Page 49

G ive the rats credit, once they’re told what to do, they don’t fuck around.

Acker gives me a team of two young males and a huge female who is as different from Tiancha as night is to day.

Kez joins us, cleaned up and smelling a lot better, to help set the tinglers.

I give the rats a crash course in creating a surveillance net, and then we split up to set the tinglers in all the entrances.

Kez smiles and doesn’t argue when I insist she stay with me, even though it means we’re the last to finish.

By the time we return, Gig has arrived. His nose wrinkles when he greets me, but he doesn’t comment.

Just knocks knuckles and hands me a bag that I assume contains fresh clothes, since I have most of my weapons with me.

I give him the codes to the tinglers, and he loads them into an apparatus that he’s got spread like a mechanical tegli over what was once Acker’s desk.

Once Gig’s got the network set up, it’ll block any foreign signal as well as report any movement.

That’ll be the end of the Ojos’s explosive capabilities.

Acker himself leans against the cave wall nearby, eating something with a lot of legs off a skewer.

He watches as Gig takes over what used to be his sanctuary.

When I’ve finished with Gig, Acker offers me the tray of skewers.

I take two skewers, give one to Kez, draw her warm and safe against my side, and chew contentedly on grilled hopper. “How’s Tee?” I ask Acker.

“Sleeping peacefully. Your man has seen to her.”

“My man?”

“I called Doc Gray while you were gone,” Kez says. “He knows a lot about burns.”

“You have him look at your arm?”

“Yes, he gave me a white derm.” She pulls a face.

I give her a squeeze. Doc Gray’s white derms are an antibiotic cocktail. He stuck six on my neck to fight the infection in my arm. They made me puke and reel around like I was drunk, but they did save me from blood poisoning, so it seemed ungrateful to complain. “He still here?”

“Uh-huh. He wants to see you before he goes.” Kez shuffles under my arm. “He gave me the lecture.”

“Which lecture is that?”

“I’m eating, see? And I haven’t done anything more strenuous than walk around setting tinglers.”

“So that would be the eatin’ and restin’ lecture?”

I’ve had that lecture, too. And the stop putting yourself in situations where you get critically injured lecture. And the don’t wait until your arm turns black to call me lecture. In fact, I think I’ve had all of Doc Gray’s lectures.

“Yes,” Kez says mulishly. I chuckle and give her another squeeze.

My kitten’s a big girl; she knows how to take care of herself under normal circumstances.

But these ain’t normal circumstances, and she’s got more than a bit of a martyr-complex, which Doc Gray knows as well as I do.

Between the two of us, we’ll make sure she takes care of herself. Even if it goes against her grain .

I take another skewer from the tray Acker’s holding and pass it to Kez. “Since Doc Gray’s already given you the lecture, we don’t need to argue about you takin’ a nap after we finish our bugs.”

Kez tilts her head and glares up at me out of one big blue. “Don’t we?”

“No, we don’t.”

“Mmm.” Not sure she agrees. “What will you be doing while I’m napping?”

Torturing me an Ojos. “Couple things. Once I’m done, I’ll join you.”

“Uh-huh.”

Oh, there’s that gift for inflection. Beside me, Acker chuckles. He might have a woman in his life who uses inflection like an edged weapon, too.

“If you go down without a fight, I’ll even give you a massage,” I offer.

Kez snorts. “Doc Gray said no massages. Not until you’re healed. I’ll consider taking a nap if you tell me what you’re really going to be doing.”

She knows me too fucking well.

“Acker caught one of the Ojos. I got some questions for him. Then I want to hear what Payton’s got to say for herself.”

Kez rolls her head against my shoulder. “I’d like to hear what the Ojos and Payton have to say, too.”

Not a chance. Questioning the drummer-kid upset her, and that was sweetness and light compared to what I’m gonna do to the Ojos. “I’ll vid it for you.” Too bad that vid ain’t gonna come out. E.M. flux off the binary, fucks with all kinds of tech. Damn shame.

Kez huffs. “I could help.”

“You could sleep.” I take a skewer in the tray and leave the last one for Acker. “Doc’s orders.”

Kez rolls her eyes but goes back to eating her bugs. I take that as a win. Two whole arguments in one day. New record.

Acker offers Kez a blandly furnished room to sleep in, two corridors away from his suite, so I’m betting it’s a guest room.

The only real feature of interest, beside the bed, is a round mirror on the wall.

Guest room plus big mirror equals a room that’s wired for sight and sound.

I’m down to two tinglers, but I’m tempted to set one spinning beneath the mirror just to teach the rats a lesson about eavesdropping on their guests.

When Kez strips down to a lacy shift that definitely isn’t hers and climbs straight into bed, I decide to save it for later, when we’re more likely to do or say something I don’t want the rats overhearing.

I tuck Kez in, careful to keep my smelly boots clear of the bed. Brush a kiss over her forehead and resist the pressure of her arms when she tries to pull me down.

“Behave,” I tell her.

“Okay, but don’t be too long. I can’t sleep by myself.”

“Traumatic, huh?” I give her another kiss to make up for my absence.

“Deeply traumatic,” she says when we come up for air. “Go easy on Payton. I don’t think she had anything to do with this.”

“Me, neither, but this shit’s hitting too close to home.”

Kez nods. “She could have been tracked.”

“I hope she’s smarter than that.”

“Not everyone has your skills.” She holds up her left wrist, which is circled by a collection of wires, straps, beads and mirrors.

It looks like jewelry, but it’s not. Before I got my hands on it, it was already a kick-ass viewie.

After I got finished with it, it was an identity masque.

It randomly mimics any signals within a fifty-meter radius.

No one will ever shoot my kitten by tracking her viewie’s signal.

“Get some rest. I won’t be too long.”

I give her another kiss, disentangle myself before she manages to pull me into bed, rank boots and all, and rejoin Acker in the corridor .

“Thanks,” I tell him. “She needs to rest. This shit’s beginning to wear her down.”

“And you, my friend?”

I shrug. “People been tryin’ to kill me most of my life. I’m used to it.”

Acker tilts his head. “I would not have gotten used to it.”

“Yeah? You got your own tag,” I observe.

“It has only become a problem since the Ojos joined forces with the Founders.”

“It’ll go back to bein’ an annoyance once we got the Ojos under control. Let’s go find out what this fucker knows.”

Acker beckons me with his claws and leads me down two levels, nearly back to the sewers.

Low red lights come on as we descend, but otherwise these tunnels are dark and silent.

It’s an eerie quiet. The silence of deep places: of wormholes, of the spaces between stars.

Places I left behind when I came to this bright, garden world.

I know that not far below us, the tunnels are alive with the sound and motion of rushing water. Here, there’s nothing. Even the whisper of our movement is absorbed by the sandy floor.

When I see the grey shape of a ratman sitting in an alcove, I put my hand on Acker’s arm. Lean in and whisper to him, “You got a way of seein’ the Ojos without him seein’ us?”

Acker nods and speaks to the guard who taps his claws on a black palmtop. A holodisplay pops up, quarters, divides again into eight panes, seven of which show empty cells. The eighth pane expands to a square meter, so I can see the details of its occupant.

The Ojos sits on the bare stone floor, his back against the wall, knees drawn up.

He’s wearing military-style black fatigues smeared with dust. There’s a dark stain down one leg, scrapes and bruises on his face and hands, but otherwise he looks unhurt.

As I watch, he rubs a hand over his close-cropped head and glances up.

Pale skin drawn tight over high cheekbones.

Pink cheeks. Prominent Adam’s apple in a thin neck.

Fuck, he’s a kid. Doubt he even needs to shave .

“You get a name?” I ask Acker.

Acker shakes his head. “He’ll tell us nothing.”

He’ll tell me something. Whether he wants to or not.

“Stay here,” I tell Acker. “Can he hear me through the security membrane?”

“I’ll turn on the comm,” the guard says.

“When I tell you to, open the membrane. My methods work better up close and personal.” I nod to both of them and go do what I need to do.

It’s ten steps down the corridor to the cell where they have the Ojos. They’ve put him in the last cell on the row. Furthest away from the guard. Not a good decision, strategically. Shows the rats’ inexperience.

I stop in front of the cell. The Ojos has his head down again and doesn’t register my presence.

I center myself, tuck my hands behind my back and slide a knife out of my wrist sheath.

There’s a panel on the wall next to the membrane that covers the cell’s opening.

I wait until a red light on the panel flashes green before I speak.

“Hey.”

The Ojos looks up, starts in surprise, then rises shakily to his feet and salutes. “Sir,” he says.

Did he just call me sir ?

“Have we met?” I ask.

“Yes, sir. When you visited Jielt with Miz Tyng. You shook my hand, sir.”

Fuck, he’s a Tyngaling. I shook a lot of hands that day. I don’t remember all of the faces attached to them, but I know they were all Tyng employees. I slide the knife back into its sheath and drop my hands to my sides.

“What’s your name, son?”

He glances upwards nervously, but answers after a moment’s hesitation. “Kein Aterra, sir.”