“Yeah,” he said, suddenly serious. “I’d be dead.”

“Once I knew where you’d gone,” she said, “I kept those ships on standby. As soon as you were outside the building, I homed in on your GPS coordinates to see if you needed help.” She punched him lightly. “You should have asked me from the beginning.”

Tom gazed at her. “But we were doing it because our friend needed us to destroy that transmitter, Medusa. I couldn’t have asked you to risk that. . . .”

“You didn’t have to,” she told him. “You’ve never had to.”

“I guess not,” Tom breathed.

A year ago, before Capitol Summit, he’d tried to ask her to take a dive for him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d known she’d say no. Why would anyone do that for him? She’d said to him afterward that maybe it would’ve been a possibility. He hadn’t believed her. Not even long afterward. Not until now, when she’d done something so hazardous just for his sake. The realization rocked through Tom that she’d risked drawing Obsidian Corp.’s attention to herself and she’d done it for him.

Tom’s grip tensed around her, because he had this sudden, terrible sense something awful would happen if he let her go. “I have to ask you something, Medusa.”

She eased back, waiting for it, her eyes searching his.

Tom stroked her black hair nervously. “Listen.” He licked his lips, his stomach dancing. For a tangle of reasons. “Tell me something. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m going to guess your name again.”

“Now?”

“Now.” His voice was intent. “Is your name ‘Yaolan’?”

Medusa jerked in his grip, and Tom felt something cold and frightening squeezing inside him, knowing it was.

“How did you . . .” she breathed. “Did you go in the personnel files in the Citadel? I told you not to do that, Tom!”

“I didn’t.” Tom clasped her shoulders, full of dread. He leaned down so he could stare right into her eyes. “Joseph Vengerov said it. I interfaced with his neural processor, briefly—”

“His neural processor?”

“His neural processor,” Tom confirmed. “He has one. You were right when you said LM Lymer Fleet was surveilling you—that was Vengerov surveilling you because he’s on to what you can do. I couldn’t get into Obsidian Corp. because he’d already figured out how to block our way. He knows there’s a ghost in the machine. He knows how to detect us, block us, and when he found me in his system, he called me ‘Yaolan.’”

She folded her arms, withdrawing one step, then another. He wished she wouldn’t pull away from him when something upset her.