“I know you did,” she replied. “That’s why I pulled you away from your crew. I knew you would never show them how the cancer's affecting you deep down inside. You’re a natural leader.”

  "How did you know?”

  “I’m your mother.” She glanced at me and laughed. “And you’re so much like your dad. Strong and sensitive." Her smile vanished. "I thought Avelus had a plan to cure you.”

  “He does, sort of. It’s complicated.”

  “How so?”

  I exhaled the last of my tension. “There’s a sigil, restore, that would be able to stop the cancerous cells and turn them back into healthy ones.”

  “That’s great news,” Mom said.

  “It would be, except the only known example of the sigil is etched into the inside of Keep’s skull.”

  “What? Did you say, inside? How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know. Apparently, his wife worked with sigiltech. She figured out how to do it and used him as a guinea pig. Then she died.”

  “And he doesn’t know what the sigil looks like.“

  “No. He never actually saw it. And we can’t exactly crack his skull open to take a look.”

  “And they don’t have technology to see the inside of someone’s skull in the Spiral?”

  “I assume not or Keep would have suggested it.”

  “That must be frustrating. Having an answer so close, but still so far.”

  “Part of the reason why I needed a good cry, I think.”

  “What about his wife’s records? Or lab? Or whatever she had? Maybe she left notes.”

  “He said it was all destroyed during the war.”

  “What about other sigils? That can’t be the only one.”

  “We haven’t found anything else yet that we can use. And there’s still a problem. Apparently, I’m allergic to the catalyst. Or as Keep puts it, the catalyst is allergic to me. Pretty much any time I use it I can wind up paralyzed temporarily. It’s painful and scary.”

  “And also frustrating. To have access to that power but to have a barrier in using it has to be maddening.”

  “It is, but if we found a healing sigil at least Keep could use it on me like he does with the one we do have, calm. It would help. Anything would help.”

  She smacked her lips the way she always did when she was thinking hard about a problem. We made it all the way down to the barn before she spoke again.

  “What about that mining company? The one you said was a front for one of the bad guys? Suck-ass?”

  I laughed. “Matt calls him Suck-ass too. It’s Succaath. We blew up the company and the guy who owned it. We destroyed everything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I was there when we wiped their servers, and Keep said he went to Dellacqua’s house just to make sure he hadn’t hidden anything there. That route’s a dead end.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The way she asked gave me pause. I eyed her curiously. “Yeeeeesss,” I said slowly. “Why?”

  “I’ve been doing some digging.”

  “You? Digging? Mom, you’re not a detective. You’re not even good at the Internet.”

  “Maybe I just never had the right motivation before now,” she replied. “It also helps that I’m working one job now, not three, thanks to you. I’ve become pretty adept at the Internet in the last few weeks. Did you know Alonzo Dellacqua had another child?”

  I could feel my mouth gaping open at the news, my heart rate jumping. Not so much because it might be a lead to healing sigils, but because it might mean Sucaath’s connection to Earth hadn’t been completely severed.

  “By your reaction, I can see you didn’t. His name is David Morgan. As near as I can tell, Alonzo had him with a woman born here on Earth, not whoever he had his daughter with. It could be that David doesn’t know anything about the mining company or sigiltech. Alonzo and his mom were never married and never shared an address, so they might have had nothing to do with one another. Anyway, David’s some kind of genius. Eighteen years old and set to graduate cum laude from Stanford in a couple of months. He’s also one of their top student researchers in their Bio-X program.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a biosciences institute whose main goal is to unlock the secrets of the human body through a blend of biology and technology.”

  “Did you get that from their website?”

  She nodded. “I paraphrased it a little though.” We both laughed.

  “And you think that this kid might know about sigiltech?”

  “He’s only three years younger than you, Ben. He’s not a kid.”

  “When he’s nearly been swallowed by a black hole formed by a candy bomb, I’ll stop calling him a kid.”

  “Huh?”

  “Long story. I’ll tell it during the barbecue.”

  “Like I said, he might know something about sigiltech. He might not. I don’t think it would hurt to go talk to him. I had planned to go in a few weeks. I didn’t know if you would ever come back or what your situation would be like if you did come back, but I thought it would be better to have as much information as I could ready for you just in case. But I’m sure David would be a lot more likely to talk to you than he would me, and—”

  I cut her off by wrapping my arms around her and squeezing tightly. “Mom, I love you." Just the fact that she had gone through so much effort when she didn’t even know if I would ever come back to make use of it reaffirmed how much she cared.

  “I love you too,” she replied. “Will you go?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. We only have a couple of days, and we can’t afford to lose any more time if we want to get Head Case back.”

  “If you can go, you should. Don’t leave any stone unturned.”

  “I agree. If at all possible, I won’t. And if we have to leave again before I can go see him, I’ll do my best to come back for that.” I put my arm across her shoulders. “Let’s go back to the house. I think I smell the burgers on the grill. Even with the molecular scans, Asshole still can’t make food taste as good as the real thing.”

  “It’s probably too perfect,” Mom replied.

  I paused before nodding. “You know, I hadn’t thought that. But I bet that’s exactly what it is. Maybe I could write a program to add some variability. I bet Gia could help with that. Don’t tell her I told you this, but she’s a superstar singer in the Spiral.” I paused and made a face. “And her music is awful.”

  Mom laughed. “Is she rich?”

  “Very.”

  “Maybe you should marry her, then.”

  “She’s almost your age.”

  “What? She doesn’t look a day over thirty, if that.”

  “She’s rich,” I repeated as an explanation for her youthful appearance. “But I’m not interested anyway.”

  “Is it her music?”

  We both laughed again. “No, Mom. I have too much going on right now to think about getting involved with anyone. Besides, I wouldn’t want someone to get that close just in time for me to die on them.”

  Her smile faded. “You aren’t going to die.”

  “My crew and I are trying to stop a war out there,” I replied. “I could die anytime, and not from cancer.”

  “But you won’t,” she insisted.

  I shrugged mentally, deciding not to press the issue. It was one area where she wasn’t ready to cope without denial. I breathed in deeply. “I definitely smell burgers. Come on.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Bill had set up the barbecue on the front porch of the house, where shade and overhead fans helped blunt some of the summer heat. My belly was filled with two burgers, a pair of hot dogs, and too much potato salad by the time George, Gloria, and Kyrie arrived, pulling up in the new truck they had bought with the money Keep had given them. I introduced them to the rest of my crew following our joyful reunion, happy to see George making good progress with his physical therapy. Of course, Shaq was a huge hit with Kyrie. She and Sally hand-fed him bites of raw ground meat before getting into a game of hide and seek with him in and around the house. He had a much more playful nature than I’d ever realized and seemed to really enjoy interacting with the two girls.

  With everyone together, I gave a quick account of everything that had happened to us after Keep and I left Earth. Matt and Alter helped fill in some of the details of what happened onboard Head Case while we were on Earth, giving everyone a full picture of our adventure.

  The adventure of a lifetime, for better or worse.

  I dropped into the seat next to Keep as the hastily assembled party wound down. Mom, Marie, Druck, and Alter were in the house cleaning dishes, while everyone else sat quietly on the porch, sipping drinks and enjoying the cooling evening air.

  “Better than being captured, right?” Keep asked. He had dark circles under his eyes and sweat running down his forehead. He looked like shit, and I told him as much. “I tore open space and time a few hours ago; what do you expect?”

  “You did the same to bring us to Caprum to see Head Case,” I replied. “You didn’t seem tired then.”

  “What do you think the hat is for? It kept my face in shadow and sucked up the perspiration. I was ready to call it a night before you plopped down and started hassling me about my appearance.”

  “I need to talk to you about something,” I said.

  “I know. You’ve been giving me that look since you came back from your walk with your Mom. She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “No, she’s fine. But I do appreciate your concern.”

  He shrugged. “I like her. She’s a good woman.”

  “Wait. You don’t have a thing for my mother, do you?”

  “No offense, kid, but she’s too young for me.”

  I laughed. “Everyone’s too young for you.”

  “In all seriousness, when Priya died, I swore I would never love anyone else. And I meant it.”

  I drew back in surprise. “You’re kidding, right? A thousand years, and you’ve never been with anyone else?”

  “Nope. Not kidding. She was the one. My one and only.”

  “That’s actually really sweet,” I replied.

  “Heh. What? You didn’t think I had it in me?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s always about the promises I make, kid. Because I don’t make them lightly.”

  “I respect that.”

  He nodded. “Now, what is it you want to talk about?”

  I leaned in closer and lowered my voice. I didn’t want to drag anyone else into this, at least not before I ran it past Keep. “So, it turns out my mom’s gotten pretty good at Googling. She discovered that Alonzo Dellacqua had another child with a different woman.”

  Keep’s forehead perked up and he straightened in his seat. “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. His name is David Morgan. He’s an eighteen year-old genius who’s about to graduate from Stanford with a doctorate in biosciences when he should still be in high school. He's already the head researcher. Mom thinks we should go talk to him.”

  “We?” Keep said. He shook his head. “Not me, kid. I plan to sleep it off for the next eight hours or so, discharge the Star, and then go back to bed for another six to ten hours. After that, we’ll be back in business. We can’t afford to linger here forever, and you don’t have time for a side quest.”

  “What if he knows about sigiltech? He could be the key to finding a sigil that’ll help me with my cancer.”

  “I get it, Bennie. The bad cells are spreading and you’re becoming more desperate for a way out of that fate. You know I want the same thing, but the odds this Morgan kid has the answers aren’t all that good. Your best chance is for us to get back to the Spiral as soon as we can.”

  “He’s Alonzo’s son. How could he not know anything about what his father was doing?”

  “Were they close?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They weren’t close,” he stated. “It was a rhetorical question.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I already searched Alonzo’s house. I never found anything mentioning a son. Even if he really does have one, I don’t think they stayed in touch.”

  “Unless Alonzo didn’t want anyone to know about David. Maybe he was trying to protect him.”

  “You’re reaching, Bennie.”

  “Come on, Keep. It would mean a lot to Mom. She put in a lot of hours tracking David down.”

  “Sorry, kid.” He pushed himself out of his chair. “I’d love to do a solid for her, but I really need my beauty sleep.” He put his hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eye. “And we really need to get back to Atlas, asap. Chasing after a weak lead is just too risky, capiche?”

  “Yeah, I capiche,” I replied, doing my best to hide my disappointment.

  “You came to me because you wanted my opinion, because you know I’ll never disrespect you by telling you what you want to hear. So just hang tight, okay kid? Twenty-four hours from now we’ll be back on the other side of the universe.”

  I exhaled sharply and nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  He headed into the house while I stared out at the cornfields. I didn’t know how many minutes had passed before Matt replaced Keep in the chair next to me.

  “Hey bro, you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied flatly.

  “Seriously? Don’t bullshit me. I’ve known you too long for that.”

  I looked over at him. “Mom found out Alonzo Dellacqua has another child. She thought I should go talk to him to see if he knows anything about sigils. Keep thinks it’s a waste of time.”

  “Another kid, huh? Interesting. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s probably right. The odds this guy knows anything are likely somewhere between slim and none. At the same time, I just can’t shake the feeling that I should follow-up. That if I don’t go I’ll regret it in the future.”

  “That seems like a pretty easy choice to me.”

  “Except then I think that if I do go and something happens to me, it could affect the whole crew. We have a responsibility to more than just ourselves here. I feel like I’m being selfish.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Matt said, leaning over and looking under the seat.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to find my crystal ball.” He straightened up and glanced at me. “You don’t have one on you, do you?”

  “You think you’re funny,” I said.

  “Hilarious,” he replied. “But I’m not joking right now. We have no way of knowing what future outcomes hinge on decisions we make now. You can decide to stay and meanwhile David’s got a photocopy of the sigil inside Keep’s skull at the bottom of his underwear drawer. In fact, if you want to look at it that way, we're here now, able to go after this information, assuming it exists, because of what we chose to do, going after the blueburn. Maybe we're meant to go see this David kid to see what he knows.”

  “Yeah, I know. Which is why I’m torn on what to do.”

  He considered the equation for a few seconds. “I’ll tell you what. Give me this David guy’s address and I’ll go. If you leave without me, then you leave without me. Don’t wait up.”

  “Matt, no,” I said.

  “Ben, yes,” he countered. “If there’s even the slimmest, lamest, more insane chance in the universe that I can do something that might save your life, then I’m taking it. Whether that means standing up to a Gilded or going to have a convo with a nerd.” He jumped to his feet. “What’s the address?”

  “I haven’t gotten it from Mom yet,” I replied. “But you can’t…” I stopped talking. Matt was already on his way inside to find Mom and get the address. “Matt, wait!” He didn’t slow, disappearing into the house. “Matt! Damn it.” I should have known he would seize the moment. Then again, maybe I did know. Maybe I just wanted someone to make the decision for me. “Matt!” I hurried into the house, not catching up until I reached him in the kitchen.

  “Ben, what’s going on?” Alter asked as I entered.

  “We may have a lead on someone who could possibly help him with his cancer,” Matt said. “Or at the very least might know some things about sigiltech that could help us.”

  “It’s not likely,” I added.

  “It’s extremely unlikely,” Matt agreed. “But there’s still a non-zero chance. He doesn’t want to look into it and risk delaying our return to the Spiral, so I’m going to go for him.” He turned to Mom. “Mrs. Murdock, can you give me David’s address please?”

  “I’ll come,” Alter said.

  Matt and I both froze in response to the comment. “Alter, you do know if we don’t get back in time we might be stuck here for a while,” Matt said. “Or even forever. You’d lose your home.”

  “Some things are more important than a pile of sand, Matt,” she replied. “If I can be of help, I’ll come.”

  I stared at her, dumbstruck by the comment. “You’d give up Head Case for me?”

  “Wouldn’t you give up Head Case for me?”

  “Well, yeah. Or Matt. Or Shaq. or Quasar.”

  “Or me,” Druck interjected from the sink, where he was scrubbing dishes.

  “I guess so,” I answered, though internally I couldn’t confirm it.

  “So why is it any different for me?” Alter said. “Before, my home came first because I didn’t have a family. Now, my family comes first. End of story.”

  “Keep doesn’t think we should go.”

  “Keep isn’t in charge here,” Matt said. “Technically, since we’re on terra firma, I am. And I’m going.”

  “Here, Matt,” Mom said, handing her phone toward him. “The address is in the contact list. This way you can call if you need anything.”

  He accepted the mobile. “Thanks, Mrs. Murdock.”

  “Matt,” I said, intending to continue the argument.

  “I’ve got the addy, Ben. There’s nothing you can do now.”

  “Mom, how could you?” I asked.

  “It seems to me the only person here who isn’t doing everything they can to keep you alive is you,” she replied. “And maybe him.” She motioned to Druck.