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Raven woke slowly, contentment washing over her. She was unaccustomed to sharing her bed, but pleased by Leith’s presence beside her. He was still sleeping, which afforded her the opportunity to study his face. It seemed so much less stressed while he was sleeping, with the worry lines smoothed away. She couldn’t resist running a finger down his cheek, which made his eyelids flutter.
He woke abruptly, sitting straight up, his expression intense. “There’s an old security system in the enclave that includes surveillance. It’s pretty much fallen into disrepair, since we had to pick which systems to keep running, and it seemed like a low priority. It’s a possibility at least one of the cameras in the brig still works, so we might be able to identify who killed Elle.”
She smiled, teasing gently, “Good morning to you too.”
His face turned a dusky pink, and he was clearly embarrassed. “Sorry. That thought just popped into my head.”
She snuggled closer, pinning her head on his thigh and her arm around his waist as she let her other hand trail up and down his chest in a random fashion. “It’s fine. I’m glad you thought of it, and we should definitely check it out.” A wave of sadness swept over her, and she did her best to hide it by keeping her face downward.
Perhaps Leith hadn’t even considered the matter yet and realized that once they solved the mystery of who might be working with Patrick, Raven would have no further reason to stay at the enclave unless Davis told her to. If she requested to stay, he would probably allow it—especially if it was so she could be with her mate. However, she wasn’t certain if Leith had accepted that idea at all yet, or if he would be fine with her leaving.
They got out of bed and were soon ready to go to the brig. Raven walked beside him, her hand on his shoulder because she needed the contact. At least he didn’t shrug her away, but he also didn’t lift his hand to hold hers or show any other overt signs that things had changed between them. It was disheartening, but she tried not to take it personally. His thoughts were clearly focused on the camera, and perhaps he wasn’t naturally demonstrative anyway.
Once they arrived at the brig, Leith showed her where the ancient cameras were positioned. She was able to immediately determine that three of the four were completely dead, rendering it impossible for them to record any footage. The fourth one maintained a weak charge, but she couldn’t be sure if it had any recorded data.
She clambered up onto a desk that she dragged over and carefully removed the camera from the system, not wanting to fry it and erase all traces of a lead. Once she had it disassembled, she sat down on the desk and immediately went to work on forging a connection. It took longer than she expected, and sweat was beading her brow by the time she finally managed to access the memory chip on the motherboard. Almost immediately, the flow of data began, and she captured all that remained from the device.
After she set it aside, she scrambled off the desk and moved over to stand by Leith. She lifted her wrist comm to show him the footage. She waited until he could see it for himself, holding her breath as the scene played out before them. There was no volume, but the camera was positioned to give them a good face shot when the murderer turned around to exit the cell.
“Michael,” said Leith, sounding shocked.
Raven nodded, having had more time to absorb the murderer’s identity, and not having any personal connection to him aside from their brief interrogation. “I’m not entirely surprised. He was hostile when we talked to him.”
Leith let out a long sigh. “Yes, that’s true. It’s not so much the identity that shocks me, but the fact that the people I’ve lived with my entire life are capable of doing things like this. It’s not like I looked up to Patrick or Michael, and neither one of them were substitute father figures after my own father was killed, but I knew them. Or thought I did. I never would’ve guessed they’d be capable of murder.”
“Do you want to talk to him?” Raven knew they had to confront Michael, but she was willing to do it alone if Leith didn’t want the responsibility.
“Of course. I’ll have security on standby, but I’d like to hear his reasoning.” He scowled. “Not that he can provide a good enough reason for killing someone or working with Patrick, who tried to kill several people.”
“You still want to know his motivation, which is perfectly natural.” Raven put a bracing hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly, waiting until his expression changed from broken to all business again. She could tell he was ready by the way he squared his shoulders, and his gaze sharpened. At that point, she moved her hand and fell into step beside him as they left the brig and headed to the oxygen scrubber room. With any luck, they would find Michael there, unless he had fled after killing Elle.
They entered the room a few minutes later, and Michael emerged from one of the rows at the sound of their entry. He held a large wrench in his hand, and he was casually wiping it with a cloth, but it made Raven nervous. He eyed them both impassively. “I told you everything I knew, so why’d you bring the cyborg back?”
Leith frowned. “Raven managed to retrieve some footage from the old cameras in the brig. We know it was you who killed Elle, Michael.” He delivered the words almost gently.
Raven waited for his reaction, expecting him to make a run for it, or perhaps start swinging the wrench. Instead, the older man just let out a long sigh and nodded before moving closer to them. He didn’t put down the wrench, but he wasn’t holding it in a threatening manner. Yet.
“I forgot all about those. They’ve barely been functioning in my lifetime.”
Leith nodded. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on here, Michael? I’d prefer to keep it informal for now, if we can.”
He shrugged before nodding and taking the seat at his desk near where Raven stood and Leith sat in his chair. “What do you want to know?”
“Why did you kill Elle?” asked Raven.
He barely glanced at her, but answered the question. “I never liked her. She used to play off all the men, and she broke more than one heart, including mine, back in the day.”
Leith made a scoffing sound. “You’re claiming you killed her because she once broke your heart?”
Michael shrugged. “Partly, but mostly it was to try to hide what we’ve been planning.”
“What have you been planning?” asked Raven.
At the same time, Leith asked, “Who is we?”
Michael answered his question first. “Elle, Patrick, and myself. We had others picked out that we planned to approach when the time was right, but we kept it mainly between the three of us.”
“Kept what?” asked Leith. His voice was hard, and he was clearly angry.
“Our plan to find a new enclave and establish a better system than we have here. Patrick wanted to be in charge, and Elle and I deferred, since it was his idea to start with, and he’s the one who found the technology that made it possible to move around on the surface.”
“The tracking system,” said Raven, making it a statement rather than a question. “How did he find that?”
“We stumbled across the remains of a synth and cyborg battle. There were just a few destroyed synthetics, and no sign of the cyborgs, but they were the only ones who could’ve eliminated the synths. We usually scavenge through their equipment, which is standard if it’s safe. That day, Patrick hit the jackpot. Of course, he didn’t know what it was yet, but he took it back to the enclave and hid it until he figured it out. It took him almost two years to reverse engineer it and figure out how to modify it to track synthetics too.”
Leith shook his head, looking confused. “If you had something like that, why not share it with all of us to make the enclave safer?”
Michael made a scoffing sound. “He didn’t give a damn about the enclave. Patrick wanted to start over with a select few. He definitely didn’t want Gwen Harrison involved, since she wouldn’t listen to any of his counsel, and there were other undesirables that definitely wouldn’t make the cut.”
Raven stiffened at the way Michael pointedly looked at Leith’s chair before glancing away. She put a hand on his shoulder while the other one balled into a fist. “Like who?” she asked in a low tone that revealed her anger to anyone who was wise enough to pick up on it.
“We were gonna leave behind all the weak burdens. And those who didn’t share our views as well. We hoped to recruit the last few acceptable breeding-aged females, so they’d come along peaceably.”
“And if they said no?” asked Leith in a thin voice that seemed to indicate he was barely holding his rage in check.
Michael shrugged, not committing to an answer—which was all the answer they needed. It was obvious Patrick and his cohorts would’ve taken the women with or without their consent. Except Gwen, but was that because she was too strong and stubborn for Michael, or because she wasn’t alone, and they didn’t want to deal with children too? Raven supposed the reason didn’t matter, but she was angry on Gwen’s behalf. That was an irrational response to have, considering Michael passing her over meant Gwen would’ve been safe from their intentions. She let her anger expand to encompass all their misdeeds.
“If Patrick wanted to lead so badly, why didn’t he step up after Stephen was killed, and Gwen was forced to take over the position? No one stepped forward besides her.”
Michael just shook his head. “You don’t get it. There were too many flaws in the system already, and too many people Patrick classified as dead weight. He wanted a fresh start, so we were using the equipment to try to find a new, safe place to establish our own enclave.”
“Did you find that?”
He shook his head at Leith’s question. “Not yet. I guess with the cyborgs destroying this enclave through their mining, you’ll have to make it a top priority now, won’t you?” Michael laughed nastily, as though his future wasn’t entwined with the enclave’s.
“I’m placing you under arrest, Michael. I don’t know what to do with you yet, but I won’t have you running around endangering others.”
Michael shrugged, finally setting aside the wrench and making it clear he had no intention of using it as a weapon. “I’m done killing, but I’ll go to the brig quietly. It doesn’t much matter whether I’m here, there, or in my quarters. I’m still imprisoned in this place, just like the rest of us.”
Raven stepped closer, kneeling slightly so that she could maintain eye contact with Michael. “Are you sure it was just the three of you plotting? No one else was involved? Because if any more of my brethren or the humans are killed because you held back, I’ll rip you apart slowly, and there’ll be no one to put you back together.”
Michael lost his calm expression for a moment, his eyes filling with fear. He swallowed audibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the process. Finally, in a dry voice, he said, “It was just the three of us. We had our wish list of people we wanted to recruit to take with us, but we hadn’t approached any yet. There was no point until we had a new enclave established and managed to put in an oxygen scrubbing system and an aquaponics room from the parts we’ve been scavenging.”
Leith stiffened. “Are you the reason we’ve been without fresh food for the last growing season?”
Michael shrugged. “Patrick was in charge of cannibalizing the parts from the aquaponics system, but he might’ve taken too much or damaged something in the process. We never really discussed it.”
“You’re obviously in charge of getting the parts to build a new oxygen scrubbing system,” said Raven. “What was Elle’s job?”
“Medical supplies. She must’ve stashed them somewhere, so enjoy your scavenger hunt.” Michael chuckled, clearly enjoying the prospect. “Now take me to the brig. I’m tired of this conversation.”
Raven stood up, getting behind Michael when he did the same. She put her hand firmly at the back of his neck and propelled him forward lightly in case he changed his mind. He walked without protest, and they were soon full-circle, back to the brig where they had begun the morning.
She pushed him inside the cell and closed the door before going to the security station to press the button to seal the cell. There was currently no one on duty, and she would leave it up to Leith if he decided he wanted to post a guard to observe Michael continuously. So far, he’d been surprisingly cooperative, but that didn’t mean she trusted him not to be planning something else. Leith was likely to share the same fear.
They left Michael in the cell without another word, exiting the brig and once more retracing their steps, this time back to Leith’s quarters. He hadn’t spoken much, but he was almost vibrating with his anger, and she assumed he wanted to go somewhere private to deal with it before telling the others about what they had discovered.
When they reached his quarters, she hesitated for a moment before following him inside, giving him the opportunity to push her away if he chose. When he showed no signs of doing so, she crossed the threshold and let out a small sigh of relief when the door closed behind her. She waited, sensing he needed to talk, but not certain how to begin the conversation.
“I can’t believe they would betray us like this.”
Raven just nodded as she reached out to take his hand, offering silent support as he continued to vent.
For at least five minutes, Leith talked through his obvious sense of betrayal and intense anger. Finally, his expression lost some of the edge of umbrage, and his shoulders slumped. “They were right though.”
Her eyes widened. “You think they were right to start a new enclave?”
He shook his head. “They were right about me being a burden. In this chair, I can’t fight or scout. I can’t even satisfy you as a lover.”
She let out a shaky breath, saddened that they were back to that. He was bound to have insecurities about it, but she hated that he found himself lacking in any form. She squeezed his hand harder. “You could do anything you want to, Leith.”
He shook his head. “No, I lost that ability when I fell climbing rocks as a child. My father told me time and time again not to play outside the enclave or climb in the caves, but I didn’t listen. If Gwen hadn’t found me, I would’ve died, and then I was stuck like this. Everything I was died that day.”
She let out a shaky breath, uncertain how to proceed for a moment. It was obvious that Michael’s words had touched a raw wound in Leith’s psyche, bringing to the surface emotions he probably hadn’t dealt with, or had no way to do so in a practical fashion before.
She licked her lips, hesitating with the suggestion on the edge of her tongue. “You’ve found all kinds of ways to contribute to your society here. You’re an inventor, and now you’re a leader. Gwen said you kept this place going almost single-handedly with maintenance solutions and innovations.”
He made a scoffing sound. “Big deal. I couldn’t physically defend or protect anyone I cared about if the synthetics found the enclave.”
“You have a pulser. That would give you all the opening you need to be able to destroy them. You created the pulser, and it’s a critical weapon against the synthetics.”
He just shook his head, clearly too lost in his own bitterness at the moment to appreciate what he could and did bring to the table.
“If you’re genuinely unhappy with things, there might be a way to fix it.”
He looked up at her, anger still visible in his eyes. “How can I fix this?” He slammed his hand down on the side of the chair to emphasize his point.
“You can’t, but our healer might be able to. OWN should be able to replace the injured areas that don’t work, allowing you to walk again. If that’s what you want.”
His mouth dropped open. “Of course it’s what I want. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Raven frowned at him. “It never occurred to me until I saw how unhappy you were. I think you’re perfect just the way you are, Leith. The thought of doing anything to change you didn’t cross my mind until just now, when I saw your frustration. If you want to stay just like you are, that’s fine with me. To my way of thinking, there’s nothing to fix, but it wouldn’t be fair to not give you the option if that’s what you want.”
He went silent for a long moment, appearing to withdraw into himself. Raven held her breath, afraid she’d somehow ruined everything with her suggestion. It had never occurred to her to offer him a repair or an upgrade, because she had accepted him as he was. Did he believe that, or did he think she was lying to cover the fact that she had thought about it all along? Was he feeling betrayed, or was he simply trying to sort through his own emotions at the prospect of being healed?
Finally, he broke the silence, and his hand turned on his lap, clasping hers instead of her just resting her fingers over the back of his. “I’d like to talk to your healer, to see what he could do for me. I appreciate that you find me fine just the way I am, but I’d love to be able to walk again and feel fully functional.”
She blinked back tears that scalded her eyes, uncertain why she wanted to cry. “I’ll get in touch with him and arrange it then. I just want you to be happy.”
His expression softened. “You made me happier than I’ve been ever, or thought I could be. I can barely dare to contemplate the idea of being able to walk again, because it leaves me feeling giddy. Having you was more than I ever expected, and now this possibility is before me as well. I...” He broke off, swallowing several times as he blinked his eyes. “I’m somewhat overwhelmed by the whole thing. I can’t verbalize...”
She squeezed his hand in a reassuring fashion. “I think I get it. Let me call OWN, and we’ll see what he can do for you.”