“It’s wired to a dead-man’s switch on my heart,” Kat yelled, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Kill me, and you’re all sludge before you can scream. Lay a hand on either of us and I swear I will set it off.”
Duke stroked his chin contemplatively. “Interesting tactic. It didn’t work out so well for Fujiko.”
Kat nodded her head to indicate me. “Her mistake was fucking with us.”
Duke nodded approvingly. “In that case, let’s skip right to it. Where is she?”
“Fujiko? She’s dead.”
Duke sighed. “I said let’s skip that! Look around. This is no place for wit or subtlety. We all know I’m not leaving until you give me what I want.” He threw up his hands. “I’ll offer you a very special one-time deal, chums. Give me Danae, and I will let you go. I’ll even rescind the price on your head. No torture. No tricks.”
A collective twitch passed through the Medusan ranks. The Major had taught me to read all the nonverbal cues that expressed a squad’s morale, and everything I saw told me Duke’s offer was as much of a strain on his troops as Kat’s threat to turn them all to quicksilver sludge; they wanted to shoot us dead and be done with it, or run while they could.
“What do you say?” Duke asked.
Kat shot me a glance. Her fingers twitched on the grip of her gun.
“We don’t know where Danae is,” I said.
Duke eyed us doubtfully. “Really.”
“She hired me to bring her here, to this hill. So I did.”
“And then?”
I grasped for words. “She disappeared. It was just before you arrived.”
“It’s true,” Kat said. “I was there. Somebody else came out of nowhere, and together, they . . .” She shrugged. “They just vanished.”
Duke nodded. He clasped his hands behind his back and swaggered back and forth through the headlights. “I’m impressed. You’re still protecting her, even knowing full well what I’m going to do to you. Valiance personified.”
“Hey!” Kat shouted. She kicked the cubic warhead, and I heard more than a few yelps of fear rise from the Medusan ranks. “Remember this?”
“Go ahead,” he yelled. “Open the box. Turn us all into nanobot pudding. What are you waiting for?”
“I’ll do it!” Kat pulled her shard out of her pocket and held her finger above a holographic button.
The situation was deteriorating. Duke kept edging closer. Kat’s tactic would only work as long as he believed she wasn’t bluffing; even then, knowing him, it was hard to predict. I had to act—and it was dawning on me that there was only one thin possibility for us to make it out of this conversation alive.
It was there in the way the Medusas all flinched whenever Kat raised her voice: these were no hardened veterans of wasteland combat, but lifelong aquapolitans, most under the age of 20, handpicked for loyalty over experience. By now they were as exhausted as they were scared—and we only needed to erode their morale enough to make them value their own lives over an order to advance against an armed warhead.
“My finger’s slipping!” Kat yelled.
“You don’t have the guts,” Duke sneered.
“Try me!”
It was Duke’s utter fearlessness that kept his troops in line. It was his narcissism that made him fearless. My best opening to attack his charisma would be to attack his ego.
“You’re a fool,” I blurted out.
I stepped in front of him, blocking his advance. I was close enough to smell his breath. Behind him, every trigger finger in the convoy twitched; there were enough wavers aimed at me now to turn my body entirely to ash before it hit the ground.
Duke chuckled in disbelief. “Come again?”
“Epak is in the middle of a full-scale war.” I kept my eyes locked on his, but I shouted over his shoulder for the entire convoy to hear. “A war you started yourself. You should be overseeing it. Instead you’re out here, chasing after a single fugitive.”
“You’re trying to piss me off, is that it? You think I’ll snap and give you a quick death.”
“You can kill me as slowly as you like, but I will never acknowledge you as the rightful heir to Dahlia’s throne.”
He barked a laugh—but second by second his face hardened, drawn irresistibly from amusement to incredulity to rage.
“Your opinion is irrelevant, Alexei. You’re not one of us—”
“And you’re incompetent,” I interrupted. “Your Empress was assassinated by a novice with nothing but a homemade bomb. You didn’t even see him coming.”
I braced my knees and tensed every muscle in my torso to prepare for the punch, but Duke’s gene-hacked fist hit my chest with all the momentum of a sledgehammer. I staggered back breathless, wincing against the pain of two fractured ribs.
“I was Dahlia’s right hand!” Duke bellowed, so loud my ears rang. Droplets of his hot saliva dusted my face. “Of course I saw him coming!”
“Fuck me,” Kat gasped, behind me. “That’s how you took the throne so quickly. You knew he was going to attack the Keep, but you stood back and let him. You had henchmen already in place to take the city before the bombs even went off.”
“He was a useful maniac,” Duke told us proudly. “He came along just when I needed him. Dahlia had gone toothless and risk-averse in her old age. After Antarka we had the clear upper hand in the arms race, and she wanted to squander it on a peace accord.” He whipped around to shout to his troops. “Thankfully, I wasn’t the only true Medusa, stout of heart and yearning for the victory she would have denied us!”
A rallying cry went up from the convoy, but the voices were hoarse. They weren’t nearly as in love with the sound of Duke’s voice as he was.
“But when it was all done,” Duke continued, “only then did I begin to wonder why Luther wanted Danae so badly. I didn’t think I would ever
