Maybe he got off on facts. He didn’t argue. “Done.”
I pushed it. “And I want to freelance. No payroll, no paperwork, no news feed headlines.”
“Freelancing comes with certain restrictions,” he countered.
I shrugged. “As long as I get full disclosure on every offered contract.”
He studied me. I returned his scrutiny with poker-faced challenge, but my hand came up to cover the patch of metal he’d grabbed. By the time I caught myself doing it, it was too late.
His gaze flicked to the movement. Lifted again to meet mine without so much as a glint of recognition.
Seriously, he bothered me.
“No,” he finally said. “I get to choose what information is disclosed per contract, but–” He raised one dusky hand. “The final say on any job you’re offered is yours.”
Okay. I didn’t want to admit it, but that was reasonable. Any information he didn’t disclose, odds were I knew somebody who could hack it. Assuming they’d do it if I was the one asking. Fuck.
I rolled my re-knitted shoulder, testing its reinforced socket as I pondered how much farther I could push.
Well, why the shit not?
I rocked back on my heels, sliding two fingers into the waistband of my snug pants in lieu of pockets. His gaze flicked to my exposed navel, the ink decorating my hip, then back up. “I don’t answer to your board.” When he didn’t immediately argue, I added offhandedly, “Oh, and I want a Valiant 14, fully loaded.”
His mouth shifted into that aggravating little curve, like I’d amused him again. “That’s worth more than a freelancer’s salary.”
I knew it, too. “Those are my terms.”
“Expensive terms.”
I grinned. “I’m an expensive date.”
“Noted. Now hear my requirements,” he replied, and my smile faded. “If you don’t answer to the Mantis board, you answer to me. You’ll have more freedom than most working under me, but only as long as I see progress. One wrong move, and I’ll have your Mantis credentials pulled faster than you can say Jane Eyre.” That smile tightened to a taunt. “Much less spell it.”
My back teeth clenched. A little rough flirtation was one thing, but I did not like this whole control business. “It will be a cold day in the wastelands before I work under you.”
His eyes glinted. “Mandatory exams.” He ticked off a list on his raised fingers. “Training exercises and goals. You will work with teams and without.”
“Hold it.” I crossed both arms in front of me, a physical X of denial. “Fail. I am not your custom lapdog, Malik. I do what I do on my terms, or it doesn’t work.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction, short black lashes flickering once. He didn’t like that? Too bad.
“I’m not a bottom-tier suit looking to scale the ladder,” I said flatly. “I’m an asset and an equal partner or you can kiss this ass goodbye. And I’m not turning down outside runs.”
“Then you turn down the ones that target Mantis.”
“It depends on the pay.”
His jaw moved. “I’ll give you a list of Mantis units that are hands-off. Anything else you want to hit is fair game, as long as you give me a chance to counteroffer.”
Okay, that surprised me. “Why?”
“Because other departments aren’t my problem,” he replied evenly. “Come after mine, and you’ll wish you’d taken the opportunity to work under me first.”
I couldn’t decide if I pitied his wife or envied her. “Then we’re agreed. I’m a freelancer, you keep your girly mouth shut about it, and I get a Valiant 14?”
“Acceptable.” He held out his hand, palm slightly tilted. I stilled.
What kind of bullshit challenge was this? Daring me to take his hand willingly?
Or being a jerk.
I’d put cred on the latter, but even as I considered it, I recognized the position he’d just put me in.
His eyes didn’t leave mine, way more self-satisfied than I was comfortable with.
If I did this, that was it. I’d be another sellout merc turned by corp money. Working for the capitalistic fuckheads of the world.
But if I played it smart, I could use Mantis to shore up my failing cred. Milk it for all it was worth, and put to rest all this bullshit. Once and for all.
“Fine.” But I ignored his offered hand. Challenge denied, motherfucker. “You have yourself a freelancer.”
For the first time, something in his dark brown eyes lit.
“Welcome to Mantis Industries. And since you’re officially on the roster,” he continued, like this was the most casual business meeting in the world, “you have authorization to know about the data you and Mr Koupra brought back.”
“Oh, goodie. On the clock already.” I patted my chest with mock concern. “Is it okay if I left my tie at home?”
He ignored my sarcasm. “Preliminary data is coming out of the undisclosed lab we’ve set up on an inaccessible system. What it’s telling me is that there’s more to that quarantine than your usual necro risk.”
“As if a ‘necro risk’ isn’t enough,” I pointed out dryly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said patiently, “the techs have found unfamiliar code encrypted in portions of the logs.”
I wasn’t following. Tech was tech. It was all predisposed on code. “So?”
“It means that whatever was going on in that place, they were working on something new. Possibly even an attempt to weaponize the necro virus.”
I stared at him, his words echoing hollowly in my head. “Isn’t that illegal?”
He raised a black eyebrow at me.
“All right,” I allowed, “isn’t that the kind of thing that’s going to get a metric fuck ton of corporate napalm slapped on somebody’s ass?”
He inclined his head. “Likely.”
Weaponized necros. Son of a bitch. Was that what they’d been doing in that lab?
But then why use people? The code could just be...I don’t know. Thrown together on a computer system, right?
Except Indigo had said the actual necro whatever started in a flesh-tech hybrid. Only then could it infect systems.
That had implications I didn’t like.
“Is that it?” I asked.
He folded his hands behind his back, watching me with that unflappable calm I despised. “One thing.” When I stared at him, waiting, he stared back.
This time, the glint in his eyes was anything but amused.
“We believe we know how the necros converted so many.”
“And?”
A pause. “Infection.”
I blinked. “Come again?”
“I mean,” Malik said slowly, once again the very model of patience and condescending education, “they aren’t spreading through just wires anymore.” Again, he waited.
The realization, when it dawned, came slow. Icy. “Holy fuck,” I rasped.
“Indeed.”
He half-turned, as if dismissing me in favor of the wide, translucent screen showcasing all of my recent vitals. That made me nervous. “We’re going through everything now, but initial impressions seem to indicate the code is in process of utilizing the nanos of the converted.” He glanced at me. “Mr Koupra very nearly demonstrated this for us. You, however, escaped infection.”
My knees buckled.
I locked them in place, fists clenching. “Impossible.”
“On the contrary.” His smile was a hard slash, grim and – in some weird little way – pleased. Maybe he saw it as a challenge. “The nanos delivered by contact with a necrotech’s fluids are programmed to assault and convert host nano agents. If your little stunt had taken up any more time, your prized linker would be well on his way to – what is it you call it? – necro-land.”
The teeth in my thigh. The blood everywhere. Ragged nails breaking into ichor. And that was the shit I’d survived. Indigo had been torn up just as bad.
Was that why we’d hit nanoshock so much faster?
Prototype tech?
I hugged myself before I realized I did it. “So now you get hit with their converted nanos and they start cannibalizing your tech?”
“Precisely.” Another inclination of his head. “We are,” he said, dry as hell in a decade’s drought, “working every angle. Until we know more, consider yourself brought up to speed. I want full reports on every move you make, beginning with any current leads that can locate the source of this... mess.”
I had a few leads, all right. Specifically, the other chopshops listed in Fuck It Jim’s records. I was rattled to the bone, but I shook my head hard. “I don’t do reports.”
“You will now.”
Shitlord. “And what will you do if I turn out to be the source of all this?” I asked his profile. “I still can’t account for my time in that lab.”
He flattened one hand against the desk, idly rifling through the screens with the other as if searching for a specific one. “Are you a religious woman?” he asked, eyes on the display.
“No.” Not even a little.
“Then praying will do you no good.” As answers went, it was enough. “Hope to whatever guidepost you want that you aren’t subject zero.” His hand stilled. “Do you think you’re at fault?”
“No.” I paused. “Not intentionally.”
“Intentions.” Now, he looked up. His eyes, always dark, gleamed. “About as useful as ‘almost’ and ‘should have’. Drop them.”
Before I could decide how to address that, whether I should even ask how much of that he actually believed, he turned back to the translucent screen on Orchard’s desk.
“Ms Ramsay will go over your verbal contract.”
“Verbal?”
Amusement touched his voice, now. “I believe you indicated you’d never imprint your identity on paperwork. Or,” he added with deadpan certainty, “work under me.”
So he was listening. The thought shouldn’t have warmed that icy knot in my chest. It totally did.
Then again, he did subsequently attempt to goad me into proving myself wrong, too. What a twat.
“Naturally,” he continued with calculated nonchalance, “if you break your contract, verbal or otherwise, it’s not court you’ll have to worry about. Please don’t cost me any more of Mantis’s enforcers.”
And there went the warm fuzzies. “You’re a flaming bag of dicks, Malik.”
“Keep that imagery warm,” he replied, entirely unruffled.
Oh, the man thought he was a riot. I left before I decided to take a stupid decision and compound it with something worse. Like... I don’t know. What could make selling out worse? Necrotechs spreading. Duplicating by infection.
Yeah, that’d do it.
I was halfway through the door when his deep voice called, “One last thing. Do you want your identification metrics saved as Riko or Risa Cole?”
My stomach clenched. I turned slowly, my pulse thick and heavy in my ears.
He hadn’t moved, but his gaze lifted from what would have been my ass a second ago, up my navel, my breasts. They touched on my lips and my skin warmed in the same way my chest had, slapping suspicion with a surge of good old-fashioned libido.
“According to the data pulled from Mr Koupra’s computer,” he continued mildly, “Risa Cole died in that lab.”
I fisted my hands at my sides. “Good. Let her rest in fucking peace.”
He straightened from the desk, tucked his hands into his pockets. It should have made him look harmless; nothing Malik Reed attempted would ever qualify as harmless. The aggressive edge of victory shaping his smile snapped a finger of black rage into my thundering heartbeat.
“As requested,” he said, like he was doing me a favor. “Now you know what I know.” I very much doubted that. “I’ll have your biometrics listed under your street name. My eyes only.”
Anger and arousal. Knowledge and power. Fuck me, but I liked a man who yanked my chain.
Even while I wanted to shove my fist into his still-beating heart and make him watch me eat it.
Libido-checking tech. I was so on that.
“Very soon,” I said quietly, “we’re going to talk.” Not now. Not while I couldn’t get a handle on my shit.
Not until I knew more about my own role in this mess. The scope of the necro infection.
“I look forward to the occasion.” Twatflapping son of a whore. The challenge inherent in that statement made me feel like he’d just slapped me on the ass. His gaze settled to my waist, and the pale band of flesh revealed between waistband and halter hem. “Why the arrow?”
The question, innocuous as fuck after that epic reveal, threw me for a loop. When I realized he meant the bright pink light tattoo, a wide arrow at the small of my back pointing to the cleft between my ass cheeks, I turned away again. “Because,” I answered over my shoulder. “Fuckheads like you need a reminder of what they’re missing when I do this.”
“Do what?”
I left him watching my ass as I walked away.
The doors shut on his sound of amusement; not quite a laugh, but I’d surprised him.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call him human, but it helped. If he was human, he would bleed. If he could bleed, I’d be the one to squeeze it from his stones.
Eventually.
Hope Ramsay waited for me in the first intersection. She wore slacks this time, brown and nondescript. A clear plastic digital unit was cradled in her arm. No intangible screen for her. Another prim blouse, sleek bun, plain glasses.
She smiled. “I hear congratulations are in order.” Something in my face must have warned her, because her smile faded. “Mr Reed get under your skin?”
Not just him. I folded my arms under my breasts. “How much of his information do you know?”
“Only what he tells me.”
“What did he tell you about me?”
Her head tilted to one side, mouth pursing. After a moment, her smile returned. A little bit crooked. “That you’re on the freelancer payroll starting now, retroactively dated to the quarantine extraction, which means you get paid for it. And that you’re more than a handful, and I shouldn’t let you bully me.”
If she lied, I couldn’t tell. She seemed sincere enough, but nobody got to be a suit secretary without swimming with predators.
“Anything else you want me to know, you’ll have to tell me yourself.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “What if I said I’d tell you everything you wanted to know if you went out with me?” Okay, so yeah, that was pretty much out of nowhere. But I wasn’t comfortable – I was fucking uncomfortable – and I wanted someone else to be, too.
Of course, if she said yes, I could think of a few ways to settle my nerves.
Her smile really was pretty. It widened at me now, exactly the opposite of what I was after. “I’d say that I didn’t get this far by skinnydipping in the water cooler.” She linked her free arm companionably through mine. “Besides, you lack a certain feature I tend to enjoy.”
“Dicks can be acquired, you know.” She chuckled, but dismissively. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“If I’m ever curious, you’ll be the first to know. Come on, let’s get back to civilized territory.”
Civilized, huh? Balls to that.
I let Hope guide me back to the elevator, only half listening to her stream of introductory encouragement. In the paneled reflection, I looked at us together – my smear of mutable and vibrant color, her pale coloring and dark blonde head. Black and neutral tones. Tall and short. Metal arm and pliable fleshbag.
Corporate and... fuck. Corporate freelancer.
I had to draw a line somewhere.
As I heard her say the word “quarters”, I opted to start there.
I covered her mouth with my hand. “New game, Hope. Let’s find the splatter specialist somewhere else to live. A flat she can pay for with her own creds, in a zone that won’t raise eyebro
ws or scream that I’m a corporate tool.”
She looked up at me, her plain brown eyes sparkling through her glasses. “I knew you’d say that,” she said, muffled but not at all deterred by my impromptu gag. “Here.” She passed me the tablet.
I let her go. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because teasing you is fun. You’re needlessly difficult.”
I was going to be a difficult a lot. As the elevator lifted and Hope filled it again with cheerful, welcoming chatter, I looked down at the list of flats to rent and buy and wondered if anyone would notice that my stomach had stayed below.
Everything I thought I knew had changed. The answers I’d gotten weren’t enough to cover all my questions, and hell, I felt like even more questions had been added to the mix. Whatever corporation had funded that lab, they had been playing with necro code. Weaponizing it, Malik said. Maybe. Maybe something else.
Not cool.
Somebody, maybe the same people, had screwed me in every way except the way I liked it. I owed Indigo an investigation into his sister’s death; I owed a massive favor to an ex-lover who called me a rival.
I owed Nanjali’s ghost some answers.
Hell, I owed myself some answers.
Somebody was fucking with me. Maybe I was fucking with me. I’d find out.
Indigo had promised his help. I’d already made a deal with Greg, and I was going to deliver that particular bouquet as soon as I could. Jax had my back – for the moment.
I wasn’t as alone as Malik thought me, but now I had Mantis backing.
Was I in over my head?
Oh, yeah. If this new Mantis Industries contract got out, other mercs would see me as a sellout, and they’d be right. I’d have a whole new set of rules to play by, ones I didn’t think I had the patience to learn.
Things were not going to get easier. Just the opposite. Hell, Lucky was going to shit a brick if he ever spoke to me again, and I couldn’t blame him. In all my years as a runner, I’d never let anyone else touch my tech.
Now I’d practically sold my body to Mantis.
The mirrored elevator panels threw back a reflection that looked like me, but I didn’t see the confidence earned after ten years on the street of a city that tried and failed to fuck me when it had the chance. I didn’t see a qualified runner, or a saint.
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