We landed in Fiji just after dawn, running on fumes. The quad-tiltrotor groaned as it touched down, engines coughing like an old man on his last cigarette. Tag had pushed the bird to its limits, but it held together. Barely.
Waiting for us on the tarmac were three "Fiji Utilities Incorporated" transport trucks. Inconspicuous. The kind of plausible deniability you need when people get disappeared. The agents weren’t much better. Faces too clean, uniforms too crisp, and not a single one looked me in the eye.
We unloaded the cargo: a dozen or so transformed metatypes pulled from the wreckage of New Atlantis. Mostly t'skrang, a few deep ones.
Tag didn’t say much. She kept staring at them as we moved them from the tiltrotor to the trucks. Her hand lingered a little too long on one of the unconscious t'skrang’s shoulders. Then she muttered something about being on the wrong side of the fight. Said we were no better than the corps now. I didn’t argue. Maybe she was right. But it\s too late to walk away.
By noon, we were washed up, debriefed, and on a call with the team. Halo, back in Manado, was already prepping for an impromptu concert that night. Half the team had been setting it up while we were still airborne. The Manado venue was an open-air amphitheater overlooking the sea. The locals turned out in droves. The them, and the Matrix, New Atlantis was already old news.
June 23 should've been a rest day. It started out that way. Good food, soft beds, ocean breeze. Then Eclipse called.
Thorne, that little decker recruit of ours, had been running a passive watch on the Seattle end. Something odd came up. John and Maria Gardner—Evie's parents—sneaking out of their Lake Sammamish estate. Into Redmond. Repeatedly. Always at night.
I knew John dabbled in the gray areas. But Maria? That woman practically flinched at her own reflection. No way she was stepping into Redmond after dark.
So I called her.
She was... different. Brighter. Animated. Flirtatious, even. Said she'd caught John in the act—sneaking out—and decided to follow him. Said she thought he was cheating on her.
It didn’t track. Maria doesn’t follow anyone into Redmond. She barely leaves the house. I played it cool, told her to leave it to me. Promised I’d have someone "look into it."
Then the images started.
Suggestive at first. Then more. Sent from her commlink. Her tone, her expressions—it wasn't her. Or maybe it was her, trying on a new skin. Either way, something was wrong.
Tag started beating around the bush later that night... something about circling a drain... I told her perish the thought. We've made it out of the Barrens; this isn't the time to develop a conscience and let it drag us back down. Eyes on the prize and remember all the shit we've gone through to get this far.
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