by Tamara Hogan
Across the lab, Gabe muttered as he consulted a clipboard. Lorin rolled her eyes. He hadn’t said a personal word to her since she’d come back from Isabella. Work, work, work. Though she’d felt his gaze throughout the afternoon, apparently he wasn’t in the mood to talk.
The silence grew oppressive and heavy without the beeps, cheeps, blips, and pings of Gabe’s Bat Phone, which Bailey had decreed be powered down. Bailey’s technical explanation about her reasoning had completely flown over her head, but Gabe was complying. Since her return, he’d snatched up the handset of the wall-mounted landline a couple of times, having a short, jargon-filled conversation with Julianna Benton, and then calling his sister to ask how things were going with her prosthetic. His guilty expression as he spoke with Glynna made her queasy.
Gabe was sacrificing so much to work on this project, and it was all her fault.
She threw a dirty look at the door leading to the Biohazard Lab. Though his interest had been clear as she’d removed the capsule from her messenger bag, Gabe had ordered it placed under the hood for bubble wrap removal, lest they have what he’d called “an encore performance.” He was right, damn his eyes, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. And now the capsule she’d sacrificed sleep and probable sex to retrieve lay slumbering under a biohood. Untouched. Waiting.
Like her.
Ah, damn, now he was talking, taking copious oral notes as he moved the ProScope over each millimeter of the box. She shifted restlessly. Apparently his actual words didn’t matter, nor did the fact that he’d directed so few of those words to her. His rumbly voice stroked her as thoroughly as his clever tongue had the last time they’d made love.
She could practically see his synapses snap as he picked up his clipboard, scribbling a notation in his heinous handwriting. When had she started finding concentration—thinking—so damned sexy? When had a days’ growth of beard juxtaposed against a starched oxford shirt made her slicken with want? Damn it, she knew exactly how delicious that scruff would feel scraping its way up her inner thighs.
Gabe stepped away from the table with a sigh, rolling his head in circles to stretch his neck. Latex snapped as he removed his gloves. He raised his hands to his shoulders and rubbed.
She stood, approached him from behind, and covered his hands with her own.
He tensed for several endless seconds. Slowly, with a stroke of skin against skin, he removed his hands.
Placing himself in hers.
Lorin’s breath quickened as she rubbed her thumbs against his tight trapezoids. Gooseflesh rose on the back of his neck, and his silent exhale vibrated into the fingertips resting lightly on his Adam’s apple. The sterile air suddenly seemed heavy, and her perfectly comfortable clothes pulled and scratched. She felt her sex soften, dampen, clench against emptiness. Taking a half a step, she closed the distance between their bodies, bumping the toes of her boots into the heels of his loafers. Gabe groaned aloud as her breasts made contact with his back. When she twined her arms around his chest, hugging him from behind, he reached back to clutch her ass in his long-fingered hands, yanking her more tightly against his lanky frame. He hissed a breath as she dragged her hands down his chest, over his abs, taking a meandering path to the waistband of his flat-front khakis.
Which were no longer quite so flat.
She groaned. It had been too long since she’d touched the hard flesh bulging under the soft fabric, forever since she’d felt his weight in her hand… tasted his essence on her tongue. Sidling around his body, brushing him with lips and breasts as she made the journey, she reached for the tab of his zipper.
His icy blue eyes burned with heat. He covered her hand with his—
“Damn it!” Bailey’s frantic voice carried clearly from the adjacent computer lab.
Lorin dropped into a fighting stance—or tried to. Gabe’s arms clamped around hers like a vice, impeding her range of motion. Intruder? Security breach? She had no idea, but the panic in Bailey’s voice was real. “Move, damn it.” Lorin shoved out of Gabe’s arms. Stalking over to the entrance, she slapped the silent alarm button that would bring Sebastiani Labs’ Security and Emergency Response teams running. The cluster of warning indicators on the panel above the button indicated nothing amiss.
Bailey bumped into her as she scurried into the lab, holding the tech unit in front of her at arm’s length. She ran directly to the box, dropped the tech unit into it, and slammed the cover down.
Lorin quickly scanned Bailey from stem to stern. No blood. She was mobile, all limbs working. Breathing, talking. “Are you okay?”
Bailey looked at them like they were missing the brain regions responsible for critical thinking. “Guys. That thing”—she pointed to the box she’d slammed closed—“connected to my network.”
Lorin looked at the now-closed box, and then at the laptops both she and Gabe were using. Both units were top-of-the-line, but their network access was nil. She could type up her notes, Gabe could update his spreadsheets, but that was it. Bailey must have a different set-up for herself. Why hadn’t she listened to the technical details more closely during all those meetings Gabe had helmed?
And now Bailey and Gabe were walking quickly, jabbering about LANs, RFID shielding, encryption, and jammers.
“Damage?” Gabe asked.
“Don’t know yet.”
Lorin brought up the rear as they entered Bailey’s domain, the computer lab she’d explicitly built to test the unit she’d just slammed back into the box. Dimly lit, fans whirring, nearly a dozen laptops, monitors, and CPUs elbowed for space on the crowded L-shaped table. Bailey dropped onto a wheeled backless stool, pushed off with a foot, and clattered half the length of the table, coming to a stop in front of a large monitor, where she pounded on a keyboard in frantic bursts that sounded like the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. She bounced her Converse-clad feet as characters flew across the screen.
“Son of a bitch,” Bailey finally muttered at a stream of letters and numbers that meant absolutely nothing to Lorin.
“What?” Lorin asked. “What do you see?”
“Actually, it’s what I don’t see,” Bailey said, leaning in to peer at the screen more closely. “There’s no sign of it now. It’s gone. If the unit was still latched on, we’d see it, right”—Bailey pointed to a tiny stream of characters—“there. Damn it.”
“Bailey, are you sure—”
“Yes, and now it’s gone.”
Gabe glanced to the door leading to the lab, and back at Bailey. “So you were working with the unit in here—”
“It was just lying there on the desk,” Bailey said defensively. “I hadn’t started my first test yet—”
“Hang on. When the tech unit was in here with you, out of the command box, it latched onto the network,” Gabe said. “And now that it’s back in the box, there’s no sign of it?”
“Yeah.”
“So… the box is blocking the signal somehow?”
“Like a Faraday cage? Maybe.” Bailey chewed on her lower lip. “But what the hell did it do, what did it access, when it latched on?” Focusing on the screen again, she muttered something about viruses and payloads and core dumps.
Lorin was having trouble understanding the fine technical details, but Freyja, she got the gist. “How did you think to put the unit back in the box in the first place?”
“The box has been down here, closed, for several days now while Gabe ran his initial tests. My network’s been clean all that time, was clean when I ran my last diagnostic a couple of hours ago. What’s changed? The box was opened, and the unit was removed. I thought putting it back, turning back the clock, would be a good first thing to try.” With a sigh, she whirled her stool back toward the screen, where white characters marched across a black background. “We’re lucky it worked—or seems to have worked, at any rate—’cuz after that, I had nothin’.”
“What’s the risk of incursion into SL’s network infrastructure?”
Lorin caught her breath.
“Unknown.” Bailey looked up to the ceiling, where ten floors of very privately held corporation soared overhead. “We’re shielded down here, but I won’t know anything about the unit’s range and capabilities until I examine it—”
“Which won’t happen anytime soon,” Gabe said darkly. “That thing’s staying in that box until—”
“Shit,” Lorin blurted. The day she’d found the box—the day she’d accidentally opened it, and noticed the unit and its red glowing light—she’d been attending a Council meeting.
“What’s wrong?” Gabe asked.
“Council_Net,” she said starkly. “The first time I opened the box, I was attending a Council meeting. I was logged into Council_Net.”
Bailey’s eyes widened as she considered the implications of a possible breach of the Underworld Council’s confidential workspace. “I can’t run Council_Net diagnostics from here. I—”
They heard a loud crack. Lorin ran back to the other lab, just in time to see the tread of Lukas’s big boot slam into the tempered glass window of the outer door again, lengthening the fissure he’d made, but not yet shattering the glass. Elliott and a uniformed Sebastiani Labs security team stood behind him.
“Damn it. Hold on.” Lorin opened the door.
Lukas shouldered into the room, his laser-beam gaze slicing into every corner. “What happened?”
“Get in here,” Bailey called from the computer lab. “We’ve got a couple of problems.”
Lukas didn’t comply until he’d satisfied himself that everyone was okay, that the lab was clear. After he turned off the alarm and sent the security team back to their stations, she, Gabe, Bailey, Lukas, and Elliott congregated in the computer lab while Bailey explained what had happened. With five people in the small, dim room, space was at a premium. Lukas paced while he, Elliot, and Bailey had a convoluted, jargon-laced conversation about the lab’s proprietary shielding technology, and the capabilities of the prototype jammer Bailey had thought to install. Lorin scooted up onto the table to free up more floor space.
Lukas summed up. “So, bottom line, the tech unit may have breached SL and Council_Net.”
“That about nails it,” Bailey said grimly. “I need to go back to Sebastiani Security to run a Council_Net diagnostic.”
“Go,” Elliott ordered. “I’ll get our network team going here to verify that our shielding held. We’ll bring it down until we have more information.”
Lorin gulped at Lukas’s nod of agreement. An SL network shutdown? This was serious shit.
Bailey shoved tiredly to her feet. “Lorin, Gabe, I’ll need your phones.”
“Huh?” Though her phone was off most of the time, the prospect of being without it was unexpectedly disconcerting. “It’s powered down in my bag next door.”
“I need to check them out,” Bailey said. “Not that I actually know what the hell I’m looking for yet.”
Bailey walked over to Gabe and held out her hand.
“Shit,” he muttered. Color flushing over his cheeks, he glanced at Elliott. “Sorry.”
Elliott smiled slightly. “I’ve heard the word before.”
Reaching to the holder at his waistband, Gabe slowly handed over his Bat Phone, as reluctant as a parent leaving his child with a babysitter for the first time.
“Oh, you have a prototype.”
“I don’t appear to have it anymore.”
“Nope,” Bailey responded without sympathy. To Lukas, she said, “This would be a great opportunity to probe Council_Net for other susceptibilities. As long as I’m—”
“Bailey, there are too many projects on your plate as it is. Most of them are behind schedule.”
“Just pointing out that there’s a silver lining here. C’mon, who needs sleep?” Bailey quipped.
You do. Bailey looked like she’d pulled too many all-nighters as it was. So much responsibility rested on the shoulders of this single, frail human.
“Are you done down here for the day?” Elliott asked Gabe. “I have a couple of questions about that proposed budget you sent last night.”
Gabe shot Lorin an apologetic glance. “Sure, Elliott.”
So, he hadn’t forgotten what they’d been up to before all technological hell had broken loose. She sighed heavily. Damn. Even without computers, even with a possible breach, business went on. She had some work to catch up on herself. “Touch base with me later, Gabe.”
As Lorin turned over her phone to Bailey, she wondered if Gabe would hear the invitation in her words—and if he heard it, would he take her up on it?
***
“Aah…” Even as his legs collapsed, even as the floor tipped up to smack him, Beddoe closed his eyes to protect them from the searing light. He’d materialized into a dark, seething cauldron: sharp spears of light. Ozone. A huge shock wave of sound built, rolling and rumbling, threatening to cleave the world in two. He clapped his hands over his ears.
Had Minchin finally made his move, sending his captain to a fiery death?
Suddenly the room… quieted. Stilled. Hesitantly opening his eyes and dropping his hands from his ears, he sat up and checked his ’comp: Thunderstorm. A seasonal weather phenomena comprised of rain, lightning, thunder.
As he read further, the workroom’s shapes and shadows formed, grounding him: the wall of shelves. The window, flashing with strobes of light. A table leg. He’d fallen near the table where, last night, he’d suckled from Paige’s body—a delicacy that still thrummed through his body and mind.
Outside, projectiles pounded, rhythmic and musical. Dragging himself up from the floor, he carefully walked to the window. He peered out and grabbed onto the windowsill to keep from falling again.
Clean water—rain—fell from the sky. The planet was so abundant with water that it fell from the sky and flowed freely over the land.
Rain. Such a simple word to describe a treasure beyond price.
Dia. Even if he never found the wreckage of the Arkapaedis and couldn’t claim the bounty, possessing the cryotube would more than meet his needs. If the cryo’s precious cargo was still viable, he could claim this world—so many worlds—as his own.
All he had to do was take it.
He flicked a tiny button at his wrist, illuminating the tabletop with a narrow-beamed light. He swept the light over its surface—its clean, empty surface. Where was… Shoving down the panic, he searched the shelves, the desk and its drawers, even the tiny room that Paige had hidden him in last night.
Nothing. The cryotube was gone.
***
Lorin jerked awake at the light touch on her shoulder. “Gabe?”
“No, dear,” her mother said softly. “It’s me. Are you expecting Gabriel?”
Lorin sat up, disgusted to find that she’d fallen asleep at her desk with her hand buried in a bag of Cheetos. Was she expecting Gabe? “No, not really.” She’d hoped Gabe might seek her out after his meeting with Elliott was over, but she’d worked for several hours, waiting, hitting the snacks like an addict did his pipe. “What time is it?” she asked while she stretched, glancing to the big window overlooking her mother’s desk. It was full dark outside, but that didn’t tell her much.
Alka glanced at her slim, black-banded watch. “Just past 1:00 a.m.”
And no Gabe. Had he called? She reached for her messenger bag, stopping with her arm extended. She didn’t have a phone anymore; Bailey had taken it. She had Gabe’s, too. He’d need to use a landline to call her, use someone’s desk phone—duh, desk phone. She glanced at the whiz-bang machine sitting, dusty and neglected, on the corner of her desk. The thing had so many features that frankly, it intimidated her, but she’d managed to use it earlier to retrieve Elliott’s message notifying SL employees that their technology use would be limited to internal communications and local work until further notice.
The message light was dark. And she was staring at the phone like a lovesick teenager.
Suck it up, Schlessinger.
Sitting up with a
lurch, she stuck her forefinger in her mouth to suckle off the neon orange Cheetos dust, taking in her mother’s simple black linen pants, matching tunic, and stunning fire-opal necklace. The large collar covering most of her upper chest was priceless, an ancestral piece, but her mother wore the ornate jewels with a royal’s casual confidence.
“How was your dinner with Valerian?” she asked.
Alka snagged the Cheetos bag for herself, walked to her own desk, and sat down. “Just fine. Valerian was quite the raconteur tonight, in fine form. But that might have had something to do with the wine. Oh my stars, the wine.”
While her mother rhapsodized over the vintage Wyland had selected from Valerian’s incomparable wine cellar, Lorin’s thoughts turned bittersweet. Even for a species as long-lived as vampires, Valerian was ancient. While deteriorating health was to be expected at such a great age, Valerian’s condition had taken a marked turn for the worse this year, prompting urgent action by both Alka and Wyland. Most of their peoples’ known history had been catalogued by this one man, written in his distinctive, sprawling script as he whispered into rulers’ ears from behind countless royal thrones, in innumerable smoke-filled rooms, sitting on the periphery of history, influencing it on their species’ behalf. Plumbing his fading memories had become an urgent priority. Alka had started recording his oral histories during a series of weekly dinners, a digital recorder lying beside the heavy Georgian cutlery, catching every word of their wide-ranging conversation. Wyland, Valerian’s chosen successor, had all but moved in to Valerian’s hulking old house, perched on the cliffs overlooking the St. Croix River, to maximize their time together.
“Why are you here, not at home?” Lorin asked around a jaw-cracking yawn.
“Wyland makes a vicious espresso. I’m wide awake.” Reaching over, Alka carefully extracted a single Cheeto from the bag. “I thought I’d catch up on some work. I never figured you’d be here.”
Lorin told her mother about what had happened in the lab earlier in the day, that Bailey suspected that the tech unit had somehow attached to her test network. “You don’t seem surprised.”