“Why are you so determined to go? It doesn’t even make sense.”

He pauses then, but doesn’t meet my eyes, hands clenching into fists. “Call it atonement, but I can’t walk away from people who need my help. I can’t risk letting the monster loose again, so I have to be better, stronger, more…everything than anyone else. See, I don’t get to be a callous son of bitch because I perfected it. I don’t ask you to understand or to risk your life over this, so stay here. It’s fine. If I’m not back in two hours, get the fuck off station. The AI can handle it.”

Though it’s a bad idea on a thousand levels, I want to touch him. Brush the dark hair out of his eyes and lean my forehead against his chin. We’re both so fucking broken that I understand our strange attraction, a push-pull magnetism born of similar scars.

It’s a foregone conclusion that I wind up heading back with March. I can’t let him die alone, the unsung hero. I don’t know what he thinks he can do up there, but I’ve got his back regardless.

I can’t help wondering about the broken jumpers Hon admitted to kidnapping. Who else has he taken and why? I feel the pinch of an awakening conscience. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass traveling with a bona fide hero, not that I’d have thought to use that sobriquet on March a short time ago. But it applies.

I wonder if he’s going to bring up the way I left and brace myself for awkwardness. He’s quiet as we make our way back on station. Wish Canton Farr had been able to tell us more about security, but he spent most of his time in the library, trying to look harmless. So most likely, they’re tracking our movements via that door. But there’s nothing we can do; it’s the only way into Hon’s Kingdom.

“He told me enough about his operations that I don’t think he intends to let me leave,” I volunteer.

“Just figuring that out, Jax?” His tone sounds like nothing, though, no mockery, no teasing, and there’s an astonishing coldness in his neutrality. “I told you not to mess with him. I’ve known the man a long time.”

My mouth quirks in what can’t rightly be called a smile. “I never claimed my brain is my strong point, apart from the J-gene.”

I offer the opening, so I expect a standard March slam, but instead he falls silent. We pass through the throne room, eerily empty, even though I know it’s the middle of the sleep cycle. I feel like a little kid sneaking to the kitchen after hours to pinch some cookies, but we’ll get a lot worse than a warm bum if we’re caught.

As we reach the library, he says, “Go on. Test the codes Farr gave us and see if you can use them to access complete schematics for the station.”

When I do, the archives immediately unlock and the sys-term says, “Welcome back, Canton Farr.”

It takes a moment, but I’m able to find the original layout and design. Without looking at March, I activate PA-245 and invite it to translate the data to its data banks via scan. The slim beam flickers over the screen as I pull each one up. I also snitch info about DuPont Station’s initial weapon systems to give us an idea what might be shooting at us when we make a run for it.

“Compile the separate images into a single three-dimensional map, please.”

“Certainly, Sirantha Jax.”

That tears it. We have to take Farr with us, as it’s inevitable this terminal will show what records he accessed recently. A man like Hon will place only one interpretation on such research—the correct one—and take steps accordingly.

PA-245 presents me a nice map of the facility, and I study it for a moment. March seems uncharacteristically passive, or maybe he’s just distracted. Eventually, he comes over, peering at the clamshell terminal before saying, “The lift isn’t the only way up there. We should access the maintenance shafts via the ventilation ducts.”

I’d like to protest. Crawling about in dark, dusty ducts isn’t something I want to do, but going straight to the third deck in plain sight seems too foolhardy, even for me. There’s direct access to the maintenance tunnels, of course, but we don’t have door codes. We’re not authorized repair personnel. If we knew where they lived, March might be able to get the codes as he’d done on Perlas, but that just increases our risk of discovery for no guaranteed gain.

Sighing, I nod and indicate a spot on the display. “We can access it through a panel here.”

“Let’s go. With luck, Dina will have supplies on board by the time we finish up.”

I follow him, and we retrace our steps, where I half expect to find Hon sprawled on his barbwire throne. But the room’s still empty, and March leads the way over to the far wall, behind the table where the rovers were playing Charm, and drops to one knee. He tinkers with the catch, and it snaps open.

“Ladies first,” he tells me, polite as a banker.

Yeah, sleeping with him was definitely a mistake. I miss him giving me shit, even the way we bickered. Now there’s just this silence in which everything dies. But I know what’s expected of me, so I crawl into the vent, where it is, not surprisingly, dark and dusty. My PA gives off a faint glow, enough for me to read the map and orient myself. Thank Mary, it’s not dark enough to trigger a flashback.

“I guess we might as well get going. We have a lot of crawling to do before we reach the maintenance shafts.”

That turns out to be an understatement. My knees are sore and my shoulders aching by the time we reach the hatch where we’ll emerge in the tunnels. The station’s riddled with them like honeycomb, permitting repairs to otherwise-impossible-to-reach pylons. I wonder how long it’s been since anyone ran a safety check, though.

We’re making for a ladder that will take us to the third deck maintenance tunnels. From there we’ll backtrack to the vents and come out…who knows where? Or what we’ll find. This time, March takes the lead, scanning side to side like he thinks there might be mines. Can he find or disarm them if there are?

“Yes,” he answers without looking at me. “Stay behind me, at least three meters.”

“You really think they’d do that? Don’t repairmen come in here?”

He spares me a single glance. “I think we’re somewhere we’re not supposed to be, Jax. There may be security measures in place that we’re supposed to know how to circumvent. And I prefer to be a bit careful. Now get behind me.”

Bitching beneath my breath, I fall in, six paces back like a good, submissive Somalan wife. Part of me thinks he’s enjoying this, and I feel cheated. I composed a speech mentally, dammit. I was going to tell him it was fantastic, but that it couldn’t be repeated. March couldn’t make it clearer that he doesn’t want to talk about it, though. Shit, maybe if I brought it up, he’d read me my own speech. I scowl at his back, disgruntled.

March kneels then, running his fingertips over the welded metal seam between wall and floor, then higher. A red light higher up the wall flares in the gloom, then winks out. I tense, waiting for something worse, but March rises and wipes his hands on his thighs.

“A series of pressure plates all the way down,” he says. “If they’re triggered without someone inputting the disarming sequence…” Well, he doesn’t really need to articulate it. “Interesting thing is, I don’t think Hon installed them. This technology is older than that, more integral to the station.”

I can’t imagine how long it took to build this place; it’s a relic, older than any other outpost in the Outskirts. But I’m not sure what this information means. “This was a Corp station, wasn’t it? Before they decommed it and removed the last personnel when the star routes changed.”

March nods, and I think I see the flicker of a smile, although it’s pretty dim. “So what does that mean, Jax?”

“Oh no.” I shake my head. “You’re not going to get me to entertain you with another conspiracy rant. Don’t think I didn’t see how you and Doc looked at each other over my head on the Folly. Fragging patronizing, the lot of you, and I turned out to be right, even if I sounded crazy! You owe me an apology.”

“Maybe,” he says quietly. “But you’re not getting it right at this moment. Let’s go play hero.”

“Can’t we play master and slave girl instead?” It’s a joke, but I flinch as the words come out. Mary, do I have a big mouth.

I can feel the heat of his eyes. “I don’t think so. Come on.”

As I start up the ladder behind him, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like such an asshole.

CHAPTER 33

I know something’s wrong the minute we crawl out of the vent.

The rest of the station looks like a pawnshop off Gehenna’s pusher promenade, but the third deck, which everyone but Farr has been so careful to tell us isn’t in use, well, it’s like the disparity between the outside of the Folly and the gleaming well-kept interior. This level shines. Everything looks brand-new; it’s a secure lab, and we’ve emerged in the middle of a hallway.

It’s almost too bright after the gloom in the ducts. I’ve probably got something weird growing in my lungs now from breathing that air, some parasite that will eventually kill me, but what the hell, it was for a good cause, right? I wish I believed that.

Really, I’m testing March with these thoughts now and then. Waiting for his sarcasm, waiting for him to bitch at me and tell me I’m depressing. Something. Anything. But either he’s not listening, or I just don’t have the power to provoke him anymore. Why the hell does that bother me?

“Because you’re fragging nuts, Jax.” He gives me a ghost of a smile as he says it. “I thought you wanted me to stay out of your head.”

“Since when does what I want matter? If the universe gave a shit about that, I’d be sitting in a café on Venice Minor, sucking on some choclaste nosh and admiring the working boys.”

I take a minute to imagine that. Mmm. Given the choice, I prefer the slim, pretty ones, golden skinned, without a lot of body hair.

“You’re truly an enlightened soul, aren’t you?” March shakes his head, setting off toward a set of double doors at the end of the hall. The red lights that encircle it serve as an effective warning as far as I’m concerned, but March won’t be deterred. “Come on.”

Neither of us doubts Very Bad Things lie beyond this door, but there’s a meter of solid titanium between us and…whatever. Mind, I’d be happy to turn around right now, but I know March. We’re not leaving until he’s seen this thing through.

“Whenever I follow you, we wind up in trouble,” I point out.

“How is that different from what happens when you lead?”

I sigh. “All right, genius, how do we get in? There are no guards for you to—”

“Let me handle that.” He withdraws a slim rectangle from his pocket, and I recognize it as a codebreaker, definitely black-market ware.

Slender silver filaments snake out from the device, gliding beneath the edges of the keypad to connect. I expect more animation, but it goes to work silently, and as it runs through numeric possibilities, the lights snap off around the door one by one. When all ten bulbs go dim, the door swishes open, leaving us looking into yet another hallway. I don’t bother checking my PA; the map of the third deck is outdated, more than the other levels. According to those records, we’re standing in an infirmary.