I wanted to scream, but there wasn’t time. I wrapped my hands around the hilt, as he swung me up out of the chair and carried me out the door. Even then, I couldn’t quite process what he’d done. As we hit the corridor, I realized he hadn’t told me just how much of that amazing sum was mine.
All of it, I decided, or I was going to make his life hell.
If I survived.
I’ll give him credit: he had it all planned. The medics met him in the corridor, the stasis pod already prepped. I was still awake when they closed the lid, but I was pretty sure I imagined the look of desperate concern on Mack’s face, just before the world went away.
5—Blaedergil
They say on Magnus 19, only the dead live. I wondered if that was true, or if there was something more sinister going on, and then I amended my thoughts. Of course, there was something more sinister going on. If there hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been called in to deal with it. Or Mack wouldn’t have been.
So, it was something dire enough that the company hadn’t wanted to have its name connected with it. I wondered just how widely my contract with them was promulgated. Mack would be a cut-out, and I was in disgrace. I guess the hole I’d dug by trying to leave was deeper than I’d realized.
My chest burnt like liquid fire, and it hurt to breathe.
Damnitall, Mack! There were reasons I hadn’t wanted the role I’d been chosen for. A dagger through the heart on my first mission back? Yeah, they weren’t paying me enough. That sort of shit could kill a girl. And I don’t mean almost. I mean stone-cold dead...forever.
Which brought me to Magnus 19. This was not the place for a living person. This was the place for the dead, and the lost, and the forgotten. This was the place they brought those who had not long to live, or who wanted to live longer when their bodies could not. This was not the place for me.
But it was the place in which our target had made himself a home.
And a refuge.
For Blaedergil fed the economy of Magnus 19 with his demands, and had built himself a fortress of minds and souls in the middle of a landscape of pine forest and plains. Even if we’d asked for his extradition, the people of Magnus 19 would not have given him to us. And Odyssey had tried.
Hence the need for a cut-out. Nothing from Odyssey could get anywhere close. Mack was in disgrace, and there were rumors Odyssey wanted to space me as an example to other recalcitrant recruits. I guess nothing works quite so well as the truth.
Or, at least, the almost-truth...
“The Plague Master is ours,” the rulers of Magnus 19 had told Odyssey when they’d gone knocking, “and we have granted him refuge.”
What they should have said was that he fed their unholy industry of death and the undying, and that they’d starve without him.
“Please,” I whispered, when I came to, “let me be alive.”
As if my words were a magical command, I saw a figure move beyond the glass, and that was when I realized I would live.
A regen tank?
On a world of death?
I stretched out a hand, intending to touch my fingertips to the glass, only to find I could not lift my hand away from my side.
What was happening?
I tried again, this time with the other hand. Again, my hand was stopped short. I took a deep breath, trying not to panic, and then took another breath as the man beyond the glass came into focus.
“So, you’re the one,” he said.
I tried to look over my shoulder, twisting my head, first one way, and then the other.
“Are you a doctor?”
I glanced down at my chest, noticing a neat patch of stitching.
The man laughed.
“No,” he said, and I recoiled.
“Who are you then?”
“Don’t you remember?”
I shook my head. I remembered the dagger, Mack’s look of concern—and why had that been, again?—but there were gaps. Holes in my memory that shouldn’t have been there. For his part, the man looked puzzled.
“Are you sure?”
I shook my head. I should be sure. There was a large portion of my head that was screaming I should know more. I watched as my visitor placed his hands on the glass.
“How are you feeling?”
I checked, doing a mental inventory, and then I nodded.
“Okay.”
“No pain?”
As if I was going to tell him that.
“Should there be?”
“Not before our wedding night,” he said, and smirked.
A wedding night. I did remember something about that. I also remembered very much not wanting one. Now, why was that?
I watched, as he looked at me through the glass, really looked, like he was inspecting a piece of meat, or a shirt, or a beast he’d just purchased. And my nakedness started to bother me.
“Who are you?” I asked, and he raised his eyes to my face.
“You don’t remember?”
I shook my head. If I wasn’t submerged in liquid, my throat would probably be dry.
“You truly don’t remember?”
Again, I shook my head.
“No. I truly don’t.”
And he stepped back from the glass, looking almost put out.
“I am Blaedergil,” he said, as though it should mean something. “Surely they told you who was saving your life?”
I nodded.
“They did,” I said, “but I can’t remember.”
Damnit, Mack! What did you do to my head?
“Perhaps it’s the new implant,” Blaedergil said.
“New implant?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head, and he smiled, leaning in close to the glass.
“You and I are going to have such fun.”
Part of me wanted to deny it, but part of me knew it was true—although it wasn’t sure about the ‘fun’ part of things. Great. Just great. When I got back on board, Mack and I were going to have a good long talk.
Mack. How could I remember him, when I could remember
