19.
MADDIE
Maddie had pulled the trigger in a fit of rage, but she jerked her hand away at the last second and the shot went wide, going nowhere near Damien. She screamed, betrayed by her body.
He should be dead. He’d done so much to deserve it. He should be dead.
Damien laughed and shook his head. “You’re pathetic.”
The doors burst open and Maddie jumped, aiming her gun in that direction even though she didn’t think she could even bring herself to pull the trigger again.
It was Redek. He stood in the doorway, breathing hard and supporting himself mainly on one leg. She immediately returned the gun to Damien, and tried not to panic at how bad Redek looked.
When he moved, though, it was like nothing had happened. Without hesitation he’d strode behind Damien and crossed knives against his throat.
Damien, finally, looked scared. He tried to struggle, but the knives were so close that he only nicked his skin on them.
“Are you okay?” Redek demanded, looking her up and down.
She nodded, though it was through tears. “I couldn’t do it,” she whispered, finally lowering her gun. “I want to. I want to so badly, but I can’t do it.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Redek’s voice was soft.
“Of course it is. He killed my parents and locked me away for my entire life and I can’t even take that away from him. What’s wrong with me? Am I really that pathetic?” She was on the verge of a breakdown, and the satisfaction in Damien’s eyes, despite the position he was in, only made it worse.
She was letting him see all of it.
She was weak.
“This is what makes you better than him,” Redek had given up on trying to mask his emotion now. His voice was raw as he spoke to her, even if his hold on Damien never lessened. “He put you through all that and you still came out of the other side without a bad bone in your body. You hate Damien because he killed people in cold blood, and you refuse to do that. It makes you a thousand times better than he ever could be.”
Maddie wished more than anything she could hug him. “Thank you,” she said through choked breaths.
“What should I do with him?” Redek asked.
Maddie stared Damien down, reveling in the terror in his eyes as he resisted the urge to fight back, and it was on her lips to tell Redek to kill him. “I don’t know,” she said after a pause. Redek was covered in blood. He’d obviously killed a lot already today.
She was loathe to ask him to do it again.
“Is there any way we can still get him prosecuted?” she asked. “I mean, he obviously has IU contacts.”
“I’m sure there’s someone willing to do it if that’s the route you want to take.”
“What do you think?”
Redek’s blades tightened around Damien’s neck, breaking skin but not enough to really bleed. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to. This is your fight. I’m just your weapon.”
She wished he'd make a decision for her, but she knew this was something she needed to do.
Everything Redek had just said echoed in her mind, and she knew what she had to do. "Don't kill him," she said, and started looking around for something to bind Damien with. "I won't kill him." She looked at him, and smiled, and it wasn't kind. "I'll let him live in a dank cell without any of the luxury he's worked his entire life to get."
Damien had shut down the moment she said she wanted him to live, and he didn't respond now. His face was drawn and his eyes downcast.
It didn't matter what he felt now, though. He'd gotten angry and sent his guards away and it had been the end of him.
Maddie slammed shut a desk drawer in frustration. "I can't find anything."
"We'll port down to the planet and tie him up there. I'm sure the gang will have something we can use." Even that didn't make Damien's expression change.
She fingered her bracelet. It felt like the fight was completely over now, but the IU and the planet were still fighting. There was still so much to do. They might still not even get out of it alive yet. "Okay. Let's go back."
They pressed the button together and reappeared in the control room where Tisya was still behind his computer screen. Maddie was almost surprised to see him still alive and uninjured after having to tell Redek where she'd gone.
He jumped up the moment they arrived, and gave Damien a once-over. "This is him?" he asked.
Redek nodded. "This is him. He's the one who made all this happen."
Tisya's smile was malicious. "Excellent."
"We need to find a way to let the military leaders of the IU know," she said, beginning to pace as Tisya found something to bind Damien with. "Maybe they'll surrender when they know we have Damien. How is the fighting going?"
"Badly. We're too outnumbered and under-equipped to fight them off."
"Then we need Damien," Redek responded through gritted teeth.
The moment Tisya had secured the binds on Damien—which looked tight enough to cut off circulation—Redek shoved him away so he could lean against the desk heavily. His leg was bleeding profusely and his skin was pale, without even a hint of pink. Maddie had been so caught up in what had been happening to Damien that she hadn't registered his wound as being that bad. He had a knife sticking out of his thigh that had been hidden by Damien.
She rushed forward, helping him to stand up. "Why didn't you say something?" she hissed. "You need to see someone about this. Tisya, where can he go to get medical attention?"
"There's a medical center below ground but it's a bit of a walk. Can you make it?" he asked Redek.
"Yes. I'll get there."
Tisya gave them the instructions and Redek stood up, obviously limping but without making a single sound of pain. Maddie had no idea how he did it.
"You should stay here," he said when she went to help him support himself. "You can help with trying to get in touch with the IU commanders that we haven't assassinated to get them to back off."
Maddie was hesitant to let him go, though. "This isn't that serious, is it?" she said, fingers digging into his bicep. She'd only just gotten him back and she was considering letting him go off and get treated without her.
"I do have a knife sticking out of my leg."
She flushed. "I mean, if I let you go you're not going to die on the operating table."
He chuckled. "I'm not going to die. I just need someone to stitch it up. I can't do it myself." He held out his hands and they were shaking.
She took them in hers and kissed two spots on his face that were relatively blood-free. "I'll come and see you as soon as Damien is dealt with," she promised. "Just stay safe. Please. Are you sure you don't want me to at least walk you there?"
"No. I'll be fine. Just find the channel so Tisya can make contact and then come and find me, okay?"
"Okay."
They shared a quick kiss and she couldn't wait until this was over and she could kiss him properly again.
Right now, though, she immediately retreated to the computer she'd located Damien on and searched through the cameras for someone else who looked powerful.
She blinked in surprise when she recognized someone. In the compound she'd kept up to date with the news as one of her only links to the outside world, and this man's face was very familiar. He'd received lots of commendations in recent years for leading attacks against authoritarian leaders and being successful in bringing more planets ruled by tyrants on the outer reaches under the IU's umbrella of influence.
She'd admired him, once upon a time. She'd looked at the pictures of the starving children he'd helped and thought he was a good man.
And now he was under Damien's thumb.
With a goal in mind, she began searching for a way into their communications system to talk to him. Already in his camera system, she found what she was looking for easily. She picked an earpiece from the desk and put it in her ear, nodding to Tisya that she was about to connect them.
"He's got to be in charge," she told Tisya. "He's very highly ranked. He's an IU superstar. Name is Commander Yil."
Tisya nodded, and she patched them through.
Maddie still had the camera on one monitor, and she held back a laugh when Tisya said, "Hello, Commander," and the stoic commander jumped in his seat.
"Who is it?"
"This is Commander Tisya, of the planet you're slaughtering right now."
Maddie typed rapidly to project video feed of their own room to Yil's ship so that he could verify them as telling the truth. She also patched the video feed through to Tisya's monitor so he knew exactly what was happening.
The commander's face didn't change. "And what do you want?"
"We have Damien—" Tisya looked at Maddie, mouthing, "What's his last name?"
"We have Damien Marshall," she said, folding her arms. "The person who put this whole thing together."
Yil raised a brow, his gaze on the monitor showing Damien bound in the middle of the room. "I think you'll find that I put this whole thing together."
"Yes, that's the official line, I'm sure. I'm not interested in the official line. I'm interested in telling you that we have Damien, so the point of coming here is over. You can leave now."
"I cannot leave a planet in this state. It would be a derogation from my duty."
Maddie tried not to let her face fall. This wasn't what she'd been hoping for. After everything, couldn't it have just been an easy ride now?
"This planet doesn't want your help," Tisya said, standing behind his desk, venom in the words he spat.
"Says the commander, part of the ruling elite. I'm not sure your citizens would say the same."
"You're not sure the people willing to lay down their lives to keep you out would say the same? Willing to make the first move against the invading force for fear of your ruling elite."
"We do not have a ruling elite. We are a democracy."
Maddie laughed. "Tell that to the businessman who managed to make an entire invasion happen to keep his corruption a secret and murder a girl he kept hostage her entire life."
Yil's posture changed, and he leaned forward in his seat. "I'm sorry?"
Maddie peered around her computer to look at Damien, and realized his mask was slipping. He was angry. Scared.
That must mean Maddie was doing something right.
Damien had been counting on the invasion succeeding, but now thought that, because she was talking to Yil, he wasn't going to escape.
"Damien Marshall has been forcing me to hack into the personal information of companies IU-wide so he can predict stock changes and make money. I escaped, and that's why you're here, looking for me. So that he can shut me up."
"Mr. Marshall is here as a personal favor to my deputy because he had business on the planet and wished for safe travel. He is no part of this invasion force."
Maddie's heart was in her throat. Damien didn't have influence over the commander, he had it over someone less powerful.
Maybe her high opinion of Yil had been shattered too quickly. "I have proof," she said, standing up and rushing to the corner to pick her backpack up from where she'd abandoned it before porting onto Damien's ship. "I have proof of what he's done."
This was where she'd take her risk. She only had proof of her own involvement and Damien's usage of it. There was nothing to prove she'd been coerced on her laptop.
But when she'd told Redek to let Damien live, this was what she'd wanted. She'd wanted him to be punished, properly.
It was a risk she had to take.
"Show me," Yil said.
She booted up her laptop and turned on the communications. "It's going to take me a minute," she said, hurrying to duplicate the files of evidence so she could send them to him without risking giving up the originals.
She sent him the files and waited with bated breath. There were far too many for him to read through them all now. She ran off the names of files for him to search that would give him the most incriminating facts.
As Yil scrolled through the documents on the large tablet in front of him, Maddie wished she had the ability to read facial expressions like Redek did. He was giving away nothing. "Do you have anything that can corroborate this?" he asked, still swiping. "Anything that can verify it?"
Maddie's eyebrows pulled together. "I'm certain there will be proof on his electronics at home, but I can't get anything right now. I could hack into it remotely, maybe."
Yil was nodding. "There is more than enough here to arrest him pending further inquiry, I'm sure."
She didn't relax yet, though. "So what happens now?"
"We'll take him into custody and I'll contact the head of the financial crime department and see what he has to say about all of this."
It was a long way to go until he'd be being prosecuted, and she still wasn't sure how much she actually trusted the IU. She'd always thought they were an upstanding organization before coming to Lyskar, but the atmosphere was so different here and she knew journalists could be biased. She'd existed on a diet of journalists' opinions her whole life. Journalists who were operating within the IU.
"And what about me?" she asked.
"You'll have to come with us. You're an eyewitness."
"I'm a criminal."
Yil lifted a shoulder. "It's not my decision what to do with you," he admitted. "But informants are normally granted leniency, I can tell you that much."
"I need to speak to my bodyguard first," she said. There was no chance she was making any more big decisions without speaking to him.
"How long will that take?"
"I don't know. He's receiving medical care."
"Teleport Mr. Marshall to my ship and then follow with your guard afterward."
"Damien stays here with me."
"I don't trust him with the gangs."
Tisya clicked his tongue. "All I care about is getting you off my soil. I couldn't give a shit about this bastard."
"And you will leave when we come aboard? You're only here because of a setup, because someone pulled strings," Maddie said, folding her arms. She was itching to get to Redek and hear what he had to say. She didn't know if she was doing the right thing, and she only had her gut to trust.
"You have my word," Yil said with a slight bow of the head. "I refuse to be manipulated by someone beneath me. I'll take Mr. Marshall home as a prize and save myself any embarrassment."
Maddie dithered, then nodded. "Okay. We have a deal, then. I need to speak to my bodyguard first. He'll be coming with us. I'm taking Damien with me. We'll all port together."
She cut the feed she was broadcasting to Yil and turned off her earpiece. "Do you think I made the right call?" she asked Tisya. "Nothing is final yet."
"Yes," Tisya replied. "I think you made the right call. I can get word to the medical wing and tell your guard to get up here so you can speak to him. I'm not risking letting him,” he nodded to Damien, “out of my sight, and I still have troops to oversee."
Maddie nodded, and sat back down, running her hand through her hair. She looked at Damien, saw he was trying to speak, and looked away again. She wasn't interested in indulging him.
He'd try and bargain information for his freedom, and she wasn't going to fall for it.
She was done listening to Damien.
He was about to get what he deserved.