Warner realized with a less than pleasant jolt that the route to the underground room had become instinctive. All the doors opened ahead of him without making him stand around and wait for the clearance to process. Freya, he had to admit, had looked better. Hell, she looked almost as bad as when he was fishing bits of metal out of her head.

  The blank stare into space remained the same, though. He thought there was something to it, a defiance he hadn’t noticed before.

  Without wasting time at the control panel, he went right into the room, barely pausing in the decontamination chamber.

  “Hello,” he said, when she didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge him. “You’re looking bloodier and wetter than I remember.”

  Not even her eyes moved.

  “I take it our deal is off?”

  “Go fuck yourself, you Keeper prick.” She still didn’t turn to look at him, and she spoke through tightly clenched teeth.

  “I thought we were past that,” Warner said, shrugging.

  “Right. You thought you’d make a show of being reasonable, and that’s it, we’re the best of friends. Is that how little you think of me?”

  There was something else beneath the defiance. Almost a kind of sorrow.

  “You seem to think little enough of me,” he pointed out.

  “I keep provoking you with the most innocent barbs,” she said. “And you keep falling for it like an idiot. So… yeah. So far, Warner Vogel, you’re epically failing to make a good first impression.”

  She was laying her cards on the table. Not what he expected—at least not at that point in the game.

  “Listen, while you were here playing hard to get, I was busy preparing you a little present. A token of appreciation, if you like. To celebrate our collaborative effort.”

  “Wow,” she said, her voice flat, “you really want to get to Nero, don’t you?”

  “Hey, if you’d rather stay in the metal brace, it’s entirely up to you.”

  “Listen, Warner, word of advice: it’s not a good idea. That mommy figure of yours is right. It won’t end well.”

  He didn’t show surprise, even though, no point in lying, he wondered how the hell she knew about Lyssa, or anything Lyssa said.

  “Well,” he replied, keeping his voice carefully measured, “it’s not up to her.”

  That got a chuckle out of Freya.

  “As for you, by all means, keep up the attitude. It really makes me want to do nice things for you.”

  “You know, she came in here. With those government amateurs you seem so impressed with.”

  Warner’s determination not to fall for her games this time was about to be put to the test, he could feel it. “Oh?”

  “You think you’re doing something nice for me by building me a cage,” she purred. He could find no other way to describe her tone. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a real treat for you. And I just as easily could have given it away to Lyssa and those losers. But I held out. Just for you.”

  He made himself meet her gaze.

  “Yes, Warner Vogel, it would have been that much easier to tell them what they wanted to know. And to be fair, I didn’t hold back only for your sake. I also have my pride, which already kind of stings—a lot more than anything they’d tried to do to me.”

  “What are you on about?” he snapped without meaning to.

  Her eyebrows flew up—a little asymmetrically because of the rapidly healing but substantial cut on the right side of her forehead. The asymmetry did nothing to ruin the intended effect, though. “You haven’t guessed? I was told you were the smartest man this side of the border.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “Cut it out,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “They wanted to know the location of Nero,” she said. “They really, really wanted to know it. But that’s a gift that I’m reserving for you, Warner Vogel.”

  * * *

  By some strange coincidence—or perhaps the opposite—Lyssa had chosen to wear her tallest heels. Which struck Warner as ironic, as she’d never needed props to seem imposing. They stood almost eye to eye, and the anger blazing off her could have scorched his skin off. Lyssa knew how to make even him feel uneasy—maybe it was something about her position of supreme authority at VogelCorp, or maybe Freya had a point, and Lyssa had to be the closest thing he’d had to a parent since age seventeen. Seeing her this pissed off would have bothered him, or made him feel at least a little bit guilty. But he wasn’t having it. Not today.

  “Since when,” she was saying, “do I have to explain myself to you?”

  “Since you lied to me,” he said. “So much for not letting her see our faces, huh?”

  “I think it’s too late for that,” Lyssa snapped. “If you can go have a heart-to-heart with an extremely dangerous Alliance assassin, then I can have my shot too.”

  “I’m just wondering what you were thinking. Did you really imagine she’d crack?”

  Lyssa considered him with her impenetrable gaze. Warner was beginning to wonder what it all meant when she finally spoke. “Not for a second,” she said at last. “But your so-called methods haven’t yielded any results either, have they? Do you know how much that cage of hers is costing us?”

  “Didn’t realize money is an issue.”

  Lyssa scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, how typical. Did anyone ever tell you you’re becoming just like your father?”

  Warner gritted his teeth, but he made sure she didn’t notice. “Why don’t you torture her some more. You seem to think that’s the way to do it.”

  “If I had my way, Warner,” Lyssa told him, “She’d be in pieces in one of the upper-level labs. Unable to hurt anyone ever again. I’m only going along with this folly of yours because of orders from the Defense Ministry. So when all this spectacularly blows up in everyone’s faces, that’s exactly what I’ll say in my report. If I’m alive to write a report, that is.”

  Warner held a pause. She looked buoyant, puffed up on her sense of moral superiority.

  “Got it. That’s why you were asking her about Nero.”

  Lyssa clenched her manicured hands into fists, then squeezed her eyelids shut and drew a breath. “You said she told you she knew Nero. I wanted—” she cut herself off, corrected herself, “—needed to know if there was any truth to it. Why? Because of the immense danger this would pose. To all of us, but especially to you. Who, may I remind you again, I promised to protect from this shit.”

  “And I already told you—”

  “Listen to me, Warner. I know you think of me as this soulless thing who only cares about deadlines and bottom lines, but I did promise your mother I’d take care of you if anything happened. Contrary to what you might think, I meant it. I already failed once, and I won’t fail again.”

  He genuinely couldn’t tell whether the appeal to emotions was sincere or some sort of last-ditch gambit. Lyssa gnawed on the inside of her cheek. The last time he’d seen her do that was a long time ago, and he wasn’t going to think about it now.

  “You think you’ll cozy up to her and she’ll tell you where to find Nero,” Lyssa said. “And then what? You can’t seriously think you’re getting some kind of—revenge, or whatever you want to call it. Accept it, Warner. Nero is gone. He’s out of your reach. There will be no revenge, no rematch, no closure of any kind. And it’s just as well. You barely survived the first encounter. There won’t be a second. Unless you have a death wish, you must understand this on some level.”

  Warner made himself look her in the eye. Her expression had become almost supplicating, all the anger gone from it. He wanted to tell her he had no intention to go after Nero. He wanted to tell himself the same thing. Lyssa had a point. Wherever Nero was now, it didn’t change anything. He was far away, somewhere far beyond the border in some secure military base, extracting information from especially unlucky Coalition spies. As far out of Warner’s reach as he could be. Whatever information Freya pretended to dangle in front of him like a prize would serve absolutely no purpose. She was just using his obsession to try and get herself out of this situation.

  “The containment chamber is going to be ready by tonight,” he told Lyssa. “And then we’ll need to move her in there.”

  Lyssa sighed. “Your cavalier attitude is dangerous, Warner.”

  Oh, and didn’t he know it.

  “I’ll inspect the design myself. The only way she’ll be able to escape is if one of us is stupid enough to let her out, trust me.”

  “I trust you,” she said after a long pause. “I just worry that your judgment isn’t at it sharpest right now.”

  “You don’t need to worry. And you don’t need to protect me, Lyssa. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  He meant it, because in a sense, it was true. He sure as hell was no longer the teenager he had once been, introverted and brooding but oh so fucking sheltered and na?ve. Nor was he quite the broken shell of a person Lyssa had recovered from Nero fifteen years ago. He was now something else entirely.

  “She’s manipulative,” Lyssa was saying. “You need to be careful. You need to outsmart her at her own game. You know what’s at stake… Warner?”

  He’d managed to zone out, deep in thought.

  “I can do it,” he told her. “And believe me, I know exactly what she is.” He hesitated, just long enough to wonder if the same thing could be said of him. “But I can outsmart her. After all, she’s the one in the cage.”

  “For how long?” Lyssa muttered.