Evan paid for two nights, seeing Harris into their room before going back to move the sedan around to the rear of the building, out of sight from the street. When he returned, Harris was already stretched out on one of the twin beds, his eyes closed, his breathing evening out toward sleep.

  Evan locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat down on the other bed. The mattress sagged beneath him, springs protesting. The room smelled like old cigarettes, but it was shelter. It was safe, or as safe as anything could be right now. And even the bathroom was clean.

  He pulled the effigy from the backpack and held it in his hands. He didn't dare risk transferring now. He could only hope the Ascendant remained on course, unnoticed and out of trouble. Tomorrow, he'd figure out their next step. The hacker, the laptop, whatever information might be hiding on it.

  But right now, for the first time in what felt like forever, Evan lay down and let himself close his eyes.

  Sleep took him shortly after his head hit the pillow.

  9

  Evan slept for twelve hours straight, the kind of deep sleep that left him feeling genuinely rested for the first time in days. The pod had done its work well. He had no lingering aches, no phantom pains, just the quiet satisfaction of a body that had been put back together after nearly expiring.

  Around seven in the morning, after going through his morning exercise routine, he walked to a diner two blocks from the motel and ordered his usual—ham and cheese omelet, coffee, and toast. The food was decent, the coffee better than he'd expected. He brought a second order back for Harris, who ate it one-handed while propped against the headboard, complaining about the difficulty of cutting even the eggs with a fork.

  The rest of the day, Evan spent going over his notes, keeping his understanding of the alien symbols and their meanings, as well as Ascendant's control interfaces, fresh in his mind. He wasn't sure when he would be able to get back on the ship. He didn't want to forget everything he'd learned before then.

  By the time evening arrived, he was ready.

  Harris remained propped against the headboard of his bed, his casted arm resting on a pillow, the television casting flickering light across his face. The local news droned on about traffic accidents and weather forecasts, ordinary concerns that felt impossibly distant from their reality.

  "You sure you don't want me to come along?" Harris asked, not for the first time.

  Evan shook his head, checking the Glock's magazine before sliding it back into the holster inside the right side of his waistband. "A one-armed gimp isn't exactly my idea of a useful battle buddy."

  "Harsh, but fair." Harris reached for the beer Evan had placed on the nightstand, taking a long pull. He gestured toward the sidearm lying beside him on the mattress. "I'll keep this close. Anyone comes through that door who isn't you, they're getting a face full of nine millimeter holes."

  "Try not to shoot the maid."

  "No promises."

  Chuckling, Evan grabbed the backpack from the chair near the bathroom. The effigy was inside, along with the laptop they'd recovered from the armored truck. He'd debated leaving the starship behind, keeping it separate from the meeting in case things went wrong, but the thought of being separated from it, of having alien goons show up here with Harris barely able to defend himself or the ship made his skin crawl.

  Better to keep it close. To both defend it, and hopefully keep the bad guys away from his injured battle buddy.

  "I'll be back in a couple hours," Evan said. "Stay off that ankle."

  "Yes, mother." Without looking at Evan, he picked up the TV controller and changed the channel to Jeopardy!.

  Evan pulled on his jacket and slipped out into the night, the door locking behind him. Navigating through Evansville's quiet streets, the drive to meet with their hired hacker in the industrial district along the river took twenty minutes. The area had probably thrived decades ago when manufacturing still meant something in the Midwest. Now it was a graveyard of empty buildings and rusting infrastructure, the kind of place where people went when they didn't want to be found.

  Perfect for a meeting like this.

  Evan parked the sedan in the shadow of a collapsed loading dock, a half mile from the coordinates the hacker had provided. He sat for a moment, watching the darkness, listening for anything that didn't belong. The only sounds were of distant traffic.

  He grabbed the backpack and started walking.

  The abandoned building loomed ahead, a massive brick structure that had probably been a warehouse or factory in its previous life. Most of the windows were broken, dark rectangles staring out like empty eye sockets. Graffiti—generations of tags and murals competing for space on the weathered surface—covered the lower walls in layers.

  Evan approached the entrance, a loading bay door that hung partially open on rusted tracks. He squeezed through the gap and stepped inside. The interior was worse than he'd expected. Water damage had buckled the concrete floor in places, creating pools of stagnant moisture that reflected what little moonlight filtered through the broken windows. The air was thick and damp, carrying the musty smell of decay that came from years of neglect. Support columns rose into the darkness, their surfaces covered in more graffiti, obscene images and cryptic symbols competing for attention.

  Near the center of the space, someone had dragged in a metal table. It looked industrial, the kind of thing that might have been used for sorting parts or packaging products back in the day when this place still functioned. Now it just sat there, a lone piece of furniture in a cathedral of abandonment.

  Already waiting for him, the hacker—a young Asian man, probably in his mid-twenties—stood on the far side of the table. A mop of dark hair fell across his forehead in deliberate disarray, his sharp eyes tracking Evan's approach with more curiosity than concern. He wore a leather jacket over a dark-colored t-shirt, with jeans that were probably designer, along with boots that looked more expensive than anything Evan had ever owned.

  Not what he had expected. But then again, Evan wasn't sure what he'd expected. Some basement-dwelling stereotype, maybe. A pale figure hunched over keyboards, uncomfortable in the physical world. This guy looked like he'd walked off the set of a music video.

  "You picked a hell of a location," the hacker said, his voice carrying easily across the empty space. No fear in it. No hesitation. Just casual observation, like they were meeting at an upscale coffee shop instead of an abandoned warehouse.

  Evan stopped at the table, setting the backpack on its surface. "I've had more people shooting at me in the last week than I did my entire deployment in the Middle East. Forgive me if I'm being careful."

  The hacker's eyebrows rose slightly. "Military?"

  "Marines."

  "That explains your paranoia." He nodded toward the backpack. "That the laptop?"

  Evan unzipped the bag and pulled out the computer, sliding it across the table's surface. It was a professional model, the kind of machine that cost more than most people's monthly rent. Sleek black casing. Minimal branding. Built for performance rather than aesthetics.

  The hacker studied it for a moment without touching it. "Why's everyone shooting at you? The laptop?"

  "Don't ask questions." Evan kept his voice flat. "It's safer for both of us."

  "Cryptic. I like it." The hacker reached into the messenger bag slung across his chest and produced his own laptop, along with a small device that looked like nothing Evan had ever seen before. Roughly the size of a deck of cards. Matte black with a single cable extending from one end.

  "What's that?"

  The hacker glanced up, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't you just say something about questions?"

  "Yeah. Your questions, not mine. I'm the one paying. I get to ask any questions I want to ask."

  "Fair enough." He held up the device, turning it in the dim light. "This is a magical password cracking device."

  "Magical?"

  "Most people think you can just brute-force a password, run through every possible combination until you hit the right one. Problem is, any security system worth a damn locks you out after a certain number of failed attempts. Three tries, five tries, whatever. After that, you're done."

  He connected the device to the laptop, then opened his computer and began typing. "This little beauty erases that particular part of the computer's memory. Makes it forget I already tried a password. My laptop runs the software, cycles through combinations, and every time we hit the lockout threshold, I wipe the counter and start fresh."

  "How fast?"

  "About ten million potential passwords per minute."

  "Not bad, but there are billions of possibilities."

  The hacker shrugged. "Technically trillions, depending on password length and complexity. My software uses an AI component that tries the most common combinations first and then trickles down based on overall probability across hacked account datasets. But yeah, we might be here a while."

  Something cold settled in Evan's chest. "Twelve grand, and the best you can do is brute force?"

  "I can do it faster for twenty."

  The words hung in the air between them. Evan felt his jaw tighten, his hands curling into fists at his sides. After everything he'd been through, after Harris nearly dying to protect him, after the chaos and violence and impossible revelations of the past week, this kid was trying to shake him down for more money.

  "That wasn't the deal."

  "Deals change." The hacker met his gaze without flinching. "You want in fast, you pay the premium. Otherwise, we sit here for however long it takes and hope the password isn't thirty characters of random gibberish."

  Evan took a step forward, letting his size and presence fill the space between them. "I could make you do it faster."

  "You could try." The hacker didn't back away. Didn't even tense. "But if you kill me, you won't get in. If you let me walk away, you still won't get in. So you can either wait for the cracker to do its thing, or you can pay up and we finish this tonight."

  The confidence was infuriating. Not bravado, not false courage, just the calm certainty of someone who knew exactly what cards he held and how to play them.

  Evan stared at him for a long moment, weighing options. He could probably break the kid's arm before he got to the door. Could probably convince him to cooperate through less pleasant methods. But he wasn't that kind of guy.

  He pulled out Harris's phone and dialed.

  Harris answered on the second ring. "Problem?"

  "Our friend wants another eight thousand."

  A pause. "You're kidding."

  "Wish I was."

  Evan heard Harris sigh through the speaker, the sound heavy with resignation. "Send me the address. I'll transfer it."

  "Thanks."

  "Just get what we need, Marsh."

  The call ended. Evan lowered the phone and looked at the hacker. "It's coming."

  "Excellent." The young man's expression didn't change, but something like satisfaction flickered in his eyes. He checked his own phone a moment later, nodding at whatever he saw on the screen. "And there it is. Pleasure doing business."

  He put away the brute-force device and pulled out something else entirely. This one was smaller, sleeker, with a USB connector extending from one end.

  "What does that one do?" Evan asked.

  "Makes the computer forget it even has a password." The hacker connected it to the laptop, fingers dancing across his own keyboard. "But fair warning: if the disk is encrypted, we're back to brute force. The password becomes the decryption key, and there's no shortcut around that."

  "Do I get a refund if it's encrypted?"

  The hacker looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. "What do you think?"

  Evan's lips thinned with displeasure. All the answer he gave. He watched as the hacker worked, his attention split between the laptop's screen and the shadows at the edges of the building. Every creak of settling metal, every drip of water from the damaged ceiling, registered in his awareness. His hand stayed close to his holstered Glock.

  A soft chime from the laptop. "You're in." The hacker turned the computer so Evan could see the screen. A desktop appeared. Generic wallpaper. Rows of folder icons arranged with military precision. "No encryption. Your lucky day."

  He turned it back his way and started clicking.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Evan snapped, circling the table. "You did your job. The rest is none of your business."

  The hacker's hand froze on the trackpad before Evan could reach him. His eyes were fixed on something on the screen. The color drained from his face.

  "Shit."

  He pushed back from the table so fast the metal legs shrieked against the concrete floor. In the same motion, he grabbed his gear, shoving everything into his messenger bag with frantic urgency.

  "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit."

  "What?" Evan demanded.

  "You didn't tell me this belonged to Skytrace." The hacker was already moving toward the exit, his earlier composure completely gone. "What the hell, man? Skytrace?"

  "Who's Skytrace?"

  The hacker stopped, turning to stare at Evan with something between disbelief and horror. "Are you kidding me right now? You have their laptop and you don't even know who they are?"

  "That's why I'm asking."

  "I'm so screwed." The hacker ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in wild spikes. "Where did you get this? Where the hell did you get a Skytrace deck?"

  Evan considered lying. Considered deflecting. But the terror on the young man's face was genuine, and genuine terror usually came with genuine information.

  "An armored car," he said. "In a barn outside Nashville. After it unloaded a kill team to take me out."

  "A kill team." The hacker's voice had gone flat. "What happened to them?"

  "Neutralized."

  "Neutralized." The word came out as a whisper. "You neutralized a Skytrace kill team."

  "Them and about a dozen others from different groups."

  The hacker stared at him for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes. Fear, certainly, but also something else. Reassessment, maybe. A recalculation of exactly what kind of person he was doing business with.

  "Skytrace is like the mafia," he said finally. "Or more like what the mafia would be if they traded their traditions for bleeding-edge tech. These people are paranoid on a level you can't even imagine. They've even got their own language. If you're on their radar, you're already dead. You just don't know it yet."

  "That's what they thought, too. I've killed about sixteen of them so far, and if they come at me again, I'll kill some more."

  The hacker laughed. "You must be crazy or something. Whatever they want you for, or want from you, they won't stop coming. Sixteen or sixteen hundred. It doesn't matter."

  "Where can I find them?"

  "Find them?" The hacker laughed, the sound edged with hysteria. "You don't find Skytrace. They find you."

  "I need more information." Evan stepped forward, blocking the path to the exit. "Names. Locations. Anything you can tell me."

  "I can't help you." The hacker was shaking his head, backing away even as Evan advanced. "I can't. Don't you understand what you're asking? These people will kill me just for being in the same room as that laptop."

  "I'll pay you."

  "There's not enough money in the world." The hacker's eyes darted to the side, measuring the distance to an alternative exit. "Look, I'm sorry you're in this deep. I really am. But this is where I get off."

  "Wait. There are other groups. Maybe you know about them. The Umbral Empire. The Red Scar Empire."

  "Damn, you just name-dropped some of the most powerful organized crime groups on the planet like they mean nothing to you."

  "They do mean nothing to me. I've never heard of them before."

  "For good reason. They don't like people knowing they exist."

  "But you know about them."

  "It comes with the territory. I need to know when to steer clear, or I'll end up dead, too. Damn it, I should've asked you where the laptop came from beforehand."

  He ran.

  Evan could have stopped him. Could have tackled him, dragged him back, forced more information out of him through whatever means necessary. But the kid had already given him more than he'd expected, and the genuine terror in his voice had communicated something that words couldn't.

  Whatever Skytrace was, they were dangerous enough to make a professional hacker—someone who made his living in the shadows of the dark web—take off like he was on fire.

  He stood alone in the abandoned warehouse, the unlocked laptop glowing on the metal table before him, and wondered just how deep he'd gotten himself and Harris into this whole mess.

  10

  Evan closed the laptop and slid it back into the backpack. The warehouse felt larger now that the hacker was gone, the shadows deeper, the silence more oppressive. He stood there for a moment, processing what he'd learned.

  Skytrace. Another name to add to the list. Another faction hunting effigies. Another group with resources and reach that made his own situation feel increasingly hopeless. The hacker had called them one of the most powerful underground organized crime groups on the planet. Which meant there was still one more faction out there, one he hadn't encountered yet.

  How many people were hunting him? How many more would die before this was over?

  He pushed the questions aside. No point dwelling on things he couldn't control. What he could control was what happened next, and right now, that meant getting back to the motel and finding out what secrets this laptop held.

  The walk to the sedan felt longer than it should have. Every shadow seemed to hold potential threats, every distant sound made his hand drift toward the Glock. The hacker's panic had affected him more than he wanted to admit. Whatever Skytrace was, they'd scared a man who made his living in the darkest corners of the internet. That kind of fear didn't come from reputation alone.