Chapter Seven Part Two

“Dearie, your friends are here,” Kyle’s mom called, sounding far away as Gus stepped through the hatch into a back room that must have served as the restaurant’s kitchen at one point. The appliances and counters around the space seemed to support that assessment.

To Gus’s relief, there was evidence of vegetables being cut up, pointing to this being an actual restaurant and not just a front.

There was no sign of Kyle, however.

Or his mom.

The kitchen’s fridge was pushed slightly off center. Upon further investigation, Gus found a hole someone had cut into the panel behind it. A quick look inside revealed a hidden room.

That was where she found Kyle.

He reclined in a chair meant for serious gamers. Or hackers. Those who devoted not just hours but days or weeks to a screen. The chair was designed to perfectly cradle his body and would continually stimulate his muscles to prevent atrophy.

Kyle’s face and head was covered by a VR helmet, leaving only the bottom of his jaw visible.

“Dearie, did you hear me? Your friends are here,” Kyle’s mom said in a louder voice.

“Not now, Mom. I’ve almost solved the riddle of the diamond sphinx.”

Kyle’s mom wrapped her knuckles on his helmet. “You have guests. Tend to them.”

“Damn it,” Kyle shouted, ripping his helmet off to expose unruly bright orange locks. “I lost.”

“Watch your language, sir,” his mom warned with the kind of no nonsense look used by mother’s everywhere.

Kyle closed his mouth, immediately forgetting his mom’s warning as soon as he spotted Gus and Caius standing on the threshold. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Language, Kyle.”

Kyle rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as his mom bustled toward them. She crouched in front of Anandra and held out her hand. “All boys need food or they turn into beasts. How about you and me go rustle up some grub while the adults talk?”

To Gus’s surprise, the boy looked to her for permission.

She studied his face seriously. Eating wasn’t the worst idea.

“He’ll take one of your lasagnas,” Gus answered for him. “But just one with cheese, if you please. No meat. He’s a vegetarian.”

Not really but you didn’t trust meat in a place like this. Anywhere there were humans, there were also rats and other types of rodents. All of which were considered free sources of protein by the inhabitants of the slums.

Kyle’s mom smiled and offered her hand to Anandra. “Just cheese then.”

Anandra would have stared at her hand until the end of time if Gus hadn’t nudged him forward. Reluctantly, he slid his palm into hers, glancing back once as Kyle’s mom led him into the restaurant’s kitchen.

Gus wiggled her fingers in a halfhearted attempt at a wave.

Kyle waited until the hatch had closed behind his mom and Anandra before fixing her and Caius with a fierce frown. “Okay. She’s gone. Now, talk. Who the fuck are you?”

“The gardener sent us,” Gus said.

The gardener was the persona she created shortly after arriving on Titan. Her alter ego, so to speak. One of several. The gardener was the most well known, however The authority attached to that name would open doors that would be otherwise closed to her.

Just look at what had happened with Kyle’s mom.

People feared the gardener and the things that person was said to have done. All fake, of course. Rumors and innuendo. Some of which Gus had seeded herself. The rest had kind of taken on a life of their own.

At this point, Gus had so many identities waiting on the sidelines that she never acted under her own name any more. Except her siblings, no one knew the real Pityrodia Augustensis.

Sometimes that thought made her lonely. But only sometimes.

The rest of the time she relished the privacy her alter egos allotted her.

Kyle’s expression didn’t hide his skepticism. “You work for the gardener?”

Gus had expected this. The gardener was something of a notorious figure on Titan. There were many people who had attempted to pose as that person’s emissary and suffered the consequences of their poor judgment.

It would have been strange if Kyle hadn’t expressed doubt. She would have had to wonder what was wrong with him. And maybe rethink his role in her organization.

“Check your messages,” Gus instructed, eyeing him with a hint of distaste.

From the slight smell emitting from his body and his overall unkempt appearance, she was guessing it had been a few days since he’d last surfaced from the augmented reality he’d lost himself in. She was guessing he probably hadn’t seen the message she sent earlier.

His unreliability and his slight gambling problem were the primary reasons why he had only ever risen to the staus of a belladonna instead of the oleander that his skills warranted.

Kyle’s frown showed suspicion as he tapped on the controls installed in the arm of his chair.

A window opened on one of the screens.

Kyle squinted, reading the message Gus had sent.

“The gardener would like to know what is taking so long,” Gus said with a politely ruthless smile.

Kyle flopped back in his chair with a groan. “You can tell the gardener to go fuck himself. Does he have any idea how many people are on Titan right now? Hundreds of thousands. He’s asking me to find a needle in a star system.”

Gus’s expression cooled. She wasn’t a big fan of being cursed at. Even if the person doing the cursing didn’t realize it was her his words were intended for.

“Perhaps you would already be done if you did not distract yourself with other pursuits,” Gus said pointedly.

This was a familiar song and dance of Kyle’s. She’d heard it all before. First he would whine about how impossible the task was. Then he’d demand additional compensation. He’d only get down to business once his ego had been sufficiently stroked. The crazy part was he always managed to accomplish exactly what he had claimed was impossible.

“You tell that psycho that if he wants this done he needs to pay up.” Kyle rubbed his fingers together. “I’m talking credits here.”

Gus called it.

“Enough of this.” Caius stalked forward, grabbing Kyle by the neck and lifting him partially out of his chair. “You were given a task. Will you do it or not?”

Kyle gurgled, unable to speak around the hold Caius had on his throat.

Gus rushed forward. “What are you doing? Let him go.”

“You said we needed this person’s help. He’s being difficult. I’m simply expediting the situation.”

“By killing him?”

Gus tugged at Caius’s hand to no avail. It didn’t budge from around Kyle’s throat.

“If he fails to cooperate, that is an option,” Caius allowed.

Gus resisted the urge to slap the Tuann upside the head. It was difficult and required more self control than she typically needed to exert.

“Did you forget where we are? If you kill him, we die too,” Gus snarled.

They just had a conversation about not underestimating humans. Yet here he was seconds later doing exactly that.

No wonder her siblings had decided not to reintegrate with Tuann society. It turned out the Tuann were mad.

“According to you. I’m not so sure,” Caius said in an oh so reasonable voice that made Gus vaguely homicidal. “Their security measures are extensive, yes, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve as well.”

What was he talking about? His ki had been expended during their escape. He had no tricks. None. He would die and take Gus with him.

Gus slapped his hand. “Let him go! Let him go!”

She debated whether she should dose him with another round of the sedative she used on him earlier.

But no.

That sedative would leave him unconscious and vulnerable for hours. That was more of a risk than she was willing to take, considering the group after them.

Kyle gurgled something.

Caius lifted him higher, tilting his head toward him to hear better. “What was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

Kyle gurgled again.

“I’ll. Do. It.”

Caius released his grip on Kyle’s throat and patted his cheek softly. “I thought that might be your answer.”

Gus eyed Caius unhappily as he eased backward. “You didn’t need to do that. I was handling it.”

This violence was completely avoidable. If he’d just waited one second, she would have solved things. No assault needed.

Caius flashed her a smug smile. “And now you don’t have to. You’re welcome.”

“I wasn’t thanking you.”

He’d ruined years of goodwill, a working relationship she’d invested countless hours into cultivating, and he expected gratitude? All because he couldn’t wait a few extra seconds for her to deal with the situation.

He was lucky she didn’t poison him. It would take a fortune to undo the damage he’d just done. Kyle, for all that he was a giant child in a man’s body, was the petty sort. Just look at the dirty look he was giving them as he grabbed his headset. All the while muttering under his breath about psychos keeping company with lunatic bastards.

See. See what he had done.

“You didn’t have to. I simply felt the gratitude wafting off of you,” Caius drawled.

“You should get your instincts checked out. They’re woefully mistaken. One might even say delusional,” Gus informed him in her best ice princess tone. It was modeled after Selene’s. A woman who could freeze a person’s insides with a simple look.

Caius proved immune, his husky chuckle wrapping around Gus’s senses like a warm blanket. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Gus informed him.

Kyle was the last contact she planned to introduce him to. From here on out, she would be moving alone.

“Don’t be so sure, jani. Fate is a tricky bitch. You never know what she’ll bring.”

Wise words from a man who insisted on acting like a brute.

She wondered which was the true Caius. The brilliant tactician. Or the meat head with more muscles than sense. She suspected it was the former and that this was all a show put on to mislead and deceive anyone who got too close.

Several of her siblings did this. They put on masks that resembled their real faces but acted in such a way as to keep outsiders always guessing as to their true selves. Pallas with his mania that hid the sensitive soul inside. Jin’s immaturity that distracted from his razor sharp intellect. Even Kira’s bravado concealed the fear of loss she carried with her everywhere.

“How long will this take?” Gus asked Kyle, ignoring the enigma that Caius was shaping up to be.

“I don’t know. Hours. Days. Months. Do you have any idea just how many cameras there are on Titan?” The question was a rhetorical one as Kyle answered it a second later. “Thousands. There are thousands of cameras on Titan. And did the gardener give me a time line so as to limit the parameters of my search? No, he did not. I don’t even know what he means by ‘people who don’t belong.’ How is he defining ‘don’t belong’? Technically, none of us belong here. Do you know how dangerous space travel is? And to live in space? Permanently? It’s a miracle any of us exist at all.”

Caius stared at Kyle with a combination of fascination and repulsion. “Does he go on diatribes like this often?”

“Quite often.”

It was one of Kyle’s most annoying traits. Right up there with his propensity for games of chance and his lack of willpower or anything hinting at self discipline.

“Oh.” Kyle sounded surprised. “I found something.”

Of course he did. That was why Gus counted him as one of hers despite his many detractors.

Gus moved closer to hover over his shoulder. “What is it?”

Kyle ripped off his VR headset with a crow of satisfaction as he flicked a video file onto the monitors. He nodded at the freeze frame of a Tuann standing on the periphery of a crowded bar that Gus recognized.

It was the Hopper.

Located on level ten in the heart of the entertainment sector, it wasn’t the nicest bar. Nor was it the worst.

The Tuann may have gone unremarked if not for the undo attention he was paying to a table of four a few feet away. His intent focus was probably what made him stand out enough for Kyle’s algorithms to pick up on him.

Transfixed, Gus drifted closer.

“I’d say that definitely qualifies as not ‘belonging’, wouldn’t you?” Kyle drawled.

Gus nodded distractedly, her gaze flicking from the Tuann to the foursome he was watching. In particular, the pair of hooded figures sitting across the table from two humans.

“Yes, actually, I would,” Gus said softly.

Although she couldn’t see their faces, there was something about the cloaked figures and the careful way they were sitting that triggered warning bells in the back of Gus’s mind. She was betting that if Kyle looked he’d find no record of their arrival or departure. They’d just appear and disappear as if out of thin air.

It’s how the forty three were trained. It’s how Gus was trained.