Shoot the Messenger Read online

Not really.

  “I’ll have to… I guess I’ll just…” She rifled below her desk and pulled out a tek-pad. “My apologies. I don’t know why it’s not working. Please place your hand here?”

  I pressed my hand to the pad, and predictably, it blipped a negative reading. I wasn’t worried. Tek failure was extremely rare, so when it did fail, people often made mistakes, like not logging me in.

  “Well, that is really unusual. I’ve never had two failed readings…”

  I shrugged. “I guess Arcon doesn’t make ’em like they used to, huh?”

  She frowned. “Erm, no.” Removing the pad, she squinted at her tactile screens for a few moments and muttered, “I guess I’ll just enter you manually.”

  While she swiped and tapped at her screens, I admired the glittering foyer. Cameras monitored the entrance from all angles. They looked like silver baubles hanging in the corners. Later, when someone high up Arcon’s ranks reviewed this footage, they’d be alarmed to find Miss Ludo apparently talking to air. It was almost a shame I wouldn’t be around to see them lose their little minds over me.

  “Miss Walker?”

  The man who thrust his hand out seemed younger in person than in the flat image on the corporation’s datanet. His storm-gray suit would have been unremarkable if not for the scarlet tie. Short sandy blond hair held hints of curls. Something the datanet hadn’t captured was the intelligent sparkle in his eyes. Ocular implants. Biotek.

  I internally scolded myself. Of course the CEO of Arcon would be sporting its latest tek. Depending on his upgrade, he might see right through my illusion. I didn’t think he had, or else his security would have been getting up close and personal. Perhaps his implants were for another reason?

  I avoided the handshake and replied coolly, “Mister Larsen, you’re doing the right thing by speaking with me. For our piece to go live without a comment would be… quite damaging.”

  He withdrew his hand, only briefly thrown off balance by my cold shoulder. “Indeed. A terrible business…” He buttoned his jacket and nodded to Miss Ludo. “Is the meeting suite available?”

  “Yes, Mister Larsen. We had trouble with the sign in process—”

  “See to it,” he interrupted, and this time his tone held a dangerous edge that belied his charming smile. He turned to me. “I appreciate you meeting with me. Would you like a tour?” All traces of that razor’s edge had vanished.

  “A tour?”

  “Of the building. Most everyone wants the tour. Arcon isn’t generally open to the public.”

  My smile was cutting. “I’m not most everyone, Mister Larsen. Let’s find somewhere to talk privately, shall we?”

  He hesitated, just a few seconds, but it was enough to dislodge some of his good-natured ambience. “Of course, this way.”

  I followed his swift pace, wondering if Arcon’s staff had underestimated Larsen and later paid the price. From my brief scan of his public persona, I knew he had built Arcon from the ground up. At just twenty-six, that was quite an achievement. His personal records weren’t public knowledge, but the gossip on the net said he was of old Earthen blood, which might account for his elevated status in society.

  Larsen escorted me into a private elevator where a few minutes of painful silence incubated many, many questions between us. A tiny camera stared down at us. A man with Larsen’s resources could easily track someone like Crater and know exactly where he would be. Then all he had to do was send in the fae. I side-eyed Larsen. He didn’t look dangerous, but neither did I.

  The elevator doors opened into a carpeted hallway dressed in muted reds and wooden panels that must have cost a planetary fortune. I curled my fingers into fists to stop from reaching out and stroking the wood. Just because I hadn’t seen wood in forever didn’t mean the reporter I was pretending to be hadn’t. The privileged clearly had access to enough wood to line their hallways with it. Could it be from Earth? No, that was too much of a stretch.

  Larsen opened a frosted glass door and breezed into a meeting room the size of my entire container. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No… thank you.” The windows beckoned. The view over Halow was… I didn’t have the words. And now I did reach out and touch the floor-to-ceiling windows. They sloped gently inward, a quirk of the building’s pyramid shape. Beyond, Calicto glittered far into the distance in a rainbow of color, light, movement, and beyond the habitat’s curved domes, ion storms fractured purple skies. The only time I’d seen it from so high up, I’d been stowed away on a ship making its final approach. Living in Sage, cruising the sinks, it was easy to forget how beautiful Calicto was from a distance.

  “I imagine you must have a view just like it from your apartment in… where is it you live?”

  Larsen had crept up beside me. It was the only explanation because I hadn’t heard him move. His eyes sparkled, waiting for my answer.

  “Oh, sure. Of course. All the time. Really, I get bored of looking at it.” He was testing me, scrutinizing me. I waved at the view like it was nothing and moved to the long wooden table. “Is this… oak?”

  “It is,” Larsen said. He crossed the room and opened a drinks cabinet. “You’ve seen oak before?”

  “No,” I lied. “I mean, only on the datanet.” I brushed my fingers across the glossy surface. “And you actually made a table out of it, like the old days, huh?”

  “Call me a traditionalist. Besides, keeping trees behind glass in museums seems like such a waste.” He moved to stand beside the ornately carved oak chair at the head of the table.

  The table alone was worth more than my entire life’s worth of possessions. The chair—carved by hand—was a work of art. I wanted to ask if both were from Earth but wasn’t sure whether I was ready for the answer. Maybe those rumors that he was of old world blood had some truth in them.

  “So…” I cleared my throat. “Mister Larsen. Crater’s assassination. What do you know about it?”

  “Very little.” He poured himself a syrupy drink and lifted an empty glass, offering to fill it for me. “Are you sure you won’t have some?”

  “All right, a little.” I needed something to stop my nerves from rattling. I hadn’t expected to be met with such extravagance.

  Larsen handed my drink over and sipped from his own glass.

  I tasted the drink and recognized it as a much smoother, finer example of the wine The Boot served on special occasions. But no water. The man still had limits. I tilted the glass, acknowledging his kindness. “Thank you.”

  He seemed pleased and leaned against the meeting table. “There was nothing wrong with the equipment Arcon installed at that establishment.” He briefly admired his view, watching a local shuttle slide on by—and then turned his gaze on me. “It performed exactly as it should have.”

  “By detaining the wrong people?”

  He lifted his chin. “If you walk into a security scanner with hot weapons, they will react. It’s what they do. Crater’s men were the obvious threat in that room.”

  “If that’s the case, why did your equipment miss the assassin?”

  He smiled, so confident. “The assassin wasn’t in the room with him.”

  Did he know that for certain because he was the one who had hired the assassin, or was it an educated guess? I couldn’t tell by watching him, and I was usually quick to read people. He should have been simple to read. A suit at the top of his game, thousands of people below him, doing his bidding. And yet, I didn’t get that impression from Larsen. His presence seemed almost small, but in a familiar, friendly way.

  “Why do you think Crater was assassinated, Mister Larsen?”

  He laughed a smooth liquid laughter, the type women everywhere had no choice but to notice. “I have no idea. I imagine a man like that has many enemies. He was a wanted terrorist, correct?”

  “Alleged terrorist.”

  “Well, then, I doubt the marshals will waste much energy in tracking down his killer.”

  Larsen looked the part. Spoke the
part. There was no denying he was smooth and refined, like the wine we were both drinking, but it didn’t add up. Perhaps it was his smile. At a glance, it looked real, sitting prettily on his lips, but upon closer inspection, it seemed shallow, as though that smile was a mask hiding something else behind. But what?

  There was one simple way to test the man’s involvement. Surprise him.

  I set my drink down on the table and looked Larsen in the eye. “What do you know of the protofae, Mister Larsen?”

  The sparkle in his eyes sharpened, but as quickly as I’d seen it, the intense effect vanished, leaving me to wonder if I’d simply seen the exact reaction I had wanted to see. “The fae?” he chuckled. “You aren’t suggesting they had anything to do with a terrorist mineworker?” He laughed harder.

  I let my lips curve at one corner. “You’re right, it is ludicrous. Who would believe a fae killed Crater?”

  “Who, indeed.” His laughter faded as he noticed I wasn’t laughing along with him. “You’re serious?”

  “You tell me.”

  “The fae?” he almost snarled. “That’s absurd. Nobody has seen one in…” He grasped for the timescale. “In what might as well be forever. A fae couldn’t get near Calicto, not with all this… tek.” He definitely snarled that last word. But wasn’t his business built on all this tek? Why the sudden disdain?

  “What else do you know?”

  His eyes narrowed. “What is this? Are you trying to implicate me in that man’s death?”

  “I don’t need to implicate you when you’ve done a fine job of doing exactly that all by yourself. Do you often circumvent your own security and send illegal messages, Mister Larsen? The next time you do, you might want to use a fake name.”

  Tension gripped his body, and gone was the easy mannerisms of Arcon’s friendly CEO. He straightened and stared through me without blinking. The full weight of his ocular-enhanced glare set my teeth on edge.

  “I think it’s time you left, Miss Walker.”

  But I couldn’t leave, not without a lead on the fae who had stolen Sota. “I think it’s time you dropped the lies, Larsen.”

  A change came over him, like flicking a switch, and the man stilled. He tilted his head and asked softly, “Who are you?”

  I grinned and reached for my concealed whip. “A nobody.” The second I touched my whip, magic flared to life, upsetting my disguise. My illusion pixelated and dissolved in front of Larsen’s widening eyes. I flicked the whip, freeing its length, lassoed it around and lashed at Larsen in a move I’d performed a thousand times before. The whip would coil around his neck. I’d yank him forward and get my answers. Only, it didn’t happen like that. Larsen threw up his forearm, tangling my whip around his wrist, and he yanked, pulling me off balance.

  Not possible, my thoughts screamed as I toppled toward Arcon’s CEO. The magic should be burning through him. Unless he wasn’t human…

  His fingers clamped around my neck, jolting me to a stop at arm’s length. He squeezed, but only enough to hold me. Then he revealed that he too knew how to play the illusion game. Larsen’s smart, young businessman appearance fell apart—just like my disguise had. His sandy blonde hair was the first to go, dissolving into dead-straight blackness. The rest of him collapsed like a creature shucking off its shell. What lay beneath turned my heart to ice. The warfae.

  “You just sealed your fate, Messenger.” A purring sound emanated from the back of his throat. He lifted me off my feet, into the air. I kicked out, hitting his waist, but he only smiled.

  Istvan Larsen hadn’t sent the assassin. He was the assassin.

  “Where’s… Sota?” I croaked. I couldn’t use the whip in close quarters, and it didn’t matter anyway. My magic wouldn’t hurt the fae. I groped for my pistol with my free hand.

  “Now? Likely dismantled.”

  “No,” I gasped. Shock spilled numbness through my veins. I searched the fae’s bright eyes for lies, knowing they couldn’t lie. He wore the ocular implants to prevent anyone from seeing the truth in his glare. His stare didn’t waver, didn’t falter. Sota was truly gone.

  “It’s better for me if the evidence disappears.”

  He had killed Sota.

  He had killed my drone.

  I yanked the pistol free and fired, not caring where it hit. The fae howled and slammed me down. Timber snapped and pain crackled up my back, pushing in dark fingers of unconsciousness. I lay stunned, surrounded by fragments of Larsen’s oak table.

  The warfae appeared in my watery vision, drifting there like a dream. “You’re a complication I didn’t anticipate.”

  Hate burned the blur away. I saw him clearly now.

  “If word ever escaped that Istvan Larsen was fae…” he began and gestured around him at the huge meeting room. “That Arcon was fae… Well, you can imagine how some might perceive it.”

  A fae oversaw Halow’s surveillance and security. The same surveillance and security that watched over hundreds of thousands of people on hundreds of planets. A fae deep in the heart of human territory.

  He smiled at the horror on my face.

  “I see you understand.” He pointed a finger at me, mirroring my earlier threat. “You found me, and for that, you must die.”

  I plucked the stiletto dagger from my hair and flung it like a dart, straight at his right eye. It should have hit. It would have hit had he been human. But the bastard whipped his head aside at the last moment and the dagger sliced across his temple. He recoiled, staggering backward. Where he pressed his hand to his face, blood streamed between his fingers.

  I snatched my whip and pushed to my feet. My pistol was gone, but I couldn’t fight him anyway, not like this. I needed a plan.

  He was too fast, too strong, too fae. There was only one way out of this.

  Run!

  With my whip uncoiled, I ran at the glass.

  A pistol shot barked. Something slammed into my back and punched through, tearing a hole in muscle and flesh. My last step buckled beneath me, but I had enough momentum to thrash the whip against the glass, igniting a spark. When my shoulder hit the window, glass shattered, and I fell through.

  For a few breathless moments, there was nothing around me but air and glittering glass. Then I hit the fifteen-degree building façade with a shuddering oomph and started tumbling, over and over. I threw out both arms, stopping the roll. Leather squeaked on glass. My coat had tangled around my legs. I half skidded, half fell. I flicked the whip at passing nodules—the large bolts used to fasten the panels to the building. The whip’s coils snagged on one and snapped me to a halt, wrenching agony through my arm.

  For a few thudding heartbeats, I stayed pressed against the glass, aware that something cool and wet dribbled down my side but hardly caring. I didn’t need to look down to know it was a long way to a sudden end. The circulating breeze fluttered across my face. I couldn’t lose consciousness. If that happened, I wouldn’t be waking up.

  Move.

  Giving the whip a jolt, I freed it from the bolt and slid downward, this time more controlled. Down and down and down until my whip snagged another bolt, and then another. Finally, I landed on the ground and immediately pushed off to get out of the open. As I limped into hiding, bloodied and numb, I realized with a sinking sense of dread that this was a long way from over. It might even be just beginning.

  Chapter 4

  My container door hung ajar.

  The neighbor in Container 15 had his virtuavision up too loud. Music thudded against the walls and floor, muffling my approach.

  Blood dripped from my fingers while I lingered in the hallway, contemplating whether to venture inside or walk away and hope I didn’t bleed out. My entire lower right hip fizzed unpleasantly. I’d lost feeling in my side, and tingling needles of pain jabbed their way down my right leg. The longer I left the wound untreated, the more damage I’d do. And right now, I didn’t have the luxury of time to heal.

  I freed my whip and toed the door open.

  A
figure loomed at the back, watching my fake rainfall. Broad shoulders carried an ankle-length coat. A mop of dark hair stuck out at unruly angles. I’d seen him before, earlier in the day. The sinks hadn’t killed the marshal, and now he was here, poking through my things.

  My neighbor’s music ended suddenly, and silence fell over my container. My heart thudded too loudly, thumping in place of the beat. If I was going to leave, now would be the time, before he turned around.

  “Looks like someone went to town on your place,” the marshal said.

  He was right. Anything not bolted down had been tossed about and knocked to the floor. Some cupboards hung open, their contents shoved from inside, and one door hung from a single latch.

  The fae, or someone connected to him, had been here. He knew where I lived, probably knew my name. It wouldn’t be long before he knew everything.

  I shoved the door open wider and wandered in, toeing through the mess. Had the intruder been looking for me or something else?

  “Is anything missing?”

  I blinked up at the marshal. Concern tightened his green eyes, and then his gaze skittered down my coat, catching on the bloody patch at my hip or my whip, neither of which I’d bothered to hide.

  “I’m fine,” I replied automatically as I reached for the lower storage unit and the med-kit still lying inside.

  I straightened and spotted the marshal eyeing something behind me. My bloody boot prints led inside, indicating I was not fine.

  “I need to call this in.” He tapped his palm. “This is Marshal Kellee…” His words petered off.

  I pretended not to notice how he struggled to find a signal and instead tore open the med-packs. Luckily, the pistol’s bullet had sailed right through; otherwise, I would have needed to dig around my own insides to find its fragments.

  “What are you doing here?” I opened my inner jacket and peeled back the bloody and torn upper-garment, revealing a gaping exit wound. A large nodule of dark blood oozed free. Nobody should ever have to see their innards.

  “One of your neighbors called in a disturbance. I was already nearby in the gulley…”