“You want slow?” Somehow, he was closer, his mouth a breath away from hers. “You want tender?” And his lips were on her, hot, light and soft, and she lost herself in the green of his eyes… and felt close to nothing.

  “Just… stop.” God, she wanted to cry.

  “I want you.” His lips cruised the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  She couldn’t answer, the thoughts, the words, tangling on her tongue. His lips hovered millimeters from hers. “Slow this time.” His mouth closed on her again, painfully gentle.

  And the floor rocked under them as heat rose and flung them down. She thought the shrilling was in her head, that the noise that had been there had gotten louder. But it was the alarms. The lights dimmed, and yellow alarm signals flickered eerily. She lifted her head just as Brenner crawled toward her.

  “Are you hurt?” he shouted over the noise.

  I don’t feel anything. Now wasn’t the time. “No.” She stood up in tandem with him. “What the hell happened?”

  He dug for his dataUnit just as it beeped. “Status!” he barked.

  “Explosion in the shuttle dock.” Duke’s voice was hollow. “Attempting to contain.”

  Brenner threw her a look she really didn’t like and rushed out. She followed, having to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. “I swear, I didn’t…”

  He wasn’t listening, keying something into his dataUnit. She gave up shouting. The noise in her head increased to match the alarms. Around them, yellow and red emergency indicators were bathing the hall in an eerie glow.

  “Can you shut off the damn alarms?” Brenner shouted into his dataUnit as he sped toward the shuttle dock.

  The silence was sudden and deafening.

  They rushed through the open doors of the dock, surveying the damage. Duke was hauling away blackened pieces of metal. Trent, his face smudged with soot, was busy scanning. “Wasn’t a mechanical malfunction,” he said as soon as he lifted his head and saw Brenner through the black smoke.

  His gaze moved away, lingered on Dinah’s face before he focused back on his pad. His face tightened. “Processor overclocked. Virus with vTech pattern.”

  The tingling in her head was pounding now. No pain. Just dull throbbing. Loud.

  She blinked, trying to bring the room back into focus just as Brenner’s hand gripped her upper arm. “Take her back to guest quarters.” He didn’t look at her, just spoke coldly to Duke. “No data access.”

  He turned away, walked toward Trent and the smoking mess of twisted metal. Dinah started after him, his shape blurring in and out of focus, the throb in her head rhythmic with the blur. When Duke’s hand closed over her shoulder she didn’t even fight it. She let him lead her out, back to the quarters where she’d been staying for the past two days. The throbbing was faster now. She winced at it, not pain, not really, just a dull ache of some sort. Pressure. She stopped for a moment, pressed her hand against her forehead --and found a firm palm gripping her wrist. She looked up into cool, gray eyes.

  “Not this time, sweetheart.” With that, Duke shoved her along the corridor and when they reached her quarters he simply muscled her in. Inside, Dinah curled into a ball on the bed, and tried to smother the throbbing. The dull ache had her stomach rolling with nausea. Too bad nausea wasn’t considered pain. The damned thing inside her certainly didn’t bother with that.

  She pressed her palm against her forehead again, the slight relief from the pressure making her moan. Fingertips dug into her forehead and she waited for… something.

  * * *

  She must have fallen asleep.

  The firm taps on her cheek urged her out of it. Dinah opened her eyes to a grim face. Brenner.

  “Get up,” he ordered through gritted teeth.

  Gingerly, like an old woman, she rolled on her side, swung her legs over the bed and finally stood. No throbs, no noise. Not yet, anyway. Brenner watched her through flat, narrowed eyes. There was a slight distaste in his expression as if he were looking at something unpleasant. As if she cared what he thought.

  Beside him, his face equally impassive, was Duke. His expression was different though, his eyes questioning, accessing. Hell, she didn’t care anymore.

  Dinah clutched her belly and laughed. A raw ugly sound. “Both of you again? Too bad I’m not in the mood.” Nausea rolled back in, greasy in her stomach.

  “Shut up.” Brenner’s eyes, cold as ice, seared through her. “MicroSel Sec units are en route again, demanding custody. Seems like your threat status was upgraded. Your Asshole-in-Charge, Franklin, is demanding your body. Preferably dead.”

  The pressure in her head was back again. She hoped he didn’t notice her wince.

  “I would love for them to fight it out,” Brenner continued, “but being in the middle without my forceShields doesn’t put me in the mood to play.”

  “And you expect me to do…”

  “You can tell me what the hell they want from you.”

  “And if I don’t?” Like she knew what the hell they wanted. Right now, she was more concerned with not throwing up. She would not throw up.

  “We can do a repeat of before.” He motioned Duke to come closer and did so himself, gripping her wrist, towering over her. At the feel of his hands on her skin the pounding in her head doubled. She blinked at him, willing him to come into focus. “I guarantee you won’t enjoy it nearly as much as last time.” His voice was dangerously soft.

  As threats went, that was a good one. “Do your best.” Maybe it was time to trash pride and tell him she had no idea what anyone wanted from her and all she wanted to do was go throw up.

  Brenner squeezed her wrist none too gently and she winced, not from the contact, but from the fact that it seemed to make the pressure in her skull vibrate.

  “You’re about to find out one small significant detail.” She didn’t struggle. All her energy went to keeping still, trying to quiet the beast in her head.

  “I can’t feel… anything.” She did feel moisture pearl on her forehead though. “Let go for a moment, would you?”

  He kept his grip. “I thought you didn’t feel pain.”

  “I don’t.” She fought the urge to wrench her hand from his, just concentrated on breathing small shallow breaths. “I need to puke. Bathroom or your feet, your choice.”

  Chapter Eight

  He waited as she retched, loudly, miserably, in the bathroom. Beside him, Duke was softly talking into his dataUnit, informing Med of the situation. When the sound ceased, Brenner went in to find her flat on the floor, her cheek pressed against the cool metallic-based tiles.

  “Go away.” Her voice was weak. He felt like a clumsy gorilla from old Earth. He felt like an idiot. He didn’t know what he felt. “Med is on his way.” He started to kneel next to her.

  “Just… don’t touch me.”

  He scowled at that, but couldn’t really blame her. Her skin was pale as death. He slipped his hands under her limp form, turned her, lifted her, and carried her out.

  “Is that a new interrogation technique?”

  Her voice was breathy, weak. It made his eyes burn. He pushed back the urge to brush a kiss on that white cheek. “I prefer the other one,” he said instead.

  Duke materialized with something cool that he pressed against her forehead. It must have helped, because she gave them both a slight smile as Brenner gently laid her on the bed. Where the hell was Med?

  “What are you feeling?”

  “Must be the chip.” Probably dizzy now, she closed her eyes. “Look, I’m sorry about the shuttle. I didn’t --” As if a sudden thought occurred to her, she sat up in bed, causing the cloth to fall onto the floor. “Did you monitor the communiqué with MicroSel from the shuttle?”

  He didn’t give a fuck about the shuttle now. He picked up the now warm cloth. “Lie back down.”

  “Did you?”

  Duke answered from the bathroom. “Yeah. It was pretty impressive how fast you loaded the virus in.”

  “That’s just it, I didn’t. I made up the number.”

  “Sounded legit.” Duke came toward the bed with another wet, cold towel. Brenner plucked it from his hand, causing a dark eyebrow to arch up. It was ignored. Instead, in a gentle movement, Brenner pushed her back down, and smoothed the cloth over her forehead.

  “I made it up.” She slowly inhaled a small breath, as if testing whether she could take it or not. “If you monitored the communiqué, you would have heard MicroSel confirm a virus. Not a new virus, which they wouldn’t have in their dataBanks, and would question. They didn’t bother checking a made up number as their scans had already verified something there.”

  She didn’t see Duke look up from his dataUnit and frown thoughtfully.

  “That piece of shit shuttle kept losing voice commands until it…”

  Until it fired, she was going to say, and Brenner thought of the delicious way she paid for it. Could she not feel anything now? His touch?

  Nothing?

  “You said MicroSel was on their way? You were taking me to their Sec. All of a sudden they need the keySeq immediately?”

  “When I touch you, do you feel me?” He didn’t make a move to make contact, afraid it would set off whatever it was that made her puke. She was quiet for a moment. “I feel it. But… the way you feel a blanket…

  or clothes. No pain, no pleasure.”

  “My dataScanner is complaining from too much input,” Duke said. “Your chip must be sending out all sorts of fun things.”

  Exasperated, Brenner ran a hand over his head, getting up to pace the room. Back to the other problem. “Franklin knows I didn’t kill you, he wouldn’t be puffing his way over here otherwise. MicroSel seems in a hurry. Both seem to be getting real time intel.” He stepped back toward her. “Is your chip transmitting?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  Just then, Med walked in carting equipment. In an ageless gesture he pressed his hand against Dinah’s forehead. His scars seemed dark against the pale blue of his eyes, and Brenner frowned again, trying to figure out where he’d seen eyes that color before.

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “I can’t feel pain.” She chuckled weakly. “Or pleasure. But I can feel a wonderful sense of nausea, and someone is hammering my skull.” She pressed a hand to her belly. The nausea was probably gathering again. Brenner ignored the urge to go over there and gently rub her stomach. Med would take care of it for her. There was also the small problem of keeping her ass in one piece.

  “You’re obviously feeling something.” Med kept his voice conversational, matter-of-fact. Brenner wanted to kick something. Duke, a study of calm, was busily plucking at his dataUnit.

  “Well, looks like we know why vTech and MicroSel are joining this party.” Duke paused, as if to add drama. “A pain blocker chip patented by MicroSel happens to be a main contender in an antiCompete agreement between our friends.”

  Brenner focused on Dinah as Med fumbled the sensor, nearly dropping it.

  “Why put it in without me knowing?” Her voice was stronger, thank God. Maybe this thing was subsiding.

  “A test of some sort?” Unable to help himself, Brenner pounded a fist into the wall. “That would explain why Franklin wants to cremate you and MicroSel wants custody.”

  “Great.” She winced as if the buzzing of the sensor was bothering her. Incoming beeped. “MicroSel security units directly in front.” Trent’s voice barely suppressed excitement. Brenner looked down at her, torn.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Go.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Med said, and something in his pale blue eyes flashed. Did he have the hots for her? Brenner chased away the thought. No time to care.

  He cupped her chin in his palm. To hell with it. He brushed a light kiss on her lips. Smiled. Then walked out, with Duke silent beside him.

  “You know --” Med dug for another instrument just as nausea was rolling back, “--I know exactly how you feel.”

  Dinah clutched a hand to her belly, determined not to embarrass herself again. “Do you?”

  Med smiled, a gentle smile that rendered the pink scar on his cheek almost invisible. “Yes. An experiment. A lab rat.” He shrugged, competent fingers adjusting the sensor. “I was one too.”

  Incoming beeped before she could answer. “I’m letting MicroSel dock us.”

  Brenner’s voice was taut. “vTech is close. Med, is there a way to get the chip safely out?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Med put back the sensor, just as a loud groan of metal sliding against metal came through. “You up for a walk? We need to get to the MediLab.”

  * * *

  At the commandPost, Franklin’s face on screen was furious. “You took the contract to discharge her.” He was speaking softly, visibly fighting for control.

  “Actually, I requested the specs. The contract wasn’t signed.” Brenner had bigger things to worry about. The ship was protected by MicroSel shields so Franklin couldn’t blow GrimJustin into space. Keeping Dinah out of MicroSel’s interrogation unit was the next step. “The money is still in the mutualAccount,” he said, scanning the other screen for chatter, instructions, or any other intel that could keep Dinah’s head intact. “You can retract it at your convenience.”

  “I… I will have you arrested! I will --” His image froze.

  “Virus scan.” Trent kept monitoring the status on screen 5. “No outgoing or incoming.”

  “Another satisfied customer.” Duke nodded to the face on screen. “You know, it’s crude, but we may just keep our asses this time.”

  Brenner looked up from his own monitor. “What have you got?”

  Not answering, Duke looked at Trent.

  “Dinah’s virus.” Trent played with something on his keypad. “It’s fucking brilliant.”

  “She said she didn’t --”

  “Just listen to the man.” Duke’s voice was mild.

  “Definitely vTech. Forced the explosion by looping back into the eM

  processor until overload. New on the market.”

  Brenner wasn’t excited. “Except they neutered it when the shuttle was scanned.”

  “Yeah.” Trent finally turned to face them. “Except I found a blinker. Bring back the signal, it will knock out anything within pulse.” He shrugged, grinned. “In theory, anyway.”

  Brenner felt his blood humming. “So if they scan again…”

  It was Duke that grinned this time. “It’s in my dataUnit. They won’t find it until we’re ready.” His face was a study of arrogant competence. “I modified the effect a bit. Anything with GrimJustin readout should get less juice.”

  “It will touch everything though.” Trent looked uncomfortable now. Brenner waited. “Everything,” Trent repeated. “Her… chip, whatever it is, could flash fry.”

  “So let’s hope Med gets it out of her by then.” Brenner narrowed his eyes, stared at the frozen face before him, those pale blue eyes so familiar. Duke leaned in. “What?”

  “Look at his eyes.”

  “What about them?”

  “Remind you of anyone?”

  Duke looked at him as if he’d lost his last marble. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Brenner ignored him, pressed on Comm. “Brenner to Med.”

  No response.

  Duke leaned in closer now.

  “Brenner to Med.” Brenner controlled the urge to shout. No response.

  Duke breathed out. “Ian Frank,” he muttered. “Ivan Franklin.” They hit the floor running at the same time.

  Chapter Nine

  In the MediLab, Dinah sat on the padded table, holding her head in both hands. The throbbing was constant now, deep rhythmic waves of it. Nausea was a greasy pit in her belly.

  Behind her, Med was rummaging for necessary sensors. She hoped he’d get to it before she needed to throw up again.

  “You know,” he said, his tone conversational, “you and I are a lot alike.”

  “How so?” She pressed her hands closer to her temples, the brief increase and release of pressure like a breath of fresh air.

  “Both vTech lab rats.” He put a sensor on the table close to her and dug out a laser unit. Probably a scalpel. The thought of that made her shudder a bit.

  “Think we should start a club?” She was really not in a mood for small talk.

  He smiled at her, those pale blue eyes twinkling. Where had she seen him before?

  “That’s a great idea. We can start --”

  He was interrupted by the doors swishing open as Brenner and Duke ran in.

  “Gentlemen.” There was a faint hint of irritation in his voice.

  “Med.” Brenner’s voice was quiet. “I need you to remove the chip. Now.”

  “I see.” Seemingly composed, he arranged instruments. “Did you run in here to tell me that?”

  Casually, Duke walked toward Brenner, taking position behind him.

  “Yeah.” Brenner stood still. “I also have a few questions for you. But we can discuss them later.”

  Med smiled. A sad smile.

  And in a move lightning-fast had the laser unit pressed against Dinah’s skull. “I’m afraid I must disobey your orders.” His voice was calm, his eyes strangely empty. “Why don’t we discuss your questions instead?”

  Brenner didn’t move, afraid to even breathe for fear of spooking him. The laser unit could sever her head before Dinah could blink. He looked into her eyes, those wide-open gold eyes, and saw some kind of… acceptance. He wasn’t going to let it happen.

  “Your relationship to AIC Franklin?” He saw Dinah’s eyes widen. Med chuckled. “Father? Brother? Cell donor? I’m not really sure.” The blue of his eyes was paler now, eerily so.

  Dinah’s knuckles whitened as she squeezed her hands into fists. “You’re experiment I.A.N?” Her voice was hoarse now. “I thought it was a rumor.”