Lisa’s entire body ached as if she’d been thrown down the stairs. Her muscles whimpered in pain, and she realized she was trembling. More than trembling. Freezing. Frozen.

Memories came back in a rush. Hell, yeah, I survived! Her gritty eyes flew open and her lungs sucked in an agonizing breath. Doug had reassured her Syndicorp wouldn't hurt her as long as they needed him. And he had a way of ensuring people needed him. Still, the ‘corp could con even the most skilled grifter, as she well knew. If it hadn't been for Doug, she never would've agreed to be put into such a helpless situation. Stepping into that cryo-pod had been the largest act of faith in her twenty-six years of life.

Her frigid fingers tingled with renewing circulation and her eyelids fluttered as she tried to focus. Doug was supposed to be here to meet her. Her heart ached to see her twin again, to be sure the ‘corp hadn’t hurt him. Her nano-bots must still be inert from the time in cryo, or she’d have felt him immediately.

Above her, ceiling panels glowed with dingy light. She rolled her blurry gaze to the right. A wall of compartments stood a few feet away, the dull metal clean, but not what she’d come to expect after a year as a Syndicorp test subject for nanite technology. These cabinets were part of a small ship’s med bay; she’d seen her share of them over the years, mostly because her brother couldn’t seem to keep himself out of bar fights.

So where was she, and why was she awake? Her journey was supposed to end at a new lab where Doug was undergoing super-secret test exercises. Something must’ve happened if she was out of stasis early. With effort, she rolled her gaze the other direction. A steel counter ran along the far wall, a small sink embedded at one end and a computer station at the other. A huge man sat there, three thick ropes of hair banded with metal hanging down his broad back.

Definitely not corporation.

“Nnnmm,” she tried to catch his attention, but her tongue was as frozen as the rest of her.

The man looked over his shoulder, his concerned face reflecting the light as if he’d dusted with that fancy cosmetic powder the men on Enayshu Five always wore. He lacked Enayshuan eye-ridges, but he was definitely alien. “You’re awake. Excellent.”

Spinning his chair to face her, he thrust one bronze-sheened hand toward her throat. This close, she was struck by how huge he was. She flinched, but he merely pressed his fingertips to her pulse. Manually checking her vitals? Shit, she was on a low-end ship. She felt like she was back in the underbelly of Whylon Station.

“What happened?” She couldn’t wrap her tongue around the gravelly words, but the man seemed to understand her anyway.

“We’re not entirely sure. We pulled you off a derelict ship.”

"Derelict? I don't understand. Who are you?" Her voice sounded better but still slurred.

“My name’s Mekoryuk, but you can call me Mek. The captain wants to talk to you. I’ll let him know you’re awake.”

She struggled to sit up, but her body only twitched like a dying fish. “I need to call my brother.”

"You can barely form words. Stop trying to move." He pressed a solid hand against her collarbone, pinning her to the mattress. "I don't want you exerting yourself until your metabolism stabilizes."

“But I—”

Mek’s hand pressed harder. “I’m going to get the captain now. If you fall out of bed it’s your own usviiq fault.”

Lisa lay still, focusing on her breathing. The pressure of his hand eased, but he kept his gaze on her, as if reassuring himself she would do as instructed. When she didn’t protest, he turned and left the small bay.

For a few minutes, she simply rested, listening to the beeping of monitors and the slight hum of the ship’s engine. If there was one thing Syndicorp was good at, it was keeping hold of its property. Yet here she was on a strange, very non-corporate ship. Something had gone very wrong. She didn’t care what Mek said about resting; she needed information.

Inside her head, her tiny robotic nanites were stirring. They swarmed and buzzed at her temple as if curious about the diode connecting her to the med-bay monitors. She was part of a test group for "cyber-sensitive" enhancements; a way to empower human brain waves to interface directly and intuitively with complex computer systems. The nanites were designed to send and receive data impulses, using the host brain's synapses. Doug could hack into a nearby computer system with a mere thought. Lisa wasn't nearly that good and needed to be physically interfaced to hack into a system. Lucky for her, the diode provided just the corridor she needed. Hopefully, the medical computers were tied into the mainframe, and she could encode a call to Syndicorp. She squeezed her eyes closed, instructing the microscopic machines to investigate.

A voice interrupted her concentration. “How are you feeling?”

Her lids flew open to meet an electric-blue gaze. She'd thought Mek was handsome, broad-shouldered and roguish with his long, banded hair and clean-shaven face. This new fellow pushed the boundaries of rogue and headed straight to rugged, copper-skinned barbarian. His long hair flowed loosely around his shoulders, dark and wavy, offset by strands of silver that might be a metallic weave, or might be his own hair, she couldn't quite tell. Mostly because his eyes were so damned brilliant and captivating. Above those eyes, a silver loop pierced one dark brow.

Holy hell, were all the crewmen on this ship hot like this? The man's sensuous lips curved slightly upward, as if he was very used to smiling, although he wasn't at the moment. A well-trimmed mustache and beard tapered to two, tidy braids under his chin. He'd just asked her a question, but her tongue felt too thick in her throat to respond.

Mek moved around from behind the barbarian at her bedside. “She may take a while to fully recover.”

The second man raked her body with a gaze that left her tingling for his physical touch. She shuddered right down to her core, confused about this unusual reaction to a man—an alien. She’d been with plenty of guys—okay, a few guys—and not a single one had ever made her feel like this, in bed or out. She was supposed to be resting, but perspiration prickled her skin as if she’d just climbed through the space station’s high-grav service tunnels.

“I’m Captain Qaiyaan. Can you tell me your name?” The deep timbre of his voice sent thrilling little rockets along her skin.

“L-lisa. Lisa Moss.” Way to sound like an idiot. She licked her lips, hoping her next words didn’t come out like mud.

Qaiyaan’s gaze followed the move, then flicked toward Mek, who began tapping at a handheld, probably doing a search for her profile. Good luck with that. Her lips twisted into a smile. Syndicorp had made sure she and her brother disappeared when they'd joined the test group, wiping their slates clean of a handful of crimes and hiding the siblings from the black market cartel that was seeking their heads.

“Lisa, we’re trying to piece together what’s going on. Why were you in a cryo-pod?”

Her smile dissolved. One wrong word and both she and her brother would lose everything, including the amnesty that kept them out of the Syndicorp prison mines and the cartel's hands. She blurted out the first thing that came into her head. "Interstellar Myasthenic Carcinoma."

Shit. She must still be slow from her time in cryo. No one actually came down with IMC anymore. The cancer, caused by unshielded travel through dark nebula, was a barely more than a horror story told by station rats consoling themselves for being stuck station-side.

Qaiyaan’s eyes rounded a fraction and he shot a glance to his medic, lips forming a thin line. Mek straightened to meet his gaze, his face equally stricken. “I didn’t detect anything during my scans. Let me check again.”

She scrambled to keep him from digging further and discovering the truth. She could do this. Had pulled cons a hundred times with her brother before the Syndicorp police had reeled them in, giving them a choice between the mines and the test program. Smiling weakly, she played her pity card. “That’s okay, really. I’m on my way to a hospital for treatment.”

Mek started pushing buttons on her monitors. “What stage are you at?”

A thread of panic threatened her composure. She had little experience with advanced medical treatments, nanites notwithstanding. Thinking of the microscopic robots roaming her body, she sent them to interfere with the doctor's sensor. Doug probably could've faked a reading for IMC, but she wasn't that skilled. Leaving her nanites to run amok, she focused her attention on the blue-eyed man standing next to her bed. "I—I need to let my brother know I'm okay."

Qaiyaan shook his head, avoiding her eyes. “I’m sorry. Our comm isn’t set up for long-range boost. You’ll have to wait until we get to a transfer station.”

“How long will that be?” She fluttered her fingers, trying her damnedest to regain enough coordination to touch him. To her delight, he pulled a seat over and took her hand. His skin was warm and slightly rough as his thumb grazed the back of her fingers. She shivered right down to her nanites, a million little tingling sensors responding to his touch.

His thumb stilled, as if he sensed something, too, and he stared intensely into her eyes.

Barely infringing on her awareness, Mek’s fingers probed the diode affixed to her temple. “Hold still. I’m going to swap out the sensor.”

She shook her head. Her rapid heartbeat was sure to raise some alarms if he got the diode working again. “Don’t bother. Something about my chemistry makes standard technology go haywire. I can’t even wear a ploycom without it fritzing out.”

“Just let him try, okay?” Qaiyaan squeezed her hand gently.

Heart racing, she gave him her "brave-but-scared" smile and tried to think like a cancer patient. "I need to get to the hospital on Aleigh right away."

Mek stopped muttering under his breath and both men stared at her.

“You were going to the Syndicorp hospital?” Qaiyaan’s brows drew together.

Her chest was tight, and she was sure Qaiyaan must be able to feel her trembling. Answering a question with a question was the best way to carry a grift, Doug always said. “Don’t they have the best medical technology?”

Mek made a grunting noise and returned to making adjustments on his screen. She boosted her nanites to be sure they kept interfering. Qaiyaan shifted his gaze to her fingers, his strangely bronze thumb tracing a thin blue vein on the back of her hand. “You’re quite a ways from Syndicorp space.”

Oops. Part of the reason they’d put her into cryo-for shipment was to keep her from hacking any systems and discovering where they were taking her. She’d just assumed they’d still be in Syndicorp space. “How far?”

“Fifteen or twenty parsecs, I’d say. And a long, long way from Aleigh.”

Calling on skills she hadn’t used in a year, Lisa drew her brows into worried lines. “They told me I was going to Aleigh.” She’d always excelled at drawing out a target’s empathy, playing their emotions to get what she needed. Right now she needed Qaiyaan to stop asking questions and give her access to a comm. “My brother must be crazy with worry. What do you think happened?”

“You have to watch your back with Syndicorp.”

“Don’t I know it.” She laughed, then realized she was being too honest. Her doubts about Syndicorp were something she kept deeply buried, even from her brother, who was their star subject. She was fairly certain she hadn’t been sent to the mines or handed over to the Whylon Cartel only because Syndicorp needed him. Her skills with the nanites were abysmal at best.

Qaiyaan’s fingers tightened against her hand, and he rose. “Mek has some experience with cancer, so just relax and let him do his thing, okay?”

Her heart sank. Of course Mek would be some sort of cancer specialist. Why hadn’t she claimed to be going to a rehab colony or something? “Please don’t go to any trouble. I’ve already paid Syndicorp for the treatment. I just need to get to Aleigh.”

Qaiyaan moved to the door, but stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. His blue eyes were wild sparks beneath his deep brow line. “Syndicorp’s probably not your best option at this point. Give Mek a chance. I’ll check back soon.”

With that, he was gone, leaving the small med bay strangely empty without his presence. All Lisa could do was boost her nanites to fend off the doctor’s repeated scans.