He’s desperate. He’s scared. And desperate, scared people do desperate, scared things: like murder their problems.

I’m Crixus’s problem.

His grip on my arm grows tighter with each stalking step.

“How did you get out of that medical ward?” He grinds out the question like shoving it through a mouthful of rocks.

My body stops moving of its own accord. Crixus gives a tug, then stops.

“You locked me in the high-rise with Luc’s father?” This doesn’t make sense. Crixus is in Tenebra. He’s been trapped here for likely months. How could he wake up in the Real World?

“You clearly got out.” He doesn’t sound pleased that I saved his precious Emperor’s father. This means Crixus knew I was in the high-rise and somehow managed to travel to the cabin and connected himself to my LifeSuPod within the span of an hour. He expected me to die. He tried to keep me out of that LifeSuPod so he could steal it.

I yank my kris dagger from my belt as furious emotions build like a swirling hurricane. Crixus looks almost bored as he pulls out his own gladius.

“Really, Cain?”

A dagger against a gladius is like a spoon versus a carving knife. But it takes a mere second of reliving how I felt when I found Crixus in my LifeSuPod to ignite my rage. I let the memory crash over me. Crash out of me.

Nightmist spills from my fingers like a tipped cauldron and pools on the dirt, taking form.

Crixus pays no attention, only asks, “So you saved him then? Galilei?”

“Obviously.” It’s too much. Crixus has been at Luc’s side this whole time. It’s so cliché, the right-hand man betraying his leader. Crixus probably wants the throne or something equally predictable. “You’re clearly not loyal to him, yet you do his bidding.”

He levels me with a direct stare. “The Emperor can’t know.”

“That you’re in my LifeSuPod? That I saved his dad? That you can wake up?” My eyes widen. “You’re a Spore.”

Of course. I was working for Luc, which means I was Crixus’s enemy.

“You know nothing.”

My nightmist solidifies into a lumbering troll, club and loincloth and all. There is no color to its form: it’s black with swirling shadows and sections of its body are still transparent. I grin, equally surprised and pleased by my unintentional creation. My nerd self is coming out. It’s about time.

“You can’t blame me for ignorance when you and everyone else continue to keep knowledge from me.” Ironically, the only person who’s consistently given me answers since I arrived in Tenebra is Luc.

Sensing my irritation, the troll looks dumbly around for a moment, then stomps toward Crixus in an attack. I cringe as the oaf tries to locate Crixus beneath his huge, awkward body. Maybe my nerd should have stayed hidden. Crixus actually has time to roll his eyes before he thrusts his mistblade gladius upward beneath the troll’s ribs and into his heart.

A single groan and the creature is felled like a tree, shaking the earth beneath our feet upon impact.

So much for that.

“You’re really going to fight me, Cain?”

“‘Fight for yourself, first and foremost,’” I say, quoting him. “Someone told me that’s the only way to stay alive.”

“You took it to the extreme.” This time he doesn’t wait for me to create a nightmist creature. He leaps at me, gladius raised. I throw up my dagger but dodge at the last moment. I don’t want to try to stop a strike like that with a dagger. I’m likely to lose a hand.

Nightmist bursts out of me in desperation, putting a broadsword in my hand and forming a giant Minotaur with an axe. The Minotaur towers several feet above both of us and looks far more aware and fierce than my troll. It turns its eyes on Crixus and snorts, scuffing its hooves in the dirt.

But I don’t want to kill Crixus. Not yet.

No, I tell myself, not at all. I want enough of a breather to get answers. If he is an Adelphoi, shouldn’t we be on the same side?

The Minotaur doesn’t seem to understand the complexity of my desires. It lunges with a decapitating swipe at Crixus’s head.

“Slow down!” I holler. It doesn’t listen—doesn’t even seem to hear me.

Crixus quickly drops and rolls around the Minotaur’s feet, coming up at its back, but the Minotaur spins and punches him in the face. Crack. A broken nose.

Crixus falls to the dirt, but that doesn’t keep him down. He’s back on his feet, wiping blood away from his eyes and lifting his gladius to meet a strike from the Minotaur’s axe.

“I’m not your enemy, Crixus.” Poor timing on my part for such a statement as Crixus takes another hit from the Minotaur. This guy’s like Boromir with two arrows in him. The third is about to strike.

The Minotaur lifts his axe above his head, and while I do believe Crixus might be able to block or dodge or something, I leap between them with my own broadsword and knock the axe out of the Minotaur’s hands.

“Stand down,” I order the creature.

It doesn’t look happy about the command, but it drops its arms and steps aside. Crixus is already back on his feet, responding to my previous statement.

“You want me to trust you, Cain?” He laughs. “One moment you’re saving the Emperor’s father, the next you’re running off to the Spore base.”

“I was trying to save Stranna.”

“Who?”

“Stranna.” I’m thrown by the fact that he doesn’t recognize her name. “Someone I know.” Someone I want to know better. Someone Crixus, if he really were an Adelphoi, should know.

“You claim to want to save Spore children and this person you know, but you left a high-rise filled with dying people.”

“Is that what this is about?” Me ignoring his request to locate other people in the high-rise? “Look, I’m sorry that whoever you care about is stuck in that high-rise, but since you can apparently return to the Real World, you could have saved them yourself.”

“It was me!” Crixus bursts out and swings his gladius. I meet it with a clang from my broadsword. The Minotaur snorts, waiting for permission to join the fight, but Crixus doesn’t attack again.

“I was in the high-rise, fading away in a dead LifeSuPod.”

He’s breathing hard. For the first time I see his emotions flare.

“I’ve been Luc’s man since the beginning of all of this. He set me up in that LifeSuPod, yet when power was cut to the high-rise he didn’t once talk about rescuing me. Instead he offered the one remaining LifeSuPod to you—a stranger. A nobody who happened to have a lot more Sleeps lefts than the rest of us.”

His story explains a lot. Why he wanted me to consider other people in the high-rise. Why he tried to get Luc to change his mind about powering up the high-rise.

I put distance between us. “Why go through all of that when you could wake up and save yourself?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“So everyone keeps telling me,” I say drily. “You have to die first.”