Every muscle in Maurus’s face stood out as he grasped the cup. He paused for a moment, and Chase hoped he would resist, but with a violent swing Maurus smashed the cup into his face, where it connected with a sickening crunch. Blood ran down his face and dripped off his chin, and only his wild eyes showed his agony.
“Now jump out the window,” said Bennin quickly.
Maurus turned on his heel.
“No!” cried Chase, stepping forward.
Bennin barked out a laugh and called Maurus back to his side. “You’re right. This is too much fun to have it end so quickly. And besides, I have another new toy to try out when this one grows tiresome.”
A chiming sound came from somewhere. Bennin glanced at the comm panel and frowned, pressing a finger to the screen. “Saleh, this is true? When did we receive word?” he asked. A soft voice came from the panel, saying something that Chase couldn’t understand. Bennin stood and placed his napkin on the table, still talking to the console. “Interesting. No, I was about to step out for a minute to check on a misplaced munitions shipment one of my men came across. Well, he’s the one who wants the meeting. He can wait.”
Bennin headed toward the door, saying something to his henchmen in their coarse language. He looked over his shoulder at Chase.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said with a scary grin, and left, taking two of his hulking henchmen with him. The third positioned himself beside the door.
Chase hesitated for a moment and went to Maurus’s side. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the Ambessitari would try to stop him. The man didn’t move, his beady eyes staring dully at the wall. Still, Chase kept the shackles on his wrists for the moment so he could speak to Maurus without any unnecessary interference.
“Let’s go,” he whispered. “I, um, I command you to come with me.”
Blood still trickled from Maurus’s nose, cutting a fresh course through the brick-colored splash already drying on his chin. His eyes rolled around in their sockets, though the rest of him remained stock-still. Chase had no idea what he was trying to communicate, but guessed that That’s not going to work was at least part of it. He examined the collar, which bit deeply into the skin around Maurus’s neck, all smooth, thick metal but for one tiny hole on the side of the band.
“Get away from him,” came the henchman’s growl from the doorway.
“Do you really think we’re going to escape?” snapped Chase, showing his shackled hands.
Maurus stared at him helplessly, and guilt rushed over Chase for abandoning him in the alley. He’d thought that maybe the Lyolian would be locked up here, trapped somewhere that Chase could break into, like on the Kuyddestor. This collar was much worse than he’d expected.
“Mina and Parker have my sister,” he whispered. “We found her, and Parker’s guardian is coming to get them. We also saw…” He looked down, regretting what he had to say next. “There’s this guy with tattoos all over his face—we saw him last time in the port. He’s the one who had your case. He brought it to Dornan while we were there.”
Through his broken nose, Maurus’s breathing grew fast and slushy.
“She destroyed the disks inside. They’re gone.”
Maurus made a choking noise, and tiny drops of fresh blood spattered from his nose. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and his skin grew ashen.
“Can you let him sit down?” Chase asked the henchman. He tried to push Maurus toward Bennin’s chair with his shoulder, but Maurus’s muscles locked up, and although it looked like he was close to passing out, he remained standing where Bennin had left him.
The door opened and Chase turned, preparing to confront Rezer Bennin and insist that he release Maurus.
Instead, Asa Kaplan walked through the door. Exhilaration passed through Chase in a rush and he began to smile, but his mouth froze at the look of intense fury on Asa’s face as he stalked into the room. He turned back toward the door, where a slender, maroon-haired woman batted her eyelashes.
“He’ll be back shortly, if you could just wait here a minute,” she said in a silky voice, closing the door.
Chase stared at Asa’s back for a moment, relief at his arrival mingled with dread at how angry he looked. But if Asa was here, that meant the others were safe, and he’d come to help Chase and Maurus escape. Chase glanced at the henchman, who still watched him but ignored Asa entirely, and turned sideways so that the guard couldn’t see his mouth. “Help me get this collar off him,” he whispered in as low a voice as he could manage. “I can’t figure out how to open it.”
Asa turned around and shook his head slowly. The anger in his hard blue eyes was unsettling. Was he really that mad that Chase had left against his wishes?
Beads of sweat were forming at Chase’s temples. “I’m not leaving him. Parker said you’d help—”
Asa crossed the room in two long strides to stand directly beside Chase. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Tell me where they went.”
“Who?” A cold bolt of fear shot through Chase, and his voice faltered. “Parker, my sister … they’re with you, right?”
Asa shook his head, just a tiny, deliberate tilt.
Chase’s heart began to race. “Why not?” he whispered. “You were supposed to get them at the—”
“They weren’t there,” Asa said through gritted teeth.
“What?” All the blood drained from Chase’s head, and he started to feel dizzy. “Then what are you doing here?”
Instead of answering, Asa whirled away and stepped toward the door. A second later, it opened and Rezer Bennin walked back in with his henchmen. A smile curled across his face.
“Jonah Masters, my old comrade,” Bennin purred. “What a pleasure!”
Chase opened his mouth, about to ask Bennin to take off the collar, but confusion stopped the words from coming out. They knew each other? Who was Jonah Masters?
Asa gestured back at Maurus. “I see you’re enjoying your new playthings.”
“I did wait an eternity for them to arrive, but the collar is delightful.”
Asa nodded, his face cool and unreadable. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve got a rather high-profile guest here today.”
Bennin gazed at Maurus for an uncomfortably long time. “Just settling a debt. Was there a particular reason for your visit, Jonah?” he asked, his voice light.
“Bennin, you’re one of my best customers. I just wanted to ensure personally that you were satisfied with this latest delivery.”
Chase looked back and forth between the two men, trying to make sense of their conversation. The collar choking Maurus had come from Asa? Did he and Bennin work together? Why was Bennin calling him by a different name? In another corner of his mind, a greater worry was gathering like a thunderstorm: Where were Parker, Mina, and his sister? Chase looked to Maurus, desperate for an ally, but the Lyolian was still locked in place, his dark eyes reflecting the turmoil that Chase himself felt.
“I’m more than satisfied,” Bennin answered. “These items were well worth the wait. In fact, I was about to try out the particle disperser next. Would you like to stick around for the demonstration?”
Particle disperser? Where had Chase heard this term before? Something to do with teleportation—wasn’t this the illegal vaporizing weapon that Mina had told him about?
“Indeed I would,” said Asa. “What were you planning to use it on?”
Bennin tilted his head with a sarcastic laugh. “Not what. Whom. I didn’t spend all that money on a particle disperser to use it for clearing shrubs.”
Asa gave him a tight smile. “On whom, then?”
Chase knew what the answer was going to be, but his heart burst into a sprint when Rezer Bennin pointed across the room and calmly said, “As a warning to all who would try to swindle me, I’m going to disperse the Lyolian.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Disperse. This was the word that Colonel Dornan had used to describe what had happened to Chase. This had to be the same kind of weapon that had bee
n used on him and his parents.
A hoarse, stifled moan started deep in Maurus’s throat and stayed there, trapped behind tightly sealed lips. There was pure terror in his dark eyes—frozen in place by the controlling collar, Maurus had no chance to defend himself. Chase stepped forward between Maurus and Rezer Bennin.
“I won’t let you kill him,” he said.
Bennin raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I won’t let you do it,” Chase repeated. Behind him Maurus made frantic, unhappy noises.
Bennin’s cold eyes flickered thoughtfully over Chase. “Keep this up, and I’ll use the device on you instead.”
The shackles bit into his wrists and caused a painful tingle that Chase knew meant he was about to phase through them again. He had to focus all his concentration to keep them from sliding off. When he looked up, he saw Asa watching him with a strange, piercing gaze, but still the man made no move to help.
“I suppose you were hoping to find this?” Bennin took something small out of his pocket and held it out, pinched between his forefinger and back thumb—a tiny metal cylinder that looked like it would fit in the hole in Maurus’s collar, obviously the key. Bennin tossed it on the floor. “Go on, get it,” he said in a taunting voice.
Chase stared at the key and nearly gave in to the temptation to pull his wrists through his shackles and dive for it. But he glanced at Asa, who gave another tiny, deliberate shake of his head, with a look so menacing that Chase wasn’t sure if he was more scared of Bennin or him.
The comm panel chimed again. With an impatient sigh, Bennin stalked across the room and thumbed the panel. He tapped his many fingers across the table as a soft voice mumbled something. A sudden expression of sheer delight broke out on his face.
“Bring them up,” he purred, and turned to Asa. “What an unexpected treat! We have more guests.”
Asa nodded. Chase tried to catch his eye again, but Asa ignored him. Anger began to cloud Chase’s thoughts as he stared at Asa’s straight profile, his expression utterly calm, as though Rezer Bennin hadn’t just threatened to disperse Chase. Was this really the man they’d thought would be their savior?
The door opened, and the maroon-haired woman led a small group into the room. As each person entered, Chase’s heart plummeted.
Mina, carrying the slack form of Chase’s sister in her arms.
Parker.
And the mercenary, Fersad. Pointing a blaster rifle at all three of them.
For Fersad to capture them so quickly, he must have been tracking them since they left the medical center. Chase strained to get a look at his sister. Mina shifted her onto her hip, and one of the girl’s arms flopped down at her side, making it look like she was still unconscious—or worse.
A large, fresh bruise was forming on the side of Parker’s face. His eyes traveled from Chase’s shackles to Maurus’s bloody nose, and then widened when he noticed Asa. “How the—”
In a flash of movement, Mina clamped her hand onto Parker’s shoulder. His words cut off in a gasp as he nearly buckled to the floor. Oblivious to this, Rezer Bennin had already turned to Fersad, a smile stretching across his flat face. “Fersad, I don’t know how you do it. As a tracker, you are a true virtuoso. How ever did you find her?”
Fersad’s tattoo-marbled face bent into a frown as one of Bennin’s henchmen relieved him of his blaster. “Spotted her coming out of a Fleet medical center. She was holed up in a warehouse in Nano City with these kids.” He glanced nervously around the room and paused when his eyes reached Asa. “Hello, Jonah,” he muttered in acknowledgment.
Asa returned a thin, irritated smile, giving no sign that he recognized Fersad’s captives.
“Welcome back, my dear,” Bennin crooned to Mina. He looked down at the girl in her arms and prodded the child’s neck. “What’s this, is she dead?”
Chase’s heart jumped up in his throat.
Mina shook her head. “She needs to see a doctor immediately.”
“I see. Thank you, Fersad. I appreciate you returning my property to me.”
Fersad gave an awkward half nod and stayed where he was.
Bennin paused for a moment, and made an inauthentic noise of surprise. “What am I thinking? You’re expecting a reward.” He went to the comm panel. “Saleh, bring up a—”
Fersad coughed. “Actually, I’d like to make a trade. For him.” He raised a clawed finger toward Maurus.
Of course it hadn’t been hard for Fersad to track him down. The whole population of the Shank probably knew Maurus had come here, just like they knew that Bennin was looking for his missing android. Chase glanced at Asa, who watched the exchange dispassionately. It took all his self-restraint to keep from screaming at Asa to step up and tell Bennin that he was Mina’s true owner.
“Ah. The Lyolian.” Rezer Bennin stood for a moment with his head inclined, and then whirled around, his long coat flaring out around his knees. He opened one of the containers along the wall and removed a long cylinder of black metal, dotted with a few levers and fitted with a strap. “Do you know what this is, Fersad?”
“I can’t say that I recognize it,” said Fersad nervously.
“No, you probably wouldn’t. It’s a particle disperser.”
Chase stared at the device. This was the creation that had, if he could believe what Dornan said, supposedly blasted him into nothingness. It didn’t look like much more than a metal tube, but the simplicity of the device somehow made it more ominous. He couldn’t take his eyes from it.
“Fersad, do you know what this device does?” Bennin asked.
Fersad hesitated, and nodded quickly. “Vaporizes.”
“Well, yes, that’s the fool’s answer. ‘Disperses’ is the technical term, but more precisely, it blasts a stream of evanescent energy at its target—for the sake of this explanation, let’s say it’s you.” He paused to flash a vicious smile. “This energy dissolves your body down to the very molecular level and flings those molecules out across the galaxy. A slight trace of you will remain, a biological smudge to show your final standing point, but that’s all. Isn’t that fascinating? I’m just aching to try it out.”
Fersad’s eyes darted nervously at the weapon. Chase felt as tense as a drawn wire, waiting to see if Bennin would pull the trigger. Hovering at the edge of his subconscious was a small, morbid curiosity to see the device in action. Would Fersad just vanish? Would he explode? With a start, Chase realized that the shackles were slipping off again and pushed his wrists closer together.
When Bennin spoke again, his tone was silky. “Now, Fersad, I have only one question for you. How high is the bounty?”
“The what?”
“For the Lyolian, Fersad. I’m no simpleton. To me, he is simply the man who wronged me. But, I realize, to the rest of the universe he is a destroyer of worlds, the most-wanted man in existence. So what’s the going rate?”
Fersad narrowed his feral eyes. “I brought you the android,” he growled.
Bennin leveled the particle disperser at Fersad’s chest. “And your reward will be your life. I think it’s an excellent bargain. Anyone else I would have killed without asking, but you’re an outstanding tracker and I may need your services again. My offer will expire shortly. I suggest you take it.”
Fersad reached for Mina’s arm, and Bennin pulled a lever on the back of the particle disperser. The weapon responded with a surging hum and a crackling film of orange sparks danced along the black cylinder. Two of the henchmen stepped on either side of Fersad.
“Get out.” Bennin’s voice was as flat and hard as his eyes.
With a snarl of frustration, Fersad turned on his heel and stalked out of the chamber, followed by the two Ambessitari henchmen.
Bennin smiled as the door closed behind Fersad and turned to Mina, staring with an intensity that would have made any human uncomfortable. Mina stared blandly back.
“That’s quite a high-caliber android you’ve got,” Asa commented.
Rezer Bennin tur
ned slowly to face him. “We can stop the charade now.” His voice had gone low and dangerous.
Asa said nothing, a hint of a smile playing around his mouth.
“You’ve been supplying me with your goods for, what, twelve years?” Bennin said. “But I’ll admit I know next to nothing about you, other than the fact that you appeared out of nowhere—despite my efforts, I haven’t been able to find a shred of information about you prior to our first transaction.”
“You mean when I outfitted your men to help you overthrow the previous Rezer?” Asa asked, arching an eyebrow.
Bennin smiled. “Correct. You’re an enigma, Jonah. But it’s never really mattered, since you produce the most advanced weapons available on the black market.”
Twelve years? Black market weapons? This sounded to Chase like someone very different from the owner of a tech corporation.
Asa inclined his head. “I appreciate the compliment, Bennin—Rezer Bennin—but I don’t quite see what this has to do with—”
“Stop,” Bennin interrupted in a derisive tone. “Rumors have been circulating for years that you have any number of other high-tech endeavors outside the weapons field. You think I didn’t immediately suspect that she might be one of yours? That I didn’t check for your mark before I had her reanimated?”
Asa’s features hardened, and in a threatening tone he said, “Then I’m sure you’re pleased that I’m giving you the opportunity to return my property to me.”
At last Asa had finally claimed what was his, but instead of satisfaction, all Chase felt was more anger. Was this just about his property—about getting Mina back? He hadn’t even looked at Parker since he entered the room. Chase wrestled with disappointment as he watched Asa. This cold-blooded weapons dealer, whatever his name was, wasn’t anything close to the hero he’d hoped for.
Bennin arched an eyebrow and looked down at the weapon in his hands, running his fingers over the levers, adjusting one of them by a few notches. “What’s your relation to the children?”
Asa shrugged noncommittally. “No relation.”
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