Page 8 of Last Chance to Save the World (Chaotic Orbits #3)

8

W e’re all up before the sun the next morning.

Rian and I sit at the table in the main room; there’s more space here than in the cramped personal living area one floor down. Rian’s jazzed up the standard-issue clothes I got for him with his coat from the gala, the informal balancing out the ultra-formal in a look that I could see some feeds picking up as a new trend, especially paired with the easy way Rian wears it all. My outfit is simple enough, all skintight black, and that gives enough of an air of elegance that will allow me to pass through Fetor Tech unnoticed. I catch Rian appreciating the way the slinky material clings to my body. I wonder if he’s realized loose clothing is a liability, something easily grabbed.

Mom bustles around, ostensibly giving us food and filling my coffee cup as soon as I take a sip. But there’s a method to her movements, purpose in every trip downstairs. While Rian spent the night in “my” bedroom, I slept in my mother’s bed...but she wasn’t there all night. There were a lot of moving parts to pin down for her operation.

Rian and I are planning a heist that requires precise timing and luck; Mom’s planning something else just as precarious. It’s strange to share a table with so many secrets.

When Mom goes up to feed the birds, I pull out a thin sheet of plastic speckled with tiny clear stickers: two round ones and two rectangles.

I peel off one circular sticker and press it into the smooth skin behind my left ear, the one without an earring. There’s a little bead in the center of the sticker, and I push it hard against my skull. I take one rectangular sticker and smooth it down just below the collar of my shirt, in the hollow space above my clavicle, under my throat.

When I pass him the plastic sheet, Rian does the same.

Bone-conducting hearing devices behind our ears, subvocal transmitters at our throats. Crude technology, but it works.

Testing , I say without opening my lips or moving my jaw. It’s barely a hum; if we weren’t in a silent, empty room, even I wouldn’t be able to hear the sound.

A moment later, the robotic voice translating Rian’s subvocal reply vibrates in my bone-conducting audio transmitter: Received.

Subvocal isn’t great for detailed messages; the artificial intelligence built into the chip relies on context and guesses to form complicated sentences, but for a few words—especially when we need to give each other warnings—this will work well.

“You have all you need?” Rian asks.

I touch my right ear and the silver stud earring. My other earring, the one I left at the gala, was a code scanner, receiving whatever code I needed.

This one is the opposite: it replaces code.

I wrote the program myself, and I spent the past week in the portal on the voyage from Rigel-Earth to here checking and rechecking it. I built the code like a virus—all I have to do is upload it into the nanobot program, and it will overwrite the malware Strom Fetor had added in.

“I’ll need an hour,” I remind Rian.

He scowls. “I’ll buy you all the time I can.”

An hour is going to be tight for the plan to work. “I can’t help how long it takes for code to get uploaded. It’s not instantaneous.”

“I know,” he grumbles. He’s a nervous ball of energy, fiddling with the plastic backing of the comm stickers.

I reach over and touch his hand. He looks up, eyes locking on mine.

“It’s going to be fine,” I say.

He smiles ruefully. “You’re a good liar.”

“I am.”

“At least one of us has confidence.”

“Before you go,” Mom calls from the stairs, announcing her presence. She bursts through the door, a box in her hands.

“What’s that?” I ask.

Mom shrugs, setting it down on the table in front of me. “I have no idea. You told me weeks ago you were having a package delivered here; don’t you remember?”

If only Rian knew I learned how to lie from my mother. Whatever is in this box must be the reason why she made sure Bruna sent me here and insisted on being here when Rian and I arrived.

I brush aside the pigeon feather stuck to the box. The gray feather loops and swirls as it drifts down, and I glance at Mom, who’s staring at me. Hard. That feather was part of the message.

I rip into the package, withdrawing . . .

“A sun shield?” Rian asks. “Why did you buy a new one?”

Clever, clever Mother. “This is not just any sun shield,” I say.

Mom heads downstairs to make another pot of coffee. And give me a chance to pretend to Rian like I planned for this all along.

“Hold your scanner up to it,” I say as I take my shirt off, slip the sun shield over my head, and smooth it against my body. The paper-thin material blends into my skin, almost unnoticeable—and anyone who did notice it would think nothing of it, given our location. I pull my shirt back on over it. Only the hood dangling over the collar behind my neck stands out, but my hair covers most of that.

Rian lifts his cuff up, looking at me through the recorder lens built into it. I pull the hood over my hair, obscuring part of my face.

“Smart,” Rian says in an appreciative tone.

All sun shields block radiation from contributing to skin cancer or climate sickness. This one also blocks camera lenses. It’s woven with tiny reflective threads from Gliese-Earth that cast light flares and sparkles, making it hard to capture a clean shot, especially one that could be used for identification. The brighter the area, the worse the image captured.

And Fetor Tech’s headquarters are very bright.

“But...” Rian’s voice trails off.

“What?” I demand.

“Nothing. But. Just...”

“What?”

“There’s going to be a record. I’ll have to check you in as a guest. When we get into the nanobot programming room, the only way that works is if I use all my credentials to open the door. Fetor is going to know it’s us. Why even bother with a disguise like that?”

Once I reprogram the nanobots, there’s no hiding Rian’s involvement. But there’s also nothing Fetor will be able to do about it—the nanobots themselves will be given the exact programming that they were always supposed to have, the programming that was approved. Fetor violated those terms by reprogramming them to fail in a system that would benefit him.

Once again, nothing I’m doing is technically illegal. Except for the parts that are, but Fetor won’t be able to prosecute me, because then it would expose what he did to everyone in the galaxy, and he won’t risk that.

“It’s not a perfect disguise, but it’s another layer of protection once I’m inside,” I say. “No one will blink twice at a sun shield. But the security drones won’t get a read on me, and any cams recording will get corrupted.”

The drones might trigger a higher level of security if they can’t get a facial scan, of course, but probably not. Or, hopefully, at least not within the hour I need to be inside the building. Our plan hinges on timing and calculated risks, and this certainly can’t hurt. Rian seems to agree; he doesn’t question it further.

I glance at the feather that dropped on the floor when I opened the box.

By the time we should depart, I’m jittery from caffeine and sick to my stomach from nerves, even if I don’t show them. Also, biology is being a bitch, but other than that and the concept that what we’re doing in the next few hours may doom or save Earth, to say nothing of my own personal prospects, everything’s fine.

Just fine.

We go by boat. Friend-of-a-friend network leaves no records; it’s Bruna’s cousin who picks us up and takes us around the south end of Gozo to the massive bridge that connects the two big islands together, forming the city of New Venice.

We’re dropped off at a platform that connects to the lifts that rise up from the sea level all the way to the bridge city atop us. It’s early, but locals crowd the area, and it’ll be a while before we can go up. Rian frowns—nerves, I think, or he’s still mad we didn’t get a nearer hotel.

Luzzu boats huddle under the bridge, waiting for tourists to summon them for a scenic waterway ride through sanitized routes. It’s early enough that the workers and their families are sleeping in the boats, under dark cloths that afford them a little privacy.

I glance at Rian.

I don’t think he sees that there are people under the blankets. His eyes glide over the scene, barely taking in the colorfully painted boats, much less what’s in their shadows. His gaze lingers on the underside of the massive city-bridge, illuminated with sparkling lights for the tourists. I wonder if he’s looking for rust. If he sees that an entire city resting atop a massive manmade structure connecting two islands isn’t exactly the safest design in the world. I wonder if he’s thinking it’ll fall one day, and if he’s concerned first with the people who live in the huge buildings atop the bridge or the ones who live in the boats beneath it.

We’re both looking for problems, but we’re looking in the opposite direction.

Rian turns and catches me staring at him. “What?”

I pat his cheek. “You have keen eyes, but there’s a lot you don’t see.”

He catches my hand, holds it next to his skin, warm and flush. “I see more than you think I do.”

Clear hazel, sharp as broken glass and honed blades.

He’s going to betray you.

My mother’s voice, shattering the moment.

But I don’t take a step back.

And neither does he.

And when I tip up on my toes on the shaky platform, he meets me halfway.

He’s going to betray you.

I know.

I always knew.

When his arms go to my waist, I know he’s feeling for more than my skin—he’s looking for weapons or for devices I can use against him. My hand presses against his hard chest, and I note the way his heart beats but also the hard edges of a data recorder in his pocket, something that may be able to connect to a communication network.

When we kiss, we both keep our eyes open.