After I escorted Hel to the door, and saying my polite goodbyes, I turned and eyed Helen, who hadn’t followed her out.

  “ I help you with something else?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Actually, yes. I wao discuss the situation a little more,” Helen replied, pletely unphased. “We both did.” She said, gesturing to Sharron.

  I raised an eyebrow at the other woman, who just nodded. “Fi better be important,” I muttered.

  While we were standing around, Jane finally emerged from the back. She froze as soon as she saas with me. “Out!” she hissed, pointing at the garage.

  “I know, I know, we’re going,” I replied as I led the other two women to the garage.

  “What was that about?” Helen asked as she followed me into the cavernous space.

  “You,” I grumbled. “If you MAY remember, you had your minions kidnap my little brother a couple months ago, and, surprisingly, my family hasly fiven you.” I stopped in the middle of the area and leaned on one of the deactivated bears. “her have I,” I scowled.

  “Well… when you put it that way, I’m surprised you eve me inside in the first pce,” Helen replied sheepishly.

  “I didly have a ton of choices. I literally wasn’t informed that you were ing until you were right outside my door. Hel had obviously e a long way to talk to me, so I wasn’t going to kick you out the instant you arrived… but there’s nothing preventing me from doing it now, so stop pretending you’re sorry and tell me what you really want,” I snapped.

  Helen’s apologetic look fell away, and her face returur, slightly cocky expression. “If you insist.” She turned, found a nearby piece of junk, and sat down. “So you heard from Hel that the Family is split, right? Some still want to support the corporations, but not all?” I nodded slightly, unsure where she was going with this. “Well, Sharron and I kind of represent the sed group.”

  I turned my judging gaze on Sharron. “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” she said defensively. “It’s just oals aligned with each other. There are actually a few samurai that agree with us. We were just the only two that had the time to e talk to you.”

  “You could have e alone,” I told Sharron. “You didn’t her!”

  “I volunteered,” Helen expined. “I figured that if I came all the way to talk to you, it might impress upon you how dire the situation was.”

  “So… what IS the situation? What exactly do you want?” I asked.

  “To recruit you to our side!” Helen chirped. My eyes narrowed, and I fought off the urge to sick my bears on her.

  “What she means is,” Sharron started, steppiween Helen and me. “While some of the local samurai seem tent to support the existing regime, a lot of us don’t give a shit about the corporate board.”

  “Okay…” I said slowly. “You have my attention.”

  “Even though some of the city's defenses pletely rely upon the corps for funding or supply, not all of them do. We want to figure out ways to augment, or improve, those autonomous defenses so if worst es to worst we still protect the people without the corps’ diretervention,” Helen expined.

  “Is that even possible? I thought the board rahing?” I asked.

  “They direct the city’s policies and collect the taxes to keep things running, but they don’t trol everything. There are hundreds of smaller corps iy. The Green Edge, for example, supplies the majority of food to the city, but their profits are tiny pared to the rge glomerates,” Sharron said.

  “And it’s a good thing too. Sihe sabotage focused on the board, things like food, water, and power have remained pletely uninterrupted the st few months,” Helen added.

  “So what’s your pn? Rely upon these smaller corps to pick up the sck?” I asked.

  Helen shook her head. “No, we’d probably just end up in the same p the long run, with defehat directly rely on specific corporate entities. We want a sedary defense grid indepe from them.”

  “How…” I asked. “The amount of time and resources to set something like that up would be… exorbitant.”

  “Believe it or not, we have a pretty good start. Barricade pushed an ordihrough a few years ag all new buildings to have both power es and foundations for AA guns on their roofs. He had a crew going around building these instaltions twenty-four-seven. Low caliber stuff, but effective against smaller models. In addition to that, the Family has data es to all the big guns iy. It’s not supposed to be direct trol, only status updates,” Sharron expined.

  “And it was… until Zetta and Bright-Eyes spent the st forty-eight hours doing some light… system updates,” Helen said with a smile.

  My eyes narrowed again. “Is that legal?”

  Sharron smiled. “Acc to the city? All major instaltions should be trolled by the board, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  “So… Why do you need me?” I finally asked. “I’m sure you were aware that I’d be an easy sell on this pn of yours, even before you showed up. I don’t want to see i people die, but you must have e to me for a reason.” I gnced betweewo women. “What is it?”

  Sharron sighed. “lenty of automated aircover, but we still o rely on the PMCs to isote the incursion; we don’t have any ground units of our own,” she expined.

  “And I do,” I finished. “I already itted seven hundred bears to the defenses, isn’t that enough?” I asked.

  “Holy? Probably not, we’d need enough forces to pletely surround the incursion, and the city had over two thousand troops, along with several hundred armored vehicles, and even a half-dozen super-heavy tanks to back them up. What we were worried about was you didn’t give up trol of the bears to the Family, or city, did you?” Helen asked.

  I stared at the woman for a long moment. “Even if I could do that, I never would. The bears are ected directly to me and my anders,” I said. “Why the fuck would I give up trol to someone else?”

  “I told you!” Sharron smirked.

  “We had to be sure!” Helen shot back. “So we rely upon you to back us up if things go south?” Helen asked.

  “I would have deployed the bears even if you hadn't asked,” I assured her.

  “Great!” Helen smiled—maybe the first real smile I’d ever seen her make. “Then we’re not i shape, but at least we have something. I’ll send you an io the discussion group, so you see who’s involved arack of the initiatives.”

  I gave her a small smile iurn, “Grand.”

  The three of us stood there, in unfortable silence, for a long minute. “Well… I should probably get out of your hair and che with the others. Thanks for your support, Teddy, I appreciate it,” Helen finally said.

  She started heading back towards the residence, so I grabbed her wrist. “Not that way,” I said, as I pulled her towards one of the garage doors. I politely waved goodbye wheepped out, and the instant the door closed, I turned on Sharron. “Expin what just happened here,” I snapped. “Why did y her here?”

  “Making sure we had a plete defensive grid we could access separate from the Board was her idea,” Sharron said. “And she’s been the one pushing everyoo get it done.”

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  Sharron shrugged. “Who knows? Remember how she was afraid that an incursion could hit the uy before and that she wouldn’t be able to tain it? Maybe this is some sort of extension of that? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter too much why. She’s had some good ideas, and by implementing them, the city’ll be a safer pce,” she expined. “Holy, I volunteered to talk to you alone, but she insisted on ing. I was actually a little surprised that you didn’t just immediately kick her out.”

  “I was fident I could handle her if she tried anything, so there was no reason to kick her out immediately,” I said.

  Sharron smirked. “You bonded a little during your st adventure, didn’t you? You straight up hate her, like you de.”

  “That has more to do with Mirage than Helen!” I insisted. “Seriously, if the man didn’t push his agenda every fug time I saw him, I probably wouldn’t have such a big issue with him.”

  “Uh huh,” Sharron said, not looking at me. I couldn’t help but notice her smirk was a little wider.

  “Whatever, just tell me more about these initiatives. Since Hoppy and I have to check all those empts for Hel, I might as well see if there’s any way to double dip.”