Renn, Mona, and Francis all left shortly thereafter, with an agreement to meet again before Anya attempted to make contact with Mars. Anya and Gary stood in the hangar and watched Mona’s Gothic carriage carry them away, and neither spoke until the hangar doors fully closed and they were back in Gary’s main lab, behind the heaviest security measures in the factory.

“You really trust him?” Anya asked.

“Renn? Hell no. I mean, I trust him to not do anything overtly stupid, like kill you. I trust that he really wants to know what’s going on up on Mars. I trust he’s pissed at Corva for taking his idea and making it her own. But I don’t think he’s showing his full hand, no,” Gary said. “You?”

“I trust him more than I did before we left for space. He had every right to be mad at me, and he was. He could’ve left me to die up there, but he didn’t. He new we needed every person we could get in the last fight, and he brought me back, protected me while I was out, and made sure we saved as many as we could. I don’t trust him—or anybody, really—inside my head, but I trust him enough, I guess.”

“What I don’t trust is that this is just about that Corva woman stealing his idea for world peace or something,” Gary said.

“You just said——”

“I said I’m sure that he’s pissed about it, but not that it’s everything. Let me ask you something: if you had decided to run away from the aliens instead of staying on Earth to fight them, how far would you run?”

“As far as I could, I guess,” Anya said.

“Yeah, My thought exactly. So why did 40-some odd people just stop right next door? Why would they go to the trouble of leaving Earth for the unknown but then just stop and decide to play city-planner on the next-nearest planet?”

Anya paused and bit her lip.

“I just…figured maybe they were trying to draw the aliens away from Earth, fight them somewhere safer? I was actually kind of kicking myself for not thinking of that sooner,” Anya said.

“That could be a reason, sure. But if all they wanted was a civilian-free battlefield, why not just come back to Earth when the fight was over? Why act so stand-offish and like a bunch of pissy kids? If they’re not on Mars to fight aliens, then they’re on there for something else. They say they’ve got forty-ish people there now, and are claiming some independent hosts here on Earth are with them too. Let’s just say it’s about a hundred. A city thirty miles across is a huge amount of room for just that number of people, which means they don’t need the space for people, but something else. This thing with Renn, I don’t think it’s bullshit, but I don’t think it’s the main reason he wants some eyes and ears up there.”

“Yeah, that would line up more with his personality,” Anya said. “And Corva and the other Martian hosts having something going on besides just making a happy little utopia for hosts sounds believable. Does that make me a pessimist? That when somebody makes something nice I wonder what their racket is?”

“Makes you a realist, kid. People who are just kind, who only wanna help, they do exist, but they’re rare as hell. I may think Immonen is a bit too much of a hippy, but he’s decent. That old woman, Yai, bringing all the forests back and cleaning up the environment, she’s okay too. A few other people. But most folks usually make sure to benefit themselves in as many ways as they can when they do something. It can be good or bad, but it’s almost always just how it is.”

“That include you?”

“Hell yeah it does,” Gary said and laughed. “I just try to make sure I’m not screwing anybody else over when I’m covering my own ass. Basic courtesy.”

“Same goes for me too, I guess,” Anya smirked.

“Mm. Glad to hear it. You’ll need to make sure you’re watching your own backside up there. But I might have something that’ll help,” Gary said. “Ever since London I’ve been reverse engineering as much psychic protection stuff in the RAC store that I can get my hands on. It’s complicated, to say the least, but I’ve made some advancements. I want you to take a prototype up to Mars with you. If those independent hosts are half as smart as they like to think they are, they’ll have at least one psychic on hand.”

“I mean, yeah, of course I’d be happy for any help. But won’t wearing something like the Crown of Isolation or other anti-psychic device kinda mark me as immediately suspicious? Besides, I’ve still got a bunch of points in psychic defense.”

“Never hurts to have a back-up. And if I can, I might even be able to find a way to shut a psychic down entirely. Kinda scramble their brain.”

Anya blinked. “That sounds kinda fucked up, Gary.”

“Not permanently!” he said and waved his hand. “Just confuse the hell out of them while it’s on, like making them drunk or something. It’s still in development but you can relax, I’m not making a brain-frying ray or anything.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said, then glanced at the far wall where she had last seen the onyx staff. “Gary, how much work have you done with the staff since you got back from seeing Samaira?”

“None. Just checked to see if it was still there and if the security measures had detected any change. Why?”

Anya took a breath and thought of what she and Immonen had said. No ultimatums, just a request. See how talking it out would go.

“I think you’re right, we need a failsafe in case the Engineers try anything, and I think the staff is our best bet, if it can do what you say it can.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but,’ coming,” Gary said.

“But,” Anya continued, “I think going too far with it and using it beyond that is dangerous. Nobody should have the kind of power you’re suggesting. It’s just too much. And if you unlock it, somebody else might, or it might change you, or, fuck, I don’t know. It’s an evil alien relic and I’ve seen enough stories to know that messing with those never ends well. Frankly if we had any guarantee that the Engineers wouldn’t pull the plug on all of us I’d still vote for throwing it into the sun.”

Gary smirked and nodded.

“I can understand. Sort of. I’ll tell you what: blocking the Engineers and any kind of remote access will be the only thing I focus on. If I can figure that out…we’ll see. I’m mostly concerned with finding some kinda reliable FTL tech to get us off this rock. But…maybe that Vaastukaar guy or somebody else on Mars is having more luck than I am. Maybe if me and him can both get halfway there, we can work it out.”

“I’ll add it to the list of shit to do on Mars. But Gary, I’m serious. Please, not just for what unlocking that kind of power could do, but what it’s already doing to you, personally. You’ve been sitting down in that floating chair more than I’ve ever seen you sit in anything since we met, and I didn’t miss you clutching your side earlier.”

Gary sighed. “All right. Fine. I promise. No unlocking the mysteries of infinite power in the cosmos,” he said and raised his hands in mock surrender.

“And one more, while I’ve got you,” Anya said. Gary raised his bushy eyebrows with some amusement. “Go visit Samaira and Chell and Pan when I’m gone. They’re not going to understand what’s going on and I can’t tell them the real reason I’m leaving.”

“I can do that. My turn for favors though. Have you told anybody else about the staff?”

Anya bit her lip and nodded after a beat. “Yeah. I told Garreth.”

“I figured you would. That’s fine. He knows it’d be better if the governments of the world and Renn didn’t know about it. Pan already knows, but, well he’s not the sort to tattle, but I want you to take him to Mars with you.”

“Why?”

“First of all, he’d be so damn sad that you left I don’t think I could handle it. He’s probably gonna insist on going with you anyway. And I seem to recall him making you promise you’d never leave him behind again.”

Anya chuckled. “Is that it?”

“One more: promise me you’ll take care of yourself. If Renn, Corva, or anybody else looks like they’re gonna screw you over, you bail. You come back here and we work it out. Thinking about you lost or dead in space up there that last week of the invasion was…”

Gary trailed off and his voice broke a little. He took a deep breath and removed his glasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“Sorry, I’m just tired,” he said.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Anya said and hugged him. She couldn’t believe she’d been worried about Gary spying on her just yesterday. He gave her a hearty pat on the back.

“Just promise me you won’t get all gung-ho and try to take any more badguys on by yourself, okay?”

“Promise,” Anya said.

“All right. Enough of that. You have the unpleasant task of saying good-bye to a lot of people before you head into space. Again.”

“Probably not gonna be as nice as last time,” Anya sighed and left the lab with her arm across Gary’s shoulders.