Page 118 of Coldwire
I shoot to my feet at once. I was alert all night, keeping watch. Nothing has appeared out of the ordinary. The loudspeakers ran on a loop every hour. The apartments turned off their lights and went to sleep at some point nearing midnight, and then it was only me and Threto, staring at each other in darkness alike.
The creak comes again. This time, I’m certain. Footsteps. There’s someone on the roof.
I dig into Nik’s bag, retrieving the hammer. It’s the most makeshift weapon I can imagine, something that’ll only have any effective use if I end up engaging in a close brawl, but I have no other options. With my own footfall light, I pad to the windows, each step drawing goose bumps on my arms.
The footsteps follow my path. Creeping closer, closer to the edge of the roof.
I grip the side of the window, maintaining balance to shove half my body out and swivel directly up, preparing to swing with my other hand.
I almost drop the hammer.
“Teryn.”
She tilts her head, taking in the threat, or lack thereof. It would be more embarrassing if I withdrew the hammer, so I let it dangle coolly in my hand.
“I was wondering where you’d gone,” Teryn says, matter-of-fact. Her gaze turns farther down, to the street. “Drones?”
“Drones,” I confirm. I don’t know how long she’s been observing me and how much she saw, but my instinct is to obscure the fact that I wasn’t here when we moved apartments. Nik got himself to safety; I was making a run to a pharmacy. It isn’t something illicit—we want him alive if he’s going to finish fetching his files. Still, NileCorp might have expected me to use the situation against him instead. Press him to distress until he divulged how he plans to retrieve this program, then continue the mission myself once he succumbed to illness. Admitting that I kept him safe feels like an unnecessary confession.
“I see.” Teryn crooks a finger. “Come up, would you?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer before retreating from the edge of the roof. I’m left with little choice except to pull myself back through the window and return the hammer to Nik’s bag. He’s still sleeping soundly.
I slip out through the door, taking the last set of stairs to the tallest point of the building. There’s a ladder here, ascending to a hatch. The handle is rusted over when I try to push, and it requires several hard strikes before the trapdoor opens onto the rooftop.
I poke my head out. There aren’t any protective barriers, no guardrails. Only a thin, metallic sheet lying flat across the roof, directly above the penthouse apartment. Teryn is standing by a plumbing vent, her shoe toeing the plastic.
In the time we’ve had working together at the base, I’ve learned some tells in reading her expressions. If she’s entirely impassive, she’s not feeling good about the situation.
“You’re delayed,” she says.
“You said Offron in three days,” I return. I don’t emerge any farther from the hatch. “There’s still time.”
“It’s hardly good practice to press right up to the deadline.” When Teryn flips up the collar of her jacket, not a hair moves out of place. The sun comes up, and her light brown ponytail practically glows a halo around her head. I don’t know how she got into the city under lockdown, how she’s navigating Threto as an Atahuan without the police coming after her. None of that matters, because she’s Teryn Moore.
“Is he ill?” she asks flippantly.
“Yes,” I say. “He’s on the mend. He’ll be awake today, and we’ll resume.”
“Where are the other two?”
I shouldn’t be surprised that Teryn knows about Miz and Blare—it would be more shocking if she didn’t. This whole time, the capture mission has beenNik Grant Nik Grant Nik Grantbecause he’s the one gracing Atahua’s headlines, but of course NileCorp would bring in the members of his team, too. I suppose they didn’t split our focus in Button City because it was obvious that as soon as we secured Nik, his team would follow suit.
My palms itch. My throat constricts. It is less that I’m surprised to hear NileCorp knows about Miz and Blare and more that I actively wish otherwise, that I’d done a better job at hiding them from my employer’s surveillance—andthatsurprises me. The moment the thought settles into my conscious awareness, there’s no coming back from it. It’s easier to justify handing Nik over when he’s murdered someone in cold blood. Yet no matter how much I twist and turn the situation with jargon from my corporate soldier handbook, I can’t pretend there’s any world where it makes sense to let Miz and Blare endure the same fate.EspeciallyBlare.
Teryn glances over, her eyes narrowed. I scramble to cover my reaction.
“We got separated from them,” I explain. “Another team’s getaway interrupted our second location’s file retrieval.”
“International intelligence, probably,” Teryn remarks. “I doubt they were successful.”
Because Nik is the only one who can retrieve these files, allegedly. I am still in the dark as to why. I don’t think Teryn knows either. It is merely what NileCorp told her, and she’ll relay the message with every bit of conviction.
“The other two,” I say carefully. “I don’t think their involvement justifies capture.”
Teryn gives me an incredulous look.
“Are they under duress?”
