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Giving them both a last smile through the awkwardness of the breathing equipment in my mouth, I waved, then let go of the boat.

Revik followed.

Together, we let the weight on our belts and tanks pull us under.

Chapter47

Slave Ship

We’d mapped the shipping routes weeks before, mainly by hacking satellite feeds.

After the leadership team agreed not to let the aircraft carrier get any closer to Dubai than the coast of India, we mapped out alternative routes into Dubai City from the staging area. We still didn’t know for certain whether we were being actively tracked, but we had to assume we were, either in the physical or via the Barrier.

Wreg and his team, along with Vikram’s, assessed every active satellite they could find in our area of the sky, as well as every mechanical and organic component in the ship, looking for any sign it was being used to pinpoint our location. They looked for foreign signals, anything being sent to or from the ship without authorization. They looked for signs of micro-flyers, or high atmosphere cameras.

They found nothing?which didn’t really reassure anyone.

At the very least, we were likely looking at a Barrier leak of some kind, which might be enough for them to plan an extraction attempt for Lily and Cass, if not a full frontal assault.

For the same reason, we decided to send Maygar with Lily, rather than leave him on the aircraft carrier where he might be vulnerable, or put him with the military team supporting Dubai. That had been Revik’s call, but I didn’t argue.

Truthfully, I felt better having Maygar with Lily anyway.

I couldn’t help obsessing on where she was, how she was doing. I didn’t let myself scan for her, of course, but yeah, I was obsessing.

I was thinking about her even as Revik and I floated in the darkness of the Persian Gulf, not far from the southern shore of what used to be Iran.

We were reasonably confident that our multiple plane changes, treks over land and several boats hadn’t been tracked?at least not in a way that was relevant to us. Meaning, even if someone logged individual legs of our journey via satellite or surveillance, it wouldn’t be traced back to the aircraft carrier, or to us.

We’d done everything we could to disguise our identities.

Revik and I even had prosthetics on underwater.

I’d also changed my hair color slightly, making it more red, if a darker, almost-black-with-metallic-red-highlights kind of red. Revik dyed his a pale, ash blond, so that it was closer to the color of Uye’s, which yeah, looked strange on him, but still pretty hot.

We wore contact lenses in addition to the prosthetics, and blood patches on all of the areas they were most likely to draw our blood in a race-cat check.

Revik even wore prosthetics on his back to cover his scars and tattoos, since the scars, at least, were rare enough among seers to garner attention. I also had prosthetics covering my sword and sun tattoo, since I wore it in an unusual place for seers?as well as the one Ditrini gave me, since that wasn’t a standard tat, and might be remembered.

We’d both try to pass as human in Dubai, given the option, but we had no idea what we’d be facing on the other side, or if there might be some reason why either of us might have to take off our clothes. Revik couldn’t do anything about his cock, not without surgery, and if they decided to X-ray either of us, obviously they’d know what we were, so we were prepared to switch out blood patches and travel as seers, if the need arose.

We couldn’t do anything about our height, collectively or separately.

They did teach me to walk differently, to throw off any gait recognition software on the docks or in other parts of the city. From what our scouts told us, the place was a “pristine fortress” (Stanley’s words), or a “well-decorated prison camp” (Surli’s description). We were warned to expect military-grade surveillance pretty much everywhere.

Our scouts also did some preliminary research on our main target, the mystery collector of List seers. He turned out to be a bit of a local bigwig, which shouldn’t have surprised me given the size of his purchase orders in Macau alone. We were warned his personal properties (and his person) would be protected by extensive private security, in addition to that for Dubai.

One kind-of surprise: he was Chinese, from the Forbidden City apparently.

Less surprising, he was seer.

He was also an infiltrator, so likely ex-Lao Hu.

He had a strange name, even for a seer: Dalcius Dontan, a name that meant nothing to Surli, despite all his years working for the Chinese. There was some speculation it was an alias, which meant his whole background might be made up, too.

It was unusual for a seer to own other seers?particularly a Chinese seer, since most Chinesehumansdidn’t even believe in enslaving seers?but maybe that was part of Menlim’s brave new world. This Dontan guy apparently owned seer fetish clubs all over Dubai City, along with a number of strip clubs, high-end restaurants, and four-star hotels.

Shadow was rumored to have a palatial residence himself, just outside the main walls of Dubai City, filled with droves of seers and human slaves. He and Dontan appeared to be on dinner-guest terms, which was a bit worrisome until Surli told us Menlim entertained all of the heavy hitters among the Emirate’s populace.