Shades of Treason (8 page)

The imprints matched perfectly, overlapping at almost every leap up and down. At least he’d gotten the tone and cadence right once.

“The compulsion triggered the seizure?”

“Possibly.” Katie sat on the edge of his bed. “Or it could be a coincidence. It could be withdrawal from the boosters. It could be a sign of mental deterioration or an unrelated medical condition we haven’t identified yet.”

He turned away from the desk, felt the muscles in his face tighten. “You’re trying to make this not my fault.”

Katie shrugged. “It might not be. She isn’t acting like an anomaly who has snapped.”

“Which leaves one conclusion,” he said, frustration making his voice harsh. “She’s a traitor.”

“You still don’t believe that, do you?”

“I don’t have a choice.” He gripped the back of his desk chair. “Unless you have evidence of something else?”

“Not yet. I’m still looking.”

He stared at his display.

“I think she does it on purpose,” Katie said after a moment. “Ashdyn’s learned how to get under your skin, so she provokes you. She flirts. She says things just to make you lose your temper, all so she can wiggle out of the compulsion.”

He gave a short, humorless laugh. Yeah, that sounded like Ash. She had an uncanny ability to see what set a person off. He’d seen her use that skill to her advantage before. That’s how she survived the first few weeks on Caruth. The recruits in her class were susceptible to her charades. When they sparred, she made them think she was weak, fragile, feminine… until she managed a perfectly timed, perfectly placed kick that laid them out cold.

Unfortunately for Ash, the anomalies learned quickly. They didn’t underestimate her twice, and she spent most of her time on Caruth getting her ass kicked. She never gave up though. Rykus had to intervene more than once to prevent her opponents from permanently injuring her. She was an impressive woman, an impressive woman whom he
did not
love.

He straightened and faced Katie. “You’re here because you want me to try to command her again.”

“Ashdyn is my patient,” she said. “And they’re hurting her, Rhys.”

“Hurting her?” His gaze jerked to the time on his comm-cuff: 2205. “I have another hour.”

“Another hour?” Katie asked.

“Yes. Bayis gave me… Never mind.” He picked up his comm-cuff and fastened it around his wrist. “When did the interrogator go in?”

“Right after I left.”

Katie’s words lacerated his chest. He’d been drinking coffee and staring at a screen while Ash was having who the hell knew what done to her belowdecks. If he’d known, he would have…

He didn’t know what he’d have done—tried more threats or compulsion or
something
.

“Where are you going?” Katie asked when he headed for the door.

“I’ll talk to h—”

His comm-cuff pinged. The message said Bayis was calling. Good. Rykus had just been about to call him.

Pulling his voice-link out of his pocket, he slipped it over his ear. “Admiral—”

“Commander Rykus,” Bayis’s too-calm voice said. “Lieutenant Ashdyn has escaped.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT FELT LIKE Ash had spent her entire life in a box and was being let out to stretch for the first time. Her muscles loosened as she moved, as she stole a uniform, a voice-link, and a comm-cuff, all in just under five minutes. Still, her body demanded more action. It wanted to run, to fight; it didn’t want to kneel in a maintenance closet prying at a panel with a knife.

The knife point skated across the bulkhead. Ash wiped her sweaty palm on her pants and tried again. She didn’t have time for clumsiness, but the pinky of her left hand was broken and her right one wouldn’t stop shaking. Honestly, she was lucky she was able to do any of this. If her last booster wasn’t lingering in her system, and if the doctor hadn’t painted her wrists with the slick medical gel, she’d still be trapped in that damn chair.

But her breaking point wasn’t far off. How long before her body gave out, she didn’t know. She shouldn’t be experiencing such severe withdrawals so soon, but that’s what the weakness and the shaking felt like. She needed an injection before it all got worse.

Unfortunately, an assault on the drug locker wasn’t part of her present itinerary. Getting into the head on the other side of the wall was. It would take her to another corridor, another room, another plan. After that, she’d get off the ship, deal with her addiction, and track down her soon-to-be-dead fiancé.

Her stolen voice-link clicked. She paused, listening to the transmission, and heard a spacer issue an advisory on a “dangerous escapee.” Rykus would know about her now. Was he already tracking her? He was the biggest obstacle in her plan. He might figure out what she was doing. He might help the spacers recapture her. He might command her to…

She closed her eyes, fighting against the loyalty training that urged her to turn herself in. It was never comfortable, doing something Rykus wouldn’t like. It felt like she had her skin on backward, like all her movements were wrong and she was struggling against a current.

She blew out a breath. If Rykus knew why she was doing this, he wouldn’t be angry.

The chains tying her to her fail-safe loosened. She focused again on the stubborn panel she needed to pop out. Rykus’s presence was inconvenient, yes, but give her ten more minutes, and he could do nothing to stop her.

Her hand jerked when the blade slipped under the panel. A satisfied smile spread across her lips. It dissolved a second later when she felt the air press against the back of her neck.

She heard a whisper and spun, bringing her knife around while she reached for the gun holstered on her hip.

No one was there. The maintenance closet was as dark and empty as when she first entered.

She wet her lips. She almost wished someone
was
there. This was the third time since her escape that she’d heard a whisper and felt a presence. If she’d believed in ghosts, she would have said the
Obsidian
was haunted. That would have been preferable to the alternative.

Her head felt like it was being squeezed in a hyperbaric chamber. She endured the pitching moment of dizziness, then turned back to the wall, trying but failing to ignore the fear that clung to her like the halo around a sun. Anomalies who had snapped heard voices. They saw things that weren’t real. They harmed people who were innocent.

What if all this was a hallucination? Would she know if she’d lost her mind? Maybe she’d imagined Jevan and the other men. Maybe they’d never stepped foot on the shuttle and
she
had killed her team. Maybe she’d soon be talking nonsense about fashion and fighting like Trevast had when he’d been on the precipice of death.

She tightened her grip on her stolen knife.

No. It couldn’t be possible. She might be an anomaly, but she was only one person, and her teammates weren’t incompetent. They would have stopped her before she was able to kill even half of them. She hadn’t snapped; she’d just been a fool. Jevan had pried into her mind. He’d known exactly what to say to keep her close these past six months. He’d kept their relationship casual, struck up conversations on how to improve the lives of people on Coalition worlds. He’d even donated funds to humanitarian organizations on Glory. He’d manipulated Ash into trusting him.

Opening her eyes, she stared at the loose panel. There was no time to linger on the past. No time for regret or weakness. In ten minutes, Ash would be off this ship, and then she’d make Jevan pay.

She let out a slow, centering breath, then slid the wall panel aside.

A tense silence greeted Rykus when he stepped onto the
Obsidian’s
bridge. Not a good sign. If a spacer had spotted Ash or if she’d accessed the ship’s systems, someone would be reporting to Bayis.

The admiral stood at his command console in the center of the room. His hands were clasped loosely behind his back, but from the way the entire crew on deck kept a professionally neutral expression and locked their eyes on the status screens, it was obvious Bayis was anything but calm. Perhaps that was because he wasn’t alone at his console. War Chancellor Hagan was there as well.

Had Hagan ordered the interrogator into Ash’s cell? Bayis had given Rykus more time. It wasn’t like the admiral to change his mind, especially not without notifying Rykus first.

“Admiral. Chancellor,” Rykus said, keeping his tone the same for both men’s titles. They turned, and he met Hagan’s cool gray eyes. The war chancellor was close to his father’s size and age—late fifties, most likely—which made him one of the youngest war chancellors in the Coalition’s three-hundred-year history. Rykus hadn’t liked the man before the anomaly hearings, but he despised Hagan now. Not only had he advocated for the Caruth anomalies to be brainwashed, but he wanted the few individuals who showed
any
sign of mental instability, whether they completed the program or not, to be sent to the institute where they would be dissected and studied. All without any solid proof that they would eventually snap.

The man was immoral and pure politician. Neither the Fighting Corps nor the Fleet had a high opinion of him.

Rykus focused on the admiral. “What happened to my three hours?”

Bayis’s mouth tightened. “There was a miscommunication. Can you find her?”

For one insanity-laced moment, he didn’t want to. He stood there staring at Bayis, hoping Ash would disappear until he had time to fully analyze every piece of evidence brought against her.

Then Chancellor Hagan shifted, and Rykus remembered Bayis’s warning. This wasn’t the time to question Ash’s imprisonment. If she escaped, Hagan would make sure Rykus answered for it.

“How long has she been free?” he asked.

“Almost ten minutes,” Bayis said. “We’ve sealed off deck two.”

“She won’t be there now.” He focused on the schematic of the ship on the central console. In the month since they’d come on board the ancient vessel, the layout had become familiar, but he hadn’t looked at the design from the perspective of someone trying to escape.

“I shut down the lifts,” Bayis said. “I have men stationed at every stairwell, emergency ladder, and—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rykus interrupted. “She’s an anomaly. She’s found a way out.”

“Are you saying she can walk through bulkheads, Commander?” Chancellor Hagan turned from the forward viewscreen to address him.

“In a way, yes.”

“Explain,” Bayis ordered.

“Anomalies study spacecraft designs.
All
the designs—the Sariceans’, the Coalition’s, even the designs of the individual planets that aren’t part of our organization. Ash knows the layout of this ship better than we do, Admiral. She could be anywhere.”

“Engineers built partitions between the bulkheads,” Hagan said. “Even in these old designs. She can’t move between them.”

Rykus ignored him. The brig was located on deck two. Below it was engineering and storage. Above it were the crew quarters and hangar bays, and above that, the rec deck, kitchens, and mess hall.

“I’m assuming you’ve lost security feeds.”

“For half the ship, yes.” Bayis’s voice was tight. “We’re working to get them back.”

That was Ash’s doing, and if she’d gained access to security, she could gain access to other ship functions. “I suggest you cut off remote log-ins to the
Obsidian
. Anomalies are trained in hack-sig. She’s stolen a comm-cuff, probably a voice-link too.”

“She’ll try to get off the ship,” Hagan put in.

Bayis glanced at the chancellor, and his nostrils flared slightly, a clear indication he didn’t want the man on his ship. Hagan used to command the Fifth Fleet, and Bayis couldn’t be comfortable having the man breathing over his shoulder.

“All outbound flights are terminated,” Bayis said in a calmer tone than Rykus would have managed.

Rykus stared down at the command console. He had no patience for the war chancellor. Somehow, he had to find Ash. The problem was, he wasn’t an anomaly. He didn’t have every detail of the ship’s schematic memorized.

Brookins would though.

He tapped on his comm-cuff to call his XO when a tone chimed across the bridge.

“Sir,” a spacer called out. “Three life rafts have launched from deck two starboard.”

“Order standby fighters to their birds,” Bayis said. “Deploy when ready and engage to cripple.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The admiral’s command and the spacer’s response were calm, professional. Rykus sealed off his own emotions and studied the forward viewscreen. Three bright orange life rafts veered away from the
Obsidian
. The small craft had limited maneuverability. They were designed to move fast over a short time period, just long enough to get away from a damaged ship or from a skirmish, and while they were equipped with some defensive weaponry, they didn’t have enough to divert an opponent who was set on retrieving them.

There was no way Ash was on one of those rafts. They weren’t covert. She’d know Bayis would notice. She’d know she wouldn’t make atmosphere before the admiral deployed his fighters.

Before he deployed the fighters.

Ah, hell.