She glanced at me, no smile on her lips.
“Relax, starshine. We’re almost done.” The empty words left a bad taste in my mouth.
“Almost done?” Tess let out a soft snort, keeping her voice low. Her gaze cut to mine, bright blue and sharp. “This is the easy part. How can we possibly do what he asked?”
I squeezed her hand. “One thing at a time.” We had to take care of Bridgebane and the blood exchange first. “We’ll figure it out.”
Her Yeah, right expression told me I could shove my platitudes up my ass. At least her annoyance was better than her wide-eyed trust and misplaced faith in me that had torn me up day and night on Albion 5.
Tess remained on edge, gripping my hand harder than she probably realized. Our palms sweated. Our fingers stuck. But I’d take any contact that bound us together. I’d had her underneath me last night. She’d been on top this morning. She was trusting me with her body again, but I couldn’t tell if her head and her heart were really following.
I looked over at the woman who’d turned my life upside down in the best way possible. The worried crinkle between her eyebrows was deeper than usual. I increased the pressure on her fingers, hoping the weight of my hand would show her she wasn’t in this alone—unless she chose to be. So far, I’d been lucky. She’d kept me around despite my bounty-hunting past and decade-long ties to the Dark Watch.
I scanned the neighborhood as we walked, my eyes peeled for danger and my ears cocked for the sound of a military patrol. We’d paid for a platform on a docking tower near the meeting point with Ahern, trying to avoid using the crowded, tubelike shuttles racing all over the place. The multilevel network ran both above and below ground and was huge and complex. A twenty-minute walk through the grid-patterned city center had seemed easier, but now I was thinking it might’ve been a mistake. The walk to the restaurant had already seemed strangely quiet, and from what we were seeing again now, Koralight Crowners didn’t stay on the streets. They either went inside or got in a tube, funneling toward the frequent shuttle stops at a quick pace.
We’d only had a few daylight hours to observe the city, and things had looked different from two hundred and fifty-two levels up. If I’d had more time to prepare, I would’ve known the people here didn’t go anywhere on foot; they took the damn shuttles. The fact that Tess and I had just walked by two stops was already suspicious.
Seeing a cross street that looked mainly residential, I guided us off the main avenue toward a neighborhood I hoped had fewer obvious transportation hubs.
While they’d been acting as lookouts and watching over us, Jax and Fiona had instinctively headed inside, rotating between the several shops and large food emporium in the area around the restaurant. I increasingly understood their urge to take cover as we made our way back to the Endeavor. Outside just didn’t feel right.
They hadn’t checked in for a few minutes, which meant they were on track to get back to the ship soon. We’d all gone mostly silent after Ahern dropped his bomb, blasting to smithereens what little safety we thought we’d gained after passing off the enhancers to the rebel leaders in the Fold.
The Fold. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around that place. Untraceable except for a big, dark gravity field. Constantly moving around the Outer Zones. Expanding to fit whatever was inside it—right now, an entire rebel base. It hurt like hell going in and just as badly on the way out. Somehow, it knew friend from foe. Unfortunately, the Overseer’s serum made any enhanced soldier able to cross the barrier without suffering from the aneurysm that usually took out enemies on their way into the rebel stronghold.
They’d have to find it first, though. As far as I could tell, the Fold was the best-kept secret in the galaxy. Being inexplicable probably helped. If you weren’t born there or brought there, the human mind just wouldn’t conjure up an alternate pocket in space like that.
I lifted Tess’s hand and brushed my lips against her knuckles. It was only partly an excuse to talk into my piece-of-shit wristband. I kissed her every chance I got.
“Coms still on?” I asked quietly. The silence was eerie when we were supposed to be connected.
Two masculine voices immediately answered with “Check.” Jax and Merrick.
“Fungi!” Fiona said, her tone enthusiastic but hushed.
A small laugh bubbled out of Tess. It was just a little huff, but it loosened her shoulders. Her stride lengthened, less tense. The Endeavor’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 the Endeavor. 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 the Endeavor could 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.”