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S o, about this announcement,” I say.

“Ada—” Rian starts.

“Hush. So, you’re going to let everyone know about the climate cleaners tonight?”

Fetor nods. “We had a bit of a hiccup with them earlier.” He punches Rian in the arm, and while it seemed to be a genial gesture, that punch had weight behind it. Dick. “Which is why the government enlisted the aid of the private sector.”

The nanobot prototype and the coding for the climate cleaners were secured on the Roundabout , and it was absolutely not the government’s fault that the ship crashed into a planet.

It was mine.

(Partially, anyway. Unlike some people in the room, I don’t try to take credit for everything .)

“Did you know,” Fetor continues, “that some anarchist group tried to steal the data? What kind of monsters would steal data that’s meant to aid the billions of people on such a desolate planet?”

“What kind of monsters, indeed,” I say, smiling at Rian innocently. “I bet they would do something horrible, like try to exploit the people of Earth, make them pay for their own survival.”

“Which is why the government is funding the project,” Rian interjects, glaring at me.

“Because you can always trust the government to handle large programs like a climate-cleaner system that will affect an entire world. If there’s one thing we can say about the ol’ UG, it’s that it’s efficient.”

Fetor snorts, his eyes raking over my dress. “Oh, I like you.”

“The feeling is very much not mutual,” I say pleasantly. “So, anyway, you’re going to buy this room?”

Rian’s jaw is tight. He doesn’t like that Fetor can—and will—buy a piece of history. But he can’t protest. Yay, capitalism.

Fetor opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up my finger. My heart’s racing. I love this part of a con. “But I thought,” I say, the boiling anticipation within me making my words bubble out, “you would buy something from the Skye Martin display.”

Rian glares at me. Don’t give the trillionaire ideas, he says with those razor eyes.

I ignore him.

“What makes you think I want something from that room?” Fetor asks.

He doesn’t, and I know he doesn’t. Here it is, though. The tricky play. I don’t need Fetor to go to the Skye Martin display, but I do need him to get out of here. Just long enough for me to make sure that domino falls in the right direction when I flick it.

I’m so excited I almost want to throw up, but I am not going to waste all that good food from earlier.

“I’ll confess,” I say, grinning sheepishly at Fetor, “I did a little reading up on you when I found out I was going to be attending the gala.” It goes without saying that Fetor would be here; he attends every year, even when he’s not the guest of honor, and every year, he makes a splashy show of wealth. Sometimes, he bids on an item in the auction, but only if there’s something for his collection. The man has well-known affinities for certain items. “I scoped out the items downstairs.”

“Nothing of note,” Fetor allows.

Tell that to Tutankhamun.

“So I figured, where would a man like Strom Fetor be? Definitely in the early-space-exploration rooms.”

Fetor does that weird thing with his mouth where he’s trying to pretend he’s not smiling but definitely wants people to see that he’s pretending he’s not smiling because he’s just that damn modest. “My reputation proceeds me.”

“Precedes,” Rian says, barely audible, and now I’m the one biting back a smile.

“The Mission Control Room is pretty...classic,” I say, finally settling on a word as if it was disappointing. “But have you seen the Skye Martin portal display?”

“Of course I have,” Fetor says.

I toss him a shy smile, entirely fake. “I’ve never seen it before.” Rian glares at me. I wonder if he scoured the security feeds enough to know I’ve visited it several times.

“You’ve never seen it?” Fetor gapes at me. “You know, you could come to visit my estate as a guest. I actually bought part of the portal a few years ago. It’s in my garden.”

“Or you could look at the display that’s literally down the hall,” Rian growls.

Oh, jealously is hot on him. And also, he doesn’t know about my little scouting missions. Slipping there. Nice. I enjoy being his blind spot.

“I suppose that’s quicker,” Fetor says. “But the offer stands. Here, let me show you the display.”

Fetor strides toward the door, Rian at his heels. It takes them a few moments to see I’ve not followed, but that’s all the time I need.

Rian whips around, his eyes snagging on every detail of me standing by the metal desk, the red telephone receiver in my hand.

“Sorry, the way the receiver was crooked was scratching at my brain. I had to fix it.” I settle the receiver down on the cradle correctly, the coiled red wire coming off it looped in a neat circle.

First domino: down. The rest will take time, but for now? I can let Newton’s law work all by itself.

Fetor waits for me to catch up to him. I pass by Rian, whose narrowed gaze traces a path from the red telephone all the way to me. I loop my hand around Fetor’s arm just to piss Rian off.

“I love the way communication evolves,” I say as we head down the corridor. “That red telephone, it was a direct line to the Department of Defense. I suppose they needed it if the space shuttle blew up or something. And it was secure. One telephone at the NASA Mission Control, one telephone at the Department of Defense. That’s real security. We don’t have that anymore.”

Fetor looks down at me. “We have security.”

I give him a pitying look. “And yet some anarchist group stole your original nanobot prototype.”

That makes him stop. Fetor looks from me to Rian, eyes wide, a pale pink flush on his pasty cheeks. “ My company didn’t break security,” he says, a little too loudly. “ My company protected the data with a private shipment and multiple stages of unbreakable technology.”

Unbreakable. Okay.

“You really shouldn’t be talking about this,” Rian starts.

Fetor waves aside his concerns. “We’re all friends here.”

“Not me,” I say. “I hate you. Remember?”

Fetor laughs in a tone I’m sure he thinks is charming. “Anyway, that security breach—not my fault. Whenever the government gets involved, you have to expect certain...flaws.”

Rian looks like he wants to add something, but I know he’s not going to confess that it was actually me who stole that data.

“Besides, it all worked out in the end,” Fetor continues. He pats my hand, still in the crook of his arm. “And while there was a breach initially, the final nanobots are securely in the Sol-Earth communications tower. And no one can get inside that I don’t personally approve of.”

Which is why my client hired me to do just that. I mean, not technically , but hey. I’ve got agendas of my own.

I fake ignorance a little longer. “I just don’t think anything is really secure in this day and age. Certainly not information.” I cast a sidelong glance at Rian. “Just think: with enough time and a data recorder, any file could be stolen.”

An adorable little muscle tics in Rian’s jaw. I don’t want him to have an aneurysm, but if he does, I do want it to be because of me.

“Not in my offices,” Fetor says firmly.

My whole body melts with happy bliss. I love breaking confident men.

“Let’s change the subject,” Rian say even more firmly.

“To what?” I ask, my tone bright.

“To anything that doesn’t require a high level of security clearance.”

Fetor chuckles.

“So, you’re announcing tonight that the climate cleaners are going to be released soon,” I say. “I assume they’ll be going out of this super secure office of yours?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Rian says, cutting Fetor off from telling me everything. Fine. I can work for my information. But also, he just confirmed what I asked, so that was nice of him.

“And here we are. The Skye Martin room,” Fetor announces, sweeping his hand toward the gallery display.

The museum has a portion of an actual portal on display. It’s been deactivated, obviously, and the power core’s been taken out. It’s only a fraction of the ring—with one part in Fetor’s backyard, apparently—but even so, it’s massive.

Fetor starts talking like he’s a professor in a lecture hall, but I can easily block his voice from my mind as I move around the display. When will men realize that just because they speak doesn’t mean anyone’s listening?

Unlike the Mission Control Room, this display is designed to be interactive. I’m allowed to go right up to the portal ring and touch it. My hands trail over the metal edge. Here, the wall of the ring is as tall as my chest and wider than two Rians standing on top of each other. The curve goes all the way up to the ceiling, giving it the illusion of continuing through the plaster.

Fetor pauses in the endless drone of misinformation that I’ve long since tuned out, and I use that opportunity to activate the holo for the room. The lights project a woman in a thick space suit floating out of the ceiling like a ghost, her face obscured by a mirrored visor on her helmet. She’s got a heavy, clunky LifePack on, and she doesn’t have jaxon jets, which is a shame, because someone like Skye Martin deserved jaxon jets. She was just born before they were invented.

“There she is. The woman who invented portals,” Fetor says, pointing to the holo projection.

Skye Martin didn’t invent portal travel. She was born on Centauri-Earth, which means she wouldn’t have even been on a planet other than Earth if portal travel hadn’t already been invented. Portals are the only thing that allow faster-than-light travel.

What Skye Martin did was make it even quicker. She combined solar glass—a rare material that’s only ever been found on a handful of worlds inhabited or not—with portal tech to make portals faster and more reliable. Without her, it would take months or years to go between worlds. Now? Weeks. Days for some paths.

When I look over, I see Rian watching me, as if he thinks I could pick up this piece of a portal and hide it under my tight-fitting sea-silk dress.

“Mr. White, Mr. Fetor?” a voice says from the door.

We all look up to see Phoebe, Rian’s associate in the red number, standing tentatively. She looks a little frazzled. Up and down the steps, wrangling wayward men. Not the best job to have.

“Hello, Phoebe,” I say. She nods at me, but her attention is on Rian and Fetor. “Love your dress.”

She glances at me as if she’d forgotten I was here. “Thanks,” she says, her attention already drifting back to Rian. “It’s an Eva Charming. Sir, we really need to complete the tech check with the addition of—”

“It’s fine; it’s just a tech check,” Fetor says waving her off. “I invented the tech.”

“And it’s still in prototype,” Phoebe says cooly. So, picking up on the way she doesn’t let emotion inflect her voice, this fancy-hover stage thing with a fancier nanobot display isn’t exactly ready for showtime.

“Also, the people operating the stage didn’t invent it and have never worked on something like it before.” Rian sighs. “I’ll go with you and make sure it’s quick.”

“Have fun, bossman,” I tell Rian with a mock two-finger salute.

Rian’s eyes narrow. “Phoebe, did you ensure the security was back on in the Mission Control display?”

“Of course,” she says, all efficiency. Rian pauses, saying something low to her, and her eyes zero in on me, narrowed, suspicious.

That’s that, I guess. Rian’s off to do more boring things, and he’s set his watchdog on me instead.

Fetor turns to me as he heads out. “Lovely meeting you.”

He still can’t remember my name. “I regret every second I’ve spent in your presence, and I want to stomp your face in,” I say genially.

“In those shoes?” Fetor makes a point of staring at my silver heels. “Some people would pay good money for that.”

Well, now he has my attention. “Really?”

“No,” Rian says forcefully. He grabs Fetor’s arm, pulling him toward the door.

“Wait, no, let me hear him out. Good money?” I ask.

“Very good.” Fetor’s lecherous grin may be the only real emotion I’ve ever seen his plastic face wear, and it promises a price tag with a lot of zeroes, my favorite kind of number.

“ No, ” Rian says again, already in the corridor.

“Maybe later,” I call to Fetor as Rian drags him away.