I wasn’t in a dream. I’d woken up on the floor where Benny had left me to bleed out, and the nanomachines had closed up my throat.

I should’ve gotten myself infected by the Dreamer days ago. I was unkillable. Sean Wren, unstoppable machine god-man.

I sat up, careful not to move my head too much just in case the nanomachine sutures didn’t hold. Sitting upright all the blood left in my body rushed from my head and I nearly faceplanted in my own blood. I caught myself and waited, breathing hard, until my blood pressure stabilized.

A good portion of my total arterial volume was puddled on the floor. I doubted the nanomachines had any way of accounting for that. I’d just have to move very carefully—what mattered was that I was alive.

Alive, and as free as I’d ever been in my life. Indigo and Lantern-Eyes had severed their connections to me with the end of our arrangement, and gone their separate ways. Benny had severed our connection when he’d attempted to sever my head. The Nameless’s AI had cut the leash connecting me to the Senator when it had destroyed the implant. I was the perfect free agent, owing nothing to nobody. And I knew that the Viper was nearby. I could take the ship and leave. It wasn’t like I wanted the Philosopher Stone for myself.

And what would happen on the ship after I left? A miniature of the war going on at large; the Ministers versus the Republic, a bloody war on this ancient ship. And maybe a last-minute suicide attack by Benny, destroying the Ministers’ last hope for survival and the Republic’s last hope for a successful defense.

Billions of people on either side, Tamara had said. But I could walk away from all that. It wasn’t my problem. What was I going to do, pick a side? That had been Benny’s last words to me. You can’t help everyone. You have to pick a goddamn side.

Alright, then. Fuck you, Benjamin.

I picked myself up off the floor, head still spinning. I was now covered in my own blood in addition to Indigo’s. There was no part of my front that wasn’t stained. If anyone saw me they’d probably think me a ghost, a dead man lost on this ship for a thousand years. If I spoke Ameng to them they’d be sure of it.

I flexed my hand, palm up. I wasn’t exactly sure of the limits of my ability to command the nanomachines still crawling through my veins, but I was about to find out. First things first: I willed a few nanomachines to leave me and head off, giving them a spitefully simple directive: Whatever Benny is trying to do, stop him.

A few of the cuts on my hand jolted painfully, splitting open from the inside. A tiny glimmering handful of machines hovered over my palm, then split off, dispersing into the dark.

Step two, easier than the first. I willed the machines to shut down all the defenses in the Lab 17 wall directly in front of me.