“E0S,” Jax murmured, and Di gave him a surprised look. He went on as the past whispered to him through his skin, “You implanted data into the bot, and when it found you again in the XO, it uploaded the data back into you. Well, that explains why E0S had shocked the ever-loving spark out of that Metal.”

The halogen light above them flickered again, this time more distraught, reflecting the confused look on Di’s face. “How did you know that?”

“You aren’t the only one with new powers—could you stop that?” he added, pointing up to the light.

Suddenly, it blinked back to life and stayed on.

“Sorry,” Di added sheepishly. “I cannot control it sometimes.”

“Mmh.”

Di went on, “With the data E0S gave back to me, I began to remember who I am, but the point is moot because I do not know if I am still under the HIVE’s influence or not. Ana is right not to trust me.”

He feigned shock. “She said that?”

Di gave him a deadpan look. “Jax, the window is glass—it is not soundproof.”

He grinned. “I know. I just wanted you to admit that you were eavesdropping.”

“I was not eavesdropping—”

“Were too.”

“You really are insufferable.”

“I won’t kill you,” he said suddenly.

Di ground his teeth. “Then bring me the captain, who will.”

“I don’t think she will, metalhead. I don’t think any of us will. Well, except Viera, but we aren’t letting her within ten feet of you,” he added as an afterthought, remembering the way the ex–guard captain had looked at Di just after he had saved them from the dreadnought: like she wanted to murder him.

With a frustrated growl, Di tugged at his bindings, and the metal cords groaned with his strength. “I almost killed everyone!” he snapped. “I almost killed Ana and I enjoyed it!”

“That was the HIVE—”

“Was it?” Di snarled. “Or was that who I really am?”

“No, it wasn’t, Dmitri.”

The sound of his name caught him off guard. Jax knew from the light flickering under his skin that it was the first time Di had been called that name in twenty years, and the sound was strange and wrong, like a crown that had once fit but now felt too small. And then Di began to tremble. “I am a monster, Jax. I kill everything I love, so I should just—”

Like a wind bending the trees, the light inside him took hold of his body and leaned him forward, and he cupped Di’s face in his hands. The light thrummed, pulsing out of his skin, through his clothes and his gloves, surrounding them in a celestial golden-white light. Di’s eyes widened as the light sank into his synthetic skin, and across his wires, and found the soft core of his soul.

And suddenly, it was no longer a Metal sitting there but the shorn-haired young man from the Plague hospital, tears fresh in his brown eyes.

“You are good,” Jax said.