Varrick
The mission. Focus on the mission.
The failing algorithms would force his hand soon, given the acceleration. He would need me to fix them. An act that would reveal his location, his desperation, his weaknesses.
Strategic. Tactical. Professional.
Everything I should have been doing from the start instead of kissing dealers in observation decks.
Her lips had been softer than—
No. The mission.
I pulled up security rotation schedules I had downloaded from a maintenance terminal. Guards changed at every shift transition. The final shift rotation had a twelve minute gap in coverage on Level 19. Useful information. Actionable intelligence.
Nothing to do with the way she had pressed against me, hands finding my chest, making that small sound when I had—
The mission. Only the mission.
Her shift started with the second rotation. I knew because I had memorized her schedule. For strategic reasons. Obviously.
I stayed away from the casino floor.
I spent the morning in the lower levels, mapping service corridors and emergency exits. I found three ways to reach the vault that bypassed main security. Located two hidden passages between Level 18 and 19. Identified which maintenance panels hid camera blind spots.
Professional reconnaissance. Finally.
Just as the high rollers of the second shift began to settle in, I entered the main casino floor to access a security substation I had identified. I had to cross the mezzanine to reach it. Pure coincidence that it took me past her table.
Our eyes met across thirty meters of noise and chaos.
Time stuttered. One heartbeat. Two. The memory of her mouth under mine, the taste of her, the way she had—
We both looked away.
The absence felt wrong. Like an equation missing a fundamental variable. Like a calculation that could not resolve without a key piece of data. I forced myself to continue to the substation, downloaded what I needed, and left without looking back.
That evening, I went to a bar on Level 12. Not the observation lounge. Not anywhere we had been together. Just a grimy hole where criminals drank and nobody asked questions.
“—that human dealer on the high stakes floor.”
My attention snapped to a table of guards. Three of them, off duty, drinking hard.
“The pretty one?” Another guard laughed. “Been watching her for weeks. Lives on Level 14, Section B.”
“Alone?”
“Far as I can tell. No protection. No friends.”
“Thinking of paying a visit?”
“Tonight, maybe. After she gets off shift. Remind her she's just property here.”
The glass in my hand cracked. Spider web fractures spreading through reinforced crystal.
They kept talking. Details about her route. Her door code they had somehow acquired. What they planned to do.
I set the broken glass down carefully. Paid my tab. Followed them out.
They split up at the first corridor junction, confident. An amateur mistake.
I took the first one in a service alcove.
He opened his mouth to shout, but my hand covered it.
I did not say a word. I simply let him feel a fraction of my strength, my thumb pressing against the nerve cluster under his jaw.
I let him see the promise in my eyes. He went limp, bladder letting go.
I let him slide to the floor, whimpering.
He would not be getting up for some time.
The second I found near the waste recyclers.
He heard a noise, turned, and saw me emerge from the shadows.
He drew his weapon. I was on him before he could aim, disarming him and pinning him against the wall.
His friends were not coming. He was alone with me in the dark.
I whispered what I would do to him, in graphic detail, if he ever went within a hundred meters of her quarters again.
I did not have to touch him further. The terror in his eyes was enough. He collapsed when I released him.
The third, their leader, made it almost to the residential block before I cornered him.
He was smarter, faster. He tried to fight.
I let him. I let him exhaust himself against me, his punches doing nothing, his threats turning to panicked pleas.
When he was spent, I held him against the wall by his throat, feet dangling above the deck.
“She is not property,” I said. It was the only thing I said to any of them.
He understood.
Her quarters were at the end of Section B. Number 247. The corridor was silent. I stood outside her door, knowing she was awake inside. I could feel her presence through the thin metal, that awareness that had been building since day one.
She knew I was there. Had to. The way her breathing changed, audible through the door if you had Vinduthi hearing. The way the air itself felt charged between us.
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us moved.
I pressed my palm flat against her door. On the other side, I heard her shift, maybe moving closer. Maybe pressing her own hand to the metal that separated us.
We stayed like that for seventeen breaths. Seventeen moments of silence that said everything. About want. About fear. About inevitability.
I pulled my hand away and left without a word. There was no resolution, but standing on opposite sides of that door, we both knew the truth of what was building between us.