The man’s yellow eyes widened slightly and he glanced from Crash to Travis and back. “But I assumed you were his property…”

Crash laughed, and there was no mirth in it. “More than I realized. I was his link to Quad, and you told me Quad’s taking me back home with him. And I think that make Travis realize which one of us was more important to him, and he decided I was a security risk.”

It had been something that always bothered her: Travis had never been interested in scholarship or discovery. He had been interested in weapons and overwhelming force. His entire life had been a passion to get himself on the other side of the Rim to avenge his father, and now he had an excuse.

He probably isn’t even going to look for Quad, Crash thought. At least not right away. He’s going to want to create mayhem. Stir things up. Scare the Pharaoh, let her know he’s coming for her…

…maybe fake Chase’s death at the hands of the ‘savages’ and give himself something to tell the people back home he was fighting for.

“He told you all this?” the Rifter asked, his yellow eyes darkening slightly, but still sounding dubious.

“No, his face muscles did,” Crash said. “They were never quite right. I just wrote it off as some childhood trauma or maybe early-infancy brain damage.”

The Rifter looked her over, then looked at Travis, his whole body nervous and tense. “How certain are you that he will attempt to kill us?”

Crash calculated. “About ninety-three percent. You’re a threat and I’m no longer useful. He’s got my notes and the recordings and I’ve trained four replacements and he’s not really interested in communicating with the Pharaoh anyway. He just wants to kill her.”

He will wade through the ashes of his brethren and stand before me and I will recognize his power as my Savior…

Travis was going to kill her. Crash was sure of it. “We’re so fucked,” she whispered.

Still watching Travis, the Rifter said carefully, “I need to be absolutely sure. You’re telling me this man will try to kill us both?”

Crash laughed. “Oh I’m dead. I’m thinking you might make it, though.” He had that whole immune-to-bullets thing, after all.

The Rifter slowly turned his head back to look at Crash. He considered her carefully. “Would you save the world if it meant you would die well before your time?”

“Depends on the world,” Crash said automatically. “I’m not feeling too positive about this one at the moment.”

The Rifter looked like he wanted to say more, but he was cut off by a soldier shoving a datapad with a map into his hands.

“Tell him to mark on the map where the Pharaoh lives,” Travis ordered.

Crash narrowed her eyes. “I thought you wanted to find Quad, Travis.”

The Commandant turned to her with a smile, but his eyes left her feeling chilled. “I do,” he lied. “Tell him.”

It took every ounce of self-control Crash had not to scream at him that he was lying. Instead, she forced herself to watch him, all the times Travis had coached her how to ignore a lie sticking in the back of her mind like million little bone shards. Before, she’d been unable to do it. Now, however, looking into his smug face, knowing that he thought she would never figure it out, Crash felt that stunned part of her just stare back in shock.

I didn’t see it. All this time and I didn’t see it.

“Something wrong, honey?” Travis asked, his voice sweet, his eyes not.

“No, I was just remembering something about ancient punishment techniques in Medieval Europe for perjurers and anyone else caught lying. Pretty horrifying stuff, actually.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Should we try it out on the bastard? Might be fun…” There was so much amusement in his face that Crash did a startled double-take. He thinks he’s smarter than me, she realized, totally stunned.

“I don’t think we have the right materials,” Crash said, calculating her chances of getting off the ship and escaping without Travis knowing, maybe hiding in a rice paddy or something. Since Crash had the most memorized face in the Alliance behind Quad and Travis himself, they were basically zero. She began to wonder if that had been intentional. “It would take an iron mask with something painful protruding into the mouth.”

“Maybe Quad’s robots could make it for us. Later. If this savage tells us what we want to know. Get him to mark that stuff on the map.”

Crash thought of all the times Travis had ended her research suddenly, usually by ‘accident’, and she’d simply assumed he was telling the truth…because it never occurred to her he could be lying. She thought of the fact he’d been talking with the pilot about dumping the man in the ocean after he got the intel he wanted.

He’s planning to kill him…and he thinks I’m so stupid I’ll think it’s an accident. Probably by leaving and having some soldier come in and unobtrusively release all the straps holding the engine down, then having a ‘small hiccup’ in the flight path that suddenly sent the engine block rolling out the hatch, her research project still attached.

And, before today, she would have been so wrapped up in whatever next new shiny Travis immediately presented to her to distract her that she wouldn’t have even thought twice about the logistics of it.

She wondered when Travis would decide to kill her, too. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe just drop her in the desert on the wrong side of the Rift and fly away and blame the savages for ‘killing’ her…

Travis snapped his fingers in front of her face. “You still with us, there, Doctor?” He oozed smug satisfaction. Again, there was so much cruel amusement in his eyes. Like the look of a cat toying with a shrew.

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How did I not see this before? she thought, stunned.

Then she knew. Because, of all the people Crash had ever met, she had thought that, with Travis, she had fallen in love. So many people gave her odd looks, or kept their distance or stared at her in complete awe—it had been so refreshing to have someone completely unafraid of her, totally willing to talk to her about ancient American noun divergences…

Something that, she realized, he never retained…

…because he hadn’t cared.

Using me, she thought again.

Travis laughed and glanced at his buddies. “She’s out of it again,” he said. And this time she could hear the condescension in his voice, the intentional cruelty she would have taken as ‘teasing’ before.

I missed so much, Crash thought, as more of her world shattered. So much…

“Crash!” Travis shouted. “Wake up. Time to do something useful.” Behind him, a couple of his soldiers chuckled.

They’re in on it, Crash realized, her horror growing. All this time, they’d all been in on it. They’d all known she was just being used. Just a…useful fool.

“Sorry,” Crash whispered, turning back to the man with the map. Her brain was locking into overdrive. To the Rifter, she said, “Make it look like you’re thinking and point your finger to the map somewhere very, very far from your Pharaoh. Then tell me how long it will take you to get out of those chains if someone distracted these guys for you.”

Khayu, thank the gods, played along. He frowned at her only a second longer than necessary, then glanced down at the pad in his hands and, looking it over, touched some place far from Yellowstone, much further north than Crash assumed the Pharaoh would be.

“Which one’s that?” Travis demanded, frowning as he got a better look.

“How long?” Crash asked.

“Maybe thirty seconds for each chain,” he said. “It won’t be quick. The suppressor does have an effect.”

Crash looked at the twelve different chains running from the man’s body to the engine block. Six minutes. “He says that’s the refinery the Pharaoh uses for her planet-killer,” Crash said.

Travis stiffened. “I asked about New Cairo.”

“I fucking know what you asked, Travis,” Crash snapped. “That’s what he said. Something about her going there twice a week or something. I don’t fucking know. Do you want to do this?!”

Travis gave her that same, cold, hard stare that Crash had seen right before he’d walked out of their room—the stare that meant she wasn’t going to live much longer. “Ask him what kind of weapon she’s using, and what the mineral is they’re mining.”

“This is Quad’s forte, not mine,” Crash complained. “I find weapons boring, Travis.”

“Ask!” Travis snapped.

She rolled her eyes and heaved a huge sigh. To Khayu, she said, “Start doing it now. Keep it out of sight, just enough so you can break it later. He’s going to shove you out of the airlock as soon as this conversation is over. Now he’s waiting for you to say something. Tell me how you know about Quad.”

“I go places when I sleep,” Khayu said. “I’ve seen you a few times, but you are like most humans—you never leave your space. I’ve tried to get your attention by stepping into your mind with you, but you won’t travel with me, so I go visit the future alone.”

He’s talking about my mindspace, Crash thought, stunned. “Are you the one that looks like stars?” she blurted.

The recognition in Khayu’s eyes was enough.

“What’d he say?” Travis demanded, like an over-enthusiastic bully-child trying to pretend to be uninterested.

“He said it’s old nukes they found in Canada,” Crash said. “The ones Quad wouldn’t let us go after.”

Travis’s eyes widened momentarily, then he blinked at Khayu. “How many does she have?”

To Khayu, Crash asked, “Can you get us out of here alive? Right now? Are you that much of a badass? I think he’s going to kill me within the next twenty-four hours and make it look like some sort of accident, and I don’t wanna die.”

Very slowly, Khayu gave her a wary nod.

“What does that mean?” Travis demanded.

“It means they’ve only got a couple so far. I saw it in my mindspace last night before his idiot brother woke me up. There’s a bunch of them still in the mountains up there, locked underground. Some big base nobody knew about. Mountain sheared off and buried them, so they’re having trouble retrieving them.”

Travis was staring at the map. “Mark that,” he told his assistant. “Nukes.” To Khayu, he said, “Is it on the right or the left side of this river right there?”

Khayu glanced at the map where Travis was pointing, then slowly up at Crash.

“If you can save us,” Crash said, “do it. I’ll keep these idiots distracted for six and a half minutes.”

Khayu glanced from her to Travis and back. “He goes to kill the Pharaoh after this?”

“Yeah,” Crash said, “that’s why you need to do whatever you can to put a hole in his ship as we escape. Don’t make it easy on him.”

“It’s very obvious what I’m doing,” Khayu said. “If one of them sees me…”

“I’ll be the one they’re paying attention to, don’t worry,” Crash said. “Start breaking free as soon as the screaming starts.”

“What’s he saying?” Travis demanded.

“He’s lying again,” Crash whispered. “Another…fucking…lie…Travis.”

“Lying about what?” Travis demanded. He gestured to one of his grunts. “You. Fuck him up a little. Send a message.”

Crash grimaced as the grunt strode forward and hit the man hard in the face with the butt of his rifle, then kneed him in the face when he doubled over.

“What was the lie?” Travis asked, sounding almost…hungry.

He’s been using me the whole time, Crash thought again, realizing how many times her lie-detector had gone off, and how many people Travis had had her interview who had lied to her—political figures, newsmen, activists, other heads of military—had simply gone missing. She’d thought it had been Travis trying to spare her having to deal with liars…but looking back, she had the startled realization that, by lying to her, they had been lying to him. And despite what Travis said about ‘resetting her brain’, he didn’t tolerate people lying to him.

As the Rifter straightened, blood dribbling from his mouth, warily watching the soldier back away again, Crash said, “He was lying about the nukes, Travis. It’s much, much worse than nukes.”

The way Travis’s breath slipped from him in anticipation made Crash’s gut twist in disgust. “How much worse?” he whispered.

“I think the Canadians were working on planet-killers before they were killed off in the Fall,” Crash said. “They were a very warlike culture, incredibly violent and destructive and generally ignorant, and I think these Egyptian wannabes found the mother lode weapons stash.”

“And it’s in these mountains right here?” Travis demanded, all but panting as he put his finger to the map. “Ask him.”

“I’m sorry they hit you,” Crash said to Khayu.

“It’s expected,” Khayu said, his eyes flickering back to her.

“What’d he say?” Travis demanded.

“Shit’s about to go down,” Crash warned, ignoring Travis. “They’re about to be super distracted for six and a half minutes. Tell me you understand.”

“I…understand,” the man said, haltingly.

“You’re lying!” Crash screamed, yanking the datapad from the man’s startled hand and smashing it against the engine block. “You morally defunct spawn of a rhesus monkey’s steaming, parasite-infected feces! You’re doing it again! You arrogant fuck, you’re doing it again! Right to my face!”

“Goddamn it, Crash!” Travis shouted, stooping to retrieve the datapad, which now had a crack in the screen, but the map was still clearly visible. Crash stomped on the screen before his fingers reached it, making it go black.

“He’s lying!” she screamed, kicking the pad across the room. “He’s saying it was on the left side of the river when it was clearly on the right! The right, goddamn it, you lying fuckwit, how dare you, it was the right!”

Travis stood up again, slowly, his face a thunderhead of darkness. “Matthis,” he said coldly, eyes on Crash, “go get me anoth—”

“No, don’t bother, I’ll just put the mental kidney stone out of his misery right now, before he infects the rest of mankind with his festering. Unadulterated. Bullshit!” Crash kicked a soldier in the nuts, making him groan and slump over. “Fuck! You got in the way, get out of the way! I’ll kill him!”