“Honesty is probably better,” I said.

“I already took it into account,” he said. He reached out to touch a terminal, where he had been operating the craft without hands on controls earlier.

In the corner of my eye, I saw the projection change.

Our ships at the facility. The Simurgh still there.

And there wasn’t a single person there who didn’t have some light exposure. The facility was flooded yellow, with fifteen to twenty red dots and a mess of orange. Light exposure, moderate exposure, and long-term dangers.

“We land in three minutes,” he told us. “The phone call with Riley Davis, formerly known as Bonesaw, will be around the time of landing, given the expedition team’s current trajectory. Who’s handling it?”

“I will,” I said. “And the call to Contessa?”

“We’ll see when Dragon is back in touch. For now, everything on that front is stalled. If you happened to be out of contact, we could wait for you, but—”

“But you know what we need to ask her. Just get back to me with the info?”

“Of course.”

I adjusted my flight as the crafts dipped, falling into a single-file line. A part of me wanted to be out there, flying alongside, instead of cooped up in here with a bunch of villains and scared kids.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” I told Defiant. “About disregarding your instructions, using the technology to access Precipice’s dream space.”

“I know.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I tried, “I’ll assume you had simulations for that course of action.”

“No. Not how it works. I need data to draw on. That was… far afield. It could be that we needed that kind of thinking for this, but my feelings around that are still complicated. It could have precipitated the end of the world, but we ended up needing it.”

“Complicated feelings are human,” I told him.

“Not limited to humans, I’m sure Dragon will tell you,” he replied. “Going into this particular battlefield, we’ll need to keep a handle on our feelings.”

The Simurgh. Mass madness.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I really hope we don’t need to use your plan,” he told me. “But I accept that we need a contingency for the worst-case scenario.”

“Amen,” Christopher murmured, under his breath. He turned metallic eyes toward me.

I nodded.

It was my plan, but I couldn’t disagree.

“And with that said, as much as I welcome the conversation while my usual conversation partner is out of contact, I should focus on the next part of the flight.”

“Of course,” I said.

Christopher, ‘Kid Win’, flock member, just left without another word or comment. Defiant seemed not to mind.