Corin Timony wasn’t sure if she heard the alarm at first, the sharp beeping sound coming from the massive, refrigerator-sized wire terminal inside the Bazaar offices on New Destiny.
She wasn’t sure because the pounding inside her skull was much louder, the remnants of a long, solitary drinking session that had, unfortunately, become almost mundane.
But still hurt like hell, she thought.
The haze cleared briefly and her senses focused. There was that damn sound. She felt her hands spasm, as if unsure what to do, as if the movement was new to them. And it was, Timony thought. She’d been relegated to this desk-jockey job months ago, and every day still felt like the first day.
The Bazaar offices were on the second floor of a nondescript building on the border between Texas 2 and New Chinatown. The kind of thing most commuters wouldn’t even glance at, which is how the leadership liked it.
After all, the Bazaar thrived on secrecy in a time when there were few secrets left.
Timony tapped a few keys on the terminal, logging the alarm and alerting those above her that she was on it. Then she drilled down.
This wasn’t the usual yellow flag, she realized. It was coming from the Mosaic, and it was on the wire, the only way a ship that far gone in space could communicate with home in anything resembling real time.
At this kind of distance, normal communications could take months to relay—hence the wire, a new piece of bleeding-edge tech that made her brain go sideways whenever she thought about it. It was a quantum entanglement device—the next stage in quantum computing. Take a particle, cut it in half, and whatever happens to one half will be immediately reflected in the other, instantaneously, even if there are entire star systems in between. It was such a wacky idea that even Einstein thought the theory was bullshit.
Turns out, he got that one wrong.
The problem with the system was that all they could do was make a light particle wobble, which created controlled flashes of light, which, at this juncture, limited them to Morse code.
--. .-. .- ...- .. - -.-- / . -. --. .. -. . ... / ..-. .- .. .-.. .. -. --. .-.-.- / -.-. .- ..- ... . / ..- -. -.- -. --- .-- -. .-.-.- / .--. --- .-- . .-. / -.. .. ...- . .-. - . -.. / - --- / ... .... .. . .-.. -.. ... .-.-.- / ... .. - ..- .- - .. --- -. / -.-. ..- .-. .-. . -. - .-.. -.-- / ... - .- -... .-.. . .-.-.- / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / ..- .--. -.. .- - . / ... .... --- .-. - .-.. -.-- .-.-.-
Given her job, Timony had learned to translate on the fly, without waiting for the computer to spit out a translation a few seconds later.
This time, she waited for the confirmation, because what she was reading terrified her.
GRAVITY ENGINES FAILING. CAUSE UNKNOWN. POWER DIVERTED TO SHIELDS. SITUATION CURRENTLY STABLE. WILL UPDATE SHORTLY.
Timony rubbed her eyes to clear away the cobwebs. She read the message again.
Then a moment later.
-.. .. ... .-. . --. .- .-. -.. / .--. .-. . ...- .. --- ..- ... / -- . ... ... .- --. .
DISREGARD PREVIOUS MESSAGE.
“. . . the fuck?” she muttered.
She sat back in her chair.
Corin Timony had been an agent with the Bazaar—the international espionage conglomerate that purported to serve the entire solar system and Earth, but in fact was just a confederacy of agents from the US, China, Russia, and whoever else wanted to play—for over a decade.
She couldn’t say “an agent in good standing” or “a decorated agent” because that’d be a lie. At least now. If she’d considered it a year ago, she might have been able to milk the statement a bit. “Agent in good standing with a slight drinking problem,” or “somewhat decorated agent who hasn’t fully lived up to her potential and might be an addict.”
She’d still be dancing between the raindrops. If not for Carriles.
Timony pushed the thought out of her mind. She didn’t have time to dwell on spoiled, entitled assholes like Carriles.
She tapped another series of keys, following the same protocol as before—alerting her bosses and their bosses about the aborted distress signal. This was her job now, on the front line of messages and incoming communiqués—a glorified secretary with little to no input on the information she ferried up the ladder. It was the price she had paid, and Timony was aware it could’ve been much, much worse.
At least for people like her, who didn’t have a powerful parent or a recognizable last name.
She pushed a strand of dirty-blonde hair from her face and felt her eyes widening intentionally, as if trying to will herself to wake the fuck up and pay attention. Deep inside the crevices of her mind, past the fuzz and smoke that amounted to her daily hangover, an internal alarm was going off. An instinct that she’d buried over the last year, dulled through drink and ignorance, was struggling to get to the surface. Something was wrong, it screamed. This was weird.
Fuck, she thought. Why now?
There was a time, before Timony had to take breaks from her desk job just to get the blood in her legs pumping again, when she was out there. In the field. An actual agent of the Bazaar. And, hell, she was a pretty damn good one, too. The kind of agent who had sources in every corner of New Destiny.
New Destiny, humanity’s shrine to world peace and space exploration. Even if, in the past decade since it’d been built, the cracks were beginning to show. Now it was a dented, rusted trophy. Buildings falling apart, roads cracking—and geopolitical tempers rising between the settlement’s conglomerate nations that talked about peace in public and vied for control in private.
Which made her job more necessary than ever.
She sometimes wondered why the seventeen inches of S-glass offering protection from the hostility of the moon’s surface wasn’t enough to keep everyone cooperating. The precarious environment gave new meaning to the phrase “mutually assured destruction.”
But it also meant she got to keep doing her job. Being a spy was all Timony had ever wanted, and she’d relished it. Thrived on the subterfuge, strategy, and the power of a good double cross.
She’d helped take down the cell trying to assassinate President Warren five years earlier. She’d gone undercover to root out a cabal of vicious cyberhackers running a vile child-trafficking ring just two years back. She’d been part of a task force that eliminated a white supremacist militia group covertly building their own private space station on the other side of Venus.
Which was a long-winded way of saying that sitting in front of a comms terminal in the middle of the night was beyond beneath her—it was offensive, and her bosses knew it.
Hell, they probably liked it.
Worse, she felt useless. Her skill set did not include “troubleshooting gravity engines over the distance of several light-years using only dots and dashes.” What if there was still something wrong? She was totally out of her range of experience. And if there was something wrong, why had the Mosaic immediately asked her to disregard its message?
The door behind her creaked open. She wheeled her chair around and found Sam Osman’s massive frame filling the doorway. He had the same look of slight confusion that he always did, but at least this time it felt warranted.
“Little late for you, isn’t it?” Timony asked.
He shrugged. “Forgot the book I was reading. Heard the alarm.”
“Didn’t take you for a bibliophile,” Timony said, immediately regretting it.
Sam was sweet—a giant pile of muscle who would pull on a push door until someone explained the difference. He was a low-level grunt, better with protection details than paperwork. She’d found herself drunkenly making out with him a few times after work events, but it’d never graduated beyond that—and Timony was grateful for it. Osman was nice enough, Timony thought—and attractive. But there was something missing, and Timony was grateful for the iota of restraint that had prevented her from making something awkward into something painfully awkward.
He gave a little shrug and held up a tattered pulp novel. The book featured a typical femme fatale on the painted cover. “Eh, I like them. Keep me entertained.”
“Sorry, that was rude of me,” Timony said. “And I think everything’s okay, but . . .”
Before she could finish, she heard another voice from the hallway.
“What are you doing here?”
Osman turned and his face dropped. “Oh, hey—sorry, boss. I meant to reach out . . .”
Boss? Here we go.
Timony pushed back from the desk and stepped into the hallway, where Derek Sandwyn was leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, like he was waiting for a bus.
The Bazaar was, on paper, a utopian organization meant to pool intelligence from Earth’s remaining superpowers. It was a way for Earth and New Destiny to combine efforts and help each other. The Bazaar was answerable to the Interstellar Union, the governing body housed a few blocks away, and responsible for overseeing all human settlements and colonies outside Earth.
But espionage and intelligence weren’t meant to be friendly.
Of course, the whole thing was a charade. All that distrust the human race was supposed to leave behind on Earth was tucked nicely behind a veneer of friendship and cooperation. Countries still spied on each other. Backroom deals still happened. Sometimes murders were still sanctioned. It reminded Timony of a picture she saw as a kid in school. Back when glaciers existed, how a little bit of ice above the waterline camouflaged a massive collection of it in the depths.
The Iceberg Effect.
The Bazaar was the iceberg.
The reality went so much deeper, and was more jagged.
But in the course of keeping up appearances, each country had a point person. And the office space was meant to promote a collaborative atmosphere. Most countries kept at least a desk here.
Sandwyn was the man in charge of the entire US operation. Anything that touched US interests ran through Sandwyn—which made him a very, very powerful person.
He was also responsible for Timony being demoted a year back. He’d couched it as a mercy to her when it happened. But it felt like anything but kind today.
Timony and Osman stood there, unsure what to say. Sandwyn offered nothing but a humorless smile as he turned his dark gaze toward them. Sandwyn was tall and lithe, pushing sixty, but he still looked like he could throw a punch. His dark, slicked-back hair seemed almost painted on. Everything about Sandwyn screamed “well-crafted.” He was a product of his environment, and built to survive the pressures of not only New Destiny but of the Bazaar, too.
After a few awkward seconds of silence, Sandwyn took a small notepad from his pocket and scribbled something on it. Then he ripped off the page and handed it to Osman. “Need you to get something for me. Now.”
Osman shuffled in his sneakers. “I’m technically off the clock, just came by to—”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Put in for the overtime if it makes you feel better.”
Osman gingerly took the paper. “Sounds good.” He cast a brief, helpless look at Timony before disappearing down the hallway.
Once he was out of earshot, Sandwyn turned to Timony. “Follow me, Corin.”
Sandwyn turned without waiting, power walking down the small aisle that circumvented the cubicle farm. Timony had to hustle to keep up, until he stopped in front of the elevator bank. They rode up the few floors in silence. But Timony knew where they were heading the moment Sandwyn tapped their destination.
The interrogation rooms.
As they entered one of the open rooms, Sandwyn clicked on the lights—the bright, neon kind Timony was used to. The room was barely big enough for the table and two chairs it held.
“Sit,” he said with a half-hearted motion.
Timony did, her body running on autopilot. Sandwyn pulled out the chair across from her. He didn’t take out his notepad. This was odd. Timony knew Sandwyn was a notes guy. Loved to document everything and then circulate the information to the key stakeholders. The fact that he didn’t want to write anything down was an interesting and troubling detail.
“Corin. Good to see you,” he said. “Been a while.”
Timony bit her tongue. It was inside-voice time. Be friendly until it was time to not be friendly.
“Yes,” she said. “It has.”
Sandwyn leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. A sign of intimacy and closeness Timony could’ve done without. But that was his intent. Make her uncomfortable. She’d played this game before with people much more talented than Sandwyn. She pulled back, feeling the chair’s rigid frame pressing into her.
“Talk me through what happened,” Sandwyn said.
“What happened?”
“With the alert,” he said.
“A distress signal came in and then got canceled. That’s all I got.”
Sandwyn frowned and drew out his words. “Tell me what happened, Corin.”
Timony’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her mind fluttered back to a year before. In a room like this, Sandwyn looming over her. His words still haunted her dreams and most of her waking hours.
“You think the Bazaar is going to just turn a blind eye to one of our agents running drugs? To being a junkie? Have you completely lost it?”
“Corin?”
Sandwyn’s question pulled her back to the present. She shook her head slightly.
“Sorry, sorry, I just needed a minute,” she said, looking at the table, figuring at this moment it was best to play ball. “We got a distress call from the Mosaic. It came over the wire, so it was terse. Engines were down, power diverted to shields. Then I got a disregard. I followed protocol and reported it. Next thing I know, Osman’s in the room.”
“Why was Osman there?”
“He forgot his book.”
Sandwyn gave a little laugh. “Didn’t take Osman for a reader.”
“Guy loves pulp novels, apparently.”
“Walk me through everything again in detail, okay?”
So she did, even though there wasn’t much more to tell.
After the third time explaining it, when it became clear that she had nothing else to offer, Sandwyn simply nodded and stood. “Follow me,” he said.
Timony was so tired she didn’t even bother hiding the exasperated sigh she let out. She followed Sandwyn back to the elevator bank, where he hit the button.
“I want you to listen to me very, very clearly, Timony, okay? I’m saying this because I know ‘listening’ is a problem for you.”
Timony scowled. “You’re a charmer, Sandwyn.”
“Again—are you listening?”
“Yes,” Timony said through gritted teeth. “I am.”
Sandwyn leaned into her.
“Tonight? Everything? Didn’t happen,” he said. “Forget it.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a perspective to take when we get a distress signal. Can you at least tell me if the ship is safe?”
“Again, this didn’t happen. All you need to know is that it’s being handled.”
“That’s it? Biggest moment for humanity since the moon landing—hell, since we discovered fire—and that’s all you can tell me? That it’s ‘being handled’?”
Sandwyn sighed himself, and seemed to soften for a minute. There was something big going on, big enough to weigh down his shoulders. He was following orders, and Timony knew the feeling—or had, once.
“This is complicated, and I get that it’s complicated for you, but the best thing you can do . . .”
The elevator doors chimed open. Sandwyn stuck his hand out to hold the door open.
“. . . is to just go home, get some sleep, put this all out of your head. I’m trying to help you here.”
“Well, you’ve always had my back,” Timony said, sharpening the words to a fine point.
Not that Sandwyn cared.
“Listen, Corin, I know you’ve done a lot of good for the Bazaar,” he said as he stepped into the elevator. “It’s why I let you stay. But you’ve run out of goodwill. There will be no third chance. So do yourself a favor and take the week off. Clear your head. Forget this happened, or you will be retired, in every sense of the word.”
“I hear there are some nice cities on Mars.”
Sandwyn’s face turned to a flat line.
“Not that kind of retirement,” he said.
She didn’t need him to explain it; it was pretty clear to Timony what he meant.
Timony followed him onto the elevator, feeling like she was floating, unable to tether herself to the ground.