“My… seed?”

Her blink glittered with tears. “I said he was our son.”

“It’s the truth, Merion,” Headmaster Faust interrupted, signaling me to refill his sherry. “I ran the DNA myself, twice. Has it not occurred to you that, thanks to modern science, there are ways a sperm and egg can meet other than the customary dick up vagina?”

Kraye froze a moment. “No. No, it was Ganymede, their incest…”

Faust rolled his eyes. “Look at the child, you idiot. The twins are genetic duplicates. Except for one Y-chromosome swapped in, Danaë and Ganymede are the same lifeform. Their child would be practically a clone of Ganymede. Does Carlyle Foster look like a clone of Ganymede to you?”

Kraye’s flinch was painful to see, doubt flaring torture-sharp where doubt had seemed impossible. I knew that feeling. “Artificial insemination?”

“True love would have stayed true, Merion.” Danaë held his eyes with hers, as deep and deadly as the sea. “I said I was with child, and a true love would have sworn to keep on loving me regardless, to the world’s end. Then I would have revealed that the child was yours after all, and we would have had our happily forever. That’s what I’d planned. But I mistook the false lover,” she practically spat the words in Kraye’s face, “for the true,” a warm squeeze of her steady husband’s hand. “I never claimed you tried to force yourself upon me, Merion. I said you tried to kill me, which you did. And our child. And when they stopped you, you went mad with rage, and swore to burn the whole world down.” Danaë rose to her feet, and faced her former lover with so calm and strong and fixed a gaze that all within the circle held our breaths. “You stole the Seven-Ten list, didn’t you? You climbed the ranks enough to learn about O.S., and now you’ve exposed it because you want to see my husband and my brother burn, and you don’t care if you burn with them.”

Threat to her own woke Chair Kosala from her shocked silence. “Is this true?”

The Prime Minister slouched within his stiff suit, like a man relieved of an old weight. “The Japanese Mitsubishi made the Canner Device, by the way. It’s not just a stealth device, it’s designed to remote access the Tracker System’s main computers.”

“You did it?” Kosala stepped forward. “You stole the Seven-Ten list? You admit it?”

Perry-Kraye laughed as he relaxed at last. “Why shouldn’t I admit it? I’ve done the world a favor! While you hypocrites are here debating how best to cover this up for the public good, I’ve scattered enough proof that the lot of you together can’t even slow it down. The world will know. The Humanists are guilty, the Mitsubishi, the rotten heart of Europe, guilty! The four of us, Andō, the twins, and I, and all our filthy allies, we’ll all go down together as we deserve, the rest of you will suffer through the aftermath, and no one can stop it, no one!” He raised his eyes to MASON, past MASON to the subtle, silent matriarch hiding behind her fan. “Not even you, Madame.”