Page 114 of The Sterling Acquisition
Dante
Thevan’senginehaddeveloped a wheeze somewhere around mile thirty, meaning their transportation was about as reliable as the rest of this insane plan. Dante kept his eyes on the cracked asphalt ahead, watching for the telltale corporate checkpoints that would mean they’d wandered too close to claimed territory.
To their right, the landscape was slowly transforming from the wild overgrowth of the Static Zones to something more structured—trees giving way to the precise geometric patterns of corporate agriculture, abandoned buildings replaced by functional infrastructure with fresh paint and clean lines. The border between chaos and control was becoming visible on the horizon, marked by the distant silhouettes of monitoring towers.
They’d made it forty-five miles from the collective an Dante hoped, that when the encrypted phone inevitably pinged a cell tower, it wouldn’t paint a target on the only sanctuary they’d found.
“You know,” Dante said conversationally, not taking his eyes off the road, “when I calculated our three percent survival rate, I was being generous. That assumed we wouldn’t do anything monumentally stupid until we get to the house Lilac marked on the map.”
In the passenger seat, Orion continued staring at the encrypted phone in his hands like it was a live grenade. Which, in corporate terms, it essentially was. The moment that thing connected to a tower, every intelligence agency in the ISNA would have their approximate location within minutes.
“It’s been on for half an hour,” Orion pointed out, his voice carrying that particular edge it got when he was about to do something purely to prove he could. “I think we’re ahead of schedule.”
Dante allowed himself a moment to appreciate the view—Orion in the morning light, hair still mussed from their hasty departure, wearing clothes that fit him for the first time since Dante had met him. Lilac’s community had been generous with supplies, and seeing Orion in proper boots and a jacket that wasn’t designed to emphasize his captivity did something complicated to Dante’s chest.
A shrill electronic tone cut through the van’s interior, sharp and insistent and fucking terrifying in its implications. Dante’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as he stared at the caller ID displaying on the screen.
Amalie - Gensyn Operations
Dante’s first instinct was to let it ring through to voicemail, but that would only delay the inevitable while potentially making him look like he was actively avoiding contact. Better to answer and control the narrative than let Amalie’s imagination fill in the gaps.
He gestured for Orion to hand him the phone, accepting it with the same enthusiasm he might show for handling a rattlesnake.
“Ashford,” he said, putting just enough breathlessness in his voice to suggest he’d been hurrying to answer.
“Dante!” Amalie’s voice was bright with that particular strain of corporate cheer that meant someone was furious but maintaining professional standards. “How lovely to finally hear from you! I was beginning to worry when you went offline for so long.”
“The trip to the Static Zone has been... educational,” Dante said. “I had some mechanical difficulties and had to find supplies to patch a hole in the van’s tire. You know how it is out here—old tech along I-295 interferes with signal transmission, and we’ve had Berserkers tracking us for the better part of yesterday.”
It was a plausible enough lie. The Static Zones nationwide were notorious for communication dead spots, and Berserker packs were a constant threat to anyone traveling through unclaimed territory. The fact that both things had sort of happened to them made the deception easier to sell.
“Oh my,” Amalie said, and the concern in her voice was probably even genuine. “That does sound harrowing. I do hope you’re safe and that the research samples and test subject remain secure.”
“All packages are intact and accounted for,” Dante replied, using their established code for sensitive materials. “I should be reaching friendly territory within the next few hours, assuming the transportation holds together.”
“Wonderful! The sooner you can get the data and our test subject to friendly territory, the better. The longer you’re out there, the more danger you’re in of losing the research —either to SVI pursuit teams who are definitely tracking you, or to Berserkers ruining the integrity of our test subject.”
Test subject.There it was again, that casual dehumanization that had once rolled off him without a second thought. Now, with Orion sitting next to him, the phrase felt like a punch to the gut. Dante glanced sideways to see Orion’s jaw tighten almost imperceptibly, his fingers curling into fists in his lap.
“Speaking of which,” Amalie continued, her voice taking on a different quality—more hesitant, as if she were approaching a topic she’d been dreading, “I need to ask about your readings, sweetie. What happened to your monitoring system?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, before they went offline, your readings were...” She paused, and he could practically hear her shuffling through reports. “Frankly, Dante, they were so far out of normal parameters that our entire technical team thought there’d been a system malfunction. Heart rate spikes that should have indicated cardiac distress, hormonal fluctuations that were off the charts, stress indicators that were literally breaking our measurement scales.”
Fuck. Dante had known the bio-monitors would be problematic, but he hadn’t realized just how thoroughly his body’s response to the Primal Triad had compromised their readings.
“The Static Zones are notoriously difficult on monitoring equipment,” he said, falling back on technical deflection. “Electromagnetic interference from pre-Adjustment infrastructure can cause all sorts of anomalies.”
“That’s what we thought initially,” Amalie said, and now her voice carried a note of something that might have been embarrassment. “But Dante, your readings were so erratic that they triggered a system-wide recall. The entire line of implants that you are equipped with has been pulled from the market. Gensyn is paying out of pocket to replace several thousand units under warranty because we can’t riskeven a ten percent deviation similar to yours in the general population.”
Dante nearly drove the van off the road.
He felt a ripple of surprised amusement from Orion—a strange mix of pride and disbelief that their connection had caused such corporate chaos.
“I...” Dante started, then stopped, at a loss for words. “That’s... concerning.”
“Oh, it’s been quite the crisis,” Amalie said with forced lightness. “The Board is beside themselves. Director Hayes has been asking very pointed questions about the reliability of our operative monitoring systems, and the technical department is scrambling to figure out what went wrong.”
