Page 9

9

T he woman in red watches Rian and Fetor go as she stands in the doorway. After enough time has passed that they’re definitely down the stairs, she turns to me. Gone are the timidness and polite veneer. “The fuck are you doing?” she asks, stepping farther into the room.

“You’re supposed to ask me the codeword,” I point out.

Phoebe rolls her eyes. Technically, I am the only one who needed the “Eva Charming” link as a codeword so I could identify the contact on the inside if I needed to—apparently, the contact already knew who I was. Which makes sense now that I see my contact works for Rian. Bit unexpected, but I can roll with it.

There’s an irony, too, in the fact that my contact on the inside was also assigned to Strom Fetor—although perhaps Fetor doesn’t have a dedicated security team like I thought, and she was only fetching him for the tech trial. The pieces start organizing themselves into a pattern in my head: Rian was tailing me, Phoebe was watching us both, and she put herself in a position to get to me alone.

“If you’re already in UG security, why does the client need me?” I ask.

“I don’t have high-enough clearance to get in. Rian’s the only one in our department with full access.” Phoebe strolls languidly around the room, eyes tracing the enormous portal built inside.

I feel a little sorry for the portal. This thing is made with minerals mined on multiple worlds and had been filled with fuel generated from the captured sunlight of stars so distant that humans once only theorized they were there. It hung in space, defying the void, allowing intergalactic travel for nearly a century before it was replaced.

And now it’s caged in a windowless room.

I give it a little pat, like it’s a puppy. It deserves better.

I can feel her watching me. Phoebe. She’s not telling me the whole story; that’s for sure. Not that I blame her. I’ve got secrets of my own. But it’s not just about clearance.

I’m betting she tried to be honest first. The good sort usually do, and she seems like Rian, all noble and sincere and hoping to do the right thing. So, I’d wager, when she first realized just how colossally Strom Fetor’s company was going to fuck Earth over, she tried to raise the alarm internally. I’m betting she even approached Rian. But she didn’t have the evidence, I suppose, to make him see how bad this deal was going to go.

I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s not like me; she wouldn’t have tried to turn her knowledge into profit. And I was wrong, I think; she didn’t go to Rian. Because Rian would have listened to her. She went to someone else. Someone who doesn’t care the way he does. Maybe someone higher up the chain? Yes, that’ll be it. She tried to tell someone, and they didn’t believe her.

So, she’s done with words. Actions only. Except now she’s burned some bridges that would have helped her do more from the inside. Lost a promotion, maybe, or an ear. Now she’s stuck as a junior member of security, fetching assholes to do tech checks. She sacrificed something in an attempt to do the right thing, and it didn’t pay off.

It usually doesn’t.

I wonder how different things would have been if she’d been trusted when she spoke up.

But that’s an old story, often repeated throughout history. It’s rare that anyone listens to words they don’t want to hear, rarer still when the speaker’s not the one in power.

“Have you even started on the mission?” Phoebe asks, pulling my attention back to her.

See, well, that’s an interesting question. The mission the client hired me to do? I mean, technically. But I’ll confess, I did sort of get distracted by my secondary goal, knocking over dominoes just to see them fall.

That’s what my contact gets for not paying for the repairs on Glory.

Still, I do have a real job to do. And I’ve done...some. I’ve laid some groundwork. That sounds good. “I’ve laid the groundwork,” I tell Phoebe confidently.

She raises her eyebrow, all doubt. Obviously, she’s been working with Rian for too long.

“What’s your connection with Fetor?” she asks.

“None. Why do I have to keep reminding everyone how much I hate him?”

Phoebe frowns at me. “You’re supposed to be here for—”

“I know,” I say, cutting her off. “And the asset is all but secured.”

More eyebrow gymnastics.

“Really,” I say.

She sighs like she’s five decades older than she really is. “Could you just stop with whatever games you’re playing with Fetor?”

“You got it,” I say.

She rolls her eyes, not believing me. “You’ve ‘laid the groundwork,’ eh? I’ll have to hope that’s enough. This entire project has been a mess. The whole thing. Took forever to get the planning in and the prototypes developed, and now that the climate cleaners have been approved, everything’s a rush job.”

Things get sloppy when they’re rushed. Cracks start to show. Things fall apart.

Exactly the kind of chaos I thrive in.

Phoebe cuts me a glance. “And Fetor insisted we announce the nanobot program tonight. I can’t even tell you the number of security breaches we’ve already stopped.”

I knew this event would be a draw. Ugh, competition.

“Fetor likes the spotlight,” I say.

Phoebe snarls in disgust, which makes me like her even more. “It’s all a show to him.” She describes a little of what’s happening later—a hover stage that’s going to soar out over the guests, with holo projectors doing a three-sixty wraparound display as the galaxy is informed of the Fetor Tech-funded climate cleaner innovation.

“Sounds big,” I say. Sounds easy to break, I don’t say.

She shakes her head. “Too big. We finally got the whole stage offline, so it’s not attached to any network, but...” She shakes her head harder, braids dancing. “It’s too fucking much.”

So, Phoebe sees the flaws too.

I try to get a bead on the situation, on her. I knew my client had someone on the inside—a volunteer, a believer . Phoebe may have been recruited...but she doesn’t have Rian’s security clearance to get the job done. The government is wasting her, using her to put out all these little fires rather than giving her more access.

While I’ve been thinking, Phoebe’s been watching me. “You’re missing an earring,” she says.

I touch my left ear. Observant. I shrug like it doesn’t matter.

I could use a distraction, though. If she’s in it for the charity instead of the money, I’m betting she’s a local girl. Judging from her accent . . .

“American?” I guess.

“Like you.”

I hate that she knows more about me than I know about her. And she’s getting it from two sides—she’s got what little information my client knows about me as well as whatever Rian’s been able to root up. And while I paid quite a coin to make sure records on my background were purged...I don’t like the situation. We’ll just leave it at that.

It’s easier to be a ghost. It’s better to be gone before I’m even spotted in the first place.

And here I am, in a glittering gown for every eye to see.

Food’s good, at least. Still, there’s a difference between smiling for camera drones that will delete my unimportant face, and my actual name being read by people who know to link it to me.

“So, what’s your angle?” Phoebe asks.

“Same as yours.”

She snorts, the sound full of contempt and derision.

“We could not be more opposite,” she states. “I’m not paid for helping.”

“You are,” I say. “Just not in cash. So, what part of America were you from?”

She hesitates but ultimately finds nothing too offensive about the question. “Indiana.”

“Oh, not bad.” Indiana was far enough away and east of the supervolcano when it erupted. Close enough to give her a healthy desire to actually give a shit about fixing up Earth’s problems.

“Not great,” she says. She was probably raised in a free colony—an area that didn’t have the intergalactic-tourism draw to be developed, but enough farmland and stable ground to independently subsist as a community.

It’s amazing how people just keep going. Supervolcanoes, climate collapse, global pandemics, dissolution of society...and there are still farms in Indiana raising wholesome young women who grow up to work as double agents and look hot in red gowns.

Humanity’s something else.

“The mission is clear,” Phoebe says, her eyes cutting to me. “You obtain the asset. You pass it off to me. And then we take it from there.”

Phoebe is on one side of the portal, glaring at me. I could go around the massive metal ring to get closer to her, but I opt instead to heft myself up the side. There’s a metaphor in there, but I was never one for higher lit.

“What are you doing?” Phoebe demands. My eyes keep drifting to the bright strands of light weaving through her braided buns. I wonder if she wears her hair like that on purpose, to distract people from her eyes, from seeing what she sees. And she sees a lot.

“Relax, it’s an interactive exhibit. I’ve been in here before when entire classrooms of children hung off this thing like it was a playground.” All the rough edges of the portal have either been filed down, removed, or covered in protective foam so said schoolchildren don’t get cut on the museum’s dime. I have to hitch my sea-silk dress up a little, exposing almost my entire left thigh, before I get all the way up and settled onto the ring. With my legs stretched out in front of me, I lean my back against the inner curving metal of the ring, and I think about how a few hundred years ago, there were solar fuel cells built right below me, more energy than a hundred nuclear bombs, just simmering.

It’s hollow and powerless now.

I loll my head toward Phoebe. At least my hair’s so glued down, it’s sturdier than the portal ring. “I know how the operation is supposed to work.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “How it’s supposed to work is exactly how it will work. You were hired for a job.”

“I know,” I say.

“And you’re going to do that job.”

I roll my eyes. Believers. She definitely feels she has a higher purpose, that her nobility counts for something.

“You’re a lot like Fetor,” I mumble. Everyone’s trying to save the planet but only on their own terms.

Phoebe sputters at me, but before her affronted thoughts can gain any traction, I add, “That’s why you can trust me. I don’t care about your little operation. I care about getting paid.”

“And the only way to get paid is to pass the asset off to me.”

Oh, she’s wrong about that. There are lots of ways to make a profit. Believers are never creative enough.

“The pass-off happens at the end of the night,” I say as if that’s a decade from now. As if it’s that straightforward.

“We can’t risk any delays.”

I tap my fingers on the metal. There’s a subtle, almost-indistinct hint of an echo, reminding me of how the portal’s empty metal now. Reminding me that if this thing were in space still, even if it had no fuel cell core, it would make no sound at all.

“You do your job; I’ll do mine,” I say, locking eyes with her again. “I know what the stakes are.”

“Do you?” There’s an edge to her voice now, raw desperation. And I don’t know if it’s the hint of fear that flashes in her eyes or the way she really does look smoking in that dress, but I sit up a little straighter. Something breaks behind her pretty face when she sees that I’m actually paying attention.

“This is it ,” she says, her voice low but not because she thinks anyone can hear us. She knows this room is secure. Her voice is soft because she has so much hope pinned to her words that they’re drowning her like pebbles stuffed in the pockets of a tragic Victorian about to walk into the sea. She takes a shaky breath in. “This is everything, everything that we’ve been planning for years. If you—”

“Get the asset,” I fill in for her, “which I will.”

“If you do, if this works...we might get Earth again. Real Earth. Not one dependent on tourism and charity. Climate sickness would be a thing of the past. Think of the people dependent on drugs just to keep living on our world.”

Think of all the people not dependent on drugs, because living on our world already killed them. I silently state each word in my mind, and then I swallow them down, pushing the sentence deep into my gut, without letting a single syllable even float across my face.

She laughs, absolutely no amusement in her voice at all. “We might actually get the farm back.”

“So to speak,” I say.

“But if you fail—god, why does whole thing have to hinge on you ?” She waves her hand at me as if I am the most inept person to ever breathe in her presence. Which is supremely fucking unfair, because just ten minutes ago, she saw Strom Fetor, who’s way worse than me. I hope he falls off his hover stage during his big announcement.

“If you fail,” Phoebe continues, utterly ignoring me as her eyes trace up to the part of the ceiling where the portal ring should continue but instead cuts off abruptly, “If you fail...”

“If I fail,” I snark back, somewhat impatiently.

“Then the nanobots get released into Earth’s climate, a Pandora’s box that can never be closed. And when that happens, it will turn my world, our world into nothing more than a shell. He’ll own us. All of us.” She shakes her head.

This is exactly the kind of pressure I purposefully did not want to contemplate earlier. Yes, there’s a hell of a lot riding on tonight.

The nanobots that were in the Roundabout were infected with code that will spread like a virus. Nanobots are designed to work that way, to replicate on their own, to infect everything. These nanobots are going into the water cycle, and every scientist in every world will confirm that the one essential thing to human life on a planet is a working water cycle.

Once released, the nanobots will be impossible to recapture.

The virus will spread.

And Earth will pay the price.

Quite literally. The nanobots are designed to cease working, an encrypted code that Fetor purposefully designed to ensure he has to be rehired again and again. Rather than saving Earth, he’s making every citizen sign up for a subscription plan that will bankrupt them, just for the privilege of staying alive.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Phoebe says.

You really, really don’t , I think. But all I do is smile.

“You’re thinking, well, Earth is dying. If this doesn’t work, there’s plenty of room on the other worlds. And it’s true. People can immigrate. I’m sure that’s what Fetor thinks. It’s probably how he sleeps at night, telling himself that if people cannot afford to pay him to live, they can just move elsewhere.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t tell himself a damn thing at night, because if he does happen to have an ounce of empathy lingering like a stain on his conscious, he can just pay someone to have it removed.”

Phoebe gives me a brief snort of appreciation at that, but then her face tilts, her mouth tightening, as if she’s swallowing down acid. “It’s just...not everyone can leave. He’s going to own Earth, and he’s going to own the people who can’t afford to leave.”

“I know,” I say. Clear. Loud. Somewhat impatient.

But she’s already drowning in her hope and her desperation. She can’t hear anything I’m saying, not really.

I know what she’s going through right now. This is the first time the universe peeled away its veneer and showed her how cruel it can be, not out of any type of maliciousness but out of pure apathy. She’s from Indiana, for fuck’s sake; she’s been a witness to horror, sure, but it’s never before been hers to own.

And she doesn’t know what to do with it all, except to keep trying to scramble over the waves, even if they slip through her fingers, even if she’s using all her energy just to keep from going under.

She still thinks good can win. And she’s not taken any of the stones out of her pockets yet.

But that crack in her voice, that thrum of anxiety wrapping around her neck, that tightening in her shoulders . . .

I swing my legs over the side of the portal, standing up close to her. I look her right in the eyes. I say: “I won’t fail.”

I see the moment when she chooses to believe in me .

And if there weren’t so much profit on the line, I would pity her for that.