His hands drifted lower. The mech-sparring-hardened instinct in Pru’s head had just enough time to register the span of his palms along her waist, before her back slammed into a cabin stilt, Alex’s face inches from hers. “Bold move,” he whispered, “to go straight for the neck. Now that’s what I call audacity.”
“Look who’s talking!” Pru bucked against his grip in protest. “I’m not the ace mech pilot who sprang a surprise sparring match on an incompetent rookie as a training exercise.” Her fingernails dug into his hips. She wondered if she was hurting him. She wondered if he cared. “You’re sweet to pretend my prospects of passing the combat assessment aren’t borderline hopeless.”
Alex sighed quietly into the bare crook of her shoulder. “Why do you always assume the worst about yourself?”
“It’s called realism. You should try it some time.”
“It’s cruel,” said Alex. “I don’t understand how someone so . . . you deserve kindness, Pru. I wish you’d be kinder to yourself. It’s frustrating, that you’re not.”
Pru swallowed a sudden, embarrassingly hot lump in her throat. What was she supposed to say to that? Anabel hadn’t given them a script for this. “Alex. I—”
“You’re probably the most frustrating person I know,” he continued. His lips ghosted along the dip of her clavicle, hesitation palpable, breath warm on her skin.
“You have a really weird definition of ‘frustrating,’ dude.” Briefly, dizzyingly, Pru wondered what he’d do if she took matters into her own hands, closed the scant space between their mouths, and just—
He ducked his head and stepped back, detangling their bodies in one smooth motion. Pru stared up at him, heart thudding. Alex stared back, eyes a little wild. For a moment, he looked ready to catch her face between his hands and finish what he’d started.
Instead, his hands landed on the collar of her frock, straightening it with perfunctory haste. “I’m going to go find Anabel and Cat,” Alex said as he worked. “Make sure they’re okay, after that run-in at dinner.”
“‘Okay’?” Pru’s hands closed over his, trapping them at her collar. “I’ll bet you half my book smuggling savings that they’ve forgotten all about Masterson, and are canoodling in a sand dune somewhere.”
Unlike us.
“Only one way to find out.” He laughed softly, slipping from her grasp. “Go up and get some rest before the demo. And drink some water.”
“Drink some water?” Pru echoed, incredulous.
Alex didn’t answer, already ambling away across the sand. If she listened closely, she could hear him whistling the tune to an old Partition Wars ditty.
“Goddamn,” Pru mumbled. She could still smell the clean notes of shampoo and cologne where he’d pressed himself into her skin and, guiltily, took a second to breathe it in. Then she collected herself and shouted after his cowardly, retreating tease of an ass, “You are the worst fake beach date ever!”
Alex just kept walking and whistling, the melody high and bright.
Pulse still humming hot under her skin, Pru checked an awful impulse to chase after him. Nuh-uh, Pru. Remember the fake part of fake dating. Spies don’t have time to chase boys. Not right before a monumentally dangerous weapons demo.
Suddenly, getting a drink of water sounded like a great idea.
Hopping on the lift, shoreside breeze kissing the sweat-sticky back of her neck, Pru slumped against the railing to stare up at the moon rising over the sea. At least she’d get first dibs on the shower. A cold one.
* * *
Metafeed Politics
“Inside Harold Jellicoe’s Secretive Salesmanship: Is an Aging Father of Wyverns Making a Postwar Comeback?”
by Angelo O’Connor
Veteran weapons manufacturer Harold Jellicoe has long been a lynchpin of United Continental Confederacy Inc.’s arms dealing empire, but in an era of peace treaties and cross-continental cooperation efforts, the relevance of a man once dubbed the “father of wyverns” has grown questionable. Yet even as younger, flashier competitors declare his groundbreaking, bloodletting work obsolete, Jellicoe somehow continues to thrive, basking in the favor of his Executive General.
The UCC doesn’t need open warfare to continue thriving—the cold war profits of an increasingly tech-driven arms race have lined the mega-corporation’s pockets nicely—but the mega-corporation’s appetite for expansion even in peacetime is an ill-kept secret. With a new Jellicoe-branded line of war machines rumored to debut this year, the biggest question on everyone’s lips is: are these simply souped-up new war mechs, designed to intimidate non-Incorporated governments like the Barricade Coalition and democratic allies abroad—or something stranger and more sinister? And do they have anything to do with the wyvern-esque shadows spotted near the walls of New Columbia last month?
* * *
AT FIRST, PRU THOUGHT she was dreaming about an earthquake. The soft-cushioned cot she’d staked out and collapsed into after her shower shook beneath her every time she turned over, which meant that either this weird treehouse-cabin-thing was much more poorly built than Anabel and Alex’s money should have allowed—or the beach itself had decided to rebel against their pretensions.
Something boomed faintly in the distance. Then the floor rocked so hard, Pru nearly fell off the cot’s edge. Swearing in a sleep-ragged voice, Pru sat up, casting about blindly for her phone. “Guys,” she hissed into the dark. “Guys, did you feel that?”
The darkness-blurred edges of the cabin did not reply. Pru fumbled her phone on, which displayed the time in bright neon numbers: 8:30 P.M. People were probably starting to gather on the beach for the demo.
Fully awake now, Pru swung her legs over the side of her cot, heart beginning to hammer. When her feet hit the floor, a second boom nearly jarred her knees out from under her. “Holy shit,” she hissed, clinging to the cot’s edge. Then, very gingerly, she jogged over to the closest window. At first, she thought a storm was rolling in—a cloud, at any rate, huge and dark, blotting out the moon. But no, it couldn’t be a cloud, not with those shifting edges, scattering like—
Wings. Pru’s fingers spasmed along the windowsill. Tens, maybe dozens, of shiny metallic wings batted up against the ocean’s horizon, preparing to descend on the beach. Like Rebelwing’s, but smaller, jerkier in their flight patterns. The back of her brain screamed. She’d seen this before, but back then, it had been confined to footage of wartime propaganda in the safety of a history classroom.
Wyverns.
So here was Jellicoe’s fireworks display. Pru’s friends would be waiting for her on the demo. The thought of them thudded into the pit of her stomach, along with her heart. She was supposed to go meet them. This was what they’d come to see. The enemy they’d come to scope.