Page 26 of Ensnared By the Rabbit Genius
The last guy—bearded, a little older, and somehow familiar—stuck out his hand. “And I’m Quincy Boone.”
I did not calm down and instead gasped and clasped his hand in both of mine. “Oh, my god, you’re the Marine who saved that Cero guard! That whole thing with the car chase and his arm… Is he okay now?”
Quincy smiled and patted my hands. “Ram’s great and his arm’s as good as new.”
I let him go and had to ask, “You’re with the Norlon guard now, right?”
“I am, yeah. Sort of a consulting position, military to military.”
“Right, okay, so… Is, like, the secretary of defense or someone like that coming after the Norlons for military tech? Like demanding it? Or are they letting the FBI do that for them?”
They all blinked at me.
“I’ve been in some of the meetings Seiwa was having with the FBI and NASA but got the feeling they weren’t the only ones at the table, you know? Some of them wore suits but, like, would’ve felt more comfortable in a uniform?” I cleared my throat in the face of their continued staring. “I’m with— I mean, Iwasa research analyst with the FBI and they assigned me to watch Seiwa, so any meeting he was in, I was…there. You all have no idea what I’m talking about, huh?”
Logan suddenly barked a laugh. “Fuck me, you’re going to be a fun addition to our club.”
The rest of them laughed, too, and I joined in even though I wasn’t completely sure what he meant.
“Let’s get some breakfast,” Quincy said, “and you can tell us all about everything.”
So I did. While we moved from station to station getting every breakfast food imaginable, I told them about everything from the little robot to Stubbins’ final demands. To hell with any and every piece of paper I’d ever signed that swore confidentiality and national security because, hello, I didn’t work for the FBI anymore—probably—and was kind of a Norlish citizen now anyway. Was there a way to formally give up Earth citizenship?
Besides, if anyone was going to know what to do, it would be these guys.
Seiwa still wanted to hack the FBI, so he was out.
“Okay,” Quincy said as we sat down with our trays around a boring table with six utilitarian chairs. “While I’ve been in a couple of meetings where they’ve asked about weaponry, they’ve rescinded their requests when we let them know that if we give weapons to one country, we give weapons to all of them.”
I snorted a laugh. “And then you had meetings to tell them all that, no, they’re not the exception.”
Quincy pointed at me with his forkful of eggs. “Literally everyone had a reason why they should be exempt. But my point is that America isn’t the only country with a space program or an investigative branch of the federal government.”
“Oh,” I said, drawing it out. “I didn’t even think about that.”
Owen said, “I bet the rest of the world has been thinking about it.”
I cringed because, yeah, that was bad.
“They have,” Logan said before sipping his coffee. “We’ve been getting a lot of…complaints.”
I had a feeling there were some threats in there, too.
Squiretsked with a shake of his head. “You’d think the nanobots being distributed globally was enough to make everyone happy.”
“Well, for some people it is.” I couldn’t help teasing with, “I know I’m thankful to them after three days alone with my new mate.”
They all snickered and toasted me with their drinks.
“That doesn’t stop, you know,” Logan said with a grin.
“No?”
“Nope. As the elder mate of this group?—”
Owen interrupted with, “Because they’ve been together for a whopping three months.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “I can confirm that we are as athletic and enthusiastic now as we were at the beginning.”
