Julian cleared his throat. “You seem to like taking on side-projects. It’s just occurred to me that I can use you.”
“Excuse me?”
“In a professional capacity,” he said, his mouth picking up on one side. “I’d like to hire you to help me with an internal investigation I’ve started at Psionic.”
“What kind of investigation? It’s your company.”
“Right. Obviously. But there is a Special Projects division. My father started it as a small subsidiary, so it wasn’t something I had full access to. Until this week that is, when I bought the majority shares. It’s been shrouded in mystery and losing money since its inception. I’m now starting the gargantuan task of sifting through a decade’s worth of paper files.”
“Wait, did you say paper?”
“Yes, paper. Have I earned your sympathy?”
She nodded, feeling truly sorry for him, and gestured for him to continue.
“So, while I’m doing that, it would be helpful if you did some forensic accounting for me. The numbers don’t make sense. There is no logical reason for a whole division that has never made any profit to still exist. Not knowing my dad at least. He never did anything that didn’t make a profit.”
“Okay…I’ll admit it sounds interesting. What’s in it for me?”
“I’ll pay you,” he said with a shrug.
Quinn scoffed. “Obviously you’ll pay me. We aren’t all made of money, Mr. Deep Pockets.”
He grinned. “All right, what do you have in mind?”
She thought about it. She didn’t have a lot of time on her hands. Especially if she was going to come up with another way to work on her parents alongside her full-time job. “Okay, I’ll do it. But in addition to you paying an exorbitant amount of money, I would like a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” he asked, one brow arched.
“I don’t know yet. You’ve put me on the spot. But I expect you to deliver when the time comes.”
“I don’t write blank checks.”
“And I don’t conduct private investigations.”
His face was unreadable as she waited for him to decide. She tapped her foot in exaggerated impatience.
“Done,” he said finally, holding out his hand to shake. She gripped his hand firmly and dropped it quickly.
“I’ll be there at five thirty tomorrow after work. I’ll need an office space that is unnoticeable to work from and network access, so I don’t have to waste time hacking in.”
“You can’t hack into my network. I built those firewalls myself,” he said with a cocky grin.
“If they are anything like your firewalls at home, I’ve already breached them.”
Julian’s scowl was all she needed to turn her mood bright once again.
The Commander
Every step down into the mineshaft felt like a mistake. The dark blue rock walls curved and twisted, making it hard for the commander to see what lurked around the next corner. Behind him was a whole company of soldiers, ready to lay down their lives for Arcadia, for their future, and for everyone they had lost.
Haven had been the home of their most talented scientists and engineers. After their second loss at the battle of Yaralee, the commander had ordered them to dedicate every waking hour to find his people a way out, for a way to defeat the Draconians.
Their enemy was led by a man whose name remained secret and who moved only in shadow. His second, Nero, was the opposite, and stories said he would sacrifice his own soldiers if it meant destroying the Arcadians. Their bloodlust was unquenchable. The commander had sent peacekeepers only once. And their deaths would be on his shoulders forever.
“This way, sir,” his lieutenant called, leading them through the twisted tunnels of their oldest city. He’d left his people in a bunker near the ocean and now he and his soldiers marched to Haven, hoping to arrive before Nero sent his own men.
They were moving now through semi-collapsed offshoots of the mine. He stepped carefully, gripping his plasma gun. It was the wrong weapon; if he fired it, the rock might fall all around them, but still he inched forward. The cold, wet air penetrated his uniform, which clung to his damp skin.
“Tell me again what was in the report,” he said.
His lieutenant replied, his light darting down another passage, “It said, we have the machine, Commander. You must come at once.”
“It was the hand of Gregor?” he asked, ducking under a low outcropping of rock. Gregor was their chief engineer, based in Haven, where all manner of scientific discovery had occurred over the decades. He would have never called if it wasn’t ready; the risk of leading their enemy here was too great.
“It was his, sir.”
But what had he meant by machine? Why did he not say weapon?
A roar echoed down the corridor and shook the walls around them, gravel knocking loose and covering his soldiers in a fine dust that made it hard to breathe. A moment later, another roar—as if Arcadia herself was an ancient beast, warning them they should turn around.
“Commander, maybe we should go back. I don’t like this,” his lieutenant said. “This area of the cavern is unstable.”
“All the more reason to push forward and put it behind us.”
The men at his back grew restless. The eerie roars continued with every curve of the mineshaft, but he wouldn’t turn around. He would see this machine for himself.
Scaffolding curved as they stepped deeper into the mountain. The rumbles grew louder, rattling the stone walls. What had Gregor made?
Lanterns came into view, and the Commander waved for his soldiers to turn off their lights. In the underground Arcadian city, Drakes milled around with fallen Arcadian scientists at their feet.
They were too late. The enemy had found Haven.
But they would not take it.
A look at his lieutenant told him they were on the same page. Now was the time to attack. The commander pulled his gas mask down, and the battalion behind him did the same. He gestured a cadet forward. The pump action of the grenade launcher echoed throughout the chamber as the smoke grenades launched, one after the other.
Detonations rattled the walls. Shouts in Arcadian and Draconian tongues echoed around him as smoke rushed out, filling the space with swirls of opaque gas. He surged forward into the chaos as gunfire flashed behind the smoke, cutting swaths through the gas, and igniting the unseen world.
He would not be stopped.
Collins
He was suffocating on smoke. The dampness of his uniform made each movement sluggish as he fought to break through the heavy cloud that pressed in around him.
When he finally broke free of his comforter, he jolted back into reality. This was his room, his wallpaper, and his data-pad on the nightstand.
These dreams unnerved him. He loved the franchise, but he needed this little sideshow to end. It didn’t matter—awake or asleep, the Draconians were after him.
And what did the dreams say about him? In them, sometimes he was Arcadian, but sometimes he was the ruthless conqueror—the bad guy. Would a therapist say this was his subconscious way of working through playing the villain at Psionic? It didn’t feel like that. It felt real—more like a memory than a dream.