And I was. He was angry. I was angry. He was an alcoholic. I was far too well-acquainted with that poison. I shouldn’t because it made me like him, and I saw him when I look in the mirror because, dammit, I looked like him too. His brown hair, his stupid small nose, the way his face reddened when he got mad. I knew it. I’d beat my wife. I’d beat my kids. I’d—
“Are you okay?”
What a weird question for Myka Benton to ask, but I guess today was a weird day with Myka. Something about her was getting to me. This whole night was like being with a completely different person. I’d only seen her as a corporate drone. But now, with her singing to kids and flailing in zero-g and loving puppies…suddenly she was a person. And she was a person I liked. A lot. That was fucked up.
“I don’t know anything about you.”
Okay, I blurted it out. Myka knew everything about my past. My goals. My weakness. My apprentice’s friends. I didn’t know anything about her. She’d been a blank slate until tonight. What was I supposed to make of her?
I looked out the grime-streaked window as the city buzzed by. “It’s not fair.” She knew my painful family shit. She knew my former name. She could figure out why I was acting so weird. She’d probably write about it in her report after this is all over. File it away. Pull it out next time she wanted to dip into my life.
She was quiet for a moment. Then, “Myka Benton. Profession: Personal Assistant to Adela Glezos. Skills: Organization, infiltration, loyalty. Hobbies: Watching nature documentaries, fashion, and singing. Motivation: To maintain and improve her position within Cadinoff. Fear: Being disloyal. Weakness…” She trailed off and looked away.
She looked vulnerable. Small. I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t know what to do with her.
She was Myka Benton. She was loyal to Cadinoff. Cadinoff wanted the plans working their way through my gut. Was Myka playing a longer game? Getting close to me to stab me in the back? Why else would Myka Benton, whose skill is “loyalty”, make out with me in a lemur habitat?
I wanted to drink so bad.
* * * *
We reached Eldarm with a gentle hiss and the pull of contrasting forces. Corporate mercs would definitely be waiting here. Halcyore’s wasn’t some obscure hole in the wall. It was the center of the engineering world on Ri.
Eldarm was an industrial area, completely unlike the touristy Hightower, and this station was crowded with the workers that kept the whole megacity running. No frippery, just utility. A bare massage parlor neighbored the station along with one of those calorie-rich food joints. Junk shops and resell shops and odds’n’ends shops stretched until the first factory warehouse a block away. These small businesses were just pale imitations. The real deal, Halcyore’s, was four blocks down. The sun was bright as it bounced off the light pavement that led past the sprawling warehouses. The crowd of workers thinned further from the station, leaving few stragglers.
No clue what would happen when me and Myka separated. We hadn’t discussed it. Fact was, we had different opinions on who owned the plans to the engine I had designed, and loyalty to Cadinoff was Myka’s thing. Her skill. She wasn’t likely to let me walk away with it, despite the kissing.
Besides, kissing didn’t mean anything. I’d done that and more with plenty of women. Never went anywhere because it couldn’t. I was the angry person hovering over Myka, ready to burst. I was not fit for a relationship. Too damaged. A lasting present from my father.
Why was I thinking of a relationship with Myka Benton anyway? This whole night had probably been a ploy to make me let down my guard. The first step in her Cadinoff-loyal plan. I could see it clear as day: Myka Benton, thwarting Halcyore’s neutrality imperatives, sticks a knife in my gut as soon as we’re separated. Then she scoops the data tab from my intestines and walks back to Glezos with her prize as I bleed out on the floor.
On a scale of one to ten, the likelihood of that happening was an “I don’t fucking know”. If Myka’s strategy was to confuse me, she’d succeeded.
I was chewing my bottom lip, pensive. Distracted. It was Myka who noticed we were being followed.
She yanked on my elbow. “We should go faster.”
I looked behind us. Mercs. Bulky assholes who enjoyed gyms, named weapons, and thought punching things was the height of human ecstasy. They stood out amongst the industrial workers by being big and dumb-looking. When they saw they were spotted, they broke into a run.
Then it was a sprint. Who could get to Halcyore’s first: two trained mercenaries or one wounded woman handcuffed to another woman wearing a knee-length skirt? I wouldn’t place money on us.
Myka, though? She was fast, and she dragged me along. Halcyore’s nondescript warehouse was just a block away. The door was open as if waiting for us. My feet pounded pavement, and my legs ached, each step slinging pain into that gunshot wound at my hip. My breath was ragged, and I regretted all the cigarettes I’d ever smoked.
Footsteps behind me. Far at first. Then closer. And closer. Then on my heels with the warehouse still meters away. This was it. We weren’t gonna make it.
Myka glanced behind us, then stopped. She let me overtake her and presented a barricade between me and the merc whose hand was reaching out to grab me. He stopped a
