“We have to leave right now,” Cassia told him.
He was already sprinting her way with Doran and Solara right behind him. “Copy that,” he panted through the link. He passed the doctor and kept going without a backward glance. As soon as they crossed into the cargo hold, Kane retracted the boarding ramp and said, “Tell Renny he’s clear for liftoff.”
The words had barely left his lips when a sharp upward acceleration buckled his knees, and he landed on the floor. From there, he half walked, half crawled up the stairs until he found Cassia waiting for him in the galley. One look at her and he knew their personal problems would take a backseat to this emergency.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s Fleece. We know how he’s finding us and listening to our conversations.”
She waved him up the stairs to the residential level, where they waited for Doran and Solara to catch up. Once they were together, she led the crew toward Arabelle’s quarters and stopped outside her door. “She has a neuro-ocular implant,” Cassia whispered. “The doctor said it’s an old prototype that never made it to market because of brain damage. It collects everything Belle sees and hears, and transmits the data to an outside source.”
“My god,” Solara breathed. “Fleece has eyes and ears right on board the ship.”
Kane glanced at Arabelle’s door. “Did she know?”
Cassia shook her head. “The implant only holds so much data before it has to be purged. Each time Fleece reset it, he erased those memories. That’s why she was confused about how long she’s been with him. She lost more than a year’s worth of awareness.”
“What a bastard,” Doran muttered. “That’s why he sent her out on the food cart. She collected the names and faces of everyone who came and went from that hub.”
“And then he erased the details before she could tell anyone,” Kane added. “Now she’s overdue for a purge, right? Hence the migraines.”
“Exactly,” Cassia said. “The specialist couldn’t help, but he gave Renny the name of a guy who might be able to remove it.” She gripped the door latch and warned, “Fleece might be listening, so don’t say anything he can use against us.”
The lights inside Arabelle’s room were turned off, but the hallway’s glow revealed her petite form curled up on the cot, a damp rag slung over her forehead. She was crying—not a faint sniffle, but the closed-mouthed sob of someone trying to muffle a great deal of pain. Sympathy swelled behind Kane’s ribs. He’d shoveled his fair share of shit in life, but no one had ever fused a microchip to his optic nerve and used him as a human probe.
Solara sat on the edge of the cot and used her fingertips to massage Belle’s temples. The act seemed to bring instant relief, because Belle unclenched her shoulders and went limp. She felt around blindly until her hand found Solara’s knee.
“Thank you, ’Lara.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“You smell like engine grease.”
Doran smiled. “Better than fish.”
“Tell me about the wine,” Belle said, her voice slurred from exhaustion but sincere, as though she wanted to live vicariously through the details. “Was it as delicious as I’ve heard?”
“Even better,” Solara lied, having never tasted a drop.
“We wanted to bring back a few bottles, but there wasn’t time,” Kane said. “Now we have an excuse to go back someday.”
Cassia glanced at him through her periphery. He searched for some sign as to what she was thinking, but her eyes gave nothing away and she looked quickly back at Belle.
Since there was nothing he could do, he decided to go.
He backed into the hall and headed toward the common room. A throat cleared from behind, and he turned to discover Cassia had followed him. She stood in the doorway of the quarters they used to share and gestured for him to come inside.
She didn’t need to ask him twice.
In the span of a few heartbeats he had already joined her and shut the door. She faced away, making her intentions impossible to read, so he stood patiently by the door to give her space. He didn’t want to lose ground by pushing her too hard.
“I was thinking,” she finally began, and then her damned com-bracelet started beeping again. Kane gritted his teeth. He hated that thing. He wanted to flush it out the waste port and force Jordan to handle his own problems for a change.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” he said.
“No, you can stay.”