I shrugged, “No idea, but I’m hoping that time travel only spins off a new universe now.”

“Hey,” Rachel said over the comm, “everybody’s exiting through the back doors. I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”

I checked the stand of trees where Rook’s backup group had been standing. They’d started running and then took to the air.

I thought through things Rook might be doing that would require people to evacuate the room. As angry as he’d been, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d ordered all his people to swarm us after he left.

One terrible and obvious possibility came to mind, “Rook might be about to nuke the building… I’m not sure if his urge to acquire technology is stronger than his need for vengeance, but—“

“Let’s bet on vengeance,” Jaclyn said. “Remember Rook’s base in Canada?”

We all did.

I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that he’d used an actual nuclear bomb because I hadn’t gone back to check radiation levels, but I did know the explosion had wiped his base from the face of the planet.

“Go,” Rachel said, “I’ll phase out. Don’t wait for me. Don’t even wait for me to stop talking. Leave.”

Watching her icon blink, I said, “Phasing works, right?”

“Yes. Go!” She stopped talking.

Jaclyn pointed toward the door, “I’ll grab Shift. You grab Cap.”

No explanation was needed. We were the fastest way out for everyone. I turned toward Cassie to find she’d turned on her anti-gravity pack and was floating toward me.

I activated the program that extended handles on the Rocket suit’s sides that I’d designed for this situation. When she said, “Ready,” I activated the rocket pack on my back, throwing us forward.

We’d left the door open, so at least I didn’t have to think it open again. I did think it shut, hoping that it might act as a buffer.

This was Artificer technology. Xiniti reports in my implant described hitting Artificer installations with fusion bombs to no noticeable effect. They’d been successful other times, so I didn’t feel like sitting around and assuming everything would be fine.

From what the Xiniti had recorded, it was far from impossible that a bomb would kill everything inside, and then all the Artificer tech would recreate the place as if nothing happened, even removing the radiation.

That was a nice trick that might be worth reverse engineering.

It wasn’t as if I had time to do it, much less stay and observe the effects. We shot down the hall, Jaclyn running and me following in the air. When we reached the room we’d entered the complex through, the animals ran in all directions to avoid us.

We had to stop at the door as I found the controls in my mind, choosing the one that seemed most like the door control I’d operated inside. There were more. Maybe I could have figured out what they did, but I didn’t have the time.

I had time to close the door as we left and called Hal, “We’re going to need an immediate pickup. There might be a nuke in the building.”

“I’m within a short distance. I placed the chance that Rook would explode the building at approximately 69%,” Hal replied over the comm.

The ground rumbled. I felt it through my boots where I’d landed next to Jaclyn. All of us—Jaclyn, Marcus, Cassie, and I—looked at each other, Jaclyn asked, “Do you think we’re far enough away?”

We hadn’t stopped directly outside. We were at least a mile out.

“I doubt it,” I said, “but we still have to go back, and… Here comes the jet.”

It uncloaked as it landed on the ground between us and the complex—not much help if the explosion were strong enough to blow it at us, but that wasn’t likely.

The hatch dropped open and we ran inside as the jet cloaked itself again. I reached out with my implant to the jet’s systems, learning that the cloak was currently set to act as a shield at the 50% setting, which was good enough for now. No need to go to 100% and get practically shut off from the universe for now.

Checking the sensors, I found that Rook’s ships were flying upward and away from Mars. This was good on a couple of levels. For one, it meant that they didn’t have any idea where we’d entered the complex. For another, it meant they hadn’t detected the cloaked jet.

I sat down at the pilot console, finding that Cassie had sat down at the weapons console. “Hey,” I looked back toward Marcus and Jaclyn, “we still have to go back for Ghost, but we’ve got another problem, we were coming here to use a device that might detect where Lee hid the connection portal on Earth and Rook just nuked the building. On the off-chance that he took the device, I’m thinking we follow them back. If nothing else, we’ll find Rook’s current base.”

“Rocket,” Marcus began and I saw why in my HUD. Gouts of smoke spewed out of the Artificer complex. I couldn’t help but note that the side we’d come out of seemed to be fine, but Rook’s bombs appeared to have made holes elsewhere.

I hoped Rachel was okay and wondered how much of this was visible from Earth. The smoke billowed out, but it wasn’t as if there’d been an explosion.