“Don’t! Fall back, Evie,” Nisrine said to her. “We can’t afford for you to get taken in right now.”
Kaiden made a sharp veer to the left followed by a dizzying downward plunge. His strength may have been superhuman, but his reflexes weren’t, and he failed to pull up in time to avoid scraping the bike on a dumpster bin. Sparks flew up as metal ground against metal.
For a few moments, her heart stopped. She felt it stall in her chest, and fear paralyzed her until the hoverbike leveled and was careening over the dirty alley floor beneath them. “Are you trying to kill us in a crash?” Her voice sounded strangled to her own ears.
“That wasn’t a crash,” Kaiden muttered. “It was a controlled dive. And it worked. Your ex must have splattered on the roof. I heard a collision and don’t see him anymore.”
“I didn’t get a good look.”
Oily black smoke billowed up behind them.
Kaiden sniffed the air, grimacing at the sight. “Damn, he must have had an illegal hyperbooster installed in that bike. Nothing else creates an inferno like that on collision.”
They circled around the next building and headed back toward the wreckage. Both police hovercars and Joaquin’s bike were in a blazing tangle, bits and pieces spread across the roof of a nondescript warehouse.
“We won’t have much time here,” she cautioned. “The smoke will draw emergency services.”
Once Kaiden parked upwind from the smoke, they moved to investigate the twisted wreckage of the two police vehicles. Both bodies had already charred.
Nisrine sighed and suppressed the wave of grief threatening to distract her from the job at hand.
“Damn. They’re goners,” he said in a sad voice. “Weren’t doing anything but their jobs.”
“Joaquin is over there.”
His limp body lay sprawled a few feet away, thrown from the bike in the crash. They moved closer and turned the man onto his back.
“Looks like he was knocked unconscious,” Kaiden said. “He’s bleeding.”
The tips of Joaquin’s middle and index fingers glowed with pinprick-sized dots of light.
“That’s strange,” Nisrine murmured.
“What’s strange?” Kaiden asked as he crouched above the fallen agent.
“He must have activated his shock grips prior to the fall. Watch—”
Before she could finish her warning, Joaquin’s arm swung up. A blinding flash overtook her vision, made her stumble back and throw up both of her hands to shield her eyes while an oppressive ringing filled her ears. Her headgear dampened the worst of the flash bang, but she stumbled blind behind the flaming debris. Nisrine couldn’t see the two men, but she could feel them.
Few people knew of the weakness Xander discovered two years ago on the Jemison when Kaiden had been under the control of the enemy. It was noted in a small line in his files, guarded by encryption for only officers of the highest classification levels.
Kaiden had a single Achilles heel, his one vulnerability, located at the base of his skull where his motor chip and spine fused.
Joaquin knew his weakness, however. He knew because he’d had access to both of their files. He was also nowhere in sight, and his extensive training made it difficult for her to latch on to his mind.
The world came into focus again. With her handgun drawn in one hand and phase sword in the other, she searched for him among the wreckage and structures on the rooftop. There wasn’t much time, and she couldn’t bring herself to abandon Kaiden.
“Kaiden is down,” she said into the comm channel. “Agent Estrada is in the vicinity and armed.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Evangeline vowed.
“Ten minutes may not be soon enough,” Nisrine said. With Kaiden down, she had no choice but to defend both of them. Déjà vu stirred memories of Boreas and her determined race across the city to save her partner’s life. She hadn’t let him down then, and she wouldn’t now.
A tickle from her sixth sense made Nisrine whirl and fling up her phase sword in time to deflect Joaquin’s attack. Their blades locked in a crossed pattern, and he pressed with his greater strength to bear down on her until she used psychic prowess to punch him in the gut. Although he stumbled back, his reaction lacked pain, and a glimpse at his hard features revealed blown pupils dilated too wide to see more than a fragile ring of brown color.
“What did you shoot up with this time?”
“Worried about my health?” His mocking smile held no warmth.
“Try disgusted. You were always too weak to do anything on your own. Can’t take me without stimulants?”
He lashed out with his sword and nearly took her fingers, but the precision of his strike dashed her hopes of infuriating him into losing control. It went against everything she knew of the man, who had always had a quick temper during their partnership. Her arms trembled as she blocked his attack, every ounce of strength needed to push him away.
“Looks like it’s just you and me now, Nissie,” Joaquin said in a mocking voice.
She stiffened. “How did you—”
“How did I know he calls you that? You didn’t think he was the only one with augmentation, did you? I’m disappointed, corazón. How do you go from a man like me to a bucket of bolts in a flesh suit?” He laughed.
An attempt to invade his mind met with a brick wall, his willpower too resilient for her to overcome despite the drugs coursing through his body. He’d been trained well. She pushed with force instead and met with a shield, its glowing nimbus of color a blue silhouette around his body.
“It’s no use. I’ve activated my psionic destabilizer. I have a full charge and you’ll be exhausted by the time you beat it down.”
She hated that he was right. Little had changed since their time as romantic partners, and he knew her limits as well as she did. What she had in power, she lacked in endurance, able to thrust hard and heavy with psychic ability for short, spastic amounts of time.
“Then I’ll take you down with what I have.”
He stepped back and lowered his sword. The hard expression on his face softened. “I don’t want to hurt you, Nisrine. I mean that. If you come with me, I can explain everything. You’ll see why this must be done.”
“You tried to kill Catherine. Why?”
“As I said before, her death will be a tragic loss, but no less necessary. Haven’t you realized it? She’s held the UNE back. Think of what we could achieve without a goddamn dictator shouting down the scientific community’s best ideas because some aliens disagree with them. The good lives we can save at the cost of a few.”
Flabbergasted, her mouth fell open slightly, and she stared into his face. “You’re trying to convince me that the group of you are leading a coup against the UNE in the name of beneficial science?”
“There’s more to it. I don’t expect you to understand until we can talk, but we can’t move forward until she’s out of the way. She’s standing in the way of progress.”
“You’re such a filthy liar, Joaquin. You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself. You don’t care about science, the needy, or anyone else. How much have DuValle and Scarot paid you to make this happen?”
“Not as much as what you’re thinking. I’ve always been loyal to the UNE, and I’d have remained loyal to Catherine, too, if we could have convinced her to open her eyes.”
The thought infuriated her. All the atrocities she’d witnessed, all the needless deaths, the thought of them stoked her anger until it sizzled with unrivaled intensity.
Abandoning her usual plays, she charged forward, swinging wild. Joaquin’s eyes widened and he stumbled back under her furious onslaught, caught off-guard. She forced him to be on the defensive, giving him no time to counter with an attack of his own.
Sweat slickened the hilt of her sword. She fought desperately, but with a raw determination, even when he kicked a pile of smoldering wreckage at her. She gritted her teeth as embers flew up between them, burning her knuckles and arms.
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Then he led with his non-dominant fist after a feint. It struck the middle of her chest, winding and knocking her backwards. Stumbling, one arm swung to regain her balance. When he rushed her, she flung out with her powers again, her best psionic push achieving nothing more than a slap for as long as his shields were charged. Damn him for having access to the same tech as her.
Joaquin chuckled. “You’ll need to do more than that. It wasn’t a bad love tap though. I’d probably be on the other side of Bromwicham if it’d have actually—”
A single shot rang through the air, and a cloud of red mist exploded from Joaquin’s chest. He looked down at the newly blossomed hole in his armor as if he couldn’t comprehend what had happened.
Nisrine certainly couldn’t.
Her opponent took one shambling half-step forward but collapsed to the rooftop, where he lay shuddering out his final breaths with a matching, albeit smaller, hole in his back. The powerful round had pierced and gone through him, armor and all.
Nisrine’s traced its trajectory to a shuttle hovering far above them, and she saw Evie leaning from the open door with a harness anchoring her in place and a massive rifle balanced on her shoulder.
The redhead flashed her a thumbs-up. “Guess he couldn’t shield a round from an anti-material rifle.”
A glance at Joaquin confirmed he was dead. Once, he’d been her lover, her best friend. Now she could only celebrate a morbid sense of relief, gratitude that her ex’s death meant Kaiden remained safe.
Her shoulders sagged and she sucked in a shaky breath, taking a moment to still her trembling limbs. Her heart hammered, pulse pounding in her ears. The reality washed over her, its full intensity staggering. Joaquin was dead and she’d survived.
“Kaiden.” Her sword deactivated the moment it fell from her grip, and she hurried over to her fallen partner. His pulse beat steadily beneath her examining touch.
Two of the burly crewmen from the Gryphon stepped onto the roof. As they approached, Kaiden groaned and rolled over onto his stomach. “Fuck. I can finally move again. What hit me?”
Her heart leapt in her chest. When she tried unsuccessfully to help him up, one of the mercs pulled Kaiden onto his feet in one tug. “He shocked your nerve conductor chip,” she said. “Now come on. We have to get out of here. All communication towers went online again after he took you down.”
His legs wobbled then he stumbled. “Didn’t fry me as badly as Xander did. I’ll live.”
“Lean on me,” she offered.
“Thanks.”
Ignoring the ache in her chest from where Joaquin had struck her, she slipped an arm around Kaiden and soaked in the warm sensation of his living body beside her, metal, flesh and all. As they limped onto the shuttle, she couldn’t help but wonder which of them leaned most on the other.
Chapter Twenty
In the safety of the Silver Gryphon, Nisrine and Kaiden tended to their injuries then met with Evangeline and the senior crew for a debriefing in the tactical room. Everything ached, but she set the discomfort aside to focus on the present and let her attention drift to everyone in turn. Evie promised all members of the crew were trustworthy individuals, she’d vetted them herself, and of course, would personally hurl any traitors out the airlock to a chilly death by asphyxiation if they betrayed her confidence. Still, as much as Nisrine trusted her friend’s judgement, they’d been betrayed from all sides already.
The deep-seated loyalty she felt from everyone—loyalty to Evie, whose integrity was unquestionable—eased some of her worries.
“Did we get away clean?” Kaiden asked.
“We did,” Evie replied. “I’ve got us in orbit according to my usual routine. Nothing out of the norm.”
“Good. As much as I hate to be anywhere close to Scarot, we don’t wanna give anyone reason to look at your ship.”
Evie tipped her head toward Kaiden and smiled. “Much to my appreciation. Now then, what do we do with what we’ve learned?”
Kaiden played back the recording he’d made of the meeting. The group listened in silence, wearing faces of varying degrees of horror, some of which slid closer to disgust. Nisrine clenched her fists in her lap but said nothing, trying to figure out how her disguise had been broken. Joaquin had seen straight through her, but she couldn’t pinpoint when or how. Then his words came back to her regarding his augmentations. Somehow, he’d picked up on their comms. No wonder he’d kept looking at her during the meeting. He must have been trying to pinpoint the noise.
“That was certainly a damning load of evidence,” Ranulf said as he stroked his beard with one hand. “I remember Admiral Scarot. Calculating, chilly bitch. I trust she’ll get what’s coming to her once the public has seen this.”
“Any idea who or what this X91 is?” Evangeline turned her gaze to Kaiden.
“No, not a clue, only a bunch of guesses,” he replied.
Jinx, a rainbow-haired fellow with a spiky faux hawk, grinned at them. He had the dual honor of operating as the ship’s mechanic and technojunkie and had been busy on his tablet throughout the entire recording. “It’s gotta be something initiated after Kaiden’s escape. I had a look at the data Nisrine—er, it’s cool to call you Nisrine, right?”
“It’s fine,” she assured him.
Evangeline cleared her throat. Loudly. “Get to the point.”
“Anyway, everything suggests they didn’t begin working on X91 until the last year. I’ve only found one reference to the project.”
“What did it reveal?” Kaiden asked.
“They considered you to be practically flawless as a subject, but X91 is the perfect creation. They’re proud of it. They’ve killed countless splicers, cyborgs, and psychics to make their supreme weapon. And they plan to make more.”
A wave of nausea rolled through Nisrine’s gut. She moistened her lips and reached for Kaiden’s hand. “Where did you find that? I went through those files over and over.”
“It was really obscure and not in the actual files. It was on a terminal screen in one of the pictures. I zoomed in, sharpened the image, and ran it through a few filters. Since it was only half the screen I didn’t get the full report, but that’s the overall gist of it.”
Evangeline beamed with pride, resembling a mother presented with her son’s school age accomplishments. “Bloody brilliant, isn’t he?”
“I never even thought to scrutinize the background images.” Kaiden shook his head.
“If only the queen were well enough to deal with this mess,” Morna lamented. “Then you both wouldn’t have to be on the run and this problem would be solved. We could track down X91, liberate her the way the Jemison freed you.”
“But it isn’t, and they are, so our work isn’t done yet,” Ranulf grumbled. “Finding their newest toy’s gonna have to take a backseat for now.”
Evangeline settled into a chair and crossed her legs. “What we need is to get this video into circulation. They may claim its manufactured or a hoax, but it’s enough to bring their loyalty into question. It’ll get them taken into custody.”
“Any word from the Jemison?” Morna asked.
Kaiden gave a curt nod. “I re-established my link with Jem and tipped her off about the seek and destroy order. Her pilot and the commodore should be aware.”
“Smart.” Ranulf grunted and gave an approving nod.
Nisrine remained quiet in her seat, taking in information as it was offered and sifting through the various possibilities. She tried to see the outcome of the multiple courses they could take, plotting out their best chance for mission success.
“Why can’t we broadcast the entire meeting through the BBN?” she asked. “Can you filter it in for them the way you linked it to us on the screen?”
“From here? I could from this range since we’re still in Albion’s orbit, but it wouldn’t solve the problem,” Kaiden said. “They’d only need to reboot their servers at the network office the moment they realized they’d been hacked. Takes mere seconds.”
Evangeline shifted in her chair. “What is your maximum range, anyway?”
“During our flight to meet you in the Amun System, I sent a message to my brother. I networked through several conduits and relays across the galaxy to avoid it being traced to us if it was intercepted. He probably didn’t receive it for hours, judging from the time of the Jemison’s departure from Albion. That, or Bishop was biding his time to make a break for it.”
Nisrine asked the obvious question. “Then why don’t we talk to them and find out? Now that they’re rogue, it should be safer to initiate a communication channel.”
“Captain, do you mind if I take over your comms a moment?” Kaiden asked.
“Please, be my guest.”
No visible changes occurred, aside from Kaiden straightening in his seat. Seconds passed, and then Jem’s dulcet tones greeted them. “Initiating contact between the HMS Jemison and Silver Gryphon. Communications Chief Lockhart is standing by.”
“Kaiden? Is it really you?”
“We don’t want you. Connect us to Bishop, ya goob.”
“Definitely you. I totally feel the love. Patching you to Commodore Bishop.”
Evangeline cocked a brow at the exchange. “Why do they sound alike?”
Nisrine chuckled. “It’s his brother.”
“Ah.”
“Bishop here.” Ethan’s strong voice carried over the line.
Kaiden gestured with his hand toward Evangeline in a prompt for her to speak. “Commodore Bishop, a pleasure to speak with you. I’m Evangeline Abbott, captain of the Silver Gryphon.”
“Captain, are my agents safe?”
“We are, sir,” Nisrine spoke up.
“Aye, and damned glad to hear your voice, too,” Kaiden added.
“Captain Abbott, I’d like to speak to my people alone.”
Nisrine lifted a hand to forestall Evie’s rebuttal. “Sir, Evangeline has my full trust in this matter. If we’re going to succeed in this, we all need to work together.”
The line went silent for a long moment. She pictured him in his stateroom, jaw stern and gaze calculating.
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