Page 4 of Scion

“You must be Azure.” The man addressing me stands in the centre of a massive atrium, hands clasped behind his back. Calm but assured. He’s slim, dark-skinned, his black half-hawk spilling artfully down his left side almost to his waist. Looks about twenty-five. No telling his real age.

“Yes.” I study our surroundings. Everything’s polished stone and edge-illuminated glass, the subtle curves and warm colours from outside repeated in here. A huge double staircase spirals, helix-like, upward behind the man. “And you are?”

“Call me Run.”

It’s not his real name—hell, he’s not even making the effort to pretend. Not that I care. I’ll forget it before the end of the conversation anyway. “I’m here for you?”

“That’s right.” Client studies me with cool brown eyes. Less nervous than I expected, though to be fair, most people I deal with are that way around me for a reason. “Where do we start?”

“I’ll need a detailed overview of the defences here. Tech and bio. All of it. Once I understand how we’re set up, we’ll also need to have a conversation about why you felt the need to hire the Keres.” Real or imagined, no one’s contacting my bosses for protection unless they’re convinced there’s an imminent threat.

“Of course. Follow me.”

“No voice match,” comes Atti’s vaguely irritated murmur in my ear as we start farther into the house. Lights come on in response to Client’s movements, revealing the way ahead even as they turn off behind us. We pass beneath a tall, smooth black marble archway. “He’s not a lifer. Neurals are—”

A brief, painfully loud burst of static drowns her out. Then it vanishes, replaced by ominous silence.

“What the hell was that?” I stop and bring my hand up to the q-com, tapping it. “Atti?”

“No AIs.” Client is unsurprised as he watches me.

“What? That’s not how this works. You want me to protect you, I need her help.”

“You’ll manage.” Client is unmoved. “These are the terms of the job. If you believe your superiors will dispute the contract because of it, I am able to put you in contact with them directly.”

Oh. Oh. It’s a stupid stipulation, but I can see from the unconcerned way he looks at me that he knows what he’s doing. Protection is low-risk: as far as the Keres are concerned, this is basically a wildly lucrative babysitting job. No chance they’re going to give up this guy’s tokens because I’m a little hamstrung.

Speaking of which: my therapy sleeve’s gone dead, too. I strip it off irritably. Not ideal, but it’s mostly for pain management now, anyway; it’ll take a little longer to fully heal this way, but the nanosutures should hold under duress, and my somatic revs can take up any slack from this point. “You could’ve just asked.” I extricate the q-com from my ear and pocket it. The internals will be fried from the EMP field—I assume that’s what the paranoid jerk had hidden in the archway—but the metals are still worth a small fortune. “What if I’d had a subdermal?”

“Then you wouldn’t have been right for the job.” He makes a rotating signal with his finger. “Now, if you would? We need to return to the volopad.”

“The volopad? Why…” I understand before the rest of the words make their way from brain to tongue. “Oh.” I was reluctant about this job ten minutes ago. Now I’m wondering how much trouble I’d be in if I just killed this guy myself, and pretended I failed.

A lot, I decide? Yeah. Probably a lot.

He starts walking back the way we came, and I, having little choice in the matter, follow. A volo has already landed as we approach the pad. Different one than before. Black, matte, more utilitarian. With SatScreen in place for kilometres around, nobody’s going to even know I’ve left.

“You don’t trust the Keres, I take it.”

“Not particularly.”

“Then why hire me?”

The volo is already spinning up. I get in.

“You’ll have to ask when you get there.” Not-Client shrugs and steps clear, dark hair streaming to one side. The doors seal. The volo begins to lift.

Oh.

THE FLIGHT TAKES A TOUCH over two hours. No Atti to complain to. Just enough time to be annoyed, then mildly concerned, then annoyed again.

The world remains mostly dark out the window. Overcast tonight, no stars. There’s the occasional pulsing blue streak below from automated transports navigating the solar roads. The warmer illumination of an estate now and then, too, though most in this part of the country can afford SatScreen and are all but invisible from up here. We’re headed just north of east, never deviating. At one point, distant clouds reflect the burning yellows of what must be Themis’s boundaries. The megacity is probably a hundred klicks away. We won’t show up on their sensors.

Aside from keeping track of our position, I ignore most of it and focus on my somewhat unwelcome situation. Absurdly paranoid though all this is, part of me understands. The Keres are engaged to kill people far more often than protect them. And this is only a two-week contract. If I was a lifer—I have to assume the client is one, now; no one else on the planet would have the funds to pull something like this off—I wouldn’t want them knowing anything more than necessary about me, either.

On the other hand, none of this is expected. And unexpected in my line of work is… rarely great.

I glower out into the darkness as the volo starts to descend. It doesn’t help that I was already uneasy about my assignment here. It’s been a minute since I worked protection, and the last time did not end well. The Keres know this. They know my skills are far better suited to offence rather than defence. So why now? Why this job? It was allocated before they could have known about my leg. The injury meant I didn’t protest as much as I would have otherwise, but the more I ruminate, the more I think they would have sent me here regardless.