Ellen hated the plan.

  Partially, she hated it because, for all that it put Bob in check, it wasn’t final. He had moves he could make. Ways to maneuver himself out of Kade’s sister’s trap. It’d cost him, but he was too good at business for a sixteen-year-old to beat him permanently—not even if they got lucky.

  But mostly, she hated it because she was stuck at the GC headquarters hospital, with Sophia, while her friends put themselves on the line for her. She had to be out of the way, in a secure place, until the paperwork was filed and Bob knew he was beaten. Until then, he could apply pressure to her and counter the whole thing. That wasn’t Kade’s choice, or Jessie’s. It was hers. She knew she might fold if Bob threatened the right people.

  So, the moment Jessie’s text hit her phone, she powered it off and left it in Yasmin’s apartment, then took a bus downtown.

  Ellen would owe them for this—and the whole point of the plan was to remove her debt, not to add to it. But she’d come to terms with it. The four of them—Jessie, Kade, Jeff, and Yasmin—were safer creditors than Bob. They wouldn’t exploit her or force her into bad situations because she owed it to them. She’d do that herself, without their help. And that was fine.

  She focused on the immediate, not on the longer term. Here and now, not later. Distractions were important in moments like this, when everything was out of her control. And the poster in her hand and the sticky, pre-cut tape were a distraction.

  Sophia’s room at the GC hospital was… nice.

  Sophia sat on the bed. It was really a mattress without a frame. The sink was made out of a kind of plastic that folded if you put too much pressure on it, and the toilet in the other room was padded. The GC had experience working with healers going through exactly what Sophia was, and their facility reflected that. But while it was babyproofed and padded, it wasn’t impersonal.

  Ellen had delivered a bunch of Sophia’s stuff—everything she could while following the strict guidelines the therapists had given her—and they were decorating while they waited. Well, Ellen was decorating while Sophia told her what to do.

  “So, you’re planning on moving in here longer-term?” Ellen asked.

  “Kind of. They say I’ll be able to delve again after a few daily sessions, but this is my third strike.” Sophia smiled from the bed. When Ellen raised an eyebrow, she continued happily. “That means I’m eligible to be a full-time resident here and keep delving. Uh, healers are…”

  She trailed off, and Ellen picked up where she’d left off. “Valuable.”

  “Fragile. I was going to say we’re fragile. But yes, that too. It’s in the GC’s interests to keep us happy and healthy. So, after three breakdowns, we get put on the list, and as long as we’re on the list…”

  Ellen waved a hand at the off-white walls and the bed. “You get this?”

  “Yep. If we want it, and I do.”

  “Got it. Where do you want this poster again?”

  As Sophia directed her decorating efforts from the bed, all Ellen could do was play along—play along, and wait for news from Kade, Jessie, or someone else. Anyone else.

  I expected Jessie.

  I didn’t expect Jessie, escorted by a handful of Bob’s security people, their hands suspiciously far away from their guns. Not one of them looked comfortable and in control, and every single one of them was trying as hard as they could to shrink into nothing—or at least, appear as non-threatening as they could. The GC rep badge in Jessie’s hand explained part of it.

  The other half of the explanation was the reporter—or at least, I assumed he was a reporter from the notepad and tape recorder. No cameraman, but the man following Jessie looked pale, a little sick, and very determined to position somewhere he could take everything in with his too-thick glasses.

  “Hi, Jessie,” I said.

  Checkmate.

  “Hi, Kade.” Jessie sat in the chair I’d vacated, undid the lock on her suitcase, and set identical—but signed—copies of the same paperwork I’d shown Bob on the desk. “Mr. Traynor, you have a choice to make.”

  “And I’m supposed to listen to a fourteen-year-old?”

  “Sixteen. And no. You’re supposed to listen to the Governing Council, as represented by me. That’s what the badge is for. Now, you have a choice to make. You can fight this. It’ll be messy. Your legal team will probably win, but some of these allegations will destroy your guild for months or years. Others will ruin your relationships with businesses across Phoenix. And if it gets to other cities—and it will—it’ll compromise the deals you’re trying to make. Portal weapons, for one thing.”

  “Ellen…never did understand proprietary information and confidentiality,” Bob growled.

  “Or,” Jessie said without missing a beat, “You can confess to it all, pay a fine, and try to keep everything going. I’d prefer this option, personally. Nothing you’ve done has technically been illegal enough to put you in prison. Immoral? Unethical? Corrupt? Absolutely. But not bad enough. It’ll destroy your reputation, but you can probably keep enough of the corporation going to stay in your house and continue hosting your parties for anyone who’s still willing to come.”

  I stared at Jessie. She was off-script. What was she doing? The plan required Bob to be off balance and to have only two options. The longer Jessie talked, the more chaotic and out of control the situation got, and the more likely Bob was to find a way out of check. But I couldn’t say anything. All I could do was wait it out.

  “Or, third, you can sign this form, legally severing Ellen from both the Traynor family and corporation, agreeing to pay nineteen point three million dollars into a fund for her, and cutting contact between you. You can also immediately put the Traynor guild team on reserve for two to three months so their cores can stabilize. And in return, all of this goes away.”

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  Jessie stopped talking, the one-page paper held out in her hand for Bob to take. The reporter’s recorder hummed slightly; other than that, Bob’s office was absolutely silent.

  I waited. There were no more moves to make. Either Bob had a way out of checkmate—either Jessie had given him something he could use—or he didn’t. But this wasn’t my show anymore. It was hers.

  The math was simple.

  Governing Council Representative Jessica Gerald had overplayed her hand, and Robert Traynor knew it. She’d overextended. There was a fourth option, and it was the one Bob would be taking.

  Chess was his game. It had been for a long time. He’d briefly been an International Master before the Portal Blitz, and he still kept up on the game’s theory. Kade Noelstra, Jessica Gerald, and Eleanor had put together a good game, with a solid ending gambit.

  But they’d blundered at the end, and Bob was nothing if not merciless when it came to blunders.

  “I believe I will take—“

  Bob’s voice cut off suddenly. His eyes flicked to the third monitor—the one that had been following his harvesting team. It had changed to a news broadcast. One of his news channels, not Channel Fourteen. He usually watched his rival, because as much as he wanted to be in control of the news, it was more useful to hear what his enemies were saying than what his friends were being told to say. But in this case, the keywords he’d asked his infomonitoring AI to alert him to were all over the screen.

  Governing Council. S-Rankers. Monster Eaters. Wickenberg. It was all there. He flicked his eyes to it briefly, then back to Jessica Gerald’s face while he watched the screen and subtitles from the corner of his eye.

  Inside, his thoughts were screaming.

  Carlsbad Fortress was overrun. S-Rank monsters roamed the desert outside of Phoenix. The strike team and Carlsbad’s surviving higher ranks hadn’t been able to stop them. Phoenix itself almost certainly wasn’t in danger—at least not in the immediate term—but the economic implications of what he was seeing were…

  Disturbing? Troubling? Shocking?

  Sure, all of those things. But also…profitable.

  The chess match was far from over. Kade, Eleanor, and their friends thought they’d taken his king, but they didn’t realize that his board was much bigger than theirs. If he could execute his next gambit against the Overholz people in San Diego, he could position himself as the strongest player in Phoenix’s economic and political world—stronger than even the delving guilds or the Governing Council.

  Compared to that, Eleanor was worthless. He could find someone else to watch over her younger sister and make sure the Traynor Corporation stayed strong and healthy.

  “I believe I will accept your victory, Representative Gerald,” he said quietly.

  Something was wrong.

  Bob was giving up? I hadn’t expected that—not when he had moves left on the board. We were missing something. He had a different way out, one that was better for him than any of our three options and that would leave us in a position of weakness, or maybe even make us lose. I tensed. Not that Jeff, Yasmin, or I could do anything. Our whole role in the plan had been to keep Bob in one place until Jessie could checkmate him, and she’d messed it up. Now he was—

  He reached for a gold-plated pen, plucked the paper from Jessie’s hand, and read over it. “You had a lawyer word this. Good work. Looks ironclad to me.” Then the pen signed his name across the bottom, along with a date.

  “Make sure Eleanor signs that within twenty-four hours, or there’s a good chance a decent lawyer could throw it out as an invalid signature. You won’t want that.” Bob’s hand didn’t leave the form. His other one reached out. “I’ll want both copies of the paperwork you’ve filed, and I’ll want to know that you’ve withdrawn your suit within forty-eight hours. Otherwise, this agreement is null.”

  The pen flashed across the bottom, scrawling a note to that effect in Bob’s handwriting. Then, as Jessie shakily piled up the paperwork we’d both brought and handed it to Bob, he pushed the single most important form toward me. He fed the extras into his shredder. It hummed and crackled, and the copies of our suits vanished.

  But that didn’t matter. What did matter was that we’d won. And we’d done it without firing a shot—or swinging a sword.

  We retreated, the single form we needed in my briefcase. Jessie didn’t say anything until Deimos started up five minutes later—the reporter had elected to wait for a cab. Then, as the drum-and-bass filled the cabin, she cleared her throat. “Got him.”

  “You almost messed it up,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t. I knew exactly what was going to happen—at least, within a couple of minutes of it happening. Kade, did you know Angelo Lawrence has been back in Phoenix for three days? They were having a full council meeting tonight—an emergency meeting—before he heads out into the field again. When I went to the news with our supposed bombshell lawsuit, it wasn’t even worth giving me an executive to talk to. I had to force them to listen. They were all focused on the GC instead.”

  “And?” I asked. She’d still messed up the plan.

  “And Angelo Lawrence and the other S-Rankers lost.”

  “So, what do you propose?” Councilman Anders asked.

  Angelo stood before the assembled delvers and unawakened humans. His wounds ached. He’d give anything to be sitting; only the sheer mass of bandages was keeping blood from soaking through his second suit of the day. But now wasn’t the time. What he’d seen…what he’d had to do to save the lives he had…

  Angelo Lawrence wasn’t a patient man. He was the kind of man who took action when it was time, and only let things go on as long as they needed to—and no longer. The one exception was Deborah Callahan, because as much of a thorn in his side as she could be, she was useful—and because her treachery was entertaining. His first instinct was to assemble the rest of Phoenix’s strongest delvers and march across the sands, lay siege to the no-doubt occupied Carlsbad Fortress, and unleash a Fusion-based hell upon the caverns, then push every delver he could find into the portal until the boss inside died and the threat was over.

  But that wasn’t possible. There was only one solution. To wait. To delay. To hope the S-Rank portal wouldn’t keep growing in strength before they could assemble the proper force to destroy it. And to begin assembling that force—while covering their backs so they didn’t return to a Phoenix aflame.

  “I propose a two-part solution. In the immediate term, we shut down all traffic to the east of Phoenix. We put out feelers to attempt to bring the Monster Eaters and any other people into our walls—or into Tucson’s if necessary. We strengthen defenses around both the Wickenberg Portal Break and the farms it waters to secure our food supply. And we prepare for a siege,” Angelo said.

  There was silence. Angelo had expected it. He let it hang, acting more patiently than he felt. When he was sure no one would interrupt him, he continued. “The 303 Wall will hold. It has been prepared for this. We will defend it, and that will be enough for the next couple of months.”

  “What’s the second part?” Councilwoman Myers asked.

  “Yeah, we can’t just wait and do nothing,” one of the Carlsbad S-Rankers said.

  “I agree,” Angelo Lawrence said.

  He took a breath. This next part would be messy, but it had to be done. “I believe the time has come to close the Fallen Delvers Memorial Portal, kill the boss inside, and claim its power for ourselves.”

  Outrage. Immediate outrage. It bordered on fury. In another time, Angelo would have been tarred and feathered, or executed, for such heresy. Instead, he merely had to wait for three minutes until Councilman Anders regained control of the room. “Angelo, explain yourself,” the big ex-delver demanded.

  Angelo explained himself.

  The room went silent. Then it exploded in even more chaos, and this time, Councilman Anders couldn’t regain control.

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