by Nalini Singh
Bo was who he was because of these two people who'd raised him to honor his commitments and fulfill his promises. He should've known they'd stand with him in this as they'd stood with him for every other choice he'd made.
That done, he spent most of the day going over everything Lily and Cassius had found to date, and comparing it against the dossier that Malachai had quietly sent him. He had to admit it--Hugo had been right in what he'd pointed out about the Fleet movements. There were too many incursions for it to be accidental, and at least two lined up with vanishings.
Fuck.
He had no answers by the time night fell in the habitat, but he talked over what he did have with Kaia, without mentioning Heenali's name. If she didn't know, she couldn't be torn between her loyalty to BlackSea and what she felt for Bowen.
"It's so hard, isn't it?" she said, a black anger in her eyes. "When the betrayal comes from within?"
"Fucking hurts more than any bullet I've ever taken."
A raised eyebrow. "How many bullets have you taken?"
He told her, relating the story behind each one. In return, she shared how, as a trainee chef, she once gave herself third-degree burns on the insides of her forearms because she refused to drop a perfectly baked cake. After that, they moved on to other memories, other pieces of themselves, desperately trying to fit a lifetime within the screamingly short time left to them.
* * *
*
ELEVEN a.m. the next day and very conscious he had only forty-five hours before the third injection and an uncertain future, Bowen went looking for Kaia again. Up since five a.m., he'd already spoken with Lily and Cassius not only about Heenali but about contingency plans should the experiment fail.
He'd written out a step-by-step strategy for the two.
After grudgingly agreeing to step into the breach, Cassius had said, "I'll fuck it up. Doesn't matter how many notes you give me. I've got the subtlety of a hammer when it comes to politics."
"You just need to hold the Alliance together until the knights find a viable replacement."
"I'll fight to the bitter end, but we both know the Alliance will fragment without you." The clear gray of his friend's eyes held no judgment, only hardheaded reality. "You're the glue, Bo. You've always been the glue."
The idea of all their brutally hard work crumbling to dust, leaving humanity without any champion, it was crushed gravel in his lungs. Refusing to believe that it was the only possible outcome, he'd spent three hours talking Cassius through the most critical of the myriad things his friend would need to know should the worst come to pass.
Now, his time was his own and he wanted to spend it with Kaia. She wasn't in the kitchen, but he spotted Seraphina in the atrium. "Have you seen Kaia?"
"Sorry, can't help." A narrow-eyed glance. "But you're doing good, Security Chief. Keep on looking after my girl and we'll get along fine."
Holding those words close after the assistant station commander walked off, Bowen was considering in which direction to mount his search when he found himself the focus of a familiar set of hazel eyes. "George."
The other man bristled. "You and Seraphina? I thought you had respect for Kaia."
"What?" Bo frowned. "She's Kaia's friend and she almost-maybe likes me, that's it." He took in George's blotchy face and raised shoulders. "You have feelings for her?" If so, he'd left his pursuit too late--Kaia had mentioned Edison meeting Sera out in the deep yesterday. The other man had been in full courting mode.
Flushing, George shook his head. "Seraphina is too much woman for me." Utter puppy-love adoration in his tone.
"Women," Bo said, "they twist a man up."
George turned to stare out into the black. "Everyone's saying she kissed Edison Kahananui. Is it true?"
"Yeah." Bo figured the man might as well have all the information. "I'm sorry."
Face falling, George sat down at a table. Bo wasn't sure quite what to do, but he couldn't leave the dejected changeling alone. He grabbed a couple of coffees from the kitchen, then came to sit with George. They didn't speak, but neither did George tell him to get lost. It was maybe half an hour later that Dr. Kahananui's assistant stirred. "I have to go do . . . something."
Bo watched him leave, lines furrowing his brow. "Does George have many friends on the station?" he asked KJ a minute later, when the other man sauntered over to say hi.
"I totally tried, man, but George is a lone-wolf type." The orderly shrugged. "He's welcome to join any table at dinner or to turn up to group swims and walks, whatever--I mean, you joined the basketball game in the central habitat--no stress, right, but George mostly, like, holes up in the lab."
That was all true. Bo hadn't realized a game was about to begin when he went to the central habitat for a run, had been cheerfully assigned to a team when he stopped on the edge of the court.
"I figure he's just one of us who likes to be alone." Finishing up his coffee, KJ reached in his pocket and pulled out a stick of gum. "Duty calls. Catch you later."
Bo raised a hand in reply, then restarted his hunt for Kaia. Fate was laughing at him--he eventually backtracked to find her in the lab, having an early lunch with her cousin.
When a tiny bell rang just as he entered, he detoured to scoop Hex up from the maze. Stroking the mouse's silky white fur, he carried Kaia's pet over to where Dr. Kahananui and Kaia sat on opposite sides of a lab bench.
The doctor had a large organizer beside her, data scrolling through it.
Angry at the gods for all the things he couldn't yet say to his siren, he went around the counter and murmured, "Hi, Kaia." Then he stole a kiss that was all tongue and possession and need.
Breath short, she smiled against his lips. "Have some respect. Hex is watching."
"He's a worldly mouse." Wrapping his arms around her from behind after putting Hex into her pocket, he held her close and tried not to crush her with his possessive need.
Something buzzed into the silence.
Throwing a quick glance at her mobile comm, Dr. Kahananui touched the answer key. "Tansy? I have you on speak--"
"Atalina, someone's smashed all our Beta Seventeen samples!" a distraught female voice interrupted.
Chapter 48
This isn't personal and it says nothing of my admiration for you. I'm also sorry that Bowen Knight will pay a deadly price for this--no human has ever harmed me, and Bowen has always treated me with respect. But it must be done. The debt must be paid.
--Note slipped under the door to Dr. Atalina Kahananui's personal quarters
KAIA COULDN'T BELIEVE the carnage she saw inside the massive lab in habitat three. Unlike Atalina's lab, this larger one was built against a seaward wall; it had been decided that as the people who worked here had to stay inside for hours at a time, with no quick access to an atrium, it was too much to ask them to do so devoid of the visible presence of the ocean.
To the right side of the huge space, beyond a transparent but hermetically sealed wall, were growing bins, many of which supplied the fresh-goods needs of those who lived on Ryujin. The area even boasted dwarf fruit trees that thrived under the light of the artificial sun.
But Kaia's attention wasn't on the growing area, a place that was often a calm and contemplative retreat for her fellow clanmates. Run by Tansy in her role as the station's chief agri-scientist, the lush, green space was a stark contrast to the antiseptic whiteness of the lab that occupied the left half of the area.
This was where the station's scientists ran experiments on materials recovered from the sea, all of it designed to teach BlackSea about the properties of those unknown compounds. Unusual seaweeds, exoskeletons discarded during a molt, secretions found on rocks, those were the types of things that made it to this lab.
Atalina did grow a few cultures in her own lab, but for the most part, she used the communal facilities here. Tansy stood on this end of a large rectangular table clearly marked with the title Beta Seventeen, the two women's names beneath that.
Kaia'
s friend was crying.
She went to move toward her, but Tansy's pain seemed to jolt Attie out of her own shock. Walking over, she wrapped the other woman in a maternal embrace. "We have the data," she said in a firm voice. "This is only a small setback."
Astounded at her cousin's courage in being able to say that when this represented the destruction of years of painstaking work, Kaia took a quick moment to send off a message to Dex. Atalina would need her mate in the minutes and hours to come.
Then Kaia just stared at the damage. It was as if an enraged attacker had taken a hammer to the curved glass jars--miniature habitats--in which Atalina and Tansy had nurtured various items. Invisible bacteria. More solid seaweed. Each in an enclosed glass environment that mimicked nature or provided an acceptable alternative.
The Beta Seventeen experiment offered the hope of a cure for a disease even the most advanced medicine and their own healers couldn't fix. A rare disease suffered by only a tiny percentage of the world's population, and nothing, nothing that could cause such hostility.
Yet shards of glass glinted on the surface of the table, sand and water and soil and agar having spilled across it to drip down to the floor. "This is five years of work," Kaia murmured to Bowen. "Five years of excruciatingly complex and delicate work. Atalina came up with the idea, but Tansy's been in from the ground up."
"Does it have anything to do with this?" He tapped the side of his head.
"No. It's a secondary project for both of them--they spent hours of their free time on it, including weekends and holidays."
"Careful." Bowen snapped out his arm to stop the three of them from moving forward any further. "There's glass all over the floor."
Only then did Kaia look down and notice the danger. She was wearing shoes today, but they weren't hard-soled. The same applied to Tansy and Attie.
"The data's backed up?" Bowen asked, his hard gaze taking in everything around them.
"Yes, but this is a continuous project. It took time to get each of these environments, cultures, and plants to the stage that they were. Tansy can't make them grow faster without compromising the study."
Tansy sniffed back her tears. "But we'll start again, won't we, Attie? This is too important to abandon."
"We'll ask Eddie to bring in new samples of the things he found for us."
"And Greta." Wiping away the wet on her face, Tansy stuck her hands into the pockets of the large gray cardigan she wore instead of a lab coat. "She's in the area."
As the two women continued to discuss how to restart the project, Kaia gritted her teeth, her blood hot. "We need to find out who did this," she muttered to Bo. "There are no strangers on Ryujin. We are ohana!" Family. "But what possible motive could drive one of us to such malicious destruction?"
Bo knew what it meant to work hard--to have all that work so callously wiped out was an insult and a crime. Unlike Kaia, however, he thought not about the why but about the how. The only access was through the door--Dr. Kahananui had scanned him and Kaia in. People couldn't just walk inside anytime they pleased. "Where do you store the records from your entry systems?"
Kaia's eyebrows drew together over her eyes. "What?"
Realizing he was asking the wrong person, he said, "I need to talk to Malachai." He took out his phone, input Malachai's direct code.
The BlackSea security chief's voice was curt when he answered. "You're calling from an unidentified number."
"It's Bo. I've got Kaia, Dr. Kahananui, and Tansy with me."
"What's happened?"
Soon as Bo told him, the other man knew exactly why Bo had called. "Ryujin is too far down for the security data to be automatically backed up in the city," Malachai said. "We do the data transfer manually week by week. All information for today's entries will be in the security station in habitat four."
"Thank you." For trusting Bo to watch out for BlackSea.
"Don't thank me yet." A grim tone. "It's not as if you even know where you are in the ocean--not much of a risk on my part to give you the information, and with Dex needing to be with Attie, you're the most qualified to handle this. Ryujin's not exactly a hotbed of crime--no reason for me to station a security team there."
Despite Mal's pragmatic words, Bo knew they both understood the importance of this.
He hung up half a minute later, after memorizing Mal's instructions on how to access the security station. When he informed Kaia about his next step, she put her hands on her hips. "I didn't even know we had a security station."
"It's a security chief's job to be sneaky." He tapped a finger on her nose just to see her scrunch it up and scowl at him, sadness no longer a dark whisper in her expression. "I'm going to look at the footage. Want to come with me?" Three others had just entered the laboratory--and all three were walking over to Dr. Kahananui and Tansy, their eyes huge and their faces pale.
"I'll stay." Tansy had stabilized after the discussion with Dr. Kahananui, revealing a steely backbone underneath her fragile exterior--not a woman who'd run headlong into danger, but Bowen wouldn't count her out if anyone threatened people she cared about.
Tansy might cry as she did it, but she'd shoot an attacker dead all the same. And she'd definitely help Kaia bury bodies if required.
Bo liked her.
"I'll put on protective gear," she said now, "and start cleaning up this mess."
"I'll help."
Tansy shook her head at Dr. Kahananui. "I'll only worry about the baby if you do. Let me handle it--and here come Bettina, Piri, and Kianmei. You know they'll pitch in."
The door opened again before the doctor could answer, Dex rushing in. Only once in his arms did Dr. Kahananui allow herself to release a shaky breath and surrender to someone else's strength.
Deciding the lab was safe enough at present--whoever had done this had wanted to damage things, not people, plus Dex had a vicious look in his eye that said he'd butcher anyone who came near his mate and her friend--Bo led Kaia outside, then over the bridge into habitat four.
She stayed unusually quiet throughout. Hex had scrambled up to her shoulder in the lab and now rubbed his nose against the side of her neck, as if sensing her turbulent emotions.
Bo couldn't help it. He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressed a kiss on her soft skin. "I know it's bad," he said. "But your cousin's tough and determined and now that she's past the first shock, Tansy's looking to how they can salvage the experiment."
"It's not actually the destruction that's the worst thing." Kaia closed her fingers around his own. "Attie and Tansy are too focused on the work to see it, but they will. It'll make the whole situation a million times worse."
"You--and they--must know the person who did it." It was the only possible scenario, taking into account Ryujin's isolation and the security features of the lab.
"Yes." Kaia's voice shook. "We are who we are because we are one. We are BlackSea."
Bo's cold rage grew even colder at her distress. "We'll find the culprit. I bet he or she has no idea Ryujin has a surveillance system."
The security station was located in an unassuming little room that said Maintenance on the door.
Kaia narrowed her eyes at the sign. "Why is Mal hiding the security station from us?"
"For exactly this reason." Bo took a quick glance around to make sure they weren't being observed before he opened the door and ushered Kaia in, then followed. "If no one knows it exists," he said, shutting them inside what seemed to be a fairly standard maintenance room, with brooms, repair kits, and other supplies stacked up neatly on metal shelves, "no one can come erase or compromise the data."
"I assume that data isn't stored in a broom."
Grinning at the arch question, Bo used a screwdriver from a maintenance kit to unscrew a specific panel on the floor. A small keypad glowed up at him, the light a thick, hazy green that wouldn't penetrate the panel.
He input the override code Malachai had given him and, when prompted, a second code that confirmed his authorization to enter.
That done, he closed the panel back up so it appeared to be just another part of the floor. One of the walls unlatched five seconds later, complete with the shelving unit attached to it.
A small tug and the space was wide enough for Bowen to slip through, Kaia at his back. She gasped at the tech within, all of it humming and bright with lights. "Who in Ryujin runs this? Is everyone keeping secrets?" A furious whisper. "We're meant to be a family!"
"Entire thing is autonomous," Bo told his fiery siren. "It's only here in case of an emergency--like if one of you lost your mind and committed a murder. The person who came in to investigate would have a starting point."
Kaia's glower didn't appreciably decrease. "Security chiefs have suspicious minds."
"Hazard of the job." He found the log he needed. "Here we go--today's list of entries into the lab." Entry was via a retinal scan paired to a palm print, with the resulting scan cross-referenced to an individual on Ryujin. Each of those individuals was represented by a four-digit ID number rather than their name. Pretty standard for a backend system like this.
Skimming the list, he pointed to the screen. "See that entry that's the fifth from the end? That should coincide with Dr. Kahananui's personnel number." Four others had entered after them and each of the scientists had come in alone, the door closing at their backs before anyone else could slip in. To enter, every one of them would've needed to place their palms on the scanpad and pass the retinal scan.
Last had been Dex, who, as station supervisor, must have an override to every room on Ryujin--including this one. The station commander had to know the security station was here; Malachai wouldn't be doing his job if he kept Dex in the dark. Which likely meant Seraphina also knew.
Bo decided not to mention that to Kaia right then. He'd wait until her blood wasn't so hot and she could accept that Sera's position on Ryujin meant she had to keep certain things confidential, even from her closest friends.
"Yes, that's Attie's Ryujin ID number," Kaia said now. "3333, hard number to forget." A frown in her voice when she added, "But we went in with her and the system has no way of tracking that."
"I don't think that'll matter with our saboteur--one traitor I can accept, but a pair working in concert pushes things." After printing out the list, he pulled up the master list of personnel ID numbers and put a name next to each entry.
