by Kit Rocha
Wren snatched up the photo of Kora’s bedroom and shook it at them. “Lieutenant Malhotra says he was alone when this was taken.”
“Uh…” North adjusted his glasses and sidled around Ashwin, holding his arms tight to his body as if he was afraid Ashwin would snap one of them off. He gingerly took the surveillance photo and studied the time stamp, then glanced at the others spread out across the desk. “Uhm. Are—are all of the shots showing evidence of the Panacea isotope from the past forty-eight hours?”
“Yes,” Wren rumbled. “Since your enhancements rolled out.”
Richards came closer, curiosity temporarily overriding wariness as he snatched the picture from North’s hands. “I told you,” he muttered, reaching for the next picture. “The sensitivity—”
“Was within reasonable parameters,” North snapped back.
“I told you we might be dealing with backscatter! The Special Projects isotopes—”
“Are sufficiently distinct!”
“At close range!”
Emboldened by the argument—clearly a longstanding one—North snatched the picture back and waved it at Ashwin. “Are you sure you were alone?”
The challenge was oddly comforting, and Ashwin vaguely regretted that he’d have to quash it. But a Makhai soldier would never tolerate insubordination from support staff, so he let the darkness gather behind his flat gaze—every life he’d taken, every life he’d shattered.
Especially Kora’s.
North’s bluster crumpled in seconds. His shoulders slumped, and his arm fell back to his side. He glanced at Richards—who was staring intently at the floor—and then at General Wren, who looked too irritated to intervene.
Fear crept into the man’s hazel eyes. Ashwin didn’t enjoy it, but it was necessary. He’d burn this Base to the ground if it would keep Kora safe. This tech could survive a little fear.
Finally, North opened his mouth. “Sorry, I—”
“I was alone,” Ashwin interrupted flatly. “I advise you to check your new software for bugs.”
North paled until his freckles stood out like scars on his face. “Yes, sir.”
General Wren wrapped his knuckles on his desk. “Richards, explain the backscatter.”
“Well—” Richards cleared his throat nervously. “I can’t say for certain that’s what it is. There are plenty of things we can test for in controlled circumstances that don’t replicate well in practical application. Topography, air haze, weather conditions, manmade structures—all of those can impact our sensors. Especially because there are so many naturally occurring isotopes, and when we mess with the sensitivity—”
“Explain it more concisely,” Wren snapped.
Richards scrambled for the surveillance shots and held them up. “These were taken at over a thousand meters. At that range, it’s possible that we’re not picking up the Panacea isotope but a—a reflection of the Makhai isotope. Backscatter.”
“So that’s easy to test. We have drones on the roof.” Wren pointed up, then pointed at Ashwin. “And a Makhai soldier right here. Take one up to a thousand meters and show me what you see.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ashwin moved aside so they wouldn’t have to inch past him to reach the closest bank of computers. The screen on the wall above them flickered to life, showing a dead camera feed and the map and control schematics. Richards took a seat and started to type, his fingers flying.
The camera flickered to life, showing a blurry shot of the sky and the golden horizon before shooting upwards so fast that watching the image on the screen gave Ashwin temporary vertigo.
He was too tense. But this was the moment of truth, the moment where his reckless trust in Gideon’s men would either save or damn him.
950.
975.
When the altitude tipped over a thousand meters, the drone jerked to an abrupt halt. With one keystroke, Richards flipped the wide view of the desert over to the isotope filter.
Ashwin tried not to hold his breath.
Little splotches of color appeared on the screen. Blue and then red, directly in the middle of the screen. To the northeast three more blue dots appeared, echoed by red shadows at various distances. On the south edge of the screen, another appeared, so close to its red counterpart that they almost blurred together into purple.
The donut-eating fool had pulled it off.
“See?” Richards proclaimed triumphantly, jabbing his finger at the screen. “Backscatter. I told you we needed to test it more before rolling it out.”
“I did test it,” North protested, looking even paler. “On a Makhai soldier, an elite officer, and the regular enlisted infantry.”
“At this altitude?” Richards pushed.
North hesitated just long enough, doubt shrouding his eyes, and Ashwin felt a prickle of sympathy. North had completed a deft bit of coding into which Zeke had simply inserted an error. When it was found, any protests North made claiming he hadn’t been responsible for the bug would receive short shrift from command—the officers valued results, not excuses.
Not a kind thing to do to a man who had just been doing his job. But kinder than killing him.
“Fine,” General Wren growled, waving his hand. “North, you’re dismissed. Richards, you, too. But I want you to oversee a rollback. And make sure the next update is thoroughly tested.”
Two voices exclaimed, “Yes, sir”—one significantly more dejected than the other. But neither man lingered once the drone was back on the ground, and Ashwin found himself alone again with General Wren.
Ashwin resumed his stance with his hands folded behind his back. “Sir, may I request access to the mechanical resources inventory? I got away today by telling them I was going to find more generator parts.”
“That’s fine, requisition what you need.” Wren gathered the photos and tucked them back into the folder. “I sent you on this mission because I trust your ethics, Malhotra. Your sense of right and wrong. Not all of your Makhai brothers share your...inner compass.”
The words sounded like compliments, but there was a wariness in his tone that Ashwin wasn’t sure how to reconcile. “Sir?”
“I also recognized that sending you was a risk.” Wren tapped his fingers against the desk. “In the unlikely eventuality that Gideon Rios turned out to be the same man in private that he appears to be in public, I knew I risked losing you the way we lost Lorenzo Cruz.”
Adrenaline surged, and it took all of Ashwin’s self-control to stay still. One of Wren’s hands was still tapping absently on the desk, but the other was in his lap.
Or reaching for a gun?
“This is between you and me, Lieutenant. And if you ever repeat the words, I’ll deny them.” Wren leaned forward. “I don’t care if you come to respect Gideon Rios. I don’t care if you come to believe your loyalties are conflicted. I want you there, standing next to him. Because if he ever becomes the monster his grandfather was, I know you would be the first person to put a bullet between his eyes, personal loyalty be damned.”
Ashwin let the words sink into him, picking apart their meaning and implication. Wren was offering him a trade of sorts. A devil’s bargain. If he accepted this charge, his mission in Sector One would be protracted. Potentially indefinite. There’d be no tension lingering in the back of his mind, warning him against getting too comfortable. No reason to expect he’d wake up one day and find himself recalled and reassigned.
Wren was offering him a permanent post in the only place he’d ever wanted to be. And, in exchange, he had to agree to kill the first man to believe that Ashwin could be more than an organic machine programmed for destruction.
But only if Gideon became a monster.
General Wren wasn’t wrong. If Gideon began to abuse his power, Ashwin wouldn’t be able to stand by and watch. His newfound sense of loyalty and protectiveness wouldn’t allow it. The people most likely to be hurt in Gideon’s fall were the people who had come to matter to Ashwin—Deacon and the Riders. Maricela a
nd her eternal optimistic smiles.
Kora, who would let Gideon bleed her dry and blame herself for not stopping him, just as she’d done with Ashwin.
The vows he’d taken the night he’d become a Rider had been to protect Sector One and the royal family, and the easiest way to keep them was to make sure Gideon didn’t give in to the temptations of power.
Gideon, Ashwin imagined, would be the first one to agree.
“Lieutenant?” General Wren prompted.
“I can make that promise,” Ashwin said, keeping his voice even. “I don’t think Gideon Rios is currently a threat to the Base. Given enough time to fully gain his trust, I believe I’ll be in a position to ensure he will never be a threat to the Base.”
“Excellent.” Wren waved a hand at him. “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.”
Ashwin saluted and turned, striding from the room. People hugged the walls as he passed, but he barely noticed this time. He made his way from the building and back toward his bike, stopping by the parts depot only long enough to snag the drive belt Zeke had been bitching about trying to find for his bike.
The smug bastard had earned it.
No one stopped him as he rode his bike back through the gates. He followed the road past the end of the razor wire fence and turned toward the old highway that connected to Eden. Five miles out of town, he crested a hill and saw Zeke, Ivan, and Deacon waiting for him at a dip in the road.
Zeke bounced his keys excitedly as Ashwin stopped and stripped off his helmet. “Well?” he demanded. “You’re not riddled with bullets, and I didn’t hear anything blow up. Did it work?”
Instead of answering, Ashwin took the drive belt from his pocket and offered it to him.
“Fuck, yeah!” Zeke plucked his prize from Ashwin’s hand and waved it in the air. “In Noah Lennox’s face. I’d like to see him pull that shit off.”
Deacon was quieter in his questioning. “They bought it?”
“They bought it.” Ashwin managed a smile, and it must not have been too off, because Zeke returned it. “Zeke was right. The techs were already fighting about the reliability of detection at that altitude.”
“Told you.” Zeke punched Ivan in the arm, so smug Ivan rolled his eyes and shoved him back. “Honestly, it was probably malfunctioning in other ways they hadn’t caught before I tweaked the code. There was bound to be interference.”
“Well, they’ve rolled it back now. And by the time they get another drone out…” Ashwin trailed off and glanced at Deacon. “Did Lucio tell you how long Kora’s procedure will take?”
“I didn’t ask.” His expression made it clear that Ashwin wasn’t allowed to, either.
The rebuke stung, but Ashwin didn’t mind. The pain was well-deserved. Maybe, when they got back, he could convince Reyes to expand upon it by punching him a few more times.
Ivan picked up his helmet. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d like to get home. I don’t like being this far from Gideon and the family.”
“Agreed.” Deacon squinted in the direction of the military compound, as if he expected to see a trail of armored trucks heading toward them. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Ashwin donned his helmet and fell in beside Deacon as he roared down the road. But when they hit the south turnoff that led in the direction of Sector Three, it took everything in him to keep following the other Riders north to Sector One.
Kora would be in good hands at the hospital, safe and protected. Gideon had promised him that. And Deacon was right—Ashwin didn’t get to ask after her. To go to her.
If he wanted that right back, somehow he’d have to earn it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Having your blood systematically removed, filtered, then replaced was surprisingly boring.
Mad had stayed for a while, and his easy Rios charm had distracted her from the intravenous lines running from her arm and neck. He’d told her stories about Gideon’s childhood, and spent far too long admiring the newly bare skin on her wrist, where Dylan had used lasers to painstakingly remove her bar codes. Then he had to go, and Dylan had handed her a book.
She’d read it before. And it wasn’t even a good one.
But it wasn’t his fault. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Gideon had explained about the other part of the plan—and Ashwin’s role in it. There were so many variables, a hundred tiny things that could go wrong. If Zeke’s software bug didn’t work. If the general in charge of the operation didn’t believe Ashwin. If, if, if.
“Dr. Bellamy.” Lorenzo Cruz pulled a chair up next to her bed and sank into it. “Mad told me you could use a visitor.”
“Cruz.” She handed him the book, and he set it aside. “How are the babies?”
“Good. You were right, Isaac’s cough is clearing up.” Cruz’s usually stern face melted into a gentle smile. “Ace is still convinced our daughter is a genius. We’re not arguing too hard with him. She’s pretty amazing.”
“He’s probably right. But don’t tell him I said so.”
“I won’t.” Cruz sat back and laced his fingers together, resting them on his stomach. A casual, relaxed pose, but his words were careful. “Most people don’t know why you’re here, but Gideon told me. In case I want to have the isotope filtered out of my blood, too.”
The Base had known where he was for the last year. If they’d wanted him back, they’d have him by now. But priorities had a way of shifting, and just because they hadn’t come for him yet didn’t mean they never would. “It’s not a terrible idea.”
“I’m going to do it.” He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe it’ll never matter. But if it does someday, I won’t have time to fix it. And I’ve got a family to think about.”
“Yes, you do.” She twisted her fingers in the thin sheet covering her. It was rough compared to the linens at Gideon’s house. “Ashwin went to the Base.”
“I heard.” Cruz reached out to cover her hand. “Ashwin spent months undercover in Eden. He can handle an hour on the—”
“Don’t. You, of all people? You know.” The generals didn’t need proof of wrongdoing. All they needed was a hint of suspicion coupled with a reason to act. People far more innocent than Ashwin had suffered because of that.
Cruz sat back and studied her in silence for a long moment before changing the subject. “You’ve never said anything to me about the time he kidnapped you. You must have known when you showed up to help with Rachel’s delivery and saw Ace. I half-expected you to turn right back around and walk out the door, but you didn’t.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t.” The tape securing the IV in her arm had curled up in one corner, and she smoothed it down. “The only thing I regret about any of it is that no one asked me to help.”
“That would have been better,” Cruz admitted ruefully. “I wasn’t exactly in my right mind when I asked Ashwin for the favor. If I had been...I would have remembered the most important thing about him.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard that old saying? When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? That’s how we are when we come out of the Base. We see a problem, and we look for a military solution. It took me months with the O’Kanes to understand that military solutions are fine when you’re dealing with enemies, but they fuck everything up when you’re dealing with friends.”
“That’s true. But you’re not Makhai,” she reminded him softly. “You’re not Ashwin.”
“Which is why it only took me months.” Cruz rubbed his shoulder, his gaze unfocused. “I’ve been thinking a lot since you two came to Sector Four. Remembering the first time I met him. Did you know he pretty much saved my life?”
“No.” Kora shifted on the bed, turning toward him as much as she could. Hungry for another tiny piece of the puzzle. “Tell me.”
“It was my tenth birthday. I don’t know how old he was—eighteen, maybe? I’d just passed all my physical and mental evaluations and was wearing my new uniform, and a bun
ch of the older elite soldiers jumped me.”
It wasn’t an unusual sight in the common rooms on the Base. Everyone denied it when confronted, even the victims, and the generals never stopped it because they viewed it as another sort of test. “What happened?”
“Ashwin happened.” His lips curled in a tiny smile at the memory. “He didn’t have to haul them off me or wade into the fight. He just told them to run, and they did. Everyone was scared of the Makhai soldiers, and Ashwin was always the scariest.”
As it turned out, she could still smile through the pain, after all. “Some things never change.”
“That’s what I thought. That Ashwin had never changed.” He laughed softly. “I still remember what he said to me when I asked why he’d done it. Word for damn word. Because it was so...Ashwin. He said, ‘You represent a massive investment of Base resources. You’re small now, but within three to four years, your height will put you in the top percentile. It’s inefficient to risk compromising your viability.’”
She burst out laughing. “That sounds like him.” But just as quickly as the humor had hit her, it slid sideways into something sad. Desperate. “Do you think he meant it?”
“I think…” Cruz hesitated, as if he sensed her pain. As if he was trying not to add to it. “I think it’s his tell, Kora. Efficiency. When he feels something he doesn’t know how to process—compassion, caring, even just the urge to help someone—he has to rationalize it, so he claims he’s just being efficient.”
“Or maybe you’re seeing what you want to see. What makes sense to you.” She paused, unable to pinpoint exactly which parts of her agony she could share without laying her entire soul bare. “He had the perfect opportunity to tell me about Panacea, and he didn’t. Our entire acquaintance has been one long string of perfect opportunities, but he let me wonder, Cruz. Even though he knew it hurt.”
“Kora, there are things—” Cruz sat forward, his elbows on his knees, his expression suddenly deadly serious. “Hell. I don’t even know where to start with this, and you’re going to hate me after I say it.”