“Is there another Rigel attack?” Dryden demanded.

Pierce shook his head, the movement requiring effort.

“Where are your stockpiles?” Dryden asked. “Where were you based?”

The man only shook his head again. “They’ll find it all. They’ll start with me and … they’ll figure it out.”

Dryden heard the metal cart shift as Danica stood up from it. She stepped over the nearest bodies and came to Dryden’s side, staring down on Pierce.

Dryden looked at him again. “How did you get away? After that night. We must have told the military all about you. They would have come after you like an escaped convict. How the hell did you get away?”

Pierce’s mouth had gone dry. He tried to wet his lips with his tongue, then spoke thickly. “I didn’t.”

Dryden stared, waiting for more.

The old man leaned his head back against the wall. “They liked what they saw,” he whispered.

“What are you talking about?” Dryden asked.

“That night … after you got away from me … I tried to leave town. It was too late. You’d talked by then. Talked to the medics. Security teams were locking down the borders outside Ashland.” Pierce shook his head. “I couldn’t get out.”

“Then why weren’t you arrested and charged? You should have gotten the chair. Or you should have rotted in a cage the rest of your fucking life.”

Pierce lifted his focus above the flashlight beam, meeting Dryden’s eyes.

“They liked what they saw,” he said again. His voice was losing all power, but for the moment it remained audible. “The people in charge here … they’d seen Rigel in action—finally.”

Pierce seemed to find something funny in that last statement. Though he didn’t have the breath to laugh, his face went through the motions.

When he spoke again, there was an edge of delirium in his tone. The blood pressure in his brain had to be crashing.

“Rigel was mine,” the old man whispered. “I wanted it for me, not for them. Wanted to sell it. My baby. Way back, I told them to kill it off … told them it was too dangerous. And they did. Then I made it again, just for me … and watched it all go to hell that night. Down in flames. But … the Army finally saw it. Saw what it did to Ashland. They decided they wanted it after all.”

The powerless laugh had faded from his expression, but something like a smile settled into it now. A look of pride, Dryden thought.

He considered Pierce’s words, and the implications that came with them.

“Jesus Christ,” Dryden said. Then: “They cut you a deal. You’d stay out of prison if you gave them Rigel. You had it all in your head. They needed you, if they wanted that weapon.”

Pierce nodded, blinking slowly.