Sevro holds up a hand at the fourth-floor stairwell and motions me forward. I slip toward him with Quinn and peer down. Dust rises up the circular stairwell. Beyond it, on the bottom-floor landing, shadows move. But there is no noise. Sevro bends and places a piece of debris on the edge of a banister, gesturing me to watch. The Howlers cluster around, staring at it, and I stiffen. Though there is no sound, the piece of debris rocks slightly.

Vibrations in the building.

Before Sevro and the others can stop me, I jump over the banister and rip down the center of the spiral stairwell with ten times the velocity this moon’s gravity would allow. Pop. I enter the domain of a second jamField, and sounds of war rattle over me. Concussive blasts, yelling, burners hissing out bullets, pulse weapons warbling like demented ghosts. The moment before I land, I tweak my gravBoots, jerking myself to a powerful stop. I slap into the marble and swing my razor around my head in a violent loop. Four Praetorian Grays die. Eight thumps hitting the floor. Their ghostCloaks disintegrate like thin window frost against hot breath.

Bodies, strewn across the halls. Rubble. Fires. Grays and Obsidians chase down Augustan Golds. Six Grays overwhelm two Golds with railRifles, magnetic ammunition screaming into aegises till they overload and warp backward, consuming the Golds’ left arms. Rounds slap into the pulseShields that cover their body’s, overloading the circuitry. The Grays slip forward with practiced precision and shoot the Golds point-blank in their helmeted heads. The best armor in the Solar System crumples inward and the man and woman are gone. The Grays turn in my direction, level their rifles, and my Howlers cascade down around me. Their black aegises throb against the vambraces that cover their left forearms. They block the incoming fire. Sevro slips from formation. Quinn follows. Ghosting, they flicker in and out of sight, moving as twin strands of smoke. Somehow they’re amongst the Grays, then back by my side before the Grays fall.

More weaponfire slams into our formation, nearly taking my naked head off. I duck behind my armored fellows. Terror pumps through me. A Gray pops into the hall and fires a microShot at us. Thirty tiny bombs spread out like a swarm of hornets. Thistle and Rotback blast the swarm apart with their pulseFists. A sheet of blue fire billows through the hall. A second swarm of bombs howls after the first. Quinn shunts off the power to her gravFist and shoots at the swarm of bombs just before they hit. They reverse course, back the way they came, where they slap into the Gray squad and detonate.

We won’t last in here. Nothing will, I decide when three Bellona Obsidians lope into view, Karnus au Bellona following at their heels. Some of my friends will die on this level if we fight all who come against us. There’s a better way. A smarter way.

“Sevro, make a hole!” I shout, pointing seven stories above us, up the center gap in the stairwell. He shoots his pulseFist upward and chunks of stone rain down around us, suspended by Quinn’s gravFist. Sevro shoots again and water rains down through the hole, swirling in the gravity bubble Quinn created. I stand and yell, “On me!”

We ascend out of the chaos before the Praetorians fall on us. I come to a halt two hundred meters above the villa. Wind whips. I had no plan when I dove down to the first level. I thought only of my friends. Now I know the Howlers and I will be killed if we fight. I let my razor curl placidly around my arm. I instruct the Howlers to do the same and I roar into the darkness.

“AJA!” The Howlers close around me, nervous as we float exposed above the villa. The storm sends sheets of rain down on us. “AJA!”

A horde of Praetorians disengage their ghostCloaks near the hot springs and lagoon, where the infrared is thrown into chaos by the heat of the water. Two Praetorians rocket up from the garden, cutting through pine trees, one a Stained. He flies closer, leveling his ionFist at my head.

“Get that thing out of my gorydamn face, you Stained whelp. Don’t you recognize your betters?” A Praetorian Gold joins him. I don’t recognize the woman. Her serpent helm recoils into her purple-black armor, sleeker than the Obsidians’. Face sharp and ruthless as an axehead.

“Varga, heel,” she snaps. The Stained lowers his weapon. His helmet slides into his own Praetorian armor, and I discover Varga is a she. An Obsidian two feet taller than I, with a tribal skull tattoo consuming her pale face. White hair flutters behind her. More scars on her face than I have on my entire body.

“Ebony dog,” Sevro snaps. “I’ll shoot her if she snarls again.”

“Were you the squad in the stairwell?” The Gold glances over us, unsure of what to make of me or my Howlers. “You killed my Grays.”

“Don’t weep over Grays,” I say. “They raised their hands against me.”

“Why are you here?” She wipes the rain from her face. “The Sovereign confined you to your room for the night. Are you responsible for the power outage?”

“My business is the Sovereign’s.” She can’t afford not to believe me.

She pauses a beat and I realize she has optics in her eyes. She checks a database “Liar.”

The Stained’s weapon comes back up.

“You know who I am, Praetorian,” I say with as much authority as I can muster. “You also know I’m not on your list to kill. I have immunity.”

“Revoked.”

“So take me to Aja.”

“Aja isn’t here.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Her optics flicker in her irises as she receives a digital command. “Follow me.”

We land on white stones and follow the Praetorian through the trees toward the lagoon where the hot springs terminate.

“What are you doing?” Sevro whispers in my ear, eyeing Varga. He flips the woman the crux with his middle finger wrapped around the index.

“I’m using your leverage.”

Aja stands in the garden, flanked by Bellona—two Gold, the rest Obsidian. Only the one Stained, Varga. The lagoon breathes tendrils of steam around the Protean Knight’s shoulders. She watches the water impassively, like a child watching a campfire, waiting for a log to burn in half.

“Darrow?” Aja purrs without looking at me. “You’re not in your room.” She sizes up the Howlers. Recognizes them. “And you killed my men. Fitchner was wrong about you.”

“I have something you’ll want,” I say sharply. “But call off your dogs.”