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“Jack, what’s happening there?” Diane asked.

Jack walked down the steps and put his hands on the back of the pilot’s seat. “I think I won the argument. The Osiris has--”

“Given you control!” Dai cried. “This is totally crazy! I mean, it’s not crazy! You’ve been right about everything, but still! I didn’t think the Osiris would let you be in charge.”

If we are all going to die, Jack Parker, it will be your fault, the Osiris said mulishly.

And Jack laughed. “You’re going to let it be my fault, huh?”

Yes.

Jack sat down in the pilot’s seat and ran his hands over the arms before he took the familiar joystick in his hand. Everything was there to access all of the ship’s power. The Osiris had even made it very easy for him by creating a red display button that would start draining the shield’s power and funneling it to weaponry.

Jack rubbed her hands together and gave a wild grin. “Then let’s get this party started!”

Back on Haseon, Ylore, Moturin Compound…

The database in the lower levels? Khoth asked after Gehenna dropped that bombshell on them all.

“The Khul are communicating,” his mother whispered, but it appeared she was saying it more to herself than to him.

Had the Khul ever spoken to them? No, not even to threaten or taunt when they had taken his sister. Khoth had imagined them miming or something to indicate that they would give the Thaf’ell hostage for Jace. Perhaps they would have shown pictures to get their meaning across. But they were communicating in High Thaf’ell, an almost archaic form of it, as if the last time they had bothered to tune their communicators to it had been over a thousand years ago.

Give us the database and you shall have him, the Khul sent to all of their comms.

It cut through their own communications. There was an electronic sizzle as if Khul technology and Altaeth did not work well together. As if their very tech was at war, too.

Why do you want the database? Jace asked.

That’ell. Unharmed. Database. Give us the database. You get what you want, the Khul sent.

Khoth wondered which of the three Thaf’ell were communicating with them. None of them tapped on a comm or used their eyes to flicker over a keyboard to generate text like they did. Maybe they were like Jace and their minds simply were interfacing with the comms.

Why do you want it? Jace repeated.

Khoth wondered if Jace was asking this because he really believed the Khul would tell him. Unlikely. Or was Jace simply trying to buy time to figure out a way to save the hostage Thaf’ell.

But there was no way to save him.

This was Staulis all over again. But Jace didn’t fully know the story there. How the person who was infected had appeared completely normal for days. How they had thought that the Omull had been killed before it could inject a larva underneath her skin. How the scans had shown nothing--no sign of larva--in her brain or blood or organs or bones or anywhere. How she had talked and laughed with the doctors as the days passed and she remained herself seemingly uninfected.

And then she was to be released.

Her daughter and mate were eagerly waiting to see her. The daughter carried flowers that the mate had purchased. They had just hastily stripped off their mourning selchitte as they finally had allowed themselves to believe that their mother and mate would truly be coming home.

She had gone out and hugged and kissed them both despite it being done in public and for all to see. She had oohed and aahed over the flowers. She had beamed at her daughter, stroked her cheeks, and promised that she would never leave her child again. Her mate had allowed tears to course down his cheeks unabashed, unashamed. And none of the people watching had felt uncomfortable, because this was a miracle! It was as if she had come back from the dead and that was something one must celebrate openly and often.

They took her home, all laughing, talking and smiling. But within 12 subcycles she was dead.

They’d found her lying in her bed. A trail of blood leading out of her ear onto a pillow and across the pillow where her mate’s head had lay. Something had left that trail.

A larva.

A single one that had somehow hidden from their scans and blood work. A single one that had nested in her skull and then had split into two. And the second had left the first to go into the mate.

The mate wasn’t in the bed.

He’d gone to work. The daughter had gone to school. Panic had filled the scientists. Security had fanned out into the city and found both of them. They snatched them from their work and school. The mate was already complaining of a headache. The daughter appeared fine. Just like her mother had.