I thought about all the things I’d done with the Old Man while he was in Blake’s body. How much I liked that guy—not Blake. And how it had horrified me to learn it was really the Old Man. I didn’t know how I could live with that. Now it turned out he wasn’t a creepy Ender after all, but a Starter. A Starter I thought I knew.
But who was he really? And could I trust him?
No matter what, there was one thing I knew. One thing I wanted. And it was true in spite of Hyden and his lie.
“We have to save my father,” I said. “So let’s go.”
“With him? Shouldn’t we cuff him?”
I thought about it for a second. “What good would he be to us then? We need all the help we can get against Brockman. I believe he hates his father. He’ll want to take him down as much as we do.”
We left Trax, still cuffed, lying on the backseat of his jeep. Before we took off on foot, I looked back at the mask lying on the desert floor. Random pixels were still pulsing, doing their sad dance for no one but the cacti and the stars.
The three of us still had a long walk to go across the hardened sandy soil to Brockman’s compound.
“Callie, talk to me,” Hyden said. “I know you must have a million questions.”
“I don’t talk to liars, you lying liar.”
“Come on, ask me anything,” he said. “I’m serious. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Where do I begin?” I shrugged. “How about what the heck was going through your mind? Why?”
“It isn’t what you think,” Hyden said. “I was trying to save the unclaimed Starters.”
“By turning them into permanent rental bodies?” I asked. “Putting them to sleep forever?”
“I was never going to do that. I just wanted the Enders to believe that. I was in complete control. I never would have let anyone hurt the Metals.”
I stopped to take this in. “But you used us. You sold our bodies for profit.”
“I had to establish the business to attract the rich Enders. And to get them used to switching bodies. Revolution isn’t cheap.”
“So you were going to kill the Enders?”
“Keep them in a deep sleep. Somebody had to do something,” he said. “I was going to set their alarm clocks for one minute after I made the world a better place.”
I tried to let this sink in, but it was the opposite of everything I had believed about the Old Man.
“I was going to find out where they kept their money so I could drain their bank accounts,” Hyden said.
“So you’re a thief,” I said.
“To use the money to finance change. To get the Starters out of the institutions and then disband that system altogether.”
“But you had nothing to do with Helena?”
“I was suspicious of her. I followed her and that’s when I met you. At Club Rune.”
“And you kept track of me so you could keep track of her.”
“Partly.”
“And you wanted to see what my altered chip could do.”
“Partly.”
“You wanted to see if I could kill. And I almost did.”
“But I also came to help you. To help save you.”
I glanced at Michael. He was walking with his hands in his pockets, just listening.
“What do you think, Michael? Would you trust him?”
“Are you kidding?” He pointed at Hyden. “He kidnapped your little brother and put a chip in his head!”
“I would never. That was Tinnenbaum, Trax, and a doctor under my father’s thumb.”
“How did you even get yourself in that position?” I asked. “Running Prime.”
“When my father wanted to sell off the research to the wrong people, I had to create an Ender identity to front Prime. And it worked. People believed I was an Ender. I was already wearing some protective gear. …”
“Because you were scared of being touched?” I asked.
He nodded. “I added more and created a disguise. But the whole reason Prime existed was to end the slavery of Starters.”
He stared off at the moon over the desert landscape. “But when you broke apart Prime, there went my plan.”
“How do I know you’re not working with your father now? He admitted that he was using the Old Man’s electronic voice.”
Hyden nodded. “That was him at the mall in your head. And ever since Prime came down.”
“Why would he do that?” Michael asked.
“To test it. He wanted to gain access to her chip, to map it. Once Prime fell, Trax gave him as much tech as he could get.”
“Testing,” I said.
“And messing with your head. Power plays,” Hyden said. “Because that’s what he does.”