Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(82)

“Um . . . sure?”

She gave me a silent nod, grabbed a food packet at random and shoved it in the reheater, and pressed the button. It began its work.

She quickly touched the input screen.

It booted up. Bea did a silent victory dance, hair whipping, and then shut it down again as the reheater dinged for attention. She grabbed the food and tossed it to me. Ugh. Meatloaf. Not my favorite.

I got it, then. She’d tapped into a power source, but in order to disguise that the input screen was live, she needed to run something else on the line at the same time. Not necessarily the reheater, just something that Typhon didn’t consider a threat.

I mouthed media room, and she grinned and unhooked the screen as quickly as she’d put it together. Leaving the food, we managed to wire the input screen in series with the vid player. I queued up a marathon playlist, and as it began, she turned on the data input.

We were into the database. Nadim had unlocked it for us, and now we had a way in.

We bumped fists while the opening credits of an old movie rolled over the screen behind us, and got busy.

Nearly six hours later, we sat in the lush seats, watching the end of a movie we hadn’t so much as glanced at until now, and passed the reheated meatloaf back and forth, taking small bites. I pulled out my H2 and quickly wrote, Do you think it will work?

Yes, she said, with five bouncing icons for emphasis. Good enough for me.

I wrote, Nadim, are you following?

He wrote Yes on my H2, and then, on a separate line, I don’t like this. I can’t help you there. It’s too dangerous for you.

I love risk, I told him.

I know. That’s why I don’t like it.

I almost laughed. Instead, I wrote, It’s our shot. We have to take it.

He didn’t approve of that, but he accepted it. Now, all we had to do was make it work. And that depended on all of us working together.

Just like it was meant to be.





PART IV





CHAPTER NINETEEN


Breaking Vows


“MARKO? ARE YOU there?”

I had been trying to hail the other vessel for the better part of an hour. It was so annoying to contact somebody you knew damn well was listening and was choosing to ignore you. If he thought I’d give up, however, he didn’t know me at all.

Into the third hour, his furious face finally appeared on my comm screen. “We have nothing to discuss, Zara! We are not interested in excuses or justifications.”

There went my first pretext. Time for Plan B.

“I need medical treatment. You already know I’m partially deep-bonded with Nadim, and that beating messed me up. EMITU isn’t working properly. I might die if you don’t do something.” I leaned over and groaned, took a mouthful of red juice offscreen from a bottle, then coughed up a stream of it at the holocam. That had to look gross. “But I guess that’s just fucking fine, huh? You don’t care?”

“Get out of the way.” Marko was shouldered aside, and then Chao-Xing appeared. “We don’t have time for your bullshit. Have EMITU fix you.”

“It’s not working.” I moaned and clutched the wall. “Don’t believe me? Come with me to medical.” I picked up my H2 and went mobile with the call.

All my years of truancy paid off in my performance. I hacked, I stumbled, making sure to give them plenty of shaky cam. When I got to medical, EMITU was offline, courtesy of Beatriz. “Please help me,” I begged the inert droid.

No response.

“Try resetting it,” Marko said.

He seemed slightly concerned now, so I milked it, pitching forward so that I almost dropped the H2. From that angle, I’m sure it looked like a full face-plant. I lay there for a few seconds before rolling onto my side with a gargle. I fumbled around at the back of the machine and nothing happened. I rasped out, “Never mind. Probably easier if I die.”

If they could monitor my vitals remotely, then we were screwed. Plus, I was gambling everything on them still having souls. A muffled argument raged behind me, but I didn’t dare move. They have to send someone. They have to.

It would be inconvenient if I died in the Honors program, but there would be ways to spin it, probably. A sudden aneurysm in my brain, some other hidden health defect? Such a tragedy; she was so young. Same way those two Honors on Nadim’s long-ago voyage had just . . . disappeared.

Suddenly this didn’t seem like that great a plan.

Finally, Marko said, “Hold on, Zara. I’m coming. But you’d better not be pulling anything.”

Success.

I lay on my face until Marko arrived. Bea made her entrance just as he did, crying out, rolling me over, babbling questions at me and him in a mixture of English and Portuguese until he waved her off. “Not now. I’ll update you when I know something.”

“She’s been so sick since—” Bea was actually crying. The Teatro Real was in her blood. “I think there are internal injuries, I thought she was resting.”

“All right, calm down, I’ll take care of her.”

She caught her breath on a sob. “How do I know you won’t just—”

“Beatriz.” Evidently her terror registered as sincere because Marko paused. “Am I a murderer? Am I?”

Even I got chills when she whispered, “I don’t know.”