Page 73 of Enthraller

The man bared his teeth at her. “There’s a lens on the stairs. We saw you coming up. She decided I wasn’t moving fast enough.”

Wren circled him as Ed lifted his comms unit to speak to Lieutenant Bartam about the hover heading over the city. “Who are you?”

“Pontia.” The man looked ill, which was unusual for anyone in the VSC. Access to high level med tech was available to everyone.

“What’s wrong with you?” She crouched beside him and reached out, but her nanos wouldn’t let her touch him with her own fingertip.

Just before she made contact, a tiny silver probe extended out.

“You have an unknown infection.” She wanted to shuffle back, but her nanos told her it wasn’t contagious, and so she kept up the contact. “Where did you get it?”

“A pit of unrelenting horror.” Pontia spoke in a whisper, and she wondered for a moment if he was a little insane.

He caught it on another planet, her nanos told her.A place no one else in the VSC knows about.

“Another planet,” she said, and he blinked at her, as if trying to work out how she knew that, and then he looked up over her shoulder.

Ed had come to stand behind her.

“Where is this planet?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter where,” Pontia said, looking away. “No one in their right mind would ever go there. It’s . . . the most terrible place I’ve ever seen. Everything there is nasty. From the flowers, to the insects, to the animals—” He shook his head. “The monsters.”

Ed bent a little, gave her a questioning look. “He’s ill,” she said. “Unknown infection, caught on a mystery planet.”

“Too medically interesting to get checked out?” Ed guessed. “Maybe there would have been too many questions?”

The man gave a reluctant nod.

“Well, the med techs will help you now.” And being denied medical care because your very body would raise questions your bosses didn’t want answered might lead to some resentment.

Like giving the incorrect address for the secondary warehouse.

Unless he was telling the truth about it just being another layer of security.

The sound of footsteps running up the stairs was clear, and Lieutenant Bartam and a small team ran toward them.

“Where did your friend go?” Wren asked, keeping the nanos in contact with him while her other hand waved in the direction the hover had taken.

He opened his mouth to say something, stuttered, and then turned to look at her. It seemed as if he was struggling against himself.

She should probably feel bad about forcing him to speak, but she thought of the laser strike at the hover port and shoved all guilt aside.

“She’s headed for our freighter at the port, is my guess. She tried to kill me. She thought she had.” He gave a grimace that she thought he meant as a smile. “She waited for me to tell her where the other warehouse was, and when I had, she shot me.”

“But you lied?” The nanos were picking that up.

He gave a wheezing laugh. “I lied.”

“No honor among conspirators?” Wren asked.

He shrugged. Shook his head. “I was never an equal partner, just a drone. She was with me on that planet, but if she’d gotten sick, they’d have found a way to treat her.”

“Aren’t you afraid she’ll come back to find you when she works out you lied?” Ed moved a little and crouched beside Wren, blocking the silver of her nano’s probe from view as Bartam reached them.

“Who’ve we got?” Bartam sounded like she was in the mood for good news.

“One of the people responsible for the warehouse. He’s been cooperative with his answers so far,” Wren said. “Maybe question him while he’s in a talkative mood.” She rose to her feet, and Ed did the same.

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