Page 67 of The Sterling Acquisition (Manufactured Mates #1)

Chapter forty-nine

Exodus

Orion

The medical bay in the collective’s main building smelled like the peculiar green scent of whatever medicinal vines Granny Lu had coaxed to grow along the walls.

Orion sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside Dante’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall with the steady rhythm that meant he was finally, truly out of danger.

Three days since the battlefield. Three days of watching Dante fight off infection and blood loss while Lilac worked miracles with salvaged medical equipment and plants that shouldn’t exist. Three days of Granny Lu’s herbal infusions being fed through IV lines when conventional antibiotics failed to address the specialized bacteria from the Gensyn nanoclotting agents.

Three days of wondering if saying “I love you” would be the last real conversation they’d ever have.

But Dante was stubborn. Dante was alive. And right now, he was pretending to sleep while listening to the conversation happening in the next room .

”—drove right through the main road like we weren’t even here,“ Riot was saying, his voice drifting through the thin walls. “Gensyn convoy first, then SVI about an hour later. Both of them so focused on getting to that killbox they didn’t even slow down.”

Lilac’s laugh was sharp with satisfaction. “The beauty of hiding in plain sight. To corporate eyes, we’re just another abandoned settlement. Overgrown buildings, no obvious infrastructure, nothing worth a second glance.”

“Helped that we killed their drones first,” added one of the other Berserkers—Stave, Orion thought his name was. “Hard to spot a settlement when your surveillance equipment is scattered across three counties.”

Orion leaned back in his chair, still marveling at how their world had changed. Six days ago, the Berserkers had been terrifying enemies who tried to kidnap him in a Neutral Zone alley. Now they were allies who’d not only saved their lives but also robbed Gensyn blind in the process.

“INSA has stopped asking around about the ATMs in the Neutral Zone,” Lilac continued.

“No traceback, no flags, nothing to connect it to any of us. As far as Gensyn’s concerned, it was just a routine systems failure that happened to coincide with some very lucky timing for a group of anonymous hackers. ”

Dante’s eyes opened, focusing on Orion with that particular intensity that meant he’d been awake and thinking for a while. “How much?” he asked.

Orion grinned. “You mean how much did your corporate girlfriend and her psychotic friends steal from your former employers?”

“She’s not my—” Dante started, then caught the teasing glint in Orion’s eyes. “How much, you impossible man? ”

“12.7 million iscs,” Orion said, watching Dante’s face. “Split six ways between Lilac, the three Berserkers, and us.”

Dante was quiet, processing. “That’s...”

“Just over two million each,” Orion finished. “Enough to disappear if we wanted. New identities, safe passage to territories outside corporate control, maybe even passage off-continent.”

“The Berserkers are considering heading north,” Lilac said from the doorway, having appeared with her usual silent creeping.

“There are some communities up in the former Canadian territories that don’t ask questions about corporate refugees.

But Granny Lu offered them the option to stay as long as they maintain their suppressant regimen. ”

She looked tired, Orion realized. The kind of bone-deep exhaustion that came from planning something this complicated while maintaining the facade that everything was normal.

Whatever Lilac had done to coordinate the corporate account heist while simultaneously arranging a rescue operation, it took everything she had.

“What about us?” Dante asked, struggling to sit up despite Orion’s protests. “The collective can’t be safe anymore. Gensyn will eventually realize their people died nearby.”

Granny Lu wheeled herself into the room, her expression thoughtful. “They searched the battlefield, found the bodies, collected their intelligence, and left,” she said simply. “As far as they’re concerned, it was an SVI operation gone wrong. Corporate rivalry at its finest.”

“We’re invisible,” Lilac explained. “We’ve been perfecting the art of looking like nothing worth corporate attention for decades. Overgrown buildings, no obvious technology, and people who scatter when vehicles approach. Just another abandoned settlement in the Static Zone.”

Orion felt himself ease. “So you’re safe. ”

“We’re always safe,” Granny Lu corrected gently. “That’s rather the point.”

She wheeled closer to Dante’s bed, her sharp eyes studying his face. “The question is whether you two want to keep running, or if you’d like to try staying somewhere for a while.”

Dante was quiet, his hand finding Orion’s and gripping tight. “We can’t go back to corporate territories. Either of them.”

“We wouldn’t want to,” Orion said firmly. “But...”

“But?” Granny Lu prompted.

Orion looked around the room—at the living walls, at Lilac’s scarred but peaceful face, at the sounds of normal life happening just outside the windows. “This place feels like home,” he said. “For the first time in my life, somewhere actually feels like home.”

Dante squeezed his hand. “The collective would really... let us stay?”

“Let you?” Lilac snorted. “ Cabron. We’ve been hoping you’d ask. You think we went to all this trouble just to watch you disappear into some other Static Zone community?”

Granny Lu smiled, and it transformed her weathered face. “The collective always has room for people who understand that freedom isn’t about having power over others. It’s about having the choice to live as you are.”

“Besides,” Lilac added pragmatically, “your corporate training might come in handy. We could use someone who understands how they think, how they operate. And Orion’s got skills we can use.”

“Plus,” Riot said from the doorway, “Miss Lilac just likes you two.”

The next few hours passed in a blur of planning.

Not escape plans this time, but settling-in plans.

Where they might live—there was a building on the eastern edge of the collective that had been prepared for new residents.

What skills they could contribute. How the community operated primarily on bartering rather than currency, with their iscs serving as emergency reserves for situations that required actual corporate credits—bribes, specialized supplies, passage through checkpoints.

“We don’t use money much around here,” Granny Lu explained. “Too easy to track, too tied to corporate systems. We trade skills and goods instead. But having reserves for emergencies—that’s just good sense.”

It felt surreal after all of the running, of looking over their shoulders, of never knowing if they’d see another sunrise.

“Any regrets?” Dante asked, hanging his antibiotic IV bag on a hanging planter hook, later that evening as they sat on the porch of what would be their new home, watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and pink.

Orion considered the question seriously. Three weeks ago, he’d been a prisoner with no hope of freedom. Now he was sitting beside the man he loved, in a place where no one would ever own him again, with enough money to ensure their safety if they ever needed to run again.

“Just one,” he said.

Dante tensed. “What?”

Orion grinned, leaning against Dante’s shoulder. “I’m going to miss Leo’s terrible coffee. It was so bad it was almost impressive.”

Dante’s stuttered laugh filled the evening air, bright and genuine and free, before it devolved into a series of coughing chest spasms.

Around them, the Prairie Null Collective settled into another peaceful night. Tomorrow there would be work to do, a new life to build, a community to contribute to.

But tonight, for the first time in either of their lives, they were exactly where they belonged.