The painting on display wastwelve feettall, and over fourteen wide. Beautiful, inspiring, and a masterpiece well worth recovering for humanity, The Night Watch was a treasure I’d had no reason to expect here. Or anywhere, for that matter—the Rijksmuseum burned when the Bauran navy bombed Amsterdam early in the Uplink War.
I’d only ever seen Rembrandt’s masterpiece in photographs, and my heart hammered in my chest as I stared at the lost treasure. Perhaps the most famous painting from the Dutch Golden Age, it stood bathed in a warm glow that brought out the play of light and shadow in the stunning portrait of a militia company. The characters looked ready to walk off the canvas. Part of me wondered what a seventeenth-century militia would make of the Hive.
The rest of me struggled with a tide of conflicting emotions.
“Fuck. Damn.” Neither word seemed strong enough, but I couldn’t think of anything stronger.“Fuckdamn.”
It would have to do.
This mission’s a bust. I looked down at the forgery I’d brought all this way. What a waste of time and effort.Best get back to my room and hope no one noticed my nighttime excursion.
That was the most sensible plan. The smartest plan. But still I stared up at the dark magnificence of The Night Watch. In a few short days, everything here would vanish into deep space. Predicting the Collectors’ next emergence was impossible—it might be centuries from now, half a galaxy away.
Unless I stole it now, The Night Watch would be out of reach for decades, maybe centuries. Ihadto rescue it. Walking away empty-handed wasn’t an option. Neither was taking the painting—aside from its unwieldy size, the damned thing weighed over seven hundred pounds.
The deciding factor had nothing to do with the painting. I refused to give Varok the satisfaction of succeeding where I failed. The thought of his smug smile made my body tense up, the cool air prickling on my skin. I bit my lip, trying to stay focused on the impossible task of stealing a painting as vast as The Night Watch, rather than on my arrogant, aggravating rival.
Somehow, that seemed like the tougher challenge.
10
VAROK
It took an eternity to get away from the females who’d circled me like scavengers waiting for their meal to die. That wasn’t fair to them, and I knew it—the human had flung them into my path like oil in a car chase. She was the one I should be angry with, not her pawns.
I’d pay her back for that trap, I promised myself, and my hands itched at the thought. I had to catch up with her to get my revenge, though. She’d given herself quite a head start.
I stepped into the maze-like interior of the Hive, careful to make no sound as I retraced the route I’d taken to Driin’s gallery. It shouldn’t matter if I got caught. No one would question my decision to visit my sculpture and ensure its correct placement. But the less suspicion I raised, the better.
Without a guide, the tunnels became a claustrophobic maze, and my battle-instincts came to the fore. Prowling forward, I crouched, teeth bared and every sense alert.
It was the smell that made me so uneasy. Hints of blood and crisp ozone, and something unidentifiable under that, wafted on the chill breeze like a warning or a threat. I was an intruder here, it told me, and not welcome.
I took my time, though every second lost tohergrated on my nerves. Whatever she had planned, it would disrupt my heist, and that I would not allow. I had to reroute twice, slipping my way around Collectors focused inward on whatever they thought about when they were alone. Each time, I resented the lost time.
What if she’s gone before I catch up?I asked myself.Will I ever see her again?
I stopped short in the tunnel.Where in the Void did that come from?I needed to catch her to stop her fucking up my escape, not because I wanted to see her.
Though Ididwant to see her. I snarled at the thought and pressed on, allowing myself to move faster and less cautiously, risking discovery in order to make up for lost time. A gamble that I won, reaching the gallery without incident.
There’s a strange atmosphere in an empty gallery, almost as though it’s haunted. I’d never felt it as strongly as I did in Driin’s hall, and I shivered as I stepped inside. I am not superstitious, and I don’t believe in ghosts. Still, the itch between my shoulder blades as I approached my ‘artwork’ told me someone was watching.
I looked around, slow and careful. Nothing looked out of place. Nothing moved. I growled and shrugged. What could I do? Waiting for the feeling to pass just invited a disaster. If someone was watching, let them come and challenge me.
The release button on the sarcophagus clicked under my finger, killing the stasis field. The metal case split open with a hiss of escaping air. White fog spilled out, washing across the crystal floor, and if the sculpture had been made of anti-ice as advertised, that was the moment I’d have killed every living thing on the planet.
Since it was nothing more than frozen water, I lifted it out and placed it against a display case containing a delicateporcelain bowl. That done, I turned to the reason I was here. The one truly irreplaceable object on display.
It had pride of place, of course. Even a person’s weight of antimatter couldn’t compete with The End, an artifact so old that no one knew its origin. Xenoarchaeologists recovered it from the ruins of a dead world, and whoever had lived there, they’d had it in a museum as an object of unknown origins.
The sweeping curves drew the eye along, creating a feeling of dread that made my heart race. Faster and faster, it pulled me in, until at last my gaze found the one point of perfect darkness in its center.
Holograms didn’t do it justice. Beautiful, terrible, and tragic all at once, it had to be seen in person. Nothing else would do.
“It would be an awful waste to let this vanish into the Void,” I said aloud. My voice broke the stillness.
“True.” Penny’s response came as a complete surprise. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to live with that. Step away from the stasis chamber, please.”
