Chapter 20
Arco sat vigil with the autodoc that cradled Brenner face down, naked, and still unconscious.
Her worse-for-wear pink-rimmed tablet rested in her lap.
The warm but windowless room couldn’t have fit anything more than the old padded chair she occupied and the Jumper-sized autodoc that was so new it still had quality seals on two of its ports.
The unit’s flawless white interior contrasted with Brenner’s golden skin, now mottled red with chaos patterns of burns and marred by myriad scrapes and bruises.
Small, distinctively shaped char marks across his hips matched the metal decorations on his ruined pants.
Despite his injuries, he was still handsome, with sleekly defined muscles she wanted to memorize by touch.
Seen through the autodoc’s clear canopy, the healing mists swirled like the mesmerizing atmosphere of a gas giant planet.
Dozens of microneedle lines plunged into Brenner’s flesh.
The biggest concentration covered his lower left calf like sea anemone tentacles, helping repair the cracked bone, torn muscles, and charred skin from the piercing wound.
By rights, he should be in a full-service medical center. It was her fault that he wasn’t.
Well, hers and the assholes who sent an experimental military spider mech after civilians.
The military claimed the damaged, disoriented spider’s pulse generator had somehow flatlined every single power source for a seven-block radius. Audience responses said few believed their explanation. She’d bet a month’s royalties the military didn’t believe it, either.
In her career, she’d met plenty of brave people.
First responders in disasters. Whistleblowers who had everything to lose.
Ex-Jumpers who refused to be sidelined by waster’s disease.
None of them compared to the man who marched up to a three-story-tall war machine and destroyed it like he was the spirit of lightning incarnate.
A light knock on the door frame preceded Haseem’s entrance into the tiny room. “The autodoc won’t work any faster if you watch it.” Gentle exasperation laced his tone as he pointed to the readout. “It’ll be six or eight hours yet.”
She shrugged. It wasn’t worth articulating all the reasons she needed to be there.
His expression softened. “N’Dwama came by with everything she could find. The bags are in your room. She’s waiting for you on the roof.”
“Thanks.” Reluctantly, she pushed the blanket aside and stood. “You are very good to bad patients.”
She counted herself in that category. Haseem had treated her for hypothermia and dozens of scrapes and muscle strains.
She’d dragged unconscious Brenner from the construction site to the runabout Minan had hastily stolen.
At the time, fear of being caught had fluxed her adrenaline, but she was paying for it now.
Haseem had prescribed bed rest, but her brain wouldn’t let her sleep.
He waved off her apology. “Occupational hazard. It’s usually the pain talking.” He smiled. “Unless it’s Jumpers, in which case, we don’t mention the ‘p’ word. They’ll bleed to death before they admit they hurt.”
With one last glance at Brenner, she followed Haseem out the door.
She glanced at his round-cheeked profile. “Do you like living here?”
After Haseem’s trouble with the crew, he’d accepted Soleil’s invitation to move into one of the upper-floor rooms of the converted warehouse.
Within a day, five children, a pregnant stray cat, and four Jumpers had moved in, too.
Arco suspected Soleil hadn’t imagined she’d be opening a hostel when she started her martial arts studio.
“Yes, I do like it here. The Jumpers are amazing. I didn’t realize how unsafe I felt before.”
“They’re as lucky to have you as you are to have found them.” Compassionate, high-level healers who had never worked for the CPS were rare. She smiled. “I’ve heard your rescue story at least six times.”
He smiled crookedly and raised an eyebrow. “Not from Brenner, I’d wager.”
“No.” She chuckled, remembering his mumbled explanation that he’d helped a friend move. “He told us why he was late, but he definitely left out the good parts.”
Haseem started down the stairs. “Soleil is back, by the way. She’s in her office.”
“Thanks.” She made her way down the hall to her temporary room. Pushing the sling bags aside, she sat on the narrow cot and opened the shopping bag.
Dull-colored flexin base layer and recycled clothes for Brenner, because he wouldn’t wear new.
A used camouflage raincoat and better flexin armor tunics.
A new percomp and earwire to replace the ones he’d fried.
She quickly keyed them to the biometrics she had on file for him.
He could set his own security codes later.
Once she’d gotten Brenner into Haseem’s capable hands, she let him apply woundpacks on her scrapes, but refused a pain patch. She needed clear-headed time to think.
As much as she wanted to finish the stories she started, she didn’t want to find out how many more people her enemies were willing to hurt to get to her.
The loose travel plans she’d made when she first arrived on Mabingion hadn’t accounted for a hasty exit.
She’d made new arrangements and set them in motion, then tried to doze while she waited for confirmations.
Unfortunately, sleep had been impossible.
Her finder talent was ablaze with the wealth of connections it found.
Starting with Soleil, the somehow-familiar ex-Jumper.
Every time Arco met someone in Soleil’s orbit, the list of connections kept expanding.
Her partner Josh, with curiously variable body language and accent.
A high-end autodoc in a more-than-it-seemed Canals warehouse.
Cryptic references in Davidro’s journal that suddenly formed a pattern.
Ayorinn’s Legacy. A sharp rise in cloned minder drugs and reverses.
Persistent CPS data leaks. Mental shields for anyone.
Outraged pharma lobbyists. Massive CPS budget cuts for the first time in living memory.
With time, she could sort them all out, but she didn’t have that luxury. Her team couldn’t cover for her any longer.
She opened Brenner’s bag, which her team had retrieved from her new flat. The newer clothes easily fit in with the familiar clothes, toiletries, and weapons.
From her own bag, she removed the duplicate of the flexin tunic she’d had to leave at the construction site.
She stripped off the borrowed top, then pulled on her tunic and new raincoat that looked just like the old ones.
Colleagues teased her about her sparse, repetitive wardrobe, but her habit of buying multiples of the clothes she liked was paying off now.
She folded the borrowed knit top and placed it, along with the empty shopping bag, on the bed.
Last but not least, she fished out a handful of anonymous cashflow chips and used her tablet to transfer funds owed to Brenner onto them, keyed to his biometrics.
After a quick check around the room for forgotten items, she stuffed her folded tablet in her pocket, then scooped up everything else and headed downstairs to the office.
Soleil stood near the mud-spattered window, smiling at her tall and handsome partner Josh, who was scooping up dirty cups from the desks.
Arco hovered near the doorway. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have another favor to ask. Can I leave Brenner’s bag and some cashflows with you? He’ll need them when he wakes up.”
Soleil’s eyes widened with surprise. “You’re leaving?”
Arco nodded. “Police investigators are already poking around my accounts. They probably got a tip, which points to me being the likely target for the spider mech. To keep them off balance, I need to have been at Novo Granica all night.”
Soleil nodded. “Sure.” Her chin pointed toward the guest chair. “Leave them there.”
Arco exhaled forcefully. “Actually, I’m leaving the planet.”
Josh’s eyebrows raised. “What about Brenner?”
Arco hoped she was doing the right thing. “That’s up to him. He’s free to make his own star chart this time.”
Without knowing what Brenner had and hadn’t told Josh or Soleil, she couldn’t say more, much less ask what they thought. “When he wakes up, tell him to check his pings.”
Josh frowned. “If my opinion matters, I think your newest story tying the elite CPS squad to the multiple fatal ‘accidents’ has them categorizing you as a primary threat.” His accent changed subtly to clipped Nordic consonants. “Don’t give up your security team.”
Her finder sense made another connection in her memory, but she ignored it.
Not her business that Josh might have been a former Kameleon.
The CPS refused to admit they existed, but thanks to Davidro’s journals, she knew they did.
“I’ll keep them as long as I can, but I’m a trouble magnet.
I believe that same squad took out an entire building in Arazak to silence one troublesome professor.
” She shook her head. “I’ll neutralize the threat by taking my ass to the other side of the galaxy and reporting on anything but the CPS.
Settlement company abuses. Financial fiddles. Prize bovines.”
Soleil was silent for a long moment, her expression remote. “The CPS gets what they want, then.”
That stung. “Yeah, but I get to live. Brenner lives. You and your students all get to see tomorrow.” Biting back her temper, she dropped Brenner’s bag on the chair. “I’m a danger to you all if I stay.”
Soleil snorted. “Jumpers eat danger for dinner.”
Arco shook her head. “Children don’t. Pregnant cats don’t. Haseem doesn’t.” She held out her hand with the packet of cashflow chips. “Please give these to Brenner along with his bag.”
Soleil stepped closer and took it. “I will. Hope to see you again someday. You’re a good influence on the students.”
A laugh escaped Arco. “Sure, as the bad example who encourages them to talk in class.”
Soleil nodded. “Indeed.”
The woman’s serene certainty made Arco laugh again. “Jumpers are all crazy.”
Josh’s gaze landed on Soleil with a fond smile. “Indeed.”
Arco turned to raise her eyebrow at Josh, who towered above her. “You’re fractured, too. Don’t forget to tell Renner to read his farking pings.”
With that, she re-slung her bag and exited the office. Rising fame and influence drew rising threats. She couldn’t protect the friends she’d made. Leaving them was going to hurt like acid rain. But better that than attending mass memorials for the newly dead.
As soon as Arco stepped foot on the roof pad, she saw the hulk of the flitter.
The doors opened. She flipped up her hood and tried not to lose her footing as she dove in.
Overnight, the rain had turned to sleet and snow.
According to the weather AI, shifting ocean-stream winds and a wet cold front were shaping up to be one mad mother of a storm.
N’Dwama took off immediately. “I’m using Brenner’s trick of logging a training flight, so we’ll be fast but bumpy. Strap in.”
Arco complied with alacrity. In her experience, race pilots were as warped as Jumpers.
“Minan sent Tōn Ko to Novo G and told him to be seen a lot.” N’Dwama chuckled. “Right up his starlane, shaking his extra-fine ass for any and all admirers. That man should have been a vid star.”
Arco smiled. “Where is Minan?”
“She parked Nilsson in one of the interview rooms under your name and set the ‘in use’ flag. We’ll tell Tōn Ko to accidentally lose his clothes or something and slip you in during the ensuing riot.”
It took Arco a second to remember that Nilsson was her newest team member. “Good work. Thank you.”
Unfolding her tablet, which had miraculously survived the night, she checked in with her personal universe.
Her digital fortress security AIs reported intrusion attempts had increased twentyfold within fifteen minutes of the spider mech’s demise and were still rising. So far, her expensive perimeter held firm, but a court order could change that. Ridderth judges were cheap.
The public net had multiple premium reward offers for images and vids of the spider mech’s destruction. Area businesses hoping to cash in would be scanning their security recordings for even a glimpse of the spider as it stomped its way through the neighborhood.
With luck, Brenner’s unleashed talent destroyed any camera eyes at the construction site before they could upload their contents. Yet another reason for her to be the glittery distraction to draw eyes away from him.
Inspired by Josh’s theory, she spent a few minutes creating ephemeral accounts to seed and amplify rumors that the CPS elite squad caused the spider mech to go rogue as their own distraction ploy.
Her finder sense said it could even be true.
Spiking article sales would help spread the rumors even faster.
And Arco Charrascos’s rising fame quotient might make them think twice about making another kill attempt so soon.
They couldn’t afford months of investigation and repercussions.
Still, the sooner she pulled up gravity hooks and went interstellar transit, the safer everyone would be without her.
She shoved the aching loneliness of that thought into a box and sealed it shut.