A small laugh bubbled out of Tess. It was just a little huff, but it loosened her shoulders. Her stride lengthened, less tense. TheEndeavor’s botanist had accomplished what I hadn’t all day: a real smile from Tess.
Moments like this drove home how new I was to this group, still finding my place. Merrick was new, too, but it was different. He’d been a rebel all along, and he’d never set out to deceive the crew of theEndeavor. Lies, subterfuge, and near-betrayal—that was all me. They hadn’t kicked me out on my ass, but real trust didn’t come back fast, if ever.
“Where are you guys?” Tess’s softly spoken question echoed through my earpiece a fraction of a second after I heard it in real time. I frowned, wanting to bury this material back in the dark ages where it belonged.
“We veered off to blend in with some people,” Jax answered. “They all stopped at the first shuttle entrance, though. Now, we’re alone.”
“Us too.” Tess freed her hand from mine and pushed a tiny hinge on her bracelet. The polished green stone slid aside, revealing a flat, dark surface. She pressed another button, and a gridgram linked to our coms sprang up in front of us.
Shit, that’s huge.The equipment I’d kept below my shop in Albion City was a hundred times more sophisticated than the things the crew of theEndeavorcould afford. I’d spent ten years accumulating the best gadgets on the market so I could be discreet and efficient, and now here I was, walking down the street next to a holographic map twice the size of my head.
Wariness pricked the back of my neck as I glanced from side to side. The deserted street didn’t help assuage the cold unease growing inside me.
Two dots advanced together a couple of blocks ahead of us on the neon-green gridgram. Merrick’s speck remained stationary on the ship. The whole thing blinked in and out like a beacon, especially in the shadowed alley. I was two seconds from covering Tess’s wrist with my hand when she flicked her bracelet closed, cutting off the ginormous pyramid of light.
“You’re a lot closer to the ship than we are.” She tucked her loose hair behind her ears and started moving faster. “Merrick, can you power up? ETA is fifteen minutes.”
“Will do,” Merrick answered.
“Eight for us,” Jax said.
“Wait… Is that purple clawberry?” Excitement electrified Fiona’s whisper. “Most people don’t know the fruit is edible and just use the bush for shrubbery. I need a cutting. This is too good to pass up.”
She needs a plant?Tess’s gaze snapped to mine. Through her lightweight but long-sleeved shirt, she tapped her still needle-marked inner elbow twice and then flapped her hands like a bird, not making a sound her necklace would pick up.
I nodded. I got it. We had to fly away fast and bring her A1 blood to Reaginine by tomorrow or her uncle—a fucking Dark Watch generalandmy ex-boss—would arrest one of the two women Tess considered a mother. Mareeka or Surral. Nathaniel Bridgebane would take one of them to Hourglass Mile if Tess didn’t deliver the six bags of blood that were currently hidden in a cooling unit on my little star cruiser, and I was pretty sure the safety and well-being of the Starway 8 orphanage, the kids in it, and the two women who ran it meant more to Tess than anything else in the entire universe.
We still hadn’t come up with a good excuse for the two of us taking off on our own to the Grand Temple on Reaginine. Announcing that we had to go hand over a cooler full of the base ingredient for the Overseer’s super-soldier serum wasn’t going to cut it. I could say I needed to pray at the home of the Church of the Great Star, but needing to prayright nowwas kind of ridiculous. And everyone knew Tess was firmly agnostic. The fact was, she’d stolen the Overseer’s supply of enhancers, and Bridgebane had blackmailed her into giving some back—or at least the means to make several new batches.
Now, I just had to make sure she didn’t get caught—by her Dark Watch enemiesorher rebel friends. Either would be disastrous.
With a questioning shrug, I held up five fingers and mouthedFive minutes?It wouldn’t make a difference at this point, and Jax and Fiona were already ahead of us on the walk back to the ship.
Tess bit her lip and then said, “Sure. But be quick, Fi. People don’t seem to hang around outside in this place. Jax, watch her back.”
“Always, partner,” Jax said.
“I can’t quite reach it from the street,” Fiona muttered a few seconds later. “There’s a high fence. I have to go into the park for it.”
“Park?” Tess hesitated midstep before letting her long strides eat up the pavement again. “There could be surveillance.”
“It’s empty,” Fiona assured us over the coms. “Not a soul in sight.”
A bad thought suddenly ignited like gunpowder in the back of my mind. The ambiance on Korabon—the crowded restaurant but the empty streets, the swarming shuttle system but no real pedestrian traffic—was starting to scratch at something in my memory, something from one of my early hunts. I tried to remember… Could Korabon be on parole?
Tess caught my brooding look. “What is it?”
“Do you think this place enforces any AGLs?” I asked.
Her eyes widened. Worry shot through her expression, and she immediately spoke, low and urgent. “Fiona, I think you should stop. Merrick, check my tablet. Have any additional galactic laws been imposed on Korabon? Something that would explain why people keep off the streets?”
“They’re not common, but I’ll check,” Merrick answered.
I swore under my breath. This was the shit that happened when you went in blind.
“I’ll be quick,” Fiona said.
“Leave it, Fi.” Tess turned toward where we knew the others were, despite it not being our best route back to the ship.
