SHAD POV

  Grandpa was in a meeting.

  "Get me in to see him as soon as possible," I told Coyote. "Cancel his next meetings."

  Coyote hesitated. "Are you sure this is wise?"

  "He needs to know everything I do as soon as possible."

  "We don't fully understand the situation," Coyote said.

  "Yes, we do. Sage is alive."

  "She's also involved with something we don't fully understand," Coyote pointed out. "We don't yet know what all that is. Perhaps you and I should look into it more. Your grandfather is not very reliable when it comes to..."

  "We're ending this conversation right now," I said. "Get me in to see him."

  Coyote sighed. "He"ll be clear in five minutes."

  I headed up, waiting until the staff officers left. I nodded to Major Armstrong as he came out.

  "We're going to need a couple of your teams in two days for an op," Armstrong said. "I'm sending the details over now."

  "No problem. Be glad to help out," I told him, and then pushed past into Grandpa's office.

  He was sitting behind his desk, looking tired, but not as beat down as he had a few weeks previous. "Mission go all right?"

  "Went fine," I said brusquely. "Had some intruders steal the bonus objectives out from under our nose."

  "I'm surprised at you, Shad. Usually, you're the one to steal from everyone else."

  "Yeah, I know." I hesitated. He must have seen something in my face as he looked me over.

  "I've been doing better," he told me calmly. "You don't need to worry about me."

  "It's not that," I said. I took a deep breath. "Coyote, show him the footage."

  I showed my grandfather the interaction with the mysterious strangers who had robbed us.

  "Interesting, that's who you lost to? I see they had a nasty effect, but— “

  “It's Sage." I blurted out.

  Grandpa went very still. He stared at me. "What?"

  "Sam told me he saw them when they had him on their side for a minute. He saw through their disguises. It's Sage and Colin. They're alive. I don't know how. Coyote has some theories. They're stuck deep inside this reality engine, but they're alive."

  Grandpa reached for something on his desk. His fingers slipped and the piece of petrified wood he’d been fooling with dropped down with a clunk.

  "Sage. Play that again," he ordered, and Coyote played it back.

  "It does look like her Mucking Out the Stalls," he allowed. "And I suppose that could be a lariat and a Tame, but are you sure?"

  "It took me some convincing too, but Sam swears he saw them and I don't know why he would say otherwise."

  "How?" Grandpa asked. "How could she be there all this time and she hasn't contacted us? She's let us think the worst."

  "Maybe she couldn't," I said. I didn't want to think that my sister had deliberately left us in the dark as to her survival. "Coyote says that they're not in the Dominator network, that they've made contact with a free fragment. Sam said Colin begged him not to say anything where the Dominators could find out."

  "Coyote," Grandpa said, "we need your advice on this."

  "I believe that what Shad says is true," Coyote said smoothly. "You two will need to figure out a way to contact her without giving it away to the enemy."

  "That's a big ask," Grandpa said. He picked up the picture on the desk of me and Sage just after we’d come to live with him. He stared at it for a long moment. "Alive," he whispered. "She's alive and trapped and we need to get to her."

  "I know."

  "Those are problems we can solve." He straightened up and spoke with more determination in his voice than I’d heard in weeks. “We need more info. We need to know where they are."

  "Remember that everything we learn, the Dominators can find out," Coyote said.

  Grandpa slammed his fist into the table. “Screw that. We've been going along with the Galactics’ plans for long enough. Let's figure out what we should be doing. Coyote, give us a summary of what's going on here. How does the Dominator network really work?"

  "This is a somewhat unique situation," Coyote said. "Generally, during an exploit, there is a single, unified Dominator working to control the Overmind. The Reality Engine Exploit Committee grants a charter to one or more corporations who agree to work in sync to tame the engine and bring it into civilized society." Coyote put an ironic twist to the word "civilized." "In this case, because the Overmind was woken up and fragmented before the attempt could begin, while the Reality Engine Exploitation Committee was still adjudicating various claims, we have multiple competing Dominator minds. The Committee has declared that all the various Dominators will work together in a single communications network. That allows for a somewhat level playing field. That means all our communication in and out of the Reality Engine is through the Dominator network. Hence, everything that you see, hear, and experience during trips into the Reality Engine is or could be monitored by anyone else in the network."

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  "How do they prevent espionage?" I asked curiously.

  "They do not. Everyone is assuming that everyone else can see what's going on. Hence, we have more head-to-head battles and fewer raids like the one you just interrupted."

  "Where do we stand on this exploit?" Grandpa asked.

  "At this point, 83% of the top-level Fragments have been harnessed by one or more Dominators. Our alliance with Leonardo has kept him intact, and we have been able to preserve several others. The rest are lost, enslaved to Dominators. It is unlikely we will be able to hold out against them forever, which is why Juana and I have been working on a plan to evacuate Leonardo and our other allies from the system when we go. The Ad Astra has the capacity to host several more Fragments of his size."

  "Good," I said. “Whoever Sage is allied with, we can offer them the same deal."

  "If we can even get in contact with them," Coyote said. "She must be at least one emulation layer down, possibly two. We believe there to be basically two layers more at which the Fragments have anything resembling sentiency. Below that is too fragmented and incoherent."

  "Where do you think she is?"

  "Since her team has been raiding up here on the surface, it is most likely they are in the second layer down at this point. They will be looking for a way to surface and make contact with us, that's almost certain. If they are allied with a Fragment, then they have some sort of escape plan. It would be wise of us to wait for them to contact us and then provide what assistance we can."

  Grandpa shook his head. "Not happening. What if they don't? Or if someone else gets to them first? We need to find them as soon as possible."

  "And so does the..." Coyote paused. "You’ll want to hear this," he added abruptly. "This is a recreation of a conversation that occurred between Dominator factions."

  The heads of six different major organizations, including Proxima, and Patriarch Kvaltash, appeared in front of us.

  "We have a trace on the Rogues," one of them was saying. "We should be able to follow them down and eradicate them."

  "You've been trying to get down into the second layer for weeks now, and we've told you no," another of the corporate heads retorted. "We're not letting you steal an advantage here."

  "It's barely an advantage. Those Fragments are hardly even worth conquering."

  "And yet, the Reality Engine is not done until we have taken them under control as well," the Proxima representative replied.

  Kvaltash spoke up. "We've had the Rogues interfere with two of our endeavors at this point. We're going to go after them now. I'm planning to hire mercenaries to clean them up."

  "And so will I,” Deneb’s rep said.

  “Very well," the Proxima representative said. "We will each be permitted to hire the equivalent of five standard mercenary squads. They will need to work together to eradicate these rogues. Once that is done, the wealth the rogues have stolen from us can be portioned back up based on who it was stolen from."

  “You're saying that because you lost the most. But you expect us to hire mercenary squads at our own cost?” Deneb, the representative demanded.

  "We could wait until they've stolen as much from you," snarled Proxima.

  I"d heard enough. "Cut it off," I told Coyote. "And get Veda on the phone immediately."

  Grandpa looked at me. "We can't tell her what's going on."

  "No," I said, "we can't. But we can try to get in there and stop them."

  A moment later, Veda popped up. She looked harried and upset.

  "Shad, General Twofeather, it's good to see you again, but I'm very busy right now."

  "We've heard about the rogues," I said, cutting her off. "We're here to offer our services cheap.”

  “I’ve got several teams already planning to go up against them."

  "Send us instead," I urged.

  She paused and looked at me, her expression changing from weariness to puzzlement. "Why would you care?"

  "I can’t talk about it."

  Veda's eyes narrowed. "You've got a scheme, don't you? And it's probably going to cost me. I already went out on a limb for Misfits, and look where it got me."

  "Yeah, in charge of a whole exploit with a brand new way of running things,” I pointed out.

  "There is that," she agreed. "But I don't want to lose this gig. A couple more exploits, I’ll have my debt paid off and I can retire wherever I want."

  "This is important," I told her. “We’ll do our best to make sure Proxima gets its property back."

  "I'm going to regret this,” she sighed. "Alright, listen, you guys made a decent impression, I can probably take three squads. This better be worth it, Shad. I'm sticking my neck out here for you."

  "Thanks," I told Veda. "I'll have Juana talk to you about contract details. When is the operation planned?"

  “Four hours."

  "We’ll be there." I cut off the connection.

  "What are you thinking?" Grandpa said. "Are we screwing her over again?"

  "I just want to get Colin and Sage some help, if I can. I don't know what I'm going to do. I just can't let them all go after Sage without at least trying to help."

  "Let's get Juana up here and have her write a contract so we don't get screwed over when it happens," Grandpa told me.

  We brought Juana up and read her in. When I told her Sage was alive but trapped, her eyes filled with tears. She grabbed me and hugged me tight.

  "Shad, I'm so glad. What can I do to help?"

  I explained to her the situation and what I wanted to do. "We need a way to make it so we're covered legally."

  Her eyes flashed. "That's a pretty tall order." I could tell she was already thinking about the problem. “We're almost certain to get adjudicated over it. We're going to need plausible deniability."

  "I think I can get us that," I told her. "I'm going to tell the Gamers the score.”

  "The more people you tell, the higher the chance of being found out," she warned me.

  "I know, but this is worth it."

  "When do you need the contract?"

  I checked the time. "Four hours from now."

  "Four hours?" she practically shrieked. Then she took a deep breath, smoothed her hair out of her face, and nodded. "Alright. In that case, you're going to have to get down to Mama's and pick up Mila. Mama has an evening mass she's going to tonight."

  "Can't you take Mila along?" I protested. "I've got to find the kids and brief them."

  "Take Mila. I'll meet you down there and pick her up before it's time for you to head out,” Juana promised.

  "Send her up here," Grandpa said, contradicting me. "I'm going to be clearing my decks because I'm not in any shape to handle things until I hear from you again. I'm off duty. Unless something really big comes up," he fixed me with a look. "It's your job to make sure it doesn't."

  "Now, get out of here," Juana said. "I need time to think and get some legal stuff written."

  I gave her a salute. "Yes, sir!"

  She stuck her tongue out at me, but she'd already co-opted a corner of Grandpa's desk and was clearly already a thousand miles away, deep in alien paperwork.

  By the time I collected Mila from Mama Grace and brought her back to Grandpa, Juana had gone back to her own office to draft the agreement and send it over to Veda. I hugged Mila, turned her over to Grandpa, and beat it down to the assembly bay, where my team was already assembled.

  "Sorry to call you back so soon," I told the Gamers.

  Sam was looking uncomfortable, but the rest didn't seem to think anything was amiss.

  "What's up?" Rose asked cheerfully.

  "We're going to have a couple more teams in here in fifteen minutes, and we're not talking about any of this with them," I said briefly. "Colin is alive. Sam saw him today. That's who you were up against. Now we're dropping down into the level where they've been hiding out. There's a coalition-wide force that's out to smoke them out and kill them if possible. You're going to stop that."

  I gave them a minute to react. Rose shrieked. Amber burst into tears. Sam was quietly nodding to himself, while Pete looked thunderstruck. Only Alpha seemed in control of herself.

  "You're certain?"

  "Positive," I told her.

  "Then what is it we need to do?" I liked that about her. Crisp and businesslike.

  "What you're going to do," I said, "is defect. But you've got to do it in a way that doesn't reflect back on us. So here's what I'm thinking. I'm counting on Colin to behave the way I expect, which may not actually turn out how we want."

  Everyone laughed. If there was one thing you could depend on Colin for, it was throwing you for a loop. But that was exactly what I was counting on. By the time my other two squads arrived, full of more normal contractors who I could count on in a pinch, the gamers were raring to go.