Chapter 30 HUNTER
HUNTER
CLEO SCREAMS IN PAIN, and I bolt out of the shower, not even bothering to shut the water off.
I wrap a towel around my waist and hustle out of my cubicle to find Cleo’s been grabbed by Blue Braid, who’s twisting her arm up behind her back.
Marguerite shows up a moment later, also in a towel, and shoots me a questioning look. I force myself to shrug, force myself to keep my expression neutral, even though my heart rate’s surging. Years in the corporate world have at least taught me which mask I need right now.
Blue Braid reaches forward to wrench a cuff from Cleo’s hand, then offers it to my sister. Marguerite leans forward to take it slowly, and my heart sinks as I see the shine on it – it’s hers.
Marguerite carefully curls it around her wrist and then lifts her gaze to study Cleo. Then she shakes her head. ‘If she’s not prepared to play with us, then get her out of the way,’ she says crisply.
‘Wait,’ I manage, going cold inside. ‘Wait, what are you going to—’
‘Get it together,’ Marguerite snaps, rolling her eyes. ‘Nobody’s shooting your girlfriend. But if you think we’re taking her with us, you’re insane.’
Her gaze is directly on me now, and the moment draws out between us, tension mounting as she waits for my reply.
She’s testing me – she’s looking for a sign I’m on her side, or a sign I’m on Cleo’s.
A storm passes through me in less than a millisecond – sharp fear for Cleo, fury at my sister, rage at my own helplessness – and then everything stills.
I dig deep and find the Graves in me – find every part of me that knows how to be a shark, that could die of blood loss before I let my wounds show – and I hold up a hand.
‘No, I get it,’ I say easily. ‘Whatever that was, it was … I mean, she’s a criminal.
I met her a few hours ago, and fun’s fun, but I’m not going to fight you to keep her.
But we’re not done yet, we’re short on time, and she knows the station. ’
Part of me is numb, and part of me is still roaring with anger and despair, deep inside, like a wound’s opening that I don’t think will ever heal. This could be our last conversation. These could be the last words Cleo hears me speak. How can I do this to her?
‘Fuck you,’ Cleo spits, struggling against Blue Braid’s grip, and the words go through me like a knife.
‘I’d rather die than stand here with you.
All the Graves family has ever done is screw over anyone they can find with less power than them.
You’re barely human. If you leave me behind – if I’m not a part of your murder machine – then that’s an honor. ’
My lungs are so tight I can’t make myself draw a breath. Cleo, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Marguerite looks at Cleo blankly for a long moment and then rolls her eyes again. ‘God, the drama,’ she mutters. ‘Will someone get her out of my sight?’
Cleo wrenches free of Blue Braid suddenly, throwing herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck, and suddenly my world is all wet girl and towel and desperation. ‘Hunter,’ she gasps, clinging to me. ‘Don’t let them take me! I’m sorry! I don’t want to die!’
Something cracks inside me and I start to shift, start to wrap my arm around her – and then she staggers back from me, as though I’ve pushed her.
‘The hell with you,’ she spits, wet hair falling around her face.
She’s cementing my position. She’s making it look like I just rejected her. She’s spending her last moment with me trying to keep me safe – trying to make sure I survive this screwup, that I can keep fighting.
So I lift my chin and do the only thing I can, to honor what she’s giving me.
‘Find her a pair of pants and get her out of here,’ I tell Blue Braid, taking a step back and securing my towel more carefully around my waist. And then, to Marguerite: ‘What did she even think she was going to do with a cuff? She doesn’t know the first thing about coding. ’
I can’t help marveling at the note of almost …
boredom in my tone. It’s like I’m outside myself, watching this happen, helpless to stop it.
I’m trapped by the thousands of hostages out there who don’t even know they’re in danger.
The innocent people who’ll die if I don’t keep trying.
If I don’t let them take away Cleo, to keep myself safe.
Blue Braid marches Cleo along the row of cubicles and out the door.
I fold my arms across my chest, forcing myself to remain in place as I watch every last second of her, drinking her in until the moment she’s gone.
Only then do I realize that my own cuff is back around my wrist.
That was the other reason she threw herself at me. My heart clenches. Cleo.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ says Marguerite, snapping into motion. ‘Nico, go prep the rovers for departure. Everyone else, let’s get dressed – you know your jobs.’
Nico’s just arrived with armfuls of clothes salvaged from nearby living quarters, and he makes his way along to offer each of us the best of what he’s got.
‘No problem,’ he says, handing Marguerite a fresh shirt. ‘I’ll get them prepped.’ But there’s a question in his eyes that I don’t understand, even though I sense the weight of it. He’s asking her something that goes deeper than he’s saying.
Marguerite gives him a don’t-fuck-with-me look in return. ‘Hunter will ride with me,’ she says quietly, and he nods.
As we duck back into our cubicles to change, I linger long enough to retrieve Cleo’s specially modified headset when nobody’s looking. I’d rather be untraceable, whatever happens next.
What was that exchange between Nico and Marguerite just now? What did that look he gave her mean? Was Nico challenging my sister?
My heart is still in pieces – I’m still reeling – but if something just happened, and it’s a place I can drive a wedge between them, then I have to figure out what it was.
Our lives might depend on it.
58 MINUTES REMAINING
I’m sticking to the shadows and watching Nico as he works his way through the rovers the Graves team arrived in. There are three, and he’s on the second now.
I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy, and it takes me a minute to figure out what he’s doing – but then it clicks. He’s getting into the guts of each one and he’s disconnecting things.
Realization slowly creeps over me, shock taking over from the pain of watching them haul Cleo away.
Nico is leaving exactly one lifeboat still functioning. That’s why my sister told him I’ll be in hers. Because the others won’t start at all.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. She came here prepared to kill thousands of people from other settlements – why wouldn’t she wipe out her own team?
If she takes them with her, they’re a vulnerability, each one a potential leak.
I asked her about her crew. I asked her if they’d be a liability. Don’t worry about them, she said.
Eventually, no matter what kind of explosion takes this place out, someone’s going to work out there are bodies here that shouldn’t be here, and extra rovers docked.
It’ll take a while, though, and everything – the uniforms, the rovers, their equipment – is unmarked.
It was the first thing I noticed when they arrived.
She’s been planning this since the start.
These people work with her. She knows their names. And she has Nico prepping to leave them behind.
Nico straightens up, stretches his back, and walks around to check the controls of the rover, tapping at the screen as he brings up the displays. Doesn’t want the sabotage to be too obvious too soon, I guess.
I hold my position, trying to slow my thoughts. I don’t have long before I’m due back – I told Marguerite I wanted to check Cleo’s work in the greenhouse. I said nobody had been watching her closely enough. She could have tried to sabotage it. It’s a thin excuse, but my sister’s busy.
I slowly ease back along the balcony and out through a door, into a quiet passage.
Shock is giving way to a strange kind of calm. Everything’s narrowing down to the next fifty-five minutes of my life. Thousands of people out there are relying on me, even if they have no idea. Cleo’s relying on me.
I treat this moment like a programming problem – I close my eyes, cast out my thoughts, and take in the whole of the picture. I let the facts run through my brain without hooking on to any one thing, like a cascade of numbers falling in front of me as I scan them for the combination I need.
I need a weakness. I need a place where I can find a crack and start to pull it open.
Is it one of her people? Is it one of her systems? Is it … wait.
Wait.
Slowly, for the first time in what feels like forever, I start to smile.
Because I know what to do.
53 MINUTES REMAINING
Sabrina’s striding quickly as she makes her way back from the oxygenators, where she’s been making the last adjustments to the oxygen flow. We won’t feel the effects for hours – and this place doesn’t have hours, but the levels must be so high by now that the smallest spark …
I step out in front of her as she reaches an intersection, and she stops immediately, wary.
‘We have to talk,’ I say quietly. ‘And fast, I’m expected back.’
Her eyes narrow and she looks me up and down, assessing.
‘Oh,’ she says, after a moment. ‘Not so close with your sister after all, huh? Don’t do this for Cleo.
I’m sorry about it too, but she was stupid and this is what happens when you’re stupid.
You don’t have to be, and I’m sure not going to be. ’
‘I get it,’ I reply, holding up both hands, keeping my tone easy. I’m a Graves. I know how to stay calm during a negotiation. ‘You’ve picked a side.’
‘I’ve picked the side that pays me,’ she replies.
‘Here’s the thing, though.’ I pause, let the tension kick up a notch. ‘That side you’ve picked? It hasn’t picked you back.’
She frowns. ‘Say what?’
I take a step closer. ‘You’ll have to figure out how to verify this on your own, but I’ve just seen Nico disabling two of your three rovers. You think you’re getting a ride in my sister’s? That she’s going to haul a loose end like you on out of here?’
Sabrina studies me. ‘She’s taking you, I’m guessing,’ she says.
‘I mean, maybe,’ I agree. ‘Seems that way for now, but who knows.’
Sabrina’s staring at me steadily now, trying to figure me out. She’s sizing me up in the way her world has taught her to. ‘Why are you telling me about the rovers when you’ve got a place on one?’ she asks.
I answer her question with a question. ‘Cleo told me you’re not a killer. I’m trying to figure it out – was she wrong, or do you really not know what my sister’s doing here?’
‘Look,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I don’t care what games you corporates play with each other.’
‘I don’t think you know what the game is,’ I say quietly. This is where the risk lies, in this one moment – this is the question that everything hinges on. Cleo thinks there’s some good in Sabrina. It’s time to see if she’s right.
Sabrina doesn’t take the bait – but she doesn’t walk away either. Instead she just stares at me, so I keep going.
‘Marguerite’s not here for corporate espionage,’ I say.
‘She’s not just grabbing data from the UN servers.
She’s going to remotely blow up six different settlements.
Thousands of people will die, and when nobody’s left, the settlements will be declared abandoned.
Then Graves will roll in and claim them. ’
Sabrina’s lips part in shock, her eyes widening as she absorbs what I’ve just told her. But what she doesn’t do is contradict me. It’s all too easy to believe.
‘Do you really think she’s prepared to do that, and not prepared to leave you for dead?’ I press. ‘You’re a liability.’
‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’ she whispers.
‘Check the rovers. If two are disabled, then you know. You’ll have to trust me on her plans.’
Sabrina’s perfectly still for a moment, and she reminds me of Cleo, the way she pauses to size up her new situation, to assess, to look for the next place to leap to. She’s thinking furiously, calculating. ‘I thought this was just rich folks screwing with each other,’ she murmurs.
‘It’s not,’ I say. ‘And I think this is way past what you signed on for. I don’t think you want those deaths on your conscience any more than I do.’
Her whole body is still, her muscles rigid, her gaze fixed somewhere past me as she absorbs what I’m telling her. Weighs it up against who she believes herself to be. What she believes my sister capable of. I can only hope desperately that Cleo was right about Sabrina.
‘There’s no way to get a signal out to warn the other bases,’ I say. ‘Not without Marguerite’s cuff, and Cleo failed at getting that. But if we can get a rover close enough to the nearest base, we could broadcast a short-range message.’
Sabrina lifts her chin a little, and now she’s beginning to understand why I’m telling her all this.
‘I’m betting they’ve taken your handprint off the authorization list,’ I say. ‘But I can get inside the code and put it back, so you can get the remaining rover started.’
‘Why not just add yours?’ she asks. And then she laughs, a quick bark, lifting one hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. ‘You can’t drive it, can you?’
‘I can’t drive it,’ I agree. ‘Not on unfamiliar terrain, in the tail end of a dust storm. Today isn’t the day for me to learn.
And anyway, my handprint isn’t registered anywhere in the system.
It would take too long to get it in there.
Yours, I just need to connect back to the rover authorization list.’
She nods slowly.
I risk a question: ‘Do you need to take a look at the rovers, confirm what I’m telling you?’
She’s quiet a long moment, and I see her run through everything again – pull up everything she knows, and see the way it clicks together.
‘No,’ she says grimly. ‘I believe you.’
‘Then I need you to go buy me a few minutes by distracting my sister while I put you back on the rover’s permission list,’ I say. ‘Tell her you saw me and I was on my way back.’
‘Sure. What then?’
‘Then a number of things have to happen in exactly the right order, or we both die here.’
She lets out a breath. ‘Talk. I’m listening.’