He took the chair from the corner of the room and came right up to him, spinning it around to sit backward on it. They were but a few feet away from each other, and if the HIVE was still banging around in Di’s head, well, then it would make quick work of him. Jax should have been afraid of that, but he was afraid of plenty more things much larger and scarier than this boy lost in time.

When he sat down, Di glanced up at him and then straightened in his chair. “Jax, I need to speak with— You are glowing,” he interrupted himself in surprise. “How did . . .”

Jax waved him off. “It’s a long story, but yes, I’m a glowlight. It makes reading in the dark riveting.”

In reply, Di’s lips twitched, as if trying to form a smile, but it quickly fell away again. He shifted in his chair. “Jax, I need you to smash me.”

That was not what he was expecting.

“My memory core is in the center of my chest,” the Metal went on. “I can help you aim for the correct location and—”

“Are you asking me to kill you?”

He winced. “I am not alive, so no. You would not kill me. It is the only way to ensure I am not HIVE’d. I do not trust myself. What if I hurt Ana again? Or you again?”

Oh, no, all of this was beginning to make a lot of sense now.

“And that’s why you asked Ana to go get the captain, right? So you could ask her to do it?” he asked angrily.

“No, I would have provoked her into doing it.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Di, there are other ways to—”

“Are there?” Di snapped. “There is no way to tell if I am still under the influence of the HIVE. The program it uses, is so perfectly tuned that it is difficult to pick the HIVE from my own thoughts and actions. I was not under the control of it. I was it. Its thoughts were mine. I would try to rebel and then it would—it would correct me, as simply as if turning a knob. Metals have never left the HIVE—”

“Yes, they have.”

“Liar.”

“You know very well I can’t lie. We have a Metal on board—Xu—who escaped the HIVE,” he informed him, nudging his head toward the door. Xu was up in the galley helping Talle prepare a snack for the crew.

Di bit his bottom lip and looked away.

Above them, the halogen light flickered, as if in reaction to the Metal’s mood. It seemed like Jax wasn’t the only one with strange powers. He folded his arms over the back of the chair and rested his chin upon them. “So, the question remains, how did you escape?”

The Metal rolled his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable, but he didn’t really need to say anything.

The light whispered under Jax’s skin, the image of Di at the palace, grasping ahold of—