Wrong. He didn't like that word. It didn't belong in his vocabulary, it evoked woolly-minded dichotomies like good and evil. Every clear-minded being knew that there was no such thing; there was only what worked, and what didn't. More effective, and less. The disloyalty of a friend may be maladaptive, but it is not bad. The overtures of a potential ally may serve mutual interest, but that does not make them good. Even hating the mother who beats you as a child is to utterly miss the point: nobody chooses the wiring in their brain. Anyone else's, wired the same, would spark as violently.

Ken Lubin could fight any enemy to the death without malice. He could switch sides the moment circumstances warranted. So it wasn't that the creators of Seppuku were right and Achilles Desjardins was wrong, necessarily. It was simply that Ken Lubin had been misled as to which side he was on.

He'd spent his whole life being used. But to be used without his knowledge was not something he was willing to forgive.

Something ticked over in him then, a kind of toggle between pragmatism and dedication. The latter setting afforded him a certain focus, although it had undeniably led to some maladaptive choices in the past. He used it sparingly.

He used it now.

Desjardins. It had been him all along. Behind the fires, behind the antimissiles, behind the misdirection. Desjardins. Achilles Desjardins.

Playing him.

If that's not an excuse, he reflected, nothing is.

Lubin's ultralight had been a gift from Desjardins. It would be a good idea to continue the conversation at a further remove.

Lubin took Clarke by the arm and walked her to the MI. She didn’t resist. Maybe she'd seen him flip the switch. She got in the driver's side. He got in the passenger's.

Ricketts crouched in the back. His complexion was slightly flushed, his forehead damp, but he was sitting up, and he was munching a protein brick with obvious enthusiasm. "Hi again," he said. "'member me?"

Lubin turned to Clarke. "He's still a 'lawbreaker. His infrastructure isn't what it used to be, but he's still got plenty of resources and nobody further up appears to be reining him in."

"I know," Clarke said.

"He could have us under surveillance right now."

"Hey, if you're worried about the big guys listening in?" Ricketts said around a mouthful of chewy aminos, "I wouldn't worry about it. They're gonna have, like, other things on their minds any mome."

Lubin gave him a cold look. "What are you talking about?"

"He's right, actually," Clarke said. "Someone's about to lose control of their—"

A soft blatting sound cut her off, like the muffled explosion of distant artillery.

"—outer demons," she finished, but Lubin was already back outside.

Off across the water, in the spindly shadows of a decrepit wind farm, the hydrogen-cracking station was burning.

It was as though, in that instant, they had changed places.