Chapter 6
CHAPTER
SIX
ARC
Riann’s office is in the center of Ilidi City. The white pillar climbs into the sky until it disappears into the green mist of the morning’s clouds.
I’ve never liked these buildings. I’ve never enjoyed the view from the top, so I wait in the lot, leaning against my car until Riann joins me.
It’s quieter out here anyway.
“You could have come up,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it.
A woman walks past us with a tablet clutched close to her chest, ogling him, and considers interrupting us to ask if he’d like to go out with her and her mate sometime. She rethinks her plan a moment later, and not for the first time.
“Do they all look at you like that?”
He sighs. “I made the mistake of doing an interview for one of the Agency magazines. Before I knew it, I was in my underwear, being posed, answering questions I didn’t necessarily think would automatically be public knowledge… and I have been bombarded with requests ever since.”
“Sounds rough.”
He shoots me a look that tells me he’s tired, even more than his thoughts already do.
“I thought I told you to come in civilian clothing.”
“I’ve got a shirt to throw on when we get there.
It’ll make these look like normal pants.
” When he questions if living in the caldera has made us all paranoid, I add, “Listen, I don’t care how routine you think this is going to be.
The fact that we have to go out there at all puts the likelihood something’s wrong at way too high of a risk for me to be comfortable not having some kind of body armor. ”
“Fine.”
“Don’t worry, I have a vest in the trunk for you if we find ourselves with a need.”
His pretty purple face goes a little pale and he glances at the back of the car, but he doesn’t argue or tell me he won’t need it.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“Yep. I’ll drive.”
He considers arguing for a moment, but doesn’t, so I turn… and manage not to look at Kilo.
Riann doesn’t acknowledge him, so I know he doesn’t know he’s there.
If Drift had sent Kilo with us, he would have told me about it. He’s here on his own, but he brought his drone, so I’m not going to try to leave him behind.
Riann is oblivious.
I don’t even know if he’s aware of Kilo’s mutation.
It should be fun to see how that revelation goes.
Kilo gets in the backseat, and even though I don’t look at him, I can see the smug smile on his face.
He likes this part of his mutation. Even if he hates how easy it is for others to forget him, he loves making them jump out of their skin.
Riann punches in the coordinates, and once we’re out of the city, he seems to relax. I wonder why?
His thoughts are firmly on the task in front of us, and he’s not thinking about whatever made him tense before.
Kilo, on the other hand…
If he wasn’t thinking so loudly, it would be easier to pretend.
Thank the saints I’m the one driving. I have no doubt he’ll try to jump scare us when he decides to make himself known and when that happens—if he was in the driver’s seat—Riann might’ve run us off the road.
Until Riann acknowledges him, I’ll act like I don’t know he’s there.
Even if it does mean hearing the lyrics to his favorite song on repeat, broken by the occasional excitement at a bird out the window, or a piece of fruit he forgot he put in his pocket for the trip.
“Calisan is supposed to be one of the small-town options for Agency sign-ups, right?” I ask, trying to break the mental trap Kilo’s thoughts try to coil around me.
Making a noise that probably means yes, Riann pulls up a display and sets it on his lap. “The Agency has cleared just over two dozen women to the town… no complaints, no rejections.”
“Rejections?”
“Sometimes bondmates don’t work out.”
“Like Echo and Ion’s first match?” Kilo asks, leaning forward between us and taking a bite out of the glion fruit.
As predicted, Riann nearly jumps out of his skin.
“What in the saints’ name are you doing here?” he asks, pulled as far back from Kilo as he can get within the confines of the car’s safety structures.
“Providing backup? Duh.”
That is one of his favorite Earth words, and I have to force myself to scowl as he laughs in his head about it.
Riann looks up at him and before he can say the ugly thing he’d like to, I ask, “When did Echo and Ion get bondmates?”
Oh…
Riann’s thoughts tell me before he actually speaks them. “They have a single bondmate who did not work out with her first Agency match.”
“I thought it was one bang and that’s it,” Kilo says with a shrug, “but Ion told me she actually consummated the first mating, and they didn’t bond.”
I file through memories and others’ thoughts to pull out… “Jess thinks you have to want it to make it happen. Maybe she’s right.”
“We are getting off topic. Other people’s bondmate arrangements are not our business.” Riann turns back to his screen.
Kilo looks at me with both brow ridges raised. Touch-y!
“The Agency has sent twenty… six women to Calisan since the program started,” Riann says, his focus painfully forced on the numbers. “They’ve reported twenty-nine children so far. No crimes worth logging regionally, nothing to make anyone look their way.”
Kilo hums suspiciously. “Sounds fisty.”
“Fishy,” I correct him.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Riann glances at me and shakes his head. I wonder how hard it would be to hide his body if I killed him?
There has to be more to the irritation than Kilo’s blithe comments here and now. I’d ask what else he’s done, but honestly… I don’t want to know.
But silence means Kilo starts singing out loud, and neither Riann nor I deserve that.
We stop on the outskirts of the Ataron marshland and I let Kilo drive.
“Seriously?” he asks, as if I haven’t given him the neural link already.
“Yeah, anything to stop you from singing.”
“You underestimate my ability to multitask!”
But he doesn’t start singing again, so I lie down in the back, hoping I might actually be able to sleep.
And then Kilo’s thoughts turn to Riann.
My eyes snap wide. Oh.
Oh fuck no.
I straighten in my seat. “Fuck. I didn’t know how much this back row sucks.”
That makes Kilo laugh and stops him thinking about secrets I do not need to know.
“How much firepower did you bring?” Kilo asks when I have Riann bring up the satellite imagery.
“What do you think we’re going to find when we get there?” Riann asks, still reading the data.
“Nothing good.” Kilo looks at me in the rearview display, for backup, not because he thinks I need to know. “If it has something to do with the Company I don’t like those twenty-six women’s odds. Or their bondmates, for that matter.”
The car falls silent again and I am once again left hearing thoughts I don’t like… but these ones simply mirror my own.
When Kilo starts singing along with the next song that filters through the speakers, neither Riann or I complain.
We both let it go on for the next three hours, until we turn onto the smaller road that leads into the community.
There’s something cold and unsettling about the ravine walls rising up on either side of us.
“It feels like a trap.”
“Yeah, but a trap for who?” Kilo eases us back to an even slower crawl.
I take the tablet from Riann’s hand and flip back to the map, checking the route and surrounding geography. “I don’t like that it’s the only way in or out. This canyon could easily turn into a kill box.”
“It’s just a town,” Riann tries to remind us, “not a military camp. They’re not going to attack us.”
And when the walls recede and we get our first real glimpse of the town… he’s right.
No one’s going to attack us, because no one’s here.
“I thought you said someone talked to these people.”
Riann doesn’t tell me that someone did. He can’t quite believe what he sees either.
No one’s lived here for a long time.
As soon as Kilo stops the car, I pop the top, climb out, and grab my closest gun.
The streets are overgrown with weeds, the trees that are still standing haven’t been pruned in years, and as I step closer, there aren’t any windows or doors left on the houses. And there are no thoughts…
None but the confusion and incredulity coming from the two men behind me.
“Get your drone out… see if you can find anything else.”
Kilo doesn’t even question how I know he has his drone—he goes back to the car and pulls it out—and I don’t say anything when he climbs on the hood to set himself up.
He can leave a dent in it for all I care, as long as it gets me answers…
Riann starts to wander away.
“No.”
He flinches, turning back to me. “What’s wrong?”
“You drive a desk. Your field training is not enough for this kind of situation.”
“He’s right,” Kilo says, lifting his drone up. The thing flies up to hover fifty feet over our heads.
“You stay here. Kilo can’t watch out for what might come up on him. You’re his eyes on the ground.” I pull the rifle from Kilo’s bag and he mentally threatens me, but he keeps his mouth shut.
He can dig out one of the four others he brought.
“If I see anything, I’ll let you know.” Kilo presses his earpiece into place, and I pull mine too.
Riann looks nervously at me, but I don’t have time to offer the bureaucrat platitudes.
I double-check the power clip and dial down the intensity on Kilo’s rifle. I don’t want to kill anyone here… but if something jumps out at me, I don’t want to let it get to me first, either.
Walking through the remnants of the town, my skin crawls… this is what Chrys would call bees under her skin.
When I follow one of the public paths, the reason hits me.
It’s not the dark, open doorways, or the plants growing through ceilings…
It’s utterly silent out here. Standing in the ruins of a playground, not even the wind makes a sound.
The Shadow Zone is big. It’s empty. But it’s never silent.
There are bugs, but they have no thoughts. I see a single lizard. It briefly screams “Flee!” and then skitters up a wall into a crack.
And then…
Pum pum pum.
I swing around, rifle leveled at the thought… The song?
There was a melody to the thoughts.