The journey this time takes two full days, as we backtrack past Veloria to reach the newest planet our quest has led us to. Wren has been quiet so far about how she came to have a contact with such knowledge to begin with, but my friends and I are too relieved at the break to bother questioning it overtly. What we know is that there is someone inside the agency willing to give us the information we need, and that we must meet in person to avoid the information being intercepted by someone watching off-planet transmissions. Just setting up the meeting was risky enough. I hope it is not a time-consuming process, as Jari is running out of time.

I spend the journey alternately worrying about how he is faring, and feeling strange about the fact that the woman I am falling for is in love with another version of myself.

I can tell that it is love. When she speaks of the stranger from the festival, her voice changes to something tinged with longing and adoration, her eyes shining with it. I often find myself fascinated with the green within them, more prominent on some days than on others; we have few such colors on the ice-side of Veloria, and I could happily grow used to seeing it every day.

We dance around each other throughout those two days. I cannot be sure, but I expect that she feels the same pull I do, leftover from our single night together and growing stronger now that we remain in close proximity. I fear that however this mission ends, whenever we inevitably part, I will not be able to function without her near.

I cannot know that she is my mate without testing the theory, without lying with her in every sense of the word, but I already feel like she is. She is human, and the feeling will be less on her part, but I think she feels some small approximation of it as well.

I push such thoughts from my mind as we land on the latest planet. Einia is a dark place, its sun so far away that the planet even at its brightest looks like a hotel room with a wonky bulb. The pollution of the mega-city we find ourselves in does not help in the slightest, and as we land, it seems as though the sky itself is blotted out.

“No stars,” Etto comments.

Lena shrugs. “That’s how most of Earth is now,” she says. “In the cities at least.”

“I’ve been here once before,” Sovren says, as we make our way out of the ship, each of us dressed carefully in clothing meant to help us blend in. “The skyscrapers are so tall that if you look out a window from the top floor, you cannot see the bottom.”

Predictably, once we are on the ramp, everyone’s heads tilt back collectively, each of us trying our best to see the tops of the nearest buildings. Even the landing dock we have stopped at is elevated, with the ground scarcely visible below us, lost in a hazy layer of smog. Air-cars and ships zip back and forth both above and below us, working with the long-enclosed bridges that stretch between the buildings to obscure our view.

“They say some people born above us live their entire lives without their feet touching the ground.”

Sovren was always the one who spun stories during the war, when our company needed help forgetting the horrors they had faced throughout the day and what new battles awaited them in the morning. He has a voice made for making bullshit believable. Even Etto looks convinced, though the Velorian should know better than to trust the yarns of his friend.

“You’ll need to keep your camera in the bag, Lena,” I say. “This isn’t the most hospitable city.”

Lena, saddened, tucks the handheld device away. “This is worse than X24,” she says, prompting a compassionate nod from Wren.

“Just stay close,” I say. “The five of us make a formidable group. I can’t imagine anyone trying to harass us on our way.”

Etto looks down at his blaster as the ramp closes behind us. I walk at the front of the group with Wren, who is receiving a transmission on her comm that is supposed to guide us to our meeting point. It comes in the form of a map as opposed to words, a green line that traces its way through the streets. With no knowledge of the contact, I have no choice here but to trust that Wren’s estimation of their trustworthiness is correct. Lena walks behind us, Etto and Sovren on either side. In this way, they can both guard the humans and my vulnerable back.

The buildings around us cast the streets in further shadow. Even with sharper vision than that of a human, I find myself squinting to make certain that I don’t trip. The people of the city seem accustomed to it, and walk with a confidence that I only hold on my own planet.

“You walk like your wound still hurts,” Wren says.

I don’t bother denying it. “It does,” I say. “It’s better every day, but it would have healed more quickly had I allowed it to rest.”

“Well,” she says sympathetically, “there wasn’t exactly time for that.” Her feet stumble slightly over a raised flagstone on the sidewalk, the rushing breeze from air-cars passing us makes her perfectly styled hair a mess of waves and stray pieces. As she is running her hands through it to smooth it down, I link my arm with hers, doing my best to guide her through the dark.

“You’ve been to X24,” I say. It is not a question, as she already revealed as much. I merely want to know what she has to say about it, or whether she will say anything.

When she speaks, her voice is lowered, so that no one outside of our small group has a chance of overhearing it. “It was pre-Lena. Had a job doing stories for the local news, and I sort of stumbled into this expose on slavery. The story took me there. I put my nose where it wasn’t welcome and things went south pretty quick. I uncovered the names of a group of influential politicians who benefitted from the trade there. I gave the list to the right person. When the story broke, they kept everyone’s name out of it. We’d probably all be dead otherwise.”

Lena clears her throat. “There’s still slavery on X24.”

Wren shrugs. “Sometimes, you cut the head off the snake, and it just grows more heads.”

“So, your contact?” I lead.

“She’s a woman I know from that job. At the moment, she’s working for the agency that hired our hitman. She weasels her way into places, and takes them apart from the inside out. Or tries to. Some jobs are better than others.”

As we walk onward, we make our way down streets littered with garbage that filters down from above, carelessly tossed out windows or moving ships. It is impassable in places, and we merely trudge through. This city is different from the obvious lawlessness of X24, subtle in its corruption. There is no doubt a slave trade here, in addition to a whole array of unspeakable evils, but such things happen underground, behind closed doors.

The crowd we began in only grows larger instead of diffusing. It is the opposite of what generally happens when one moves toward the dark underbelly of something, and it makes me uneasy. This planet is unfamiliar to all of us, even the soldiers at my back. I feel as though as we are walking, with wide-open eyes, into the maw of a predator. I am suddenly worried about the implications of the Prince of Veloria being seen in such a place, and wish I had the capability of throwing on my disguise without giving away my identity to Wren.

When at last we reach the place Wren’s comm has led us to, I would hazard a guess that each one of us has fried nerves. Paranoia has infested us as we walked here, and we are sure that each person who stares at us too long has a motive that is less than pure.

“Which building?” I ask.

Wren shrugs, body tight with nervousness. “She didn’t say.”

The crowd flows around us, like we are rocks in a stream. Voices overlap, putting our translator implants through their paces.

“I have to say, I’ve never met up with a more obviously out of place client,” a voice says. I turn to see a human female sizing us up. Her hair is buzzed short and a silver ring glints in her nose. Her smile is wide and friendly, but I do not for a second think that I can trust it, even if Wren does. Her body relaxes, shoulders entering a more normal slope.

“Rita,” she says. “I wish I could say it was a pleasure. I hope you don’t plan on speaking in the open.”

“Not quite,” Rita says. “I just wanted to meet you with witnesses, make sure this isn’t a trap.”

“And to think we were worried about a trap on your end,” I say, voiced laced with sarcasm.

Her grin is too sharp and thin to reach her eyes. “Follow me,” she says. “But don’t be obvious about it.”

The building she leads us to is a dilapidated apartment a few floors below the surface. We are blind until Rita pulls a cord that switches on a flickering light bulb, illuminating the room. It is small and bereft of furniture save for a single table and a vid-screen on the wall.

“I would appreciate it if your muscle watches the door,” she says.

I meet Etto’s eye and incline my head in that direction. He and Sovren are quick to oblige, apparently happy to be given a job with a tangible goal. Rita taps the vid-screen, making images flicker past, before finally settling on what seems to be a list of names. She zooms in on one, and I see that they are not names, but coordinates.

“We usually know who the clients are,” she says. “But in high profile cases, the money they pay us is sent through a hidden network, routed through decoy IP addresses and fake accounts. The only reason the coordinates are collected, is so we have a way of tracking them down if they refuse to pay.”

“Did this one pay?” I ask.

She nods. “Every penny. And you were worth quite a bit. Of course, the job went south considering the fact that you’re standing here, which means the client is obligated to request a refund.”

“Obligated,” Wren says. “So, they haven’t asked?”

Rita lifts both shoulders. “Not as of yet.” She pulls a drive from her pocket and passes it to Wren. “A copy of the coordinates is on there, along with all the servers and IPs used for the initial transaction. The latter part is only useful as evidence if you’ve got a kickass computer expert, but you’re a Prince, so anything is possible.”

She ignores me then, and steps toward Wren. “I’m sorry to make you traverse the whole city like this, but it was really the only way to get you the info without one of us getting burned. Every transmission I receive or send out is fair game for the Black Station to track. The only way I got away with the call the other day was by pretending you’re prospective clients.”

“I owe you a favor then,” Wren says.

“You’re damn right you do,” Rita replies. “My bosses want me to wait on something big before I spring the trap. I’ve got a feeling that we’re close.”

The two women shake hands. “Be careful,” Wren tells her.

Rita gives her a smile that suggests she will do nothing of the sort and disappears into the crowd outside.

“That was shockingly easy,” Lena says.

Wren glares. “You should know better than to say that before we’re at the ship.”

“Shit,” Lena says. “Change of subject then. Rita’s cute, don’t you think?”

Wren is standing next to me, and drops her forehead onto my shoulder in exasperation.

Throughout the long walk back to the ship, we wait for trouble the way you wait for a blizzard. But nothing happens. We pass through the same crowds and travel past the same buildings. Wren walks with her head held high, the drive filled with information tucked safely in her pocket. I am beginning to realize that she has likely worked with all sorts of people in the past toward the end of securing a good story, of gaining credible information that needed to be shared. My respect for her is continuously growing.

Back in the ship, we upload the coordinates in the cockpit. Wren and Lena stand beside me, the three of us behind the two chairs that Etto and Sovren occupy. They know ships better than I do, and by the extension the computer systems aboard the ship. A representation of our current system fills the screen, but with a few clicks of Etto’s fingers, it switches systems, showing the one I am most familiar with. It zooms past the other planets before focusing on only one.

“Veloria,” I say, and with the word, a cold weight settles in my chest.