“Don’t know,” she said, but without the same focus she’d given my brain. “That’s another department’s job. As for you and that other guy, the fact you came back from this mess at all is kind of fascinating, don’t you think? I mean, we’ve never seen a necrotech spread like that. It’s crazy interesting!”
“That’s a word for it,” I acknowledged, dry as bone. She grinned, but if she’d meant to ask any more questions, the double doors across the lab hissed open and cut her off.
Malik strode inside like he owned every piece of tech in it, Orchard and me included. Control freak.
He wore gray. Again. Surprise. This suit was darker than the previous, a single-breasted jacket over a matching vest. His dress shirt was a shade he probably convinced himself was light red but which I called pink. Again, a tie. Also gray. In one hand, he held a duffel. Black, though, not gray. Surprise.
Orchard launched herself from her stool. “Mr Reed, sir! Just running over the diagnostics with the patient.”
I didn’t bother sliding off the end of my table. I swung my bare feet idly, leaning back on my hands and well aware of what that did to my physique.
A girl didn’t get killer abs by being soft.
Malik’s gaze flicked to me, but didn’t linger. “I’ve got it from here, Dr Gearailteach.”
“Yes, sir.” Slanting me a wide-eyed apology, she swiped the projected screen back to her desk’s anchor unit. “Bye, Riko,” she said cheerfully. “Don’t forget lunch!” Without waiting for confirmation, she fled the scene, red ponytail bobbing.
Traitor.
The doors closed behind her, leaving me alone with Malik Reed, suited exec and all around cardholding member of the gaping assholes committee.
I owed him so much emotional backlog, I honestly didn’t know where to start. Or if it was even worth it to bother. It annoyed me that I didn’t hate him as much as I thought I should. I guess a near-death experience with ambulatory tech did something for a girl’s perspective.
I eyed him. “Her last name is what?”
“Ask her yourself.” He tossed the bag at me. Without thinking, I caught it with my tech hand. It was heavier than I expected. “Good reflexes. How do you feel?”
I peered inside the bag to find an indistinguishable mass of black. “Like someone that should feel like hammered shit and doesn’t. What’s this?”
“Clothes.”
I couldn’t wait to see this. Ignoring him, I rifled through the pile of black, fishing out a pair of black pants that would fit like a wet dream with none of the imagination. Underneath, a halter top similar to the one his team had ruined at Plato’s Key. Also black.
Malik Reed was a one-color-per-customer kind of tool.
I found a pair of black boots under it, sporting a two-inch tread and a four-inch, street-ready heel.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s this for?”
“Your other apparel was damaged.” I noted he didn’t claim responsibility for that one, either. “I took the liberty.”
I eased off the table, my bare feet hitting the cool tile, and snapped open the pants. “Indigo get the same treatment?”
Again, I was hit with a lingering sense of déjà vu.
Malik made no effort to turn away. He watched me the same way he always did, unreadable as stone, arms folded over his chest. “Mr Koupra’s nanoshock symptoms were too early to be of import. His wounds were also less... extensive than yours.” Goddamn, they liked to underplay it around here. “He responded well to the treatment, his various injuries healed without scarring, and he was released two days ago.”
I appreciated the detail. While Orchard had made it a point to fill me in when I’d finally been pulled out of the recharge tank, she’d kept it to “doing just fine” and “already headed home”. As the med staff hosed nutrient-rich slime off my clammy skin, she’d told me that a four-block radius in the Vid Zone had been razed to the ground. Farther, even. With the burn team’s proficiency and the chemical napalm used in a controlled burn, the structural integrity of the place hadn’t stood a chance.
By the time anyone had gone through it, there was nothing left behind but a slagged crater. Indigo and I were the only witnesses to whatever went down in that hellhole.
So why the pause?
“Then to what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked mockingly. “Are you here to lecture?”
His dark head tipped, fluorescent overheads carving harsh planes into his implacable features. “You owe me a conversation, as I recall.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“Why?”
I shot him an impatient shrug as I wriggled into the pants. I was right. They fit like a second skin, which made them sexy club wear and worthless everywhere else. “What do you want me to say? My whole team nearly died down there. I lost my cool, like the brain scans say.” A mild stretch. “You set me up. Oh, and I cost you four enforcers. Don’t you have a lot to say about the value of resources and shit?”
“You returned with data from the infested lab. That in itself is valuable.” If the loss of his team bothered him, I couldn’t tell.
And Digo called me cold.
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve learned?” I prodded. “Or am I going to have to do this dance for the next hour?”
He gave in with surprising grace. Damn it. “According to Mr Koupra and the footage taken from the suit cams above ground, the surge of necrotech infection spread to one-fourth of the quarantined population.”
Ouch. That was a lot of walking necros. A whole lot of normal folk gone real bad, real fast. I zipped the pants up and stripped off the modest bra without looking at him. “Everyone said conversion only works via wire, and it’s rare.”
He didn’t afford me the same courtesy. “It will take time to sort out the data.” Without letting me pursue the topic, as though deciding it was done, he added simply, “You have questions.”
I wasn’t sure I did. Not the same ones I’d gone in there with. I frowned. “Did you pay Digo for his…” What would I call it? Selling me out? Ugh. “Blood price? For meeting your demands.”
His head cocked, the glaring white lights turning his shorn hair to a dark shadow on his swarthy scalp. “What do you intend to do if I confirm that?”
“Thank you.”
There. A flicker of his short, thick eyelashes. I’d surprised him. Finally.
The emotion didn’t linger. “Mr Koupra has been compensated accordingly.”
“Good.” I was happy to leave it at that.
This time.
I shrugged into the halter, wrapping it around my ribs with deft ease. He must have modeled the shirt after my yellow one. The material was softer than I remembered, nearly sheer but for the layers. A good printer could reproduce the pattern as many times as needed, but I liked this quality fabric.
He wasn’t inclined to let me get away with that. He raised his eyebrows, his full mouth hiking up ever so faintly at that crazily endearing corner. “You were saying?”
Oh, for all the fucks in the world. I shrugged my bare shoulders. “Thank you for paying him,” I said, and slanted him a hard eyebrow from beneath the fringe of pale hair flopped over my forehead. “Next time you put a bounty out on my head, make sure it’s to kill me.”
The smile, small as it was – smug bastard – didn’t fade. He switched gears without confirming my unspoken threat. “I understand Mr Koupra located some footage.”
I stilled, black cloth stretched taut in my fingers. My gaze pinned not on him, but somewhere beyond his right shoulder. Desks, computers, examination grids flickering faintly between stations. I didn’t see them.
I saw myself, negotiating with a man in black security BDUs over Nanjali Koupra’s unconscious body.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.” A rasp. I cleared my throat. “But it might be fake.”
His dark brown eyes searched my face. “Might be?”
I forced myself to loosen my grip. To finish wrapping the mater
ial and tie it in place. I wasn’t sure how to frame my thoughts in a way that didn’t sound desperate.
How did I explain that I was haunted by a memory that unfolded more like a vid screen recording than a recollection?
Echoes of panic still haunted me when I looked at white tile. The smell of disinfectant cramped inside my guts and chest and stole my breath. I didn’t make that up.
Malik didn’t cut me any slack. It wasn’t his style. “Riko.” His deep voice wrapped around the name I’d heard for ten years, and I shuddered. Regret? Aversion.
Who was I, really? What had happened to me in those four months?
What the shit was I becoming?
“What makes you doubt what you saw?”
Pulling my thoughts back roughly to the present, I turned away, pulling on one boot and kicking it up on the edge of the table to fasten. These tied, with real laces and everything. Quaint. “A few minor details,” I said, forcing my tone into something close enough to calm to fake it. “Individually, no big deal, but all together, they don’t add up.”
“I’m listening.”
I’ll just bet. “That vid showed me imprinting my thumb on a tablet. A contract, maybe, or some kind of employment record.”
“So?”
“So, that’s bullshit.” I yanked the knot hard, surprised when my metal arm nearly snapped the lacing.
Enhancements. Right.
I went through it again with my left shoe. “I’m a saint, but I was born a sinner. There is no way I’d ever let my fingerprint end up on some corporate rap sheet. I may as well write home and tell them where I am.”
“You don’t think that you’re setting up an elaborate lie to tell yourself?” His tone gentled, but only a fraction. “I’m not here to judge you. If you betrayed your team–”
“Suck my balls, Malik.” I stomped both feet, surprised and gratified by the comfort, and turned again, hands propped on my hips. “I didn’t do it. You don’t just throw away a decade of conditioning.”
“Anything else?”
I hesitated. “Nothing I can pinpoint.”
“Why?”
I eyed him. “Because I can’t, okay?”
“So you’re willing to ignore visual evidence in favor of… what? A hope?”
“I don’t know,” I said, probably the first blatantly honest thing I’d ever said to him. I shot him a slanted smile that promised nothing by way of gentling. I still wasn’t made for soft. “I risked my ass for all that information, and I’m not convinced the vid is real.”
“You aren’t convinced it’s not.” Eerie, how well he had me figured out. “What will you do?”
I focused on the question, ignoring the knot of anxiety threatening to lodge in my chest. “I’m going to do what I do best, Malik. Wreck everybody’s shit until I get to the bottom of that hellhole. Whatever went down, somebody has answers.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t lift an eyebrow, or look at me like I was insane. Malik was a watcher, and as creepy as that should have been, it only made me very much aware of his gaze on me. “How do you propose to start?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know yet, but I can tell you one thing. Whatever was down there, MetaCunts, Inc wanted it bad.”
“Do you plan to do this alone?” he asked me, a furrow forming over the bridge of his nose. It pulled at his freckles – which wasn’t nearly as disarming as when Orchard’s did the same.
Malik’s instincts, I decided, were scary as fuck.
I ran my hands through my hair, forcing it behind my ear. Until I found out for sure what was wrong with my memory, I wasn’t sure about running with anyone – especially my team, who probably still hated my guts. Indigo and I had worked out a kind of mutual ground, but Tash and the others might be harder sells.
There was no shortage of mercs eager for corp targets, at least. The problem was sifting through the mess for quality.
“I’ll figure out something,” I finally said, glancing at him with a shrug. “Right now, I don’t trust myself.”
Something sharp glinted in his gaze, twitched that muscle in his jaw and was gone. “Why?”
My mouth slanted into a grim slash. “Chunk off, Malik, you know why. When my chipset shorted, I damn near lost my shit for good down there.”
“Don’t you want to find out what caused it?”
“And stick around here?” I swiped my flesh hand at the lab as I passed Malik, dismissing them both in one sharp gesture. “Ass, no. I’ve had my fill of labs to last me a long time.”
He turned to watch me, and his tone dropped to a mocking octave. “So it’s easier to run.”
“I’m not running,” I snapped, but I stopped dead in my tracks.
Yes, I was. Damn it.
I turned to find him still watching me.
“What the tits is your malfunction?” I snarled. Annoyance, frustration.
His lips curved into a deeper smile; an edge in it that battered at my already fraying sense of grounding. “You’re running,” he stated, like he was the authority on all things me.
I swiped my hair back from my forehead. “What do you want from me, Reed?”
His arms dropped, easing his silhouette from nonchalant patience to something harder, more aggressive. Like he prepped for a fight as he approached me, closing the distance I’d put between us in my rush to get the hell out. “I can respect your need for answers.”
My gaze narrowed. I wanted to step back; screw him if I gave him that satisfaction. Instead, I raised my chin.
“I want answers, too.” He stopped a mere foot from me, so close I could pick out the individual freckles on his nose and cheeks. He smelled like something custom manufactured and expensive, which shouldn’t have smelled delicious and did.
Shit on that. I moved back, after all.
Satisfaction flicked a corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, well,” I said tightly, “we all want stuff, big boy. Get used to disappointment.” I turned away.
His hand lashed out, wrapped around my scarred metal arm and I was suddenly whirling, spun like a thrashdancer caught off guard and pulled close enough that half of my body was plastered against his.
I blinked into intense dark eyes, aware that my pulse had launched into a rapid beat. I was a tall woman, but I didn’t realize how tall Malik was until I stood almost nose to nose with him in four-inch boots.
I inhaled tightly, which dragged my chest against his. My snatch clued in right around the time my brain went nova in warning.
The fact I found him delicious annoyed the hell out of me.
“Let me help you.” It was practically an order.
I bristled in his grip. “What makes you think I want the help from you?”
“What makes you think you can afford to go without it?”
I could have shaken him off, probably would have enjoyed the chance to lay him out without his security team, but I didn’t. His men had pulled me out of that hellhole and I’d already cost him four trained enforcers.
He deserved a warning.
I gave him one. “Let me go,” I said softly.
He didn’t. He searched my gaze for something I didn’t know, so close I could see each individual whisker making up his shaped goatee. I bet his hair would be rough against my palm.
I bet his skull would cave in beneath my metal fist.
His fingers tightened. I couldn’t feel it, I just watched the numbers in my lateral display hike.
Hell of a grip. Arousal dragged rough claws through my unstable restraint. So did snapping restraints of fury.
His grip eased, like he knew. “My apologies,” he said, with the same level of calm certainty he did everything, and let me go.
I resisted the urge to rub the spot where his fingers had encircled cool metal. My phantom arm didn’t need the encouragement. “Your wife must think you’re a real catch,” I muttered, irritated.
He ignored me. “There’s tech and intel you’re going to need if you’re planning to wander bl
indly into corporate warfare.” He cut me off before I could argue. “Don’t delude yourself, it is corporate warfare. That lab was well funded, highly organized, and extremely covert.”
“I told you so.”
His eyes glittered.
Too late, I remembered that he’d already known.
My teeth gritted.
“Work with us, Riko. Mantis Industries has the funding, the tech and the resources to help you.”
“Never mind that you’ll get your espionage fix, right?”
“And then some.” He shrugged. “If you need information on MetaCore, the tools to take them on, and resources you don’t currently have, you’re going to need a backer. I tracked you from that lab when no one else knew you were even alive. I have the means. You have the drive. Give this a shot.”
Shit. I looked down at the floor in front of me, blindly cataloguing all the pros and cons I could think of.
Resources, sure. Tech upgrades that Lucky couldn’t get – and wouldn’t give me now, even if he could.
Better funding than your average merc group.
What was Malik Reed’s game?
I eyed him with blatant speculation. “You used me.”
“We’ve already had this discussion.”
I was running out of names to call him. “I thought you suits didn’t trust easy.”
“You cost me four highly trained specialists. Is this your version of easy?”
Point well made.
Cons? The corporate world didn’t operate by the same rules the street did. Working for a corporate’s cred was one thing, but going on payroll was something else. It’d cost me the last of my hard-won street rep and then some
Oh, and there was that teeth-grinding fact that I found myself wondering if a married man’s cock was as rigid as the rest of him.
Too many cons to list.
“I want to talk to your armor research team,” I told him, testing the waters.
“Why?”
Compromise wasn’t a word I think Malik considered often. “Because,” I told him, “I’ve got first-hand experience on necro armaments that turned Mantis’s suits to paste and chewing gum. If I’m going to be wearing the suit, it damn well better work.”
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