Page 2 of Last Chance to Save the World

2 Although apparently at least one member of my team already knew, based on what Ada’s let slip. I’m not sure who, though.

3 At least not until I’m certain this message gets through to the right people.

4 To put it nicely.

5 Much as I hate to admit it, I do trust Ada here. I believe her. The nanobots need to be reprogrammed before release, and it’s going to be tricky doing it without being caught. I need her help. I need my team to not interfere before then.

6 If she runs...I know she’s skilled enough to disappear. And take the proper coding for the climate-cleaner nanobots with her.

7 She knows so much—contacts in the underworld, higher levels of knowledge than some people on my team.

8 I should be. I wrote most of them.

9 Not only will this event be recorded for the entire galaxy to stream, live, this is also a historic event. The more we can keep this situation contained, the better.

10 Which I also helped organize. I know every agent assigned to security on the square, and I personally checked the grid layout of all the surveillance drones.

11 I’m never going to live down the fact that she kidnappedme.

12 At least I have some negotiation room. I can arrest her and offer to drop charges if she’ll tell me more. She won’t cooperate unless I have a sword over her head; I know that much for certain.

13 And yet, I do.

14 Top security, no acknowledgement. Ada won’t tell me who the leak is, so I cannot afford to trust anyone but my closest agents.

15 We have to get through with the reprogramming before we arrest her. If my people are ready to arrest in Fetor Tech, there’s too great a chance of either tipping Ada off or my team moving in too early. Fixing the malicious code in the bots is more important than arresting Ada and gaining whatever information we can from her.

16 Or have some other plan. I don’t think she knows that I have a communication access point here on the station, but she might. She’s always been one step ahead of me. My only hope is that she trusts me enough to believe I wouldn’t turn her in.

17 Except to me. She’s going to fucking murder me when she realizes I betrayed her.

18 . . . and maybe I would deserve it.

19 This is going to get messy.

1

Iwatch as Rian strides across the docking bay platform, straight to the onboard ramp at the back ofGlory.He walks as if he has never once doubted gravity, as if the surety of landing on solid ground is a guarantee so irrevocable, it never even occurs to him to question it.

This little layover on the Moon—capital M because it’s the original, the one circling Earth, the other original—was expected, but the delays are absolutely not helping my stress levels. I’ve spent most of the last three hours wrangling with the port authority to get the landing sequence I want. Letting Rian out of my sight was a risk but one I had to take.

Rian draws up short when he sees me opposite the ramp, leaning against the wall of the cargo bay.

“I just went for...” he says weakly, holding up a bag of snacks he must have purchased in the common area.

My eyes rake over him. After the initial shock of being kidnapped followed by the secondary shock of me explainingwhythe kidnapping was genius on my part, actually, Rian’s been pretty compliant. Sure, he wasn’tthrilledI turned our first date into a felony, but he definitely agrees with me that the nanobots Fetor Tech is going to be releasing on the intergalactic government’s dime and approval need to be reprogrammed first, and this is the most expedient way to do it.

He knows how important this mission is. He knows that what I’m doing is designed to help all the billions of people on my ravaged planet.

Still.

That man is a rule-follower, through and through. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can never trust people who trust the law.

I blow a breath of air out through my lips, shaking my head softly at him. “I wish you would have just slept with me when you had the chance,” I say.

The bag of blue puff cubes drops to the floor with a softthwump. “Ada—” he starts, and then seems incapable of saying anything past my name.

I bite the corner of my lip. His eyes fall south, his gaze a knife-point at the place where my teeth press into the sensitive skin.

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