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  He smirked. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve found blackmail to be effective enough.” When the smile vanished, the white scar she’d left in his beard looked like a ferocious fang jutting up from his jaw. “Without the hack, with the Alpha coming for me, I’ll have no reason not to kill the baby first. Your choice, Victoria Ray. You’re clever for an Earther, so I think you’ll do the right thing here.”

  Clever and right weren’t always the same. She knew that better than most. With one more squeeze of the baby’s toes—more to steady herself than for the serene Stella’s good—she pulled the gel cylinder back to her. “I can do it, but I need more tools than this.” She tried to make her expression as innocent as the baby’s. “I could use you as the interface.”

  He grimaced. “And have you upload something else? Not likely.”

  Shoot. Well, Stella had proved herself not exactly innocent either. “I’m not a cyborg,” she snapped. “I can’t access the code through my fingertips.”

  “I’m not taking you back to the ranch,” he said. “They’ll have the advantage there.”

  He was losing his Theta cool. Which told her she still had a chance.

  Holding onto the cipher and Stella’s elf toe and her own cool, she said hesitantly, “After the scavengers attacked, Mach moved all the transport salvage to a cave in the badlands. As far as I know, they’ve left it mostly abandoned, but I bet I could find what I need there.”

  Ah, the perfect lie. They had left it mostly abandoned—along with their Omega. And she did hope she’d find what she needed.

  She needed Cosmo.

  After a moment, Lehigh raised his head to glare at Cross who was standing in the corner. “Load the Delta into the truck. Bring the blaster. And dial it up from the stun setting—all the way up.”

  Vic gulped. “I’ll carry Stella.”

  “We won’t be gone long. The mini shroud stays.”

  “But—”

  In one stride, the Theta was looming over her. He chucked his thumb under her chin, and the jagged crystal cut into her skin. But his green eyes pierced her deeper. “You aren’t going to betray me, are you?”

  “Give me half a chance,” she whispered.

  “I won’t,” he assured her. “Give me the hack. Give me the shrouds. Give me my chance to give the consortium what it so richly deserves.” The mesmerizing rhythm of his words seemed to pulse through the ring.

  Oh no, was he trying to infect her with his nanites? He couldn’t take control of her as he’d done to Cross, not while he still needed her with enough free will to code.

  But she felt her nerve falter, wanting to just do what she was told. She’d given into her parents’ wicked ways, hadn’t she? And she’d wanted just their love. Lehigh held her life in his hands.

  When she swallowed, she felt the crystal bite deeper, and when she gazed up at him, her eyes welled with tears.

  She wasn’t faking, not at all.

  “I won’t be able to stop you,” she said brokenly.

  Releasing the force of the ring, he skimmed his thumb over her lower lip. “Right answer. Now let’s get your toys so we can finish this.”

  They smashed an axel as Lehigh forced Cross to push the big truck farther than even it could go into the badlands. The afternoon sun glared off the snow, which only left the shadows under the trees darker and more sinister when they got out of the disabled vehicle.

  “We’ll walk the rest of the way,” the Theta said. “That will give me the chance to scout for snares and ambush.”

  “Glass half full,” she muttered. “Good for you. I could use a glass of something.” She raised her voice. “Just so you know, Earthers need to eat and drink and pee.”

  He frowned, as if he hadn’t even considered such needs. Which of course he hadn’t. But all he said was, “Give me the hack.” He glared at Cross. “You, bring the Delta.”

  Vic had sneaked a few glances at the shroud where he’d been stuffed into the way back of the truck. He looked dead. Maybe he was just unconscious; she wished he was faking.

  His big body hung limp as Cross struggled to heft him. “I can’t…”

  “Do it,” the Theta growled. He slapped his hand to the side of Cross’s face over the dataport.

  A tiny explosion of gray veins spidered out along the hapless Earther’s temple. Without another word, he lifted the deadweight. He wasn’t a small man himself, but something popped in his shoulder, and he staggered once under the burden as if his knees simply weren’t up to the task.

  But the fresh nanites had infused him with enough incentive, borrowed strength, or at least painkillers. He started limping along the path they’d followed.

  Lehigh glared at Vic as if this were all her fault. “Get going.”

  She wasn’t sure if he’d put anything in her, but she would’ve happily run the other direction. Except the badlands ate people.

  And Cosmo might be waiting in the cavern. Her heart pounded in anticipation, as if she could get to him faster.

  They hiked on.

  She almost took a wrong turn. Cross almost fell into a crevasse hidden by the snow. Lehigh looked like he almost wanted to kill them all now rather than waiting.

  But they finally arrived at the crack in the limestone.

  “Here,” she said. Please, Cosmo, be here.

  Lehigh grabbed her shoulder when she took another step forward, her weariness momentarily lifted by hope. “I’ll take a look.”

  He disappeared into the cavern.

  She looked at Cross. Could she break the nanites’ hold? Could she revive Delta enough to fight? Even if she could, they wouldn’t be able to drive out. The Theta, fully powered, would have no trouble crushing them all like bugs.

  He was back too quickly anyway. “You’re right. It’s abandoned.”

  One of the chunks of limestone falling on her couldn’t have been more crushing than that report. “Just like I told you.” The empty whoosh of eagerness deflating made her lightheaded. Where was Cosmo?

  They made it to the first big chamber with a collection of salvage, and Cross’s knee buckled outward.

  His cry of pain broke through the nanites’ control, and he collapsed, dropping Delta hard to the stone.

  Lehigh burst out with a frustrated curse. “I’m not wasting any more nanites. Stay here.”

  As if the busted-down Earther was going any farther than his truck—nowhere.

  The shroud lifted his brother and they continued on to the smaller chamber where she and Cosmo had…

  “Hold on.” Lehigh dropped Delta—again, he hit hard, and she hoped his nanites weren’t unconscious too—and prowled around the cavern. “What’s this?”

  Amid the gray alien plasteel and black plasmic scorch marks was a small square of cheerful red and green, silver and gold.

  The Theta circled warily. “That’s not debris.”

  “It’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” she said, but she knew she sounded genuinely baffled. What was it doing here in the depths of Cosmo’s sad, desolate hideaway?

  Lehigh poked her shoulder. “Open it.”

  With a sigh, she trudged forward. “If this is a bomb, it’s still gonna suck for you.”

  “But it’ll suck worse for you.”

  “Asshole,” she muttered.

  Gritting her teeth—as if that would stop them from getting blown out of her head—she nudged up one side of the tin lid. The flat cavern lighting glinted on Rudolph’s eye as if he was winking at her.

  A whiff of cardamom and honey whispered around the barren rock.

  “Laddoo,” she murmured.

  Lehigh edged closer. “Some sort of plastic explosive?”

  “An Indian snack.”

  “No reference in my database.”

  “I guess you don’t know everything.” She ate one and closed her eyes. “It’s good.”

  Cosmo had made them. But when? And why, if he hadn’t brought them to her? They were still soft and sweet and just a little sticky—as she liked them�
�so they couldn’t have been made very long ago at all.

  Where was he?

  Longing for him swept through her. Of course she wanted to see him—he was going to save her.

  But more than that.

  He’d made her a treat. Something no shroud ever needed. He’d done it for her.

  Carefully she sealed up the tin and set it aside. She wouldn’t eat another until he handed the tin to her.

  She turned back to the Theta, her jaw set with determination and that bit of stickiness between her teeth. “I know what I need to finish. I’ll bring the shrouds here.”

  Chapter 12

  Everyone was gone.

  He was the one coming to tell them he was leaving but somehow everyone else had left him first.

  How…disheartening.

  In the last rays of sunlight, both ranches were empty except for the cows and barn cats. After a century mostly alone, he should be fine with the silence, but he’d gotten used to…others. To Mach and Delta, to their Earther girls, to little Stella.

  To Vic.

  How easily she’d infiltrated his systems. And now he needed her more than his nanites.

  They prickled in alarm, and he turned his attention to soothe them. Only to see Mach stride from the barn, pulling the yurk on her lead line.

  Cosmo frowned. The other shroud hadn’t been there a moment ago, he’d swear it. He started to call out, then stopped himself.

  While their matrix had never been activated, so they weren’t able to communicate across distance via their implants, they still often had an awareness of each other.

  He’d known when Delta had imprinted on Lindy—and he’d gone to stop it, which in retrospect was the wrong move. But he’d felt the change in his brother. And Mach’s worship of Lun-mei—not as his keyholder but as something more intrinsic, and chosen—had inspired him to that first touch of mouth to mouth when Vic had shared her archive with him.

  He thought he’d known her from those files. He wanted to know so much more.

  But now he wasn’t feeling anything, not even from his Alpha brother.

  He hadn’t fallen back into his cold, hard ways. Something was wrong.

  Obviously the yurk sensed it too. She loved to fly with the shrouds, but this time she yanked against Mach’s tight hold.

  And when he yanked back, she bugled a protest. He raised a hand to her—and she was having none of it.

  He might be a shroud, built for battle, but she was a yurk—born to rule the stormy skies of a world far away.

  She reared back, bating her wings. Whether she hit Mach or it was just the force of wind, Cosmo couldn’t quite tell, but the big Alpha was knocked back on his ass.

  The yurk hopped away, snarling her displeasure.

  Mach righted himself and took one step toward her. Crouching, she gave him a hard look—and then sprang to the roof of the barn where she perched like a particularly large, leathery, and irate chicken.

  Hands on his hips, Mach spun away and marched into the dark belly of the barn. If he thought he was going to climb into the loft to retrieve her…

  With a warning roar, the scavenger float-sled zoomed out of the barn.

  Startled, Cosmo watched for just an instant before racing down into the yard. “Mach! Wait!”

  The Alpha flashed by, right overhead, so close Cosmo had to duck or he’d have had no head. Which would hurt, even for a shroud.

  He glared up at his brother…and saw nothing in the other’s gaze. Just a reflection of the last sunlight in a frenzied rage of nanites that turned his eyes white.

  The sled banked into the glare, blinding Cosmo before his vision adjusted.

  “You are a terrible Santa!” he yelled after his brother.

  The yurk bugled too.

  Hands on his hips, he turned to face her, and she stared down at him, rustling her wings. The inky black void of her scales and burning crimson edges were meant to haunt the dreams of conquered populations.

  “You are no Rudolph,” he said.

  She made a softer sound, maybe agreement.

  Tentatively, he held up one hand. The last time he’d tried something like this, Wog had shredded his wrist and shed his blood. If the yurk reacted the same, she’d gut him and leave his empty corpse for the earthworms.

  But everyone else was gone, and they were the only two left.

  Maybe she didn’t like that idea either, because she plummeted to the yard, backwinging in a flurry of snowflakes.

  She wagged her head, flopping the end of her lead near his hand. It was either an invitation or a trick. And their Alpha was almost gone.

  He took the lead, set his other hand on the harness across her shoulders, and leaped up between her wings.

  She rocketed into the air so fast, only his shroud reflexes saved him. Each pump of her wings drove him down into her back, and each updraft left him floating for an instant.

  And made his heart soar.

  He laughed and she bellowed back. They had to stay low, but the yurk skimmed agilely over the treetops, whisking past the pointy pine tips close enough to release the pungent fragrance of their needles.

  Cosmo breathed deep, sending all his nanites into ready mode. Whatever happened, no matter what he was, technically, he would not let this be the end.

  It was obvious Mach had headed to the cavern—there was nothing else out here in the badlands. But why?

  Should he try to get ahead of his brother? Or block him? He grumbled to himself. Sure would be helpful to have a Theta’s cleverness at the moment…

  Or Vic. She would know what to do.

  He thought of her quick smile and dark eyes. Her favorite movies would tell him to believe in himself, so he’d do that.

  But he wished he had a blaster-rifle too.

  He landed the yurk short of the cavern entrance. Instead of rushing into danger though, he paused to stroke the sleek scales between her eyes when she angled her head down to him.

  “You are better than Rudolph,” he murmured. “Even if you aren’t soft and furry.”

  She nuzzled him, almost knocking him over.

  “Stay out of the line of fire,” he warned her. “I might need you again.”

  He raced for the crack in the limestone.

  The scavenger sled was parked just outside the entrance, and he slowed to keep a wary eye out for his strange-acting Alpha. Mach had most of the size of an Omega and most of the cleverness of a Theta—disrespecting that got a body dead.

  Watchful, he sidled into the cavern. And almost tripped over Tanner Cross.

  Cosmo muttered in annoyance. How had he missed the tracker… But Cross was missing his belt buckle. The Earther lay in a crumpled heap. He was breathing shallowly, his eyes open—and dully awash in gray, expired nanites.

  The Theta was here. And Lehigh had last been with Vic, which meant she might be here too.

  His pulse slammed around inside him as his nanites clamored to be set free, to blow apart the cavern, hole by hole, until they found her.

  It was hard to argue with brainless microscopic robots, especially when he sort of agreed with them.

  Hmm. Maybe the rest of the world felt the same way about him. Minus the microscopic part, of course. But he had learned to make laddoo. He could learn to listen too.

  He got to the first chamber where most of the useless wreckage was piled. There’d been a time when he felt at home here. Now it just seemed empty and sad.

  He passed through it, knowing he’d be facing his brothers alone.

  The other chamber, with the least burnt and crushed scrap of the crash-landed ship, was just ahead.

  They jumped him before he got there.

  He had a half-second warning, a flash of silver from the corner of his eye. But his brothers were shrouds, bred and built to kill.

  And they wanted him dead.

  As they rammed him into the rock walls, knocking loose the embedded light paths in arching sprays of photons, he changed his mind. Worse than dead. They wanted t
o trap him.

  Nothing good had ever come of an enslaved Omega.

  But as they crashed into the wider chamber—bashing into the old wreckage and tearing open the more delicate portions of their organic anatomy—he changed his mind again. Dead was hopeless. Dead was the end. Even as they grappled to entrap him, he still had a chance.

  Trying to entrap him had balanced out their two-against-one attack. They could hurt him, and badly, but they had to restrain the most potent force of their enhanced bodies.

  Although they really did beat the nanites right out of him.

  If he hadn’t figured out they were activated, under someone else’s control, he might’ve been actually pissed.

  Spinning away from Delta’s hammering blows put him right in line with Mach’s fist. He took the punch to the face. His nanites swarmed to absorb the kinetic energy and fed part of it back to him, but some of them were destroyed in the force and sprayed from his body in a gray fog.

  He wasn’t going to be able to keep up with the punishment.

  Taking example from the yurk, he sprang to the top of a pile of old wooden trunks from back in the early decades when Mach and Delta had stored the salvage at the Fallen A. The musty mildewed stink of the rotting wood soured the air when his foot went through and he nearly fell.

  It was more graceful when the yurk did it.

  Delta jumped at him, and Cosmo lashed out with his free boot to drive him back. Unfortunately, Mach with his longer arm grabbed that boot.

  “Coal in both your stockings!” he hollered before Mach yanked him down and smashed him onto the rock floor.

  The abrupt, painful exhalation knocked the breath from him—and sent another round of nanites expelling uselessly into the air.

  Another shroud loomed over him as he gasped for power.

  The Theta frowned. “Stop fighting. You’re mine now.”

  Cosmo heaved up against his brothers’ matched holds but couldn’t throw them off. They stared down at him with blank eyes. Just like all those years when he’d been apart from them but couldn’t actually leave.

  For another breathless moment, he yearned to join them. His back bowed off the rock as the nanites drew inward.

  Lehigh smiled, sadly. “I know. I was always on the outside too. But not anymore. We’re a matrix, from the first to the last. The only free matrix in the universe. And we’ll show the galaxies what it means to be beholden to no one except ourselves. By which I mean me.”