“He’s not, I purposefully tried to avoid him. The Calisan trip was enough for a while.”
But he has access to Kilo’s home and his bike… Even if his thoughts aren’t complimentary, they do tell me a little too much.
“Okay… but why are you out here, so close to dark?”
“That.” He nods at the pod. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about that?”
“I assumed Drift had.”
He’s cleared away enough snow, I can see the numbers again.
“The pod popped shortly before the crash.”
“And it’s occupant.”
“She’s fine.”
“The third Ardem sister.”
Something about the way he says it makes me look at him differently. “Isthere something about the family?”
Riann looks up like he’s been caught with something he shouldn’t have. “When Risk told me she was here, I looked her up. She was flagged in our system. The Agency wasn’t allowed to bring her over, even if she matched. Someone found a way around that.”
“Why wasn’t she allowed to come here?”
“Men with Company ties have tried to abduct or kill both of her sisters. It was a safety precaution.”
“And they brought her here anyway.”
“We can only speculate.”
I don’t like the unsettled feeling that washes over my skin. “What else do you need from this?”
“As much as I can get.”
“Can I run some things by you… off the CSS records?”
“Sure.” He uses a multi-tool to pop open a panel and dig out wiring.
“Do you know why the Company wanted Laurel and Jessica?”
“The working theory is that something in their gene panels fit their specific repopulation requirements.”Their bio scores are low, but their Fillio Index numbers are high.
I’ll look the index up when I get home.
“What do you know about kirocilicantephen?”
He freezes, cursing before looking up at me. “I know that a black market for the stuff has popped up in the last year. And that they’ve modified its chemical makeup,justenough.”
“Just enough for what?”
He thinks the answer before he says it, and I feel ill. “It does exactly what it used to do, but it kills the bonding protein that Jessica found.”
Someone wanted Chrys and Shock to have sex, not bond and… think something was wrong. Or worse, they wanted her unbonded and pregnant, so they could take her from us and we wouldn’t be able to find her.
Riann’s focus is fixed on the tiny computer he’s plugged into the pod, and I look up as Kilo makes his way down through the snow to us.
I don’t even pretend to not see him.
