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  And time’s running out.

  If it’s an alarm, it could signal the Rodwells at the restaurant. If they have a hidden bomb and a trigger switch….

  “Wiring on the door?” I weigh the odds against the ticking clock. They don’t want to kill their victim if there’s any chance they can make money off him. If I were fully human, if the implants weren’t suppressing my emotions, I wouldn’t be able to make a decision. Life-or-death shouldn’t be about playing the odds.

  “None.”

  “Composition?” Some beeps in the background answer my request.

  A longer pause. “Apartment doors in that building were purchased from Door Depot, lower-end models despite the high rents. Just over one inch thick. Wood. Medium hardness.”

  “The door at the bottom of the stairwell was metal.”

  “But the one on the top floor isn’t. It’s considered a ‘back door’ to the apartment. It’s wood like the front entries.” Alex’s info shifts the odds—odds placed on a child’s survival. I try not to think too hard on what I’ve become. It shouldn’t matter to me, but— The suppressors clamp down on the distraction.

  “Give me a five-second jam on those sensors,” I tell him and count on him to do it. Damn, I hate these last-minute piecemeal plans, but we didn’t have much time to throw this together.

  “Vick, what are you—?”

  Before Kelly can finish voicing her concerns, I’m charging up the last of the stairs, past the sensors, and slamming shoulder-first into the penthouse door. Wood cracks and splinters, shards flying in all directions, catching in my hair and driving through the material of my jacket.

  Medium hardness or not, it hurts. I’m sprawled on the rust-colored kitchen tiles, bits of door and frame scattered around me, blood seeping from a couple of cuts on my hands and cheek. The implants unleash a stream of platelets from my bone marrow and they rush to clot the wounds.

  I raise my head and meet the wide eyes of my objective. The kid’s mouth hangs open, a half-eaten sandwich on the floor by his feet. I’m vaguely aware of Kelly demanding to know if I’m okay.

  Her concern touches me in a way I can’t quite identify, but it’s… good.

  “Ow,” I mutter, rising to my knees, then my feet. “Fuck.” I might heal fast, but I feel pain.

  The kid slides from his chair and backs to the farthest corner of the room, trapped against the gray-and-black-speckled marble counter. “D-don’t hurt me,” he stammers.

  I roll my eyes. “Are you an idiot?”

  “Oh, nice going, Vick.”

  I ignore Kelly and open my trench coat, revealing an array of weapons—blades and guns. “If I wanted to hurt you….”

  His eyes fly wider, and he pales.

  A sigh over the comm. “For God’s sake, Vick, try, will you?”

  My shoulder hurts like a sonofabitch. I try rotating my left arm and wince at the reduced range of motion. Probably dislocated. I’m in no mood to make nicey nice.

  “You’re not the police.” Oh good, the kid can use logic.

  “The police wouldn’t be able to find you with a map and a locator beacon.”

  My implants toss me a quick flash of the boy buried in a haystack and a bunch of uniformed men digging through it, tossing handfuls left and right.

  “I’m with a private problem-solving company, and I’m here to take you home,” I continue. “Will you come with me?” I pull a syringe filled with clear liquid from one of the coat’s many pockets. “Or am I gonna have to drug and carry you?” That will suck, especially with the shoulder injury, but I can do it.

  Another sigh from Kelly.

  I’m not kid-friendly. Go figure.

  My vision blurs. We’re out of chat time. A glance over my shoulder reveals pale blue haze filling the space just inside the back door, pouring through a vent in the ceiling. A cloud of it rolls into the kitchen, so it’s been flowing for a while. “Alex, I need a chemical analysis,” I call to my tech guru. I remove a tiny metal ball from a belt pouch and roll it into the blue gas. Several ports on it snap open, extending sampler rods and transmitting the findings to my partners in the hovervan.

  A pause. “It’s hadrazine gas. Your entry must have triggered the release. Move faster, VC1.”

  Hadrazine’s some fast and powerful shit. A couple of deep breaths and we’ll be out cold, and not painlessly, either. We’ll feel like we’re suffocating first. If I get out of this alive, my next goal is to take down the Rodwells.

  “Report coming in from Team Two.” Alex again. “You must have tripped an alarm somewhere. Rodwells leaving the restaurant, not bothering to pay. They’re headed for your location.”

  A grin curls my lips. Looks like I might get my wish.

  I know I’m not supposed to want to kill anyone. I know Kelly can pick up that urge and will have words for me later. But sometimes… sometimes people just need killing. But not before I achieve my primary objective.

  I’m in motion before I finish the thought, grabbing the kid by the arm and hauling him into the penthouse’s living room. Couches and chairs match the ones in the lobby. “Tell Team Two not to engage,” I snap, not bothering to lower my voice anymore. The boy stares at me but says nothing. “They may still have a detonator switch for this place.” And Team Two is Team Two for a reason. They’re our backup. The second string. And more likely to miss a double kill shot.

  “You’re scaring the boy,” Kelly says in my ear.

  I’m surprised she can read him at this distance. Usually that skill is limited to her interactions with me.

  “Jealousy?” she asks. “What for?”

  Or maybe she’s just guessing. Where the hell did that come from, anyway? I turn up the emotion suppressors. Things between me and Kelly have been a little wonky lately. I’ve had some strange responses to things she’s said or done. I don’t need the distraction now.

  “Never mind,” I mutter. “Alex, front door. What am I dealing with?”

  “No danger I can read. Nothing’s active. Doesn’t mean there isn’t some passive stuff.”

  “There’s a bomb.”

  I stare down at the boy by my side. “You sure?”

  He nods, shaggy blond hair hanging in his face. I release him for a second to brush it out of his eyes and crouch in front of him. He’s short for his age. Thin too. Lightweight. Good in case I end up having to carry him. “Any chance they were bluffing?”

  The kid shrugs.

  “The café manager stopped them in the lobby, demanding payment,” Alex cuts in. “Doesn’t look like they want to make a scene, so you’ve got maybe five minutes, VC1. Six if they have to wait for the elevator.”

  Maybe less if the gas flows too quickly.

  Right.

  I approach the door, studying the frame for the obvious and finding nothing. Doesn’t mean there isn’t anything embedded.

  There. A pinprick hole drilled into the molding on the right side of the frame. Inside would be a pliable explosive and a miniature detonator triggered by contact or remote. Given the right tools and time, I could disarm such a device. I have the tools in a pouch on my belt. I don’t have the time.

  “Um, excuse me?” The boy points toward the kitchen. Blue mist curls across the threshold and over the first few feet of beige living room carpet.

  I race toward a wall of heavy maroon curtains, shoving a couch aside and throwing the window treatments wide. Lightning flashes outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the skyscraper across the street and the twelve-story drop to the pavement below.

  Oh, fuck me now.

  “Lyle, I need that hovervan as high as you can get it. Bring it up along the east side of the building. Beneath the living room windows.”

  “Oooh. A challenge.” He’s not being sarcastic. Lyle’s the best damn pilot and driver in the Fighting Storm.

  Too bad he’s an ass.

  The van’s engines rev over the comm, and the repulsorlifts engage with a whine.

  “Vick, what are you
thinking?” Kelly’s voice trembles when she’s worried, and she rushes over her words. I can barely understand her.

  “I’m thinking my paranoia is about to pay off.”

  I wear a thin inflatable vest beneath my clothes when we do anything near water. I carry a pocket breather when we work in space stations, regardless of the safety measures in place. I’m always prepared for every conceivable obstacle, including some my teammates never see coming.

  So I wear a lightweight harness under my clothes when I’m in any building over three stories tall.

  Alex teases me about it. Lyle’s too spooked by me to laugh in my face, but I know he does it behind my back. Kelly counsels that I can’t live my second life in fear.

  Sorry. I died once. I’m in no hurry to repeat the experience.

  Using my brain implants, I trigger an adrenaline burst. The hormone races through my bloodstream. I’ll pay for this later with an energy crash, but for now, I’m supercharged and ready to take on my next challenge.

  The hadrazine gas is flowing closer. I shove the kid toward the far corner of the room, away from both the kitchen and the damage I’m about to do.

  For safety reasons, high-rise windows, especially really large floor-to-ceiling ones, can rarely be opened. Hefting the closest heavy wood chair, I slam it into the windows with as much force as I can gather. My shoulder screams in pain, and I hear Kelly’s answering cry over my comm. With her shields down, she feels what I feel. They’re always down during missions. I hate hurting her, but I have no choice. I need her input to function, and I need the window broken.

  The first hit splinters the tempered glass, sending a spiderweb of cracks shooting to the corners of the rectangular pane. Not good enough.

  I pull my 9mm from a thigh holster and fire four shots. Cracks widen. Chips fall, along with several large shards. There’s a breach now. I need to widen it. I grab the chair and swing a second time, and the glass and chair shatter, pieces of both flying outward and disappearing into the raging storm.

  Wind and rain whip into the living room. Curtains flap like flags in a hurricane, buffeting me away from the edge and keeping me from tumbling after the furniture. I’m soaked in seconds. When I take a step, the carpet squishes beneath my boots.

  “VC1, I think the Rodwells made Team Two in the lobby…. Shit. I’m reading a signal transmission, trying to block it…. Fuck, I’ve got an active signature on the bomb…. It’s got a countdown, two minutes. Get the hell out of there!”

  Alex’s report sends my pulse rate ratcheting upward. Other than not being here in the first place, no paranoid preparation can counter a blast of the magnitude I’m expecting.

  Judging from the positioning of the explosives, anyone in the apartment will be toast.

  I take off my coat and toss it into the swirling blue gas, regretting the loss of the equipment in the pockets but knowing I can’t make my next move with it on. The wind is drawing the haze right toward the windows, right toward me. I grab gloves from a pocket and yank them on. I unsnap a compartment on my harness and pull out a retractable grappling hook attached to several hundred coiled feet of ultrastrong, ultrathin wire.

  Once I’ve given myself some slack in the cord, I scan the room. The gaudy architecture includes some decorative pillars. A press of a button drives the grappler into the marble, and I wrap the cord several times around the column and tug hard. I’m not worried about the wire. It can bear more than five hundred pounds of weight. I’m not so sure about the apartment construction, given the flimsy back door.

  The cord holds. I reel out more line, extending my free hand to the kid. “Come on!”

  He stares at me, then the window, then shakes his head. “You’re crazy. No way!” He shouts to be heard over the rain and thunder.

  My internal display flashes my implants’ favorite metaphor—a thick cable made up of five metal cords wrapped tightly around each other. Over the last two years, I’ve come to understand they represent my sanity, and since Kelly’s arrival, they’ve remained solid. Until now.

  One of them is fraying, a few strands floating around the whole in wisps.

  Great. Just great.

  The image fades.

  “Die in flames or jump with me. Take your pick.” The clock ticks down in my head. If the boy won’t come, I’m not sure I’ll have time to cross the room and grab him, but my programming will force me to try.

  He comes.

  I take one last second to slam myself against the pillar, forcing my dislocated shoulder into the socket. Kelly screams in my ear, but I’ve clamped my own jaw shut, gritting my teeth for my next move.

  One arm slides around the boy’s narrow waist. I grip the cord in the protective glove.

  “Five seconds,” Alex says.

  I run toward the gaping hole and open air, clutching the kid to me. He wraps his arms around my torso and buries his face in my side.

  “Four.”

  “Oh my God,” Kelly whispers.

  “Three.”

  Lyle and the hovervan better be where I need them. The cord might support our weight, but it won’t get me close enough to the ground for a safe free-fall drop.

  “Two.”

  The sole of my boot hits the edge and my muscles coil to launch me as far from the window as I can. There’s a second of extreme panic, long enough for regrets but too late to stop momentum, and then we’re airborne. Emotion suppressors ramp up to full power, and the terror fades.

  My last thought as gravity takes hold is of Kelly. My suppressors have some effect on her empathic sense, but extremely strong feelings and emotions like pain and panic reach her every time.

  If she can’t get her shields up fast, this will tear her apart.

  Chapter 2: Kelly — Meeting of the Minds

  Two and a half years earlier….

  VICK CORREN was broken.

  Oh, Kelly, what have you gotten yourself into?

  Recyclers filtered and processed the air I breathed, and if I looked up and up, I could make out the sheen of the main protective dome and the glitter of stars beyond. There on the landing platform at Girard Moon Base, I stood awkwardly with the other passengers disembarking the shuttle from Earth. We were both outside and not—within the dome but outside the colony’s prefabricated buildings.

  Graduation was only a month behind me, and already I was a long, long way from the Academy for Special Abilities.

  The gravity here was artificially increased as well; the hum of generators created a constant vibration I would have to adjust to. Irritating but manageable if I—

  “Kelly LaSalle? I’m Lyle Walters, here to escort you to the Storm’s Girard headquarters.”

  I jumped. Damn, no one should have been able to get that close without me sensing them. Not the best first impression you’re giving, Kelly. I smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from my cream-colored business skirt, then tightened the hairband around my ponytail—anything to cover my unprofessional startle.

  Stepping away from the ramp, I nodded to the soldier. “How long were you waiting there?” How long was he watching me gawk like a tourist?

  “Caught the empath by surprise, huh?”

  Teasing. He’s teasing you, Kelly. Don’t stress about it. Except I wanted this job, or at least thought I did.

  I scanned him from head to boots, a long scan considering he towered over me. Red hair, brown eyes, a sprinkling of freckles. Good build—a given for fighters. No visible weapons. His tan uniform shirt bore a patch embroidered with his last name. He was older than me, probably somewhere in his mid to late twenties. I forced a smile and shook the offered hand.

  “You ready for this?” He took my bag and started across the shuttle platform. I fell into step behind him.

  The Fighting Storm, a mercenary military organization, had a “test subject” (I hated the term) who had suffered severe brain damage. Despite implementation of regulating devices, their patient was no longer able to express and absorb her emotions in a reasonable, rational ma
nner.

  If I met the Storm’s requirements, they wanted to train me to be part of some kind of team, pair me with this individual on missions, and have me provide ongoing emotional support to enable her to function in the field. Their science research team assured me that if they found the right empathic match, their patient would be capable of continuing to work as a soldier.

  Specific details were withheld due to them being classified, but I had absolutely no doubt this person needed the services of a good empath.

  “I don’t even know what ‘this’ is, exactly,” I admitted. I had to yell to be heard over shuttle engines, air processors, and ground vehicles carrying luggage to the terminal ahead. “Your bosses offered me a brief description, an interview, and a first-class ticket. It sounded… interesting.”

  I could have taken a cushier, planetside job in one of the hospitals’ psychiatric wards, gone into school or marriage counseling, or joined my mother working for the One World government, helping different cultures understand one another better, promoting world peace. But I wanted something different.

  Walters snorted and kept walking while I hurried to keep pace. “Yeah, interesting is one word for it. Impossible might be a better one. We’ve had four empaths out before you. All of them older, one with prior military experience. No one can handle VC1. Sooner or later, they’ll have to shut the project down.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that. “What’s a VC1?” Could he possibly have meant the patient? And what did he mean, “shut it down”?

  “You’ll see.” At my frown he added, “I’m not authorized to give details.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  We proceeded into the terminal, passing through an airlock, its hydraulic hiss loud but comforting to an Earther like me. When I commented on it, Walters explained the structures like the terminal were there first, so every building had airlocks instead of doors and we’d go through a lot of them. The domes (one main one and a series of smaller ones connected by airlocks and enclosed walkways) came later. So truly interior locks remained fixed in their open positions while the exterior ones continued to operate normally.