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  Shit, she hoped she’d calculated this right. Or else Joel was going to kill her…if he survived.

  The Ogg wasn’t impressed. He clearly wasn’t used to being threatened or told what to do. He pulled out a gun and trained it on Joel.

  “Do that, and your boyfriend gets it. You going to risk me pulling the trigger, when you…Ughhhghgh. ZZZZZ. Bthughjgjksjkshssas.”

  Molly connected the wire to the circuit, and all four of them, including Joel, went down. Joel slumped over the tub of water, and stopped convulsing first.

  Shit. Shit. Shit…

  She waited until the others had stopped moving, and made sure the wire was no longer live. Sprinting towards Joel, she pulled out the tiny kit she had in her bag.

  Please, please, pleeeeeeeease, she begged, bargaining with the universe not to let him die.

  What are you doing??

  Not now, Oz.

  She wrenched Joel’s head out of the tub and pulled him back, laying him out on the ground. He was technically dead. And now she was going to have to shock his heart back to life.

  Shit! She hoped he was in good health, or else this wasn’t going to work.

  “I hope to fuck those muscles of yours aren’t just for show, Meathead.” Molly half pleaded, half bitched at her friend.

  She opened the little kit wallet and pulled out a hypodermic needle. It wasn’t designed for this, but hopefully it would go deep enough. She’d only had to do this once before, and then it wasn’t for electrocution. When one of her friends at the University had OD’d, she’d heard from a medic friend that adrenalin worked for a bunch of things to get the heart going again.

  By her calculation, she had less than ten seconds left…

  She pulled the adrenalin into the needle and tapped it to get rid of air bubbles. Squeezing till liquid came out, she tapped again.

  Six seconds…

  Okay, here goes…

  She felt Joel’s ribs and visualized where the fourth chamber of the heart was.

  Three seconds…

  BAM. She plunged the needle into his chest and injected the adrenalin.

  The needle was still in his chest. Shit. She carefully pulled it back out.

  Joel’s eyes opened suddenly, and he yelled.

  “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

  About twenty seconds later, his scream of horror transitioned into sobbing, as he rolled over into the fetal position.

  “Are you going to puke? Last time I did that, the girl puked her guts out.” Molly stood over him, assessing his state and clinically thinking of their next move.

  He tried to twist his head to look her in the eye, but failed. “No, I’m not going to puke. I’m going to fucking kill you,” he groaned as he rocked on his side.

  She nodded. “Okay, later. Right now we need to get you out of here. Can you stand?”

  He agreed, even though he didn’t yet know if it were true. But he was a Marine. He was going to stand. Whatever it took.

  He rolled onto his knees, half expecting to see blood. No blood from electrocution, he told himself as he staggered to his feet, Molly took his weight on her shoulders as she slipped under his arm to help.

  She was a gem, this girl. And, strangely, stronger than she looked.

  “Come on, dickwad. Beers are on me tonight,” she grunted out, trying to be bright in the face of what had just happened.

  ---

  A few minutes later, she helped him into the car. He was soaked through to the skin. She tried to get him to peel his shirt off, but he resisted.

  Probably just too tired, she hoped. His head lolled as he fell asleep. Putting her seatbelt on, Molly put the car into gear and with Oz’s assistance, navigated out of the hellhole of a parking garage and into the city traffic.

  Any chance we’re being followed?

  Unlikely. The only camera I can see on the network was the one at the door. Nothing in the parking garage, so they won’t have an image of your identifier.

  That’s damn lucky.

  Molly contemplated all the hundreds of ways this could have gone sideways. Being able to retrieve Joel so easily was a blessing. And a mistake she was never going to make again. From now on, they’d be way more careful. This wasn’t an exercise in a controlled environment where you could fuck up, hit the showers, and come back tomorrow to try again.

  This was life and death.

  And things were getting very death-oriented, very damn fast.

  Let’s get this lug back to the safe house. He’s going to have one hell of a headache when he wakes up.

  “No more apartment for you, big guy,” she told the semi-conscious Marine. “From now on, we’re taking this shit seriously 24/7 and staying safe.”

  Molly cursed at herself that she’d let something like this happen. This was her fault—and why she had joined the military. She didn’t want to be responsible for making decisions that would get people killed. The military made those decisions, and she did her best.

  Why did she ever think she could deal with this shit and have people be okay?

  Her thoughts wandered to the three kidnappers she’d left behind. Without medical attention they would probably die, and though she didn’t feel guilty per se—they had kidnapped her teammate—she still felt a twinge of regret for killing them. It couldn’t have been helped, but this was her first real kill. And yet it felt so remote.

  Maybe I just feel bad for not feeling bad?

  I have no way to parse the information that I can gather from your system. Or interpret what you just said.

  Me neither. I just…it wasn’t until now that I realized what I’d done. Had I thought of it sooner, we might have called emergency services for them.

  That would have been unwise. Not only would they be able to identify you, the police would have tracked you down, and then those kidnappers would probably have come after the both of you. Game theory suggests that given you wanted to get away and not have to deal with them again, you made the right call—98.5% probability of success.

  Oh. That’s good to know.

  Your circuits have settled.

  You mean, my emotions. My emotions, Oz. And yes, thank you. That helped.

  Oh. That’s good. It wasn’t what I was optimizing for, but I’m glad my analysis could be of assistance.

  Molly rolled her eyes. Maybe this was what she sounded like to normal people….

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mac Kerr’s Office, Health Corp Building, Downtown Uptarlung

  Molly stormed in, a hard copy file in her hand. She slammed it on the desk in front of Mac. The cup of mocha on his desk slopped as he jumped back in surprise, bashing his inner leg on the table.

  “What’s this?” He looked up at her completely perplexed, resisting the urge to rub his leg and look weak.

  “Evidence.” Molly glared at him, staring him down, daring him to play dumb. When he stayed quiet, she continued.

  “Evidence that you hired us for this job, that you work for the competition. Oh, and that your real name is Frank O’Rourke, and you’re wanted in the Outer System for murder, accessory after the fact, and human trafficking. My guess is that if we release our intel to the authorities, this place will be swarming with cops in no time.”

  Molly glared at him and he noticeably shriveled, shifting backwards in his seat.

  “There are things you need to understand about this situation, Ms. Bates” the Estarian began. As he spoke, he found his voice and his posture recovered, little by little.

  “This is bigger than you,” he pointed to her and then to himself. “Or me.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. And half the time, it’s from some Ogg trying to get me to go back to his place,” she smirked.

  Oggs and Estarians were known to like human companionship, as long as they were the ones giving orders and controlling the relationship. They only treated their own as equals. That’s what
made this exchange particularly…humiliating for him.

  “Tell me, what do you know about the Syndicate?” he asked.

  She raised an eyebrow, “Sounds like a seedy nightclub you people like to frequent.”

  He paused a moment before continuing as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s an organization; a very private organization that monitors and controls the interests of some very powerful people in the health care sector. These corporations you’ve been digging around in recently have made a lot of Sarkians very rich. And your poking around has made a large number of them very nervous. And when very rich people get nervous, it becomes a problem.”

  Molly had straightened up and folded her arms. Though she had intended to get him to talk, she didn’t think it would have been quite so easy. It seemed like his ego was more important to him than his discretion.

  He continued, “The Syndicate has friends all over the place: in the police, in the government, in the military.” He put extra weight on the word “military,” and turned to pull something out of his desk drawer.

  Molly drew back a little, completely unprepared if he was pulling out a weapon.

  He threw another file onto his desk, open at the page describing Molly’s discharge. He had a glint in his eye.

  “A 4077, eh?” It was his turn to smirk. “You know, if I’d have known you were that kind of girl…”

  “Shut up!” she snapped. “I’m not. And I would never...”

  “Point is, Molly Bates—do you think these health care corporations, with all that money and all that power, wouldn’t have means to make some interfering human go away? Mr. Andus would just need to say the word, and that would be it.”

  “Mr. Andus? Who’s he? Did he give the word on Joel?”

  “You don’t already know? Wow, you are new to this part of town. Keep going the way you are and you’ll find out eventually, though that would be a very bad thing. He’s the last person you want to meet. Not very understanding when people tread on his toes. And he knows who you are now.”

  “Because you told him?” She asked.

  “Because I told him,” he confirmed.

  The smug look had returned to his lips. This Estarian thinks he’s won this war. Molly considered coming back with a gun, or planting a car bomb for his trip home…but that was just her inner teenage frustration talking. And she’d already put enough people in danger acting on her impulses. She had to be smarter than that.

  Smarter than him.

  And now smarter than Mr. Andus, whoever the fuck he was.

  This battle wasn’t going to be fought here in Mac Kerr’s office. She needed to leave.

  “You need to leave,” Kerr announced, mirroring her thoughts. He reached over to pick up the phone. “Or else I’ll have security remove you.”

  Molly turned on her heels. Mac Kerr had already been immensely useful. She’d let him think he won, and leave quietly more informed. They had research to start on this so-called Syndicate.

  “One more thing, Mr. Kerr,” she turned before walking out of the open door. “We have precautions in place that if anything should happen, this intel is automatically deployed. You had better pray we don’t have an accident.”

  Molly left his office and continued out of the building via the front door.

  Joel was waiting in the car just down the street. She got in and slammed the car door shut.

  “Fuck!” She slapped the dash in front of her.

  “What?” asked Joel, genuine concern plastered all over his face.

  “I’ve just realized how Oz came up with those names. My fucktard of an ex must have been recording our holocalls as sex tapes.”

  Joel shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What went on in there?”

  “Oh, we have some work to do if we’re going to survive this and still make an impact in this system. Let’s get back to base and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Joel, stunned and still thinking about the sex tapes, put the car into gear and lifted out of the city. He was still none the wiser about what this strange alliance between them was going to be, but this weird-ass girl had saved his life and given him something to focus on.

  Right now, his heart told him this was the right team, even if his brain was telling him that it wasn’t. Fuck it, he was up for whatever trouble she’d gone and stirred up in Mac Kerr’s office just now.

  Electrocution or not, he’d have her back.

  Mac Kerr’s Office, Health Corp Building, Downtown Uptarlung

  Mac straightened himself up behind his desk and stood up. Stretching, he felt a flood of relief. He was getting too old for this shit. He wandered idly over to the window.

  Looking out on the cityscape, he considered what had just happened. This wasn’t what he had signed up for. He enjoyed the money–and the feeling of power this game gave him—but this was supposed to be an easy retirement for him. He swore to himself that he was done with the fuckery of his past endeavors. Yet something told him he should probably start taking more security precautions.

  Composing himself, he hit up his holo, and selected Salon on his call list. The other end picked up after two rings.

  “Elite Style Salon, Elise speaking, how can I help you today, Mr. Kerr?”

  “I’d like to speak to the boss, please.” His tone was flat and routine. Yet this wasn’t a request.

  “Just one moment.” The call was put on hold, and the chimes of the hold music oscillated through his auditory implant. Fokk he hated that music.

  “Mr. Kerr, Mr. Andus for you…”

  And with that the line was switched.

  “Yes,” Mr. Andus answered on the other end. His voice was elderly but strong. Astute. And brusque. There were only certain conditions under which he could be contacted without dire consequence.

  Thankfully for Mac Kerr, this was one of them.

  “She came. Just as you suggested, Sir.”

  There was silence on the other end, as the gentleman considered the new information.

  “And what was her move?” he asked finally.

  “She knew only about my past, and that my position at Health Corp was a cover. She threatened to expose me if anything else should happen.”

  “And did you make her aware of the severity of the…situation?”

  “Yes, Sir. Just as you asked.”

  “Good.”

  “And their location?”

  “We haven’t managed to trace them to a base yet, but I have someone on it as we speak. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from them.”

  “Very good. I will await your call.”

  And with that, the line clicked off.

  Mac turned back to his desk and sat down. Looking at his holo again, he deactivated the jamming signal he used for just such occasions. He’d been impressed that Ms. Bates had thought to do the same.