by Rachel Bach
Brenton started laughing the second he saw what was in my hand. “God rest the sly old fox,” he said. “Any other bugs I should know about?”
I did another sweep, but everything came up green. I’d cut my suit’s connection to the Fool when I’d put it on, and so far as I could tell, I was now flying solo. I did a manual bug check anyway, going over my suit inch by inch with my hands, but all I found was dirt. Brenton had stopped laughing by the time I finished. He was staring at me, leaning back on his heels with his thumbs looped through his belt. “You ready to get out of here?”
I fixed him with a no-nonsense look. “No,” I said. “Not until I get some assurances. Is the deal you offered me on Falcon Thirty-Four still valid?”
Brenton tilted his head. “It is. I’ll answer all your questions if you’ll answer mine. Tit for tat, and when we’re done, you can go. Assuming you still want to, of course. We had to dodge some pretty serious security to get over here. It seems your life has gotten a bit more dangerous these days.”
I folded my arms. “We’ll see. You answer my questions truthfully and fully, I’ll do the same. Then, when I know exactly what is going on, we’ll work it out from there.”
Brenton looked hard at me, searching my face through my visor for the trap, but there wasn’t one. I was being completely honest. I had no idea what was wrong with me, but whatever it was, it was clearly dangerous, and no one ever did herself a favor by staying ignorant. Of course, that didn’t mean I was just going to roll over either.
“I’m not going to be a lab rat or a prisoner,” I announced. “This is a two-way street. I keep my autonomy, weapons, and armor, and you keep your willing participant. You corner me at any point and I will die without telling you shit.”
That was not a bluff, and Brenton knew it. “There’s no need to make ultimatums.”
I just stared at him.
“Fine,” he said with a sigh. “You have a deal.”
“Good,” I replied. “Now let’s get out of here. If you could find me, it won’t be too much longer before Caldswell figures it out.”
Brenton nodded and motioned for me to follow him into the woods.
CHAPTER 9
The forest here was denser than the high woods Rashid and I had walked through. I couldn’t see more than few feet through the trees, but I scanned the undergrowth with every sensor I had. Other than the usual wildlife, though, the forest was empty, and that made me more nervous than finding a whole battalion of the king’s armored corps.
“Okay,” I said at last. “I give up. Where are your goons?”
“Why would I bother hiring mercenaries if I was just coming to talk to you?” Brenton said.
I glowered at his back. “That’s not what I was talking about. Where are your other symbionts?”
“I didn’t bring them,” he said casually. “Didn’t have time. Rashid’s message said Caldswell had already called in a retrieval team.”
“So it’s just the two of you?” I was almost insulted.
“We expected to have Rashid as well,” Brenton said with a shrug. “He’s no slouch. And it was the Eyes we were worried about fighting, not you.” He glared at me over his shoulder. “I’ve learned my lesson, Miss Morris. If I want to take you on again, I’m going to hire a tank.”
“Don’t count on it,” I said proudly. “I’ve beaten a tank.” Barely, with help, but his words still made me happy. It was a foolish, idiot kind of happy. Brenton was blatantly buttering me up, but after hours of crawling through the dark trying not to get caught by monsters who could hand me my ass without blinking, I was ready to take any reminder that I was actually someone to be feared. The last twenty hours had not been kind to my ego.
The undergrowth was so thick I didn’t see Brenton’s ship until I nearly walked into it. It was a sleek little planet jumper with a long aerodynamic shape that looked brand new and seriously expensive. The heavy guns on its nose and the sound dampeners over its thrusters showed it was all business, too, and I gave an appreciative whistle.
“Damn, Brenton,” I said, reaching up to run my gloved hand over the smooth muzzle of the plasma cannon. “What army did you steal this beauty from?”
“I prefer to say we requisitioned it,” Brenton replied as the door slid soundlessly open.
The ship’s interior was just as nice as the exterior. It was small, just a cockpit directly attached to a crew cabin with two bunks that were currently folded over to form padded benches, but everything had that slick, professional feel you only find in top of the line equipment. Brenton went straight to the pilot’s seat, poking things on the projected display as the engines hummed to life.
“Better strap in,” he said as Nic sank into the navigator’s chair. “Going to be a quick takeoff.”
I dutifully grabbed the wall harness, bracing for a rough ride. But despite Brenton’s warning, the sleek ship lifted off the ground light as a butterfly. Maybe I’d spent too long on the Fool, with its deafening roars and constant shaking, but I barely even felt the thrust as we shot into the night sky. That was actually kind of a bad thing, because without the shaking to keep me busy, I spent all my time scanning the air for missiles.
Considering the force he’d mustered to get me out of a lake, I had no doubt that Caldswell had air traffic on lockdown, and I didn’t see how we’d be getting out of the atmosphere without a fight. Not unless Brenton could bribe better than Caldswell could threaten. But while I could see the blips of the patrol ships on the navigation screen, none of them seemed to see us, not even when Brenton turned out of the planet’s orbit and punched the engines, sending us darting into open space.
“Don’t look so surprised, Miss Morris,” Brenton said, grinning at my disbelief as he reached up to set the autopilot. “This is a stealth ship. Even Caldswell can’t see everything.”
“Well, that would have been nice to know earlier,” I grumbled, pulling my arms out of the harness.
Brenton laughed and turned his chair around. “We’ve got a few hours before we reach the gate. Are you hungry?”
“We’re jumping?” I said, instantly wary. “Where?”
“NJM0921,” Brenton answered, getting up and walking past me toward the little galley at the back of the ship. “It’s an asteroid. We’ve got a base there where we won’t have to worry about the Eyes.”
I did not like the idea of jumping to some random asteroid with Brenton, but it was a little late to complain now. “How long will the jump take?” I asked as I sat down on the portside padded bench, taking care not to get mud on the pristine wall behind me.
“Four hours, give or take,” Brenton said, unlocking one of the cabinets and pulling out a military-style supply crate. “Now, do you want to talk first or eat first?”
My questions were burning a hole in my tongue, but I’d been a merc too long to turn down food. “Can’t we do both?”
Brenton shrugged and pulled down two handfuls of prepackaged rations. “Sorry it’s the plastic stuff,” he said, handing one package to me before dropping the rest on a little table he folded down from the bulkhead. “Unlike Caldswell, I don’t have the luxury of keeping a cook.”
I ignored the barb and focused on the food. “Picky mercs are hungry mercs,” I said as I peeled back the shrink-wrap. “Do you want to start or should I?”
Brenton sat down on the bench across from mine. “Why don’t you start by telling me why Caldswell decided to wipe your memory after our attack rather than kill you.”
“How do you know about that?” I asked as I removed my helmet so I could eat without getting crumbs in my suit.
Brenton shrugged. “When Rashid’s report came in that you were not only alive, but moving freely, as head of security no less, a memory wipe seemed the only rational explanation.” He paused, frowning at me. “That’s what confuses me the most, actually,” he confessed. “No offense to you, but it’s not like Brian to take that sort of risk.”
I took a bite of my ration to stall while I decided
just how honest I wanted to be with this man. I was feeling decidedly less loyal toward Caldswell than the last time Brenton and I talked, but even though we were playing nice right now, I wasn’t stupid enough to think this Brenton was different from the one who’d killed Cotter and a crash team just to corner me. If I hadn’t just spent twelve hours lost in the dark, I probably would have been more cautious, or at least a little more clever about what information I gave him, but I was exhausted, starving, and more than a little overwhelmed by everything that had happened. Finally, I decided just to spit it out. All my bridges were good and burned at this point anyway, I figured. Might as well try to make something out of the ashes.
“It wasn’t Caldswell,” I said at last. “It was Rupert.”
“Charkov?” Brenton asked. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“He wiped my memory so Caldswell wouldn’t kill me.” Just saying it made me feel guilty, but I squashed the sentiment ruthlessly. Rupert had betrayed me in every possible way; I owed him nothing. “We were lovers,” I finished, swallowing against the tightness in my throat.
Brenton’s eyes went wide. “Let me see if I have this right,” he said. “You slept with Rupert Charkov? The iceberg? Mr. Cold Killer?”
“I never heard him called that,” I snapped. Things might be over between us, but that didn’t mean I was going to sit here and listen to Brenton talk shit about Rupert.
Brenton didn’t even seem to hear me, though. He was leaning back on his bench, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “Why would Charkov sleep with you?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said, glowering. “Maybe because he’s got good taste?”
Brenton’s head shot up at my sharp tone, and he held up his hands. “No offense meant, Miss Morris. You’re an attractive girl, but you have to understand, if Charkov slept with you, he did it for a reason. Oh, he can be charming when it suits him, but the man is a machine, calm and controlled at all times, and he never does anything without evaluating risk and reward. That’s what makes him such a good Eye.”
“He’s not a machine!” I couldn’t believe I was defending Rupert, but this was just unfair. It was also untrue. I knew for a fact that the night we’d slept together, Rupert had been just as out of control as I was. “He can be cold,” I admitted. “But he’s not heartless.”
Brenton gave me a scornful look. “You don’t know the first thing about cold,” he said. “Rashid told you what the Eyes do?”
“Caldswell told me the propaganda,” I replied. “But Rashid filled in the ugly parts.”
“It’s all ugly parts,” Brenton said, his voice as hot and bitter as banked ashes. “Eyes are monsters, murderers. I know, because I used to be one.”
I’d guessed as much already, but hearing the truth from his own mouth made me fidget. I was trying to figure out how best to respond to his confession when Brenton suddenly changed the subject. “Do you know why the Eyes use symbionts?”
“Because phantoms break powered armor,” I replied.
Brenton smirked. “Phantoms break anything electronic, but that’s not the whole reason. If we just wanted something that would keep working around phantoms, there are other less dangerous options. The real reason every Eye is required to have a symbiont is because they make us highly resistant to plasmex.”
“To resist the phantoms?”
“To resist the daughters,” Brenton said. “Every daughter breaks free of her conditioning eventually, and when she does, the first person she attacks is her Eye.”
I shrugged. “That makes sense. The Eyes are her guards.”
Brenton shook his head. “You don’t understand. This isn’t like a prisoner escaping. There’s no rational thought to it, no planning. When a daughter is made, Maat takes her over completely. Everything she was before is wiped out and replaced by Maat herself, and Maat hates the Eyes with a madness that cannot be calmed. Rightly so—they deserve nothing less for what they’ve done to her—but the point I’m trying to make, Miss Morris, is that the only way an Eye survives past his first assignment is by shooting his daughter before she cracks.”
Brenton leaned forward, his eyes bright with the same fanatical gleam I’d seen back on Falcon 34. “Rupert has been a perfect Eye for a long time now,” he said. “When I left, he had an unblemished record, and he must have kept it up because they put him on Caldswell’s ship.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Why is that special?”
“Because Brian Caldswell is the Eyes’ field commander,” Brenton explained. “He’s number two in the entire organization, and his partner, Mabel Cobb, is widely considered to be one of the best covert ops combat symbionts ever made.”
I sighed. That explained a lot. You didn’t get to be as overbearing as Caldswell without some real power behind you.
“Caldswell’s team handles the most difficult and dangerous daughters,” Brenton continued. “The ones Maat has the most control over, the ones who break the sharpest and have to be killed most decisively.” He smiled at me. “The Glorious Fool is a death sentence for more than just security officers. The only Eyes who sign up to fly with Caldswell are the ambitious ones willing to risk their lives to learn from the best. So, what does that tell you about our dear Rupert?”
He was looking at me like he expected an answer, but I was barely listening anymore. My mind was back on the Fool. The night I nearly broke my leg on him, I’d told Rupert all about growing up on Paradox and my ambitions to be a Devastator, but the only thing I’d learned about him was that he considered it an honor to serve under Caldswell. At the time, I couldn’t see how. Now, thanks to Brenton, I understood.
That thought was still finishing when a memory rushed into my mind like a flood. I had enough experience now to recognize it immediately as one of Rupert’s. Even if I hadn’t, though, I would have known soon enough, because in this memory, I was looking in a mirror, and it was Rupert’s face that was staring back.
It must have been a while ago, because his hair was cut military short. Otherwise, he looked just like he always did: same black suit, same intense blue stare, but his reflection was blurred by the blood that was sprayed over half the mirror. There was blood on him, too, splattering his pale face and hands, one of which held his pearl-handled disrupter pistol. It must have just fired, because I could feel the intense heat against Rupert’s hand, but his attention wasn’t on the burning metal pressed against his palm. It was on the body lying at his feet.
The corpse looked far too small and thin to be the source of so much blood. Its head had been completely blown off by the disrupter pistol blast, but even so, I knew it was a daughter. Curious, I poked the memory, trying to pick out why this daughter was special, but all I got was horror, regret, and a sadness so deep it brought tears to my eyes as the Rupert in the memory fell to his knees. With slow, jerky motions, he took off his coat and tucked it around the girl’s body, whispering something again and again in a language I didn’t know. The words didn’t matter, though; I understood. He was saying he was sorry, repeating it over and over until the syllables ran together.
The regret was still throbbing in my skull when the memory vanished, and it was all I could do to turn away before Brenton saw the tears. I wiped them away in a quick, furious motion, but they just kept coming back. I didn’t know if what I’d seen was the first time Rupert had killed a daughter or just the one that got to him the worst, but the damn misery wouldn’t fade. Worse still, Rupert’s memory was triggering others. My own this time.
I was freshly out of the trauma dampener after the fight on Falcon 34, lying helpless and weak as Rupert leaned over me. The newly returned memory was so vivid I could almost feel the brush of his hair on my cheek as he leaned down to whisper about the horrible things he’d done, still did, could not undo. How he did not deserve me, how he could not be forgiven, and how he had no right to love me. Like the others, the memory was just a flash, fading as quickly as it came, but it left a dead, bitter taste behind in my mouth, and suddenly
I didn’t want to talk about Rupert anymore.
“My turn,” I said, turning to Brenton. “Back on Falcon Thirty-Four, you said I was the one who could save the universe. Why? What am I? Does it have anything to do with my ability to see phantoms?”
Brenton jerked. “You can see phantoms?”
I nodded, and he whistled. “No wonder Brian was after you so hard. Did he tell you what he thought you were?”
“No,” I said. “He claimed to be stumped, but the seeing phantoms thing was special enough that he was ready to stick me in a lab for the rest of my life on the off chance I might be a useful weapon in his war.”
“Better than being shot,” Brenton said with a shrug.
The glare I gave Brenton snapped his mouth shut. “I would shoot myself in the head before I let them take me,” I growled. “I’ve seen how they treat their weapons, and I’d rather be dead five times over than end up like Maat.”
Brenton eyed me with new respect. “Fair enough,” he said. “But your escape tonight might be luckier than you know. For you and the universe. Do you remember what I told you back on Falcon Thirty-Four about Stoneclaw’s virus?”
I had to hunt through my newly returned memories before I found what he was talking about. “You said she was making a biological weapon,” I said. “And that was why the lelgis destroyed her ship.”
“She was making more than that,” Brenton said. “Given the vast differences between species, even between the various xith’cal clans, viral weapons have limited effectiveness. But Stoneclaw wasn’t just engineering a virus, she was making a plasmex virus, which is another thing altogether.”
Brenton held up his hands and spread them slowly, like he was stretching something invisible between them. “Plasmex flows through every living thing. Certain races can feel it more than others, but the same plasmex that flows through the xith’cal flows through aeons and humans. What Stoneclaw figured out was a way to corrupt plasmex itself, creating a one hundred percent lethal virus capable of infecting any living thing regardless of genetic difference.”
