Bex’s eyebrows rose, her surprise growing with every word out of Nolan’s mouth. Clearly she hadn’t expected this, given how he’d pulled a gun on her less than half an hour earlier. “Thank you,” she managed to say in a quiet voice.
Nolan shook his head. “Let’s just say I’m paying forward what someone else did for me.” By helping Bex, he fulfilled the promise he’d made the day Tanis died.
Out of instinct, he turned his wheelchair toward his workshop. Then he caught himself. He couldn’t let Bex see the armor, guns, and machines behind the door. That would set off every alarm bell in her Silverguard-trained mind and invite more unanswerable questions. Any hint of trust he’d earned from the woman over the last few days would evaporate.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, Nolan wheeled his chair toward the kitchen. “Looks like we’re going to have to stop at the Grove District stash house for weapons,” he told Taia in his mind. “I can’t grab the MK75 with Bex watching. And I definitely can’t go back to Moabus armed with nothing more than my Echoblade.” His Echosteel knife— the one weapon that always remained at his side—sat in its sheath on his belt.
“Agent Styver said there will be a combat suit and weapons waiting for you at the Shipyards,” the AI chirped. “Weren’t you listening? I could always play back the recording of the conver—”
“No, thank you, that won’t be necessary.” The last thing Nolan wanted at that moment was to hear the Protection Bureau agent’s voice. The elevator door dinged noisily and slid open, and Nolan wheeled his chair into the steel-walled car. With a clank-thump, the elevator began its descent. “Anything else important I might have missed?”
“He mentioned whispers of something big taking place within the next seventy-two hours,” Taia said after a moment.
Nolan’s brow furrowed. “Seventy-two hours?” He spoke aloud—no one else used the elevator, so he had no fear of being overheard. “Not a lot of time, given that it’s going to take us at least forty-eight to make the journey.”
“Indeed,” Taia said. “And Agent Styver’s intel on Elden Croyle’s location is fairly light on details.”
“I’ll go over what he’s given us on the trip off-world,” Nolan said. “For now, let’s just get to the Shipyards.” The elevator clank-thumped again and, with another ding, the doors slid open.
Nolan braced himself for the thump of the music, the shouts and cheers of the peeler bar’s patrons, and the heady scent of the perfume and machine-generated smoke that always hung in a thick cloud in the hallway. But only silence greeted him as he wheeled out. Lights shone in the club’s main room, but instead of pumping, driving music, only the sound of sweeping glass and scraping furniture echoed from the stage area. No bikini-clad dancers strode down the corridor toward him; he saw only unfamiliar men in the coveralls reserved for the Spacer’s Paradise cleaning staff.
Nolan’s stomach tightened. The peeler bar hadn’t yet fully recovered from the White Sharks’ attacks—first, a drive-by shooting by low-level drug pushers trying to earn Wolfe’s favor by taking out the guy who killed his kid brother, and then, Wolfe and his goons storming the bar to hunt down one Nolan Garrett. Doubtless the main room was still littered with the debris of both attacks.
But it was the people who would never forget the White Sharks’ actions. As Nolan wheeled toward the rear of the bar, he rolled past the closed door to the dressing room. Last time he’d been this way, Clive had greeted him with a cheery smile and a friendly word. Never again. The bouncer had been one of the casualties of the attack. Next time, there would be a stranger guarding the door.
The image of Jadis lying in the hospital bed flashed through his mind. It made him sick to think of her, trapped in that maze of wires and tubes keeping her alive. She’d pulled through the surgery and Taia had said the prognosis was good, but would she ever fully recover from the ordeal? The bullet wound in her neck might be just one of the scars left on her body and mind. Mimi, Stedd, Garry, and everyone else who had survived the attacks would doubtless spend months or years recovering from the terror such a traumatic event could inflict.
Taking out Wolfe and the White Sharks had stopped the attacks, but the effects would linger for a long while to come. The thought added weight to the burden of Nolan’s guilt. Spacer’s Paradise had only been attacked because of him. Clive’s death and Jadis’ injuries were his fault. He’d failed them and everyone else wounded and killed in the attack. Stopping whatever Elden Croyle planned to unleash with his stolen IAF weaponry wouldn’t make up for what had happened, but it was a start.
“Taia, get us a skimmer-cab to take us to Grove District,” Nolan said mentally as he pushed open the back door. He paused in the doorway, glancing into the alley behind the Spacer’s Paradise. Before him were metal dumpsters, mud, and a smattering of brightly colored posters and advertisements decorating the wall.
“Calling a skimmer-cab,” Taia said. “Scratch that, one’s already here.”
Even as the AI spoke, a bright orange skimmer craft bearing the “Presto Shuttle” logo and comm number backed into the alleyway.
Nolan’s brow furrowed. Something about the timing felt absolutely wrong. Presto Shuttle operated all throughout New Avalon, but they tended to drive chiefly through the upper-crust neighborhoods like Upper Heights, Silver Towers, and Canyon View. Most of the skimmer-cabs that ran in Shimmertown, Grove District, and the Bolt Hole were independently owned and operated.
His worries were confirmed as the skimmer-cab continued backing up toward him, not stopping at the mouth of the muddy alley as most vehicles did. The quiet humming of the engines grew louder as the vehicle glided smoothly between the dumpsters and pulled up alongside him. The window rolled down, and the driver turned toward Nolan.
“One passenger to the Shipyards, yes?” he asked. His smiling face and calm voice held no menace, yet left no doubt that he knew exactly who Nolan was and where he needed to go. No ordinary skimmer-cabbie, then. The print of a pistol grip tucked under his armpit and his smooth, too-unworried expression made his profession immediately plain.
Agent Styver hadn’t just insisted Nolan hurry; he’d sent someone from the Protection Bureau to make sure Nolan got to the hangar on time.
Nolan tensed as the driver’s door opened and the man stepped out. His hand never left the wheelchair’s pushrim, but he mentally sized up the man, analyzing his stance, the way he moved, the distance he’d have to go to reach his pistol, and the speed of his gestures. The Protection Bureau man made no overt threat—he simply opened the door and gestured for Nolan to get in—but everything about the situation was threatening enough.
Every detail, down to the little wheelchair ramp that extended from the skimmer-cab, was Agent Styver’s way of putting Nolan in his place. A less-than-subtle reminder of just how much power the Protection Bureau wielded. If Agent Styver could anticipate his movements so easily, what else did the man know about him? Too much, that was for certain.
But as Nolan wheeled his chair up the ramp, he had to struggle to hide his smile. Agent Styver had come for him, but not for Bex. The fact that the Protection Bureau had no idea that one of the two “terrorists” they sought was now lounging on his couch gave him hope.