Heretics (Stars Edge: Nel Bently Book 4) Page 21

  Nel stepped back. Cold dumped over her heart. “Lin, I know what I saw. It was just like the shit we found on Samsara. If it detonates—”

  “Not everything that detonates is a bomb. This is tech we’ve had for centuries—based on the Teachers’. We’re using it to counter what we think happened down here.” Her expression grew pinched as another message appeared on their comms. “Why do Harris and Dr. Ndebele want to speak with you?”

  Panic pivoted to recklessness. “Probably because I sent everything I’ve found to Munashi Max Gamal and the rest of the Founders an hour ago.”

  “You what?”

  “Look, everyone and their aunt is telling me to trust no one. Keep my radical theories to myself. Max offered something I couldn’t refuse, something IDH never has—finding my mom. And all she wanted in return was what IDH promised in the first place: transparency.”

  “How dare you,” Lin hissed.

  Nel rocked back from the words, resisting the urge to rub an invisible blow from her jaw. “Excuse me?”

  “Your confession yesterday was moving, more than I ever thought I’d get from you. But you’ve just destroyed us. Dar might have betrayed us all, but he was right to warn me. The greatest risk to both me and IDH is you.”

  “Risk? You’ve risked nothing!” Nel knew it wasn’t true, but she couldn’t count down her anger, couldn’t even make it to “one.”

  “I risked my career! My reputation for you on Odyssey!” Lin screamed back. “For fuck’s sake, I almost died with Mikey that night!”

  Silence tumbled around them in the wake of the confession. She stared. “What?”

  “I just mean—”

  “No. Finish it.” Nel growled.

  Lin looked away. “I was there. When Mikey died.”

  “When he was brutally murdered, you mean?”

  “I was doing reconnaissance.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “They got a reading on IDH tech from my comm. Thought it was his and attacked.”

  Cold fury gripped Nel’s chest. “Did you take part or just fucking watch?”

  “When they were gone, I went to get him, drag him to safety. But then they came back,” she whispered. “I ran to the hills and prayed they didn’t get me too.”

  Nel didn’t care. She didn’t care that she had just professed love in the only way she knew how: stumbling and hot with the flames of fury. She didn’t care that Lin had been in danger. “You lied to me. You saw what his death did and looked me in the fucking eye—”

  “You never asked.”

  “I shouldn’t have to!” Nel roared. All of her questions from that week surged back, ripping the fresh scars of her grief open again. His autopsy report had said enough, even if she was too numb to really process most of the information. But it didn’t answer what she needed to know. Was he alone? Was it quick? Was he scared?

  Lin had left Mikey—precious, perfect, irreplaceable Mikey—to die, and Nel had given a big finger to his memory by fucking her. By loving her.

  “How can you imply I don’t understand what I’ve been working my ass off on for the last few weeks?” Both comms beeped with a second summons. Lin’s gaze darted between the comm and Nel in confusion, in hurt.

  What the fuck do you have to be hurt over? Nel couldn’t stop the shaking in her body. “Doesn’t matter what they’ve conned you into building, what they’ve told you that thing is. Don’t do it for me. Do it for the rest of us. They’re going to blow my planet up, Lin. You don’t want that on your conscience.”

  Boots thudded above them. Lin’s mouth moved, soundless.

  “Please. You said you’d damn everything for me.” She dropped to her knees, chest heaving. “I don’t beg, but I’m begging you.

  Lin stepped back, face twisted in frustration. Then she tapped the alert button on her wrist, overriding the audio-block. “She’s here.”

  Nel’s world imploded, soundless, bloodless. Heartless. Backing toward the door, she grabbed her bag and yanked the bolo from her neck. It clattered to the metal floor. “I meant it, you know.”

  And then, like always, she was running.

  NINETEEN

  If anger was a bonfire, Nel stood in a molten core. She bit her lip, focusing on the pain and the tang of blood until it flooded her tongue instead of pounding in her ears. She dashed through the corridors, grateful, for once, that IDH-issue boots didn’t clomp like her own. She skidded down the stairs, wincing at the ache throbbing at the root of her missing toes. Isolated. Without allies.

  Originally, she planned to just destroy the device. Break it. Toss it overboard if she had to. If Nel couldn’t stop them, she’d have to find someone who could. Sixteen hours. It wasn’t much time, but she hoped to fuck it was enough.

  Tears leaked from her smoke-stung eyes. Everything just led back to that—a bone-deep wish for enough. That she was enough. But she never quite got it right—failing upwards, her stepdad would say. Progressive enough to rub shoulders with the best of them, but more likely to be found in the bar on a Saturday than at a protest. No wonder IDH didn’t let her play with the big leagues. Betrayal and lack of communication aside, she wasn’t cut out for it. And now even a mountain of proof wouldn’t sway Lin to her side.

  I’m not enough.

  She scrambled onto the flight deck and movement cut through the inferno of her wallowing. She fell back into the shadow of the bridge as the serviced Osprey taxied onto the flight deck. In its gaping belly she glimpsed the crate that would end it all. Wind whipped through the thin fabric of her sweatshirt. All it did was fan the flames of her fury.

  If she ran now, if she evaded the catapult crew, if she wasn’t struck by the taxiing craft, if she wasn’t tossed from the cargo bay by the flight crew, maybe she’d make it. Maybe they all would.

  “Hey, Bent.” Andy emerged from below decks, long braid swinging under her keffiyeh. It took less than a second for Nel to note the full duffel over Andy’s shoulder and the gleaming handgun at her belt.

  Nel could barely hear over roaring engines and screaming nerves. “Headed out?”

  “Yeah, got heads-up about a crashed ship. Leaving in a few.” She trailed off. “What’s up?”

  Cold fury buzzed up Nel’s arms, shrieking that she scream, do, run. As she edged backward toward the runway, Andy’s first words wormed through Nel’s thoughts. “Crashed ship?”

  “Chilean desert. Client must have some IDH pull, got me a flight off of here.” She jerked a nod at the awaiting chopper. A klaxon blared. Across the carrier, a door slammed open, regurgitating a dozen armed officers. Any hope of escape was about to die on the brightly lit tarmac. Andy turned to stare at the commotion.

  I’m sorry. Nel sent the thought into the midnight air with the last shred of her decency. Then she shoved the butt of her trowel into Andy’s back.

  The journalist stiffened. “What the fuck?”

  “Keep quiet,” Nel growled, patting her down and tugging Andy’s gun from its holster. “Walk toward the chopper. Calmly. You blow this, I shoot. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Nel pivoted them, head ducked as they cut across the flight deck to the waiting Osprey. In the stark runway lights, she watched Andy’s jaw work. It was a joke of a plan, and Nel knew it. But it’s the only one I got.

  “I thought you sucked at guns.”

  “Don’t have to be good when it’s this close. Get me on board,” Nel hissed, pulling on a fake smile of her own. They were beneath the Osprey’s spinning blades now. The flight crew shouted something over the roar, eyeing the officers racing to the hangar deck in search of the fugitive archaeologist. Andy’s answering laugh was forced, the lines of her neck turned to rebar.

  The trowel’s sharp edge bit into the meat of Nel’s palm. She pressed harder, wishing every new betrayal didn’t break her heart as much as it did those she kept fucking over.

  Andy marched stiffly up the ramp, handing over her itinerary. “Andy Gull, journalist, headed for ALMA.�
�

  “Who’s this, then? Only got transfer docs for one.”

  “Assistant,” Andy supplied without missing a beat. “New hire, they aren’t in the records yet. You know how slow paperwork is these days,” she chirped. “This is, ah—”

  “Lena Gray,” Nel lied. Shedding who she was in favor of deception came easier this time. She forced herself to meet the soldier’s eyes, instead of staring a hole in the crate filling the cargo bay.

  It was a breathless moment as the man peered at the papers and then her face. “Fine, but make sure you get them checked in once we land, alright? We got systems for a reason, yeah?”

  For once being no more than a blip in IDH’s grand scheme had a benefit. They trudged up the ramp and into the chopper’s belly. Nel remembered Andy’s tiny headshake in response to her question about the bomb in Alexandria, an olive branch of secrecy between two women straddling the same warring sides. Could she have just asked? I can’t afford to trust the wrong person. Not again.

  Rotors revved, flight crew dispersing to a safe distance. Another klaxon sounded, and the door to the flight deck flew open. Dr. Ndebele burst from the bridge, hand raised against the blades’ turbulence. Lin was hard on her heels. It was foolish to think she could see tear stains on Lin’s face, to imagine more than shadowed features that, just hours ago, were tender with adoration. Still, Nel looked away. She couldn’t stand longing or terror in Lin’s eyes, even if it was imagined. Death is easier than betrayal.

  Then the flight deck dropped away, the carrier shrinking to a splotch of fluorescence on the black swells as the hatch ground shut. With a glance tossed at the now sealed cockpit door, Nel raised the commandeered gun in her shaking hand. “Drop the bag.”

  The duffel hit the floor with a thump. Nel tore into the bag, tossing the set of handcuffs she found at Andy’s feet. “Cuff yourself to the seat.”

  Andy heaved a sigh, more annoyed, it seemed, then scared. Holding her one hand up where Nel could see it, she sank into one of the seats and snapped the gleaming metal around her wrist and the seat’s arm. “Didn’t take you for the hostage type. Want to tell me what this is about?”

  “Not really, no.” Nel didn’t need Andy’s observations to make her feel like shit.

  “Lin know you’re on the lam?”

  “Lin and I are complicated,” Nel spat. And over. Apparently.

  “I thought I was the only one who deserved an award for how many beds I slipped out of in the middle of the night before bolting for the border and war.” Andy chuckled, hand dangling from the cuff. Clearly this wasn’t the first time she’d been caught in a sticky situation. “Conflict’s much easier when it’s not your own.”

  “Didn’t think this was war. More like forensics, archaeology, solving the puzzle.” Confessions were easier, too, when you didn’t care if a stranger judged you, and it was just about getting the weight out of your lungs and off of your mind. Nel’s eyes lingered on the floor at the bridge she still stood on even as she lit the match. “But I guess people are dying and something’s killing them and that sounds a bit like war.”

  “On Samsara. When this shit started killing folks,” Andy prodded. “What happened?”

  Nel’s jaw clenched. She knew what Andy was doing—trying to build a rapport. It was almost working, too. But if Nel let those memories out, she’d never be able to shove them back down under the layers of gray matter and scarred trauma, let alone pull off her half-cocked plan. “A sound. A radio signal made my colleague rip his helmet off on a planet with corrosive atmosphere. It made my friend’s throat malfunction, eviscerating her from within. And that was after it apparently reduced the populace to bone dust.”

  “Fuck.” Andy let her head drop back against the wall behind her seat.

  Nel let the conversation lapse, continuing to riffle through Andy’s bag. An extra scarf went around her faux brown mop. An open package of off-brand protein bars was next, but she had the decency to offer one to her hostage.

  “Couldn’t possibly,” Andy drawled.

  “Whatever.” Nel wasn’t sure whether to be flattered Andy knew she didn’t have killing in her or offended that, once again, she was not taken seriously. She pocketed a few before taking a desperate bite. Crickets. Yum.

  “If it’s all the same to you, the past few days have been a doozy. Gonna catch some shut-eye. Wake me up if you decide to shoot me.”

  I’m not going to shoot you. She almost said it, too, except this entire fiasco hinged solely on how shitty of a person Andy thought Nel might be. Instead, she fished out Andy’s comm. Swiping through the transfer papers and travel itineraries, the archaeologist scanned the assignment details, noting with detached humor that Andy’s full given name was Andromeda. And I thought Annelise was bad.

  Whatever Andy’s lead was, it had dragged her all over the globe, starting in Russia, then west to The Hague, south to Cairo where she’d joined their train. Her inbox looked like Nel’s—all business, nothing more personal than a friend checking in six months before. Still, Andy’s face seemed relaxed as she dozed across the Osprey’s cargo bay. Nel’s heart ached. She might have been a runner, but she was damned if it wasn’t getting lonely. Figures the one time I try to settle down ends in a doomsday device and hostage negotiation.

  The dregs of adrenaline forced her to her feet. She shoved everything back into the duffel. After making sure Andy was safely unconscious, Nel set the Jericho aside, out of reach of Andy’s splayed boots. She wiped her sweaty hands on the thighs of her sweatpants and edged closer to the crate at the rear of the chopper. It was locked, this time with more than an easily bypass-able electronic pad. Arms crossed, Nel surveyed the device. Thick canvas tie-downs. Tightly nailed crate. And fifteen hours to worry about whether dropping it into the ocean below would save them or cause immediate detonation.

  She peered through the slats, tracing the copper, wishing diffusing a bomb was as simple as Die Hard led her to believe. That was the inherent problem with her schemes—hairbrained enough to work, but so poorly planned they crumbled into chaos. Something thunked behind her and she turned. Gleaming metal flashed and the butt of Andy’s gun cracked into her temple.

  TWENTY

  “Afternoon, Dr. Bently.” The warm voice washed over Nel’s shoulders, sunlight on a crisp day. Then the pounding headache caught up and she groaned.

  “Fuck, how much did I drink?” She pressed her fingers to her temple to find a tender lump. “I get one more concussion and I won’t have any brain cells left to talk to one another.”

  A heavy, warm hand patted her shoulder. Blinking focus into her vision, she glanced up. Bright sun streamed through the window with Chile’s dry, hot air. Emilio crouched in front of her, smelling salts in one hand. Across the room sat Dar, electro-gloved hand trained on her chest.

  Concussion. Emilio. Dar. The last few days tumbled through her mind in an avalanche of angst and bad decisions. Fuck. She surged to her feet, fumbling for her trowel, for anything. Her head spun and she sagged back onto the couch.

  Dar’s hair was longer than when she last saw him. Or maybe it just wasn’t slicked back. A scrape on his cheek told her he’d either crashed or gotten in a fight. His focus never wavered. “Where’s my sister?”

  “Still with Harris.” She spat, glancing up at Lin’s brother. “Somewhere between here and IDH’s giant aircraft carrier in the Atlantic.” See that star? Somewhere between here and there. Nel swore her ribs cracked open at the memory. When had the other woman weaseled her way into Nel’s heart? When had she started taking up as much space as Mikey and her mom? Nel clamped her teeth shut on the feeling.

  Dar’s determination flickered, but skepticism still laced his words. “And you’re not?”

  “Not sure who I’m with frankly, but it ain’t IDH.”

  His mouth curled in what may have been the first real expression of mirth she’d seen on his face. Dar’s arm relaxed, but she noted he kept it out from his body, like a quic
k-draw space cowboy.

  Emilio leaned in the doorway to his living room, holding her gaze. He rolled his eyes and offered her a mug of tepid water.

  “Oh.” Nel glanced between them. She lowered her own guard with more exhaustion than finesse. “Same side then.”

  “For now,” Dar bit out.

  She took the water wordlessly, swishing her mouth out before taking several draws. “We gotta get to ALMA. There’s a device—”

  “A few minutes isn’t going to make a difference.” Emilio pointed down the hall to what must have been a washroom. “Why don’t you clean up? Andy left some things for you.”

  “Andy?”

  “We’ll discuss everything when you don’t smell of bile,” Dar insisted, lip curled.

  Wordless, she tottered down the hall and into the tiny bathroom. Her steps were wobbly from exhaustion as much as post-concussion weakness. She managed to undress and stagger into the shower with only one break to sit, woozy, on the toilet.

  She took stock of her battered body under the pummel of scalding water. Scrapes from the firefight, bruises from who-knew-what. Cricked neck from sleeping on the Osprey—or maybe however she lay once Andy cracked her one. Two rounds of soap later, she no longer smelled like a back alley. She emerged, drying off while she read the note pinned to the stack of clothes.

  Hope these fit OK. Sorry for the goose-egg, but you didn’t leave me much of a choice. Next time don’t put down the gun.

  XO

  - Andy

  It wasn’t what she expected. Certainly wasn’t what she deserved. And a large part of her was pissed that the understanding came, not from the woman she loved, but a stranger with an attitude as bad as Nel’s. She tugged on the too-long jeans and baggy tee and pocketed the note.