My face spread into a huge grin. Different as we were, xith’cal still needed to breathe, and every lizard in the room, even the huge one, was rushing for the air masks. And as I watched them scramble, a beautiful plan fell into my mind.

I reached over my shoulder and grabbed a grenade from my string. My ordnance was low since I worked, or had worked, on a spaceship, but it was still plenty for what I needed now. Using my targeting computer to line up my shots, I lobbed my entire grenade payload in rapid succession, not at the xith’cal, but at the metal cabinet in the corner where the masks were stored. My bombs exploded in blinding flashes, knocking lizards back and blowing masks everywhere.

The resulting chaos was so perfect I couldn’t have planned it better. Everywhere, male and female xith’cal were scrambling to grab the scattered masks, but their motions got slower and slower as the flame-retardant gas filled the room. By the time the smoke from my grenades was forced down as well, the air was completely unbreathable, and I was the only thing left standing.

Grinning inside my sealed suit, I hopped over the xith’cal bodies and scooped Mia off the ground. Sliding her back into place over my shoulder, I hurried back across the room toward the door that led to my prison. I didn’t have much time, but now that I had a chance, there was one final piece of business I wanted to take care of before I left.

The door to the observation room had sealed like the others when the gas came on, but a blast from Mia opened it again. I couldn’t see the daughter’s glow with my visor down, but I could still make out her heat signature inside the box. I crossed the room and grabbed the lid, tearing the box open with my suit’s strength, but though I’d braced for the worst, the thing locked inside still took me by surprise.

It was a daughter, there was no doubting that, but she was so thin she barely looked human. She was naked, hooked up to a dozen strange xith’cal machines with a tube down her throat, which explained why she hadn’t suffocated yet. They’d shaved her head, and her eyes were closed in sleep, but her face was screwed up in pain and her body was heaving, crying without making a sound, just as she had in Brenton’s arms back on Falcon 34.

“Enna,” I whispered, brushing my gloved hand over the girl’s bald head. She didn’t stir at her name, or when I reached down to pick up her hand. Her fingers were so thin they felt like twigs in my grip.

I dropped her hand with a soft curse and moved up to cradle her fragile head. Then, gently as I could, I reached into her mouth and began working the tube out of her throat. I’d barely gotten an inch free before I felt an invisible hand grab my wrist.

What do you think you are doing?

“Stopping you,” I said, pushing against Maat’s hold. “I can’t leave any of this virus for Reaper, and I won’t leave this poor girl either.”

I couldn’t see Maat through my cameras, but I could feel her cold fury like a knife against my throat. So you would kill my daughter?

“She’s already dead,” I said, staring down at Enna’s emaciated body. “If not for these machines, she’d have moved on a long time ago.”

The grip on my arm tightened, and I turned to glare at the empty air where I could feel Maat standing. “Why are you stopping me? She’s clearly suffering, and you’re the one who’s always talking about death as freedom.”

Maat’s death, Maat hissed. This girl is Maat’s link here. You will not sever her.

I arched an eyebrow. “So the Eyes aren’t the only ones using the daughters as tools.”

I DO WHAT MUST BE DONE! Maat roared, making my head ache. But quick as her anger came, it vanished, replaced by despair.

Please, she whispered, her grip softening on my wrist. You can end both our suffering right now. You know how to activate the virus. Give it to us. The daughter’s plasmex is Maat’s. If you infect her here, we will die at last, and a direct infection will kill her too quickly to leave Reaper with a viable sample. We’ll both win, don’t you see? So please. Please, Deviana, set us free.

I took a deep breath. It wasn’t like I wasn’t sympathetic to Maat’s situation. But as much as I wanted to end her suffering, I couldn’t do it yet. Not before we had another weapon against the phantoms, and not before I was sure I wouldn’t be killing all her daughters in the process. “I will set you free,” I promised her. “No matter what Caldswell says, as soon as this virus works, I promise I’ll come to you.”

Save your false promises, Maat snarled as her hand landed in my mind. Maat will take it from you if you do not—

She never got to finish. The moment she touched my mind, my other arm, the one she wasn’t holding, shot up and grabbed the daughter’s neck. With my suit’s strength, breaking it was nothing. Enna’s spine broke like chalk under my fingers, and Maat’s presence vanished.

I removed my hand slowly, looking down at the girl’s still, abused body. Rupert’s memories welled up at the sight, but I didn’t need them. I understood how he felt well enough on my own now. Whoever Enna had been before, she hadn’t deserved this. Someday, I promised myself, I’d get the Eyes to tell me who her parents were so I could offer my apologies. It was a stupid promise that I’d probably never be able to keep, but making it gave me the strength to walk away, stepping over xith’cal bodies as I made my way to the door.

I fully expected to find an emergency team waiting when I hacked my way through the lab’s fire door. Or worse, a full band of warriors come to recapture me, but there was no one. The hall outside the lab was empty, and that scared me more than running into Reaper himself.

The whole setup screamed trap, but I couldn’t hang around waiting for it to spring, so I set off down the corridor, jogging at a steady pace with Sasha ready in my hand. I kept my eyes locked on my cameras for any sign of the hammer I knew was about to fall, but I didn’t see so much as a flicker of movement. This entire section of the tribe ship seemed to be empty.

Paranoid and jumpy, I put my back to the wall as I tried to figure out my next course of action. I wanted to go find the crew, but I had no idea where they were or how to find out. Even if I could take a xith’cal hostage and make them tell me, I wouldn’t be able to understand it. Also, tribe ships were huge. The crew could be miles away and I wouldn’t even know.

Standing around definitely wasn’t an option, though, so I decided to just keep moving until I spotted something better. I focused on getting as far from the lab as possible, turning corners at random and keeping out of sight of the cameras. I’d just spotted a long, low hall that looked like it might lead somewhere interesting when I saw something behind me.

I turned and fired before I could think, shooting a three-shot spread. Sasha’s bullets caught the thing in the chest, sending it flying. I flew after it, pinning it to the ground with my suit before my brain could catch up. From the size, my gut reaction was that it was a female xith’cal, but as I brought my gun up to shoot it in the head and finish it off, I realized that the black-scaled thing beneath me wasn’t an alien at all. It was a symbiont.

The black glossy eyes stared at me for a second, and then Rupert’s familiar accented voice sighed. “We really have to stop doing this.”

“Shit,” I said, scrambling off him. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

It was a stupid question. If Sasha’s bullets could hurt symbionts, my life would have been a lot simpler. That didn’t stop me from examining Rupert’s chest for injuries, though. When I was satisfied I hadn’t broken anything, I slugged him in the arm as hard as I could. “What the hell were you doing, sneaking up on me?”

“I wasn’t,” Rupert protested, rubbing his arm. “I’d been looking for you for a while when I heard the alarms. Emergencies and Devi tend to go together, so I came over here to check it out. I’d just spotted you when you shot me.” His chest flexed, and the scales covering his head fell away, revealing an almost sheepish expression. “I was coming to rescue you.”

I couldn’t help a grin at that one. “Well, you’re about fifteen minutes late,” I said, offering him my hand. Rupert took it, and I pulled him up, though his weight made me stumble. I always forgot how much heavier he was than he looked. “Where are your big guns?”

“This way,” Rupert said, running down the hall back in the direction I’d come. “I left them with Mabel.”

I ran after him, matching his pace with effort. My suit is fast, but symbionts can move. Fortunately, we didn’t have to go far. A few turnings down, Rupert ducked into a small room I’d dismissed as a dead end and opened a panel on the wall. He motioned me inside, and I went, ducking into the dark. When I came up again, I was nose to snout with a xith’cal. Fortunately, it was the one I liked.

“Hyrek!” I cried. “What are you doing here?”

“Mabel sprang him when she escaped, along with the rest of the crew,” Rupert said, coming in behind me and replacing the panel. “We couldn’t navigate this place without an inside man.”

Once again, I am reduced to translator, Hyrek typed into his com. Clearly, Mabel had also gotten everyone’s stuff back.

I looked at Rupert in his symbiont scales and then at Hyrek. “I’m guessing you’re in on this, then?”

One does not work for the captain as long as I have without picking up a few things, Hyrek replied.

“I’m always the last to know anything,” I grumbled, looking around at the place Hyrek had been hiding. It looked like we were in some kind of maintenance tunnel, but the scale was wrong for xith’cal. I could stand, but Rupert had to stoop, and Hyrek was bent nearly double. Also, it was filthy, the walls smeared with dirt and grease like hundreds of people passed through here regularly, which seemed odd for a tunnel inside a wall. “What is this?”

A slave road, Hyrek replied. They run all through the ship. But we need to get out of here quickly. This whole area has been locked down for quarantine.

“They’re treating your escape as an outbreak,” Rupert said. “If they didn’t need you alive, they’d already be spraying the whole sector with neurotoxin.”

Hyrek shot me a wary look, and I raised my hands in surrender. “I didn’t plague anything,” I said. “And I’m not going to, either. That shit is dangerous. Let’s just get out of here. I’ll tell you what happened when we’re safe.”

Hyrek nodded and started down the tunnel, clicking his handset as he went. A second later, a message appeared on my camera as he patched himself into my suit. This way.

Before I could follow him, Rupert’s arm slipped around my waist. “I’m so happy you’re all right,” he whispered, his voice warm as he hugged me tight.

He let me go before I could tell him to get his claws off me, which was absolutely what I’d been about to say, even though the phrase forming on my tongue had felt more like I’m glad you’re okay, too. But that couldn’t have been it, because I wasn’t saying that sort of thing to Rupert anymore.

Fortunately, my near miss went unnoticed. Rupert was already jogging down the tunnel after Hyrek, his black clawed feet as silent as falling leaves on the grubby floor. I followed a few seconds later, keeping my eyes firmly on my sensors and absolutely not on Rupert’s muscles as they shifted under the smooth scales on his back, which for some reason didn’t seem nearly as alien or creepy as I remembered. Not that I was looking, of course.

Considering how busy I was not looking, it was a very good thing the tunnel was empty. The slave area must have been evacuated for quarantine, too, because I didn’t pick up so much as a flicker of a heat signature until the tunnel we were following let out into what looked like a storeroom. It was only after Hyrek slowed down that I saw the first sign of life. Three of them, actually.