Page 11 of Marked By the Bounty Hunter

I turned to find Tyrix stripping off his rust-stained shirt. The motion pulled at the muscles of his back, purple markings stark against gray skin. Old scars crossed his shoulders, silvered with age. Heat rushed to my face. I spun away, pretending to dig through my supplies.

“Here.” I tossed him a maintenance vest I’d salvaged - the kind made to fit multiple species. “Not much, but it’s clean.”

“Thank you.” Fabric rustled as he changed. My neck burned where his gaze rested. “You have rust. On your neck.”

His fingers brushed my skin before I could pull away. I froze at the gentle scrape of his claws. They sent shivers up my spine and through my whole body.

I tried to clear my head. I couldn’t be falling this hard for a Vinduthi. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

“Hold still,” he murmured. The pad of his thumb swept across my pulse point, wiping away grime. Every nerve ending sparked at his touch.

But the gentle pressure reminded me of another touch - a shaking hand on my arm as one of my regulars steadied herself at the bar last week, her face drawn and sallow under the harsh lights...

Liseth had complained about power fluctuations in her sector, said the constant changes made her dizzy. I’d written it off as station fever, given her a drink on the house...

“Nalina?”

I pulled away from Tyrix’s touch. “Sorry. Just remembered something. A regular at the bar. She worked maintenance in Blue Section. Started looking sick a few weeks ago. Same signs as Jevik - shaking hands, skin going pale. Haven’t seen her in days...”

“Sick, like Jevik?”

“Maybe. She talked about weird power spikes in her sector. Said it gave her headaches.” I paced between the crates. “And themedical supply shortages. Suppliers bitching about redirected shipments...”

“The synthetic proteins Dasari mentioned.”

“Yeah.” My skin crawled. “What are they doing to people?”

Voices echoed in the corridor outside. We both froze.

I crept to the door, peering through a gap in the metal. The distinctive hexagonal insignias on their collars made my stomach clench - the same shimmering blue-silver design I’d seen on those false medics in my bar, on the men who had attacked us.

Now I knew what they were: Consortium agents. The sight of those badges brought back memories of how smoothly they’d moved through my bar, how precisely they’d scanned the crowd. Not like regular security at all.

Grot stood with them, his four arms hanging oddly still. His usually ruddy skin had a gray cast, tentacles at the sides of his mouth twitching. He pointed back toward Green Section, moving like a glitchy hologram.

“...spotted them heading that way,” he said. His voice sounded wrong - flat, empty. “The bartender knows these tunnels. She’ll try to lose you in maintenance.”

My stomach turned. I’d served him drinks yesterday, listened to his drunken stories. Had he been watching me even then?

“Good work.” One agent touched something at Grot’s neck. He went rigid, then relaxed. “Return to your post.”

I stumbled back from the door. Tyrix caught my shoulders.

“We can’t go to hydroponics,” I whispered. “Not directly. They’re watching everyone.”

“Then we find another way.” His hands slid down my arms. “When do maintenance crews change shift?”

“Twenty minutes.” I forced myself to think past the nausea. “Most systems run on minimal staff then. And the patrols change routes. If we loop through the cargo sections first, doubleback through maintenance...” I sketched a rough map on an old cargo manifest. “It’ll take longer, but they won’t expect us to circle around like that.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine.” But my hands trembled as I traced the route. Grot’s empty eyes haunted me. How many others had they turned into puppets?

Tyrix’s fingers closed over mine. “We’ll find out what they’re doing.”

“And stop them?”

“Yes.” Such certainty in that single word. I wanted to believe him.

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