“No.”
He stripped off Riccardo’s jacket and suspenders. He rolled Riccardo onto his stomach and wrenched his arms behind him. Ian used the suspenders to tie him hand and foot with quick efficiency.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
So, in universally understood language, he was not fine. “Did you call the ship back?”
“Yes, but Riccardo revoked our authorization. Alex is landing nearby and Aoife is going to meet us at the perimeter for an escort back.” Ian staggered to his feet and I rushed to brace my shoulder under his arm.
“How many guards are between here and there?” I asked.
“Fewer than there were,” Ian said. A glance at his face revealed a grim smile.
“How many did you disable?”
“We’ll take the stairs,” he said, changing the subject. “We’ll be able to hear anyone coming up.”
Warm blood had soaked through my dress, so I decided now was not the time to argue. “I don’t suppose you saw a medkit on your way up? You’re bleeding badly.”
“Tie his jacket around my waist,” Ian instructed as he took the blaster from me. “It’ll work until we make it to the ship.” He was starting to look gray, but the determined set of his mouth was familiar.
I picked up Riccardo’s jacket and folded it to make a pad out of the front and back, then tied the arms tightly around Ian’s waist. He grunted but didn’t complain.
I found my clutch and tucked my com down the front of my dress, then I activated the cuff on my left wrist by swiping my right hand over the smooth surface from inside to outside and back again. I kept my hand in place for two seconds until the cuff vibrated. It had enough power to repel up to eight shots. If Ian stayed close, he would be partially protected, but if he went down, we were sunk.
“Let’s go,” I whispered, concern eating at me. Perhaps at the peak of my fitness I might’ve been able to carry Ian, but today I would be lucky if I could drag him on a smooth surface. We needed to get to Aoife as soon as possible.
Ian set off with an unsteady gait. In the room next door, two guards and two techs lay unmoving. The techs had been shot in the head, while one guard had a hole through his chest and the other had been shot at close range with what appeared to be his own blaster.
I closed my eyes at the destruction. I knew it had to happen, and I was no stranger to death, but so much carnage turned my stomach. Holding my breath, I stopped and collected the extra blaster. Ian’s stance wobbled and his eyes were going glassy.
“Stay with me, Ian,” I murmured. “I’m not leaving you and I can’t do this alone.”
“If I go down, leave me.”
“I won’t,” I said calmly. “So you better not go down.”
Determination lit his gaze, but by the time we’d descended the stairs, Ian had taken to leaning heavily against me. I paused to give him a chance to catch his breath. Everywhere I looked, dead guards stared back with unblinking eyes. Ian had single-handedly taken out at least a dozen armed guards after being outnumbered three to one in close quarters.
Speculation turned into suspicion. He was about the right age. And he knew Loch, though he tried to hide it. My eyes narrowed as the pieces snapped together. This entire time a member of the Genesis Project had been hiding directly under the Consortium’s collective noses.
The Consortium had hunted Loch to the ends of the universe to cover up their little experiment and the fact that they had treated the project members as expendable and less than human. Ian had a good reason to hate everything about the Consortium. Was this his payback? Did he have something to do with Ferdinand’s disappearance?
I spun around and planted my blaster in Ian’s chest. His eyes widened, but he didn’t move. “Did you betray Ferdinand?” I asked in a furious whisper. “Was this your doing from the beginning? Did you put a hit on me?”
He blinked and some of the fuzziness cleared from his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “I did not betray you or your brother.”
“But you must hate the Consortium.”
His expression shuttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
He sighed and the sound rattled dangerously, letting me know time was short. “Look around. If I wanted you dead, do you think I would need these imbeciles to do the job for me? I did not betray you, Bianca.”
He moved surprisingly fast, knocking my blaster up toward the ceiling and spinning me around. His arms wrapped around me, trapping me with my back to his chest, the blaster pointing harmlessly away from us. I struggled, but I would have better luck breaking out of triple-max prison restraints.
“I did not betray you and I will not hurt you,” Ian said. “But I will not let you expose me with your wild theories, either. Promise me that you’ll keep any knowledge about me to yourself.”
“I could lie.”
“You could, but you won’t. Promise me, Bianca.”
“And if I don’t?” I pressed.
“Bianca,” he growled and gave me a little shake. “We’re not leaving until you promise. Do you want to kill me?”
“Maybe I do,” I bluffed.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered into my ear. I shivered. “Promise me, Bianca.”
“I will, if you’ll promise me something in return.”
I felt him tense against me, then curse under his breath. “What is it?”
“Promise me you’ll let me help until Ferdinand is found. And not from Serenity or wherever else you plan to dump me. I go where you go and we find him together.”
He sighed again, but I could tell his resistance was wavering.
“You owe me this much, at least,” I said.
“Very well, if you promise to keep anything you may know about me to yourself forever, I’ll let you come with me to track down Ferdinand.”
I could argue about who was coming with whom, but I decided to take what I could get. “I promise I won’t ever use any of your secrets against you,” I said quietly. It was a broader promise than he’d asked for, but trust was built slowly, one brick at a time.
I didn’t have a good history with trust, but I would try, one more time. The thought of making another mistake terrified me down to my bones, and I didn’t know if I could recover again, not if Ian was the one who betrayed me. I swallowed nervously as I waited for his answer.
“Okay,” he agreed, letting me go. He staggered, then caught himself against the wall before he toppled. “I should’ve asked Aoife to bring me a dose of foxy.”
Foxy was the street name for amphoxy, a mix of stimulants and painkillers. Soldiers used it to get wounded teammates back to safety or to complete an impossible mission. It tended to be a last resort because it overrode the pain receptors and made the user feel invincible, usually causing the soldier to end up more injured.
“Where is she meeting us?” I asked.
“North gate. We need to get moving.” The while I still can was unspoken, but I heard it nonetheless.
For all of Ian’s injuries, he was still an impressive shot. In the next hallway, he shot a guard before I’d even realized someone was there. When another guard rounded the corner directly in front of us, Ian felled him with a single swift punch. I swallowed as I realized just how gently he’d treated me.