Chapter 5

Edme found Lucie in the tiny closet at the back of the kitchen, during Lucie's break. While Lucie gobbled down the sandwich Olivette had thrown together for her, Edme grinned at her and leaned against the closet frame. "I saw you speaking to the bear."

"Santiago?"

"Yeah. He growls just like one."

"I wouldn't know," Lucie said, after swallowing quickly. "I've never seen a bear."

"Ask Barney to show you one." Edme's grin broadened.

"Then, it's not just me he growls at?"

"God, honey, no," Olivette called from behind the sizzling griddle. "He's like that with everyone."

When her shift was done, Lucie wove through the main square of the city and through the corridor into the Celestial dome. Barney had found her a temporary short-term lodging. It was a real find. Lucie considered it to be the most amazing house in all of Celestial, which was just as jaw-droppingly amazing as the travel guides had promised.

Lucie took this as a sign that her tour was fated to be good.

She palmed the lockpad to open the gate into the house. The sun was shining through the clear dome, which was a shame. Celestial had been named that because when the city had first been built, it hadn't rotated at all, and Celestial had lived in permanent twilight. This house looked better in twilight.

But it was still a lovely, but very small house and it was hers for the month. Even better, Yennifer had lived here, once. That made the house very special in Lucie's eyes. She stepped through the gate and moved up to the open rooms under the L-shaped roof. The roof shed rain, but there was no need for protection from any other kind of weather.

"Barney?" Lucie called as she pulled off her shoes and carried them into the tiny bedroom. "Ears only!" she added, as she undressed.

"Here, hon!" Barney said.

"I have a bone to pick with you! You couldn't have warned me that Santiago has breakfast at the restaurant every day?"

"You couldn't have warned me you were going to get a job there?" Barney shot back. "I would have told you not to. But no…you scuttled upstairs like a jackrabbit and before I?—"

"What's a jackrabbit?"

The screen over her bed lit up and showed a video of a small, furry mammal running and leaping, crossing grassy terrain at an astonishing speed.

"I had to act fast, Barney. The job seemed perfect. No training required, instant start—they pushed me into an apron and shoved me out there the moment I showed up. But you could have said something at any time the last three days!"

"Honey, if I broke privacy like that, the city would lynch me, and I'd be stuck here for a century. I intend to escape with a new carcass any day now. I'm not going to mess that up by giving you details of someone else's life."

"You didn't mind showing me that video about Santiago and Blake!" She shoved her legs into clean trousers and fastened them.

"That's public property," Barney pointed out.

"But you said that watching the security feed of me and Santiago talking was wrong, too!"

"I said it was hazy, ethics-wise. But that's public feed, too. You have no expectation of privacy in the middle of a docking bay. The hazy bit is accessing it while talking to you, just to keep ahead of your conversation."

Lucie put her hands on her hips. "You're squeezing and pulling to justify things, Barney. You know damned well you're supposed to use human measures when you're uncertain about things like that. You used your ability to multitask, which humans and

Varkans can't do, instead of figuring out what happened by talking to me, the way non-computers do."

Silence.

"Oh, put yourself on screen, will you?" Lucie said.

Barney appeared on the screen. He looked contrite—or as contrite as she'd ever seen from him. "I'm sorry," he said, pushing his hand through his hair. "I shouldn't have looked at the docking bay feed. You're right. It's just…you seemed so upset. I thought it would be faster and kinder to not ask you to tell me all the details."

"Sometimes that's exactly what we have to do," Lucie said, her temper cooling. She really didn't have much of one, anyway. Here and gone, one breath after the last. "At least I don't have to serve the man, if I'm doing breakfasts."

"Which Olivette has scheduled you for, here on in. I think you just got promoted, Lucie," Barney said. "Well done."

"I'm still mad at you."

"No, you're not." He blew her a kiss.

Lucie sighed and settled on the bed. "What else have you found about them?" Barney had been giving her little stories, and showing her video feeds and images of the pair, the last few days, when she had a moment to draw breath.

Now he told her about Blake's escapes and near-misses, always staying ahead of Santiago's relentless pursuit of her, crisscrossing the known worlds.

Lucie listened, while staring up at the stars visible at the edge of the roof, through Celestial's dome. She had committed to thirty days of work with Olivette, not including regulated days off. So, thirty-nine days…around forty days before she could book a flight to Nicia and leave Charlton City. And twenty-eight days of seeing and being seen by Santiago.

Her presence reminded him of Blake Bloodworth, but Lucie couldn't help that. She could stay on the other side of the room and let Edme deal with him.

Lucie could put up with that for twenty-eight more days. Then she could finally leave.

"Lucie! Come in, Lucie!"

She stirred and glanced at the screen. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, I can show you video on that one." He puffed up his chest. "I found it. Buried deep. But it's security feed, so public property, and it all happened in a public space, so…"

"Show me what?"

"One of their meetings. The very first one…I think this wasn't planned. Santiago finally caught up with her."

"He caught Blake?" Lucie's heart fluttered. "But you said…"

"I know. That's the public perception, that they never properly met until the Big Showdown."

"But now you know different?"

Barney nodded solemnly.

"Alright. Show me."

The screen flickered, then she was looking at a back corridor that she suspected was a station corridor, because it had handrails on the roof and walls, for times when the gravity might give out. The corridor ran for many meters before it met another at a T-junction, and the security camera was up high.

It was a service corridor, because the left-hand wall wasn't a wall at all, but a maze of pipes, conduits, engines and other machinery housed in protective metal boxes, with control panels flashing and flickering with readouts.

Through the general audio feed of the lens, she could hear the low continuous burr of equipment running smoothly.

Then, Blake appeared, running fast. Jackrabbit speed, Lucie thought.

The woman glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Her eyes were narrowed. She was concentrating, even as she ran.

Then she skidded to a halt, only just staying on her feet. At the T-junction ahead, boots could be heard. Running boots.

Blake looked back behind her, weighing her options. There was something more than concentration showing on her face now. A touch of fear, perhaps.

That was when Santiago rose up from behind one of the big motor cases. He wrapped his arm around her, slapped a hand over her mouth, and pulled her deep inside the equipment. They both crouched behind a motor case, hidden from whoever was coming, and from the camera, too.

From the corridor behind the camera, three men wearing black combat gear and carrying rattlers ran along the corridor, heading for the bootsteps they could hear ahead of them.

As soon as they passed the casing where Santiago and Blake were hiding, the pair moved over to the next casing, and stayed low behind it, so that if the trio looked back, they wouldn't be seen.

But the three pursuers didn't look back. They came to a halt as five more armed men appeared. They all met in the T-junction and talked in low voices.

One of them turned back to the corridor and considered the field of industrial fittings, his expression suspicious.

Santiago raised his hand. He had a mini pad in it. He pressed on the pad.

From much farther down the corridor, the faint sounds of an alarm came.

The eight men all turned and raced toward it, leaving the T-junction bare.

For thirty seconds, the pair crouched behind the housing didn't move. Then Blake bounced to her feet and out into the clear corridor. "What the hell, Elijah?"

Elijah? Lucie raised her brows.

"It's a proximity alert," Santiago said, rising to his feet. He was smiling, which was an astonishing expression on the man now referred to as a bear. "The five were coming from the west. I sent them east." He shrugged and stepped out into the corridor.

"I should slit your throat," Blake said.

Santiago's smile faded. He pointed toward the T-junction. "They would have cut yours. I thought you said you could handle Montema's men?"

"I was handling them," Blake muttered, her hands fisted. "I could have ducked down behind the casing myself, you know. I was going to."

"But you couldn't have set off the alarm two hundred meters from here," Santiago pointed out.

"I don't know how you did," Blake said.

"One day, when I've arrested you, I'll tell you about an AI I know, who likes me."

"Elijah, no one likes you."

Santiago smiled. "You do."

"I like the dopey messages you send me. You're just a liability to limb and lungs."

"I make you laugh. Go on. Admit it."

Blake dropped her hand from her hips. "I hate you right now."

"Ditto." He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, and Blake wound her arms around his neck.

"Turn it off," Lucie whispered, her heart hurrying along.

The screen went blank. Barney returned. He studied her. "What? I thought you'd like that."

"There's public data, and then there's stuff that should be private," Lucie said. "You need to figure out the difference, Barney."

"I know the difference," he said. "But it's you, Lucie. That makes it a special case."

"It's not!" She slapped the bed. "I happen to be wearing her DNA and that's all. Inside, I'm me. It shouldn't make any difference what I look like, Barney!"

"But it does, doesn't it?" Barney said softly. "He hurts when he looks at you and you hurt because you can't help doing that to him."

"Yes," Lucie admitted, wheezing out the word. She plucked at the bed cover. "Did you see the way he smiled at her? He looked…."

"Happy," Barney finished, with a nod.

"Have you ever seen him look like that before?"

Barney hesitated, and Lucie knew he was running through every image, every second of footage with Santiago in it, comparing the evidence to the Santiago in the video they'd just watched.

"Nope," Barney said. "Santiago has never looked like that since I've known him. Longer than that."

"Since Blake died," Lucie finished.

"Yeah," Barney said, and blew out breath he didn't have.