“Gina, you need to come into contact with more of yourself. And there’s a lot more, believe me. We are weapons, Gina, powerful, living weapons.”

She stepped away from him. “Here we are in this bizarre, bizarre situation, desperate, and that’s all you have to offer?”

“You know something of your power, Gina. I know you do, I can see it in your eyes. The fear that it brings.”

A shadow passed over them, bringing sudden darkness to the forest. They both looked up and saw that the great collection of girders that defined the huge ship was just above them. As he looked up into the thing, an electricity shuddered deep in Mark’s body, bringing with it a new desire, deep and sick and ugly.

Always before, his work had remained separate from his emotional life. No more.

He needed Gina, and he needed her right now. “No matter what you believe, you can fight and you will fight.”

“I have no idea how.”

He grabbed her arm, shook her like a rag. “We come to our powers as needed. That’s the way it works. I don’t know why, but that’s what I’m finding. Trust yourself. There are parts of you that you don’t know exist. The way of the warrior is programmed into you, and now we have to do this!”

“And what happens when we reach the limits of our abilities? Then what?”

“In the woods, you were touched with a disk. Probably very quickly.”

For an instant, she glanced away, telling him that he was precisely correct.

“Then it or one like it was given to you, and you’re supposed to touch me with it.”

“No.”

“Gina, I’m remembering a lot of things. Memories that they thought were erased, but the brain is a labyrinth. There are a lot of hiding places, and I remember these disks and how they’re used, so where is it, Gina?”

Purple light began glimmering down from above, seeking along the trunks of the trees, glimmering on the ferns, making their long leaves tremble and bend upward into its sucking death.

“You tell me now, or you turn away from me now, and if you do, it’s forever.”

She would not look at him.

“We just found each other. Don’t take this from us. We’re two. That’s it. Nobody else like us. All we’ll ever have is us, Gina.”

She gasped, gasped more deeply.

“I—I—can’t. I can’t make myself, Mark. I want to but I can’t!”

He sought into her eyes with his own. “You can, Gina. Part of you can. Because you’re not all machine. You’re not, or I could not love you and I do love you. I love you, Gina. And I think you love me, and that part of you can give the thing up.”