Chapter 10

TEN

A ctually being given food was the last thing Felix had expected. Maybe he'd read too many holo comics featuring evil villains, or maybe he'd been fooled by the institutions set up to protect and guide humanity—namely, the AEF and Central—too often. But when they'd taken Zed one direction and him another, he'd figured he'd find himself locked in a black hole, his dinner whatever he could scrape off the floor.

He'd eaten worse.

The foodfactor burped and another greasy gray cube crapped onto the plate beneath it.

Damn, he'd eaten better too.

'Factor food had been all the thing until people realized you pretty much only got out of a 3D printer what you put into it. So, if you wanted something tasty, you had to vary the ingredient blocks. Standard gray nutrition cubes were cheap and easy to transport. Why anyone bothered actually feeding them through the 'factor was beyond him, though. They tasted about the same either way. Unless you keyed in something like doughnuts. 'Factor doughnuts were pretty good.

Another cube dropped onto his plate. It hadn't formed properly, leaving one side gooey and quickly disintegrating into mush. Probably a fault in the timing mechanism. That was always the first part to go. The molds were hard to damage and 'factors didn't use much power.

Glancing over at Andy, Felix said, "I could fix this for you."

Andy's brows rose. "Yeah?"

Felix felt his brows dip in the opposite direction. Why wasn't he being cuffed, his offer of help returned with a sneer? "How old is it? Is this the only one you have?"

"It's the only one we got left. We used to have three."

"Have you still got the others? I could use them for parts."

"You seriously think you can fix this thing?"

Felix looked around. "Don't you have anyone here who works on this kinda stuff?" Maybe the skinny girl who'd called for more power generators. Certainly not Dayne, who stood by the door hefting her rifle.

Andy's eyes narrowed. "Sure we do, but the 'factor ain't totally broke yet. Keeping the fence repaired is our top priority."

"Because of the lopers." Another cube of crap hit the plate and Felix picked it up. Four mouthfuls of mush were enough for this road trip. "They don't have tentacles, do they?"

For the first time, Andy looked truly amused. "Run into some rock scragglers, did ya?"

Felix rubbed his neck. "Yeah."

"Over here." Andy nodded toward one of the few unoccupied tables in the mess hall—a double-wide prefab on the south side of the pavilion.

Felix straddled the bench and took the all-in-one utensil Andy offered.

"Scragglers are a menace, but they're not mobile. It's the lopers that make a mess of things. They chew through anything. Found one gnawing on the side of a bunkhouse one night. Another nearly ate a power cell."

Now the perimeter fence made sense.

"So how long have y'all been out here?" Felix stabbed a cube and carved off a slice.

Andy regarded him quietly before answering. "'Bout eighteen months. Some of us."

Some of us. So…they had an immigration program?

The slice of 'factor shit slid down his throat without stopping. Felix swallowed. If he didn't chew, he could pretend…something. Man, he never used to be a fussy eater. Must be Zed's influence.

"What are you then, that you can fix a 'factor?"

"Mechanic." In simplest terms.

"Yeah? Can't be easy with only one good arm."

Ignoring that, Felix asked, "What about you?"

Andy snorted. "What about me?"

"Is guard duty your thing, or do you all have to pitch in around here?" Guard duty seemed to be a common thing, judging by the number of men and women hovering close by. Or maybe they were just curious.

"We all pitch in. This colony is what we make of it."

Colony. With one word, Andy had confirmed that this was a rogue colony, an illegal settlement on a world Central hadn't claimed—or at least one that they hadn't opened up for colonization bids. Though, given their distance from the rest of human space, Felix guessed this hunk of rock just wasn't on Central's radar.

Illegal colonies weren't common. There just weren't enough planets capable of sustaining human life—and, in Felix's humble opinion, Paradise barely qualified. But when a survey team did find a planet that might host a useful colony, Central sent out a request for colonization bids. The group that needed the least amount of help, or promised to provide the most return on investment, usually won it. Sometimes there were other politics to get through, high-level interests to be taken into account, but that was the normal process of setting up a settlement.

Once in a while, Central missed a habitable planet. Maybe it was too far away from the rest of humanity's space, like this one, or maybe there just weren't any viable resources to be found on the surface. In either case, what Central skipped over, pioneers set out to conquer. It was a difficult life, getting along with only the resources planetside or whatever bare bit of help they could scrape from less-than-scrupulous traders. If they were discovered by Central or the AEF, they were looking at severe punishments, up to and including life in prison for any number of offenses. Too often the colonies went dark with no one to mark their passing.

This place, though…There was something off about the whole setup. It couldn't be a coincidence that the data trail ended here. Thing was, if these colonists knew anything about Project Dreamweaver, they'd have recognized Zed. No one had.

But none of the colonists had seemed all that surprised by their visit, either. They were wary, but curious. All except Dayne who continued to guard the door.

A shudder of relief coursed through Zed as he entered the mess hall and spotted Flick immediately. He sat at one of the picnic-style tables and, although he was scowling at Dayne, some of the tension in his face melted away as he saw Zed, then flooded back in as he noted the exhaustion Zed must have carried in his own expression.

His wrist might not hurt for the moment—the doctor had taken his advice about needing a substantial dose of anything and numbed him so thoroughly Zed wasn't even sure he had a hand anymore—but he was tired. Beyond tired. Somehow the fact that his wrist had been properly treated, with a good dose of Mendo and cradled in a plasmix brace, made everything else wrong with him hurt that much more . A headache had crept in and all he really wanted was to be horizontal.

Though he wouldn't turn down food, if they offered.

Zed slipped onto the bench beside Flick, nudging his shoulder. Hindered by their clothes, the brush wasn't enough to let their connection click into place, but the physical contact felt good anyway.

"You okay?" Flick whispered.

Zed held up his braced wrist. "All good. Set and Mendo'd."

A shaky breath escaped Flick, barely audible. "Good. Did he check out your head too?"

"Mild concussion, like we thought. Nothing to worry about." Zed eyed the gray cubes on the plate in front of Flick. "'Factor food?"

"Yeah." Flick poked at one of the cubes with his utensil, keeping his left arm still to maintain the ruse of it being useless. He didn't look thrilled at the meal, but a colony like this one—that didn't seem to be agricultural-based—couldn't be expected to serve up anything but 'factored sustenance. "Not my favorite but it's warm."

Zed grunted. Warm was good. It felt like forever since he'd had a full stomach, let alone one with warmth in it.

"Want some coffee?" one of the colonists—Andy?—offered.

"No," Zed said quickly, then added, "thank you."

Beside him, Flick chuckled. Yeah, yeah, his aversion to caffeine was so amusing. He'd like to see what Flick would do with an unflagging erection and increased horniness when he could take care of neither.

Someone brought over another plate for Zed. Even though it looked no more appetizing than Flick's meal, Zed dug into it. Worries about the food being drugged flashed through his mind, but he quickly shoved them aside. They wouldn't go through the trouble and expense of repairing his wrist if they intended to drug them senseless. Mendo wasn't cheap and, if this was an illegal colony, refilling their stores wouldn't be an easy thing. The cubes were bland but warm, like Flick had said. It'd do.

Todd entered the mess, flanked by a few more colonists. Deep lines etched furrows on either side of his mouth and more had taken up residence across his brow. He looked less congenial than he had earlier.

Flick pushed away his plate and looked up at the leader of the colony. "What are you going to do with us?"

There was more movement over near the door. Zed looked up—then jumped to his feet, dragging Flick to his and shoving him behind his back, ignoring his lover's protests.

"Hello, Major," said Dr. Carlisle Preston, smiling.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Something must have leaked over their connection, some sense of the threat facing them, because Flick tried to get past him. Zed shoved his good arm out to prevent it. God, he wanted Preston nowhere near Flick. Ever.

"Carly," Zed growled. Predictably, the good doctor frowned. She hated that nickname, which was why he used it.

Dr. Carlisle Preston had been the lead medical specialist for Project Dreamweaver. She'd been the one to determine when to dose them with the stin venom, how much and for how long. She'd monitored them, put them through untold tests. Every single man and woman on his team had come to hate her and her cold, unfeeling approach to their suffering. Yes, they were all volunteers, but she'd treated them like fucking lab rats.

Zed had even more reason to hate her, though. The last time he'd seen her, she was employed by an AEF admiral to mitigate his pain resistance so they could interrogate him. She'd stabbed him, then dosed him with stin venom. Combining pain with the poison made his hallucinogenic trip even more intense and awful. And it had all been for nothing. The AEF gave up on questioning him. The admiral in charge decided he was far more interested in making Zed simply disappear—a plan that had been thwarted by Flick and the Guardians.

But none of that explained why Preston was here now, looking pretty much the same as she had on the AEF military intelligence flagship—caramel hair pulled back into curls cascading down her back that made her look far less dangerous than she was. Unless?—

"Fuck." Zed sagged. "This isn't an illegal colony."

"Technically, it is," Preston said with a shrug.

"Who the fuck is she?" Flick hissed from behind him.

"She's from the project," Zed said. "She was the doctor?—"

"This is Preston? You fucker !" Flick dodged Zed's outstretched arm, only to be brought up short by a wall of bodies. He clawed at them, forgetting to keep his left arm still, trying to get through. "Do you know what she did to him? She fucking tortured him! You fucking bitch !"

"Flick! Felix!" Zed yelled. No point in worrying about names now. "Stand down!"

"Fuck that!" Flick cocked a fist back, ready to let loose.

"Goddamn it, we're still outnumbered here! Stand down!"

Flick swung, but the colonist dodged. Another jumped in, throwing a punch that connected with Flick's cheek hard enough to make him stop and blink. Zed started forward, determined to get to his lover, but someone grabbed his bad arm, making him hiss in pain. He jerked his wrist out of the grasp— ow —and stepped forward, just as Flick took another hard hit to the head. This time he stumbled, falling back a few steps, but he didn't go down.

"Felix, stop."

Flick turned to him, blinking, clearly trying to focus. "She hurt you."

"Yeah, and she's gonna hurt you if you keep this up, stupid."

Flick narrowed his eyes. A male colonist grabbed his shoulder and encouraged Flick to take a seat on one of the nearby benches. Zed joined him, both to keep him out of trouble and to make sure he was okay. A quick visual inspection revealed a couple of bruises already forming, but no blood. He'd avoided getting punched in the nose for once.

"Are you done?" Preston asked, her voice cool.

"For now," Flick shot back.

"Good." She smiled and, wonder of wonders, the expression actually reached her eyes, warming them. "Because I'd like to talk to you about Project Dreamcatcher."