Benny didn’t answer. My leg ached and itched, much like the lump of pain in the back of my skull. I rubbed at my thigh above the gash, and when I looked back up, Benny was walking away, following the bend of the Lab 17 wall.

Several rooms later, I had to stop. I crouched down to examine my leg while Benny continued on, feeling around the wall for some weakness we could exploit. My fingers probed the gash I’d seen briefly in the light of Indigo’s collar. It stung, as I’d expected, but weirdly, it wasn’t bleeding.

Benny’s light was receding fast. He didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d lost me. I couldn’t see anything anymore, much less what kind of damage I’d done to my leg. I stood up, wobbling on my injured leg, and took a step towards Benny, opening my mouth to call his name—and then a solid bar of something caught me around the throat, stopping my breath in my lungs, and a moment later everything went black.

CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE:

A Frighteningly Efficient Kidnapping

I woke up the captive of a very annoyed Republican lieutenant and an icily composed Minister.

That takedown had been terrifyingly efficient. There was no telling who had actually rendered me unconscious so swiftly; the silence and speed suggested Indigo, but the bruise to my larynx implied Tamara. Maybe they’d both done it together. Whoever had done it had somehow managed to cure my headache, though. Instead of an all-encompassing throbbing, all I felt now was a vague ache. I guess a good knock on the head did cure some things.

It was a good thing their alliance wouldn’t last much longer. The world probably wouldn’t be able to handle the two of them working in concert for long.

“Hey, guys,” I said, from flat on my back, while Tamara crouched at my side, hands dangling between her knees and flashlight on the floor and Indigo watched me from a height, dark-water gleaming. I smiled disarmingly.

Tamara was not disarmed. Actually, I don’t think she ever went unarmed. “You got that explanation ready?” she asked.

“Uh, explanation of what?”

“Of what the hell happened, Sean.” She was speaking with deliberate patience. Not a good sign. “I heard the Dreamer coming before you shut the door. Then I couldn’t get through. But when Indigo and I made it the long way around the door, you weren’t in the server room anymore. What happened?”

“This and that,” I replied, and nodded at Indigo. “Is he Good Cop?”

Indigo gazed down his nose at me and did not speak.

“Hey.” Tamara patted my cheek to pull my attention back to her. “Why’d you run? What’s going on?”

“I just thought I’d get the drop on you when it came to ending the arrangement,” I said. “I mean, you can both kill me with your bare hands. We’re close to Lab 17 now, and I was a little bit worried you might try to winnow down the competition, you know? Thin the herd? Make things easier for yourselves.”