The Star Thief

by Jamie Grey

  He smiled sadly, his violet eyes almost going soft. “You never let me.”

  Renna sucked in a breath like he’d punched her. What they’d had had been a convenient, friends-with-benefits kind of relationship. He couldn’t have loved her. Or had she been too afraid to see it?

  Before she could figure out how to answer, Kojima’s voice came over the intercom. “Captain, we’ll be landing in two minutes.”

  Finn stood with his arms behind his back to give orders. “Team, we’re going in hot. Keva, take your crew to the east entrance of the facility and make your way to the center. Viktis, Renna, and I will head west. Keep in contact if possible. If this facility is anything like the last, they may have disabled comms. If that’s the case, find the boy and get back here ASAP. Whoever finds him waits two hours and then leaves. His safety comes first.”

  Keva and the rest of the crew finished gearing up.

  Renna’s skin prickled, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She hated this feeling, like things were about to go tits up and there was nothing she could do about it.

  The Athena touched down with a soft tremor, and the cargo door slid open. Everyone drew their guns, and each group headed down the plank. Keva raised a hand in farewell and headed east with her crew.

  “Renna, you have the map?” Finn asked.

  She nodded. “Shouldn’t be too far. I found an entrance that looks like it’s through the forest here. Keva and her team will have to go farther around the building before they can get in.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The trio headed through the jungle. The air pressed down on her like a weight, the smell of death and decay catching in her nose and hair. Strange animals screamed at them from the shadows as they approached the cement-gray building. At least it wasn’t made of the same strange material the last place had used. Getting in would be much easier.

  Walking through the wet heat felt like moving through water. Renna tugged at the neck of her shirt as sweat trickled down her back and her hair plastered to her face. Beside her, Finn used his sleeve to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.

  Luckily they found a thick, steel door guarding the entrance at the corner of the building. A V’Mani lock glowed blue against the dull cement wall. Renna smiled. About time things started looking up. She had the lock disabled in moments, and Finn let out a low whistle.

  “You get what you pay for,” she said with a laugh.

  Viktis shook his head. “Or, in this case, who she slept with.”

  Finn took a step forward. “Watch it, pirate.”

  Renna rolled her eyes and slipped through the door into a dim hallway. A fine coat of dust covered the floor, and cobwebs hung in the corners of the ceiling.

  If the kidnapper was going for creepy, he’d nailed it on the head.

  “Scan for security,” she ordered. A few cameras and sensors popped up on the map her implant laid out for her, but none were close enough to worry about. “We’re clear for now. I say we head toward the center of the facility and then down. The distress call said something about the problem being on level two.”

  Finn shifted his grip on his blaster, holding it more firmly. “Let’s go. And stay quiet.”

  “This ain’t my first brawl, soldier.” Viktis shoved past him so that he was closest to Renna.

  She ignored their bickering and focused on the doors dotting either side of the long corridor. Her implant said there were no heat signatures, but it wouldn’t hurt to stay on guard.

  The hall dead-ended after a few minutes. Their only choice forward was through a door and into a brightly lit passageway that led toward the center of the building.

  Renna pulled back to check the map again. Her stomach plummeted. The central hub was at the end of this corridor. Gathered in and around the area were at least a hundred heat signatures.

  There was nothing for it; they were going to have to go right past that space to get to the stairwell. “Stay on guard. This section is crawling with people,” she warned, before moving silently toward the main hallway.

  Finn and Viktis followed close behind her, blasters drawn as they circled the main open space. It seemed to be some sort of auditorium, two stories tall, with the main floor on the lower level. She crept closer and risked a glance over the railing into the room below.

  Human men and women filled the space, all standing perfectly still, staring straight ahead. Her gaze caught on one of the men at the edge of the group. He was tall, with closely cropped dark hair and olive skin like hers. He looked like someone she might see on a street in Hesperia. Someone she could be related to.

  Until his eyes began to flash with a strange red light.

  The same light that most implants made when they were downloading information. A quick glance around confirmed her suspicion. Every single person had the same flashing light in their eyes.

  She clutched at the railing as everything inside her started to scream.

  “What is it? What’s wrong with them?” Finn’s breath was hot against her ear, but for once, his closeness didn’t distract her.

  “I wish I knew.” She swallowed back the nausea burning her throat as everything started coming together. The mercs, the facility, the drugs. “Navang must be experimenting on them, trying out the drug we found. We need to get out of here before they see us.” Renna crept around to the emergency exit and ran her safety program through the lock. It opened with a snick, and the three slipped into the stairwell.

  “What were they?” Viktis asked, scraping a hand over the bone plates in his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  She shook her head. “I think they were…robots. But we don’t have time to figure it out right now. Navang is here somewhere. We need to find him and Myka.” She scanned through her implant’s blueprints of the facility. “Looks like level two has a lot more security than the upper floors. Let me go first and disable the systems.”

  Both men nodded, and she eased open the lower level door to reveal a gleaming white hallway. Glassed-in labs and research pods lined the way. It reminded her of Aldani’s station back on Iniros, but with one big difference.

  Her implant detected no heat signatures, no movement in any of them.

  She snuck forward and peered into the first lab. One of the lab chairs had fallen on its side, and a coffee cup sat steaming on the desk. Someone had been here. And recently.

  Shit.

  As she crept down the hall, she snuck glances into lab after lab. All empty. She disabled the sensors as she went, but it seemed like it didn’t matter. There wasn’t anyone around to catch them.

  “Where is everyone?” Viktis whispered. His head whipped back and forth as he searched each of the rooms.

  “I don’t know. But I don’t like it.” Renna kept moving despite the goose bumps prickling her arms. Whatever that distress call had been about, it hadn’t been a trick. Something had happened here.

  They reached the end of the corridor, which led to another pair of doors. These were thick, opaque plastic with some kind of airtight seal, almost as strong as an airlock. She didn’t recognize the flashing keypad beside the door, but she pulled out her tools and went to work. The silence around them—broken only by their breathing—stretched her nerves taut. Her skin crawled each time the air blowers kicked on or a computer beeped in the distance.

  Something was very wrong here.

  After a few tweaks of the wiring and a quick pass of her software, the airlock swooshed open, letting out a puff of metallic-smelling air. Behind it came the other scent she always dreaded: the choking, burnt-sugar odor of clay. But woven into the clay was a strange metallic undertone like the one she’d smelled in the facility on Banos Prime.

  She spoke through gritted teeth, trying to breathe in as little as she could. “Layout is similar. One long corridor with labs. There doesn’t seem to be anyone here either, but stay on your guard.” She pulled her blaster from its holster, and they continued on. The smell grew stronger the
deeper in they went, until her nostrils burned and her eyes stung.

  “What is that?” Finn asked.

  “I think it’s the drug they were making at the other facility. Maybe that’s what the distress call was about.” She pulled her shirt over her nose, but it did little to block the heavy smell.

  “Is it toxic?” Viktis asked, alarmed.

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure it can’t be good.” The last thing she needed was to get high in the middle of a job. “Wait.” A heat signature flashed on the map in her head. “I’m getting a reading from the far end of the hall. Let’s move.”

  They sprinted toward the last lab, and Renna pressed a palm against the autolock, letting the doors slide open. Inside, computers and holomonitors lined the wall, and a bank of strange machines beeped and hummed near the door.

  As she did a quick sweep of the room, her gaze tripped over a familiar form. She sucked in a breath.

  Myka lay in the center of the room on a surgical table.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The boy’s eyes were closed, his chest barely moving with each shallow breath. His dark skin looked ashy against the white sheet covering his mostly naked body. An IV line disappeared into the crook of his arm, and his hair had been shaved to accommodate sticky probes attached to his skin.

  Guilt burned in her belly, shooting bile up the back of her throat. For a moment, Renna thought she was going to be sick all over the sterile floor. She tore her gaze away from Myka and took several slow breaths, trying to steady herself.

  “My gods.” Finn’s voice shook as he surveyed the boy. “How are we going to get him out of here?”

  Viktis had already moved to the computers and was scanning the readouts. “They’re monitoring his vitals. It looks like the IV is full of that new drug in liquid form. What the fuck are they doing to him?”

  Renna forced her legs to carry her closer until she could stare down at the boy. Her fingers shook as she touched his bare shoulder. His skin felt hot and damp, as though he had a fever.

  His eyes flew open.

  She screamed, jumping back as Myka suddenly thrashed. The sheet that covered him slid down to reveal his thin arms were tied to the table.

  Finn grabbed her shoulders to steady her. She wanted to turn her face to Finn’s chest and hide there, but Myka’s voice jerked her out of her own fear.

  “You came,” the boy whispered, staring up at her like she was some kind of hero. “I told him you would. You promised.”

  “Are you all right? What are they doing to you?” She tried to keep her voice calm, but a sob choked her on the last word.

  “They’re using my cells for something. They come in every day and take blood. They won’t tell me what they’re doing.” His voice trembled. “I want to go home. Get me out of here, Renna. Please.”

  She forced the worry from her face. “Yes. Yes, that’s why we’re here. Just hang on a bit longer so we can figure out how to disconnect you. Viktis, what do you see?”

  “I have no idea. There are two probes in his brain. Several Cida patches are keeping him mostly sedated, and the IV is pumping drugs into his bloodstream. There’s also an external port currently hooked up to an interfaced hemodialysis machine. Like they’re going to drain him.”

  Viktis’s words circled her brain. She knew they were bad; she just couldn’t let herself think too much about them or she’d be useless.

  “Do what you have to and get everything out of him.”

  Viktis typed some commands into the control. Renna moved back to Myka and nodded at Finn, who took up a spot on the other side of the boy.

  Renna smiled down at Myka. “I don’t know if this is going to hurt, but we need to pull all of these needles out. Okay?”

  Myka bit down on his lip before nodding.

  Finn met her gaze over the table. “Are you sure?”

  “As fast as you can. Keep the pain to a minimum.”

  He nodded. “One. Two. Three.”

  Together she and Finn pulled the tiny probes from the boy’s temples. He screamed, high and shrill. His body jerked once, and then he went still.

  “Myka! Myka? Are you all right?” Renna shook his thin shoulders

  His head lolled loosely against the bed.

  “Get the rest of these needles out of him!” She scrambled to pull the IV out of his vein. The patch on his shoulder was next, then the restraints tying his arms to the bed. Across the bed, Finn did the same. But the boy still didn’t move.

  “Viktis! What’s his status?”

  “Heartbeat is off the charts. Vital signs are unstable. There’s some strange brain activity going on.”

  Her pulse raced as she studied the boy on the table. She’d never forgive herself if she’d hurt him.

  “Renna, we need to get out of here. We can stabilize him once we’re back on the Athena.” Finn put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  Viktis’s scalp ridges vibrated as he scanned the machines. “There should be a dose of clay on that table. It might help get his heart rate under control.”

  Renna eyed the needle. She hated the thing, hated the fact she was about to shoot up a kid with even more of that drug. But if it would save Myka…

  “If he’s already on clay, won’t it make it worse?” she asked.

  Viktis shook his head. “Whatever they’re pumping him with is no longer clay, it’s…different. I’m hoping this will stabilize him.”

  She pulled down the sheet to uncover the rest of Myka’s thin body.

  A wave of horror swept over her, so powerful that when it crashed, the room spun. She clutched at the edge of the table to stay upright.

  A portion of the skin covering Myka’s ribs was pinned back to reveal metal and tissue wrapped together in a nightmare of robotic engineering. His ribs seemed to be made of some kind of metallic material, and some of his veins looked synthetic. The rest of what she could see was obviously still human.

  Finn tugged the sheet down on his side of the bed and said, “His arm, Renna. What have they done to him?”

  Her gaze flew to Myka’s forearm. The skin there was pulled back to reveal a mess of wires, nerves, and veins. She couldn’t tell which ones were human and which were synthetic.

  “The kid’s a frakking robot.” Viktis stared at the boy, his mouth clenched into a hard line. “There’s no way he’s still human with all of that cybertech inside him.”

  The taste of copper burned the back of her throat, and she swallowed. “I don’t care what he is. We have to get him out of here.” Steeling herself, she unpinned the skin on his ribs and folded it back to cover his insides. It disappeared seamlessly into his body. If she hadn’t seen it a second ago, she would have never known.

  Renna gasped. That wasn’t possible. What the hell had they done to this kid? She seriously would like to meet this Dr. Navang in a dark alley some day. Quickly, she injected the clay into the boy’s arm.

  Viktis nodded across the room. “Looks like that helped. He’s stable for now.”

  Finn wrapped the kid in the sheet and picked him up. “Is there a faster way out of here, Renna? We can’t go back the way we came.”

  She pulled up the schematics. “There’s a door not too far from here. We’ll have to pass through the rest of the lab, but if it’s as empty as this, it won’t matter.”

  He nodded. “Make sure it’s clear.”

  Renna pulled her gun and peeked out the door. She took a moment to suck in a deep breath and try to scrub her mind clear of the image of the boy’s cybernetic insides. No matter how horrified she was, Myka was counting on her. She exhaled her fear out with her next breath. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”

  Together she and Viktis took point, scanning the hall as Finn carried the boy behind them. The labs they passed were still empty. No sign of the woman who’d sent the distress signal. No sign of whatever had happened.

  Her skin prickled.

  They reached the end of the hallway and turned left. “We’re almost there,” she said, gl
ancing back over her shoulder. “One more set of doors and then the stairwell and we’ll be outside. How’s Myka doing?”

  Finn shook his head. “Not moving, but I can feel his heart beating. He needs help.”

  Who could help him? They didn’t even know what he was anymore. She pushed the thought away. One thing at a time. She needed to focus on getting them out of here.

  Renna pushed open the door and gestured Finn and Viktis through. Just a little farther to the stairwell and they’d be almost out.

  Two labs sat on either side of the hallway, and she expected them to be empty like all the rest. But as they approached, the doors slid open and a group of people marched out into the hallway from each lab. They fell into formation, three abreast, and one of the young men in the front row stepped forward. His eyes seemed to gaze past her, and a red light flashed once, deep inside the cornea.

  They were the people from the auditorium.

  “Intruder alert. You may not pass. Please come quietly with us.”

  His voice sounded human, but the cadence was off, as if he’d been programmed to say that. She risked a glance at Finn and saw that he was backing toward the doors. Viktis had his pistol out, aimed at the leader.

  “Let us go and no one gets hurt,” she said sternly.

  “Assassination protocols have been engaged,” the man said. “Please return the boy to his room immediately.” He took another step toward her, and Viktis fired his gun into the man’s head.

  It erupted in a shower of metal and flames and screams. Organ tissue and blood splattered everywhere, coating her face and hands, and Renna pressed a hand to her mouth.

  He spoke like a machine but bled like a human.

  “What are you?” she whispered.

  Another man stepped forward to take the leader’s place. “We have been perfected.”

  Dear gods. These things were hybrids. Robot-human creations. Navang’s drug was keeping the human bodies from rejecting the tech.

  Had they done this to Myka?

  “Viktis. Remember our job in New Holland?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You want to try that here?”