“I’d rather not,” I replied.

  “Understandable, considering the pain you know is waiting for you.” She pursed her lips. “You’re probably right. You’ve made a habit of escaping capture already.” Her eyes shifted to Druck. “Kill him, and the reward is yours.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” Druck said as the knife dug into my skin. The muscles in his arm flexed and he pulled back as hard as he could, hoping to decapitate me in one smooth stroke.

  Except I’d already activated shift, phasing my neck from a solid mass into its basic molecules. His blade passed easily through the disconnected fragments without injuring me. While it was enough to avoid spinal damage and keep me solid enough to breathe with some effort, it wasn’t enough to kill me. Not even close. In fact, it sent Druck stumbling backwards as his knife encountered an unexpected lack of resistance. It surprised the Gilded too. She wasn’t prepared when I ended shift and activated enhance, grabbing Druck by his head and throwing him forward over my shoulder.

  His big body slammed into the archon, and she pitched backward, Druck's weight coming down hard on top of her. She recovered enough to throw him hard into the wall. I lunged forward behind him, grabbing the Gilded before she could whisper her focus word to start a new action. Clamping my hand down over her mouth, I dragged her to the floor. Beside me, Druck pushed himself to his knees, lunging for the knife he had dropped when he hit the wall. Growling, Shaq landed on the back of his hand just as he grabbed it.

  “Shaq,” Druck said, smiling affably. “We’re friends, remember? This is all just one big misunder—” Shaq's teeth sank into his wrist. Druck's eyes rounded in stark terror as he looked up at me, his bloodstream carrying Shaq's lethal poison straight to his heart. “I’m…sorry,” he managed to wheeze as his heart stopped beating.

  Seeing him go down like that was a punch to the gut, even if he did deserve it, but I didn’t have time to dwell on his betrayal and death. I still had the female Guilded in a choke hold. “How many other archons are in Lapul?” I gritted out, glaring down at her as I removed my other hand from her mouth. "Tell me and I'll let you walk out of here."

  “Like I would…tell you,” she gasped, struggling for air. “If I don’t…bring your…body back. I’m already…dead.”

  I squeezed a little tighter. “How many!” I screamed, hoping to unnerve her.

  She stared up at me, her head moving in denial as much as my hold on her throat allowed.

  “You should tell me,” I said, trying a different tactic. “I have the sigils to transit. I can open a rift in spacetime and toss you in. If you’ve ever been there before, you know that the despair you’ll feel is a fate worse than death, but you won't die, at least not right away. You'd have a chance to get picked up by a passing ship.”

  “Please,” she said, turning to begging. “I can’t.”

  “Tell me!” I didn't have much time to get something out of her. I was sure PD would be here any minute. Maybe even the Royal Guard too.

  A sudden rumbling came from outside I jerked my chin up and looked out through the open doorway, A group of passersby grouped outside stood, hands shading their eyes, as they peered out over the ocean as the roaring drew closer.

  “What is that?” I said softly. At first, I thought it was an incoming dropship or transport. Then, as the noise increased rapidly in volume, the crowd started screaming and breaking in every direction, revealing a third black-clad Gilded standing against the seawall, arms raised high.

  Water rose behind him, pulled into a huge wave that towered behind him in seconds, poised and ready to crash down over the waterfront, destroying everything in its path, including Shag and me. I looked down a the Gilded beneath me. Her eyes were closed, and she was no longer breathing. I stood, locking eyes with the Gilded at the seawall as the wave rose over the top of him, headed straight for us.

  “Shaq, run,” I hissed, pushing myself toward the open blast door. A secret room, I imagined it had to be reinforced.

  On her knees and paralyzed with fear, I grabbed Emerald around the waist, taking her with me as I dove through the door right behind Shaq, turning onto my back and taking the brunt of the impact as we landed and slid across the floor. Behind us, water began rushing through the front door, some of it spraying into the room before I managed to push the blast door closed and seal it off. The lights went out, the entire space shaking and shuddering as if a freight train rolled overhead. I didn’t know if the walls would hold, so I pushed against them to keep them from collapsing.

  The wave rumbled over and around us for nearly a minute before it died down and the room grew completely silent. The sudden stillness seemed louder than the tsunami.

  “Ben, I don’t know if it's the right time for this,” Emerald said, lying on top of me, my arm tight around her.

  I realized my hand was cupping her breast. “Shit, I’m sorry,” I said, quickly pulling it away.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer her. I had other concerns. “Are you all okay?"

  “Here,” Shaq replied from right next to me. I couldn’t see him in the darkness.

  “Don’t know what the hell is going on," Junto said, turning on his laser cutter, producing just enough light to allow me to see both him and Arcine, "but we’re still alive."

  “Quasar?” I asked again.

  She groaned and pushed herself up to her elbows, looking down at me. “Ben? Where’s Druck? What did I miss?”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Zar, I'm sorry,” I said. “Emil’s gone.”

  “What do you mean…gone?” she asked, her mouth falling open in shock. “I don’t understand. We just got here. I haven’t even had the neural link installed yet.”

  “The link is installed,” Junto said. “If you think about it, you should be able to access it"

  Quasar’s eyes widened. “Yeah. I can. Wow. This is…wow. I have no memory of even coming into this room.”

  “It’s a side effect of the anesthesia,” Arcine said. “Ben, what about Lyle?”

  “The tattooed man?” I asked.

  “Our adopted son,” Junto explained.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ben, what the hell is going on?” Quasar asked, growing more agitated.

  I remembered the third Gilded. Was he still out there? Would he come for us? “I don’t have time to explain right now. I’ll be right back. Emerald can fill you in.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Emerald said.

  “No. It’s too dangerous. And I need you to look after Quasar while she’s still recovering.”

  She nodded her acceptance while I returned to the blast door. Shaq jumped onto my shoulder. I didn’t ask him to stay behind. If the other Guilded was out there, I might need him.

  The water had washed off some of my makeup, revealing the veins in the back of my right hand. As dim as they were, I was certain only the quish I had eaten on the way here had given me enough strength to survive thus far. As it was, I didn’t have a lot of confidence I could beat the asscrab who had brought the sea down on us, at least not head-to-head. Maybe I could catch him by surprise with the use of my sigils, but it wasn’t a sure thing. Not that I had any choice. I had to go out there to confront him before he could get the drop on me.

  Ankle-deep water poured into the room as I opened the steel door and leaned out to take a quick look around. The storage room where the bodies of Lyle, Druck, and the two Gilded had been was gone, the entire building around the parlor washed away, along with the corpses. The other nearby buildings had also been torn apart by the tidal wave, leaving floodwaters that were filthy with all kinds of debris, including bodies. Especially bodies. Hundreds of innocent people floated still and silent in the stagnant flood water for as far as I could see. Some looked like they had drowned, while others showed obvious signs of injuries sustained by the flotsam that had collected in the flood water and pummeled them.

  Scanning the destruction, it was the most insane, evil, and tragic thing I had ever witnessed, and I felt sick to my stomach as I waded out of the reinforced room, looking toward the waterfront for the remaining Gilded. I didn’t see him anywhere. My best guess was that he had used all of his energy to pull the ocean onto the shore, and having used his weapon of mass destruction, had fled back to wherever he came from. Had he waited long enough to see that one small part of the shops along the waterfront hadn’t crumbled under the weight of the tide? Or had he mistakenly assumed I was dead?

  Sedaya and his goons should have known by now not to make that kind of jump to a conclusion. Or maybe he figured that if I wasn’t dead, he didn’t want to be here alone with me.

  The sound of buzzing overhead suddenly caught my attention. I glanced up at the first of many PD drones swarming toward the area, larger medical transports right behind them. Rather than trying to hide, I waved at the incoming forces. With all of the bystanders dead, there was no one to tell the officers what they had seen me do. There was no reason for Planetary Defense to be suspicious of me. I was just another victim, albeit one that had been lucky enough to have holed up inside a more secure structure.

  “Shaq, you’d better hide,” I said, turning away from them so Shaq could scramble down my shirt and back into the pocket in my shorts. My shirt was soaked with salt water, stained with grease and blood, and had multiple holes in it. The carnage could help me pass all of it off as collateral damage. Still, Emerald had given it to me, and it bothered me that it was ruined.

  I retreated into the room as the drones reached me, a few of them circling while the others continued across the disaster area, searching for more survivors. Quasar was on her feet and standing behind me, along with Junto, his wife and daughter. They huddled together, mourning the loss of their son and brother. I felt like shit for getting them mixed up in all of this.

  “Damn you, Emil,” I cursed under my breath. If he hadn’t gotten greedy, if he hadn’t betrayed me for the bounty, Lyle and thousands of others would still be alive. So much death for what amounted to a number on a screen.

  “Ben, is it true? Emil betrayed us?” Quasar asked, looking at me with sad eyes as she came to stand beside me.

  “I wish it weren’t,” I replied. “He came within a hair’s breadth of killing me.”

  “We used to always argue about the Empress and the Hegemony. He didn’t like the government or its politics. But we became friends in spite of that. Good friends. I thought I could trust him. Count on him to always have my back, not to stab me in it.”

  “I guess it’s like the old saying goes,” Emerald said.

  “What saying is that?” I asked.

  “You can’t take the fortune out of soldier of fortune. The greed and motivation is built into the job title.”

  “You should have told me that old saying before he turned on us,” I said.

  “I would have, but I just made it up right now.”

  I almost smiled as a sharp whine increased in volume behind us. Looking over my shoulder, I saw one of the medical transports coming our way, preparing to land nearby.

  “Junto,” I said, getting his attention. “Planetary Defense medics are coming.”

  “Y’all might want to go with them,” Arcine said. “They’ll get you cleaned up, checked out, and discharged. North Lapul General is less than a mile from Musashi’s HQ.”

  “What about you?”

  “We’ll take care of ourselves,” Junto said. “The twenty million wasn’t worth the price we paid. I don’t ever want to see any of you again.”

  “I understand,” I replied. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. Druck was a trusted member of my crew. I still can’t believe he—”

  “Don’t care, Ben,” Junto growled before turning away from me.

  “Are you saying the mission is still on?” Quasar asked. “After everything that’s already happened?”

  “It's still on because of everything that’s happened,” I answered. “Too many lives have been lost because of us. Because of Druck's betrayal. The only way their deaths will mean something is if we stop millions more from dying. We can’t quit now.”

  The medical transport splashed down. The side hatch of the transport opened and a squad of medics jumped into the floodwater, wading toward us.

  “How many are you?” the lead medic asked while he was still fifty feet away.

  “Three,” I shouted back, nearly choking on it. “Three more inside, but they aren’t hurt.”

  “I’ll make that determination,” he said.

  I looked down at my wrist again. If there was one benefit to my current state, it was that the blue glow in my veins was much more subtle. The medics had no reason to suspect me as anything other than a honeymooning tourist.

  “You two, help them to the transport,” the lead medic said, pointing to two of his squadmates. He motioned to a third. “You’re with me.” They went right past us, into the operating room. I heard him gasp in surprise at the setup. Junto hadn’t said anything about the trouble he might be in for having the illegal setup discovered. In his grief, I doubted he cared.

  “It’s easy to feel guilty,” Quasar said softly. “Easy to let the doubt eat you up from the inside out. You didn’t kill Lyle. Emil did.”

  “Thanks, Zar,” I replied, grateful for the reminder.

  “I’m Corporal Bates,” one of the medics assigned to us said. Emerald immediately began laughing, drawing a look of disbelief from him. “Is she okay?” he asked.

  “She’s definitely not okay,” I replied, knowing what had caused the outburst. “But she isn’t injured. At least not physically. And that…" I jerked my head toward her."...didn't happen today.”

  “Oh, you!” Emerald said, shifting back into newlywed wife mode. She hooked her arm in mine. “I’m just fine, Master Bates.”

  The man’s face flushed. “It’s Corporal Bates, ma’am,” he said.

  “Of course it is,” she answered, turning to the other medic. “Who are you?”

  “Corporal Reeves, ma’am,” the woman said, eying my shirt. “Is that blood?”

  “It might be,” I replied. “It isn’t mine. I…” I paused dramatically. “It's…the bodies. They…” I didn't need to say anything more.

  “It’s okay, sir,” Reeves said. “I understand. Are you hurt at all?”

  “A little sore, but I’ll be fine.”

  “We’d like to take you back to North Lapul General,” Bates said. “Run some basic tests, and get you a shower, some clothes, and a hot meal. I assume you lost everything here?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Emerald said. “We came for our honeymoon. I can’t believe this happened. I’ve never heard of tidal waves on Bushara before.”

  “Neither have I,” Bates admitted. “I can’t begin to understand it, but that's outside my area of expertise.” He looked at Quasar. “These two are together. What about you?”

  “I…I’m with them too,” she replied. “I’m his first wife.”

  She was supposed to be posing as Druck’s wife, but with him gone she needed a new story. I just didn’t expect that one.

  “I see,” Bates said, glancing back at me. “Two beautiful wives. You’re a lucky man.”

  “She’s my wife too,” Emerald blurted, releasing me so she could put her arm around Quasar, who realized her mistake when Emerald kissed her wetly on the cheek. “And I’m very lucky.”

  “Yes, well…” Bates trailed off, left speechless and embarrassed.

  Reeves motioned to the transport. “Let’s get you three back to the hospital. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be bringing in many more survivors. Only corpses. First the tram, now this.” She shook her head sadly.

  “Yeah,” Emerald agreed. “This is the worst honeymoon I’ve ever had.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The medical transport airlifted us to North Lapul General, a massive tower near the center of the city's north end. It was dwarfed on all sides by other mega business towers, which stretched so high the tops faded into the haze. Mushari had the tallest tower of them all, stretching nearly two miles high. Only one of four buildings in their complex, the entire campus occupied four square blocks just east of the high-end shopping district occupying the exact middle of the city's north side.

  The Gilded’s tsunami turned out to be a boon in one sense. The confusion of the destruction allowed us to process into the hospital without providing identification or paperwork of any kind. The staff accepted our word that it had all been lost in the unexpected flooding, and while I still had my phone on me, nobody thought to ask to see it. Just like they never considered we might be stashing anything else in our outfits, like guns or a jagger.

  I learned quickly that hospitals in the Spiral weren’t like hospitals on Earth, especially on a planet like Bushara. Instead of a sterile room with an easily identifiable odor, we were checked into a suite on the hundred and fifth floor, complete with a single bedroom, a living space and a bathroom with a full shower that smelled like a resort vacation. Before the nurse assigned to us arrived, I stashed my blaster in the back of the suite's small closet, while Shaq hid under the bed.

  The suite also contained a late model autodoc, which the nurse Lorai was eager to sit us down in. Thanks to privacy laws, basic diagnostics wouldn’t run any bloodwork without consent, so I submitted to the machine, I just about blew our cover story with our nurse. Lorai was around my age, and she was amazing. What I had always considered my out-of-reach dream girl. She had a petite, athletic body; long, silken, auburn hair that reached her shoulder blades; a clear, golden tan complexion, the cutest little nose I had ever seen, and big, bright blue eyes. Everything about her captivated me.

  I should have been more confident around her after everything I had been through after spending so much time running and fighting over the last few months. I'd gained a great deal of confidence in myself as a leader, but Lorai's looks and easy, compassionate nature, the kindness and incredible warmth in her smile, left me fumbling for words every time she spoke to me. I could barely take my eyes off her, which didn't miss Emerald's attention. Every time I glanced at her, she looked like she was about to break out in hysterics over my idiotic dumbstruck performance.