“What are you doing?” Myka asked. No, demanded. That was a demand.
I pulled at her arm. “What are you doing?”
The merc looked confused too. He glanced at his partner, then at me, then back at Myka. “The target—”
Myka shook her handcuffed hand. “Is under my custody, isn’t she?”
Oh. These mercs were Cadinoff, not Sev Tech. Myka was their boss.
“Our orders are to secure the target—”
Myka pointedly shook her hand again. “Is this secure enough? Who’s giving you your orders? Let me talk to them.” She held out a palm, expectant.
The merc pulled out his handset while shuffling his feet. After punching in a code, he handed it to Myka like a chagrined student being disciplined.
This wasn’t great for me, was it? Was Myka taking me into Cadinoff custody? We’d had a deal. She was breaking it. Right? Or was this a ploy to get to Halcyore’s?
How much did I trust Myka?
“Dalton, Myka Benton here. Tell your goons to stand down. I have the situation in hand.”
My stomach jittered. She was back to being Myka Benton, the bane of my existence. The woman who’d helped kidnap me last year. The woman who would betray me as soon as her boss gave the word.
She returned the handset to the merc. After a short conversation with his commander, he lowered his gaze. “Sorry for the confusion, ma’am.”
Myka pinched her lips together. “Keep watch for Sev Tech. I have business in Halcyore’s.”
The mercs didn’t question. It wasn’t their job. Myka’s word was unassailable at Cadinoff. Might as well be from Glezos, herself.
Then she tugged at me as she resumed her approach to Halcyore’s.
I caught up. “You’re not gonna drag me to Cadinoff after this, are you?”
She glanced at me but didn’t answer. My stomach sank. So this was the “stabbing in the back” part. Guess I saw it coming.
The inside of the warehouse was as bright as the outside with a naked ceiling sheltering a maze of shelves and parts piled atop each other. There was some meager attempt at organization, but nothing could tame the mountains of parts and gadgets and casings and tools and other assorted goodies. It was a wonderland. A person could happily get lost in this place. I had. No regrets. Getting lost amid the offerings of Halcyore’s was the closest I’d come to paradise.
Myka didn’t pause at the entry but went straight down the main aisle and scanned for an employee. As she did, the ground rumbled, shaking the merchandise in a frantic percussion. A groundquake?
No, smoke appeared at the back, drifting to the ceiling and spilling over. The tell-tale tromps of booted footfalls cascaded toward us, and like dominoes, shelves crashed one into the other, sweeping precious junk into even more disarray.
Then we were surrounded, black-clad and armored soldiers circling us with guns. These weren’t hired mercs. This was someone’s private army, military-trained and fully-equipped. These guys were better than the actual military at killing things.
Things like us, for example. Guess you could get a data tab from a corpse’s intestines.
I took a useless step back and bumped into a too damn calm Myka.
From the smoke emerged the one face I had never wanted to see again: Benjamin Brassard, backed by two soldiers and wearing a smug smile. Sev Tech was breaking Halcyore’s neutrality rule.
“Brassard, what the fuck are you doing?” Given my current position, I shouldn’t’ve gone the confrontational route, but…okay, this was insane! Nobody broke Halcyore’s neutrality rule! It was like a force of nature. An unbreakable law of the universe. Violating it would probably spawn some singularity that would collapse the entire world.
Brassard kicked a connector for the Eagle Dawn propellant tank at me. It skittered along the floor to hit my insole. No injuries sustained. “Let’s put an end to this fiasco, shall we? I’d like my design plans now.”
“They’re not your plans, Brassard! You stole them, like you stole everything you ever accomplished in your fucking life.” A part of my brain knew arguing was pointless, but instinct and anger were running the show. How dare this fucking yahoo try to claim my design!
“Henderson, I’m not getting into a back and forth over this. Sev Tech presented the engine at the expo, it’s ours, end of story.”
“Not end of story. What are you gonna do? Shoot me?” I eyed the motionless soldiers.
“I don’t want to, but if you refuse to cooperate, I’ll have no choice.”
Like fuck he had no choice. “Really? Brassy, we went to school together.”
Brassard’s nostrils flared. “Yes, I had the unfortunate experience of attending school with a piece of egotistical street trash. I prefer not to think of how Becker lowered their standards for your benefactor.”
I gaped. Yeah, I’d gotten some shit at Becker for my background, but none of it had come from Brassard. He was an asshole, but not that type of asshole. Except, apparently, he was.
Brassard kept talking: “Henderson—Elly, this invention is the purview of the people who matter. The only reason you made it to Becker was because an addled philanthropist forced their hand. There’s a reason you never went on to anything worthwhile: It’s not your place. I know it. You know it. It’s why you stick to the Back 40 working on whatever ancient engine pops up in the next-door junkyard. You’re not good enough for this engine.”
Ouch. “But I designed it…”
Had Newt Henderson IV been off his rocker? Yeah, of course. The old guy took walks around the Back 40 wearing expensive clothes with no bodyguards. He was certifiable. But he’d run across teenage me with my dinky alley fix-it shop, and he’d seen potential. Changed my life.
But Brassard was done with me, and he turned to Myka, his expression shifting to
