“Alright.” She shrugged and entered the single name into the system.
“World of origin?”
“Unknown.”
She looked up. “What do you mean ‘unknown’?”
“Exactly that.” His smile wasn’t as cocky as before. “I have no idea what planet I’m from.”
He reached up with his metal hand and tapped the side of his temple gently. “Long-term memory before I woke up like this…” He waggled his fingers. “All gone.”
Shit. He must have lost his memory in the accident that had given him the replacement.
“No worries. Current planet of residence?”
“Lathar Prime.”
And just like that, all her guilt at quizzing him disappeared, anger taking its place.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Will you take this seriously?” she demanded.
Lathar Prime.
She’d heard of the Lathar, of course. Who hadn’t? Like the rest of the human population across the territories, she’d been glued to the newsfeeds. But… he didn’t look anything like the leather-clad alien barbarians. “You do realize I can charge you with obstruction of a security officer’s duties?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Does that mean I get you cuffing me this time, Officer? Because if so, I’m all in.”
“It’s Chief!” she hissed, turning as the department doors swished open. The interruption was timely and would stop her from committing murder in her own department.
Her brows snapped together as a guy wearing the uniform of Michael’s, the premier and only restaurant on the station, wheeled a delivery trolley in.
“Errr… can I help you?” she asked, forcing her voice to its polite setting.
“Yeah, I got an ultimate romance dinner delivery for a…” The delivery guy checked his list. “For a Mister Naught?”
“Zero?” They both chorused at once, and he grinned.
“Yeah, that’s it. Where do you want it?”
4
“I know where I’d like to put it,” Eris ground out, voice clipped.
She waved the poor delivery guy to leave the trolley by the booking desk and turned on Zero. For a woman he was trying his utmost to charm, the amount of fury in her eyes made him take a physical step back.
“So, this was all a setup, huh?” Her voice was quiet.
Hope filled him, and he tilted his head to the side slightly. “More ‘creating an opportunity’?”
She nodded and he took a step forward. Perhaps she was just annoyed they’d been interrupted? Sure, he was on the wrong side of a security barrier for what he really wanted… to pull her into his arms and see if her lips were as soft as they looked… but that was better than her initial reaction.
His onboard tickled at the back of his mind, trying to get his attention. He ignored it, far more interested in the woman in front of him.
“So… what happens now?” She tilted her head to look up at him. This close, he was struck by how much smaller than him she was. That was to be expected, though. He was a large male, bigger physically than most males of any species. Even if she was tall for a human… they were one of the smallest species in the galaxy.
It was also a leading question, and he knew he was being tested. Nothing about her body language and demeanor said as much. Still, women were women, no matter what the species, and the look in her eyes told him to tread carefully.
“Well…” he drawled, leaning one shoulder against the wall nearest to him. “I was kind of hoping you’d drop this barrier, and we could have a nice, romantic meal.”
His onboard flagged him again, the interruption getting more insistent. Not wanting to divert his attention, he suppressed the notification.
“Really now?” her voice was sickly sweet, and she smiled.
Shit. That was so not a good smile.
The notification tickled again. This time his onboard didn’t give him a choice. It broke through his suppression, flaring a warning across his vision.
Incoming hostiles detected. Take evasive action.
The smile fled from his face, and he straightened up.
“Eris, you need to let me out of this cell. Right now,” he ordered, focusing on the door. His onboard had been idly monitoring the security feeds on the station, and it had picked up coordinated movement coming their way.
She chuckled, starting to turn away. “Yeah, right. Like I’m going to do that. Pro tip… if you want to impress a woman, don’t get arrested. But… thank you for the food, I’m sure the lads will appreciate it in the morning.”
“Seriously, Eris, you’re in danger!” he exclaimed, using his uplink to the station to monitor the corridor outside security. Armed men in black masks flooded into the area, any civilians fleeing quickly. No heroism or warning in a place like this.
Hostiles approaching active zone. Prepare to engage.
“Yeah, yeah…” She walked away from him toward the front of the booking desk. Where she was, she’d be directly in the firing line when those assholes came through the door.
“Bollocks.”
He hadn’t wanted to do this. Closing his eyes, Zero diverted all his processing power for a second to break into the security department system. Monitoring the primary station feeds was one thing, but the security department was a separate, more sophisticated system. It took him over a second to crack, an unforgivable delay before the forcefield snapped off.
“What th—?”
Eris didn’t finish her sentence before he had her, forcing her down behind the booking desk as the front doors shattered. He curled his larger body around hers as the air around them was peppered with gunfire. The delivery trolley was the first to buy it. Bullets ripped through the thin metal and sent the chicken chasseur dancing in the air like a prima ballerina.
She didn’t scream but instantly went for her gun, the weapon in her hand as she edged toward the corner of the desk, ready to return fire. He helped by plunging the department into darkness while reaching up to grab his gun belt. But it skittered from his fingers, dropping out of reach on the other side.
“Bollocks.” Okay, he was going into this unarmed. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before and he was hardier than most.
“Shit,” she hissed, ducking around the
