<Fine, I’ll place it down like it’s a newgrown right out of the vat,> Eris said. <Then I’ll set off the pulse to kill the factory’s power. We’ll have about five minutes to get this as close as we can and bail. You can hang back, if you want. It’s a risk. I’ve got this.>

<No chance,> Clo said, flashing her own wild grin. Eris returned it, and Clo felt a flush of camaraderie.

They picked their way through the foliage. Clo took the explosive from Eris. She set it down gently in a small hollow in the ground, nestled among the twining roots of a tree with a yellow cast to its bark.

Crack. A footstep breaking a twig near them.

“Shit,” Eris breathed.

Both women stumbled into the underbrush near the un-activated bomb. Clo tripped in the dark, smacking into Eris. The other woman hissed.

Two Tholosian guards made their rounds. Clo fought down a surge of panic. They’d plotted the guards’ routes—they should have had ten minutes at least without having to worry, and Eris’s initial electromag pulse had taken out any nearby cameras.

A horrible thought pulled at her like quicksand: is this a trap?

Clo could make out Eris crawling through the underbrush. She was low to the ground, inching toward the explosive as the guards headed away. If Eris activated it now, those two men would die.

Clo wished she could turn off the ability to care, like Eris seemed to. They couldn’t save every guard programmed with loyalty to the Empire. They would still kill Clo and Eris without blinking.

All’s fair in war.

Eris reached out and pressed the small button on the side of the sphere.

<Go!> she yelled in Clo’s mind, crawling back. <Four minutes and thirty six seconds.>

But in the darkness, Eris’s face had changed.

Clo stopped, fascinated and horrified, as the features she knew so well amended subtly. It took her a second to realize what had happened: shifter technology glitched during electromag pulses.

Eris wore a false face.

And Clo had caught a glimpse of her true one.

The other woman’s hair was still dark, but blond showed at the roots. The shifter had altered the bones of her features, the effect melting away to reveal their true shape: wider nose, blunter chin, high cheeks and brow. The most startling difference was her eyes—they glowed yellow-gold, luminous in the darkness. Gold as royalty. The spit of the icons that dotted on every street corner on Sennett.

That face was blasted across the galaxy.

Princess Discordia had infiltrated the resistance. The ultimate spy in their midst. Everything Clo and Sher and Kyla and all the other rebels who risked death to break free of the Empire—they would all be dead.

And Clo had defended her. Drunk with her.

Become friends with her.