by Natalie Grey
Mala closed her eyes.
“Hey. Don’t be scared.” Nyx crouched down, wincing a little. She looked up into Mala’s eyes. “You’re safe.”
“I’m not worried about me!” Mala burst out. To her horror, there was the blur of tears in her eyes and she looked away. “God, you just got beat up all to hell chasing down some smuggler I found, and…” She squeezed her eyes shut.
“And I’m okay,” Nyx said. Her voice changed. “And next time, no one’s going to get hurt.”
You can’t promise that, Mala wanted to say, but the look in the other woman’s eyes told her that this was a promise she needed to say out loud. Whatever guilt Mala felt, Nyx clearly felt tenfold.
“You’re a good leader,” Mala offered. They wouldn’t follow you if you weren’t.
“I’m not, but I have to be,” Nyx said bleakly. “Or they’ll die on my watch. I don’t know how Talon lived with it.”
“He was a Dragon, too.” Mala craned to look into her eyes. “You’re all crazy, and he was crazy just like you. I’ll bet he got through it by remembering that no matter how much danger he was putting people in, he’d have walked into that danger willingly if someone else had commanded the mission.”
Something in Nyx’s face eased, and she managed a laugh.
“You’re right,” she said quietly.
“And I…look, there’s never going to be—” A good time for this.
“Hmm?” Nyx looked at her, the full weight of a Dragon’s regard behind those brown eyes.
Oh, dear. Mala swallowed hard.
“I just have to say….” She could do this. She could absolutely do this. “I’m really glad you got out okay.” She squeezed Nyx’s hand, every sense of idiotic, primal self-preservation warring against what she knew needed to be done. “I have to go,” she heard her idiot-self say, and she left Nyx staring after her and half-ran down the corridors until she didn’t even know where she was anymore, just that she was alone. She leaned against the wall and let her eyes drift close, clenching her hands until they ached.
Dammit.
22
“And how many shipments is that now?” Ghost’s fingers curled around the arms of the chair.
“Seventy-four.” The voice on the other line was unsure.
“Are you sure? That’s the number, the whole number?”
“It’s not as simple as—well, the thing is, some of them get diverted entirely, some are off, and some are only off by a tiny, tiny amount. It’s possible that there are more, that a vein was richer than expected and something got skimmed off the top.” There was a pause, and then cautious optimism. “I suppose there could be less than we think, though. If we’re sometimes off on the vein valuations, it could be that almost none of these are actually being skimmed. Just the ones that disappeared.”
Ghost did not dignify that stupidity with an answer. “It’s her.”
“It might not be.” The voice was stronger all of a sudden.
“Excuse me?”
There was a pause.
“No, don’t be silent. Answer me. What did you mean?”
“I just mean … I don’t think it’s her. It’s not like her.”
“Oh? Then explain to me why she left, without any warning at all, and then Horatio went off the grid as well. She was first. Unless you think he assassinated her—”
There was a distressed sound from the other end of the line.
“Get ahold of yourself,” Ghost said coldly. “She’s a traitor. I’m going to make an example of her, and unless you want one made of you as well….”
A pause. Then: “No.”
“Then find her. You’ve been lax in your reports, but I know you’ve been around her. You know her, or you should. Find her.”
“Y-yes.” The informant sounded truly miserable.
“I suppose that’s not the only option.”
“Oh?” The woman sounded desperately hopeful.
A weak link. Once she’d served her purpose, then, she would be eliminated. It had been a mistake to bring her on, made out of desperation. She had simply been the most likely of the new recruits going into Intelligence that year. When she hadn’t reported, she had been left to her own devices rather than eliminated right then, as she should have been.
It was a risk to take out an Intelligence agent, after all.
Still, it was not a mistake Ghost would make again. No untried double-agents. Displays of loyalty given beforehand. Weak links eliminated promptly.
“What’s the other option?” the informant asked, when Ghost said nothing.
“You might fail me,” Ghost said coldly, and ended the call.
Jessica Fenty heard the call click off and she stared at the screen, shaking. She was very careful not to look up at the corner where the surveillance camera was trained directly on her desk.
Jessica had arrived on Seneca sure that all of this was a prank. She hadn’t spoken to Ghost yet, then. She hadn’t told anyone at her new job because she’d thought there was nothing to tell, that this was some prank played on new Intelligence agents. She thought it was a puzzle to be solved—trace the contact.
So she had tried. She’d sat up late, so late she arrived at work yawning every day. She didn’t tell anyone else because she didn’t want to give them an advantage, or let them know she was struggling.
And then she’d gotten close. She wasn’t even sure, to this day, which lead she was following had been too close to the truth.
They had showed up at her door. They must have, because she remembered the knock, past when anyone should have been there. She remembered walking across the living room to look through the peep hole.
She didn’t remember anything else. Whenever she got close to remembering it, fragmented memories of screams, of blood, she shoved the memories as far away as they could go. She never drank anymore. She didn’t dare. When she dropped her guard, the memories came back.
She didn’t need to remember what they’d done. She remembered the lesson.
And so she realized now that she had been wrong, that this was real. And it was far, far too late. Ghost had told her there were informants everywhere and Jessica didn’t know where to turn. She wasn’t sure if she could trust the Head of Intelligence.
Of course, at that point, the Head of Intelligence had been Aleksandr Soras. So it probably wouldn’t have been a good bet to go to him, in any case.
Jessica had pushed it as far as she dared. For the first few “reports” she made to Ghost’s team, she had taken care to pretend to give them information while really giving them nothing. She’d been very pleased with herself. At the time, she had thought her superiors would commend her for a good job of stringing a contact along and tracking them down.
But they weren’t going to commend her for this.
Still, Ghost hadn’t ever mentioned the reports, themselves—until now—and so Jessica had continued with reports made of the same type of nothing. Gradually, after a few prompt reports of, “nothing new,” she had begun pushing the time frame farther and farther.
She wasn’t brave enough to defect. She didn’t know who to trust to report this. But she was damned if she was going to let this other person die just because Jessica had done something unforgivably stupid.
But now she had to make a choice. If she failed….
They wouldn’t let her die for a very, very long time.
She needed air. Jessica practically ran out of the room and through the apartment door, down the 17 flights of stairs to the garden below. The activity might help her burn off some of the panic, at least.
Outside it was far too cold. She hadn’t thought to bring her coat. Jessica walked with her shoulders hunched, passing dozens of people like her: younger workers in Seneca’s government and NGO offices. They were still getting off trains in their work clothes. They worked hard, these people. They wanted to advance.
Jessica was rubbing her arms now as she walked. It was so cold, but she couldn’t go back. She just c
ouldn’t. If she got back, she’d have to choose to follow her leads … or not.
And she really wasn’t sure she was brave enough to refuse.
She was just too cold to stay outside. She ducked into the first open door she found, following the sound of laughter and the smell of really bad beer. The bar was packed, and so she crowded her way to the back, to what looked like an empty booth.
“Hello,” a voice said, as she slid into the seat.
Jessica jumped and swore. She looked over to see a woman with a hooked nose and black hair, who had stopped with her beer almost at her mouth when Jessica sat down. She looked just as surprised as Jessica, which oddly put Jessica a little at ease.
Then she realized she had just sat down next to this woman for no good reason.
“I’m sorry. I’ll—I’ll go.”
“Hey.” The woman reached out to grab Jessica’s wrist as she stood, and took her hand away hurriedly when Jessica yanked her arm away.
Fingers around her wrists—
She was frozen in place.
“Whoa, okay.” The woman set her beer down and pushed her way out of the booth. She took Jessica carefully by the shoulders. “You’re okay, I’m not going to hurt you. Come on, sit down. That’s it. Sit. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you.” She kept up a steady stream of murmuring as she took a seat across from Jessica again.
They stared at one another.
Finally the woman asked, “Are you all right?”
“No,” Jessica said. To her horror, she could feel tears starting. Her voice was coming out all weird. She was going to die. They were going to kill her at the end of this, she realized. Either way. “I got caught up in something, and … and now they’re going to kill me.”
She looked down at the table, which looked all blurry now.
“What’d you get caught up in?” the woman asked neutrally.
Jessica started laughing, and once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. She kept laughing until the people near them looked around at her, and then she kept laughing until her sides hurt, and then she started crying—and couldn’t stop that, either. She just kept crying while the woman kept handing her a steady stream of cheap bar napkins.
Finally, when she had run out of tears, Jessica opened her mouth to speak and only managed a hoarse sort of croaking noise. She cleared her throat and tried again. This bar was loud. She probably sounded crazy. She was just going to tell the truth.
“There’s someone manipulating the whole market of Gerren’s Ore. I’m supposed to help them track down someone—another person in their ring who went off-grid. I’m supposed to find her so they can kill her. If I don’t, they’ll kill me. But they’re going to kill me either way now, I’m pretty sure.”
The woman stared at her for a long moment. “Huh,” she said finally. She took a sip of beer. “Sounds like what you need is to disappear.”
Jessica tried to laugh again and all her muscles seized. She managed a weak smile. “There’s no running from these people.”
“Oh, really?” The woman was smiling now, too. “Because, just between you and me, I know a thing or two about disappearing.”
Jessica narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”
The woman considered. She stared at the back wall for a moment, and then she sighed. “Fuck it, he’s in jail now.”
“…Eh?”
The woman shook her head. “Not important. My name is Satomi Kreuger.”
23
“You’re going to kill yourself, you know.” Loki leaned against one of the walls and watched as Nyx danced out of the way of the punching bag.
“I am not.” Her next punch landed sloppily, and she swore. A flurry of jabs seemed to do nothing, and she barely got away from the bag as it swung back toward her. Sweat was trickling down her spine and into her eyes, and she could feel exhaustion dragging at her muscles. But now was no time to stop. At last, she understood why Talon came down here all the time: there was nothing more satisfying than feeling this impact and the faint touch of pain. Matching wits with herself seemed to quiet the part of her mind that kept telling her she was a failure.
“You should still be resting,” Loki insisted.
“You’re one to talk.” She shot him a look. “How’s your arm?”
“Less broken than it was a few hours ago.” He slid down the wall to sit on the floor and gestured to himself. “As you can see, however, I am not exerting myself.”
“Uh-huh. And that lasts—let me guess—about until I turn my back.” She landed a successful punch and grinned, only tos miss on her next kick. “Oof.”
“Just give it a second.” He lifted one hand lazily, pointing to the bottle of water she’d brought with her. “Have some of that.”
“That, at least, is a decent suggestion.” Nyx came to sit by him, resting her arms on her knees and looking over. “So.”
“Yeah. So. What’s getting to you?” His look was intrigued.
“What do you mean?”
“You only work out like that when you’re really upset. But you haven’t yelled at anyone. It’s making us all tense.”
“I….” Nyx shook her head. For the first time in days, it wasn’t her own command that was getting to her. The itch to work out, to escape her stress, had come upon her even before she left the med bay. She didn’t understand it, herself. “I’m not angry at anyone.”
“Really.” She heard the surprise, and he frowned at her.
“Really.” She took a mouthful of water and considered. “I fucked up with that mission.”
“Talon fucked up a lot of missions.”
“I’m not … it’s not that that worries me. Something was wrong there. The subcommittee ordered all those guards, but they didn’t heed government authorization. That’s not good. It’s beginning to look like Ghost has to have snuck along with the subcommittee members, and that’s not good, either.” Her words followed the familiar tread of her thoughts. “It’s more than that, though. Something about this whole thing is just off.”
And with that, the feeling came rushing back so strongly that she wanted to leap out of her own mind with the itch of something half-remembered, half-understood. She pushed herself up and attacked the bag with a will, unleashing strikes as her body fell into its own rhythm. She was only half-there, watching herself as from a distance; her body, like her soldiers, knew what to do if she just got out of the way. She fought until the last dregs of her energy were gone and the bag caught her full on and knocked her sideways onto her knees.
She slumped down, hanging her head. She could not find the energy even to crawl to her water bottle, and she could not bring herself to care. She heard Loki retrieve it and when he pressed it into her hands, she only stared at it, trying to figure out if she had the strength to lift it to her mouth.
“Melissa?” The voice was tentative.
Nyx struggled to her feet, muscles screaming. She was supposed to be glowing from her workout, shown to great advantage, and instead she was sweaty and swaying. She looked around for a towel and scowled as she saw Loki bite back a laugh. When Mala came around the corner, Nyx gave an apologetic smile.
“Hi. Sorry. Were you looking for me?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your workout.” Mala’s wide eyes took in every inch of Nyx’s bedraggled form.
“Perfectly fine.” Except the fact that she might be about to pass out, which would be somewhat embarrassing.
She wondered vaguely if she could lean against the punching bag suavely. Probably not. Maybe the crates? She was seeing spots. “Um. Can I help you with something?” Please suggest we sit down. Please.
“I just got bored.” Mala flushed. “I’m sorry. I know you all have work to do. I can go again—I heard you were talking about the mission, and I know I’m not supposed to know stuff about it.”
“Uh….” Nyx blinked, trying to focus, and raised a trembling hand to take a sip of water. Strength was returning slowly; she just had to stay upright until Mala
left, and if she could get Mala to leave now … yes, that would be good. It wouldn’t do to look clumsy. “Well, yes, we do have some things to discuss.”
“Okay.” Mala nodded. She hunched one shoulder, endearingly awkward at how out of place she was here. “I agree with you that it doesn’t seem right, for what it’s worth. When I talked to the guy we picked up, even he didn’t seem to know what was going on.”
It was a reassurance, Nyx knew, and she was grateful for the effort. She smiled and nodded, listening as Mala’s footsteps receded, and then went to sit on the crates with a groan of relief.
“You know, if you’d passed out on the floor she would have fussed over you,” Loki pointed out.
“Dammit, why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because people get stupid when they’re flirting?”
“That must be it.” Nyx slumped back and considered. “And what she mentioned, that’s the other thing—even the guy we picked up doesn’t seem to….”
There was a pause.
“Doesn’t seem to….” Loki prompted.
“Did she say she went to talk to him?” Nyx sat up, frowning. Her mind kicked into high gear, tiredness forgotten.
Loki only looked over at her, wariness growing in his eyes.
And she knew. This was what wasn’t right: the apologies Mala kept giving, the way she swallowed when Nyx thought aloud about what was going on. She’d been scared—terrified—and yet she insisted, without fail, that it wasn’t her safety she worried about.
Nyx had assumed it was a lie, that Mala simply didn’t want to seem cowardly in front of the Dragons. Hell, she’d dated multiple women who suggested skydiving and all manner of other activities that clearly terrified them, convinced that Nyx would leave them if they weren’t as exciting as combat. The fact that Nyx didn’t want her relationships to resemble combat didn’t seem to occur to them. Faced with Mala’s worry, Nyx had explained it away with the familiar story.
But what if the lie wasn’t there, but somewhere else?
“You aren’t going to want to hear this.” Loki cleared his throat. “But…”