Surprised, I turned to see her indignant shock. “Oh, she’s pissed,” I whispered so Quen would know, getting my fingers squeezed in return. But I think she heard me, too, since she stared at me with a prune face for an entire three seconds, fumbling for words before she turned on a heel. Pace stiff, she went to the door. There was a flush of drums and light, then the soft smothering of darkness returned. Takata’s base thrummed through it like a pulse.

Trent stepped into the lowered pit of Quen’s bedroom. In a fast motion of anger, he shoved a piece of expensive equipment off a low cart. The noise of it hitting the floor shocked me as much as his unexpected show of frustrated anger, and I stared as he sat down where it had been to put his elbows on his knees and drop his head into his cupped hands. Trent had once sat and watched his father die, too.

I felt my face blank as I saw him raw and stripped down to the pain in his soul. He was young, afraid, and watching yet another person who had raised him dying. All his power, wealth, privilege, and illegal bio labs couldn’t stop it. He wasn’t used to being helpless, and it tore at him.

Quen’s eyes had opened at the crash, and I found them waiting for me when I turned to him. “This is why you’re here,” he said, confusing me. Quen’s attention slid to Trent, then back to me. “Trent’s a good man,” he said as if he wasn’t sitting right there. “But he’s a businessman, living and dying by numbers and percentages. He’s got me in the ground already. Fighting this with him is a losing battle. You believe in the eleven percent, Rachel.” He took an arduous breath, his lungs moving in an exaggerated motion. “I need that.”

The long speech had winded him, and as he labored to catch his breath in wet inhalations, I held his hand tighter, remembering my father. My jaw gritted and my throat closed as I heard the truth in his words. “Not this time, Quen,” I said, feeling a headache start and forcing my grip to ease. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you die. All you have to do is see the sunrise, and you’re home free.”

It was what Dr. Anders had said, and unlike Trent, I saw it as a real possibility. Hell, I didn’t believe in the eleven percent, I lived on it.

Trent was staring in horror at us as it sunk in. He wasn’t capable of living any other way than by his graphs and predictions.