Page 34 of Last Chance to Save the World

His razor eyes slice right to me. “You’re not concerned.”

I shrug. “It’s too late now. We did our best, but...”

A little muscle works in his jaw. “No. That’s not it. You should be more concerned.”

He’s going to betray you.

Not if I betray him first.

I can see his mind working. I’ve turned down food before, when something more important was on the line. His gaze drops from my face to my fingers, where I’m licking off some fruit juice.

Food always gives me away.

“What have you done, Ada?” Rian asks, just loud enough that Haoyu looks up. I smile charmingly at him, and he returns his attention to the chocolate fountain. Smart man.

I spin around to Rian, pulling him into a relatively private corner. The room’s not packed, but it’s crowded enough that true solitude is impossible. Anyone with a golden ticket to go up the golden elevator cashed it in, and the people allowed guests absolutely brought anyone they could.

But everyone’s distracted.

There’s a cadre here that truly cares about the program; they’re invested in the countdown, eagerly anticipating the launch of the climate cleaners, the salvation of Earth. But they’re well outnumbered by the people putting themselves in view of the cam drones or showing off for each other or simply snagging more and more champagne.

The guests here are a mix of the people who care and work, and the people who are on the guest list by nature of being Fetor’s friend—and that man only befriends people with high-enough bank accounts.

“Ada,” Rian growls, pulling my attention back to him. “I know you would do a lot of things, but giving up isn’t one of them.”

“Wow, that’s kind of eloquent; thank you.”

“You know something I don’t know,” he says.

I smile. “You can’t stand it, the not knowing.”

“Not when it comes to this,” he says, but I replace those words in my head withNot when it comes to you.

I glance at the countdown clock. There is less than half an hour left.

Rian grabs my wrist—he doesn’t see that I’m trying to look at my cuff, at the totally different countdown timer I started there—and he holds my arms pinned to my sides. It should be uncomfortable, but it’s not. He’s holding me like I’m the thread leading him out of the labyrinth. Like I’m not just valuable but his whole redemption.

A girl likes to be appreciated.

It’s not until I meet his eyes that he speaks. “I can stop it all, right now. I know the optics would be bad. Iwillstop the program before I allow dangerous nanobots to go into Sol-Earth’s environment. Ada, tell me what you know. Do I need to kill the countdown?”

I shake back my hair, looking at him a little defiantly. “I know that you shouldn’t do that.”

“Why.” It’s more demand than question.

Shit. He’s basically cornered me. And while usually that makes me stubborn, right now?

Hot as fuck.

“Okay, so, I told you I needed about an hour or so to reprogram the nanobots, right?” I say. Rian nods. “Well, that’s roughly true. But...” I get a good look at my cuff’s timer. It’s hit zero. Rian watches me, focused as I tap the screen and check a little alert that says,Program Upload Complete.

“You got to the nanobots?” Rian asks, his voice laced with deadly hope.

I nod. “Ididneed about an hour. But I didn’t need to be standing over it the whole time.” It’s not like I was actively writing the code into the system. Rian knows this. I wrote the whole program already and just needed to install and overwrite the malicious coding Fetor had put into the bots. If he understood the system more, he’d know that all I really needed was to use the fifteen minutes the security system allowed me to do everything I needed to do.

“The nanobots—” Rian starts, but then a little buzzer echoes through the room. All the guests pause, looking around, and Fetor stands up.

He claps once, loud, for attention. “Friends, that sound means that the nanobots have been successfully loaded into the launch site in the communications tower! In moments, it will be time to save Sol-Earth!”

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