I said to One, “What do you know about Mara Zhu?”

“Only what is necessary.”

“She felt terrible about what she’d done,” I said, looking down at Mara Zhu’s last victims, her colleagues and probably her friends, too. “She… uh, she despaired about it. She killed herself, you know, all alone in her office. You told me once that I was trapped in the moment I’d lost everything. I’ve left that moment behind now. So I will help your people. I will help you get the Philosopher Stone.”

I remembered that photograph of the scientist who looked like Number One—her genetic ancestor, I was certain. That great-grandfather of hers had had dimples when he smiled. That was genetic, wasn’t it? I wondered if One would have dimples, if she ever smiled. I wondered if One’s ancestor was among the bones in this room, if his daughter stepped between his ribs on immortal, indifferent feet.

Number One said, “You have not left that moment.”

She reached to her side as she spoke, where she kept sheathed her slender flight-feather knives.

“You will never leave that moment,” One said, with glacial sympathy, that could feel pity and yet not be moved. She raised one of her graceful little knives, and I watched the line of violet light that gleamed on the edge of her knife. Perhaps my nanomachines could stop a blade, or sew up my throat when she slit it again, but I somehow did not believe that anything could stop the Ultraviolet Minister’s killing blow, death herself—

Metal rang against metal, resoundingly loud in the catacomb-room. Another sword had stopped One’s long knife. I followed the line of metal, hand, wrist, arm, back to the underwater-blue glow of a familiar collar-light.

CHAPTER EIGHTY ONE:

Brother

One faced Indigo over their crossed swords, shock and a question in her eyes. Indigo shoved her back; she staggered, and his hand grabbed me under the arm. “Sean, go!”

I got up, stumbled backwards when he dragged me. One watched us as Indigo dragged me back out of the room through the far door. I did not like the look in her eyes.

Indigo slammed the door shut. “Can you lock this?”

I willed it locked, and glittering machines tore through the skin of my palm, shedding blood in drops, and vanished into the darkness between door and frame.

“What was that?” Indigo demanded.

I lowered my hand. I’d lost my breath somewhere between One going to kill me and locking the door. “The nanomachines. There’s not many left in my body but I can sort of control the ones that are left. What the hell did you do out there? What the hell were you thinking?”

“What was I thinking? What were you thinking? You knew she would kill you!”

“I, uh, actually thought I could talk myself out of that,” I admitted.

He stepped closer to me, anger clouding around him. “Is it because you’re dying? Is that why you’re throwing your life away?”