The man remains. “Hello?” I wave a hand at him, but his eyes never connect with mine. He’s looking toward me, but not at me. I take in the brilliance of the deep blue clothes he wears, tailored tighter than what makes sense for the wastes. There are decorative gold lines across his arms and a leather patch on his chest that holds more Old World symbols: GENERAL. It’s oddly familiar. It . . .

I lower myself into the chair, feeling sick.

The General at Bedrock had a patch like this, aged and worn, stitched into his floor-length robe. It looked just like this man’s.

“Asher!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “Reed! Get in here!”

“Things were fine at first,” the man says as their boots come pounding up the hall. “Eden was built with no issue. Mining and harvesting got under way. For fifteen months, things went smoothly. This rock was rich with harvestable fuel, just as our research said, and without a native species, we were taking all we could.”

Asher sinks into a chair beside me and shoots me a stricken look. Reed waves at the man like I did, dumbfounded at his lack of response.

“Then the geomagnetic storm hit. Scouting reports had claimed that the sun’s next active phase wouldn’t be for several hundred years. Our math was wrong, or the active cycle kicked off early. Whatever the case, we weren’t prepared. All our tech malfunctioned: GPS failed, radios went down, satellites began to drop out of orbit. Not a single compass worked, and the mag-rifles were completely worthless what with magnets powering the barrel rail.”

I glance at the boys. They look as confused as I am. I have no clue what this man is talking about.

“But the worst of it,” the man goes on, “were the workers. Their cerebral chips malfunctioned, and they snapped free. I don’t know if they could suddenly see all the ways they’d been mistreated and used, or if they simply saw a rock that they could colonize and make their own. Perhaps it was a little of both. But when they revolted . . .” The man blows out a breath. “Workers outnumber Federation guards a hundred to one on these ops—it’s not like brainwashed and chip-controlled workers typically need much oversight—and it was a massacre. They overran us at drill sites and water harvest points. Killed every Federal foreperson they could get their hands on, and used anything they could get their hands on to do it: wrenches, hammers, drill gear. It was brutal. They used the mag-rifles as clubs, and once they got to our rovers and the semi-autos stored in the trunks, well . . . Then it was easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel.