“I guess.” He could, even if their Romeo and Juliet bit was hard to take. “This world we’ve made makes it hard.”

“No shit.”

“And I thought she was a hostage, Slider,” said Donny.

“Man, you are such a sucker.” He actually laughed. “Next thing, you’re gonna tell us how her daddy loves her.”

Donny could finally make out what Heather was doing at the table. Making bombs.

“Dad doesn’t give a fuck about me,” she said, not looking up. “It’s just about the money.”

“Well, Lecker’s the one with the money.”

“That freak. I can’t believe you don’t even know how they’re using you.”

“Let me out of here and tell me all about it.”

He realized the cage was a kennel, for a medium-sized dog.

She laughed at his request, and kept talking. “All the patents for the Tripto Labs seeds are in my name. Mom kept them, separate from the trust, and licensed them to the company. But the license expired a month ago.”

“While you were here, incommunicado.”

“They need my signature to transfer them over. And then make sure no one uses their designs, or anything derived from them.”

“Just say no. They can’t get away with it.”

“Sure they can. Don’t you understand how things work now? Either I sign, or I’m likely to have an accident. And then the patents go to my sole heir: Daddy.”

Slider was balancing a knife on his hand while he watched Donny and listened.

“Dad is getting a nice payday from Lecker out of the deal. Enough to stop working. Maybe enough to leave the country.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Donny. “That’s not how your dad works.”

“Sure it is,” she said, inserting wires into a bag of Titan Jelly. “He probably thinks it’s for the good of the country.”

“If what you’re telling me is true, then why are you helping them?”

“Because we need to draw them out,” said Slider.

“Huh?” said Donny.

“And because the people running this place have sold out the cause,” said Heather. “You talk about justice the same way they do. Like it’s something we can get from talking. But the creatures who have been murdered can’t do any talking. We need to get this planet back to equilibrium.”

“Using the same mode of ecocide your granddad used to get us into this mess?”

“This stuff works a lot different when you use it on a building instead of a forest,” said Heather.

“You wouldn’t do that,” said Donny. But as he looked at them, he knew they would.

“Maybe we’re just going to do what it takes to persuade Lecker to sign over Heather’s trust funds, instead of her signing over the patents. And then we’re going to finish what we started, before the lawyers and do-gooders and so-called peacekeepers got in the way.”