I couldn’t argue with him, but if I had to bet what Ray’s orders were, I’d have bet that they were to kill or delay us. That meant that we needed to take him down.

  The problem would be coordinating with Prentkos. If Ray had Izzy’s hearing, he’d hear everything and Prentkos didn’t have a League communicator.

  Then another thought struck me. What if absorbing energy worked on Ray the same way it worked on Prentkos? Spark had said that everyone Ray brought through here was descended strongly enough from Artificers that they could develop into them given time.

  If I taught Ray how to remove Magnus’ commands, I might be able to trust him to a degree.

  Of course, if any actions that he made while fighting us had been directed by the Nine, I might be screwing up my own past. On the whole though, when I thought about Ray’s actions back then, he’d betrayed Sean, his father, and the rest of that group without a thought. He’d never seemed to be entirely on the same page as Prime either and when Lee led our group to capture the Cabal’s soldiers, he’d abandoned them without a thought. In fact, he appeared to have been working for Syndicate L the entire time.

  At any rate, he’d been planning to deliver me to them as a captive inventor. He hadn’t made much of an effort to save them either after things went wrong.

  The overall picture of his actions struck me as self-interest from one end to the other. Wiping whatever Colette had left in his head might be essential to making Ray the wild card that the League’s mutual past needed.

  “Well,” Ray said, watching me, waiting for any sign that we’d attack, “what will it be? Are we going to help each other or am I going to have to follow my orders to kill you?”

  Prentkos adjusted his stance so that his legs bent, the left leg ahead of the right. It was subtle. He wasn’t bending over as if he were about to sprint forward, but he was ready. He wasn’t the only one. I’d realized how I’d take Ray out if I had to.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “You know what?” I held my hands in the air. “Let’s not fight. I think we can help each other.”

  I don’t know what he expected I’d say, but even though he’d nodded and said, “Good,” his eyes narrowed, flicking from me to Prentkos.

  Maybe he’d noticed Prentkos’ stance change too.

  Remembering that Jody had been programmed to kill himself if we figured out that he’d been modified, I said, “Step one to keeping you from dying is teaching you to use the machine we’re currently inside. It will provide you power if you learn how to draw on it. I can show you how.”

  Nodding Prentkos’ direction, I added, “I showed him how less than 10 minutes ago.”

  Prentkos frowned as he looked over at me, “Are you sure about this?”

  “Pretty sure,” I said.

  Prentkos shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  It may have been that hint of division that sold Ray on trusting me.

  He nodded and stepped forward, closing the 20 foot gap he’d created when he landed. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me how to draw on this.”

  He flicked his hand outward at the madness around us.

  “Sure,” I said. “It starts with breathing. You breathe in through the nose and let it out through the mouth. When you do, imagine yourself drawing in energy.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What is this? Yoga? Because I have zero interest in that shit.”

  “Not yoga,” I said. “You’re inside alien technology, but you have the potential to use it yourself. I’m telling you how. If you can connect to it, you can survive a lot.”

  He stared at me, his expression somewhere between a scowl and a sneer. He looked around as if watching for something and said, “Sure. I’ll try it.”

  I extended my Artificer senses and reached out to the Core device, making life support available to Ray. Then I watched as he drew in a breath, followed by a few more.

  I could see it as the energy near him began to flow in. He turned toward me, eyes wide, asking, “What’s going on?”

  “Keep on drawing it in,” I said.

  Prentkos stepped closer to me and said in a low voice, “I still don’t trust him. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Part of me wanted to say, “I don’t, but this makes sense right now.”

  It might not later.

  I saw the moment when Ray reached “critical mass,” the moment where enough of his consciousness existed outside his physical body that any changes Colette had made to his mind no longer mattered.

  With a whistling breath that made me wonder if he was dying, all the energy disappeared at once, and he groaned, clutching his head with his hands.

  “What was that?” He stared at me, the metal of his Rolex glinting.

  “You’re free of Magnus’ influence,” I said.