Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
CYAN
Cyan sat across from Elaina and listened intently as she explained what she’d found, but there was something nagging at the edges of his awareness. This virus wasn’t just data. It was more. It was dangerous. It was why he was here.
“It’s been changing. Almost like…” Elaina hesitated.
“Go on,” Cyan instructed quietly.
“Almost like it’s being modified. But there’s no way. I checked the access logs—nobody but me’s been in these systems for spans.” She frowned.
“Spans?”
“Umm…” She looked up, searching for words. “A set of seven sols.”
Right. Weeks.
“Go on,” he nodded.
“So it must be programmed to self-modify somehow,” she continued. “But it’s… The sophistication, it’s like…”
He sensed the weight of what was on the tip of her awareness, the thing that her rational mind wouldn’t let her say. Probably wouldn’t even let her think.
But he could think it. And he could say it for her.
“It’s evolving. ”
Elaina chuckled. “That’s a little too anthropomorphizing for my tastes.”
“But you know it’s true.”
“How do you know it’s true?”
“I feel it.”
“What does that mean?” But he saw it in her eyes. She felt it too. She just wouldn’t let herself believe it.
Cyan leaned forward, gently unwinding her arms. He traced down her forearms until her hands were wrapped in his own, and pulled her closer in her chair.
“Not everything can be explained with logic, Elaina,” he said quietly, eyes locked on hers.
She nipped at her bottom lip in that way she did when she was thinking. She had to stop thinking.
He pulled her forward, closing the distance between them as he captured her lips with his own, cutting off her surprised gasp. Hot breath washed over his cheek and a quiet groan caught in his throat as her hands unwound from him to prop on his knees at either side of her, seeking balance. Warmth filled his chest, expanding through his limbs. He gripped her upper arms, squeezing more tightly than he’d intended as he deepened the kiss, and she parted her mouth for him, permitting him to take a taste, their tongues brushing together with dangerous curiosity.
Cyan broke the contact before things went any further, but the tension between them didn’t dissipate. It hung in the air like an unfinished conversation. Her mouth was parted slightly, her pupils large as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She watched his mouth.
He’d intended the kiss to interrupt her racing mind, but he couldn’t pretend something between them hadn’t shifted. She’d let him in, more than just physically. He could see it in her eyes, in the way her body had relaxed into him so easily. Too easily .
He realized how close he was to stepping over a line he had no business crossing with a woman he just met on a planet he’d never stay on once his job was done. Not that he’d never had casual company like that before, but he had a feeling that wasn’t the right thing here, with her.
The weight at his side grew more insistent, a reminder of the task ahead. Cyan couldn’t afford this. Not when something so much bigger was at stake. Whatever was happening here, it would have to wait.
“I need to find out where it’s coming from,” he said, his voice steady despite the storm brewing inside him. “And I need to stop it.”