It—it was too much. He could not think—

And suddenly he found himself in the doorway to the cockpit. Out of the starshield, looming like a great black shadow, was a dreadnought. One of four in the kingdom. He knew—he remembered—reinstating them to the Messier force some months ago.

Two bright flares lit from either side of the gargantuan ship. By their speed, trajectory—they were missiles. Solar-grade, high-impact. They would not render this ship prone; they would obliterate it.

Through the haze of his jumbled, warring memories, he knew he had to do something. Whether this was a dream or a nightmare or the HIVE playing with his head, he could not let . . . he refused to . . .

His thoughts warped and stretched. What was the Dossier again? What was he doing here? Where was—

Home, whispered a voice between his memories, scratchy and garbled from a damaged voice box.

This was—

Electricity jumped between his fingertips.

He moved into the cockpit and reached out his hands toward the incoming missiles. One moment he was standing, the next his thoughts were rushing toward the missiles at the speed of standing still, just as he had on the Dossier all those months ago, when he took control of the ship. He had done it a thousand times since then, with the Great Dark singing in his head.

But this was different. He had control, and he knew this body now—he knew its capabilities and its limits.

He felt himself snag onto the missiles’ guidance systems, threading apart their code number by number. The left missile wavered and went careening off course, up and up, until it exploded like a silent, distant flash of white. The other was a little harder.

FIVE SECONDS, the warnings on the starshield read.

FOUR.

THREE.

TWO—

He pushed his right hand to the side with a noise of protest. The missile wobbled—and went screaming past them, scraping the wing of the Dossier, and exploded in a flash. The Dossier rattled with the quake of it.

He reached farther toward the dreadnought and felt the commands from the bridge to the gunnery to send off another round of fire, and sank into the colossal ship’s onboard computer. He zipped down the multitude of hallways, past the vacant crew’s quarters and galleys.

YOU BELONG TO ME, the Great Dark sang, Mellifare’s voice laced with sudden bitterness. He winced as he burrowed into the ship’s mainframe, clawing between the red code as though it was sticky mud. YOU ARE MINE—

No, he was not.

He rerouted his own power away from tertiary necessities, prying energy from his skin and his aches and his senses. He had to stop the dreadnought. He had to stop her.

The engine room was easy enough to find, its console like an open door—

His vision flickered. He was overheating.

YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ME, the Great Dark roared. YOU ARE NOTHING.

He knew that. He was less than nothing. He was a boy who had died long ago. He was a ghost of himself. He was not even human. He was nothing—but if he overheated, at least he could take the dreadnought with him—