Rosalyn didn’t look back. She seemed to be staring directly into Piero’s eyes, into the core of the monster holding them all hostage. Her voice was small but firm and sent a shiver down Misato’s spine.

“Me.”

29

The bastard alien inside Piero was thinking it over.

One simple word had brought the whole screaming panic of the moment to a standstill. She could hear Edison’s shattered breathing, and Misato’s, too, and her skull ached from the deafening pound of the blood in her ears.

She had stared the devil in the eyes before. I’ve been here, she thought. I’ve seen the snake coil before the strike. I’ve seen the humanity fall away from a man until there’s nothing left but madness and rage.

It was going to work. Or at least, this part of her hastily patched-up plan was going forward. The rest? Well, one step at a time. It had been her mantra after Glen; it would have to serve again now. One step at a time. Shave your head. Throw out your makeup. Wipe the lip gloss off your mouth and smear it on your jeans. Go to space. Lose yourself. Remake yourself. Forge something new.

A snarling beast had tried to control her before and won. Not this time, motherfucker.

“Admit it,” Rosalyn pushed. “You want all of us. You’re hungry for more bodies. More knowledge, right? You want more knowledge for the . . . for the cluster. You want to be mother to us all. It’d be stupid to throw Edison away. Look at him. He’s strong. He’s smart. He’s got . . . he really likes dogs. I don’t know if you know this because you’re not from Earth, but that’s a big deal to us humans, so don’t toss him away when you can have us both. It’s simple math. You . . . you can do math, right?”

She couldn’t tell if he was grinning or hissing. Most of his face was a sloppy, disfigured mess. His grip seemed to relax a little on Edison’s neck, and the captain half smiled at her, his face shiny with sweat. It was working. Or something was happening. It was an improvement over the pandemonium.

“Mother sees the wisdom in your suggestion,” Piero said slowly, as if debating each word. “She knows you. She . . . knows your face. I know your face. But she does not trust your intentions.”

“Why not? You said it yourself, you’ve got the upper hand.”

“You think Mother is foolish. You think she’s blind.” The canopy of blue above them twinkled, a grim reminder of just how much she was up against. She wondered if maybe in addition to a master engineer, bioengineer and programmer, Misato was a champion javelin thrower. That would simplify things considerably.