Princess of Lies and Legends (The Evolved Book 2)

by Veronica Sommers

  Ducking into the hall closet, I remove my robe and slippers, shoving them into a back corner of the space. Then I slip out the back door, where the hoverbike waits for me. Two helmets stick to a heavy mag-plate at the back, and I have to tug hard to get one off.

  Guards eliminated—check. House escaped. Helmet on.

  Time to go.

  I keep the bike on the ground, its engine a low purr, until I pass the boundary of the estate. Then I engage flight mode. The bike's fall bars unfold, quick as whips, from their compartments at the machine's front, snapping into place, two on either side of my shoulders and two over my head. A hum of energy and a faint blue sheen shows that the protective bubble around me is in place. In theory, it should keep me from free-falling if I lose my grip at high speeds.

  Guiding the bike up from the street, I race toward the Reigning Complex wall, aiming for one of the smaller exit points. I transmit the code and streak through, taking a deep breath of the stale air inside my helmet.

  I'm free. Without a skull-port to register on any of the sensors I pass, with my helmet covering my face, I'm anonymous. Mysterious.

  "Engage visor overlay," I say, and across my field of vision appear thread-thin blue lines, tracing the air lanes, the tunnels I'm supposed to stay in to avoid smashing into pods or other bikes. I speak Rak's new address and add, "Advise direct route."

  Tiny golden dots appear along the tunnel I'm riding, showing me the directions to Rak's new place. As I approach the city, the millions of brightly colored lights make the visor overlay harder to see. "Auto-compensate," I say, and the visor darkens, muting the background lights and making my path more vibrant.

  When I reach the sector where Rak lives, I drop through the air lanes, hopping down one level, then another, till I'm near enough to the ground to disengage flight mode. The bike lands with a jolt that nearly throws me, but I manage to steady it in time.

  I wave Rak through the helmet's built-in com system. It's voice only, so I can't see his face.

  "I'm on my way," I tell him.

  "I'm ready. Meet you outside."

  "Do you know where Alik is right now?"

  "At his place—I could see it in the background when I waved him a few minutes ago. It's a miracle he answered. Not sure how much longer he'll stay put, though."

  "I'm turning onto your street now."

  When I roll up, Rak is leaning against the wall of his building, a five-story block of weathered brick and beaten metal with windows of thick, dark glass.

  He saunters over to me. "What do you think?"

  "It looks old," I say, eyeing it.

  His grin disappears under the glossy visor of his helmet, and his voice reverberates in my helmet through the com system. "I like it." He mounts the bike's rear seat.

  "You like old, rundown things?" I'm barely conscious of the words, because I'm suddenly alert to his body behind me on the bike, his thighs pressed against mine.

  "I like things with some age to them. Old bones are good bones."

  "That's a ridiculous saying. Old bones can also be brittle bones." I set the bike in hover mode and it bounces gently off the ground. "What's Alik's new address?"

  He tells me, and my helmet nav system picks it up, charting a course. Rak wraps his left arm around my waist, a band of heat and muscle right below my ribs.

  "May I drive next time?" His voice in my helmet is disconcertingly low and intimate.

  "Maybe," I say. "Now shut up. You're distracting me."

  He chuckles. At my direction, the hoverbike shoots up, joining a low-level tunnel that will take us near Alik's quarters.

  "So if he's not there, we go back to your place," I say. "If he is there, we'll wait to see if he leaves, and then we follow him."

  "I think he's headed out somewhere. He said he didn't want to watch Next Best Brawler with me."

  "You two watch Best Brawler together?" I burst into giggles.

  "We like it." I can tell from his voice that he's smiling. "Don't criticize our entertainment choices, sweetheart. Or if you do, prepare to be roasted yourself."

  "Me? What do I watch that's as stupid as Best Brawler?"

  "That show with the plain women who get turned into fashion dolls."

  "Ceanna's Reigning Beauty?"

  "Yes. Or the one where one man is given a house full of people and must choose a consort in seven days."

  "How do you know I watch those?"

  "Your friend Reya told me."

  "It's called pointless entertainment," I grumble. "Yes, it's silly, but sometimes I need something silly to make me feel smarter."

  "That makes no sense."

  "I'm a complicated woman, like Safi. Speaking of whom, has she found a place yet?"

  "She checked out a spot down the street from mine, a corner shop with living quarters at the back."

  "What about the neighborhood? Will she be safe there?" I ask.

  "Listen to yourself, Zilara. The girl survived on her own in Ankerja for years. I think she can handle a shop in Caliston's production district."

  "Of course. I just—"

  He squeezes me tighter. "You care."

  "Yes."

  "I love you."

  My lips part to respond, but the nav system says coolly, "Destination approaching."

  I jerk the bike out of the tunnel and zoom toward the ground, flipping the lever for street mode.

  My fingers tense on the grips as I ease the bike closer to the road, decelerating slowly. The front wheel hits sooner than I expected and we wobble, but I accelerate one more time and the bike straightens. We've landed safely, and I can breathe again.

  "It should be around the next corner." Glancing up, I note the expanse of smooth white concrete, the sweep of arched windows, the delicate pinnacles of the courtyard walls. This is no time-ravaged tenement house—it's a fairly new complex offering upscale apartments for wealthy people. Apparently Alik counts himself among them. My father was generous with the rewards, but not generous enough to keep Alik in a place like this for more than a few months. What other source of income does he expect to have?

  Instead of parking in the pod berths, I guide the bike into the courtyard and over to a row of vehicles, some wheeled, some hovercraft. One spot is open—narrow, but with enough width for the bike and a decent view of the building's entrance.

  "Nice work." Rak squeezes my waist. Closing my eyes for a second, I fight the urge to scoot my hips back and writhe against him. Why am I so hot for this man? It's becoming ridiculous, and embarrassing.

  Thankfully the helmet hides my flushed face. "We need to find out if he's home. There should be a panel in the lobby where we can check occupancy."

  "You can see which apartments are occupied and which ones aren't?" Rak frowns. "Isn't that a security risk?"

  "Not really. In a building as nice as this, unoccupied apartments get an extra swath of cyber-security to keep thieves from breaking in."

  Before I've taken three steps toward the building, a tall figure emerges from the door. Although he's in silhouette, I can tell it's Alik—I'd know that wavy hair and easy gait anywhere. I dart back to the bike and mount. Alik doesn't look our way; he's distracted by something on his skull-port holo-screen.

  Minutes later, a hoverpod glides up, the telltale blue and yellow lights giving it away as a rental. Alik sweeps away his holo-screen and climbs in.

  "Go," says Rak, but I'm already moving, staying a few pod-lengths behind Alik's pod in the invisible tunnel he's using. I just hope he doesn't go too high in the lanes—hoverbikes like mine have altitude limits.

  Fortunately, Alik's pod stays in the same tunnel, heading for an area of the city I've never seen before, on the southwest side. Here, the buildings are dozens, not hundreds, of stories high, with walkways weaving them to each other. The old city trams haven't been used since Ceanna switched to lev-tech, but their skeletons still arch between the structures here. Nearly every building has its own tram platform, several stories up, with an arched glass ro
of that used to keep rain off waiting passengers.

  Alik's pod dips lower, to the lane nearest the ground, right above the wheeled traffic. I follow him, keeping my distance. The roads are poorly lit here, compared to the bright blaze in the central city. Below us, the network of streets is still clogged with transport vehicles, even at this hour. They carry goods for small business owners too cheap to pay lev-tech or hovercraft freight rates.

  We're moving into a new area now, with buildings even lower and less well-kept than the old mercantile district we passed through. Between the delivery platforms and the transport routes lie long double-story buildings, nothing more than temporary drop-off points for goods coming into the city. Alik's pod is headed toward one of them, a run-down affair with guttering lot lights and chipped brickwork.

  The pod swoops down into a parking grid, and Alik hops out and pauses, probably to set it in lock mode. He's keeping the rental instead of sending it back and calling another later. Either he's not planning to stay long, or he thinks he might need a quick getaway.

  I swing our bike into a narrow space a couple rows away from Alik's pod. Putting it in lock mode, I dismount and stick my helmet to the mag-plate at the back. Rak does the same, and we sprint along the rows toward the corner of the building, where Alik disappeared.

  Near the corner, Rak holds up his open hand. I slow my pace, not wanting Alik to overhear the scuff of my feet on the pavement.

  Peering around the edge of the building, I see Alik sauntering toward a door guarded by a pair of burly men. Each of them is about twice his size, yet he walks as if he has nothing to fear from them. Like he owns the place.

  A word from him, and the men move aside to let him enter.

  Rak and I pull back, leaning against the wall. "We're not getting in that way," he says.

  "What about the back?" I whisper.

  We skirt the building, staying in the thick shadows, until we're at the rear of the place, where the freight docks are. One of dock doors isn't pulled down all the way, and someone has piled crates along the gap as if to disguise the fact. Maybe the door jammed. The gap is a couple feet high, big enough for us to squeeze through on our bellies.

  I start moving toward the gap, but Rak pulls me down behind a cooling unit as pair of guards strolls by. They're talking in low voices.

  "I told her it's an open relationship," one of them is saying. "I'm too much man for one woman, if you know what I'm saying."

  "Huh," grunts the other one. "Good luck with that."

  They keep walking, heads turning as they look for threats. When they're far enough away, Rak motions me forward. "Keep your head down, in case of cameras," he whispers, and we scuttle along the building to the partly-open dock door.

  16

  I slither through the space first, rolling and springing to my feet in the dark room beyond. I take out my com and put it in soft-beam mode, just enough light to let me see what I'm into now—a storage space, home to a rusty bin and some garbage. There's a door at the opposite side of the room, probably leading to the rest of the building.

  Rak moves to my side. "Ready?"

  I nod, even though I have no idea what we're doing here, or how we're going to find Alik. We pass through the door into the black hallway beyond, and wander the innards of the building for a few minutes before we see yellow light ahead.

  I'm about to surge forward, but Rak grips my upper arm. Two dark silhouettes stand not far away, by the entrance to the lighted room.

  Carefully we back up.

  "Stairs," Rak whispers. They're at the end of the hall, and we climb them, cringing at every creak of the old metal.

  The second floor hallway is lined with closed doors; but at the end of the passage, it opens out into an open loft piled with boxes, overlooking a large, brightly lit room. Rak and I crawl to the railing of the loft and gaze down on a milling crowd of men and woman. On broad tables below us lie weapons of all kinds, guns and grenades and rings of pulse cartridges. Other tables bear devices and tech that I can't identify, protected by glass covers. One table has a selection of reinforced vests and plated shirts. Another bears racks of vials, displays of pill canisters, and stacks of powder tins. I don't need to be a surveillance expert to know that this is a black market of some kind, a place for the purchase of weapons, tech, and substances of questionable legality.

  Alik strides down the center aisle of the market, his golden hair gleaming under the lights. He pauses briefly to inspect the wares, but he walks like a man who has somewhere to be.

  Another man, dark-haired with a large beaked nose, approaches Alik. Their paths cross between two tables, right below our hiding spot. I crouch lower and squeeze closer to the railing, trying to hear what they're saying—but the entire room buzzes with low conversations, and I can't make out a word.

  Beak-Nose nods to Alik, and together they cross the room and disappear through a door at the far end. I swear softly in frustration. "We have to find out what they're up to," I whisper in Rak's ear.

  He nods and motions for me to follow him along the edge of the loft. It curves into an L-shape, with the short branch ending right over the room Alik entered. There's a large ventilation grate in the wall, which Rak begins prying loose. The murmured conversations of the crowd below conceal the tiny squeaks and rasps of the metal.

  I kneel beside him. "Seriously? You want me to go in there?"

  He shrugs. "You don't have to. No other way to get close though. Unless you want to walk through that crowd, knock on the door, and ask nicely for an update."

  I frown at him, and his mouth curves in a half-smile as he lifts the grate free. "I'll wait here," he whispers. "I'm too big to go in there."

  "I hate you," I hiss at him, and his smirk broadens to a full grin. I slip off my boots and crawl into the space as quietly as I can, taking care not to let my knees bump against the floor of the ventilation shaft. Fortunately I don't have far to go, since the room Alik entered is so close by.

  Alik's careless laugh floats up through one of the grates. I press my ear against it and lie perfectly still.

  "You've heard the rumors about suppressor tech, I assume?" Alik is saying.

  "No." The other man sounds reluctant to admit it.

  "There's a whole government conspiracy—suppressors being put in Evolved kids' heads to restrict their powers, against their knowledge. I have an ally in play who's working on blowing the lid off the whole thing."

  I clench my teeth. An ally in play, am I?

  "Anyway, when that news breaks, a lot of young adults are going to have their suppressors taken out. And my thought is, once they get a taste of their real power, they just might want more. Plus the ones with less power will be jealous of those with more; and envy always means money for men of business like you and I."

  "You're proposing a device to enhance Evolved powers?" The other man scoffs. "Even if we started right now, it would take years to develop that kind of tech."

  "Not years, Reinhold. I already have it."

  Reinhold—why is that name familiar?

  "What?" Reinhold sounds stunned.

  "It's here, in the city," says Alik. "I liberated a power-boosting device from its original owner."

  "Won't the original owner miss it?"

  "He's far away, and doesn't have the power to reach me here. Think about it, Reinhold—you and I, with this device and the best tech experts in the city—we can replicate the booster and market it to the Evolved. In a few years, maybe we can even find a way to market ability devices to normal humans. Or, if we play our cards right, we can get a Ceannan military contract. There are a dozen different ways to take this to the next level."

  "And you want me to give you one of my production facilities."

  "You've got the buildings and supply channels in place already. We'd need some new equipment, of course, and materials—but together we can make this happen. The demand is coming; we have the tech. All we need is the manpower, the production facility, and the vision."


  Oh, Alik. What are you doing?

  "It's tempting," Reinhold says slowly. Suddenly the connection snaps into place—there was an Olen Reinhold in one of my classes. Olen's father owns one of the city's biggest lev-tech production companies. During a discussion in micro-economy class, Olen talked about the rivalry between his father's company and another producer. If this Reinhold is Olen's father, he's probably looking for an edge over his competition—and Alik's offer might be the answer.

  Olen is a member of Riot Circle, so Alik must have made the connection at the party. The man works fast, I'll give him that. But what he's planning here is completely illegal, and very dangerous. The world is going to change once Ceanna's Evolved are freed; and things will only become more volatile if Alik introduces ability boosters into the mix.

  They're already making plans, discussing how they can keep production hidden from the government until they're ready for rollout, how to market their product to the Evolved population without getting shut down—this conversation is going to continue for a while. Slowly I scoot backwards out of the ventilation shaft.

  "Alik still has the Evolved power booster he stole from Akej Orunei. He's working with a local businessman, and they're going to mass-produce the boosters."

  Rak's eyes widen as he processes what that would mean for Ceanna. "He's crazy. That tech is dangerous—it shouldn't exist."

  "But it does exist, and Alik is nothing if not opportunistic. He's going to make this happen."

  "We shouldn't talk about it here," Rak says. "Let's go."

  We hurry back along the loft walkway toward the hall—but suddenly there's a shout from the main floor. When I turn, one of the men below is looking straight at me, pulling out his gun.

  "Time to run!" Rak hisses.

  We race down the corridor, down the steps, and into the first floor hall, where three dark figures hustle toward us, so Rak and I dash in the opposite direction, back toward our original entry point. Rounding a corner, we dart into the dock with the open door. A skidding sprint across the space, a squeeze through the gap, and we're outside again—