Shepherd (16 page)

“There are too many details left to work out.”

Clay’s voice had rumbled against her breast, and Esme followed along the list on the screen of the items still hanging in the balance. “I’ll finish modifying the keg in a few hours. Can you designate a team member to prep a position for me to load it?”

“Even empty it will be too awkward for you to load. I’ll handle the insertion into the drainage system.”

“You aren’t supposed to be directly involved in the field for this mission.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He glanced up at her, his cyber eye a dusky gold, reflecting her color back to her. At least he was still in a good mood, because she had her own bit of wisdom to add to Ty’s. “I had no problem understanding Vier before you zapped me into an unconscious drooling fool in the trailer. He wants you to step back and let others gain some experience.”

He’d turned toward the screen but not before his eye’s shift back to his normal blue registered. “There is no point in adding another person just to handle the small details.”

“Right.” When he didn’t bother looking at her, she moved the screen closer and tapped the timetable of events to enlarge for the notations of personnel. “Ghost is handling distraction inside the camp and the first level of extraction. Even though Ratter is in the second portion of the extraction, he’s providing intel and perimeter info. He can easily create the opening for me anytime between now and time for the keg’s activation. I can hoist the keg there and load it with the ERD. That leaves you here to handle emergencies and provide backup.”

She felt him exhale, watched him rub over the wound sealant, which was beginning to melt as the nanites produced healthy, pink flesh around the scars on Clay’s chest. The visible sign of his injury and vulnerability should be enough to force him to consider reason, but the tension in his body said he wasn’t giving up…
yet.

“Why do you need to assume the entire burden? Don’t you deserve some downtime?” she added.

“Everyone on these teams works round the clock. I’m no different.”

“Right, except Trace has a wife and family. So does Badger. I imagine even Vier doesn’t spend all of his time with the Underground.”

“You’d be surprised.”

She pressed a kiss to where his forehead wrinkled in an effort to find some counter argument. She wasn’t going to let him win this one. “No. What would surprise me is if you could see some future for yourself, instead of an end in one mission or another.”

“I don’t have a death wish.”

“Good, then train others to do what you do. Everyone wins that way. Without you, too many people lose.”

“It’s not like I’m going to live forever. This type of job—”

Esme sighed into his strands of blond and brown. “This isn’t just a job. This is a life, Clay. All those other people are doing this so everyone gets a chance at life, and they are making sure to live their lives along the way. That should include you.”

“Countdown—twenty-eight hours, ten minutes.”

Not seeming to make much headway, she swung her legs over the side of the bed to finish modifying the keg.

Clay’s hand covered hers. “Esme, stay. Just a few more minutes. I promise I’ll give what you said some thought.”

Carefully crawling back, she moved until his face turned into the space beneath her chin. She ran her fingers gently through his hair, waiting for his breathing to pulse in a low snore. His comfort and trust enough that he slept in her arms was progress. His death wish—she would have to work on later.

Chapter 10

Prepared to haul the keg under his arm, Clay turned suddenly to find Esme, fists on her hips, glaring at him.

“Trace wants you to have a full scan to confirm you’re totally recovered before you go hoisting anything.”

“You messaged him?” he asked, though he seriously doubted it. She hadn’t been out of his sight since he’d woken from his surgery. She’d even performed the modifications to the two kegs in the corner of the console room so they could talk. It would take him some time to get the place clean and put all the tools away, but her work was worth the mess. The test model and the one targeted for the sewage system both resembled enormous antiquated bullets, the tips prepped for explosion and loaded with Esme’s directional devices.

“I answered the one he just sent.” She raised a brow, crossed her arms over her chest, and gestured with her head at the keg. “He obviously knows you too well. Another five minutes and you would’ve been out the door with that thing.”

Clay briefly considered checking the messages but discounted the idea given the fierce expression on Esme’s face, one that enveloped him in warmth and vulnerability at the same time. A little fear lingered around the edges of his emotions as well. Too much had transpired too quickly between them—all good—still, he couldn’t trust his luck in having such a woman cross his path and want to stay. These kinds of things didn’t happen to him, and he certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve such a windfall.

“I’ll leave this here for your ERD, but we need to test the level of the detonation,” he said, waiting to see what she would offer as a solution.

Esme’s posture eased. She turned and paced back to the myriad screens now littering the air. He considered the numerous New Delphi feeds a little unsettling, yet he understood how weeks in the Pit could make a person require constant reminders of life. She seemed to need to keep an eye on everything even if she wasn’t watching. Almost as if she considered them windows, because half of the screens displayed live feeds from Down Below and New Delphi, in addition to the Regent authorized public broadcasts. A brief frenzy on one caught her attention, and Clay relayed a command for volume.

The split screen displayed a dichotomy of images. To the left, a staid and primped broadcast host stood before a background of screens in the Regent civilian-service attire of a royal blue jumpsuit with cream piping down the arms and legs. The effect was aesthetic, but the piping had a purpose. It generated a wavelength to allow tracking and potential retrieval of personnel in case of disaster situations. For the man, safe in his broadcast center, the suit was more about ego than safety.

The right screen displayed a crowd amassed before the steel superstructure of the New Delphi Medical Treatment Facility. The crowd’s presence in response to a call for new inoculations wasn’t unusual. The tendrils of smoke, the twenty-foot hole in the building’s façade, and the fact that only “Del” and “ity” remained signaled an attack.

“Sources report dissident forces have claimed responsibility for damage to the New Delphi Building earlier this morning. Several workers in the main reception area reported injuries. Several bystanders were taken to a secure facility for treatment. Reports of fatalities have not been released. Inoculation deliveries have resumed.”

The image shifted from the wreckage to a series of opulent row houses. The sheen of the polytec composite glinted in the morning sunlight. Regent Row, a several-mile-long street near New Delphi’s center, hosted the homes of the major families who governed the city. Their houses were built from steel blanketed with tremor-resistant compositions of carbon and fiber optic cables woven in a 3-D rope-like textile, offering increased structural resilience. The upgraded materials also equipped their homes with additional amplitude for local and international communications.

The reporter continued, “The Regent security task force has issued a statement that efforts to locate and contain the rebel leaders are underway. The Regent Council is due to meet within the hour.”

“Will this impact our timeline?” asked Esme. “Or can we use this somehow?”

Clay gave her a quick look and glanced back at the reporter on screen. It struck him as odd she hadn’t asked if the Underground had actually perpetrated the act. He knew the network didn’t operate in situations risking damage to civilians, but Esme’s experience with any of the teams, much less their philosophies, was brief. “You hardly batted an eye at the broadcast and moved right to how to exploit the situation, Sugar.”

“Exploit? Hell, yes. The only way to survive is to exploit any situation that pops up. And if you were to ask me, which you didn’t, I’d put money on the option that the Regents created this.” She waved a hand toward the screen.

He froze, thrown off guard by her suggestion, but the possibility burned in his gut as well. The attack resulted in increased vigilance above the grid, and increased negative opinion of any Underground or Down Below activity. Coupled with a good excuse for heightened security, it all gave the Regents free rein. Her coming up with the conclusion stunned him. The sensation of her hand turning his chin away from the screen brought him back to reality.

“I’ve spent a lot of time watching how people impose their ideals on others. The more power they have, the more unusual their options can be. It doesn’t make me complicit.” She’d moved away from him to the console. “The dampeners should be enough to disperse the sound waves from our explosion. How about we test in the new basement section? Best case, it seals in the area from access. Worst case, you create extended living space.”

Good point and back on focus, which was where he needed to be. “I’ll set up some remote monitors for feedback, just in case we don’t contain the resonance as expected.”

A new screen flickered to life next to him with a schematic of the underbelly of the New Delphi grid surrounding his compound. Esme tapped several keys. Sub-windows enlarged, one for each virtual comm server with its own visual perspective and statistics. “We can use these.”

Clay’s eyes narrowed as he realized where the feeds were originating. “I wiped all tracks to those New Delphi communication hubs weeks ago.”

Her Cheshire-cat grin almost distracted him. “Yes. You did such a good job that I couldn’t find anything on your system to work with while you were surrounded out there.” The grin faded as she tapped up another sub window, reflecting a list of code names. “Unfortunately, not all the team members are as thorough. I added an item to the list for you to create a scrub program for each of them.”

The uneasy feeling in Clay’s stomach flowed back as he noted not only had she earmarked the lazy offenders, but the list was nearly complete. She’d located a large percentage of the Underground network teams.

“Countdown—nineteen hours.”

“We need to get the test done.” Esme had the ERDs positioned around the test keg, yet hesitated when he didn’t join her.

Clay glanced at the screens again, then back to her. She was right. They didn’t have time. It could be he was taking more time acclimating after his accident, off-kilter, feeling something was terribly off. Missing pieces, external factors he couldn’t account for, and worse—risk to the project and the team. However, it was too late to pull back now. Actions he couldn’t rescind had launched with team members at the twenty-hour mark.

Regardless of the problems, they had nowhere to go but forward.

***

“Countdown—one hour, forty minutes”

“We have enough dampeners. I can release them into the system five minutes before and after the keg is directed to the ignition site, to cover the explosion.” Esme packed the six dampeners she’d constructed based on the model Ty provided to Clay. Actually, her design was better. Waterproof, the palm-size devices had a farther range of interference and closely mimicked the traditional communication waves around the extraction site. They were also programmed to disintegrate after use, so no messy loose ends.

Clay didn’t respond but keyed her scenario into an equation on his screen and delivered an approximation of the containment range and distribution of the dampeners. “Make that three minutes. We need a tighter ring around the discharge.”

Esme paused, making a mental note for the variance as well as Clay’s emotional distance. He’d been pleased with their results of the test. After multiple scans to reconfirm the data, he had approved both her device and the option to incorporate the dampeners. Still, he hadn’t so much as brushed against her. After hours in close proximity, she could tell something weighed on his mind.

“—wife of Regent Councilmember, Ty Vier.”

Esme’s gaze snapped to the live feed on the farthest screen. She’d programmed for certain words, names, and phrases to active the sound. The image of the newscaster from early this morning posed beside Ty, a video bot hovering in the top corner of the screen, sucked the breath from her lungs. She wanted to check Clay’s reaction but couldn’t tear her gaze away from the screen or the new depiction of fire and destruction at Regent Park.

“Regent Vier, have they found the insurgents who caused your wife’s death?”

Ty stared at the wreckage and the newscaster, not offering Esme a good view of his face. She held her breath, waiting for confirmation on whether it was Sinea or Carley affected. “Squads are looking for the perpetrators. While I want them brought to justice, nothing can replace what I’ve lost.”

“You have our sympathies, Regent Vier, on the loss of your wife, Esme.”

Roaring thundered in her ears as blood rushed from her head. A snapshot of her, standing next to Ty in the Justice Hall as they signed their marriage certificate, reflected from the split screen. It didn’t matter that both of their expressions were blank or that she wore a long silk mandarin jacket Ty had provided to cover the tank and underpants—all she had been allowed to wear in the prison. Her face and her features appeared three times their normal size, and one glance at Clay told her he wasn’t taking this news well.