Chapter 2

TWO

Z ed caught a glimpse of someone matching Qek's description of the hacker—a flash of red hair on a shorter-than-average figure wearing a green backpack—and that was it. Man, woman, he didn't know. At this point, he couldn't even say it wasn't an ashushk wearing a wig. Tracking the hacker through the crowd on the concourse outside the docks was achieved by following his or her wake. Zoning to access the greater speed of his experimental training wouldn't help in these crowds, and phase-shifting to pass through people was out. Transitioning through the Chaos 's thick cargo door had left him feeling more unsettled than he'd like. A familiar ache had settled in between his temples, his eyes didn't really want to focus and his muscles felt a bit rubbery—good signs that he'd pushed himself too hard to phase-shift through that door.

When the corridor from the docks dumped traffic into the market, Zed faltered. People flowed everywhere—a glut of humanity, with a few friendly ashushk thrown in for variety. No matter where Zed looked, he couldn't pick up a disruption in the eddies of the crowd's current. No clue as to where the hacker went.

His wallet pinged. He pulled it out, his tone short as he answered. "Yeah?"

"Have you reached the market, Zander?"

Qek's precise, even tones mollified his temper somewhat. He'd checked in with her earlier to relay his intended destination, so it was natural for her to follow up. "I'm here. I think I lost them, though."

"Elias is approaching from the opposite direction."

And it would be just their luck if the hacker ducked sideways without them seeing—wait. Fuck, yes . Zed jolted forward. "Got him! He's heading toward the promenade." The main one that had vegetation hanging everywhere—it was a pretty iconic destination on Chloris, a unique characteristic that separated it from all the other stations belonging to Anatolius Industries. "Hasn't seen me."

"I will inform Elias and Anatolius Security. Good luck."

Tucking his wallet away, Zed focused on shortening the distance between himself and the hacker. The crowd inhibited pursuit again—but luckily this time, it did the same for the hacker. By the time the guy reached a side corridor, Zed was only a few meters behind. The service alley wasn't as wide as the main concourse and didn't have nearly as much vegetation dangling overhead. It also wasn't as crowded. Zed tried to keep a few people between him and the hacker as he debated his course of action. Charge ahead again and risk the hacker bolting? His slighter frame was a definite advantage over Zed's bulk. Or hold back and work at getting closer, all subtle-like?

Movement close to his side distracted him for a second, but it was just Elias, jogging up and breathing heavily. "We got him?"

Zed smiled. Well, the odds had just increased in their favor. He nodded to one side of the corridor. "Work your way over on that side. I'll stick over here."

"Pincer?"

"Pincer."

They wove through the diminished crowd, getting into position. Zed was about to signal Elias to close in when the hacker looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened and he darted sideways.

Zed didn't waste any time on swearing—he just leaped into pursuit. The hacker had found a narrow access tunnel intended for maintenance bots and technicians. Slipping into the Zone despite the headache that warned him it was a bad idea, Zed found an additional burst of speed. He reached out, his fingers millimeters from the hacker's pack?—

And grabbed nothing. Only an afterimage existed—an afterimage that tossed a smile over his shoulder and melted away from his grasp.

Zed skidded to a stop, his brain refusing to acknowledge what he'd just seen and felt.

Elias caught up to him. "What the hell happened?"

"He shifted…" Zed waved a hand at the empty corridor.

"He what?"

Zed shook his head, fighting the words. They couldn't be true. There was just no way…

Elias looked at Zed, then at the dark hall—then back to Zed, the realization dawning on his face. "Are you telling me he phase-shifted ?"

Impossible. But…"I don't know."

"Zed—"

"I don't know!" His fingers carded through his hair, yanking at the roots, a bad habit he'd picked up from Flick. He squinted as the shout made the pain in his head spike.

"Was he one of your teammates?"

"No."

"Did you recognize?—"

"No!"

Elias raised his hands. "Man, I'm just trying to get a handle on this. We've been operating on the belief that you were it . The last of your kind."

Ire fading as quickly as his temper had flared, Zed's shoulders sagged. "Maybe he was a holo." But the suggestion sounded weak, even to his ears. He'd felt the rough material of his pack.

Zed closed his eyes. Fuck . "He phase-shifted."

"Yeah. Looks like." Elias rested his hand on Zed's shoulder, a rare comradely touch.

"Whoever he was, a hell of a lot of planning went into this." And the fact that they'd carried it out on a station the Chaos hadn't even been scheduled to visit until the day before—that meant they'd been shadowed, their communications monitored.

Fuck, that was almost as scary as the fact that the hacker had phase-shifted.

Felix met Nessa exiting a lift tube from the maintenance level.

"Where are Elias and Zed?" he asked.

A scowl pulled at the delicate lines of her face. "On their way back from the main market."

"They lost him?" Qek had relayed a short holo capture from one of the security cameras. Maybe when Marnie and Ryan were back online, they could clean it up and pin an identity to their hacker.

"Apparently he shifted."

"He what?"

"Phase-shifted. Zed had a hold of his pack and he dematerialized right the fuck out of there." Ness rarely swore.

Goose bumps prickled the back of Felix's neck and shoulders. "Qek wasn't able to follow on from…" From where he'd disappeared?

"He slipped into a camera dead zone behind the promenade. From there, he could have gone anywhere."

His bracelet chimed once. Felix thumbed open the channel. "Yeah?"

Zed's voice crackled through. "We lost our perp in the market ? —"

"Because he phase-shifted?" Felix exchanged a look with Nessa. Surely she'd meant something else?

Zed was the last living member of Project Dreamweaver. He should be the only human being in the galaxy who could mimic the stin ability to shift out of phase. The stin poison running through his veins had killed the rest of his team. Zed had only survived through the intervention of the Guardians.

"Can we talk about it when we get back to the ship?"

"Sure. Sooner I get back and start purging systems, the better."

Felix closed the connection and ran his fingers down the smooth skin of his crystalline wrist and over the back of his perfectly formed hand. It freaked him out to have Zed in his thoughts, to be in Zed's. But in only four months, he'd come to rely on it. Nothing soothed his anxious ripples as well as Zed's deep pool of love and commitment. Not for the first time, he wished their connection extended beyond touch.

Nessa touched his wrist. "I'm sorry Zed's whole scene got interrupted."

Felix shrugged. "It's not as if he needs to buy me strawberries to get me into bed. I'm a sure thing." A creepy creep at the back of his skull suggested Zed had been trying to do more than simply seduce him.

Nessa opened her mouth.

"You know what this means, right?" Felix said. "Someone other than Zed phase-shifting?"

Closing her mouth, Nessa nodded. "Let's get back to the ship."

The crew of the Chaos normally gathered in the mess for team meetings. Felix didn't want to be parted from the main computer, however, so they were all squashed into the corvette's small bridge. Qek sat in the pilot's seat, Felix in the copilot's. Nessa and Elias took the jump seats set just behind and Zed crowded the doorway. The air cycler struggled to keep up with five rounds of agitated breath.

Qek's blue fingers skipped across three different holos. Felix had another three open. The main console display shimmered beneath, and Nessa, Elias and Zed all had their wallets out and activated.

"Navigational system cleared." Qek didn't look up from her displays. Instead, she closed two and opened another.

"Great chunks of data were copied from medical," Nessa said.

Elias looked up from his wallet. "Logs are secure, as far as I can tell, and all our financials are held off-ship."

"They weren't after credits," Zed said.

Felix finished recompiling the program responsible for basic ship functions. "Life support and the gravity generators are secure." He glanced over at Zed. "What do you think they were after?" He hadn't assumed it would be credits either. There were much easier ways to steal currency than hacking a third-class corvette.

Zed gripped the back of his neck. A crease teased the middle of his brows. Felix had an uneasy relationship with that little wrinkle. In the past, it indicated headaches—symptoms of Zed's rapid decline. Now, the crease signaled stress, which didn't make Felix any happier.

"Obviously they wanted access to Morrison. Hacking through our communications protocols would have had to have been a priority."

"I concur," Qek said. "I have been able to reconstruct part of the attack. Our communications system was compromised first. When Mrs. Scott cut off access, a secondary program initialized."

"The door locks," Felix guessed.

"Yes. The hacker then targeted very specific systems within the Chaos . Most notably, medical files."

"What did they get?" Elias asked.

"Zed's brain scans," Nessa said.

No surprise there. The hacker shifting out of Zed's grip no longer felt like a coincidence—not that it ever really had.

The comm panel chirped. A new holo opened up over the main display, eclipsing several others, and Marnie and Ryan joined the meeting on the bridge. "We're back," Marnie said.

"So I see." Elias offered a mock salute. "Status report?"

Ryan looked up from his console. "That was not fun."

Marnie shot her husband a concerned glance before turning back to face the bridge. "All systems secure. We had to purge some data, but I have backups of my backups. What about the Chaos ?"

"We're mostly back together," Felix said. "I'd be more comfortable if we dumped everything and installed fresh copies from the backup of your backup, though. Are you sure this connection is tight?"

Marnie huffed. "It's tight." She tapped something just offscreen. "I have a list of files they managed to copy. Comm logs for the last six months, some of Dieter's journal entries, about half of Qek's porn collection and…" Marnie licked her lips. "Everything we had on Project Dreamweaver."