He pulled her closer. “By giving you this information, I’ve chosen a side. You are my side. That means I want us to be honest with each other from here on out.”
She paused. Not disagreeing but needing to clarify, she said, “I can’t give away Lasair’s secrets.”
“I’m not asking for that,” he said. “I’m asking for you to call off your personal vendetta against my family.”
Arden scrunched her face, not following. “We steal from you, in case you missed that part.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean the bigger plans to destroy us. I don’t want you personally involved in that.”
The implication caught Arden off guard, giving her pause. Was he speaking to a specific threat? Had he heard something about Project Blackout? Did Lasair really have a mole?
Dade rolled his eyes. “Don’t pretend there’s not a bigger play. Lasair wouldn’t be content with sticking to the drug trade. Eventually they’ll want to destroy us like they have other Solizen families. And I’m telling you, it’s a mistake.”
“I don’t make those decisions.”
Dade shook his head. “You’re not hearing me. Something is being planned between the families and the govies. That’s why they’re pushing so hard to extract information from your friend. It would be a mistake to fall into their trap. I don’t want you personally involved in that.”
“There’s always a plan. If it’s put into motion, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I don’t make decisions for the gang. And if I’m called to act, I have to do my part.”
“There’s always a way,” he said, as if it were that easy. “No one else needs to die. Between the two of us, we can figure out a nonviolent way to stop the corruption.”
“You’re a dreamer.”
“A dreamer who’s doing something.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Admittedly, as the Ghost, Dade was doing more to help society than she was.
They were really going to do this, she realized. Make a real effort at this relationship and at fixing the problems that plagued them both. Together. It was crazy. And yet, she was happy. Go figure.
She wanted to ride this high for a while. But duty always came first. She needed to get the information about Mariah back to headquarters and plan her rescue if they had any chance of pulling it off. “I have to go.”
“I worry about you,” he said softly. When she started to protest, he added quickly, “Not that you’re not capable of taking care of yourself. It’s just, I don’t like not knowing when I’ll see you again.”
His words twisted her heart. She leaned forward, tilting her lips up and pressing them against his warm mouth.
“Soon,” she said. “When we figure out how to be together.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Arden tied her hair back, twisting it into a braid before pulling up her hood. The fabric molded to her head like a second skin, made to lessen the heat of phase-fire while allowing for movement. It was part of their skintight running uniform made of individually formed body armor inside a synth material. A simple black mask would go over her face, but she wouldn’t bother with it until they entered the grid.
They were in the Icebox, so named for the chilly steel-lined rooms where they kept their weapon caches. There was no heating system, and Arden shivered in spite of the synth-suit that was supposed to help regulate her core body temperature.
Lasair had weapon caches like this one all over the city. The soldiers knew the locations of the armories assigned for their use. Only the inner circle had the details about caches located in other quadrants. It made it easier to ensure their weapons weren’t seized if a Lasair member was caught and tortured.
Each weapon room was kept filled to capacity. Phasers of every sort and size racked the walls on hooks, filling up the space so that there was nothing but glinting metal everywhere. On the ground were racks and bins of various other weapons categorized by type and size.
Most of the items were grab-and-go. A gang member could take what they needed when a situation presented itself. The harder-to-come-by items were logged and kept in a cage that required a thumb-scanner. They were a gang of thieves, after all. Best not to play to their strengths. Especially when those items became critical and no one could recall where they had gone.
Benches rounded the space where they sat to strap up. The room also came equipped with a vid-projector for going over their missions.
Usually they talked and joked before an operation. Missions were thoroughly planned, so all they had to do was hit the target and go home. Not this time. They were moving on this information right away. Arden didn’t like that. Neither did anyone else, and they all made sure she knew it.
Arden knew she had to be right about this intel. If she led them into a trap, it was one they couldn’t escape. They’d never hit a target so well guarded before. The knowledge sat like a boulder in her stomach. She was betting their freedom on her relationship with Dade. Which wasn’t fair to them and sure as hell was dumb for her. She hadn’t yet come to grips with how much she blindly trusted him. Which made her a fool, honestly.
Colin sat too close to her on the bench, not respecting her space and generally driving her crazy. “It’s not your fault.”
Arden grunted. He’d been telling her a variation of that line for weeks. She was sick to death of hearing it.
“Mariah would have been taken that night anyway,” he said. “You would have made for the bolt-hole like you did. Nothing would have changed. It’s not your fault we picked the wrong exit.”
Arden ignored him, pulling on her metal-enhanced boots. They reached her upper calves where her suit had no armored plates. She began the arduous task of lacing them up.
Colin took her silence as a signal to continue trying to convince her she shouldn’t feel guilty. “You have to let it go. If you go in like this, you’re likely to get yourself killed or someone else killed. You know that.”
He was right. She’d been internalizing a lot of bad stuff lately. She missed the good old days of just doing her job and flying on an adrenaline high when they pulled off a run. All before Dade. Now there were equal amounts of anxiety and the rush she wanted.
Yet she didn’t regret meeting him. She wouldn’t have described herself as innocent then, but looking back, perhaps she had been. She’d changed so much, so fast. As if seeing a different way of life had opened her up to the possibility that there was no right and true side to this fight.
“What if she’s not there?” Arden asked, giving voice to her tightly held fear.
He shrugged. “Let’s hope we find her. Uri’s about to crack, and your brother’s not far behind.”
She looked up to watch Uri pace. He cracked his knuckles repeatedly. He hadn’t spoken much since Mariah had been taken, and Arden didn’t trust him to keep a level head.
Niall was worse. He was as high as a kite. His eyes were glassy, and he mumbled as if hearing voices in his head. When she’d tried to speak with him earlier, he’d stared through her. She couldn’t stop him from coming on this rescue mission, though. She didn’t have that pull. Not yet, at any rate. Though it was looking increasingly every day as if she’d have to take control, if only to save him.
That pissed her off even more. She wanted to save Mariah, but had hoped that she could do so with people she could trust.
Her boots were laced now, so she sat up and turned to Colin. “This gang is imploding.”
He threw out his hands and exhaled in exasperation. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“Treason,” she muttered under her breath. They’d been dipping their toes in the treason pool a lot lately.
Kimber sailed into the room, cutting off their conversation. She’d be on comms for this operation because they needed Colin on the run. They were going in small: just her, Colin, Niall, and Uri. Kimber walked to the vid-projector and inserted her data drive. A large map opened on the screen, showing the inside of the South Grid Lockup. “Huddle up.
”
Arden and Colin ignored her. They both chose to keep their butts on the bench, leaning back like they were too lazy to get up.
Uri walked over to stand beside Kimber. His face rock hard and mean. The running suit he wore emphasized his muscles as he crossed his arms and glared at the projection. “What’s the plan?”
“I’ve gone over the schematics a dozen times. When they say that the Lockup is impenetrable, it is,” Kimber said. “I can’t find a single way to get inside without setting off a dozen sensors and starting a full-scale war.”
“Which means we’ll have to take her when they move her to the transport, like I told you,” Arden said.
Kimber shot her a glare and then changed the projection from inside the facility to the port deck and the surrounding area of the Lockup. All the possible avenues for escape were labeled. Then she said, as if Arden hadn’t spoken or come up with the plan in the first place, “Arden’s intel was that Mariah will be relocated to CRC sometime today. We’ll have to stake out the docking pad to be ready for when that happens.”
Arden didn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes.
Colin stood up and walked closer to study the map. “We’re grabbing her and splitting up without cover?”
“We didn’t have enough warning to set anything more elaborate in place. Nor do we have clear intel. That’s not on me.” Kimber threw another look over her shoulder at Arden.
Two moons, Kimber stole her plan and then stabbed her in the back at the same time.
“It also means anything can go wrong,” Uri said. “Snatching her only gives us a minute to a minute and a half at most to make our escape.”
Kimber gave Uri a hard look. “Do you want to get her or not?”
“You think you can shut off the cameras?” he countered.
Obviously Uri had as much faith in Kimber’s skill set as Arden did. Though in this case, it didn’t matter. Their time frame for the job was too small. If they were seen, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
Niall studied the projection with a frown. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s our only choice,” Arden said.
Kimber slid her gaze to Arden once more. “Why doesn’t Arden tell us where she got her intel? I’m sure that if we knew we could trust it, we’d feel a lot better about it than we do now.”
Not being able to be honest about it had turned into a huge pain. Arden understood how they felt. She would hate to go into a dangerous situation without knowing all the details. Especially since she’d voiced the same doubts herself. “She’ll be there.”
Colin sent her an amused look.
“You had to get the intel from somewhere. Who did you use? How did you pay them?” Niall pressed.
Arden sealed her lips tightly together and glared at him. She raised a single eyebrow.
“We’ll be sitting there with our asses hanging out,” Niall said. “All because we should trust you without any proof? Have any of us ever asked you to do the same?”
Wasn’t he sort of doing that now? He was high and unsteady. How dare he accuse her of being the one who put them in jeopardy.
Arden swallowed back her frustration. She wasn’t all that successful. “Let’s focus on the plan, okay? They won’t be expecting us. We’ve never done this sort of thing before. It should be easy enough to take out the cams, take out the guards, and jet out of there.”
“Oh yeah, easy,” Niall agreed sarcastically.
“Mariah shouldn’t put the rest of us in danger,” Kimber said. “We’re going to get ourselves killed trying to save her.”
“Screw you,” Uri shot back at her. “Nothing is as important as saving Mariah.”
Niall shook his head and walked away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dade could see just fine from beneath the synth-mask and hood. He’d not gone out as the Ghost in days. Even though he was privy to the knowledge of his father’s increased security measures and managed to avoid the worst of them, it had grown too risky. His father’s determination to catch the Ghost had become an obsession.
Dade had tried to let things cool off and get back to normal before he committed another theft. Yet here he was, sneaking into the joint refinery owned by all the Solizen families. It was a factory he was unfamiliar with, and he was here against his better judgment and Saben’s vocal protestations. Dade knew this was taking a chance, but he didn’t have another choice. The dispensaries he usually gave VitD to were running dangerously low on their supplies.
If he could score a larger haul than normal, it would buy him enough time to figure out how to bypass the new security and get back on an easier theft cycle. He’d hoped changing to a new location would work to his advantage and that he’d find some easier ways to steal VitD. So far that plan hadn’t worked. Security was tighter here than at any facility he’d ever hit. Every floor was worse than the last.
He crept along the yellow-lit halls on the floor where he believed the latter stages of the drugs were processed before they’d go into packaging. It was a calculated guess since he couldn’t locate the schematics in any of his family’s cloud systems.
Dade turned a corner, sticking to the sides of the hall and moving as quickly as he could without drawing attention. This hallway was empty, another in a long line of nondescript hallways within the mazelike facility. The plain walls were broken up by metal doors with small round windows on both sides. He glanced in as he passed to see if anything inside the rooms looked like what he wanted.
He wasn’t used to being lost. And would have asked Saben for directions, but the comm had gone silent some time ago. He tried to focus on his task, worried about what that meant.
So far he hadn’t seen anything that looked like VitD. Most rooms were filled with machinery or people or both. No one noticed him, their attention focused on their work.
He’d also managed to avoid the guards. Sometimes he’d see them in the hallway. When that happened, he’d either choose another direction, or wait until they moved on.
It wasn’t the guards who concerned him, though. It was the new squads of mercenaries who now marched up and down the halls in groups of two or three. They were big and thuggish, strapped down with firepower and clearly ready to do battle.
Dade looked into a window and was about to sneak past it when the right corner of his mask’s eye scanner shimmered, taking on a slight red haze. He immediately stopped. The sensor noted things like air quality, temperature, and movement. He wasn’t quite sure what this anomaly meant. He twisted his head this way and that, but the shimmer never repeated.
Suspicion kept him still. Just because he couldn’t see something didn’t mean it wasn’t there. His gut told him that he had to figure out the problem fast. Before he was cornered by a group of mercenaries.
He pulled out his datapad and opened the program that scanned for anomalies. Once he set the scan in motion, it only took a few seconds to measure a reading. There were no abnormal qualities to the electro-fields in the hallway. Convinced that there had to be something there, he switched programs. He checked the air first. Then he moved the datapad along the wall and tested. Everything still came back normal. He couldn’t let the flicker go, though. He crouched to the floor, placing his datapad on the surface, and reran the test. This time the biofeedback measure was a flat zero. Even the ambient electro-currents that were always present showed no readings.
That wasn’t possible.
The floor looked normal. He would have walked across it and not thought twice if he hadn’t seen that red haze. Dade put away his datapad. He stared at the floor, thinking, his vision unfocused.
The lack of focus made him notice a faint light coming from the grout where the tiles intersected. He inspected it closer. It appeared to be a fibrous filament that was not quite shiny.
Perhaps the floor was a series of grid sensors. He didn’t know what they would do, but he had a few guesses. They could simply ping his location, or burn him on the spot with vape-fire.
He expelled a sharp breath and frowned. Perhaps it was time to call this mission off and figure a way out of the facility. His internal clock had steadily been ticking louder and more insistently the longer he delayed. The pressure of getting out unseen now eclipsed anything he’d come to do.
Dade decided to try at least one more corridor, hoping that there was an exit at the end of it. Because he knew for sure there wasn’t one in the maze behind him.
Touching his wrist, he activated the suction grip on his gloves. Then he kicked the floor with the back of his heel, releasing small hooks from the toe of his boots. Up he climbed onto the wall. That made it a hundred times more difficult to bypass the windowed doors, and made him vulnerable to anyone who happened to turn the corner into this hallway.
His body strained, exertion making him sweat under the cloak and synth-mask. Grunting, he released himself from the wall and fell to the ground at the other end of the hall.
A foul mood had set in. Dark thoughts surrounded Saben’s silence and Dade’s awareness that he needed to get the hell out of there. He huffed, his breaths deepening while his body flexed with agitated worry.
He gave up on trying to find VitD and instead started looking for anywhere that could be used as an exit, an airshaft he could pry open, a window in an empty room that he could crawl out of. He turned the corner into yet another identical-looking hallway. He let out a strangled growl. This was not good. There were no guards or mercenaries, however, so that worked in his favor.
Halfway down the hall, he peered through a small round window into a dark room. It was the first empty room he’d come across in the last half hour. Dade couldn’t make out much. From what he could tell, it was some kind of supply room full of boxes. He decided on a closer inspection, hoping for a window to the outside.
The door used a biometric scanner. Dade pushed the thin bio-print on the thumb of his glove. It matched a random employee he’d chosen who had access to most of the facility. The digital reader scanned the synthetic that mimicked skin, searching for not only the print but also the heat and ridged texture. A string of codes flashed across a small monitor before the light next to the door switched from red to green and the door slid open.
The Breaking Light (Split City Book 1) Page 15
