“The champion sits over there,” Yeon-ha said, pointing toward the booths. “He’s in the back.”
“Min, you can stay with your friend,” Eva said. “But if I say we have to leave, we leave, okay?”
Min nodded, then swung away from Eva so fast her braid whipped around. “Yay, okay, so tell me about every single bot here,” she told Yeon-ha as they began moving through the crowd toward the fighting area.
Eva briefly debated sending Sue with them, then decided against it, since Sue was liable to get lost immediately. Instead she continued to tow the girl along like a wayward escape pod. Short as she was, she couldn’t see over the crowds, relying instead on Vakar’s steady movements and Pink’s constantly scanning eye along with the occasional tiptoed peep to be sure she hadn’t been moved off-course by the currents of people.
As she got closer, a single voice stood out from the rest. It wasn’t that it was especially loud, compared to the blaring music and the many other conversations going on simultaneously. But it was, as Yeon-ha had said, incredibly irritating, the kind of voice pitched at just the right register to trigger a fight-or-fight response—as opposed to fight-or-flight. Eva’s own words, spoken moments earlier, immediately came back to haunt her, and she closed her eyes and prayed that she had heard wrong even as she continued to approach the person speaking.
Her prayers, as they often did, went unanswered.
“Well, actually,” the voice said, and the crowd parted in front of Eva, leaving her face to pale, skinny, intensely punchable face with Miles fucking Erck.
Chapter 7
A New Challenger Appears
For several long moments, Eva became intimately acquainted with how she assumed Mari felt every time Eva was being exasperating in a conversation. She stared at Miles, sitting in his booth surrounded by hangers-on, his arms draped over the back of the seat in a pose of utter relaxation, his limp blond hair hanging over one half-lidded eye.
How had he even survived? When she left him at the Fridge facility, he was unconscious under a table because she’d knocked him out for being a mouthy comemierda. Presumably he’d awakened with enough time to reach an escape vehicle, or his friend—Emily? Emle?—had managed to drag him to safety. And then he had either escaped on his own, or he was one of Josh’s two mystery companions on that whirlwind intergalactic tour.
She forced her breaths to come evenly, in and out of her nose, until she mastered herself enough to plaster on a smile and approach the table.
“Hey, Miles,” Eva said in the friendliest tone she could manage. “It’s been a while.”
Miles looked up at Eva, first with his mouth half-open in confusion, then with a sneer that bordered on lewd. “Captain Innocente,” he said. “It’s been six months, actually.”
“It certainly has.” Madre de dios, she thought, her hand curling into a fist.
“I’m surprised you’re not dead yet,” he continued. “Doesn’t Gmaargitz Fedorach still have a bounty on you?”
Eva sensed a dozen sets of ears perking up at the word “bounty.” One set belonged to a dark-haired man sitting near Miles, wearing a blue exosuit and a scowl that could curdle milk. He stared at Eva as if his eyes were lasers that could zap her into dust, but his only visible weapon was a large cannon that either covered his right arm or had replaced it. Android? Cyborg? She wasn’t sure. The weapon looked familiar, though . . .
“No bounty anymore,” Eva said, and the attention died. “Turns out even rich, powerful emperors can only waste so much time and money on one lucky human before their subjects start sharpening the guillotines.”
“Well, actually,” Miles said, “the gmaarg don’t use guillotines. They prefer to feed people to giant worms that are basically living oubliettes.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully at the thought.
Eva could feel her smile slipping, so she struggled to slide it back into place. “Miles, just to be completely certain before I continue this conversation: you’re the current bot-fighting champion here, is that right?”
“Current, and future,” he said smugly.
Behind Eva, Pink groaned loud enough to wake the dead. This was going to be a “secret bourbon stash” kind of day.
“I’m looking for someone you were working with at The Fridge,” Eva continued. “Josh Zafone. Do you remember him?”
Sue leaned forward eagerly, peering out from behind Eva.
“Well, actually, I do,” Miles said. “I saved his life, you know, when everything was blowing up. We were on the same project. I would tell you about it, but it was highly confidential.”
“The Proarkhe artifact, yes,” Eva said, relishing the frown that flashed across his features before they returned to his normal resting punchface. “Did you and Josh travel together after you escaped, or did you come straight here, and he passed through later?”
Miles crossed his arms and leaned back. “I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t even have to keep talking to you losers.” He snapped his fingers. “Nara, get rid of them.”
“Nara?” Eva blinked, sure she must have heard him wrong.
From the shadows behind the booth, the hulking form of Nara Sumas emerged. Over two meters tall, in her trademark suit of armor with its smooth black helmet and miniature plasma cannon, Nara was normally employed as an extremely expensive bounty hunter. Eva had first met her on Garilia, then again on La Sirena Negra when her dad, Pete, had stolen it briefly, and she’d last seen the merc while dropping her ass off somewhere with the rest of Pete’s motley crew after the Fridge facility was destroyed.
Vakar, who had stood by quietly up to this point, managed to become somehow more present despite his Wraith armor rendering him scentless. If it made a difference to Nara, she didn’t show it.
“Larsen,” Nara said, her voice modulated by the helmet.
“It’s Innocente,” Eva replied coolly. “Is the economy that bad, that you’re slumming it here playing bodyguard for this comemierda?”
“She isn’t his bodyguard.” The dark-haired guy next to Miles spoke, climbing out of the booth to stand next to Nara. He wore giant boots over his exosuit, and as she watched, a series of yellow status lights on the side of his arm weapon lit up.
“Well, actually,” Miles said, “she’s on my team right now, which means she does what I say, or she doesn’t get what she came here for.” He sneered at the man, who glared right back.
“And what did you come here for?” Eva asked.
“Confidential,” Nara replied.
“And none of your business,” the other man said.
Sue, who had always been a pro at reading a room, stepped forward then. “Please,” she said. “I just want to find my brother. Won’t you help me?”
Miles leaned forward eagerly, a weird glint in his eye that made Eva want to slap her forehead. “You’re Josh’s little sister? He talked about you all the time.”
“Uh, yeah,” Sue said, backing toward Eva again.
“He said you were even better with bots than he was,” Miles continued, his expression predatory.
“I . . . Maybe? He’s really good.” Sue fidgeted nervously.