  “Come now, Ben. You have my respect. There’s no reason to be so uncivilized.”

  “Yes, there is. You and your master have killed more than one of my friends.”

  “Master? I bow to no master, Ben. I make deals that advance my desires. Is that so wrong?” I glared at her, refusing to dignify the question with a response. She shrugged. “What was it you said to me? My pride demanded I fight you because I need to know I’m better than you. You were so sure you knew me, but you didn’t realize my hunger for power is bigger than my drive to hold onto my pride. But since you’re here, and I’m here, I might as well get my answer. You want to dance, Ben? Let’s dance.”

  She waved to me and disappeared back into the room with the sigibellum.

  “Ben, it’s still a trap,” Quasar said.

  “Even if it is, there’s no way she can beat me.”

  “Then why does she seem to think she can?” Emerald asked.

  I looked at my crew. “We don’t have a choice. You heard her. The ship controls were transferred down here.”

  “Have you ever heard of a thing called lying?”

  “We don’t have the luxury of taking that chance. Like it or not, I have to go in there. It’s not up for debate. Go for the bridge, since in all likelihood, she’s full of shit. If I don’t make it, you all know how much you mean to me, right?”

  “We do,” Quasar said.

  “Yesss,” Ixy added.

  Shaq buzzed and nuzzled my neck.

  “This isn’t goodbye,” I said. “I’ll see you after the show. Now go.” None of them moved, hesitant to leave me behind. “Go!” I shouted. “That’s an order.”

  Shaq hopped from my shoulder to Quasar’s. Emerald threw herself into me, giving me a quick one-armed hug while keeping her wound away from the pressure. She pulled away, but instead of being teary-eyed, she looked as determined and lucid as I had ever seen her. “Kick her ass, Ben.”

  They lingered another moment before turning and heading away. I spun back toward the open door, my resolve firming quickly. The support of friends and family had been invaluable to me my entire life. But there were some things a man had to do for himself.

  I shifted my fingers on my guitar, turned up the volume, and set my pick against the strings. Lyke wanted to dance?

  I knew the perfect song.

  CHAPTER 46

  I’d learned to play my song selection on a challenge from Sheri, who thought my repertoire was way too metal and hard rock heavy, lacking variety. I’d actually enjoyed the process more than I expected, though I could never have imagined I’d be using the tune in a time and place like this.

  Chaos energy flowed from the iconic opening chords to Stayin’ Alive and through me as I reached the entrance to the room housing the sigibellum. My temples tingled at the edges of the protostem-coated crown.

  I wasn’t just preparing to fight Lyke. I expected a gang of Gilded too, a showdown like a classic kung-fu movie. Bruce Lee versus ninjas, with the Boss Battle at the end.

  I was ready.

  The sigibellum rested in the center of the room. The platform itself was identical to the one on Head Case. Same size, shape, everything. Instead of multiple monitors showing feeds from the cameras arrayed on Head Case’s skull, a single curved display occupied eighty percent of the sigibellum’s perimeter, arcing over the platform. Saloon doors for entry completed the full view, left open when Lyke returned to the platform. Sparing a quick look at the feed, I absorbed a small sample of the scene beyond Dominator’s hull.

  Brito’s fleet was still out there, but his remaining numbers were hard to ascertain. They were much more spread out and seemed to be focused more on staying out of range of the sigilships than harassing the Niflin corvettes. A delaying tactic to be sure, but the Count and his forces could only delay so long. Otherwise, the orbit Dominator had moved into was thick with debris, enough of it hitting the ship’s energy shields that it created a constant blueish haze around the camera lenses.

  Lyke stood in the center of the sigibellum as I entered. The lack of glow from the sigils etched into the base of the device told me she wasn’t actively using it at the moment. A quick glance to the left and right of the machine, suggested we were alone in the room.

  I doubted that.

  I also noticed there were no other control stations in the room. Not even a single separate display from which to operate the main functions of the starship. Quasar had said Lyke lied about that. And I was pretty sure she had, too. This was purely confirmation. I didn’t regret my decision to step into the jaws of the trap. If me being here would keep my crew safer, then I was all for it.

  The door closed behind me the moment I passed the threshold, the displaced air tickling the back of my neck.

  The Bee Gees echoed in the suddenly enclosed room, and Lyke surprised me by showing off her disco moves for a few seconds before offering me a predatory smile. “I knew you couldn’t resist my charms, Ben.”

  “You’re about as charming as a rattlesnake. About as trustworthy as one, too.” Squinting through it, I created a sudden burst of light overhead, bright enough that the immediate change should have revealed any cloaked archons before my miniature sun faded away. I didn’t see one anywhere along the room’s perimeter. Either they had found some other sigil or combination thereof to make themselves invisible or Lyke and I were alone in the room.

  Her laughter suggested the latter. “Ah, Ben. A clever use of a sigil that most think is useless. It’s not the strength of your abilities that makes you who you are. It’s your ability to think outside the box. But here we are at the end of the road, and you still don’t get it. I know you, maybe better than you know yourself. And you think you know me, to the extent that you were probably ninety percent sure I was lying about the bridge and a hundred percent sure I wouldn’t fight you alone. But you see, whatever you think of me, I’ve already thought of it first, which makes it just too easy to subvert your expectations and use your subconscious arrogance against you. You’re not as smart as you think you are, Ben. Even your choice of music was predictable. There’s no one else in here except you and me. My Gilded are on the bridge, waiting to kill your crew. And when they’re done, they’ll move on to your ridiculous ship. Even if you win against me, you still lose. Do you understand?”

  I stared at her, physically shaking in response to her claim. Fear and fury coursed through me. For the moment, fear had the upper hand.

  “I’d better kill you quickly then,” I said, voice trembling almost as much as my body. I switched from Bee Gees back to Metallica, pushing Lyke with all my strength. Enough that she should have gone through the display behind her and splattered like a bug against the bulkhead.

  She didn’t. She countered my push with nearly equal strength, only sliding back a few feet, not even impacting the curved monitor behind her.

  My fear intensified.

  “How?” I mouthed, only to be hit with a counter-push that nearly caught me off guard. I was thrown back into the sealed hatch, vertebrae audibly cracking upon impact. I dropped to a knee, the pain of breaking bone so intense I lost my breath, keeping me from crying out. It was all I could do to continue playing, though I could only manage random notes when my fingers lost their placement. I had no choice but to use restore on myself to keep up the fight.

  “You clearly don’t understand,” Lyke said. “You were so sure I enticed you in here because I had an army of archons waiting. Because I couldn’t possibly be as powerful as you. Because I can’t possibly beat you on my own.”

  As my body healed, I closed my eyes, creating another ball of bright light between us, hoping it would be enough to blind her. Enhancing my legs, I sprang to my feet, shifting to change my position without physically moving and lunging at her. My hand out, I hoped to make contact with her skin and nail her with calmed-to-death.

  I almost made it, my fingertips brushing the back of her neck just before she sensed my touch and pushed me away with so much force I flew across the room, just missing the sigibellum on my way toward a high-impact collision with the wall. I managed to push back against the wall, slowing my velocity enough that I didn’t die when I crashed into the bulkhead and collapsed on my hands and knees, looking back at her. I had touched her with calmed-to-death. I was sure of it. But she merely stood there, her cold stare sending a new kind of fear racing through me, my entire body falling numb. “That’s impossible,” I whispered. Lyke’s form shifted, changing into one I knew all too well.

  “Do you remember driving from McRory’s? Keep put you to sleep so you wouldn’t see us transit,” Pilot Alter said before again changing forms. “Do you remember the first time you passed out, and when you awoke I was there with coffee and a bacon and egg sandwich?” Her form changed a third time, to Mechanic Alter. “Or when we space-walked to fix Head Case.” She shifted to Clown Alter, but didn’t say anything until shifting to the translucent young girl she had shown me after fleeing the lounge. “Or when you started calling the ship’s AI assistant Lexi instead of Levi? I still don’t know what that was about. Or when I told you that bullshit made up sob story about my past that you ate up like candy?” She changed back to Pilot Alter. “How about when I tore Gia to shreds?” She shifted to Blorb’s male form. “Do you remember when I left you to die on Omega Station?”

  I stared at him in silence, my mind trying to catch up to everything I was seeing. Everything Blorb was saying. “You shouldn’t know about all of that. Unless…”

  “I told you that I know you, Ben,” he replied. “Because I’ve been with you from the moment Keep found you. That story I told you about two Aleal assassins? There were never two. Only Blorb and his Alter.”

  My heart pounded so hard I thought it would explode. I continued staring at Blorb in silent shock. He hadn’t killed Alter. He was Alter. How the hell was that possible? “The palace,” I managed to squeeze out. “The Empress.”

  “Not me. At least, not until you helped me get into the palace to reach her. One of my bigger strokes of genius, I have to admit. Honestly, it all came together so naturally. I never even considered turning on Sedaya before I spent some time with you. Before you showed me how I could become something so much more.”

  I struggled back to my feet. “All of this is because of me?” I said softly.

  “There goes your subconscious arrogance again, Ben. Sedaya had this in the works for some time. My job was to prevent Keep from finding his champion. From finding you. But when I learned…” He paused, effortlessly pulling my guitar from my hands to his. “We don’t want to repeat cliche movie scenes, do we?” He snapped the guitar in half and dropped the pieces on the floor. “When I learned why Keep wanted you, I finally understood my true purpose. My path to freedom, and my kind’s path to superiority.”

  “But… Hiro said he came from Alter, and that made him good,” I blabbered, trying to come to terms with this new reality.

  “Hiro made Hiro good,” Blorb countered. “But he’s still immature. There’s still time to manipulate him.”

  With my ability to tap into chaos energy destroyed with the guitar, Blorb lifted me easily into the air, holding me with my arms at my sides, unable to move.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Ben. You’re wondering how I can use sigiltech when I’m not human. You probably won’t be surprised to know I learned that from you, too. All of the blood tests I ran, the research I did. It wasn’t to save your life. It wasn’t because I cared. It was so I could learn to emulate your genetics. So I could evolve into not just the appearance of a human on the outside, but learn to mimic the fingerprint of a human on the inside. Your fingerprint.”

  He pulled me across the room to where he stood in front of the sigibellum, until we were practically face-to-face. Not that it mattered. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. I had been ready to lose this fight. But not like this.

  Blorb reached up and snatched the crown from my head. “And what’s this new toy?” he asked. “David made it for you, I assume. I should have killed him before you had a chance to steal him back, but I suppose it wasn’t a total loss.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” I asked.

  “Kill you, of course,” he replied. “I don’t need you anymore.”

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I asked. “Especially if I opened your eyes to everything you can be.”

  He paused, staring at me before shrugging. “I don’t really know. I just do.”

  He continued holding me as his chest sprouted a spear-like appendage that sank into my chest and punched out through my back. The pain was incredible. My legs instantly went numb, and I couldn’t move them. Paralyzed. He jerked my body around like a rag in his chaotic grip. He dropped his sigiltech action, holding me up with the spear, tilting it back so that I slid toward him.

  It was hard to think of anything beyond my crew, my friends, my family, probably only moments away from running headlong into Blorb’s archons. I wasn’t afraid to die myself. It was the thought of failing them that filled me with anguish.

  I’d lost my guitar. My crown. My construct. I had nothing left to help me reach through the veil. The last time I had felt this vulnerable, this alone and afraid, had been in the minutes before Mom had driven me to my appointment with Doc Haines.

  But fear wasn’t always a bad thing, was it? Succaath called his race the Relyeh. The Hunger. They lived on fear. Fed off it. Gained strength from it. He used it to channel chaos energy without aid. Could I do the same? I had already done the same, when Dominator’s attack had scalped Head Case more cleanly than any tomahawk could have.

  Blood gurgled out of my mouth as I coughed, struggling to breathe past the obstruction stabbed through my lungs and spine. Blorb lost his form, becoming a transparent humanoid with an arm of barbed tentacles that reached out to wrap around my neck.

  “Wait,” I wheezed. “You need me…for one…more thing.”

  It was a stall tactic. An act. Somehow, it worked. While Blorb froze, I did my best to focus on my fear, to listen for the resonating tone of chaos behind the thudding of my heart, the pulsing in my veins, the pain in my body, and even the bubbly gurgle of my labored breathing. It had to be there. I had used it before.

  “And what might that be?” he asked, giving me a chance to answer.

  “You don’t…” I paused for longer than I needed, buying more time as I gasped for air. I couldn’t hear anything despite my best efforts, but I sensed a tickle along the back of my neck. “You don’t…” I paused again.

  “Spit it out!” he snapped.

  “You don’t know how…” I rolled my eyes back, letting my head loll forward. He wrapped his tentacles around my skull to pull it back upright. The tickle in my neck expanded, becoming a tingle stretching inward toward my heart, creating a sudden warmth I recognized.

  “I don’t know how to what?” Blorb cried, strangely infuriated by the idea of me knowing something he didn’t.

  Now that the floodgates had opened, the prickly heat spread quickly. My entire body burned with a near overabundance of chaos energy waiting to be used.

  “You don’t know how to—”

  I locked my hand on the spear, attempting to send calmed-to-death flowing through it.

  Nothing happened.

  Blorb looked down at my hand and started laughing. “I get it,” he said, locking eyes with me again. “You actually managed to lie convincingly. You were still trying to win. I might hate you, Ben, but I do respect that about you. No matter what, you never give up.”

  “You don’t know how to reverse,” I said as he twisted my neck.

  I heard it crack. I was pretty sure I felt myself die. Or maybe that was the heat of the motes burning energy to execute the action, which apparently needed a focus word. My neck straightened, my hand backed from the spear and I slid up it before it sank back into his chest and I dangled in the air. That was as far back as the action carried me.