Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

I hoped my doubt wasn’t too visible as I nodded.

We’d reached the unmanned south watchtower. Standard started up the skeletal stairs, visibly straining against the pain of his burn. The sandy wind howled through the rusty crossbeams.

“We have to leave him while we can,” Naoto whispered in my ear. “Or dispose of him. We can’t trust him.”

I shook my head. “We need protection. We’ve already been attacked once, and the wasteland only gets worse from here.”

Naoto gripped my shoulder. “Listen to me. Whoever he’s working for, it isn’t us. He said it himself: squid are worthless. That means the squid you paid him are worthless.”

“Out here, yes, but maybe back in Epak—”

He cut me off. “There’s more. After we surfaced, while you were still unconscious, he ran a cranial scan on you. It happened so fast, I couldn’t stop him before. . . .” He was a quivering mess. “Before he saw your unifier implant.”

Adrenaline punched me in the chest. I watched Standard hobble up the last flight of steps. I asked Naoto through clenched teeth, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I tried, damnit! But after what you made me promise in Bloom, I . . . I couldn’t. . . .”

He’d been too afraid to tell me—afraid I’d kill myself pre-emptively to keep the Medusas from getting their hands on the tech in my body.

“Okay, okay,” I hissed. I paced the dusty ground once.

He was pleading with me through his tears. “Please just tell me you’re not going to hurt yourself. Please tell me you won’t—”

I wanted to be angry, but the sheer terror in his voice made me realize just how cruel I’d been in asking for that promise.

“No,” I said. “I won’t. Fuck. Just let me think.”

I grabbed one of the watchtower’s beams and put my weight on it; the whole structure was too rickety to let us sneak up the stairs. Standard stepped inside the drafty cabin at the top, out of our sight. I told Naoto, “Tell me you still have that scanner hooked to your belt.”

We rushed to set it up with shaking hands—sharing the pair of earbuds, each putting one interfaced contact lens into our dominant eye, then running a signal-interception program I’d written myself. Holographic light began to cohere in my vision; voices cut through the static in my ear.

“I knew it,” I said. “He’s calling someone.” But I froze solid when the image fully resolved.

It was Duke.

“—loud and clear,” he said. “Wise of you to return my call. Remove your coverings. I do not trust a man whose face I cannot see.” He grinned. “Not even you, my dear Alexei.”

I swallowed hard at what I saw: the throne Duke sat on was still waterlogged from Dahlia’s death, but he’d already drilled new rank-rings into his jaw, and his scalp was raw from its latest tattoo: a sawtooth pattern in golden ink, forming a viciously stylized crown.

I stared at Naoto in fear through the superimposed image, further realizing that the man we’d hired was no mere bodyguard. He worked for Duke. He worked directly for Duke. Naoto primed his wave pistol and braced to run; I could barely move.

“Please be quick,” Standard answered, peeling off his goggles and scarf. “I’m not in a secure location.”

“Relax, Alexei. I bring you good news. Epak is again united, under me. We have only to complete the formality of a few public executions, and then we may devote ourselves fully to our revenge on Norpak for Dahlia’s death. But first—”

“What?” Alexei interrupted. “But I thought you said . . . you said Norpak had nothing to do with the assassination. You said there would never be any Gray Day. That it was all a game.”

Duke tipped his head back to glower harder down his nose. His jaw rings glittered fiercely, and for a split second I was sure I saw pieces of a human nose in the shoulder of his jacket. His voice was dripping with paternal condescension to say, “The masses believe Dahlia was assassinated by Norpak. If we do not retaliate, we demean ourselves before the entire world. Don’t be so squeamish. This war will be over very shortly. Our Gray weapons are far more advanced than theirs. Meanwhile, at last, I have a job for you. Maybe your most important job yet.”

Attached images scrolled across the contact lens my eye, and my heart all but stopped.

“The woman calls herself Danae,” Duke said. “A tech servant. Clan property. Bloom surveillance has identified her accomplice as one Kusanagi Naoto, a civilian. We’ve tracked them as far as Crossroads Station, and we’re currently interrogating a woman who had some contact with them there. I’ll have more details for you soon, but we believe they’re headed into the open wasteland.”

“I’m sorry,” Standard began. “I can’t—”

“Sure you can. I know you have clever ways of finding people, Alexei. Someone works nodespace for you. Use those resources. Return them both to me, intact. Pay is five million squid—inflation-adjusted, metal equivalent, whatever you like.”

Five million. I wilted in Naoto’s grasp. He was tugging on my arm, pulling me down to duck with him behind a pile of sandbags at the tower’s foot.

But Standard’s image on the other side of the call didn’t turn back, didn’t brandish his wave rifle, didn’t make any move to obey Duke’s new orders. He only stared pensively at his feet, seeming to resign himself.

“I can’t—” he began.

But Duke ignored him and said, “You must be wondering why.” He leaned forward on his throne almost giddily. He looked around to confirm he was alone before continuing. “You must guard this information with your life, but we received some telemetry from a stolen medical scanner. This woman is carrying a cerebral implant more advanced than anything our techs have ever seen. We need it. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but her head alone may not be enough. We don’t know how far the device extends into her