But somehow, Sheena wasn’t sure that was the right answer. Even as she thought it, she heard Saleen’s squall. The little girl kicked, the sound of her filling her diapers unmistakable.

31

The doors had been flung wide in Dek’s memory. The Transluna of his youth filled his head with images, replayed scenes from his past, the sights and sounds. And he relived his days dirtside on Earth. The family had an estate—a re-wilded place called The Tetons in west-central North America. It occupied a long valley bordered on the west by the Teton Mountains, on the east by the Gros Ventres Range, and included everything in the Snake River Valley between. And then there was St Lucia, the family’s private island in the Caribbean, with its mansion and grounds situated on the highlands between the two Pitons.

Both strongholds were Taglioni fortresses, empires within whose boundaries the family elders lived as a law unto themselves. There, along with their residences in New York, Hong Kong, and Transluna, they managed their share of the various extractive and manufacturing enterprises that fed The Corporation’s ravenous maw.

Granted, the Taglionis only controlled a portion of the economic engine that was The Corporation—the other families managed the rest—but it was enough to ensure their influence. Keeping it? That was the battle.

“Dek?” Talina’s voice intruded.

Pulling himself from images of Taglioni Tower in Transluna, he blinked.

For a moment, Dek couldn’t figure out where he was. Nothing made sense as the crystalline halls of Taglioni Tower faded into . . . what the hell? A sort of drab room appeared out of a rainbow haze of colors that dipped down into the infrared. His eyeballs ached as if they were about to explode.

He tried to sit up, discovered he was in one of those emergency bedrolls made of heat-reflective material that inflated into some semblance of comfort. The thing crackled stiffly as he moved.

“I was just . . . Where am I?” His voice sounded hoarse; flickers of sunlit Donovanian forest flashed through his mind only to fade back to this horrible and dimly lit room. From the curving ceiling, it was a dome of some sort. Faint gray light—filtered through scummy-looking windows—illuminated a series of beds, including the one he lay on. He could see closets and night tables.

Real? Or imaginary? How did he tell anymore?

“You don’t,” the voice hissed inside.

Talina Perez was standing over him, arms crossed, looking down with a serious expression on her exotic face. “It’s morning, sunshine. You hungry?”

A flash . . . and he was crouched over a chamois. His clawed forelegs were locked in the beast’s sides as he twisted his head, pulled, and severed meat and bone with the serrated teeth in his powerful jaws. Savory, rich blood and hot flesh filled his mouth.

Saliva, ripe with the taste of peppermint flooded around his tongue.