Home > The Devil You Know (Mercenary Librarians #2)(9)

The Devil You Know (Mercenary Librarians #2)(9)
Author: Kit Rocha

Maya’s death sentence was hopefully still years away, but she too had been handed one the day the TechCorps had messed with her brain. No fix. No cure. Just the fight to hold on to sanity and her ability to function for as long as she could.

Yeah, she hated that look.

It took effort, but she banished the concern from her eyes. “Fair enough. But when I put you to work chopping produce or sweeping floors, remember you could have had sweet sympathy and dinner in bed, and you’re the fool who asked for tough love.”

A hint of a smile curved his lips. “That’s better.”

It was practically a croon, his liquid-molasses voice sliding over her like an obscene promise. It was almost enough to distract her from the throb in her temples, a warning that she was headed straight for sensory overload—fast.

She jabbed her finger toward the exit. “Fine, I’ll let you feed yourself. But get your ass in bed before I call Rafe back to put you there.”

“Kinky.” The word drifted back over his shoulder as he headed out the back door.

Maya held it together until he was gone. Then she just … let go.

The cement floor of the warehouse was pleasantly cool in spite of the heat outside. Maya sprawled out on it and closed her eyes. A quick shake of her wrist primed her watch for voice commands. “Play Dance it Out.”

Her FlowMac Pop playlist rolled over her, the perky tempo and throbbing beat perversely soothing. Her new ear cuffs were unobtrusive, stylish, and the absolute cutting edge in bone-conduction sound transfer technology. Maya wouldn’t have paid the black market asking price in a million years.

Turned out, there were perks to your best friend having a literal evil clone.

Nina was mildly exasperated by the fact that her sister kept trying to buy forgiveness for her past crimes with expensive gifts, but Ava was like a feral cat. She appeared sporadically, scratched anyone who tried to pet her, and vanished again without warning. But instead of dead mice, she left behind expensive technology and impossible-to-obtain weapons.

Maya was perfectly willing to be bought off.

The cuffs were better than her old earbuds. The music was a part of her, filling the inside of her skull. She breathed in time with the heavy beat and fought back the rush of memories, silencing the chaotic rush of overlapping voices one by one. Technicians, data scientists, administrators, even members of the TechCorps Board. They lived inside her, perfectly preserved, a thousand mundane moments and even more horrifying ones.

That was what it meant to be a data courier. You were the receptacle for every dark secret your VP wasn’t willing to commit to paper. You were a day planner, a filing system, a living, breathing memo. Only, Maya’s boss hadn’t been content to advance the TechCorps’ bottom line at all costs.

No, Birgitte Skovgaard had been planning a revolution. Maya had that in her head, too. Every secret. Every bit of blackmail that might put an executive in a compromising position or take down an enemy at a delicate moment. Maya knew everyone sympathetic to their cause within the TechCorps and every contact Birgitte had cultivated outside of it. All that knowledge was precisely why the TechCorps had put a two-million-credit bounty on Maya.

Some days, Maya wanted to be anywhere but in her own damn head.

The music helped. It didn’t stop the chaos, but it helped her breathe through it until it was locked back away. In for three throbbing bass beats, out for three more. Steady. Deep.

Meditation. It was a gentler kind of dissociation, one with fewer consequences. Maya could still feel the world around her—the slightly rough concrete under her fingertips, the soft fabric of her T-shirt. That had been one of the unexpected hardships about rebuilding a life off of the Hill—the clothing. For the first nineteen years of her life, she’d been able to step up to her wardrobe mirror, initiate a 3D body scan, browse through a catalog of fashion, and select exactly what she wanted, both in styling and fabric. Within twenty-four hours, a drone would deliver custom-fitted clothing tailored to her precise preferences—light and airy fabrics, no tags, no close-cut necklines, nothing that dug in or constrained or irritated.

Salvaging clothes from secondhand shops was an entirely different experience. Nina had helped her find things that worked, like denim and T-shirts washed so many times they were soft to the touch, skirts and sundresses that flowed around her body, and cozy sweatshirts she could get lost in.

It had been the first of a dozen things she’d had to relearn, bit by bit. Life down here could be so … much. Loud and rambunctious, bright and wild. She’d grown accustomed to it, bit by bit, adapting to the overwhelming scents and the tastes, the vivid colors and joyous sounds. Some part of her thrived on it, even, as if this was how she was supposed to be. Alive and surrounded by a whirlwind of sensation, not encased in sterile numbness.

But still, too much was too much. And she never knew when it was going to hit her—or how hard.

This time wasn’t too bad. As FlowMac Pop rolled over her, she settled into the music. Her breathing steadied, and the memories stopped trying to rush up to fill the silence in her head.

She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Once she had her shit together, she’d see Nina off with a confident smile. And then …

Then she would open for business. Prep food and package yesterday’s freeze-dried haul while the new batch was processing. Organize a schedule for the last harvest rush before winter. Check the budget to see if they could afford another freeze-dryer now that demand had skyrocketed.

She would scan books, fight with file formats no one had used in fifty years, and update their catalog. She would figure out how the hell to organize the dozens of boxes of salvaged books that still lined the back wall of the warehouse. She would fix tablets, upgrade tech, and sort through a new tangle of donated tools.

And she had to do it all alone.

No, worse.

She had to do it with Gray.

Gray and his Gothic brooding eyes and his long, meaningful stares and his endless silences only interrupted by that smoky-smooth voice. His voice was like fine whiskey. Like sin. His voice was goddamn angels fucking.

She was pretty sure she could tip over into full sensory overload just by listening to him talk. But every time she caught him watching her, she wanted more than sound. She wanted to drag the scent of him into her lungs and feel his hands on her body. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to taste him.

She just wanted.

Groaning, Maya covered her face with her hands. Then she pulled them away and forced her body to move. Upright, then to her knees, then to her feet. One boot in front of the other. She’d see Nina off, then indulge in a bath to soak away the rest of her jittery nerves.

Then she’d square up and get to work. Just her and a random genetically engineered kid and Tia Ivonne with her dodgy heart and Gray with his angel-fucking voice, for who knew how long.

This was going to be a disaster.

 

 

TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L1 SECURITY CLEARANCE

Reminder to executives: unnecessary education for DC subjects compromises their long-term viability. Limit requests for additional course access to knowledge essential to your data courier’s specific job performance.

Internal Memo, February 2074

 

 

FOUR


Gray shouldn’t have worried about being served food in bed like an invalid, because Maya didn’t even have time to consider it. Her luxurious soak turned into a hasty shower in between neighborhood crises.

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