“Humans are a hunted species, Yirella. Sometime, somewhere in this galaxy, we have to stop running and fight back. You have known that it is your destiny, to confront the enemy, from the very beginning. We never withheld that from you. Everything which has followed, everything we have taught you and trained you to do, is designed to give you the greatest chance of success.”

She arched her eyebrow. “Including the cougar?”

“No,” Alexandre said ruefully. “The cougar was a mistake. We didn’t know one was in the area.”

“But the moroxes, they’re not real, are they? They’re just genten remotes.”

“They used to be real,” Alexandre said. “Thousands of years ago in a star system light-years away. A traveler generation starship found a planet with indigenous biological life not dissimilar to terrestrial evolution, which is always a rare and wonderful surprise. They stopped and studied the xenobiology for a century before moving on. We replicated the basic morox form in molecular initiators. It provided you with a believable threat.”

“It nearly ripped Dellian’s arm off!”

“No, it never did that. They were deep scratches, that’s all. Plenty of blood, but no real damage.”

“You scared the living crap out of us to give us motivation? You bastards!”

Alexandre sat next to her and reached out to put hir arm around her shoulders. She shook hir off angrily. “Don’t. Not you. You were supposed to be the one we trusted, our almost-parent. You betrayed us.” She wiped her eyes, struggling to hold tears in.

“I would die before I would betray you,” Alexandre said. “I might not be your biological parent, but my love for you is just as strong.”

Yirella shook her head. “No parent would do this. Doesn’t matter what kind.”

“All of us who volunteered to stay behind while our families left for the safety of the generation ships did so willingly, knowing the suffering—this suffering—that we would face raising you,” Jenner said quietly. “We made that sacrifice freely because we not only love you, but we believe in you. You are destined to be our salvation.”

“We’re not your salvation. We’re your slave soldiers,” Yirella spat. “Why did you even birth us? Why not just use genten remotes?”

“Because of you, Yirella,” Alexandre said softly. “You are the reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“A genten is smart, fast, but ultimately has limits—in imagination, in intuition. You don’t. You are human.”

“That’s…stupid. I’m not as clever as a genten. It doesn’t matter how physically large my brain is. I could never match one of them.”

“Not in absolute processing power, no. But like all technology, Turings have plateaued. There is no ‘next level’ for them, no eleventh generation.”