After Tennama’s blunt announcement, Reyer stood up. Despite how carefully she raised herself, a wince spasmed across her face.

“Your back?” Tennama asked.

“Is none of your concern.”

Alix paced behind her chair. Her back was hurting, but it was the mounting sense of restless energy that had driven her to her feet. She only made it a few steps before she had to stop to lean on the table.

“How far along are the queen’s plans?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You claim you know what her plans are, but you can’t tell me any details?”

“She claimed she was being cautious, but she’s Harlan, so it’s just as likely she doesn’t trust me!” He tried to explain: “When we—when we gather someone’s mind, we take in a lot of who they are. I knew when I saw her standing there that she’d be much more inclined to his way of thinking than to mine.”

“She doesn’t trust you. Imagine that.”

It had been a childish and spiteful thing to say. Reyer knew it even before she heard Vas use her name as a one-word rebuke, but by then, it had hit home.

Tennama had to master his face before he could speak. When he did, Alix could see his jaw was still tense. “I can understand why you, of all people, don’t like traitors, Miss Reyer, but I’m trying to save millions of your people. Could you, please, at least try to hide your scorn?”

Reyer wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tennama.” She rushed to add, “You said she stayed with you for two months. What happened then?”

“She went to Carter Levin. You know him?”

Reyer nodded.

“I thought you might. She wanted access to Devi Kumar’s resources. A senator has more avenues of information than a major. That’s when she took the new body. A female—don’t bother asking. I don’t know who. I can’t even tell you what she looks like. She kept in touch with me using audio-only calls, and even those were rare. She’d only call if she needed a favor or to give me some scrap of news.”

“What kind of news?”

“Usually to let me know when another one of us had died.”

Reyer didn’t know what to say.

Tennama looked away. “There weren’t many of us left after what happened on our home world—”

“How many?”

“Only four. Including myself and the queen.”

Alix felt a stab of bitter emotion too convoluted to name. Only four? Her whirling mind cast up a fact. “But we killed two!”

“Carter Levin and Lia Wauters.”

“So…”

“For a time it was only me and the queen.”

For a time…

“Go on,” Alix said.

“She found a planet to settle on. That much I know. She said I’d hear from her, but over a year passed and there was nothing. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. If she was alive, I had to hope I was wrong, and that Harlan had been telling the truth when he said he agreed with me. Then, about two weeks ago, I received an encrypted message. She said she was sending me a queen…” Anthony fell silent.

Reyer hated to do it, but she needed the rest of the story. “Tennama.”

The xeno looked up.

“Go on.”

Three more seconds passed before he began. “I think I held out hope until the last minute. But when the courier presented her to me…”

Tennama couldn’t finish his sentence. All he could do was shake his head. He had to force himself to keep talking. “She was a human. We can’t go back to an untransformed state once we take a body, and she was human. I knew then that the queen had no intention of leaving you alone.”

“Where’s this new queen?”

Tennama laughed when he heard the apprehension in Alix’s voice, but there was no levity in it. It sounded dismal and weak. “Don’t worry, Miss Reyer. The new queen is dead.”

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“How?”

Alix watched as Tennama tried to speak. She could see him open his mouth, but then he would swallow and have to take another breath.

At last, he managed to say, “The newly created queen had been put directly into a human body. She was…an imbecile. If she’d been completely sentient, I don’t know what would’ve happened, but as it was, she couldn’t give me orders. Her mother expected me to take her to a safe place and look after her—by which she meant, help her find suitable bodies to take over so she could finish her transformation—”

His emotion overcame him. Reyer could see it twisting his face. He pressed his lips together until her could force himself to remain calm. Then he continued.

“On the way out, I kept staring at her, thinking about what would happen”—he swallowed and his voice dropped into a whisper—“and I knew I had to stop it. I killed the pilot, took over his body, disabled the ship, and came here.”

There was a long silence.

“You left her in a disabled ship floating in the middle of space?” Alix said.

Tennama’s eyes were already shut, but he squeezed them tighter and nodded.

His hands flexed in the cuffs. Reyer got the feeling that he would’ve put his head in his hands if he could. Any human would want to hide that look of agony if they were being watched by an enemy.

He’s not a human, Reyer reminded herself.

But she was. She eased herself back into her chair to give him some time to collect himself.

Then she said, “And you want our help to stop the other queen.”

“She’s reproducing,” Tennama said. “I doubt the first xeno she created was that queen. With any luck, their numbers might still be small enough to make them vulnerable, but the longer we wait, the bigger the problem will be. If she’s left alone, people will die. I don’t know how many have died already.”

Reyer stared at the table. Her thoughts seemed to sweep up time in a slow whirl. She didn’t know how long it was until she heard Adan’s voice in her ear.

“I think that’s it for now, Alix.”

Reyer nodded once and looked up at the xeno.

“I’m going to leave the room,” she said. “In a few minutes, we’ll have the bots take you back to a cell. I advise you to eat and rest. We’ll have a lot more questions for you later. For now, we have to talk about this.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Everything. Everything you brought to us. Starting with whether or not we can trust you.”

“My life is in your hands. I’m asking you for help. I have no reason to lie to you!”

“Why me? Why did you come to me?”

Something about her expression made Anthony feel wary, but he didn’t think it’d be wise to hesitate for too long.

“I don’t trust the Supremacy,” he said. “They used us as tools, and I don’t know how long it’d take for me to convince them the danger was real. The Rising, on the other hand, has been working to destroy us ever since we were forced to act against them. I thought you’d be faster to act.”

“That’s why you picked the Rising. Why did you pick me?”

“This may surprise you, Miss Reyer, but I don’t know many people in the Rising.”

“You could have simply surrendered yourself. You asked for me.”

In the outer room, Ciro muttered, “Why is she pushing this?”

“Shut up, Ciro,” Adan growled.

Ciro glanced up at his brother. He couldn’t help noticing how hard Vas was clutching the com.

Tennama answered in a soft voice. “Yes, but I trust what I know of you. You’re the only person I know with any intimacy.”

“Intimacy!” Alix cried. “You had me tortured. They beat me with machetes!”

“Yes”—Tennama was almost whispering now—“I know how far you’ll go to get things done, and I know what makes you break.”

Reyer was on her feet. Tennama’s eyes never flinched from her stare. Then she was at the door.

“Open it.”

Ciro had barely found the button to unlock it when she yelled, “Open it!”

Even after she’d shut it behind her, no one moved.

“Alix?” Ito said.

Reyer spoke in a brisk voice: “This is above me. If what he says is true, someone will have to do something. And I think he’s right. The Supremacy has no reason to believe us, and there’s no telling what would happen if we handed him over.”

“Do you believe him?” Adan asked.

“I do, but I don’t know if that matters. We’re going to have to try to confirm his story anyway.”

Ito tried again. “Alix—”

“The assembly will have to be informed. We’ll need their support if the problem’s gotten too big.”

“Miss Reyer.” Jordan’s booming voice dropped through her rushed words and left silence. “What did he mean when he said he knew what made you break?”

There was a pause.

“I never told them anything,” Alix said.

“Miss Reyer—”

“Jordan, I never told them anything.”

“But Alix—” Ito said.

Reyer shook her head. “I don’t know what you want from me. I was only in there for three days. They only asked about their home planet, and I didn’t tell them anything. Can’t you believe me?”

“Then what did he mean?”

“How should I know!” Alix went to the outer door, wrenched it open, and left.

Adan moved to follow her.

“Captain Vas,” Jordan called.

“General?” Adan’s voice was low.

Ciro and Jane looked away, but Jordan was a general and not easily cowed by the mood of his subordinates.

“What did that xeno mean—”

“I don’t know!”

“Captain, you don’t have to shout,” Ito assured him. “We hoped she might have told you something.”

“Look, I don’t ask about her nightmares, and she doesn’t ask about mine.” Then Adan was gone. The door slowly shut behind him.

Ito turned to Jordan. “It’s all right. She just needs some space. Is there a meeting room open?”

“Several.”

“Let’s go claim one with good chairs. Alix is right. We’ll have to decide what to do.”

Jordan pulled up his tablet. “I’ll message the captain’s com.”

“But!” Jane blurted.

Ito looked around. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Please. He’s a xeno!” She pointed into the room where Tennama was sitting.

“Doctor, you’ll need to come with us too.”

“Will I get to study him?”

“We’ll save the discussion for when Vas is with us.”

“Vas? He just stormed out!”

As Jordan opened the door, he grumbled over his shoulder, “And if we waste any more time, he’ll beat us there.”

Jane stared after Jordan, even when the closing door cut off the view of his broad back.

Ito put a hand on the biologist’s shoulder. “Jordan and I are getting older. We don’t walk very fast. Adan Vas never holds still, especially if anything’s happening. He'll check on Reyer, but as soon as he knows she’ll be fine, he’ll go straight to the meeting room.”

Jane liked Ito. It’d be hard not to like someone who talked like a CEO turned grandma, but still managed to make it to the top of the Supremacy’s most-wanted list.

“You know everything about them, don’t you?” Jane said.

“Not everything,” Ito said.

“Oh?”

“I haven’t figured out if Adan comes back because of his own sense of obligation, or if Alix chews him out for abandoning his duty.”

There was a snort of laughter from Ciro.