Chapter 47
Life cuts us. A million bloody slices.
—Adina Mercant, poet (b. 1832, d. 1901)
BO TUGGED KAIA away from the atrium an hour later to steal a kiss . . . and to try to erase the faint sadness that had lingered in the back of her eyes since she’d returned from speaking with Edison. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
Huge brown eyes looked up at him. “I have a secret.” It was a bald statement. “It’s a bad one and I’m scared to tell you.”
He didn’t misread what she meant. “Nothing you say could ever change how I feel about you.”
Swallowing hard, his tough Kaia with the marshmallow heart said, “Give me a little more time?”
“Take all the time you need,” he whispered.
Her eyes shone wet for an instant but she blinked away the tears and they danced in their quiet, secret place as if time weren’t racing forward toward an unknown future.
Her cousins were gone by the time they got back to the atrium.
“Damn it.” Bo looked around, spotted a distinctly ruffled-looking Seraphina—her curls were a mess and she didn’t appear to have much lipstick left. “How long ago did they leave?”
The assistant station commander blinked. “A couple of minutes maybe.” Breathy voice, her hand pressed to her chest.
“Which exit pool?”
“Um”—Seraphina smiled dreamily—“I think he said three.”
Dropping Kaia’s hand, Bo began to run. “Back soon!” he yelled over his shoulder and, from the burst of laughter that washed over his senses, his siren knew exactly why he was running like a madman.
He was glad for his foolishness if it had made her forget the sadness.
His heart pounded, that mechanical piece of him keeping exact time as he dodged around the startled changelings in his path. And the coolly strategic part of him thought—this heart is better than my old one. It could last longer at higher rates of activity. It’d give him a physical advantage once he was back to full strength.
But it remained a heart. His heart. A human heart.
The mechanics didn’t change the blood that ran through it, or the mind of the man in whose body it was integrated.
Now it pumped with smooth efficiency as he pelted down the bridge to habitat two, the sea flashing by on either side. A large being swam alongside him for a while, its eye appearing intensely curious. Before Ryūjin, he’d have thought it impossible to read the gaze of a creature of the deep. Now he knew nosy fish who liked to poke about outside the window to his room and who he swore laughed when they startled him by appearing without warning. As for his current companion . . .
A fucking hammerhead shark! Who here was a shark? Or was it someone from the city above?
He ignored the extraneous thoughts as he crossed the bridge to habitat three and exploded into the habitat proper. Kaia and the Kahananui men were cousins, not siblings, but they all displayed a similar mischievous playfulness. Even Taji, the acknowledged grump of the group, had gleefully snuggled Seraphina, then informed Oleanna—with utmost solemnity—that he didn’t stir out of bed for anything less than ten tentacles.
It solidified Bowen’s suspicions about Kaia’s animal, but he needed proof.
However, the doors to the exit pool had already closed by the time he arrived. A red light flashed above to alert him that the doors had locked and wouldn’t open until exit was achieved. He pressed his face to the transparent material. Though the water of the pool lapped strongly against the edges, there was no sign of the men.
Discarded jeans and T-shirts littered the benches to the left of the pool.
Since those clothes had all fit the men, they’d either had them in storage on Ryūjin all along—or they’d somehow swum down with them. BlackSea changelings had to have come up with ways to carry a change or other items; otherwise, they’d have to build clothes-and-money caches along every shoreline.
Spinning away from the pool, Bo ran to the closest seaward wall, having calculated exactly where the men would come out once they exited the habitat. But he was too late. Water rippled in the lights from the habitat and he caught the silvery flash of a sleekly powerful creature moving up above, but it was only the slightest glimpse and nowhere near enough to confirm or deny his guess.
Groaning, he leaned down with his hands on his thighs and tried to catch his breath. His heart thundered, but it was holding strong. It was the rest of his post-coma body that wasn’t impressed with his sudden headlong run.
“They’ll drive you crazy,” a male voice said.
Bo wasn’t startled, having sensed George walking up to him. “I’m starting to get that feeling,” he said before rising to his full height and turning to face the thin male.
For once, the dour-faced man was smiling. “It’s a game the Kahananuis play,” he said, “not telling people their other self. They do it to unfamiliar clanmates, too.”
Bo took in George’s face and body and could come up with no creature he might resemble. “Will you answer about your own other self if I ask?”
A sly smile. “No, I like it to be a secret, too.” Something in the way he spoke made Bowen pause, but when George simply stared out at the water with a half smile that shouted wonder, he shook off the sensation. Clearly, Dr. Kahananui’s assistant enjoyed being inscrutable as much as Kaia liked being mischievous.
BlackSea’s motto should be: Secretive R Us.
EXACTLY forty-four hours later and Bo was sick to the pit of his stomach. “You’re sure?” he said to Cassius and Lily.
They both nodded. “Orders definitely came from Heenali.” Cassius’s grim voice. “Lily was able to track the calls the Fleet captains say they received. All were from her direct line.”
“Any chance a skilled hacker could have hacked her codes?” Bo struggled to believe that Heenali would scupper their alliance with BlackSea—what possible reason could she have for such a massive betrayal?
And the missing Hugo was a hacker who’d lied once already.
Bowen felt disloyal to Kaia for considering that option, but he had to consider it. Hugo was an unknown to him, while Heenali was a trusted friend and compatriot.
“The captains were adamant it was her voice on the line, her way of speaking.” Cassius folded his arms across his chest. “We have to find her, ask her.”
“Yes.” It was the least she deserved. “You lost track of her in Ireland?”
“Last fix was a place called Cork. She must’ve discovered the tracker and gotten rid of it.”
“And she’s too smart to give herself away by using electronics that can be tracked, or tapping her accounts,” Lily pointed out. “She might have cash but it’s more likely she’s using an unregistered card.”
The latter wasn’t a problem in itself—they all had unregistered cards, a safety feature that had sprung up in the aftermath of the previous leadership’s betrayal. Lily herself had helped Bowen and the knights skirt the registration system, but she was scrupulous about never knowing any details that could be used to track those cards.
Their whole point was to turn the runner into a ghost.
“Track her ex,” Bo ordered. “Only reason Heenali probably hasn’t already found him is because she’s trying to do it on her own.” Heenali had many skills, but she was no expert in Lily’s field. “We find him, we find her.”
Lily picked up an organizer. “I know where he stayed while in Venice. I should be able to unearth a financial trail.”
After ending the troubling conversation with Lily and Cassius, Bo went directly to his scheduled appointment with Dr. Kahananui. She proved to be cautiously optimistic. “The changes are progressing exactly as modeled. I feel comfortable in saying the third injection will permanently stabilize the chip.”
“What about my brain?”
“It could still go either way.”
Bo shoved his hands through his hair and stared at the ground before getting to his feet. “Thank you, Doctor.” There was only one place to go, only one person he wanted to see.
Kaia took one look at him and tugged him into a quiet corner of her busy kitchen. “What did Attie say?”
He told her, then said, “I haven’t spoken to my parents yet.” A lack that tore at him. “I figured they’d already mourned me once. Why give them hope when it could all be over in three more days? Two, since I won’t have much time on that last day.”
The lack of time was a freight train rushing at him.
Kaia searched his face. “Talk to them,” she said softly. “Last time, it was an act of violence that brought you to the edge of death. This time around, you’ve taken hold of your own destiny—and your parents know their son, will understand the choice you’ve made.” Her hand, warm and strong, pressing against his cheek. “If I could speak to my parents again, even if only for a single minute, I’d take it.”
The raw hunger in her voice shattered Bo. Enfolding her in his arms, he held her until one of her assistants called for her.
Kaia told her younger clanmate she’d be there in a moment, then kissed Bo sweet and infinite. “You need this, too. Go, talk to them.”
Bo contacted Lily first, so she could warn Leah and Jerard Knight. Five minutes later, he took a deep breath and placed his call. Smiles cracked two grief-worn faces. Their joy was piercing, their sadness a punishing heartbreak, and their pride in his choice to be used as an experiment an open thing.
Bo was who he was because of these two people who’d raised him to honor his commitments and fulfill his promises. He should’ve known they’d stand with him in this as they’d stood with him for every other choice he’d made.
That done, he spent most of the day going over everything Lily and Cassius had found to date, and comparing it against the dossier that Malachai had quietly sent him. He had to admit it—Hugo had been right in what he’d pointed out about the Fleet movements. There were too many incursions for it to be accidental, and at least two lined up with vanishings.
Fuck.
He had no answers by the time night fell in the habitat, but he talked over what he did have with Kaia, without mentioning Heenali’s name. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t be torn between her loyalty to BlackSea and what she felt for Bowen.
“It’s so hard, isn’t it?” she said, a black anger in her eyes. “When the betrayal comes from within?”
“Fucking hurts more than any bullet I’ve ever taken.”
A raised eyebrow. “How many bullets have you taken?”
He told her, relating the story behind each one. In return, she shared how, as a trainee chef, she once gave herself third-degree burns on the insides of her forearms because she refused to drop a perfectly baked cake. After that, they moved on to other memories, other pieces of themselves, desperately trying to fit a lifetime within the screamingly short time left to them.
ELEVEN a.m. the next day and very conscious he had only forty-five hours before the third injection and an uncertain future, Bowen went looking for Kaia again. Up since five a.m., he’d already spoken with Lily and Cassius not only about Heenali but about contingency plans should the experiment fail.
He’d written out a step-by-step strategy for the two.
After grudgingly agreeing to step into the breach, Cassius had said, “I’ll fuck it up. Doesn’t matter how many notes you give me. I’ve got the subtlety of a hammer when it comes to politics.”
“You just need to hold the Alliance together until the knights find a viable replacement.”
“I’ll fight to the bitter end, but we both know the Alliance will fragment without you.” The clear gray of his friend’s eyes held no judgment, only hardheaded reality. “You’re the glue, Bo. You’ve always been the glue.”
The idea of all their brutally hard work crumbling to dust, leaving humanity without any champion, it was crushed gravel in his lungs. Refusing to believe that it was the only possible outcome, he’d spent three hours talking Cassius through the most critical of the myriad things his friend would need to know should the worst come to pass.
Now, his time was his own and he wanted to spend it with Kaia. She wasn’t in the kitchen, but he spotted Seraphina in the atrium. “Have you seen Kaia?”
“Sorry, can’t help.” A narrow-eyed glance. “But you’re doing good, Security Chief. Keep on looking after my girl and we’ll get along fine.”
Holding those words close after the assistant station commander walked off, Bowen was considering in which direction to mount his search when he found himself the focus of a familiar set of hazel eyes. “George.”
The other man bristled. “You and Seraphina? I thought you had respect for Kaia.”
“What?” Bo frowned. “She’s Kaia’s friend and she almost-maybe likes me, that’s it.” He took in George’s blotchy face and raised shoulders. “You have feelings for her?” If so, he’d left his pursuit too late—Kaia had mentioned Edison meeting Sera out in the deep yesterday. The other man had been in full courting mode.
Flushing, George shook his head. “Seraphina is too much woman for me.” Utter puppy-love adoration in his tone.
“Women,” Bo said, “they twist a man up.”
George turned to stare out into the black. “Everyone’s saying she kissed Edison Kahananui. Is it true?”
“Yeah.” Bo figured the man might as well have all the information. “I’m sorry.”
Face falling, George sat down at a table. Bo wasn’t sure quite what to do, but he couldn’t leave the dejected changeling alone. He grabbed a couple of coffees from the kitchen, then came to sit with George. They didn’t speak, but neither did George tell him to get lost. It was maybe half an hour later that Dr. Kahananui’s assistant stirred. “I have to go do . . . something.”
Bo watched him leave, lines furrowing his brow. “Does George have many friends on the station?” he asked KJ a minute later, when the other man sauntered over to say hi.
“I totally tried, man, but George is a lone-wolf type.” The orderly shrugged. “He’s welcome to join any table at dinner or to turn up to group swims and walks, whatever—I mean, you joined the basketball game in the central habitat—no stress, right, but George mostly, like, holes up in the lab.”
That was all true. Bo hadn’t realized a game was about to begin when he went to the central habitat for a run, had been cheerfully assigned to a team when he stopped on the edge of the court.
“I figure he’s just one of us who likes to be alone.” Finishing up his coffee, KJ reached in his pocket and pulled out a stick of gum. “Duty calls. Catch you later.”
Bo raised a hand in reply, then restarted his hunt for Kaia. Fate was laughing at him—he eventually backtracked to find her in the lab, having an early lunch with her cousin.
When a tiny bell rang just as he entered, he detoured to scoop Hex up from the maze. Stroking the mouse’s silky white fur, he carried Kaia’s pet over to where Dr. Kahananui and Kaia sat on opposite sides of a lab bench.
The doctor had a large organizer beside her, data scrolling through it.
Angry at the gods for all the things he couldn’t yet say to his siren, he went around the counter and murmured, “Hi, Kaia.” Then he stole a kiss that was all tongue and possession and need.
Breath short, she smiled against his lips. “Have some respect. Hex is watching.”
“He’s a worldly mouse.” Wrapping his arms around her from behind after putting Hex into her pocket, he held her close and tried not to crush her with his possessive need.
Something buzzed into the silence.
Throwing a quick glance at her mobile comm, Dr. Kahananui touched the answer key. “Tansy? I have you on speak—”
“Atalina, someone’s smashed all our Beta Seventeen samples!” a distraught female voice interrupted.