He looked from Hawk to Fallon.
“What happened?” Hawk asked.
He licked his lips. “Those little flashes were all I remembered, but they got me to a docking bay. I hadn’t even known I was on a station. I got stuck, unable to get to the shuttle, but the woman from my memory showed up and helped me. She wouldn’t come with me though. She said she had to help the next one, that it was all her fault. Then she said, ‘Find Hawk. He’ll make it all stop.’”
Fallon raised an eyebrow at Hawk, but he only shrugged. “What did she look like?” he asked.
“Bennite. Pretty. No Bennite accent, though. Medium height. Right-handed.”
Fallon and Hawk exchanged another look.
“Ugh, stop with the looks!” Lim burst out. “Just say what you’re thinking. Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Some of it sounds familiar,” Fallon said slowly. “What can you tell me other than that experience? Anything from before.”
“Nothing. I don’t remember a thing before that day. Everything else is what I’ve experienced in the past eighteen months or so. Including learning how to pilot the shuttle. If it hadn’t had autopilot when I escaped, I’d have been dead.”
“You think they were going to kill you?” Hawk asked.
“Yeah.” Lim looked to some far-off point in the room. “I definitely had that feeling, and I assume it was why the woman wanted me to escape.”
Fallon moved closer to the couch Lim sat on. “So you haven’t recovered any memories in the past year? No dreams that felt like they could be memories? No additional flashes of knowledge?”
For each question, he shook his head. If what had happened to him was related to what had happened to her, they’d had very different experiences.
“Here’s my problem,” she said. “I’m not going to bullshit you. You’re in serious trouble. I don’t know if your kind of trouble is our kind of trouble, but whoever sent you to Hawk was right—he and the rest of our team are trying to fix some things, and we’ll look out for you. Provided you don’t give us a reason not to.”
Lim frowned. “I won’t. So long as you are the good guys.”
Fallon stifled a sigh. “Unfortunately, ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ don’t seem to mean as much as they used to.” She stood. “Okay. So I’ll assign you quarters. You’ll be staying with Hawk. Hawk, you’ll be moving to the next suite over, and Raptor and Ross will gain a whole lot of space.”
He smirked at her. “Not all of us can fit into a suitcase.”
She flashed him a grin. Lim seemed puzzled by their interaction. “You’ll get used to it,” she promised. “If you’re around long enough.”
Lim’s mouth tightened. “I will be. If I don’t belong here, I don’t belong anywhere.”
Hawk patted his shoulder on their way out. “Hold that thought, young’un. All of us might just belong nowhere.”
On that cryptic note, Fallon locked up her office and followed Hawk and their new hope.
“So Hawk’s over there, babysitting the guy?” Peregrine seemed less than impressed.
“Pretty much,” admitted Fallon. “I wanted a chance to meet as a team before deciding what to do with him. And I didn’t want to leave Lim on his own, even if he is only next door.” She rested her hand on the arm of the couch in Raptor and Ross’s quarters.
“Distrust, or concern for him?” Hesta asked.
“More the first. A little of the second.” Fallon smoothed her hand over the leg of her uniform pants.
Ross and Raptor remained silent.
“Is there anything I can help out with?” asked Arin.
“Possibly. What do you all think about this?” Fallon looked from one face to the next.
“I think it doesn’t much matter what we think,” Hesta said. “You’re the one who’s been through what he seems to have been through. That makes you the only person who can decide if he’s legit or not.”
“Not exactly,” Fallon said. “I think Brak and Jerin could help us out with that. A physical exam could tell us a lot.”
“Perhaps,” Hesta agreed. “But if it doesn’t, it still comes down to you.”
“One of these days, I’m going to need a vacation,” Fallon mused.
“What would you do on vacation?” Ross asked.
Fallon wasn’t sure, but Peregrine answered before she could. “Probably go diving off of cliffs or rock climbing up a ridiculously hard mountain face. Something risky and difficult and not at all relaxing.”
Well. She wasn’t exactly wrong, Fallon supposed. “So I’ll arrange that physical exam, then proceed from there. Agreed?”
“And you’ll keep him under surveillance? I don’t need some piece of shit wandering around my station like we had with Colb.” Hesta scowled.
Fallon took a moment to enjoy the shocked look on Arin’s face. He hadn’t encountered this side of the captain yet. “Of course.” Fallon wouldn’t risk being wrong about Lim.
“Fine,” Hesta agreed. “And since we’re on that general subject, I want to bring up something else. Are you sure we can trust Wren? I’m still wary of ignoring the fact that she cut holes in my station and released a prisoner.”
All eyes shot to Fallon. “I’m glad you brought it up. You’re welcome to question her yourself until you’re satisfied. But I’m convinced she thought she was working for the good of the PAC. Thing is, she didn’t have our training. She proved to be a remarkably resourceful ally, but trusted the wrong guy. So did we, for a minute or two. And if we got it wrong, I don’t think we can blame her for getting it wrong.”
Nevitt looked undecided, but said nothing.
“Like I said. Talk to her yourself.”
Peregrine spoke up. “If she’s actually on our side, and is a good asset, should we consider bringing her in? Training her?”
Fallon had thought about that too. “She could do well at certain aspects of intelligence work, as an analyst. Maybe even some contained field work related to mechanics. But
