Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(18)

“You’ll receive equal thirds of the price,” Abel says. “But I wanted to pace out your payments to prevent another submersible incident.”

Zayan hangs his head, sheepish, as Virginia says, “What submersible incident? If you guys got up to hijinks in a submarine, I want to hear every detail.”

“It’s not that,” Harriet says. “The first time we received a big payout after we joined Abel’s crew, Mr. Thakur here got it into his head that he needed to rent a personal submersible to cruise the ghost reefs of the Indian Ocean. Which would’ve been expensive enough, even if he hadn’t promptly driven it straight into a reef and needed a tow to get out.”

“The tow cost more than the sub.” Zayan sighs. “Okay, I got carried away. We’d just been so broke for so long! I wanted to do something special, really memorable—and I did. Just not the way I wanted to. Trust me, I’m never doing that again.”

Trust me. That’s what Abel hasn’t done. He nods. “All right, Zayan. We’ll settle it on board. Please forgive the delay.”

At this moment, the Montgolfier waiter—a Zebra model, designed for customer service—walks up to the table. Virginia tries to wave him off, saying, “Abel here hasn’t even glanced at the menu.”

The Zebra ignores her and turns to Abel. “Professor Mansfield has a message for you.”

As startled as Abel is, it takes him only three-tenths of a second to react. “If you’ve coded in your payment for the meals,” he says to Zayan and Harriet, “let’s go. Now.” Virginia has already hopped off her energy-field stool, wild-eyed with sudden fear. But Abel’s always known Mansfield could be tracking him. He’s had time to steel himself.

Yet beneath his calm exterior, he cannot deny that he is afraid.

The Zebra pays no attention to his attempt to leave. “The message is urgent.”

“Walk away,” Abel commands the others. Probably he should ask them, be more polite, but Harriet and Zayan have figured out that this is a crisis, even if they can’t possibly understand it. Meanwhile, Virginia knows exactly how wrong this is. They fall in line as he walks away from the table, out the door of Montgolfier, and into the corridor of the vast underground shopping complex.

In the corridor is a Yoke model, fit only for manual labor, mopping the floor. She doesn’t pause in her work as she looks up at Abel. “Because of your reluctance to cooperate with Burton Mansfield’s plans, he has been forced to find another form of motivation.”

“What, this one, too?” Virginia says.

Abel quickens his pace. Another Yoke steps in front of them, and Abel doesn’t wait for her to speak, just pushes her to one side. He’d always hoped that when Mansfield made his move, Harriet and Zayan would be far away, safe from any harm. While he is willing to take risks with his own life, he cannot allow Mansfield to endanger his friends.

The hangar. They have to get to the hangar, immediately. Such linked communication among several mechs is highly unusual, if not unprecedented. Whatever Mansfield has planned, he’s compromised any number of mechs on Cray and could have reprogrammed them to do absolutely anything. They could slaughter his crew and Virginia at a stroke. He is willing to defend them to the death—and since Mansfield has left him alive, that gives him a chance of saving them.

He doesn’t think past “a chance.” He senses that he doesn’t want to calculate exact probabilities.

As they hurry into the hangar, a Charlie mech standing sentry smiles as if he’s been expecting them. Abel tenses, preparing himself to fight, but the Charlie doesn’t make a move. Instead he says, “Noemi Vidal is in Burton Mansfield’s custody.”

“Impossible,” Abel says. He believes it. Mansfield has great power, but not even he could send a kidnapping force to Genesis. This can only be a lie, flimsy and crude—

—but Mansfield is a good liar, when he wishes to be. So why this?

The Charlie continues, “Proof of life and captivity will be provided to you as soon as you contact Mansfield from any Earth communication station. You have forty-eight hours from now to present yourself at his home in London, where you will surrender without resistance. Once you are adequately secured, Miss Vidal will be released to safely return home.”

“Why is Burton Mansfield after Abel?” Harriet whispers, but Virginia shushes her.

The Charlie’s dark eyes are empty—soulless, Noemi would say—as he concludes, “Should you fail to surrender before the deadline, Noemi Vidal will die. The choice is yours.”

Then the Charlie model straightens, a motion that indicates realigning subroutines. Within another second, he stands at attention as usual, unaware of the words he has just uttered.

Abel takes one step backward; Zayan’s hand closes around his upper arm. Virginia’s the first to find her voice. “Hey, we don’t even know if that’s for real.”

“It is,” Abel says. “He promised proof, and in such matters, Mansfield never bluffs.”

Noemi is “in custody.” What does that mean? His imagination pictures her in a cell, a highly melodramatic and improbable circumstance, but he fixates on the idea anyway. Is she hungry? Is she scared, or cold?

(She hates the idea of being alone in the cold. That’s what happened to her when her family was killed, when she lay in the snow for hours.)