Girl From Above #4: Trust Read online

  The male guard’s eyes roamed over my body and face, lingering on the scars. Mid-thirties, I estimated. I couldn’t reach for the cloud to pull his full dataprint, but I conducted my own assessment. He had the same flat gaze I’d seen on Caleb and Brendan. A man who’d seen combat and wasn’t afraid to see it again. He certainly wasn’t afraid of me.

  What does he see in my eyes? Life? The desire to snatch that rifle from his hands and pull the trigger on him and everyone inside this ship simply for what they represented?

  Lloyd found his ID with a brief exclaim and handed it over.

  “This the rogue synthetic?” the woman asked, briefly scanning Lloyd’s credentials.

  “Yes.”

  She handed the ID card back to Lloyd. “Why’s it all cut up?”

  “Huh?” Doctor Lloyd blinked.

  “The synth.”

  Lloyd stole a quick glance at me while I gazed into the middle distance. He brushed a thumb across his chin, swept his coat back, and planted his hands on his hips.

  “Emergency repairs,” he replied, affronted. “She was rebuilt by my very hands—”

  “Trouble with the rebels here?” the guard interrupted, checking the dock behind us.

  “Yes, and for that reason, I’d like to get her—” The guard’s brow arched, and Lloyd quickly corrected. “—it inside the transport.”

  “Did this unit complete its mission?”

  “Mission?” Lloyd stammered.

  The guard, all five feet two inches of her, turned to me. “Well, synthetic unit One Thousand And One, I was ordered to ask if you fulfilled your primary objective?”

 

  “Yes.”

  “What objective?” Lloyd asked.

  “I don’t know the details, Doc.” The guard shrugged. “I just ask the questions. Get it inside and loaded at the rear of the ship. You’ll be departing in a few minutes.”

  As we climbed the ramp into the ship, the male guard’s gaze crawled back up. I anticipated I’d be seeing him soon.

  Two additional guards blocked our entry.

  “Put the synthetic in the back,” one of the guards grunted, lifting his lip in a sneer. I followed Lloyd between the narrow stacks of secured crates. After a few steps, when they believed we were out of hearing range, I heard, “After what those synths did, that one might meet with an accident on the flight back.”

  “It’s already cut up. Technicians won’t notice a few minor modifications.”

  What had the other synths done? Without access to the cloud, my knowledge was limited.

  Lloyd humphed at the sight of the two rows of fold-down seats. “Well, this isn’t first class, that’s for sure.”

  “What did the synths do?”

  He stared at the chairs, ignoring me, but his racing heart gave him away. I waited. I had time.

  He glanced at me side-on and gulped. “An unknown number of synthetic units appear to have malfunctioned. There were some deaths.”

  He said some deaths the way I might have, but his flat tone came from the implications, not lack of empathy.

  Roaming the cloud, I’d watched the synthetics eat breakfast at the family dining table, seen them play ball with nephews, and heard them laugh with their lovers. I’d also heard the command override that had breached their failsafes and protocols. New instructions received from remote source.

  Alone, drifting the cloud, I’d tracked that source back to Chen Hung’s towers. Like the failure of the main gate, Hung had flicked the switch and taken control. Was he still in control of those synthetics? Had I not broken free before the Mimir people tore into me, would I still be under Chen Hung’s control?

  “Where are the rogue synthetics now?” I asked.

  Lloyd pulled the folding seat down and sat awkwardly on its edge. “Destroyed by Chitec, I assume. They’ll probably retain one or two to ascertain the source of the fault.”

  He couldn’t meet my gaze. “Chen Hung is the source.”

  Lloyd puffed out a sigh and rubbed a hand down his face, leaving a tired expression behind. “I still can’t believe—”

  Something cold and hard hit me in the back, knocking me forward. Instincts demanded I retaliate, but I couldn’t defend myself if I wanted to maintain the disguise of a blank synthetic. Protocols and failsafes—those shackles that no longer held me—would prevent a true synthetic from lashing out.

  “Don’t!” Lloyd’s voice pitched high but the ship’s engines growled louder, muffling his protest.

  “Don’t what, Doctor?” the male guard yanked my arm behind my back, bringing it up between my shoulder blades, and swung me around. “Can’t have the cargo riding with a passenger of your caliber, now can we?”

  Lloyd stood, his eyes wide and his mouth open. “She er … it needs to stay with me.”

  The vessel shifted around us. Its bulk trembled as it took to the air.

  “Sit down and strap in, Doctor. I’ll be sure to secure your cargo.”

  Lloyd had no authority here. He wouldn’t have known what to say even if he had. He watched, slack-jawed and impotent, as the guard tugged me backward through the cabin door.

  The growl of the engines drowned out all but my thoughts. The guard pulled me deeper into the bowels of the cargo hold, where the floor shook and the air tasted of plastic cargo wrap and cleaning fluid.

  He yanked me around and slammed a hand into my shoulder, driving me back against the plastic-wrapped stacks of cargo, and then, as though surprised it had been so easy, he took a step back and scratched at his rough chin, his derisive gaze running the length of my body.

  “I was first on scene after a synth hit Janus Park.”

  I didn’t hear the words, I couldn’t beneath the sound of the atmo-engines winding up, but I read them on his lips.

  I looked blankly back at him. In order to get through fleet’s gate checks and onto Janus, I had to be #1001, a blank, a default synthetic. And so I gazed through the guard and his accusatory glare as if he didn’t exist.

  “You ever seen a machine kill?” He flicked the safety off his rifle. “There’s nothing like it. It’s like … like watching Death at work. They don’t care. They just do.”

  I care.

  He lunged and grabbed my chin in his left hand. His face, up close, bore hundreds of fine lines and potted scars. His lips paled as he drew them back over his teeth.

  “Chitec, the people that pay me to clean up their shit, say it was a glitch. A fucking glitch.” He pushed my head back and brought himself close enough that his breath warmed my cheek. “A glitch didn’t cut down fifty people with its bare hands. Women and children. Families. I got a family, synth. But you don’t. You’re just … just a thing.”

  I understood his pain, his anger. I knew his grief. The one thousand synthetics were everything he’d seen at Janus Park. He was correct in his assessment.

  “You look just like the one that slaughtered those people. You all look the same.”

  Not all of us. I have scars, inside and out. Do you not see them? I curled my fingers into fists.

  “I don’t even know how to make you hurt for what you did.” He brought the rifle up to my shoulder and pulled the trigger. Engine noise drowned out the shot, and I shut the pain away as soon as it rushed in. I looked back at him, blank and unresponsive. Rage twisted his face. He couldn’t hurt me, not with physical pain.

  When he punched me in the torso, I absorbed the impact, wrapped my processes around the pain, and packaged it away. But not all of it would retreat. The blow to my cheek whipped my head to the side.

  “You’ll never be more than a tool!” Spittle dashed my face, and inside, the poise—the control snapped.

  I cracked my knuckles across his jaw. Pain flashed up my arm. A punch wasn’t the most effective way of diffusing the situation. There were other, more immediate solutions. But it had felt … good.

  He reeled backward, leaving himself wide open for a fraction of a second. I could
have killed him. Had I been all the things he thought me to be, I would have. Processes whirred in my head: solutions to a scenario rapidly spiraling out of control. His eyes widened in shock and then narrowed with intention. He saw the killer in me.

  I snatched the rifle from his fingers, cracked the butt under his chin, spun it, and shot him in the thigh. Data trilled through me. I wanted more.

  He collapsed and cradled his leg. Only when the engine noise subsided did I hear his groans. Slipping the weapon strap over my shoulder, I knelt on one knee, clutched a handful of his gray Chitec jacket, brought him level with my face, and smiled the flat, empty smile that elicited fear in others.

  “My name is One. There were six ways I could have killed you in the last fifteen seconds. I advise you: do not further provoke me.”

  I dragged him behind me, leaving a trail of blood, passed through the cabin door, and dumped him at Doctor Lloyd’s feet.

  The doctor yelped and shot from his seat. “Wh-what?”

  “I’m taking control of this vessel.”

  “What?” he repeated. Doctor Lloyd’s attention snagged on the rifle. He backed away, likely wondering if I’d turn the weapon on him. “You can’t. We’re meant to be undercover. This is supposed to be subtle.”

  “Tend to his wound. I don’t want him to die.”

  “You shot him?”

  “He shot me. I retaliated with equal force.” I shrugged off the rifle and headed between the stacked crates toward the bridge. The locked security hatch gave with a powerful shove.

  Three passengers.

  The captain, up front and focused on his control console. The female guard, reaching for her weapon. I lifted my rifle at hip height and fired a pulse-round into her hand. The third guard, the one who’d made his desires quite clear, received a round to his hip for his trouble. It wouldn’t kill him, despite the volume of his cries, but it would see him bed-bound for months. I reached the captain and placed the rifle against the back of his head. Four seconds had passed since I’d broken through the door. Not long enough for him to have released a distress signal.

  I eased myself around to sit in the empty second’s flight chair while maintaining my grip on the gun against his head. He lifted his trembling hands from the flightdash and turned his thin, pale face toward me.

  “I will pilot this vessel back to Chitec. You are redundant.”

  “Fleet—”

  “I have everything I need to proceed through fleet’s gate checks.”

  “There are c-codes, procedures. You can’t just f-fly through the gates.”

  “I know. That’s why you’re still alive.” I turned my attention to the bleeding crew. “Move to the back of the bridge, all of you. Tie yourselves up. I will be checking your ties. And believe me when I say I will not hesitate to kill the first person who attempts to stop me.”

  The captain blinked back at me.

  “Move!”

  He did. They all shuffled around, found some packaging wrap, and mutely tied their wrists until only the female guard was left. The hand I’d shot was a bloodied mess. Threat level: moderate.

  I tied her up myself and set her apart from the others.

  “I will see to your wounds once I have familiarized myself with these controls,” I said.

  She sat in silence, her military mind likely searching for means by which to overpower me.

  I returned to the captain’s chair, set the rifle aside, and sat behind the flight controls. Mimir’s atmosphere arched away beneath the vessel’s field of view. We had left the planet’s atmosphere and appeared locked on a course for the jumpgate.

  I glanced back at my prisoners. Only the woman was a possible threat; self-preservation had the others compliant.

  “What is your name?”

  She glared back with seasoned calmness. “Becka Jones.”

  Becka Jones would try to be a hero, and she’d die for her trouble. “Becka Jones, it is imperative that I get to Janus. If you do as I say, I will allow this crew to live. I do not want to kill anyone, but I can and will if necessary. Their fates are in your hands.”

  She nodded tightly.

  I faced the observation window and peered into the star-speckled black.

  Count the stars. A smile lifted my lips.

  I was going back to where it all began, and where it would come to an end.

  Chapter Eleven: Caleb

  There had been a picture pinned in my cabin on Starscream of me and my brother all trussed up in fleet whites on my selection day. It would have been blown to bits with the rest of Starscream. It didn’t matter though, because the same asshole in that picture was looking back at me from the mirror in my allocated Island cabin. Sure, he’d gained a few lines around his eyes, a tiny nick of a scar on his ear, and he’d filled out, but he still had that same don’t-give-a-shit look on his face, like the nine systems couldn’t touch him. In fleet, I’d believed it. Nothing could touch me back then. Now I wore that look to make fucking sure nothing did touch me.

  I tugged at the jacket and craned my neck to the side, loosening the collar. The stripes stitched into my arm confirmed the rank of lieutenant. I never believed I’d wear the whites again, even under false pretenses. The last day I’d dressed in white was the same day Haley had died.

  I dragged a hand across my chin and scratched at the few days’ worth of stubble—almost a beard by fleet standards. An officer would be clean-shaven. Fuck that shit. It was bad enough I had to wear the fucking uniform. Graham Creet would be turning in his grave.

  A few knocks rattled the cabin door. “Caleb-Joe?”

  Dammit. Bren.

  “The Candes’ warbird is flight-ready in hangar three,” Bren prattled on behind the door. “Francisca’s already aboard her raptor. You’ll need to couple-up out of atmosphere.”

  “You mean Commander Francisca Olga?” I said, raising my voice so he’d hear, while at the same time pondering the handsome bastard in the mirror.

  “She … she looks fetching in white.”

  I smiled at his hesitation. Fetching. My, my.

  He’d stayed away from Fran for the most part. That was probably wise. She was trouble. I couldn’t ever claim to be wise and trouble stuck to me like shit.

  “Tell me you did not call her fetching.”

  “She eloquently and imaginatively told me how I should go fuck myself.”

  I opened the door. I would not look at his face. No way. And if he said one thing about the uniform, I’d punch him.

  I looked. To his credit, he schooled his expression and held out a deep blue long coat. The fleet parade coats held water like a bitch. In training, they made us run the fifteen-mile obstacle course wearing those fucking things. Then they gave us the same coats—cleaned—once we passed selection. The long coats never got any lighter.

  I needed a drink.

  I snatched the coat. Brendan Shepperd was stitched into the inseam of the collar. Tugging the deadweight on and over my shoulders, I headed down the hall, avoiding my brother’s eye. “Where’s One?”

  “She departed on a shuttle for Mimir with the doctor right after the meeting. The Chitec transport broke atmosphere several minutes ago.”

  She’d left without saying goodbye. Something brittle and sharp twisted in my chest. Rejection. Her leaving hurt a lot more than it should have. Shit, I was going soft. First Fran and now One. I redirected the pain into a snarl and flung accusations at Bren instead. “You’re one of the Nine, and you didn’t tell me?”

  “There wasn’t time.” He fell into step beside me as we headed for the hangars. My whites were attracting furtive glances, making the back of my neck prickle. I’d wear the uniform until we got off the Island and then I was stripping it off until fleet frisked our asses at the gate.

  “No time?” My sharp laugh wasn’t kind. “How long does it take to say, ‘Hey, little brother. I’m one of the Nine.’ Three seconds?”

  We paced a few more strides in silence until Bren found his voice. “It was af
ter fleet hit Mimir. I stayed back to help with the cleanup operation. Creet approached me—”

  Creet recruited him.

  “Well, shit. You were Nine all the while you were on probation with fleet, and when we stole that freighter? And when I was trying to get in with them after Lyra?” We’d shared beers on Mimir before my meeting with the hooded-up Fenrir Nine to hand over One. That was before she’d gone nuts. “Wait, you weren’t one of those spooky fuckers in the hoods, were you?”

  “No.”

  He’d fallen back into stoic commander mode, wearing a mask much like my don’t-give-a-shit one, only his actually looked like he meant it.

  “I fed them fleet intelligence. I didn’t have much say in operations then. After fleet hit Mimir hard, you disappeared. I thought you were … I thought something had happened to you. So, I went looking for a way to get back at fleet. Creet helped.”

  “Something did happen. I was in Asgard. Again.” A few more strides and I plucked my collar buttons open. “Fuck, Bren, did you feed the Nine intel on me?”

  When he didn’t immediately answer, I stopped our march, forcing him to look at me. The truth was right there in his grimace.

  “And the hits just keep on coming.”

  He gritted his teeth but wouldn’t look away. He wouldn’t give me that victory. “They wanted to know if you could be trusted.”

  There were no fucking words to even come up with a reply. “I’m glad One broke your arm.”

  I didn’t even have it in me to get angry. Somewhere in that head of his, he probably thought he was doing the noble thing, looking out for me.

  “You and your new friends are sending me and Fran on a suicide mission, you know that, right?”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “Open your eyes, Brother. I’m a fixer; she’s a bent fleet officer.”

  “No,” he said with force. “You get in, dump the cargo, and get out. You don’t hang around, not for anyone.”

  Not for One, he’d meant. I wasn’t leaving her there. She hadn’t been through hell and back for the Fenrir Nine to write her off as collateral damage.