"Bait," Dayton said. Despite their camouflage, my HUD filled in their outlines. Dayton had grabbed Sean's shoulder.

"Remember this is the Nine. He might not want to, but he'll turn on us the second they tell him to."

Sean looked down, the head of his outline staring ahead—into metal shelving, but then over at Dayton, "We're not going to be able to save him, are we?"

Dayton took a breath, "I don't know how this will play out. It's going to be hard, but maybe. You've taken him in training, and there's lots of metal."

"Yeah… But we don't know what he is now."

Over the camera feeds in my HUD, I saw Jody's eyes twitch, taking in one spot and then another.

"Guys?" Jody stared directly at one of the spybots. He had to have clocked it. "I know you're here. I know the Rocket and that red-haired bitch are here."

"And I'm feeling a little less sympathetic," Amy sent me privately.

"I can see cameras all over this place, and my eyes are better than they used to be. They're telling me I have to kill you. I don't have a choice. I've got an Abominator slave implant. You should leave. Get out and let them have me. I'll be fine. You'll be alive. If you fight, you don't stand a chance. Rook's here too. You don't know what that means yet, but you don't have to find out."

He stopped, breathing heavily. His face flushed.

"Rook only wants the Rocket. He wants the Rocket dead," Jody said, voice growing louder. "Rook, the greatest being of all time that I love more than life itself, hates the Rocket! He will destroy him! Then he'll usher in a golden age where the Nine rule all things!"

He ended his speech shouting, face red, and a wide-eyed look on his face as if he'd received everything he'd ever wanted. Then he shook his head, shrinking into himself, glancing from side to side, and then dropping his head to stare at the floor.

In a lower voice that I wouldn't have heard without my suit or the spybots, he added, "I don't know why I said that."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

We did. Our implants had dropped the relevant data about Abominator slave implants into our heads.

Rook must have found an egg-shaped implant maker of his own on Mars or the Moon. Arguably, all implants were slave implants, including the ones in our heads. The Xiniti design had a crucial difference, though.

It wasn't designed to allow someone else to manipulate your thoughts and emotions. In fact, Xiniti implants had been designed to make that as hard as possible, including defenses that could pass for attacks. Could we use our implants to attack Jody? Maybe.

I wanted to go further into that, but I didn't have time.

Rook's voice thundered from the PA system as Jody stopped slouching and his face became neutral. If Jody's lower eyelid glistened, that may have been a trick of the light.

"That," Rook said, "was an illustration of my control. He'll kill for me, and he'll love it while he's doing it. Don't think you can appeal to his emotions and rely on his strength of will. He can't control himself. This isn't a movie. Go, and leave the Rocket to me, or stay and either kill him or be killed by him."

He laughed, adding, "As for the Rocket, surrender and we'll find a use for you. Otherwise, I'm afraid you and I will have to meet for the last time. It's been fun, hasn't it?"

Recognizing that we'd be fighting within seconds and that this was the last chance to plan, I said, "If the Power can get Jody and the minions into the air, we'll only have to fight Rook."

Sean stared at the ground, "Look, I'm tired. I'll try, but I don't have much left."

"Do what you can," I said, but then stopped.

Rook had appeared in much the same way Jody had. He wasn't as fast as Jody. My bots' cameras registered his movement as a blur. Jody moved too quickly for that. Rook's movement reminded me of the Xiniti that Cassie, Jaclyn, and I had killed.

It wasn't good news. That had been a hard fight.

Amy provided a small bit of good news, though, "He's still human. Whether you'd call it a life force or a soul, he's still got it."

"We need to start this before they do," I said. "They want me. I'm flying toward the ceiling. They'll see me. Throw everything you've got at the minions."

I didn't wait for a response. We didn't have time for a discussion. I became visible, activated the rockets and shot upward, weaving as if I were trying to evade attacks—I was—but that wasn't the main point.

I was trying to distract them, and the good news was that I was succeeding. The bad news, of course, was that everyone on that side of the room started trying to murder me.

Rook's minions fired in coordinated blasts, but they weren't all out of the metal piles, which was one of the things that kept me alive. The other was using my implant to adjust the suit's direction at the speed of thought.

Rook didn't hesitate; he ran straight for me in a blur, firing blasts of energy at me from the barrels that had appeared where his arms used to be.

Though he missed, the blasts shattered pieces of the concrete wall behind me.

Jody continued to stand where he was, staring into space.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.