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“What is it?” Kimmalyn hissed. “Should I secure the aliens?”

I stared right at Brade, who eyed me, tapping her foot on the floor.I had my gun pointed at her head, but I forcibly stopped myself from firing. It was a projection. Scud, another cytonic projection.

She was subtle in the way she touched my mind. I hadn’t noticed this wasn’t real, despite all my training.

“We’re good,” I said, lowering my gun. “But the enemy is watching me.”

“That I am,” Brade said, strolling around, looking over the facility. “I’m ready for you. The trap falls now.”

I braced myself, waiting, gun at the ready.

Nothing happened.

“Winzik placed a new inhibitor at this facility,” Brade explained to me. “The ones you’ve destroyed were decoys.”

Scud. I was about to flee into the hall, gun blazing against an ambush, until she spoke again.

“None of these humans,” Brade said, “will serve you.”

Oh.

Oh.

She’d prepared her trap on the wrong planet. She didn’t know where we’d landed—she was still working from the lies I’d fed her before, believing we were trying to recruit humans on one of the preserves we’d located. And her ability to project to me happened wherever I was, so she had no way to realize yet that I wasn’t where she thought.

“I knew you’d pick the most warlike and battle-ready of the humans,” she explained, raising a datapad. “They should be coming for you any moment…”

“Damn you,” I said to her. I screamed then, and shot her in the forehead—all in the name of the act—and cytonically threw everything I had at her.

Nothing happened. Scud. I’d forgotten the inhibitor—the very thing we were trying to bring down at the moment. It prevented me from doing anything with my powers. But Brade would be allowed, as she had codes. That caused my soul to tremble. Things started shaking.

My cytonic powers burst through the inhibitor, hitting Brade. Who gasped in surprise. She was stronger than I was at this sort of thing, but still she seemed shocked.

“Did you just cut through an inhibitor?” she snapped.“How?”

How indeed?

Delvers always ignore inhibitors,a part of my soul said.You become more and more like one of us, the longer we are bonded.

Scud. I knew Chet was right about delvers ignoring inhibitors—I’d seen it in the old video. That delver had attacked and destroyed the humans on Detritus, before we’d landed there. Despite all its protections.

Visibly concerned, Brade looked away, listening to someone at her side. She glanced at me, then vanished to deal with whatever had drawn her attention.

“You said she has this in hand!” Alanik said from behind me.

“She does,” Arturo cried. “Don’t you?”

“Actually,” I said, lowering my gun and looking back at them, “yes. Tell those officials to show us the inhibitor. I just saw a cytonic projection from averydangerous human. We might not have much time.”

That made the already-addled aliens cry out. “Not ahuman,” one of them said. “Please. They won’t come here, will they?”

“Never can tell with those humans,” Kimmalyn said. “Best be quick and do what we say.”

The aliens did as they were told, and I smiled, thinking of Brade trying to run an operation against us on the wrong planet. Unfortunately, her appearance was still a big problem. She knew for certain we were trying something, and it wouldn’t be long before she realized she had the wrong place.

We needed to move faster. I had the aliens take us to the device, which was a large box installed in the corner of the small room.

“Open it,” Alanik told them.