Only Ritter met my gaze. I expected to see amus.e.m.e.nt or even satisfaction at Ava"s words, but instead I glimpsed a sadness I didn"t often see on his face, a heaviness usually masked by strength and competence, a weight caused by this centuries-long war. What had he been like before becoming Unbounded? Obviously he"d felt an urge to protect others since he"d chosen to be an officer of the law in colonial America, but what else had he done? Had he gone on picnics with his family? Had he partic.i.p.ated in games of skill that were popular in the day? All I really knew about that time of his life began on the day his family was slaughtered by the Emporium.
Ritter saw my gaze and winked, his strength back, the weight lifted-or at least willingly borne. Warmth inched over my body, filling me to bursting and blotting out all thoughts of Ava.
With effort I left him there with the others.
STELLA JOINED ME ON THE elevator at the next floor, her face looking weary and her pinstriped suit slightly disheveled, which for her was unusual and testified of a fruitless day. As usual, her neural headset was on and occasionally blinking. "Glad to see you"re recovered." She turned up her eyepiece and smiled. "Mari told me what happened today. That"s tough about the disk."
"Thanks." I could always depend on Stella to say what I needed to hear.
"Keene should have known better than to force you to take him along. He was nothing but a liability in his condition."
"Well, he did get us in. Mari and I would have spent hours looking for the family and figuring out some excuse to talk to them." I don"t know why I was defending him because I was angry about the way things had turned out.
"Instead you spent the entire day recovering." Stella rolled her eyes. "He should have set things up and let you take over. The question is why didn"t he? And don"t defend him. I like it better when you two are at each other"s throats."
I laughed. "I"ll keep that in mind."
The doors swung open and we continued down the hall together. "You heading to bed?" Stella asked.
"I"ve had enough rest." I explained Ritter"s idea of scaring the Emporium into moving the prisoners. "Wanna come?"
"If he needs me, but I"d rather keep researching. A few of the technopaths in Europe are helping me sift through data." She stared into the distance at something I couldn"t see. "And Ava and Dimitri just sent me texts with additional requests."
Requests I suspected she was already jumping to fulfill, if the increased blinking of the lights on her headset was any indication. "You should get some rest. From what I hear, I"m not the only one who had a rough day, and you"re not fueled by an overdose of curequick like I am." I stopped in front of my door. "They must have given me too much."
That made her smile. "You just seem to be more sensitive to the stuff. As for me, I"m fine, or will be after a bit. I think what you"re seeing is a problem with a couple of my nanites."
"A malfunction?"
She nodded. "I tapped into a computer at the hospital and I got my wires crossed with some nanite research they"ve been involved with. Good thing I noticed before I shorted out more of them and my appearance reverted completely. I had to reprogram the remaining nanites to temporarily do their job, but their replacements are back in now. Nothing a little time won"t cure." She sighed. "Sometimes I think I"m too vain, but this version of me has become so familiar that I don"t really recognize the other me."
I"d never seen Stella without her nanites slightly altering her appearance, but I suspected she was still an attractive woman. "Want to talk while I change?" I asked, twisting the k.n.o.b on the door to my room.
The brow over one slanted eye rose. "Is this about Ritter?"
"Hey, I"m the one who"s supposed to be able to sense, not you."
She chuckled and followed me inside. "I can spare a moment."
Dropping my boots by the door, I began undressing as I walked into my bathroom, tossing my clothes into the hamper. I would have liked to take a shower, but I contented myself with a rubdown using a hot, wet towel. In the large mirror I could see the skin in the middle of my back was pinker than the rest, but otherwise there was no sign of the bullet. I grinned.
As I finished washing, Stella came in carrying my catwoman suit. "Might be a little cold, but you"ll need it if you"re going on the offensive. Too bad the jacket part was ruined in Mexico. Well, the other sets we ordered should be here soon."
"Better add in another long coat," I said to her retreating back. "We all left ours at the Emersons" townhouse." Pulling on the suit, I returned to my room to restock my weapons.
She flopped on my couch, though on her it looked more like a seductive flourish. "I already ordered you another long jacket and a short version. I like everyone to have a backup, so after I make sure it works, I order more. We tend to outlive our clothes." She paused. "Or most of us do."
She was thinking of her mortal husband and the unborn baby she"d lost, both three weeks gone. The loss was huge, a thing that filled up all of who she was and everything she might have become. She would get over Bronson and the baby in time, but for now it felt as if she never would. No wonder she worked so hard.
She looked up at me, her olive skin darkening with embarra.s.sment. "I"m doing it again, aren"t I? Projecting emotion. I"m sorry."
I shook my head slowly. "It"s me. Something happened in Mexico. I would have told you before, but we"ve all been a little busy."
"Go on," she kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet under her.
"I can feel surface thoughts without really trying. I mean, I could somewhat before, but now I always do, and mind shields . . ." I stopped before making myself continue. "When I"m rested, I"ve been able to break through everyone"s except for the sensing Unbounded we ran into this morning. Well, everyone that I"ve tried." I hoped it went without saying that I didn"t pry in my friends" minds.
She stared at me, her dark eyes wide. "That will be very useful. Try breaking through mine."
I was pleased that, like Ritter, she still considered me more useful than intrusive, and I was almost teary that she hadn"t asked me if I"d already breached her shield. That showed her trust more than anything else she could have said.
I sat beside her on the couch, pushing out my thoughts and finding her familiar shield. She wasn"t making it easy for me. As a technopath, she was more adept at directing her thoughts than most Unbounded, and she had centuries of practice. There were no holes anywhere and her barrier was every bit as thick as Ritter"s or Cort"s, though hers was a shimmering dark gray.
Remembering the Emporium agents outside the townhouse, I pulled out my imaginary machete, wielding it in both hands, and slammed it into the gray. Three hits and a glowing hole appeared. I shot through it. I"m here, I told Stella.
"Impressive," she said. "So tell me how I can keep you out?"
I saw in the sand stream of her mind that she didn"t mean me but someone like me. "I"m not sure yet, but it can be done, at least by a sensing Unbounded."
"Can you show me?"
"Yes." I called up the image of the black shield I"d seen inside the sensing agent, trying to include details. I pushed the image into Stella"s sand stream, careful not to disturb the flow of the stream itself with any part of me-or any part of the representation I made of myself.
"It"s more shiny than I usually see," I said, "and it felt far thicker. There was also a cord and another shield he"d thrown up around his companion. I was able to break through the cord and it shattered the other agent"s shield but did nothing to the one over his own mind." That reminded me of the mental shield I"d thrown up around Mari. Had I seen her shot? Maybe I"d ask Ava to go back with me in my memories to see if I had it right. Mari seemed totally fine. Perhaps she"d shifted in and out in that very instant.
I held the image in Stella"s mind as she tried to mimic the construction. The problem was, I could only show it to her from the outside and neither of us really knew how it worked. After several attempts, she sighed. "I think you will have to figure out how it"s built and then teach us."
"I"ll work on that as soon as I get a moment."
The dryness in my voice didn"t escape her. She laughed. "Life does seem to move at breakneck speed, doesn"t it? Good thing we have so much of it left."
"So when do we get to sit on a beach and sip exotic drinks brought to us by gorgeous, half-naked men?" I asked.
She laughed again. "Maybe after we figure out what Patrick Mann is up to."
I started to leave her mind when a familiar mental humming stopped me. Where had I felt that before? There was a pattern to the humming, a pulsing pattern that I- "Erin?"
I pulled my thoughts back to myself, realizing I no longer had permission to be in her mind. "Sorry."
Arising, I headed to my closet to see what weapons I might have stashed there. "I lost my guns at Emerson"s townhouse, and my sai and the machete must still be in-" I stopped talking. The missing weapons sat on a shelf, and the coat I"d reported lost to Stella was inside as well. Okay.
"Is something wrong?"
I lifted the coat from the hook and pulled it on. "Apparently, someone"s been busy while I was off in dreamland." I sure hoped it wasn"t Mari, or I was going to rat on her. Weapons were replaceable; she was not. All the shifting in the world wouldn"t help her if someone got lucky with a bullet.
Stella watched me put the sai into the coat"s special pockets. "So what"s going on with you and Ritter?"
I let my hands drop to my sides and turned to face her. "I"m not really sure. I mean, I know he"s attracted to me and it"s all I can do to keep my hands off him, but . . ." I groaned.
In the past I"d told him to get lost, but even then my body begged him to stay. It didn"t make sense on the surface, but when I remembered that all regular forms of birth control for Unbounded failed, it made perfect sense.
I called it the end of the s.e.xual revolution. Vasectomies healed in a day, an entire uterus regenerated in forty hours. Unbounded genetic material had a longer life span, so keeping track of a woman"s cycle was a challenge, and naturally occurring body acids rendered most barrier methods inconsequential. The only sure method of birth control was a relationship with a sterile mortal, unless you were a healer, and then you might heal your partner without realizing it. While healers couldn"t replace a missing womb, they often untied tubes and healed vasectomies. They could extend the life of a failing organ just by proximity.
Great for the propagation of the species, but not so great for a developing relationship.
Add that to the fact that the normal rate of Unbounded offspring between two Unbounded was thirty percent, which meant a seventy percent chance of burying your child before you physically aged two years. Even with genetic manipulation, the rate was only nearing fifty percent. It was a sort of Russian roulette.
No wonder I was in such conflict.
"Aren"t you going to ask me about his giving you the sai?" Stella asked.
I wanted to, but part of me was afraid of what she would say. My tongue felt suddenly thick. "You seem to think it"s weird that he gave them to me, but he gives everyone weapons."
She arose and came to stand in front of me. "Yeah, from the a.r.s.enal, not his personal collection." She put her hands on my shoulders and stared up into my eyes. "Erin, it"s a mating ritual that combat-gifted Unbounded have practiced for millennia. They give their most prized weapons to their intended. Combat Unbounded understand the significance immediately, and the rest of us have learned to appreciate it. Of course to mortals and to you, so recently Changed, it must seem odd." She let her hands drop from my shoulders but held my gaze. "Anyway, by giving you weapons, Ritter is making a declaration."
"What? It"s a proposal?"
"Of sorts." Stella"s grin was ridiculously wide.
"Why are you so happy about this? You"re the one who told me Ritter is too angry to partic.i.p.ate in any kind of romantic relationship."
She shrugged. "He"s different now. I don"t know if it"s because Justine"s death in Mexico finished his quest to find all the Unbounded who murdered his family, or if it"s because of you. But I suspect it"s you." She hesitated before adding, "Maybe it"s because now he has something to live for. Loving someone makes near immortality a lot less bleak." The pain in her heart had come to the surface again, and I shut my eyes momentarily against the onslaught.
"I don"t know if I"m ready for that." There. I"d spoken the truth I"d never dared to say aloud, especially not to Ritter. "It"s a lot of commitment."
"I know." Her hand came up again, resting on my arm comfortingly. "But the only thing worse than deciding to commit and losing is never taking the risk. Erin, you have something I wish I had. I know it"s a lot to work through, but finding someone to spend your life with . . . I would have given anything if Bronson could have been Unbounded. Or even if I . . ." She looked away before finishing. "If I could have been mortal with him."
That was silly, because even if she"d been mortal, it wouldn"t have prevented his death.
Stella crossed to the door and picked up my boots. "I know you may think that"s stupid, but can you imagine how horrible it"s been these past few years to go out in public? I looked like his granddaughter, not his wife. Even before he became weaker, he couldn"t go on vacations because of his special diets. He couldn"t work in the yard or go for a walk. If I sent him to the store, I worried that he would be too weak to get back alone." She walked toward me and pushed the boots into my hands. "All the while, I didn"t slow down. I felt stronger than ever. Even his desire for intimacy steadily decreased at a time when I only seemed to need him more. It drove me crazy not to share that intimacy." Tears glistened in her eyes. "Several times . . . I"m ashamed to say I sometimes thought about cheating on him. I never did, and I"m glad I didn"t, but it was hard. You know how Unbounded genes are. Survival of the species."
I knew exactly what she meant. Even being near Ritter made me feel crazy sometimes. Except when I was in his arms and then somehow it was okay.
"Aw, Stella." I hugged my friend tightly.
After a few moments she pulled away. "I"m okay. Or I"ll be okay. Working helps. While you guys have been out casing the Emporium compound, Cort and I have been occupied with some nanite improvements. Most are for technopaths, and one will be of interest to you, but I don"t want to get your hopes up yet. We"re not entirely sure we can get it to work even for true technopaths, much less anyone channeling our ability." She walked toward the door, the sadness dropping away from her demeanor, or at least becoming adequately masked, and the hopelessness I was experiencing at my own situation lessened considerably. I really needed to work on my shield.
"So about Ritter," I called after her. "How serious is it? All the weapons, I mean."
She stopped and turned, one hand on the k.n.o.b. "As serious as it gets, and you know Ritter. It"s all or nothing with him."
I swallowed. "What do I do about the weapons?"
"Have you used them?"
I nodded. "Once. Today."
"Then I think you"ve already made your reply."
"That"s crazy! I didn"t even know what it meant."
She tilted her head. "You can probably claim ignorance and get out of it, if that"s what you want. The question is, do you want to get out?" With that she opened the door and left the room.
I stood there alone, all dressed, weapons ready, curequick running through my veins. There was a battle ahead of us tonight with the Emporium, but all I could think about was Ritter and how his touch made me feel.
A rap sounded on the door, and I moved toward it, tugging on my boots as I went. Or trying to. "Come in," I called, thinking that Stella must have forgotten something.
I was bent over trying to pull on the last bit of my left boot when Keene appeared in the doorway. He gave me a mocking smile. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
I gave a last little hop as the boot slid into place. "Ah, no. I am heading out, though."
"I see you found the coat." His eyes ran over me slowly, sending warmth to my face.
"That was you?"
He shrugged. "I called Emerson and had him send our things by messenger to Central Park where Mari shifted in to grab them. All of our stuff was there, plus a few extra guns the Emporium agents left behind."
"Emerson did that?"
"It was the least he could do after we told him about his son."
"Wasn"t he mad at the way we left?"
"Not after I explained. He was angry when he realized the danger his family was in, but happy the Emporium didn"t get the disk. He"s called in backup to protect his son."
"Good thing. Cort and Oliver are watching him, and I think Dimitri is heading over there now, but it"s possible Brody"s a blaster and the ability is rare. If the Emporium suspects, they"ll retrieve him as quickly as possible."
Keene shut the door and my room suddenly felt small. "I only hope his father doesn"t change his mind and kill him first."
"He won"t. I"m sure of it. Thanks for taking out the bullet, by the way."
"No problem. I"ve had to do it enough for others." He chuckled. "Be different if I actually worried about killing you. Or scarring you for life."
I grinned. "Right. So, how are you feeling?" There seemed to be a difference in him now, a strength that wasn"t there this morning.
"Good, surprisingly. Dimitri is better than the healer I"ve had work on me before." Keene took two steps, closing the s.p.a.ce between us. "Going to the compound?"
I nodded. "You"ve heard the plan?"
"Yeah. A siege might work as long as the Emporium isn"t connected by tunnels to the outside like our new facility in San Diego." He took another step. Now he was in my s.p.a.ce and my heart thumped more rapidly. What was he doing?
"Stella would have let us know if that were the case."
"Computers can"t tell us everything." His eyes held mine, brilliant green even in the average light of my room. His hair was pushed back and I glimpsed the long line of darker red on the edge of his face. I thought the scar looked different. Maybe it was finally fading or changing colors, or Dimitri"s healing had helped speed recovery. "Erin," he said.
I swallowed hard. "Yes?"
"Here." He handed me a small folded knife.