“No, Eos. No problem. On my way. XF41 out,” I said once I had my voice and emotions under control. No, my emotions weren’t under control. I’d done it. Well, I’d hacked into the system and added myself. No, I hadn’t done much except that and partner with the most amazing, smart, and talented human. She’d worked her ass off in all the simulations. We had. I’d been with her on mission after mission, watched as she’d failed. As she’d succeeded. Learned. Grew. Because she’d done all that, I’d been able to enhance my flying skills, tie in my own computer abilities to hers. Every simulation and training session we each completed had to relived and completed by the other.
The long distance between Earth and Velerion made the training more difficult, but somehow we had become a powerful pair. So skilled that as far as I’d heard, Mia and I were only the second pair to complete the new training program.
Word had spread fast about the newest Starfighter pilot, about how Jamie Miller, a human female, had become the first recruit from Earth. If I was getting word of Mia’s success, then everyone at Eos Station would have heard. And know that she had chosen me.
Definitely.
Mia was it. The second Starfighter, but this time a Mission Control Specialist would come to Velerion instead of a pilot. My MCS. I would see her in person. Talk to her. Hear her laughter. Touch her. Fuck her. Now she was mine.
Mia, Treptowers, Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)), Berlin, Germany
I staredat the nearest screen, one of six, and watched the data change. The chart shifted in real time, and I was able to analyze and make changes swiftly to the data I’d requested for my latest project.
They might have stuck me behind a desk—as I deserved after the clusterfuck my so-called informant had made of our last investigation—but I was determined to be useful, to prove myself. Getting over the two agent deaths my bad information had caused? That would take longer.
Maybe they were right about me. Maybe I should have chosen a profession outside of law enforcement. Like knitting. Or gardening. At least then the only deaths I would be responsible for would be plants.
And who could make a damn plant grow anyway? In fact, the stupid plant I had on my desk was dead, the brown, crispy leaves taunting me with yet another failure.
Damn it.
I picked up the small pot and dropped the whole mess into the garbage bin under my desk. Gone. Next.
The windows of my office afforded me a view of the city’s charming mix of new and old buildings, but heavy rain streaked the glass and a thick fog obscured all but the post-war offices across the street. My mood matched the weather. The night before, I’d finished Starfighter Training Academy. Lily and I had watched as I was congratulated by the Mission Control Commander, General Jennix. Her avatar showed a woman with black hair streaked with silver at the temples, focused hazel eyes and a back so straight I wondered if she was a cyborg with a metal spine. But the sound of her voice through my speakers had been almost eager. I remembered the same screen, the same words spoken when Jamie had completed the game, although a different general had welcomed her. Perhaps because she’d been a pilot instead of MCS? I had no idea, but I distinctly remembered a tall, dark, and handsome man. General Aryk?
Jamie had accepted the game’s ceremonial bonding to Alexius of Velerion with mine and Lily’s coaxing. The first time we’d all seen the final cut scene, the pair bonding questions had been exciting if a bit weird. Jamie might have hesitated that day. Not me. I’d pushed the X button before Lily even prompted me. Maybe because I’d won after Jamie and knew what to expect, the oddly personal nature of the scene had seemed less daunting. Or maybe I just wanted Kass so badly that accepting a fictional bond with a man was the most exciting thing I’d done in months.
My gut instinct insisted that accepting this pair bond with a fictional alien, that beating the game was somehow the key to finding Jamie. I was insane, definitely, to think that, but I needed to know what had happened to her. If following in her footsteps led me to her whereabouts, I’d do it.
Because I was desperate. I’d exhausted every legitimate option I had. The data I was watching scroll by on my monitor offered me no help. I did my work, but I had also used my inside skills and connections at the Federal Criminal Police Office to search for one Jamie Miller of Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. With zero success.
“Mia?” A colleague from the data lab knocked on the door to my office.
“Yes?”
“Sorry. The whole thing’s gone. Scrubbed and overwritten.”
“Scheisse,” I muttered, swearing under my breath. The game, the data, and my game console’s hard drive had been wiped clean? “Are you sure?”
He rolled his eyes at me as he placed the unassembled console on the seat of the chair in front of my desk. “I don’t make mistakes, Becker.”
Not like you. I don’t get people killed.
I could practically hear the accusation in his tone, read behind the lines. But I didn’t blame him for his rage. One of the agents who’d died had been his friend. And mine. But no one seemed to remember that.
“Sorry. Stupid question. Thank you.”
He nodded and left, softly closing the door to my office behind him. Of course he was sure. He was very good at his job. I was talented with computer code and with reading people. But no one could hack into a system that had no data to break into. Not even me.
If this blackout was a game defect or a recall issue, I had heard nothing of it. I’d spent hours in gamer chats since Jamie had disappeared, searching for anyone else who had managed to beat the game, with no luck. I was cranky. The exhilaration of winning had been short-lived. Just like with Jamie, my screen had gone black after I’d accepted the role as Starfighter MCS. After I’d accepted Kass as my pair-bonded, lifetime fighting partner.
It was as if I had blown up my game with the push of a single button. There was nothing left of my score, my avatar. Or Kass.
I couldn’t even start the game over.
I’d tossed and turned all night, frustrated by the fact that if the game was dead, then I wouldn’t hear Kass’s grumbling voice ever again. Thank goodness I’d taken photos of him on the gaming screen and saved them to my phone like a lovesick teenager. Not that I would ever admit that fact to another human being. But I’d taken some very personal time staring at that image of Kass while in my bed.
So far I’d spent the day tackling my new punishment projects—as I liked to think of them—and even more time scouring the system for clues about Jamie’s disappearance. There was nothing. Now the analysts had confirmed what I already knew in my heart.