“What’s going on?”

He bit back a scream, spinning to see Gareth standing behind him. Leo was supposedly the quiet one, but his brother could be sneaky when he wanted to be. “There are army guys here. EDF. They’re talking to Dad,” Leo whispered.

“Talking to Dad about what?” Gareth asked, coming to stand next to Leo, so much taller that Leo’s nose only reached his brother’s chin. And only if he stood on tiptoes.

“I don’t know. War stuff, I think.”

“Do you think they came to recruit me?”

“You really think they’d want you?”

Leo winced from the sudden punch in his shoulder, but Gareth kept his mouth shut, his face pressed to the wall above Leo’s as the colonel continued to talk.

“Dr. Fender, everyone considers you to be one of the top, if not the top, expert in the field of experimental elemental chemistry and physics, in part because of your extensive study of EL-four eight six.”

“Ventasium,” Leo’s father corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“I realize Enrico Ventasi didn’t really ‘discover it’ in the sense that several species already had, but I still acknowledge him for being the first to find it here. Credit where credit is due.”

“Ventasium, right,” Colonel Ramsey repeated. “And we understand you all at the university have made some solid progress using EL—ventasium to accelerate the regeneration of skin cells, is that right?”

“The element is used in the process, yes. But that’s more the work of the biomedical department. And even those results are preliminary. Nothing has been verified. Nothing published. The long-term effects are completely unknown. There is a very good chance we end up inventing a new kind of cancer.”

“Then we will just turn around and cure that,” the woman, Officer Vonnevich, said.

“You make it sound so easy,” Leo’s father snipped.

“Not everything has to be complicated, doctor,” the colonel countered. He’d taken off his hat—a beret with the EDF’s patch of the planet Earth emblazoned upon a knight’s shield—and was twisting it around and around in his hands. “Take this war we’ve found ourselves in. The Djarik attacked us from out of nowhere, just like Pearl Harbor a century ago. Sure, the Aykari tried to protect us, but they failed, simple as that. It is painfully clear who our friends and enemies are. But it is equally clear that we have a responsibility to protect our own—to manage our own house, if you will.”

Calvin Fender sighed. Leo knew his dad didn’t like talking about the war. And he certainly didn’t like talking about what happened that day. He and Gareth exchanged worried looks.

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing we have fine people like you watching over us,” their father said.

“We’re certainly doing our best, Doctor. But a shield is only as strong as the materials it’s made of, and frankly, our shield could be stronger. That’s why we’re here. I won’t beat around the bush. We need you. We need your brain. We’d like to recruit you into the EDF’s experimental weapons division. . . . Now wait a minute. Here me out. As you know, nearly all of our best tech is borrowed from the Aykari, which means our military capabilities are essentially just what they’ve given us. We’re kind of at their mercy, see? All we seem to bring to the table is warm bodies. You have two sons, don’t you?”