You’ll do too much damage, the voices warned.Let’s not give secrets away.
He forced himself to breathe it out, and to sit back down on the bunk. It was without a doubt the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
Velda worriedabout Ethan as she was marched back down the same passage. He looked ready to revolt, and he would only have lost that round, what with a huge laz pointed straight at him.
They would get out of this—she was sure there was a way—but it wouldn’t be by directly assaulting armed guards.
At least he’d reined it in at the last moment.
Which meant she could focus on why she was being taken back for talks, when Linao wasn’t back yet.
She felt a chill raise the hairs on the back of her neck as she considered what that might mean, and what they might be doing to Linao.
Sure, the woman had taunted her and Ethan with death, but she wasn’t Linao, she was better than that, and she didn’t wish anything terrible on the Cores operative.
The door to the same room she’d been in before opened up, and there was Linao, sitting on the chair she hadn’t used for her own interview, looking pissed off.
And this didn’t look like an interview, she realized, which is exactly what her little meeting had been. This was an interrogation.
“She says you can confirm the identity of who was in our ship before it was destroyed.” Mr. Black came straight to the point.
Velda blinked. “The Caruson soldier who seemed to be in charge on the Cores ore runner showed me an image of a woman inside what looked like a cargo ship, and asked me if I knew who the person was.”
“When was this?” Uniform asked.
“Just before we boarded the small runner.” She had assumed the guard had received the image from the warship, had been in communication with them about it, but if that was true, perhaps he hadn’t had time to relay the outcome of the questioning. And now he was either dead or dying.
“And were you able to?” Mr. Black asked.
“Yes. It was very upsetting to me, because I think I know the person, and I understand the ship was destroyed moments later, so, if it is my friend, she is likely dead.” Velda hadn’t even had time to process that yet. Too much was happening all at once.
“Who do you think it was?” Mr. Black asked.
“A Special Forces consultant, Wren Thorakis.” Velda hoped there was some mistake. Any life lost was a tragedy, but if it was Wren in that ship, she hoped there was a chance she hadn’t died in the explosion.
“What is her role?” Uniform asked. “How would she have come to be on our ship?”
Velda shook her head. “I have no idea. She’s an artifacts consultant, and she only just transferred to Demeter. She hadn’t been in the Special Forces unit for more than a few days when that image was taken.” That was all true, but Velda knew there was more to Wren than met the eye. Still, she really didn’t know how she could have been inside that Caruson ship.
It was a mystery. And maybe it just wasn’t her at all.
Her gaze clashed with Linao’s, and Linao lifted her brows in a way that said she knew Velda was bullshitting, and suddenly a light went on in Velda’s head.
Wren Thorakis had found an ancestral wreck on Ytla.
The Cores had found one on Garmen.
There was something . . . extra . . . about Wren. Something she hadn’t been able to put her finger on.
Would someone think the same after meeting her, now, too?
After meeting Ethan?
Because it suddenly occurred to her that the reason Wren had been able to survive being chased by a violent cult in a massive storm on Ytla might be the same as her own newfound difference.
Wren had come across some silver balls.
She wondered suddenly if the silver balls could change someone’s appearance at will.
