For the first time, McClane understood why the other armor systems had died trying to save their hosts. This was Riley and the man who loved Riley with such crazy, bone-deep passion, and they were about to die because of McClane, erased from existence because they refused to abandon each other and McClane.

This wasn’t acceptable.

MCCLANE heard the soft click and hiss he’d come to associate with a missile being fired and had he had the time, he’d have been surprised that he recognized the pattern, could tell it was the same weapon that had killed his brethren by the wreck of the Widowmaker. Not the same kind. The same weapon. The same launcher. The same type of missile that had ended the lives of Jas and System Five, Kir and System Three, Cen and System Two.

The same type of missile that had killed Rik, because McClane had faked attachment to his host and then abandoned him.

No need to fake anything this time. Riley wasn’t just a host. Riley was his friend, his partner, his other half.

Riley was his… and so was Misha.

McClane leapt forward, out through Riley’s skin, grabbed Misha and wrapped both men in an embrace of living metal. He put everything he had, everything he was, between the people he’d come to love and certain death, and when the warhead hit them and detonated, he absorbed the force and let it tip them over into the abyss.

FIFTY-ONE

“SO IT’S gone,” the president summed up his general’s report, not even looking down at the folder in his hands. “Dead?”

Nick Young shrugged his broad shoulders. “You read the file, sir. We hit it with the amplified Spitfire. It fell into the ravine. The whole damn cave collapsed on it and almost on us, but we did find that map that indicates there might be an underground river there. If it isn’t dead or buried under tons of rock, it might’ve gotten out. There’s simply no way to tell at this point. We’re still digging.”

They’d be digging for years, at the rate they were going. The whole damn area was riddled with caves and tunnels, the ground too unstable for heavy machinery. Trying to find a dead body in that mess was like trying to find a soggy lentil in a bathtub of pea soup; mental image provided by Chief Cabrera. Thanks, Chief. Talk about disgusting.

The Commander in Chief leaned back in his big leather chair and steepled his fingers. “There was no other choice?”

“It wasn’t going to come quietly,” Young said calmly, not moving an inch. “We could’ve let it go. We could’ve tried to overpower it and lost most of our people in the process. Maybe all of them. Or we could’ve cut our losses and tried to destroy the alien technology. I made the call. I stand by my decision.”