Page 12 of Enthraller

“Successful hunt?” she asked.

He’d brought in a bag he’d slung beneath the table as he’d sat, which he hadn’t had when he left.

“Went back home to get some clothes, but my place was surrounded with SF soldiers, so I had to go shopping.” He took a sip of his hirtsu. “I also tried to have a word with the head of Special Forces, Captain Hyt.”

“Tried?” she asked as she slid the dish into the oven.

“He was with too many people, and he’s still wearing the bruise I gave him the last time I saw him, so I reckon he hasn’t had time to go to medical to get it sorted out.”

“You hit him?” She landed in the chair opposite him, her own bottle of hirtsu in hand, and quirked her brow.

“He irritated me.” Ed gave an almost sheepish half-shrug. “I didn’t think he’d let me leave SF headquarters after what happened at the hover port without an escort, and I wanted to ask Katil in the Depository what she could tell me about a woman who disappeared like morning mist right in front of my eyes.”

Wren gave him a wide-eyed stare, and realized she should have kept her expression more guarded.

“You know Katil?” He sounded surprised.

She shook her head. “I’ve seen her from a distance. I deal with Histilo when I’m at the Depository. I saw you walk past me while I was in there, that’s why I waited for you in that alley.”

“Why were you there?” he asked.

“My main source of research in the past has been the Depository in Nanganya, but I’ve spent enough time in the Demeter Depository as part of my job, researching artifacts and the history of various cultures, for them to be used to me there. And it’s felt safer for me to work there than in the Nanganya Depository. I’ve been on official leave for more than three months, waiting for a transfer to Demeter SF, and I’ve been using the Depository to study everything anyone knows about the Ancestors in the meanwhile.”

“Why do you think Demeter is safer?” Ed asked.

“Because since I got back from Ytla and started pushing for a team to go back and look at that wreck, I’ve been followed and watched, and I have a sense things are escalating, getting worse the closer I get to transferring over to Demeter SF.”

Ed leaned back in his chair, his long legs pressing against hers, his sharp-angled face contemplative. “You said you got the nanotech at the site of a wreck on Ytla?”

“Yes.”

He slid his elbows onto the table, face serious. “That’s that moon with the cult on it?”

She nodded. “Special Forces were called in to rescue a small group of scientists who were being threatened by the Har Met Vent, and they came across some interesting items while they were rescuing them, so I was called in to assess them.” She took a slug of her hirtsu. “I was busy recording the find, which was an interesting series of carvings in a rocky outcrop, when the two SF soldiers guarding me were ambushed and the Har Met Vent grabbed me and carried me off.”

“The SF soldiers, were they killed or just knocked out?” Ed asked.

“Knocked out.” She tipped her bottle at Ed. “You think someone in the unit organized the grab, on condition his team mates weren’t killed?”

Ed gave a nod. “Could be. Two SF soldiers to guard you when they were already aware the cult was playing hardball seems inadequate.”

She gave a nod. “Heads rolled, or so I was told, over that mistake. I don’t know if that was just talk or someone actually experienced consequences.” She stared into space for a while, trying very hard not to remember the three days she was held by the cult. She took another swallow of hirtsu.

“Bad?” Ed asked.

She gave a twist of her lips in answer, and he gave a nod in acknowledgement.

“They come get you? The SF?” Ed slid his empty bottle away from him.

She shook her head. “I escaped, found the nanotech, and got a turbo boost, so to speak. The Har Met Vent did manage to clip me with a laz strike near the wreck, but they obviously hadn’t come across it before and they were so interested in it, they missed me lying almost unconscious in the bushes nearby. My nanos decided they most definitely didn’t like being hit by laz and started working on a solution.”

Ed gave a grunt at that, and she remembered he’d been saved by her nanos’ solution, as well.

“When I recovered from the hit, it took me three days to get myself to headquarters. As I came in the front door, there was a team suiting up to come for me. Allegedly.”

Ed was shaking his head. “So you were taken six days earlier? And they were only then heading out?” He looked skeptical in the extreme.

“There had been a massive storm from the night I was taken until the day before I arrived back, to be fair. That’s how I escaped, the wind tore the roof off my prison in the middle of the night, and I managed to climb out over the wall. All signs of my captors tracks were destroyed by the weather, and I was told theSF were waiting out the conditions until they could safely come for me.”

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