He crumpled to the ground, the controls still in one hand. The orbs drifted slowly to the left.
The woman bent to check on him. “You shot my camera man? Who does that?”
Stephanie got to her feet, feeling uneasy.
“Camera man?” The stunner felt suddenly heavy, her fingers numb. She let her arm fall, the stunner hanging in a loose grip beside her hip.
“Yes, camera man. How am I supposed to do an interview without him?”
“How did you know we were here?” Ivan asked, pointing the stunner at her.
The reporter’s eyes opened wide, showing too much white around the iris.
“That’s a stunner, right?” She chuckled, nervously.
“Why don’t you try me and find out?” he asked.
The color drained from her face.
“How did you find us?” Stephanie asked, trying to remind her what the question had been.
“I got a call. An anonymous tip.”
“Katia.” Stephanie shook her head.
“Do you think there was any way the call was intercepted?” Ivan asked.
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “We’re going to need your hover-ship.”
“You can’t take my ship.”
Stephanie tilted her head to the side. She frowned. There was something... another sound, coming from the distance.
“We have to leave, now,” she said.
She ducked into the house to get their bags while Ivan kept his gun trained on the reporter.
“Don’t move, Sofia,” she heard Ivan say.
She was still arguing about them taking the hover-ship when Stephanie came back.
“You can come with us,” Stephanie muttered. “I’ll give you an exclusive. But we have to leave now.”
Sofia yanked her camera man’s controls, calling the orbs to circle around her.
“My ship’s this way,” she said, turning.
They followed her to a clearing. The hover-ship was parked in the middle of the space. A logo for Middle Kingdom News was painted on one side, its blocky shape like a target.
Stephanie ducked low, dragging Ivan and Sofia down with her.
They were already here.
Another hover-ship sat in the clearing, its doors open. The whooshing sound died slowly as the ship’s engines powered down.
Stephanie scanned the clearing from one side to the other, trying to find the corporation’s collection team.
Something grabbed her from behind, yanking her to a standing position and away from the others. Her stunner slipped from her fingers.
“Don’t move.” The cold point of a device dug into her temple.
Ivan froze. The reporter shifted her grip on the controls, sending two of the orbs flying out around them.
“Stunner on the ground,” the voice behind her ordered. Ivan put the stunner down slowly, as though he were moving under water.
“I should tell you that all images are automatically sent to our offices. Even if you kill us, your face will be all over the news.”
The man who was holding her laughed.
Stephanie saw uncertainty flicker across Sofia Wang’s face. Ivan got slowly to his feet.
“You won’t get away with this,” Sofia frowned.
“I’m just the repo man, Stephanie here has reneged on her contract.”
“She’s indentured?”
“I’m not.”
“For another twenty years.”
“That’s bullshit.” Stephanie struggled against him, calling on the killer’s training. A set of restraints wrapped around her in seconds.
“I have all the appropriate documents.”
“He’s lying. I’ve never seen this man before in my life.” She pushed away from him. The restraints tightened, shooting a cold, tingling sensation across her skin.
If she kept going, she’d pass out.
“Ivan?” Stephanie met his eyes, silently pleading for help.
The man behind her stiffened, standing straight as he saw another man walk out of the hover-ship. Stephanie glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t recognize him either. He stopped in front of her, raising his coms level with her eyes and tilting his wrist so that she could see the holographic image.
“Spencer?”
“Hi, Stephanie.” His eyes crinkled in the corners, filled with concern. The time lag between them was low, less than two seconds. He was probably in orbit around the planet, or maybe even on the planet itself.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, breathlessly. She was beginning to sweat, even in the cool mountain air.
“Listen, Stephanie. I need you to go with these men. We did it. We’ve found a cure. Everything is going to be all right.”
She shook her head. It couldn’t be that easy.
“You won’t be in any trouble for disobeying orders, if you come now. We understand about the illness. It’s not your fault you ran, it’s just one of the symptoms. Quite a common reaction, we’re finding, in cases with paranoia.”
Stephanie frowned. “What about the assassin?”
“What assassin?”
“You sent a Predator Class assassin after me. At Ana’s house.”
Spencer Evans shook his head. “It must have been a hallucination. We never sent an assassin.”
“But-”
“You’re not well, Stephanie. It’s starting to look like you haven’t been well for a long time. I don’t know how we didn’t pick up on it sooner.”
“I didn’t imagine that.”
“I’m not saying you imagined it. Not exactly. It’s not your fault you’ve been experiencing these things.”
The muscles in Stephanie’s jaw were beginning to ache and something in the pit of her stomach seemed to drop. What if he was telling the truth?
She had been experiencing symptoms for a long time, ever since Maia. The voices. The visions. The feeling that she couldn’t trust anyone. That they were all out to get her. She’d hallucinated entire conversations, not just with Maia and the killer but with Dr. Volkov. How could she tell which parts were real and which ones were made up?
“Come back home, Stephanie. We can help you.”
“What about Caroline?”
“She’s here. She’s doing a lot better since she started the new treatment.” He smiled.
“Can I see her?”
Something flickered behind his eyes. Another hallucination? She frowned.
“Of course, you can see her. When you come home.”
I don’t trust him, Maia whispered. She never had.
Coldness. That’s what you see behind his eyes, the killer said.
How much of her trust issues were her own? How much of the paranoia came from the voices in her head?
She felt herself wavering. Hope and suspicion warred within her.
She could see Caroline again.
She would be a prisoner.
They could help her get better.
They’d tried to kill her.
What if she was wrong about the corporation?
What if she was right?
“Please, Stephanie. I can’t help you if you don’t come willingly.”
Willingly? Maia snorted.
Stephanie glanced away from Spencer’s image. The man holding his coms in her face stared at her, completely motionless. Waiting.
The restraints tingled against her skin, even through her jacket, not quite burning as long as she didn’t move.
The endwave pistol was still pressed against her temple. Ivan and the reporter were standing awkwardly, hands in the air.
Spencer hadn’t seemed surprised to see her with a gun to her head and restraints draped around her body.
“What happens if I don’t come willingly?” she asked.
Spencer’s smile turned to wood. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Stephanie nodded, slowly. “I thought it might be something like that.”
She threw herself back, knocking into the man behind her. He s
tumbled, trying to hold on to the endwave pistol. She turned her head, pressing her cheek against his jaw. Two seconds was all it took to find the memory. She pulled, replacing it with the death memory, the way the killer had shown her to use her powers. It wasn’t until after it was done that she thought she could have found a way to make him sleep instead. She felt instantly nauseous.
He fell to the ground behind her.
A moment later, Ivan had his stunner again and the other man was down.
He hurried to her, deactivating the restraints and peeling them off her. She opened and closed her hands a few times, testing her circulation. Then she bent, retrieving the endwave pistol.
“How high does your hover-ship go?” she asked.
“What just happened? What did you do to that man?” Sofia asked. Her eyes were wide, white showing around the brown of her iris. She kept her hands low, down at her sides, but Stephanie could see they were shaking, even from here.
“We need to get off planet,” Stephanie said.
Ivan bent to check the man’s pulse, then the other man. He paused when he realized the man she’d touched was dead. He stood, brushing his hand off on his pants.
“We should go,” he said, voice gruff. He didn’t meet her eyes. He started toward the reporter’s ship.
Stephanie followed, a step behind him. Sofia fell into step beside her.
“It’s not designed to reach orbit,” she said.
“Do you think it will get us to the top of the space elevator?”
The woman frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“Better start praying then,” Ivan muttered.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Stephanie chewed on a fingernail, watching Ivan manipulate the controls of the hover-ship. She’d already hacked into the system, disabling several fail-safes. It was out of her hands now. Literally.
The reporter had set one of the orbs outside, letting it hover somewhere above the ship, piggybacking on its altitude as it clawed its way into the thinner atmosphere. The other two orbs were in the cabin with them. Stephanie waved one out of her face.
A voice came over the hover-ship’s coms, ordering them to bring the ship down to ground level and await the authorities.
Ivan ignored them, forcing the ship higher.
A rushing sound came from outside. Then a whine.
Stephanie peered out the view screen, over Ivan’s shoulder. The needle was coming up fast, swelling in their field of vision. She gritted her teeth to stop from screaming. Her eyes scrunched closed.
The impact didn’t come.
She opened her eyes, looking outside. All she could see was white.
She brought her hand up to her mouth again, biting her nails. How were they going to land on the elevator if they couldn’t see?
They broke through the clouds.
The low whine intensified. The rushing sound seemed to have faded away.
She scrunched her nose. Was that smoke?
Then they hit something. The reverberation ran through her, jarring her bones.
“We’re here,” Ivan said. “Any ideas on how we’re going to get on a shuttle?”
He probably should have asked that before they risked their lives getting to the top of the needle.
“I’ve got it,” Stephanie said. She grabbed her bag and ducked into the bathroom, slipping into the killer’s suit.
She activated the camouflage and slipped outside.
“I’ll call you when it’s ready,” she said, making the reporter jump. Her eyes darted over the area where Stephanie’s voice had come from, sliding over her without focusing as the suit wrapped the image of the wall behind her across her body.
Stephanie opened the hover-ship door and went outside, keeping her body low to the ground. She didn’t know how much wind force would be there but she wasn’t going to risk being dragged off the top of the needle.
She found a service door and entered, unseen.
The door stretched into a corridor. She passed a storage closet and finally came to a staff office. She moved quietly.
The console near the door was manned, a worker drinking a cup of coffee. He put the cup down and she nudged it so that it tilted off the desk and into his lap.
“Fuck,” he swore.
Stephanie pressed her back against the wall as the other two workers turned to stare at him. He excused himself, going to the bathroom to clean up.
Stephanie hacked into the systems, deleting the security orders that had been sent through about her ship. She recorded new orders, under the same authorization code, claiming that the hover-ship was part of a delegation that required immediate assistance in getting off planet.
She slipped back outside, jogging to the hover-ship. She deactivated the camouflage on her suit once she was inside.
Sofia stared at her, eyes wide.
“We can go. We’re part of a delegation. Try to act like you own the place, and for ancestor’s sake, if you’re coming with us, put those orbs away.” She grabbed her bag.
“But how-”
“It’s your choice. Do you want the exclusive or not?” Stephanie said, moving toward the door.
Ivan fell into step beside her. “Are you sure this is going to work?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure the hover-ship would work.”
She heard a noise, the scrape of a shoe against the floor behind her, and glanced over her shoulder. Sofia scurried out of the ship. She had a bag slung over one shoulder and Stephanie saw the last vid orb arc down toward her and slip into the bag. Her hand dipped inside, stashing the remote control.
They moved quickly. She walked into the station, shoulders back, posture straight, like she had a right to be there.
She walked through the service entrance, into the office.
“Stephanie Petrov. These are my associates, agent Huang and Lebedev. We need seats on the next shuttle.”
“Who-”
“Authorization should have been called in,’ Stephanie said, projecting an air of annoyance. “I’m going to kill Sun.” She shook her head and lifted her wrist as though she was going to make a call.
“No, sorry. It’s here,” a pale, thin man said. He frowned and shook his head.
“Good,” Stephanie nodded. “Can we get an escort? I don’t want to deal with the same hold up again.”
“I’ll call security.”
“Damn it, we don’t have time for that. You, come with us.” She pointed to the man who was closest to the door.
Without waiting to see if they complied, she marched off, heading through the door into the passenger transfer area. She heard Ivan and Sofia scurry to catch up, a chair scraping against the floor a moment later. She increased her pace.
They made it to the shuttle area and the man she’d commandeered jogged ahead of them. He spoke to another staff member, scanned his ID, and ushered them forward. They went inside, and strapped in.
Stephanie exhaled a sigh of relief when they took off.
It was almost too easy.
“How did you-?” Sofia asked.
“Shh. We’ll talk once we’re through the gate.”
* * *
“Go back,” Stephanie shoved Ivan behind her. They fell back into the hallway, the other passengers spilling around them shooting them confused looks.
“What is it?”
“Guards.”
Ivan peeked around the corner. “Fuck.”
“Why haven’t they come in yet?” Sofia asked.
“Trying to minimize civilian involvement?” Stephanie ran a hand through her hair, tugging the strands. It didn’t help.
“I’m out of ideas on this one. I mean, I could get past them alone but...” she said. She probably could sneak past them, the suit rendering her practically invisible as long as she kept to the edges of the room and didn’t bump into anyone.
Leave them, the killer whispered. They’re holding you back.
She glanced at Ivan.
“I have an ide
a,” he said. He pulled his stunner out and dropped to the floor, disassembling the stunner and muttering beneath his breath.
Stephanie pulled her hood up and the visor down, activating the camouflage before peeking around the corner.
The other passengers had almost finished disembarking, slowing to a trickle around her. The guards were talking, starting to look impatient. She ducked back, pulling her hood off.
“Whatever you’re doing, you better hurry.”
“I’m done.” He handed her a mangled piece of the stunner. “Drop that somewhere near the guards and come back. You have about ten seconds.”
She shoved the thing in a pocket and activated her suit. She jogged around the corner, counting in her head. Nine, eight, seven, six. Dropped the device. Five. Turned and sprinted back the way she’d come. Four, three, two. She dove around the corner as a loud buzzing sound and a flash of light exploded behind her.
“Stephanie?” Ivan asked.
Rogue Memory Page 18