Again Piero fell silent and again he considered Rayan, studying him, and he sensed an odd force tugging at his brain. An invasion. The Foxfire was searching for answers and it hurt, more than a headache, a needling, precise pain that blossomed over his right eye and spread.

“Shit! What are you doing?” Rayan tried to reach for his head but he was pinned to the table, able only to flail and groan with pain.

“There. Obvious but poetic. I can’t believe she didn’t find it sooner.”

His vision frayed at the edges, spots and spangles blotting out his sight, more and more, like raindrops collecting on a windowpane until everything was blurred. The sensation in his head was incredible, white-hot, lancing agony that made him finally go boneless. He would have collapsed to the floor if Piero weren’t keeping him upright against the table.

“Ignorance. You hate ignorance.” Piero was nodding, but he could only see it vaguely. He hadn’t expected the transition to hurt this much. Stupidly, he had assumed it would be gentle, just a gradual sinking into darkness. A fade to black. Rayan couldn’t see at all then, but he felt Piero’s breath on his face, warm and loamy.

“This is the key that fits any lock . . .” His voice sounded far away, trapped behind the wall of pain and muffled by it. “She’s found it, what you hate, and what you hate makes you vulnerable. Now unlock for her and the pain will stop. The pain will end and you’ll join the family.”

25

“Then we just need Piero to leave the cockpit, and—hey. Hey. Are you falling asleep on me?”

“Son of a bitch, sorry.” Rosalyn shook herself awake, sitting cross-legged with her back to a chair. There was no missing the deep blue smudges under her eyes, or the way her limbs sagged toward the floor.

“I haven’t really slept,” she added, glancing at her VIT. “In forty-eight hours. No wonder I’m agreeing to this insane plan.”

Edison shook his head, crouching down on the other side of the barrier. The diffuser cycle had switched, and now only a light vapor hung in the cold storage chamber. He wondered what would happen if the shield dropped and all that fog rolled out to him. Nothing good. Every treatment Rayan and Misato came up with only made them sick as hell and weak, which probably only made Mother Foxfire happier. A compromised immune system was a party for viruses; he could only imagine what it meant for the Foxfire.

“I know you’re exhausted,” he said, tilting his head to the side. She pulled her knees up to her chest and stuffed a yawn behind her fist. “But that doesn’t mean my plan can’t work.”

“Mm. Yes,” she mumbled absently. “Very achievable.”

“I’m gonna remember that you get real agreeable when you’re exhausted.”