by Zen DiPietro
Wren gave her a hard look, then deflated, her shoulders sagging. “I know. It just feels better to be mad at you.” She ran her hands over her head, then wrenched the pins out of her hair, letting it fall down her back. She raked impatient fingers through it. Fallon’s gaze lingered on the long tresses of pink.
“Yeah. I get that.” Blame and anger were always easier than hurt and disappointment. Fallon could relate to that all too well.
“I thought I had this awesome life, then all of a sudden, I found out it wasn’t real.”
“At least some parts were,” Fallon countered. “I don’t have answers yet for my time here with you, but I’m certain I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t care about you. You weren’t just an assignment.”
“How do I know that?” Wren seemed stuck between vulnerability and a desire to fight.
“Couldn’t you tell if I were lying?”
“I used to think I could.” Wren’s gaze didn’t waver. When Fallon didn’t respond, she asked, “You still don’t have your memories, then?”
“I’ve learned some things. As far as memories, though, no. I don’t have those yet.”
“Do you expect to?” Wren didn’t quite manage to hide her hope.
“It’s my plan.”
Wren’s chin lifted. “Well, let me know if you succeed.”
“I will. In the meantime, is there anything I can do for you? I came here because of Nevitt, but I don’t want you to be unhappy. I mean, we were married. I care about you being okay.”
Wren sighed. “I’ll be fine, but I want you to be okay, too. It doesn’t thrill me that you’re out there, doing who knows what.”
“So you’re worried?” She risked a gently teasing look.
Wren relented with a small smile. “Of course I am.”
Fallon grinned at her and rose to casually perch on the arm of the couch. “Well, let me tell you, then.” She leaned in closer. “I mean, I can’t give you actual details, but it turns out I’m totally badass. And I have these partners, who are more than totally badass. You should see the things we can do.” She raised an eyebrow and nodded in a mock-confidential way.
Wren rolled her eyes, then reluctantly laughed. “That’s only somewhat reassuring. Also mildly alarming. Besides, I’ve already seen some of the things you can do.” She raised an eyebrow and Fallon caught a hint of double entendre. She felt a catch—a pull toward Wren and the connection between them.
Awkwardness almost immediately elbowed in. Wren stepped toward the kitchenette, away from her. “Can I get you anything? A drink?”
“I probably shouldn’t stay.” Except she kind of wanted to. Instead, she moved toward the door. “I just wanted to make sure you’d be okay.”
Wren closed the space between them and put her hand on Fallon’s arm. “Do you have to go right away?”
Fallon wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I’m not leaving the station right now, but I don’t think I should be here. I don’t want to complicate things.”
“Things are already complicated.” Wren stepped into her personal space, her eyes locked on Fallon’s.
Yeah, about as complicated as they got, relationship-wise. Married and never married, attracted and repelled, comforted and agitated. Whatever Wren’s problems with Fallon were, Fallon had her own objections. Wren had ditched her at the first sign of trouble, after all. Sure, that sign had been less an inkling and more an exploding nova, but whatever. Fallon had deserved better from someone who’d made marriage vows to her.
But there Wren was, edging closer until Fallon could feel the warmth of her skin and smell the oddly enticing hint of grease solvent. Wren’s eyes held her in place, and Fallon could only stare at all of her textures. The soft wave of her hair, the curve of her bottom lip, the fringe of her eyelashes.
She felt Wren’s breath on her neck and knew that if she didn’t step back now, things would only get more complicated.
She didn’t step back. She didn’t seem to have a knack for retreating.
Fallon opened her eyes inside the confines of her mind. She’d grown accustomed to finding herself pacing the labyrinth of doors. She’d become more picky about selecting them, too.
A pattern had recently emerged. Round doors tended to be small things. Objects, like a book or a jacket. Without context, they meant next to nothing. She avoided the round doors.
Red ones, though. Red ones meant something fraught with emotion. Perhaps a combat scene or a verbal fight. Fallon liked the red doors. They seemed the most likely to show her something useful.
They were tougher to find, though. Her memory seemed to be chock full of spoons, hats, flowers, and other useless things. Perhaps a function of her ability to retain so many memories. But it made it hard to wade through all the doors to find a red one.
She turned a shadowy corner and finally found one. Small, though. Its little square frame wasn’t big enough to get her head through. She lowered herself to her knees and grasped the small protrusion on the front. More of a handle than a knob. The door popped open with a small tug and she stuck her hand in, all the way to the shoulder. Usually, if she kept pushing inward…
Ah, yes. She was in a small room. She twisted into a cross-legged position and waited. These memories showed up whenever they damn well pleased.
She didn’t mind the wait. It wasn’t like she was in a real room, with a real floor under her ass. She sat in a shadowy figment, wrapped in layers of sleep. Not at all unpleasant.
The room lightened gradually, and Fallon watched a beach scene take shape around her. Golden sand pressed into her legs as waves of heat drifted down to her from the sun. Trees swayed in a gentle breeze, and partygoers milled about. Wait. She’d seen this before. What was it?
Right. Her wedding. Wren had shown her images. Fallon saw herself in a gauzy pink-and-white dress with flowers in her hair, which hung much longer than she now wore it.
The image zoomed, so that Fallon could see only her face, with a periphery of other people just at the edges. Memory-Fallon smiled and nodded, then fell back, letting Wren and the others proceed past her. Her eyes tracked Wren, though, and her lips curved in a contented smile. Then her eyes snapped to the left and the right quickly, and Memory-Fallon’s face became alert. Hard. Worried. For just a microsecond. But in the time-variance of the memory, she replayed that instant over and over.
Fallon knew perfectly well that if she woke herself up, she’d find Wren sleeping next to her. This was the first time she’d accessed a memory relevant to the current events of her life. It could be entirely coincidental, sure, but she didn’t believe that. She’d made a mental connection between Wren and this memory. A moment of worry at their wedding. Why? Worry that Wren would find out about her? Or worry for Wren? Or maybe just worry about all the reception details going smoothly.
The memory started to turn fuzzy, pixelating into gray haze. It always happened this way. After a certain amount of time, her memories kicked her out. Made her sleep. As her thoughts grew blurry, she tried to remind herself to…something. Later.
Fallon woke up alone, which suited her fine. She took a long shower to give her jumpsuit enough time to get clean in the processor. As soon as the unit stopped, she dressed and braced herself.
She stepped out of the bedroom cautiously. Wren leaned down with one hand on the couch, putting on her shoes. She turned her head to look at Fallon. “You can let yourself out, right? I need to get to work.”
Fallon’s fears of an emotional scene eased, though she stayed wary of an ambush. “Sure.”
“Are you going to be around long?” Wren straightened, smoothing out her mechanic’s coveralls instead of looking directly at Fallon.
“Not sure. I’m not leaving right away, that I know of.” Fallon sidled into the room, slowly drifting toward the door.
“Relax,” Wren said with a laugh. “I’m not going to be throwing myself at you, begging you not to leave. I’m still pissed at you, and just so you know, this does not make us a cou
ple.”
Actually, that did reassure Fallon. “That’s a relief. I’m not that thrilled with you, either.”
A smile lit Wren’s face. “Good.”
Wren strode to the door, pausing only to say, “I’ll see you later. Or not. Try not to die,” before walking right out.
Fallon lingered for a moment in Wren’s wake. Sometimes Wren made Fallon work really hard to avoid remembering how easy it was to love her.
Fallon had hoped to find a message from Brak regarding the procedure when she returned to her quarters. But when she entered, she discovered her partners waiting in her suite. Their expressions put her on instant alert.
“We were just about to call you. Whelkin made contact ten minutes ago.” Peregrine’s frown cut deeper than usual.
Fallon jumped right into fight mode. “Where is he?”
“In trouble. Hiding behind an asteroid. Life support failing. We need to go get him.” Hawk leaped to his feet and flipped his backpack onto his back.
“Immediate departure?”
Hawk slanted a look at her. “Unless you think he can somehow survive without pressurization.”
“And if this is a ploy to draw us out?”
“Then we take him out,” Raptor answered, eyes dark.
“Right. I’ll grab my bag.” She didn’t need to pack it. She kept it ready. A moment later she returned. “Let’s go.”
As soon as Fallon got the Nefarious free of the station, she entered the coordinates Raptor gave her.
“Did he give any additional information?” she asked. She needed details. His reappearance in their lives would either be a boon or a disaster. It would be nice if she had a clue as to which.
“No time,” Peregrine said. “He said he was diverting all power to emergency containment.”
“What’s our ETA?” asked Hawk.
Fallon studied her readout. “Four hours at maximum velocity. Can’t do it any faster.”
“Let’s hope he has that long,” muttered Hawk.
“On the bright side,” Peregrine mused, “if we show up and find him dead, we know he was legit.”
They all stared at her. She shrugged. “It’s true.”
Since a dead Whelkin wouldn’t be any use to them, they had to hope he’d be alive, whether friend or foe.
His ship turned out to have been a poor one to start with. Amazing he’d gone on the run with the patched-up little star-runner. Not much more than a joyride ship for hopping between close-set planets. It definitely had a plasma leak, which Fallon saw reading hot on the sensors.
“Hawk and Raptor, you’re up. Save and subdue. Make sure he’s under wraps.”
They nodded and made for the airlock. Fallon’s problem was docking with a ship in crisis. If the damn thing blew, it would take her and her crew with it. She matched the ship’s attitude and rotation, then gingerly made the connection. She didn’t want to create any more friction or vibration than she had to, for fear of setting off a chain reaction. Hawk and Raptor boarded the little cruiser while she stayed glued to the sensors.
Waiting was not her strong suit. Minutes ticked by, and then more minutes. Fallon kept a constant watch for any temperature peaks or buildups in energy. When she finally heard Raptor give the all clear, she threw herself into getting them away from the time bomb of a ship as fast as she could make it happen.
With it safely behind them, she felt relief for one danger averted. Then Hawk and Raptor marched Whelkin up to the bridge and she faced another.
Ross Whelkin looked good, other than a bruised cheekbone, a bloodied chin, and a layer of grime. He’d grown his hair out, and the shaggy blond mane made him look younger than middle-aged. A human who’d transplanted to Zerellus early in life, he had the tanned good looks of someone accustomed to sun and fresh air.
“Fallon,” he said. “Good to see you again. I was afraid I wouldn’t.”
“I bet.” She gave him a hard look. “I’m sure you can appreciate the situation we’re in. We have no way of knowing if we can trust you.”
He nodded, then shifted his weight. He seemed to be favoring his left leg. Probably an injury. Raptor could check that out later.
“That’s why I brought you this.” He held out a data chip to her, but she indicated he should hand it to Raptor instead.
“What is it?” Raptor asked.
“Hopefully, everything you need to bring Blackout down. But while you look at it, would you mind if I get a little first aid and some food? I haven’t eaten in days.”
Piloting could be the best job, and sometimes also the worst. Fallon sat at the controls while Raptor worked on the data chip and Peregrine and Hawk saw to Whelkin. She wanted to know what was going on, but wasn’t about to leave the pilot’s chair. Not with who-knows-what out there searching for Whelkin.
Raptor returned first. She tried to glean something from his expression, but he gave nothing away. “He might be for real. If he’s not, then the entirety of Blackout has been subverted, and I don’t think that’s the case.”
“Why not?” Fallon asked.
“It would take too many people. Nothing we’ve encountered has indicated that all of Blackout has gone bad. We’ve always assumed a few rogue individuals quietly manipulating it to benefit their own agenda. That’s much more the style of those people. Who wants to be in control of something that everyone knows is corrupt? It’s too big to keep quiet.”
It was a reductive, roundabout sort of logic, but it rang true to her.
“So you think Whelkin’s for real, then.” She’d hoped for that, but suspicion and caution always outweighed optimism.
“I think he most likely is.”
She’d opt for cautiously optimistic, then. For now. “So what’s on the chip he gave us?”
“Strategic positions. Pass codes. Contingency plans. And Krazinski’s name is all over it.”
“Krazinski.” It was almost too predictable, really. Krazinski had been the one to blackmail Brak, trying to get her to engineer memory implants. He’d always been the most likely suspect, and every time they got close to the problem with Blackout, Krazinski’s name bubbled to the top.
Fallon wondered if she should feel personally betrayed, given how close Avian Unit’s relationship with Krazinski had apparently been. They’d even rescued his daughter, for Prelin’s sake. She searched Raptor’s face, but found only drive and determination.
“Fingerprints?” She didn’t mean actual fingerprints, but data authenticity. No one could identify signs of tampering like Raptor.
“Not a thing. They’re as clean as it gets.”
She let out a long, slow breath. “So do we trust Whelkin, then?”
“Of course not.” He grinned at her. “But we can give him enough rope to hang himself. And if he turns out to be clean, then all the better.”
So they’d given Whelkin the appearance of their trust, all the while monitoring him closely. Raptor saw to the man’s healthcare needs, and Whelkin saw to his own makeover. When he returned to the bridge in a clean jumpsuit, he made Fallon pause.
He still looked like the dashing young instructor that a great many academy students, by all accounts, had fallen for. He’d washed his hair, but it remained a dirty blond that seemed to suggest debauchery somehow. He was just good-looking enough to be attractive, but not so much as to suggest vanity. He seemed rough, loose, and a little wild.
Raptor caught her checking him out and raised a sardonic eyebrow. She smirked at him. No, she had no designs on their former instructor. She made a mental note to warn Hawk off, though. Just in case. He’d been eyeing Whelkin like he was birthday cake.
“Decided to trust me?” Whelkin asked.
“To a point,” she hedged. “You know how we work.”
“That’s why I wanted to get this to you. See if we could figure it out together. Things have smelled wrong for over a year now. When it all started to reek, I couldn’t keep ignoring it, assuming there was a good reason. I had to start digging.”
“What took you so long to bring it to us?” Hawk asked.
“Lack of proof to incriminate anyone, and the fact that I didn’t want to tip anyone off that I was sniffing around. I also needed to be sure that you weren’t part of it. Then, when I was ready to talk to you, you all just disappeared. Off the grid. ‘Special assignment’ was the official line. But I started digging there, too, and found you’d been separated. That’s when the reek became a stench.”
“We weren’t too excited about it either,” Peregrine remarked dryly.
“So what have you learned?” Whelkin paused, then rephrased. “Is there any intel you’re willing to share with me?”
Good question. They hadn’t figured that out just yet. They sure couldn’t risk letting him know anything that involved Dragonfire. Just his knowing about the Nefarious made Fallon uncomfortable.
“Fine.” Whelkin didn’t seem perturbed. “I get it.” He turned to Raptor. “Look in the pocket of the uniform I had on before. You’ll find a splitter. I want you to use it on me.”
Everyone stared at him. Splitters had been outlawed by every government on record a hundred years ago.
“Come on, we don’t have time to waste,” Whelkin said. “I need you all to trust me, and that’s the only way it’s going to happen.”
“Would the thing even work?” Peregrine looked doubtful.
“Given what I had to do to get it, it had better.” Whelkin’s voice had an impatient edge.
“You know there’s no way back from that,” Raptor said.
“Like I said, it’s the only way you’re going to trust me. We don’t have time to waste.”
Fallon exchanged a long look with Raptor. She got the impression he had the same thought she did. She nodded. “Fine. Do it.” She looked at Hawk. “Watch over them.”
When the three men had disappeared to the ship’s tiny infirmary, Peregrine spoke up.
“Will Raptor really do it?”
Would Raptor implant Whelkin’s brain with a device that would allow them to monitor any data he saw, hear every word he said, and tell whether or not he told the truth? Splitters were classified as an illegal torture mechanism. They were invariably fatal, giving only a lifespan of about a week past implantation. Raptor would do what he needed to. “I trust him.”