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Anyone could be lurking behind the transparisteel.

"I'm in Belazura on business, and—"

"Imperial business?" the Arconan said, now even more suspicious. "Haven't you people done enough? What now? You want to torture their ghosts?"

"Does that mean you knew them?" X-7 asked eagerly. "The Flumes?"

"What's it to you?"

"I told you, I'm an old friend."

The Arconan sneered. "Right. An old friend who came by to say hello after all these years. Except I tell you they're dead and you don't even blink. So how about you tell me what you really want?"

"Money," X-7 said without hesitation. "What else does anyone want?"

"They owe you?" the Arconan asked.

"Big-time."

The Arconan made a strange sound, like a dianoga choking on a lump of sewage. X-7

suddenly realized he was laughing. "Good luck getting them to pay you back now!" he chortled. But quickly, he sobered up. "You want some help tracking down what's left of Flume's people? It's going to cost you."

Again, X-7 swallowed his irritation. This Arconan didn't know how close he was to death. "How much?"

"Fifty."

"Twenty," X-7 countered.

"Fifty."

"Thirty," X-7 offered.

"Fifty."

He was too impatient to negotiate. Money was nothing to him. He threw a handful of it at the alien. "That's half. Give me the address, and I'll hand over the other half."

The Arconan complied, giving him an address on the fringes of town.

"If this information is inaccurate, I'll be back for you," X-7 said coolly. Now he finally withdrew the blaster from its holster.

"Oh, it's accurate," the alien said, laughing again. "You'll find what's left of them, for all the good it will do you."

X-7 wasn't looking to do himself good. He was looking for answers. After that, who knew? Maybe he would reclaim his old identity and learn to be human again, weak and pathetic.

Or maybe he would track down every last Flume, kill them all, and be done with this mess forever.

The rest of them, X-7 thought sourly. Perfect.

The Arconan hadn't lied. Not technically, at least. Presumably whatever was left of Trever Flume's family was here—underground. Beneath the crooked tombstones. At the edge of an old graveyard, weeds spouting between the mounds of dirt.

Trever Flume. Clive Flax. Astri Divinian.

They didn't share a name, but the epitaphs— loving brother, loving mother, loving father—made it clear they were a family. Love. It put a bad taste in his mouth.

There was something about the last name Divinian. Something familiar. Could it mean he was on the right track? X-7 stared at the graves, trying to feel something. "My parents," he said aloud, testing the phrase on his tongue. It felt wrong.

"Trever," he tried next. "My name is Trever."

Each of the three graves had " Gone never. Here forever, " the standard Belazuran mourning cry, etched across the top.

Each was marked by a bouquet of nahtival flowers. The flowers were fresh; someone was tending to these graves.

X-7 paced quickly to the entrance of the graveyard, where a hunched Belazuran had been hacking at the ground with a rusty shovel. He was still there, now sliding a tombstone into the shallow hole.

"Who's been here today?" X-7 asked harshly.

The weary Belazuran looked at him blankly.

"Today!" X-7 shouted. "Someone put fresh flowers on those graves." He gestured toward the Divinian plots. "Who was it?"

The man nodded slowly. "That's right, he did come by today. Didn't expect him."

X-7 grabbed the man's shoulders and gave him a brutal shake. "Him who, you mudcrutch?"

"The boy," the man said in a dreamy voice. "Of course, he's not a boy anymore, is he?

Time's passing, it is. Slow, fast, it just keeps going. Yesterday we're a republic, today we're an empire, tomorrow—"

"The boy," X-7 growled.

"A man now," the Belazuran said. "Thought I wouldn't recognize him, but I did, didn't I? Looks just like his mother. Astri was a beauty, that one."

So Trever had a brother. There had been a suspicious lack of information about Trever's family in the files, as if it had been purposefully blotted