 
All characters in this publication are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Finder's Gate

Episode One

Copyright © 2018 Odette C Bell

Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.

www.odettecbell.com

Finder's Gate

Episode One

He hunts treasure, and she's his greatest find.

Zel is a Level VIII Finder who travels the multiverse searching for objects of worth for his masters. When he travels to Earth to acquire an ancient treasure, he runs into Helen. She has a treacherous secret that could unravel the very fabric of reality and tear the multiverse apart.

But she's still a find. And Finders never let their prizes go.

...

Finder's Gate is an action-packed space opera that takes you on a thrilling journey through the multiverse. It is sure to please fans of Odette C. Bell's Star Destiny.

# Prologue

The Hall of Doors

Zel Barok, Finder, Level VIII

I strode down the darkened path between the pillars.

Beside me, I listened to the methodical footfall of the guards.

Every step droned out, timed, precise, and never missing a beat.

I was one thing as a Level VIII Finder. A thing that meant I could win most fights I entered, no matter what I took on in this violent dimension. As a Level VIII, I'd completed the necessary training of not only the Androx Special Forces Corps, but the Celestial Guard training, too, meaning I could comfortably slip into the role of a protector for one of the 10 Families if my life as a Finder didn't work out.

And yet, even as a Finder, I had my limitations. The towering ten-foot tall Hall of Doors guards that strode beside me, ensuring I didn't stray off the main path, were one such limitation.

They weren't human. Of course they weren't human. Though I was only half human myself, to be fair.

The guards weren't of any known biological race in the galaxy.

They belonged to the Hall of Doors, and they could not leave or operate beyond it.

They were....

Not for the first time and not for the last, I surreptitiously ticked my gaze to the side and stared at the reflection of the closest guard in the two moats that ran along the stone path I was striding along.

They were fashioned to look like two enormous men with the heads of jackals. Though I didn't know that much about human history, I could appreciate they bore a resemblance to Anubis from the Old Earth religion of the Egyptians.

I was on a long, narrow, dark stone path that led straight toward a door 100 meters away.

Above me, there was no ceiling – nothing to keep back the luminescent glow of the stars beyond.

The Hall of Doors was on a moon. Or perhaps a geological construction was a better way to describe this place. A moon has a specific celestial origin. Moons orbit larger planetary objects. This place chose where and when it appeared.

Though there was no ceiling above to hold back the lack of atmosphere and the crushing vacuum beyond, that did not matter.

You couldn't die in the Hall of Doors. Unless one of the guards killed you, that was.

"Do not stray," the one to my left suddenly rumbled as my foot shifted half a millimeter off course.

As soon as the creature's deep, rumbling voice echoed out, my back stiffened as fear punched me hard in the back.

I'd fought countless fearsome races throughout the galaxy, from the Bardoxian bulls of the Tenth Cluster, to the Voxa assassins – but none of them could strike fear into me like one of these guards.

They were meant to be undefeatable. And as I slipped my unassisted gaze to the side and let it lock on the darkened pool that separated my narrow path from the wide walkway the massive dog-guard was striding along, I could see why.

There was something otherworldly about them. It wasn't just that they'd been fashioned to look like gods from some myth – it was that trapped within their massive obsidian black forms seemed a power like no other.

I was a man of science. As a Finder tasked with locating and delivering any object the 10 Families desired, I had to be. It was through a proper understanding of natural forces that one gained mastery over their environment.

And yet the guards always reminded me there was something beyond mere facts.

"We approach. Prove yourself worthy," the guard to my right demanded in a booming voice that shook through the black stone floor.

Though many a man had tried to scan this Hall of Doors before, none had been able to penetrate its defenses and discover precisely what it was made of, let alone how its remarkable technology worked.

It was forbidden to bring any form of technology onto this moon, and beyond the simple clothes on one's back, they had to come alone and unassisted. If you possessed internal scanners built into your body – like I did – you had to switch them off on pain of death.

Though as a Level VIII Finder I was rarely out of my sophisticated neural armor, down here, I was in nothing more than a flight tunic. Trim and black, it was cut high at my defined neck and easily accommodated my strong build with its variable weave.

But what was on the outside hardly mattered. Within me, I had some of the most technically sophisticated implants this dimension could offer. They were built into my endoskeleton, ensuring that even without armor, I was a formidable foe.

As I took another step, and the door at the end of this long walkway finally came into focus, I pushed every extraneous thought from my mind.

I narrowed my gaze, held my breath, and focused on the mission at hand.

"Prepare your mind," the guard to my right spoke in another deep rumble that pushed through the room, shaking the forever-dark pool by my side and making me wonder just how deep it was.

For all I knew, it traveled right through the center of the moon and terminated on the dark side of this mysterious rock.

Unlike normal celestial bodies, this moon had a permanent dark side and a permanent light side. It didn't matter where it was oriented and what light source struck it – one side absorbed all light and the other reflected it.

It was yet another mystery to add to the list of impossible-to-explain curiosities about this place.

"Only those who are worthy can pass through a door," one of the guards rumbled.

I ticked my gaze down to the pool beside me and saw a reflection of the massive dog-headed beast as he continued to stride forward, measuring his pace so he never left my much shorter form behind.

The guard's skin was otherworldly. At once it looked like it was made from carved and polished gem, then in another moment, it looked just as real and tactile as skin.

No one knew which race created the guards and the Hall of Doors. But they, like all other races in this forever-warring dimension, had known the trappings of power. It isn't always enough to have the largest armies and most powerful warriors. People often respond to stories more so than reality. It is those who act as if they were born to rule that often rise to the top.

And thus it was with the 10 Families.

Of all the separate powers that had risen and fallen throughout the long, violent history of this dimension, it was the 10 who had lasted the longest.

They came from different races, and yet, over the centuries, they had altered their appearances, picking up the styles of beauty and privilege from various races and amalgamating them into their own forms until all the 10 essentially looked like each other.

The 10 – just like whatever long-lost race created this place – understood that one of the most fertile grounds for controlling people was through their most sacred mythologies. So they – just like the guards who still strode beside me – understood the power of becoming someone else's God. Subjugate someone, remove their power, and take on their iconography, and you too can ascend.

... I was vaguely aware of the fact that I never thought like this – at least not when I wasn't here, surrounded by this mysterious, lightless black rock with the beauty of the galaxy glistening through an open ceiling beyond.

Maybe it was the place itself – or, more realistically, some unseen technology having an effect on my mind – but I always found my thoughts slipping into places I would never go ordinarily when I came here.

The ordinary me asked no questions. I simply did as I was told – a dutiful guard, a perfect Finder.

Not every soldier was suited to becoming a finder – few had the skill. Even fewer had the patience to track some object or prey throughout the darkest, furthest reaches of endless space.

I was born patient. A soldier from birth, I'd grown up on one of the central army worlds, and from the day I'd been old enough to hold a gun, I'd known the secret to winning was waiting.

"Prepare your mind, and prepare your sacrifice," the guard to my left stated in its deep, rolling voice that reminded me easily of thunder tumbling over some vast alien plain.

My sacrifice? It had been prepared for me. Clutched in my left hand was the only object I'd been permitted to take onto the moon – apart from the clothes that covered my back. It was a Galazar pendant – one of the rarest and most beautiful gems in the known universe.

"The hall awaits," the guard to my left rumbled.

Once more I fixed my gaze on the door quickly coming up before me. For a moon that otherwise had some of the most impressive technology the universe had ever seen, that door was nothing more than a stone archway that looked as if it had been carved in a single night. It was rough, badly hacked, and even from several meters away, my eagle-eyed, sharp gaze could pick up the scratch marks over the stone.

"You approach the door. Ready yourself."

I was ready. This wasn't the first time I'd gone through the Hall of Doors, and it wouldn't be my last.

I finally reached that carved stone door. The entire time I had been walking down that narrow pathway, I'd been separated from those dog guards by two deep moats – but now the moats terminated, and for the first time, I stood side-by-side with those megalithic beasts.

I did not turn to look at them directly, even though my stomach tingled with the urge to try.

Yet another rule of the Hall of Doors was that you could not look one of the guards directly in the eye. Do so, and you'd be skewered right through with one of the massive black spears they clutched in their huge hands.

"You have reached the doorway. Stride through, offer your sacrifice, and prepare yourself."

I knew the routine – any finder sent here had to.

I pressed my hands flat on the stiff fabric of my pants and bowed. I still did not face the guards, and rather directed my reverence at the cold, darkened doorway in front of me. Light didn't behave normally in this hallway. Hell, nothing behaved normally here, from the fact I wasn't popped like a blood-filled balloon as the vacuum of space opened out beyond, to the rather pointed fact that I was being shadowed by two dog-headed men.

That did not matter. This doorway – and critically, what lay beyond it – was different.

Though I had built a lifetime convincing others I was strong and I would never back down from a fight, my gut unavoidably clenched as I directed my gaze forward through that formless, dark mass in front of me.

To pass through a doorway was to go beyond the veil of existence – or at least that was the colorful way these guards described it. In reality, it was to access a stable, timed temporal wormhole. Though no one had ever managed to scan the Hall of Doors, anyone with a functioning understanding of modern physics could appreciate what this place was. Whatever race this moon had originally belonged to, they'd done something the modern universe could only imagine. They'd isolated and essentially tamed the temporal wormholes that perforated the very fabric of reality. Wormholes that theoretically led not just to other times, but to other temporal-spatial systems. And that, why that was just a fancy way of saying other dimensions.

"Purify your thoughts and enter," both of the guards said in time behind me, their droning voices more than powerful enough to shake through my legs.

I staggered forward, and the next thing I knew, I took a step right through that darkened doorway.

A step through time and space.

To the guards behind me, you were only meant to cross through the Hall of Doors if you had some noble mission in mind. Yeah, well, here's the thing: nobility did not exist in this universe anymore. It had been plundered, broken, and redefined until it was nothing more than a tool of the 10 Families. The only way to get ahead – the only way to survive – was to serve the 10.

And I would serve them.

For I only knew how to do one thing – continue no matter the costs. Keep fighting, because it was precisely when you put down your gun that you were swallowed by this indifferent galaxy and your meaningless existence wiped away forevermore.

As I walked through the darkness, it swallowed me, and I let it. For men like me would always deserve to be swallowed.

# Chapter 1

Helen

"Okay, it's just I need an extension on that bill," I tried to press a warm, friendly, but only slightly pleading smile across my lips.

The cashier leaned back, crossed her arms, and shook her head once. "There are strictly no extensions. You've got two days." She unhooked her arms, reached over, and tapped her long nail against my crumpled bill, emphasizing the reconciliation date at the bottom.

"But I can't get $2000 in two days." My gut squirmed as I curled a hand into a fist. It was hidden by my long coat. My beautiful, long designer jacket. The last nice thing I owned.

The cashier had obviously noted the glossy fabric, and she shot it a pointed look. "You can start by selling that."

My shoulders fell. With my free hand, I clutched the collar protectively as if the look in this woman's eyes was enough to rip it from my shoulders. "That's not going to get me $2000."

"Listen, sugar, I don't honestly care how you scrape together the cents. All that matters is that you pay on time. Next," she called as she elongated her neck and spoke over my tall, willowy form.

I barely had the chance to clutch up my bill and shift to the side before a large-framed woman bustled over, elbowing me out of the way.

That, right there, summed up my life. Not just being incapable of paying my bills – but being pushed out of the way, kicked into the shadows, and ignored.

You couldn't imagine a person more invisible than me.

It was like someone had specifically programmed me to never stick out.

I was taller than your average woman – and yet, the way I held myself, my shoulders perpetually rolled in and my head hunched, you wouldn't be able to tell. I was thin, but not in a glamorous way. I just looked as if someone had stretched me with a rolling pin.

As for the rest of my features – humdrum. It was like somebody had taken the perfect average of everyone in the city and crafted me the kind of nose, eyes, and facial structure that ensured no one would ever give me a second glance.

Walking away, it was hard not to let those thoughts overcome me as I scrunched the bill into one hand, not caring that the paper crumpled and almost tore.

I shoved it into the pocket of my jacket and walked out of the building.

As soon as I hit the street outside, I huddled under the collar of my jacket. I watched rain clouds mercilessly marching over the horizon, the dark, tumultuous blue and gray blocking out the sun.

It might technically be a summer's day, but you tell that to those clouds. They brought with them a chill wind that raced down the streets, played around the loose straps of my jacket, and sent them tumbling over my willowy legs.

I latched a protective hand on the shoulder of my jacket, scrunching the fabric in, trying to make a smaller target of it.

It might look fancy, but it wasn't warm, and it wouldn't be able to put up with the drenching storm those foreboding clouds promised.

"Why can't I just catch a break?" I muttered under my breath.

It was as if the universe heard and reacted. Just as I stepped out onto a pedestrian crossing, a bike shot past me, something on the handlebar snagging one of the ties of my jacket and ripping it free from the loops at my waist.

I spun around and fell down to one knee, bashing my patella hard.

"Hey," I managed, but the courier was already out of sight.

Nobody bothered to race to my aid as I pulled myself up, patted down my knee, and made a tortured face when I assessed my jacket.

With limp, defeated fingers, I ran them up the torn seams at my waist.

The jacket was ruined. I could probably fix it with a needle and thread, but I could no longer hawk it for any money.

I stood there, not caring as the wind battered me, as the storm clouds got closer, only minutes from opening up, and I just stared at the traffic.

This wasn't fair.

Why did my life seem to be perfectly programmed to keep me down?

Though I didn't move, and the pedestrians walking around me could easily flow either side of me like water around an obstacle, I kept being jostled until the constant barrage of pointed elbows and shoulders got too much for me.

I turned away. I tucked my head down, and I tried not to cry.

By the time I made it back to my single bedroom apartment, I'd failed. The tears streamed down my cheeks as I opened the door with a shaking hand, my key missing the lock several times and scratching the already beaten-up paint.

When I finally gathered the coordination to open the door, it swung out to reveal my equally threadbare apartment. There were chips in the wall, right down to the plaster mesh, and there was mold in several patches along the ceiling.

I had a crappy couch I'd found on the sidewalk one day, and though I'd lovingly restored it, patching the tears in the foam with scraps of fabric I'd saved from clothes, it was worth nothing.

As defeat dragged my shoulders down with the gravitational pull of a moon, I continued to assess the rest of my apartment. With a discerning eye, I gazed at everything I owned – from the TV that couldn't show the color green, to my 20-year-old cooker, to the two-dollar picture frames on the wall.

"Oh God." I pressed my teeth into my lip until they dug marks into the flesh. "I have to do it, don't I?"

Larger tears brimmed my eyes, trailing down my cheeks, dashing along my chin, and tickling my throat as they splashed against the collar of my ruined jacket.

The jacket had been a gift from my grandmother. One of many.

Including money.

The money was gone – swallowed up by the litigation my cousin had brought against me.

You see, my grandmother had been a truly wealthy woman. She'd owned several buildings in town, she'd run a successful jewelry store, and she'd acquired a one-of-a-kind art collection.

She'd left a significant chunk of her wealth to me.

It hadn't lasted. The day my grandmother had died, cousin Robert had gone after my share of the will like a bulldog. Considering Robert was a soon-to-be partner of one of the largest law firms in town, I hadn't had a chance.

Robert had left me this jacket and one other thing. Something Robert had had valued only to find it wasn't worth his while.

And what was that thing?

A calendar of sorts. It was hard to say. It was this round, circular disk that sat in your palm. It was made of a collection of brass, gold, and platinum plating.

The man who'd valued it at one of the antique stores in town had told Robert it was a curio and nothing more. The guy had never seen its like, but that didn't mean much in the antique world. It often meant you couldn't find a buyer, the guy had claimed. That little disk, therefore, would be worth nothing more and nothing less than the value of its constituent parts.

As more tears trailed down my cheeks, brought on by the bitterness of not just losing my grandmother, but having her memory dragged through the courts, my shoulders dropped. Like a man being led to the guillotine, I walked through my lounge room and kitchen without taking my shoes off. I'd been right, and approximately 10 minutes before getting home, the heavens had opened up. They'd brought with them a deluge, fat raindrops hammering down and drenching anything in sight. They'd further ruined my jacket, soaked my hair, and inundated my cheap sneakers. Now I tracked mud and sodden welts of grass over my carpet as I dragged myself to my room.

The carpet didn't matter. It was already torn, moldered, and a patchwork of stains.

Yet I'd always looked after it. My grandmother had taught me that – value material objects, no matter what your socioeconomic status, and you'll attract wealth through efficiency.

Yeah, well, the only thing I was attracting right now was gut-wrenching pain.

That disk – or calendar, or whatever it was – was the only memory I had left of my grandmother.

Now I'd have to sell it, heading back to the antique dealer and crying at his counter until he gave me as much as I could get.

"This is so screwed. My life is so screwed," I concluded as I made it into my bedroom.

I finally kicked off my shoes. My bedroom was my last sanctuary. Only a couple of meters squared and as cramped as a sardine can, it was where I'd gathered together all the things that meant something to me.

I'd handmade the quilt, using the sewing skills I'd learned in college to create a beautiful patchwork of silks and satins I'd scrounged from thrift shop clothes.

My bedside dresser had been pulled off the sidewalk, and I'd restored it in an antique French finish. It was what was sitting on top of it wrapped in a moth-eaten silk scarf that dragged my shoulders all the way down.

The calendar.

The last object I had that meant anything.

I walked over to it, one hand curling into a fist, my nails dragging over the sodden fabric of my jacket. With a deep breath, I shoved a hand out, trapped it in my grasp, and plucked it up.

... Ha, trapped it. That's what my grandmother had always said. To grandma, this small, smooth disk had been like a bird in the hand. Something you had to hold on to with all your might lest it flit away.

Yeah, well, what good was my might anymore?

Though I could – and should – wait around until the tumultuous rainstorm finished dumping its fill on the city, I wanted to get this over and done with.

As I clutched up the little disk in my cold, stiff fingers, I felt treacherous, as if the act of selling it would be like trading away my grandmother's memory.

"Just put it out of your head. There's no other way."

With those soft words pressing from my lips, I walked out of my apartment.

I braved the storm once more until I made it to the exact same antique store cousin Robert had got his valuation from.

It wasn't downtown – and thankfully was only several streets away. Why Robert had chosen this store instead of the fancier downtown antique dealers, I didn't know, though I could bet it had something to do with the fact everyone downtown would have adored grandma. They would have given a false valuation just to boost Robert's esteem, but one that would've consequently fallen flat at the auction. And Robert? Robert was a man who hated getting things wrong.

So this guy would have to do.

As another wave of rain sliced across the street, feeling like a blade from the heavens, I didn't even bother to hunker under my collar. One hand was loose by my side, my skin pale white like snow, the flesh prickling and numb. With my other hand, I protectively clutched the disk in my pocket, even though that too had already become completely soaked.

Though it was midday, the streetlights had come on, reacting to the gloom. Behind me, cars splashed through the soaked streets, and I didn't even bother to buckle forward as a bus plowed through the drenched gutter behind me, a wave of water cascading up and splashing over my pants.

I gave a single shiver as my eyes traced the sign at the top of the store.

Otherworld Antiques.

I tapped my numb hand against my jacket, sucked in a breath, and pushed in through the rickety old door.

The first time I'd come here with Robert, I'd been surprised by how large this place was on the inside. Outside, the façade devoted to it, squeezed between an old theater and a bookstore, was less than 10 meters across. Inside, it was a veritable warren, twisting deep into the back of a long building, chaotic rows of antiques twisting with it like scales along a coiled snake's back.

I patted myself down as best I could, realizing the last thing I could afford was to damage some precious antique with the rivulets of water running off my back.

"You can put your jacket on the hook by the door," a man called from further into the shop, his voice kind but sharp.

"Thank you." I unhooked my jacket, protectively pulling out the disk first and immediately putting it into the small pocket of my pants. Hooking my coat up, I made a face as I watched water splash out onto the old, unpolished floorboards beneath it.

"If you have something to be valued, I suggest you hurry – we're closing early today," the man called again, his voice booming enough that it made it easily over the cramped rows of dressers and wardrobes, chests and stands.

Once upon a time, I had loved coming to stores just like this. Be they bookstores, knickknack shops, or antique stores – I loved the unordered rows. They gave me a sense of adventure. Sure, it wasn't the same as trekking through some dense jungle in a far-off land, but you still got the impression that at any point you could come across treasure.

My sense of adventure couldn't last – my neck was frozen stiff, my teeth were chattering in my skull, and I was about to give up the last memory of my grandmother that meant anything to me.

Pushing past beautiful walnut veneer wardrobes and mahogany stands, I saw the counter. It wasn't even at the back of the shop – considering that seemed to stretch onto eternity. Instead, it was incongruously in the middle and off to one side.

The counter – like the rest of the store – seemed chaotic, this amalgam of various woods and marbles. There were curios and little objets d'art covering it, spilling out of pressed brass bowls and mixing with a basket of silk scarves from the fifties.

The same valuer was standing behind it who'd assessed my disk in the first place. He was a man of middling height, middling build, and middling looks. He had half-rimmed glasses that hung halfway down his nose, and the perpetual stoop in his cervical spine suggested he spent all day every day staring over them at undeserving customers.

My stomach pitched as I became aware of just how much water and mud I was tracking over the floorboards. At least they were dusty and looked as if they hadn't been varnished in centuries. They creaked with every step, and as I finally reached the counter, the one right before it groaned so loudly it sounded like someone pushing open a door.

"I know you," the man announced as he tilted his head further down, his glasses slipping right to the edge of his nose as his pale gray eyes refocused on me. They flashed toward my hand as I clutched the calendar in my pocket. "Back to sell that curio, are you?"

I tried not to look defeated. It was pretty hard. I was cold to the bone and—

"I warn you, I haven't changed my valuation. Though that disk is unusual and unique, without a buyer, it's also a waste of money."

I brought up a hand, latched it on the back of my neck, and dug my nails in. If I thought the move would anchor me and distract me away from my emotional pain, I was wrong. My skin was so frigid, I could take to my neck with a scalpel, and I'd still be unlikely to feel it. "I know that. I was just wondering if you could take another look. I... I need the money," I managed, a knot of shame forming in my gut, feeling like I'd swallowed fishing line.

Though I could tell the man didn't look pleased, at least he shifted back, locked one old, gnarled hand on the polished marble, and thrust his other toward me.

I grounded herself with a breath and pulled out the calendar.

Considering I was soaked through, I shouldn't be that surprised by the fact the little metal disk was covered in beads of water. Yet the sight of it turned my stomach for some reason, and I quickly, lovingly wiped them off with the base of my palm before handing it over.

The guy tilted his perpetually bent neck down, thumbed his glasses back up his nose, and got to work inspecting the object. With practiced sweeps of his old fingers along the girth of the disk, he turned it over several times before clutching up the jeweler's loop on the length of leather around his neck.

My stomach squirmed more and more as I watched him work. I tried to lock down the hope rising through my chest. The guy had already told me he wasn't going to change his valuation.

Back when I'd come with Robert, this guy had said that this could be worth no more than $200 tops.

I let my hands fall behind me, and they drew behind my back as I crossed my fingers. Yeah, I wasn't a kid, and I knew crossing my fingers would not materially alter my luck.

But I would do anything to catch a break.

The break, however, wouldn't come. The man abruptly stopped inspecting the device and let his loop drop until it banged against his linen shirt.

His expression looked bored.

My shoulders crumpled.

This was where I would have to beg, wasn't it?

I opened my mouth – but he opened his mouth, too.

"I might have a buyer." He drummed his fingers on the hard counter as he brought the disk down and carefully placed it before him.

"What?" My stomach pitched with surprise. "Really?"

He shrugged. "A man came in this morning handing around a photo of something that looked almost exactly like this." He carefully placed a hand on top of the disk.

"Really?" I couldn't contain my excitement as I thrust onto the top of my toes like some kid.

The man frowned, then shrugged. "Really. Though I would usually ask for a finder's fee for connecting a client with a buyer," he shot my disheveled form a prying look, "I'll waive that this time. As long as you get a mop and clean up that mess," he added as he reached under his voluminous counter, rummaged around in some drawers, and brought out a card.

He handed it to me.

It was plain white. I flipped it over excitedly, holding it with the edge of my nails so I didn't damage it with my wet hands.

I knew what I expected to see. I'd tagged along with my grandmother so many times when she'd bought expensive objects for her collection. Dealers were never short of money, and their cards reflected this. My grandmother had often told me that presentation is everything. Even if you're just starting out in your business and you barely have two pennies to scrape together, you take those two pennies and you spend them on your business card. Get the most expensive gold leafing you can, and fake it till you make it.

My stomach sank.

This business card did not have gold lettering. It wasn't even embossed.

Instead, it was just a plain white rectangle of card someone had scrawled on. And their handwriting was appalling. Lopsided loops of blue ink shuddered across the page like a Richter scale reading.

I frowned, tilting my head to the side and then to the other side as I attempted to decipher the message.

The dealer snorted. "It took me a while too – says Grand East Park, near the lake."

My lips slowly dropped open. "Sorry? That's not a business address."

The guy chuckled, turned, disappeared for a moment, and came back with a mop. He looked pointedly at the water I'd tracked all through his store. "It's the only address I've got." He proffered the mop.

"But only bums live in the park." My shoulders couldn't sink any further.

He shot me an affronted look that told me I had absolutely no place casting aspersions on the disadvantaged when I looked like an old doll someone had thrown in the trash. Hefting the mop up, he thrust it to me over the counter.

I hesitated, then plucked it up. The hope that had managed to rise through my heart like steam thawing ice was blown away as I realized this was all a game. "You can't honestly expect me to believe that a bum who lives in the park has the money to buy this disk?"

He shrugged. "The guy sure had a nice suit."

I pressed my lips together, the skin crumpling. "Men with nice suits don't live in parks."

"Listen, lady – I don't honestly know if he has the money to afford that disk. And I don't even know how much that disk is worth to him. But judging by your circumstances," he shot me another pointed look that lingered on the fractured seams up my waist, "you can't really afford not to try. Head to the park, see what he says. If you don't want to sell, keep trying to find a buyer. But first—"

"Yes, sir, I'll mop your floors."

Turning around with defeat climbing my back, I did as I was told.

By the time I mopped my way all the way up to the front door, I cast a long, morose glance out at the rain-washed streets.

Did I really want to brave them and head to East Park?

Did I really have any other choice?

No and no.

But sometimes our lives get to decide for us.

# Chapter 2

Helen

"This is insane. Turn back, you idiot," I admonished myself for the hundredth time as I walked through the imposing wrought-iron gates at the front of the park.

Predictably, the place was abandoned. The lovely manicured lawns were slicked with puddles, mud trailing onto the winding path that led up into the gardens and lake beyond.

The rain didn't let up. It seemed like penance sent from God, and until every single droplet slammed hard against my back and neck, the sun would not shine again.

Muttering to myself that I was mad, I kept a hand clutched on the disk in my pocket, the badly scrawled business card safely protected by a small Ziploc plastic bag the antique dealer had given me.

My thumbnail kept brushing up against it as I made my way toward the lake.

On an ordinary day, the lake and surrounds would be packed.

Today, there wasn't a soul in sight.

"I told you this was mad," I spat at myself, my teeth digging into my bottom lip and leaving hard indentations in the flesh.

Before I could turn around, drag myself home, and beat myself up all night, I saw a single figure through the drenching rain.

It was a man in a suit. He was sitting on one of the wooden slat seats positioned right on the bank of the lake.

I could only see the back of his head and neck, but that was enough to confirm he was in a suit.

"... What the hell? No. This is mad," I tried, but there was no one to hear my words save for the howling wind.

I shook my head a few times, but when that didn't stop me from taking another step, I just gave in, my shoulders caving until I would look like a gorilla dragging her knuckles on the ground.

I approached the seat from the back, trying to talk myself out of this up until the last step.

My fingers tightened around the disk, protectively grasping it as if I thought the very wind would snatch it from me.

Come on, this is mad, I told myself one last time. Turn away. Salvage the last scrap of decency you have.

I teetered on the spot, eyes locked on the back of the man's neck.

He didn't have an umbrella. He was just sitting there, drenched through, his head tilted up as he apparently watched the lake.

He didn't have his phone out; his hands were in his pockets, his back hunched.

Turn away, I tried one last time.

And finally, my decency won out. I shifted.

"Do you want something, human – I mean, lady?" the guy asked. He had a deep voice. It wasn't the baritone of Pavarotti or anything like that – but it was low enough that it reached in and clenched my stomach.

"Sorry to bother you, sir – just—" I began, spinning a lie about how I was just walking past.

I stopped.

My fingers tightened around the disk, my thumbnail snagging against the Ziploc bag with his business card in it.

If I dragged myself back home, I would just have to face this all again in the morning. The guy at the antique store had been right. What was the harm of me asking this guy what he would pay for the disk? If I didn't like the price, I could always turn away.

"You were just?" he prompted.

I pulled the Ziploc bag out of my pocket, a sudden gust of wind almost snatching it from my grip. But I locked my knuckles against it, holding onto it like it was a tether in a storm. I finally walked around the side of the seat. I'd been conversing with the back of this guy's head, until now.

As I faced him, a gust of wind snagging my hair and sending it scattering my shoulders, its long length like a scarf as it whipped and flailed, my breath caught in my chest.

I'd seen a lot of attractive men in my life. Back when my grandmother had been alive, she'd dealt with the rich and privileged.

This guy?

I didn't even know where to begin. As he sat there, slouched in what looked like a $100,000 suit if my seamstress training was anything to go by, he looked like a god who'd fallen to earth. It wasn't in his hard-edged, chiseled jaw with the ray of faint stubble dappled over his chin. It wasn't in his piercing blue eyes. And nor was it in his sandy blond short hair.

It wasn't even in his unaffected stance, his hands loosely pushed into his pockets, his shoulders slumped against the wooden slats of the seat behind him.

No.

It was in his look.

He had the expression of a man who seemed completely unaffected by this world. The lake could explode – he probably wouldn't even notice. The city could crumble, and those eyes wouldn't blink.

For me – trapped in a spiral of poverty – that look was impossible to understand.

It seemed, to him, this life was nothing more than a game.

The guy had been staring out at the lake, but he ticked his gaze up to me. Not to my face – not my drenched, scraggly locks of hair that sat clumped around my neck when they weren't being buffeted by the wind. Nope. It shot straight to the plastic bag with the business card inside.

He straightened. Without any invitation, he leaned forward and snatched it from me. He turned it over, confirmed the scrawled writing on the back, then let his gaze tick to my eyes. "Where did you get this card? Did someone send you here? Have they found my object?"

Firstly, I hated guys who were rude – and snatching was never polite.

Secondly, my back bristled as he flatly stated the phrase my object.

One of my hands was still in my pocket, and my fingers bent in hard as I clutched my disk with all my might.

Was it too late to back out?

Yes. Because the guy who'd previously been slouching like a cat pushed to his feet. His form was lithe and strong, the rigid lines of his muscles obvious under his wet shirt and pants. "Have they found it?"

My lips wobbled. Then I caved. "How much is it worth to you?" My voice shook. I understood the first rule of an effective deal was to remain calm and cool. Don't show them how much you want their money.

His brows flattened over his piercing eyes. "Where is it?"

"How much is it worth to you?"

"The world, human – I mean lady," he corrected again.

Though I was distracted by the continually howling wind and driving rain – oh, and the fact this guy looked like an unaffected God who'd crashed to Earth – that was the second time he'd said human only to correct himself.

Who called people humans?

"Lady, where's the object?"

"You said it was worth the world to you?"

He snorted. "I'll give you any planet you want. Just take me to the object."

My eyebrows peaked. This guy wasn't mad, was he?

He got frustrated again and rocked back and forth on the soles of his expensive shoes, a gust of wind catching the tails of his jacket and sending them slapping around his angular torso. "Look, I've already wasted too much time on this shit-hole world. Where is it?"

I blinked, water trailing off my long lashes. "Shit-hole world?"

He blanched, and it brought my attention to the fact his cheeks weren't even pale. He had tan skin, and despite the fact it looked as if he'd been sitting in the rain for hours, he looked unaffected by the cold. "I mean shit-hole city," he corrected with a growl. "Now take me to it."

I brought up a hand and spread my fingers. "Let's talk money first."

"I can pay you whatever you want."

My skin crawled. Was it hope that I'd finally found the money to pay my urgent bill? Or was it a warning that something wasn't right?

Who was I kidding? Of course something wasn't right. Ordinary people didn't make deals with demigods in suits at the edge of rain-swept lakes.

Too late to back out now, right?

That fact was confirmed as the guy ticked his head ever so slightly to the left and suddenly dropped his gaze to my pocket.

His cheeks blanched further, muscular tension climbing his jaw and up into his forehead as his eyes widened.

I latched a hand harder around the disk and took a step back.

A mistake.

I was standing right on the bank of the lake. As I shifted, my sodden sneaker suddenly sank through mud, and I teetered backward.

The guy moved. He was quick. Blink-of-an-eye quick. His muscles shifted in unison, his body darting forward until the next thing I knew, he was somehow behind me, wrapping a hand on my elbow as he spun me away from the side of the lake.

I didn't have time for my breath to catch in my chest as my hair sailed around my face, slapped against his hard jaw, and came to a rest between us.

He kept a hold of my elbow, his expression unreadable as his gaze once more darted down to my hip. "Watch yourself," he growled. "I don't want to go fishing it out of the lake."

My heart trembled at his words until my brain caught up with them. He hadn't said he didn't want to go fishing me out of the lake. He'd said it.

Sure enough, his gaze did not lift from my left hip.

"Show me," he stated, his voice ringing with authority and command. Before, as he'd slouched against the seat, he'd looked like nothing more than a disaffected youth. Now from the rigidity of his muscles to the sheer force in his voice, he felt like some drill sergeant from the army.

It left me blinking in surprise.

"Show me the damn disk," he snapped once more.

"First, we talk money," I forced myself to say, knowing that if I continued to blink doe-eyes up into this man's face as he took control of the conversation I would lose the one thing I'd come here to get.

From this guy's suit, I could tell he had cash.

"Money, gold, dalium ore – whatever. Name your price. Just give me the object."

"What's dalium ore?" My nose scrunched.

He paused, looking as if he was thinking up some excuse before snarling, "A new experimental metal. Now name your price."

"No, it's not," I said determinedly. I would hardly call myself a metallurgist, but I'd grown up around jewelry, and that meant growing up around metal.

There was no such thing as dalium ore.

His lips twitched. "Just name your price, human."

"Why do you keep calling me human?"

"You are human," he pointed out blankly.

I had to concede his point, but it still wasn't a satisfactory answer.

Who the hell was this guy? Some rich and eccentric playboy who waited around in windswept parks for damsels to mess with?

Until now, though I'd been conscious of the fact his hard grip was still wrapped around my elbow, traces of warmth spreading from his fingers and up into my arm, I'd just let him hold me.

Now I took a firm step back, pivoting on my hip, turning my shoulder in, and yanking my elbow down.

It didn't break his grip. It should have been enough to unbalance him, maybe even send him careening into the lake by our side. Instead, he simply stood firm and tall, his fingers feeling like a vice.

"Name your price," he growled once more.

"Let me go."

He didn't hesitate. His fingers parted from my elbow with a quick twitch as his arm swung down to his side. He continued to loom in front of me, though, not reinstating my personal space and instead keeping his attention firmly locked on the bulge in my pocket.

I took a defensive step back and forced myself to breathe.

"Name your price," he said one final time.

"2000." There, I'd done it. I tried to hide the hope as I stared up into his eyes.

"2000 what?"

I blinked.

"You talking gold, or," he looked to the side as if he was trying to remember something, "stocks? Or buildings?"

His questions floored me. "Money."

"What denomination?"

"Excuse me?"

"Hundreds of thousands or millions?"

My mouth hung open. This was a game. It had to be. Nobody wearing a suit like that and looking like him didn't understand money.

Fine. If this was a game, I'd play. I dragged myself out here and wasted my last hope for this bastard. Stifling a teary sigh, I shrugged. "It's billions, actually."

"Fine. Do you want cash?"

"Sorry?"

"I will have it sent to you. Now show me the object."

I stood there, stunned. My brain reeled. Did I for a second think this guy would actually give me 2000 billion dollars for this? No. Because 2000 billion dollars wasn't even a thing – 2 trillion was.

I took another worried step back. He simply thrust his broad arm out, his fingers reaching toward me as his lips drew into a determined frown.

"We've made a deal – and you'll get your 2000 billion dollars. Now give me the sun calendar."

It was the first time he'd referred to it as something other than a disk or object.

My gut clenched. "Sun calendar?"

His cheeks twitched as if he'd given something away. "Not your concern. We've made our deal. Now give me the object."

I stood there, cold down to my bones, wondering if it was too late to turn and run.

A specific shiver that traced quickly up my spine and snagged the back of my neck told me if I ran, this guy would just follow like a lion.

A sense of dread filling my stomach as if I'd swallowed acid, I finally pulled out the disk.

Maybe it wasn't dread, maybe it was something else. This twisting, marching sense that ran from the pit of my gut up my back, around my neck, and hard into my temples.

It was such a strange, out-of-the-blue sensation that at least it distracted me from the pale look of greed that gripped the man's features as his gaze locked on the disk.

I was surprised when he didn't shove out a hand and snatch it from me and instead waited until I proffered it, my fingers fixed so hard around the disk, it would take a crowbar to lift them.

He brought his hands up and waited, and with one final, defeated breath, I deposited it in his outstretched palms.

I swore I could hear a clunk as it sunk into his hands, but that made no sense – they looked as soft as ordinary flesh.

I watched his cheeks twitch, his eyes widen, and unmistakable recognition flood his features.

Then he turned the disk over, and that recognition snagged as if somebody had rolled down a hill only to hit a boulder. His eyes flashed up to me, those deep blue depths piercing like knives. "Where's the ring?"

I paled. "Ring?"

He proffered the disk in front of me, though his grip was still careful around the smooth metal. His expression wasn't. It was as hard as a jeweler's hammer. And it looked as if it was just as willing to beat me into shape. "The ring that goes here." He tapped a finger into the central groove in the middle of the disk.

Though I'd noted that before – I'd never assumed anything had fit in there.

My stomach sank. Then it sank some more as I appreciated just how dark his expression had become.

"This disk is useless to me without that control ring."

"Control ring?" my voice shook.

"Never mind. Take me to the place where you found this disk," he demanded as he let his other hand drop and shoved it hard into his pocket. His shoulder remained clenched, the muscles down into his arm rigid as they pushed against the fabric of his jacket. It almost looked as if he was playing with some device in his pocket, but I couldn't discern the oblong shape of a phone.

"I inherited that."

"I don't know what that means."

I blinked in surprise. I got the feeling that if I spent any more time around this guy, his confusing mannerisms would see me blinking all day long. "It means that when my..." I pressed my lips together and took a steeling breath, "grandmother died, she left it to me."

"Right. Did she leave you a ring approximately this large?" He curled his forefinger in and pressed it against his thumb, indicating a ring that would be around size Z. And for those who didn't know, size Z was about the biggest you could get.

I went to shrug, but then a memory caught hold of me. "Is it yellow gold with two lines of emeralds and one of obsidian?"

"It's yellow with two green lines and a black stripe in the middle," he defaulted to saying, proving again that he had little idea of what he was speaking about. Had this guy just been sent to obtain this disk for someone else? Maybe he was a crazy son of some rich stockbroker or something, and rather than let his idiot son loose on the world, he gave him quaint tasks like this.

"I have seen a ring like that," I revealed.

His shoulders dropped, looking like somebody had severed the nerves to them. So much relief flooded him, I suddenly saw him in a different light.

Since the moment I'd clapped eyes on his angular, apparently perfect face, I'd got the impression that this guy was the kind of cold, selfish bastard who only lived for himself. But that glimpse right there seemed to lead to a different man. Albeit one he quickly buried as he straightened. He angled his head to the side, his neck muscles twitching hard. "Take me to it."

"There's a problem."

"What kind?"

"I don't own that ring."

"Who does?"

I pressed my lips together and swallowed, an unpleasant memory reaching into my mind like a hand from the grave ready to catch me and pull me down to Hell. "My cousin."

"Can he be bought?"

I couldn't help but snort. Even as the rain picked up harder, driving down into the lake behind us like machine-gun fire, I found the time to laugh. Because yes, cousin Robert could be bought. He had the scruples of a slime mold.

"I'm going to take that as a yes. Is he in this city?"

I nodded.

"Take me to him."

I forced myself to give this guy a second look. One where I emphasized how crazy he was. He was in a wet designer suit, and he was offering to give people 2000 billion dollars for metal disks. Robert would eat him alive. Worse, he would shred me and feed me to his lawyer sharks for wasting his time.

"You'll still get your 2000 billion money," he said.

I winced. That did it. 2000 billion money? This guy was crazy.

Though I could back away, he was still holding the disk, and I was anchored to it – tethered as if some invisible string had pushed from the metal and linked to my body.

It had always been that way – from the day I'd seen it in my grandmother's collection.

It was as if a part of me had instantly recognized it.

That part of me would not let me walk away now. "Robert isn't an easy man to deal with."

"If he can be bought, I'll just find what his currency is. Now take me there."

I hesitated. For a million reasons.

He flicked his sharp gaze to me. "Don't worry – you'll still get your money," he confirmed again.

I let my gaze tick to his perfect, expensive suit, and I tried to make a quick calculation of how much it would be worth. Yes, it was wet, but unlike my designer jacket, it was made of strong, sturdy Cashmere wool. If I dry cleaned it, it would be fine. I could easily get 50,000 for it.

I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a breath. "Fine," I managed.

"Lead the way."

Still wincing, I tipped my head back and considered the tumultuous sky above me. For a few seconds, I let my gaze track the clouds as they scattered across the sky, swept on by the unforgiving wind.

Why did I feel as if that same unforgiving wind had suddenly latched hold of my destiny and would not stop blowing until the life I knew lay at my feet?

The man turned around and ushered me forward.

With one last sigh, I followed.

# Chapter 3

Helen

Going into Dawson and Thompson law firm always felt like pulling teeth. My gut clenched a block before we reached it, and as I pressed in through the automatic doors, it was like someone pushed a hand into my back and yanked out my spine. My limbs became as loose and unresponsive as jelly as I let my head fall down. I would probably look like a dog who'd been sent to the doghouse, and hey, I was.

Robert had taken me to the cleaners, and the second he found out my disk was worth anything, he'd likely try to do it again.

But if it was really worth something, maybe he'd at least let me have two grand.

The guy hadn't said a word to me as we crossed town together. Either he didn't like to chat, or he didn't consider me the kind of person worth talking to. Nonetheless, it had given me a good opportunity to assess him. My conclusion hadn't really changed – he still looked like a God who'd fallen to Earth, albeit one with a very loose understanding of our economics.

But there was something else sitting under that calm, unaffected, bored persona.

Something sharp. Something that gave you the impression it had been sharpened by circumstance.

Don't understand what I mean? Imagine a soldier. Send them out to their first battle, and they'll come back a changed person with all the soft sides of their personality eaten away. Keep sending them out into battle, and you'll whittle down their innocence until it becomes as hard as a knife.

That's the exact impression this man gave me. Sitting under his slightly eccentric, unaffected persona was a weapon – a personality that had been honed to do whatever it would take to survive.

Though I looked like a drowned rat as we walked into the expansive, expensive atrium, he looked fine.

Sure, his suit was wet, but it just gave him this sense of ruggedness that caught the attention of every woman who passed us.

His hands were in his pockets. He'd handed me back the disk in the park, though reluctantly.

I kept hold of it, my thumb stroking the metal protectively as I attempted to let it distract me from what I knew would come next.

The guy looked around the atrium sharply, gaze ticking over the counter and every person he saw until it locked on the lifts at the end of the room. "Those allow you to scale the building, right?"

"I guess." There was no point in correcting him. Though he didn't sound as if he had an accent, obviously his command of the English language wasn't perfect. Sure, he could string together a syntactically functional sentence, but the concepts underlying his speech made no sense.

He strode toward the lifts.

"Do you know where we're going?" I commented with a muffled breath.

"Fourth floor, third office."

"How do you know that?"

"It was written on the board behind reception."

"But you never got close enough to the board to read it," I protested.

He paused. "What's your name?" he asked abruptly as we reached the lifts. It appeared to take him several seconds to figure out what to do.

As his gaze searched up and down the lift doors, I leaned in past him and shoved a thumb against the call button.

"Name," he demanded as the doors opened and he strode in.

Several lawyers were striding out at the same time – men I knew. Men who'd helped my cousin steal everything I had.

And men who, I knew from experience, owned anywhere they walked. They were the kind of macho fools who would jostle you on the street even when there was no one else around.

At the sight of this guy striding in, nonchalantly dripping water everywhere, all three of them took second glances at him. They shoved past, two of them jostling me on purpose.

Nobody ever came to my defense.

Except for now.

My eccentric millionaire turned hard on his foot and grunted. "You did that on purpose. Show some respect."

One of the lawyers – Jason – stopped and turned slowly on his expensive designer shoes. He was a large man – easily a foot taller than my eccentric millionaire. Because I was going to start referring to him as my eccentric millionaire – it wasn't like I had a name to go by.

"Excuse me?" Jason rumbled.

"You heard me. Now go about your business and stop breaking the law."

My cheeks started to redden as our altercation drew the attention of everybody nearby.

Though jostling people was rude, it wasn't assault.

"Are you here to cause trouble?" Jason's gaze sliced off my millionaire and onto me. "Find some clown, dress him up in a suit, and bring him here to take on your cousin? You're smarter than that. Or at least you should be. You should have learned from experience – we're not the kind of firm you can mess with lightly."

My millionaire brought up a finger and scratched the back of his head. He wasn't posing and pumping his muscles or in any other way acting in a threatening manner. You tell that to Jason. He got the kind of sparking look in his eyes as if my millionaire had just locked horns with him.

"You listen here—"

"An undeveloped, uneducated human like you has nothing worth listening to." John didn't even blink as he delivered that harsh insult.

Jesus, this had been the worst mistake of my life.

Jason looked as if he was getting ready to knock my millionaire flat.

He loomed in front of the lifts.

Fortunately I'd already walked through, and I pressed my back against the metal, fingers drawing over the smooth surface as I wondered how the hell I could get out of here.

"Uneducated? Undeveloped?" Jason spat each word slowly, his lips whipping them out of the air.

"If this is you attempting to intimidate me, I suggest you don't bother. You aren't my physical match. If you initiate any form of altercation, you will have no way of winning."

That did it. Jason had a short fuse, and my millionaire lit it.

Jason pushed forward and tried to grab my millionaire.

My millionaire – showing the same remarkable speed he had back at the lake – dodged to the side. He didn't flip Jason – he didn't lay a finger on him. He simply moved his position by an inch and a half until he was no longer where Jason expected him to be.

Jason promptly overbalanced, his expensive shoes slipping in the puddle of water I'd dripped over the floor.

Jason landed flat on his back, the floor around him jolting as his heavy body impacted it.

The two lawyers with Jason – Wilkinson and Smith – pushed down and picked Jason up.

Smith jerked his head toward the reception desk. "Call the police—"

These men had bullied me. From the day my grandmother had died, Robert had set his lawyers on me like a pack of wolves. And I'd done nothing. I'd shuddered in the corner as my life had been taken from me.

Even in court, I hadn't been able to look them in the eye as they'd lied about me.

But back in the court, I'd had something to lose. Now?

There was nothing.

I pushed off the back of the elevator, my movements quick enough that my sneakers squeaked over the metal floor. "He didn't lay a finger on Jason. Jason slipped while attempting to lay a finger on—" I still had no idea what this guy was called, and I could appreciate that if I referred to him as my millionaire, my argument would sink before it could swim.

"John Doe," my millionaire supplied.

... Of course his name was John Doe.

I didn't let that derail me. "You can call the police – but your own footage—" I pointed up, knowing perfectly well where the security cameras were in the atrium, "will not corroborate your story."

We'd drawn everyone's attention, and the receptionists had already picked up their phones.

Jason was now on his feet, and he was patting down his jacket slowly in that way men did when they were trying not to beat their chests like gorillas. "You want to shut up, Helen?"

"It's Helen, then," John acknowledged under his breath.

"Your cousin left you with the jacket on your back," Jason snarled as he shot my bedraggled form a derogatory look, "but that can change—"

"I see, this too is about money, then?" John said from nowhere. "Are you like Robert, can you be bought?"

"What the hell?" Jason snarled. At least he didn't take another step forward. He was a big brute, but he wasn't stupid, and he would appreciate that John's quick move from before had been more than luck.

John shoved a hand into his pocket, and the next thing I knew, he pulled out a fistful of cash. Not one-dollar bills, mind you – $100 bills.

Jason's eyes widened. John threw the cash into the air. "This is me buying you. Now get out of my way. I have a deal to make."

"What the hell is happening here?" Jason snarled, but the edge of his anger had changed as his gaze darted over the hundred-dollar bills as they softly fluttered to the ground.

The floor, though it had once been clean, was now covered in mud and water from where John had been standing.

Jason twitched and shoved out his hand to catch as many bills before they could fall into the mess.

John watched him. "Consider yourself bought." He took a step back, reached over, and hit the button for level 4 on the panel by the door. While he'd hesitated when we'd approached the lifts, now he'd obviously remembered how to use them.

Jason spluttered, Smith and Wilkinson lost behind him as they stared at the small fortune strewn over the muddy floor.

Jason's gaze darted from me back to John, then back to me. Before he could figure out whether to threaten me again or just take the money, the doors closed softly in front of him.

As soon as they pinged and the elevator began to rise, I pushed backward, crumpling against the railing behind me, my hands shooting down and clutching it. My fingers were covered in sweat as my shoulders shook.

What the hell had I just done?

You didn't make enemies with men like Jason.

"Helen," John said as he turned on his foot, his gaze not once going to my eyes but locking on my left pocket. "Don't jostle the sun calendar."

I looked up at him from under a crumpled, tortured brow. "Just who the hell are you?"

"John Doe."

"That doesn't make any sense – no one is actually called John Doe."

His cheek twitched in that specific way it had when I'd caught him out making up a fake metal. "According to a brief scan—" he began. He stopped.

"According to a brief scan of what? What were you about to say? That you looked up names for people who didn't have them on the Net? We use that name for unknown male corpses and missing people who can't remember who they are."

That same cheek twitched.

Before I could question him further, we arrived at the right level.

I wasn't at all surprised to find security mustering toward us.

Robert was big on security – you had to be when you were as much of a thug as he was.

The two men were big, and they were dressed in black security uniforms with the name of their firm emblazoned on badges on their left shoulders.

John's gaze ticked toward those badges nonchalantly as he pushed out of the elevator.

"All right, sir – you're coming with us," one of them said.

As my life crashed down around me, I wondered just how far Robert would take this. I shouldn't have pointed out that the footage from the atrium cameras would vindicate John. I could imagine that right now Jason was wiping said footage and paying off everybody in the atrium.

My skin was so cold and clammy, it felt as if I'd been dragged through the snow for hours.

... And yet... my fingers were warm. Not the fingers of my right hand – the fingers of my left hand. As they clutched my disk for dear life, they remained as warm as ever, almost as if the disk was starting to come to life.

It was a fleeting thought, and it was pushed away as the one person I didn't want to see walked casually out of his office.

Robert. He was in a designer blue pinstripe suit. His tie would have cost 10,000, and that wasn't to mention the one-of-a-kind platinum and diamond cufflinks that sparkled at his wrists – cufflinks that had been mine until he'd stolen them in court.

His gaze brushed over me as if I was dirt someone had dragged in from the street. It locked on John. "I don't care how much she's paid you to come in here and make a ruckus, but believe me, she's not good for the money."

"Are you Robert?" John asked efficiently, his mood calm and unaffected.

Robert chuckled dryly. "I might be willing to let this incident go if you leave now as you are."

My skin crawled on the words as you are. Robert had used them on me, too. Back when he dragged me through the courts and I'd been forced to settle, he threatened me in his office. As I stood there in my designer jacket, he'd said I could leave as I was if I dropped everything. No more courts, no more expensive legal battles. I'd be able to keep the jacket and my dignity if I left all of the money on the table and walked.

Yeah, well, there was no money on the table – but there was some down on the floor of the atrium.

Robert was essentially saying that if John didn't demand his money back, he could leave a free man.

"I'm here to make a deal," John plowed on.

Robert chuckled. Then, perhaps for the first time, he actually looked at the man he was speaking to. His gaze darted down John's pristine suit. His eyes narrowed. "Is that Armani?"

"What?" John asked blankly.

Robert gestured toward the suit with his shoulder, too cool and far too rude to use a hand instead. "Your suit."

"Is replicated."

"A fake?" Robert chucked his head back and laughed. He'd only looked at me once when I'd walked in, now he shot me a lingering look that told me he was going to take me to the cleaners again. "The deal has changed—"

"It has not yet begun. You possess in your collection a ring of approximately 22-mm diameter. It is made of gold, emeralds, and obsidian. You acquired it from the inheritance of this woman, Helen."

Robert's face scrunched. "Yeah, I've got a ring like that. But trust me when I say you don't have the means to buy it from me."

"What would you want?" John kept plowing on as if, short of Robert wringing his neck, he wouldn't stop.

"Money. Lots of it."

John shoved his hand into his pocket again. I shouldn't need to tell you that I'd paid enough attention to John's svelte form in that clinging, wet suit to appreciate there couldn't be much in his pockets. And yet, once more, he plucked out a fistful of hundred-dollar bills as if he had a minting press crammed down his pants.

Robert's eyes widened. "What the hell is going on here?"

"A deal."

"Is that money fake, too? You want to be caught on counterfeiting charges?"

"Why would you assume it is fake?"

"Because you're clearly a joker. And you're wasting my time," Robert spat. But his gaze locked on the hundred-dollar bills as if he couldn't quite pull himself away.

"I assure you, the money is real."

"Give me a bill," Robert snapped.

John complied. Robert pulled out his wallet, and I wasn't at all surprised when he yanked out a $100 bill – one of many. He held both of the bills side-by-side as he searched for any defects.

As a deep frown marked his lips, it was obvious he couldn't find any.

"What the hell is going on here?" Robert snapped.

"I am a collector. I am after that ring." John straightened.

"And what's this got to do with her?" Robert dismissively gestured to me with that same shrug of one of his large shoulders.

Don't tell him about the disk. Don't tell him about the disk, I repeated in my mind, throwing all the luck I didn't have at the mantra, hoping at least this wish would come true.

"She informed me that you had this ring," John said.

My shoulders lost their tension as I sighed.

"It won't be cheap." Robert actually licked his lips as if he was some predator who'd spotted soft prey limping down the Savannah.

"Money is immaterial. Where is this ring?"

"It's in my office."

"Please let me appraise it."

Robert hesitated, his gaze flicking to me again. There was a darkened quality to it – one that told me that if this was an elaborate game, he was going to make me pay.

But then I watched his fingers twitch over the hundred-dollar bill, and I could tell his greed for cash wiped away his doubt.

He turned toward his office.

Throughout the conversation, those two security guards had been standing there, awaiting their orders. As Robert led us forward, they turned away.

Robert hesitated at his door, flashing me the kind of look that told me I wasn't welcome. I could tell he was about to snap at security to drag me away, then he quickly re-thought that as he appreciated how close John was standing to me.

"You want tea or coffee?" Robert asked, slipping from the suspicious prosecutor to the obsequious host.

"What are those?" John asked.

Robert's brow descended as a new wave of suspicion caught him.

I forced a laugh. "Sorry, he has a unique sense of humor."

I walked into Robert's office. My stomach twisted as if somebody had tied a noose around it.

All around his office were my grandmother's antiques, right down to his beautiful mahogany desk – the same desk where I'd sat on my grandmother's lap as she designed jewelry.

There were glass cases behind him, and in them, various expensive objects.

John's gaze methodically ticked around the room as he searched for what he was looking for.

And just like a targeting laser, he found it quickly.

He walked straight over to the right glass case, twisted his head to the side, and located the ring. Which was mad, considering he shouldn't have been able to see it from all the way over at the door.

Robert walked over, his hands in his pockets. Though it was clear he was attempting to pull off a calm, unaffected vibe, unlike John, he was failing. His shoulders were rigid and high. "You have good eyesight."

"I never stop when I find something I want," John said simply.

My stomach twitched.

I stood halfway between the door and the glass case in this large room, wondering if I should just escort myself out of the building.

"Please remove it from its rudimentary holding cell," John requested.

Robert chuckled awkwardly. "Holding cell? That's pretty funny," he said in a way that told everybody he wasn't laughing.

Robert walked around, opened the back of the case, reached in, and plucked up the ring.

He considered it for a moment before handing it over.

John didn't even dart his gaze over it. Instead, he clamped his fingers around the ring and held it still as if his palm could tell him what it was without his eyes bothering to help.

Nerves climbed my back. Sharp and hard, they felt like ice picks sinking into my skin.

What was this tension building inside me? This sense that something was about to happen?

It took me a moment to appreciate that as my hand clutched the disk harder, heat climbed my wrist.

This wasn't me making it up anymore – I could feel it as it thawed my frozen arm.

John let his hand drop. "What's your price?"

Robert's gaze flicked down John's suit. He stopped just short of licking his lips again. "20,000."

I waited for John to ask what denomination that was in. Instead, he shook his head. "It's not worth more than 5000."

Robert's gaze changed as he obviously appreciated this wouldn't be the easy game he'd hoped. "It's valued at 15,000." He emphasized the word valued.

"Then the valuer was fraudulent. The current price of gold is US$1200 an ounce. There is approximately," he brought his hand up as if he were attempting to weigh the ring, "2.54 ounces in this ring. Though the emeralds are gem-quality, the obsidian is not. The overall material valuation is no more than $4000."

Robert looked floored. "I'm not gonna settle for anything less than 10."

"Then we will settle for 10."

... Was this the same man I'd met in the park? The same guy who'd offered me 2000 billion dollars for my disk?

This was a sick game, wasn't it? John was getting some kind of kick out of this. And I'd wandered right in like the fool I always was.

Before my shoulders could drop, John reached a hand into his other pocket and pulled out his wallet. "Do you take cash?"

Robert smiled. "I prefer it."

Because it was untraceable, and it would leave his bank account records squeaky clean.

"But don't tell me you've got 10,000 in your pockets?" Robert chuckled.

John proceeded to pull out a fat wallet that was over-stuffed with cash. He counted out 100 hundred-dollar notes.

I felt like I was out of some surreal movie. Stuff like this did not happen in the real world.

Robert practically salivated over the cash as he plucked it up, counted it, and re-counted it. You'd think to a man like Robert, $10,000 would mean nothing.

You'd be wrong. Robert blew through cash faster than an organism blowing through oxygen.

I know he had debts – substantial ones. He also liked to gamble.

As he counted the cash once more until he was finally satisfied, a smile spread over his face. He shrugged his shoulder toward the rest of his collection. "Anything else you want?"

John opened his mouth to say no, but his lips froze as his gaze darted across the room.

There was a small circular metal disk sitting on top of one of the antique, Edwardian dressers.

John walked right over to it, hesitated, then plucked it up.

That object – like everything else in this room – was from my grandmother's collection. It was a strange little thing – just two metal disks hinged together with an unusual screw.

The only reason Robert would be keeping it was as a paperweight.

"You're interested in that? It's valued at... 30 grand," Robert lied flatly.

John frowned down at the object as he started to play with the two disks, turning them over one another as if they were dials to break into a safe.

Robert continued to chuckle, though it had an edge to it – the edge of a man who was starting to appreciate he knew nothing compared to his opposition. "... You know what that is?" His tone admitted that he himself had no idea.

"It is an Aquin bio lock," John revealed.

"... A what?" Robert tried to keep a grin fixed over his face, but it was clear to anyone he'd lost all control of the conversation.

"Aquin bio lock," John repeated, a frown digging harder into his lips until it looked as if it would drive them from his face. "And it is on."

"On? Is this more of your legendary sense of humor?" Robert let out a fake chuckle.

"There's no reason it would be on unless an Aquin was around. Where did this come from?" John turned, still clutching hold of the lock as he faced Robert, his expression changing once more. You know that glimpse I'd seen of John back at the lake – when I'd gone from thinking he was a mindless playboy to someone who would do anything to survive? Yeah, I saw that again.

Robert looked uncomfortable, but he hid it with a tense shrug. "My grandmother."

"The same grandmother as Helen?" John pointed to me.

Robert's lips twitched. "She's adopted."

"I don't know what that means," John said emotionlessly. "Are you suggesting you are not biologically related?"

Robert tried to chuckle, but his lips were stiff. "No, we're not biologically related."

"Give me your hand," John demanded abruptly.

Robert twitched, tried to laugh it off, then clenched his teeth. The idiot was finally appreciating something was wrong. Even the allure of money could only take Robert so far. "What?"

"Give me your hand." John reached out his hand.

"Why?"

"I want to confirm something."

Robert twitched.

"I will pay you 30,000 for this object."

Robert suddenly complied, thrusting his hand forward like a pig at the trough waiting to be fed.

John dropped the small object into Robert's palm, and I could tell from the tension climbing John's cheeks that he expected something would happen.

Nothing happened.

John removed the disk and took a step away from Robert, his gaze sharpening.

Robert laughed. "Do I pass your test? Now, about that $30,000—"

John's gaze ticked all over the room until it stopped on me.

Nerves climbed my back. They were horrible. The worst I'd ever experienced. Being dragged through the courts was nothing compared to the unholy mix of fear swarming in my gut like locusts. "... What are you looking at?"

John took a step toward me.

He reached out a hand, making it obvious he wanted me to give him mine.

I clutched it into a fist and locked it by my side.

"Just humor the man, cousin," Robert spat. "And about that $30,000. I'm assuming you don't have it on your person," he continued with a chuckle. "If you can get the cash by the end of the day, however, I'll give you a discount of... $50."

John wasn't paying attention. His sharp gaze was locked on me with all the force of a gravity generator.

... For some reason, whenever I thought of metaphors and similes, I thought of sci-fi examples. Which was stupid. I didn't even like sci-fi.

"Give me your hand, Helen," John commanded. That drill sergeant was back. From the look in his eye, to the control of his shoulders and hand as he kept his fingers spread toward me, he wasn't going to back down until I complied.

My stomach continued to twitch, my back crawling with nerves. I wanted to back away, but I knew that would get me nowhere. At the prospect of $30,000, Robert would set security on me and drag me back here.

So I had no option but to comply.

It was easily the hardest thing I'd done in my life as I finally dragged my hand up. It was shaking, the fingers cold and white.

John walked over to me, and for some reason I got this sense of ceremony, as if I was Cinderella and he was Prince Charming ready to cram a crystal shoe on my foot.

But this was no crystal shoe, and he was no prince.

You tell that to the feeling building in the air – the sense of import enshrouding me like arms. Arms fixing me to the spot. Arms that held my hand out wide as John placed the disk into my palm.

... Nothing happened.

Not a damn thing. You'd think with the sense of import building in the room, the disk would've transformed into a crown.

Not a thing, though.

Robert let out another tense chuckle. "I'm guessing she doesn't pass the test, either? No surprise there. But I'm assuming you still want to buy it?" He steamrolled on. "If you can get me the cash in the next two hours... I'll give you a $100 discount," he said through clenched teeth as if giving up $100 was like giving up a kidney.

John didn't remove his eyes from me. It was only then that I realized he hadn't blinked since he'd dropped the disk in my hand.

My stomach twisted. "... What—"

"Are you doing on a planet like this?" he spoke over me.

That about did it – I almost fell over from nerves. This unspeakable terror gripped my stomach, opened my eyes wide, and about stopped my heart.

Robert snorted. "Hell of a pickup line you've got there. She's really not worth your time, though."

Again John didn't reply. He kept swinging his gaze over my face as if he was looking for the answer to some long-lost secret.

"... You like her or something?" Robert, as always, appreciated it was time to change track. If he thought one of his clients liked me, he would go from dragging me through the mud to propping me up on a crystal pedestal. "I'm sure she'll go out with you if you could get me that money within the next hour—"

"I wasn't under the impression you sold people on this world," John said.

I'd been allowing him to press that disk into my hand – until now. At that revolting concept, I jerked back. Unlike at the lake, he didn't keep a hand on my wrist. He let me shift away, but he kept me trapped in his gaze.

It took me until I was several steps away to realize I was still holding the strange metal desk. It seemed to fit into my palm naturally, as if we were made for each other.

"... Ah," Robert began, clearly trying to figure out how to play this situation. If it were up to Robert, he would sell me. He'd sell his own grandmother – because he had sold his own grandmother. He'd dragged her memory through mud to get to her money, and as his gaze calculatingly swept over me, I could appreciate he was wondering if I would be worth more to him yet.

"I guess we could come to some arrangement," Robert tried.

"This conversation is over," I stuttered, getting ready to turn and leave.

John simply looked at me and shook his head. It was a... quiet move. Strangely quiet. It wasn't just quiet because he didn't speak and softly closed his lips into a line. It was silent because of the still way he held me in his attention.

I wasn't someone who'd had a lot of experience being gazed at like this. People paid attention to me only so far as they needed to in order to get what they wanted.

With John... my stomach erupted in a flight of nerves as I felt that feeling of import rising in the room once more.

Robert went and ruined it with an awkward, oddly pitched laugh that demonstrated just how desperate he was not to let this deal go south. He brought up a hand and shakily wiped it over his mouth, dislodging the sweat that had built along his top lip. "Like I said – you get me that money within the hour, and you can pretty much do what you want—"

"You're a very ugly man, aren't you?" John said out of the blue, still not turning from me as he held me in his gaze as steadily as he held the ring he'd bought of Robert.

"Ah, what?" Robert tried to keep his tone friendly and even, but it cracked.

"You'll get your 30,000. This disk and ring are leaving with me." As John spoke, he didn't shift his attention off me.

Under his lingering gaze, I shivered.

Because the look in his gaze promised one thing – I'd be leaving with him, too.

# Chapter 4

Helen

This couldn't be happening. But it was. And short of running and screaming from the room, I couldn't escape. Even then, this dense pressure was spreading from the metal disk in my hand, eating up my elbow, sinking into my jaw, and holding me to the spot.

It was a sensation unlike any I'd ever experienced before.

It seemed to open up a different map in my body, if that made any sense. As if the tall, willowy, insubstantial me was just an illusion that sat over something more real beneath.

Robert was still utterly out of his depth, but as his gaze kept swinging back to the money protectively clutched in his hand, it was clear to me he wasn't about to come to my aid.

If I wanted to get out of John's clutches – and importantly, escape the intensity of his gaze – I'd have to do it on my own.

I slowly brought my hands up and spread them. "Look, I'm not going anywhere with you. You can get me the money for the calendar but—"

I thought Robert had all but tuned out as he'd salivated over his cash, but at the mere mention I had something worth a dime, his head jerked up as if someone had attached a string to the base of his skull. "What? What calendar? You talking about that weird disk I left you with? The one we had valued? Is that worth something?"

"Everything is worth something to someone," John said with the kind of ease that suggested he'd repeated that refrain over his life.

Just who was this man?

The more I looked into the intensity of his gaze, and critically, the more it held me to the spot like tethers, the more I appreciated he was far more than he'd initially seemed. He wasn't some eccentric millionaire who hung out in the rain waiting to mess with damsels.

This man had the hardened edge of a soldier wrapped up with the eye of a merchant, and all mashed together with the body of a model.

Oh yeah, and the eyes of a God.

I won't even begin to describe to you what was going on with my stomach anymore. Tumultuous nerves didn't do the storm in my gut justice. It felt as if I'd swallowed an asteroid storm and every single rock was bashing around my insides, wreaking havoc that would never be healed.

You know when you have moments in your life when you appreciate there will be no going back?

I had such a moment when I stood there – on a day is equally rainy as today – watching my grandmother be buried. Then again when I'd sat in the stalls at the court, realizing Robert had successfully taken everything and the law hadn't stopped him.

But both of those memories paled in comparison to the realization that flooded me now.

It was brought on by the shadows pooling under John's focused eyes, by that intensity in the air, and more than anything, by the feel of the strange disk still lodged against my palm. The disk that felt as if it had been made just for me.

I knew the provenance of almost every single item in my grandmother's collection. Unlike with Robert, who knew the valuations down to the last cent, I cared about their history, their use, their craftsmanship. And as for this disk, I was certain she'd had it since I'd been adopted.

"If that calendar is worth something, be aware that I am the rightful owner," Robert went straight back into litigation mode, his head straightening, and for the first time in minutes, his eyes darting away from his fist full of dollars. I'll give him one thing. He had tenacity. Sure, he had the morals of a blood-covered knife, but he never stopped.

Me? I never got started.

But John?

He was in another class altogether.

He seemed so damn reluctant to pull his gaze off me, almost as if his very eyes were having some trapping effect on me.

... And maybe they could be, because I'd never felt like this in my life. I get it, I know that sounds crazy. You can't honestly trap somebody in your gaze. Your stare is nothing more than your line of sight. Maybe at the quantum level photons are pinging off your retina and slightly affecting the object you're staring at – but on the macro level, where you're looking is immaterial to the object you're staring at.

And yet, I honestly felt as if there was some electronic force shifting out from his eyes and surrounding me like a tight embrace.

Without bothering to turn to Robert again, John angled his neck toward him. "You got your money. It's all you're going to get."

"That calendar is mine. I'm not sure if you understand how things work around here—" Robert began, obviously momentarily forgetting that he was very much not the man in charge.

"It took me a while, but I'm starting to appreciate how things work on this planet." John ran his tongue over his canines. "The only thing that matters to you people is money. You're worse off than we are."

My cheeks twitched, a cold sensation flooding through my chest. "... We are? Who's we?" My voice was so faint, I could barely hear it.

John obviously had no trouble, because I watched his cheeks twitch. But this time, rather than launch into some explanation of his peculiar statement, he pulled his left lip up into a smile.

And he got a look about him – one I knew.

Like I'd said so many times before, I knew valuers, merchants, dealers – the lot.

So I understood the look building in his eyes. It was the look of a man who'd been searching for some rare object only to find it wandering across his path.

My stomach twitched with another burst of unholy nerves, and I took a shaking step back.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the door. Could I reach it, wrench it open, and scream for help?

Would that even matter?

No and no. Because I knew from experience that John could move faster than the wind. And even if a miracle happened and I made it out into the corridor, it wouldn't count. Robert's staff would just drag me back in at his behest.

I was more trapped than I'd ever been in my life.

"You really do have a sense of humor," Robert conceded in a flat monotone that was devoid of a single laugh. "But let's talk money again. Because you're right – the only currency that works around here is the hard stuff. That calendar was part of my grandmother's collection. As the rightful," he stressed that word with a blast of air that might as well have been a trumpet proclaiming his authority, "heir to her fortune, it belongs to me."

When Robert had dragged me into his office and told me to leave as I was – with the clothes on my back and nothing more – he'd given me that calendar.

That wouldn't matter. He'd wheedle his way into getting it once more.

Had all this been for nothing?

I didn't have time to answer that. John turned his head over his shoulder and finally locked his full attention on Robert.

I could tell from the muscular tension running up John's neck and down into his back, riding across his shoulders, and stiffening his hands beside him that John was finally getting irritated. A miracle – most sane people were irritated the very second Robert opened his mouth. Few could last this long without wanting to beat him to a pulp.

"You might be fond of my cousin for some reason, but we can come to a deal. How much is that calendar worth to you?" Robert spread his teeth. He was the kind of man who, if this was a mob story, would have a full set of gold caps just so the very food he chewed could be ground down by his wealth.

The edgy grin, however, did not work on John.

"I probably shouldn't do this – but to hell with it," John muttered under his breath.

"That's the way. I can see you're a man—" Robert began.

John closed the distance between him and Robert in a flash. There were a good three meters between them, but in the blink of an eye, that didn't matter.

Don't ask me how John moved – because my limited understanding of human movement could not account for it. His speed, his strength – they were otherworldly.

So Robert had no chance as John swung behind him. Robert didn't even have time to open his mouth, let alone scream or try to punch and kick out.

John brought his hand up and crammed the base of his palm down between Robert's eyes. It wasn't a heavy blow – I didn't hear the crunch of bone or the twang of muscles.

But that didn't matter. As soon as John's palm ground against Robert's flesh, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his body became as limp as a ragdoll. He flopped against John, and John wrapped an arm hard around his torso as he guided him to the floor.

This was where I should scream, run for the door, and call security. Instead I stood there, stuck to the spot, my lips open and weak as fear tumbled through me.

... What had John done?

Nothing. I hadn't even heard a thwack of any substantial force as he slammed his hand onto Robert's head.

But now Robert lay still, twitching occasionally, but out cold.

John cracked his back as he stood, brushing some nonexistent dust off his shoulder. Then he tilted his head up, and I swore time slowed down as I focused in on his gaze, and he focused on mine. "Right, now that's out of the way, you're coming with me."

I shook my head feverishly, my cheeks becoming cold and slack. "Look, I don't know who you are and what you've done," I choked as I looked down at Robert, "but if you take another step toward me, I'm going to scream—"

"I might not understand that much about this world, but I can appreciate you're not the most popular person on it. I'm assuming," he jammed a thumb casually in the direction of the corridor beyond, "that if you made a ruckus and brought those guards in here, they'd just drag you to whatever authorities are on this rock."

"Rock?" My voice shook.

"Planet, world, you name it."

I couldn't allow myself to be distracted by his strange turn of phrase. John acted as if this was the first time he'd been to Planet Earth.

But that – that wasn't the point.

The fact Robert had only just stopped twitching and now lay still as if John had anesthetized him with a single touch was very much the point.

"If you call those guards out there, I'll tell them you attacked Robert." John looked at me evenly.

My gut twisted, my cheeks paled even further until they felt as cold as the tail of a comet, and I took another shuddering step back. "Just who the hell are you? And what did you do to him?" Actual emotion and concern twisted my tone.

It made him frown. "Why would you care for this man? He obviously doesn't care for you."

"Because I have basic human dignity. Just what do you want? And where did you get all that money? And why do you keep referring to Earth as if this is the first time you've visited it?"

"Because it is the first time I've visited – this Earth, at least."

"What the hell does that mean?" I spat desperately.

"It doesn't matter."

"Then what does matter?"

He brought a hand up and pointed at the disk that was still flattened in my palm. Though his expression had been cold, deadly, and efficient until now, as it switched to that disk, I watched his cheeks twitch.

I saw the greed.

So I took another step back. "I'm not a piece for your collection," I found myself stuttering.

He arched an eyebrow. "You're not an empath, are you?"

"What?"

"I'm not detecting any psychic activity. So how can you know what I'm thinking?"

My shoulders crumpled in. I brought one hand up and spread it wide, still unable to shift the hand that was holding onto that disk. "Look, I'm sure we could get you some help," I began, wondering just how I would get this guy to agree to go to a hospital with me.

He snorted. "I'm not mad. Trust me. I mean, I should be. I came to this shit-hole to get that sun calendar, but I had no idea someone like you would be waiting, walking around for all to see."

"What the hell does that mean?" I pleaded desperately.

"You're an Aquin."

"And what's an..." I couldn't say it. My lips went to form the words, but they died on my tongue, twisting, punching back into my throat, and forcing me to swallow them as if I mustn't, mustn't ever speak them aloud.

He watched my strange emotional reaction, and finally the right side of his mouth ticked up until he was no longer offering me that lopsided grin. "You've got no memories, ha?" His gaze darted over me. "What are you doing here?"

"Just who the hell are you and what is this?"

He brought a hand up and tapped his chest. "My name is Zel."

"I thought you were John Doe?"

"No you didn't. You appreciated I was lying. Now, as to what I am? I'm a Level VIII Finder."

I made a suitable face at that – just the same confused, twisted face any sane person would. But the hope that I was still a sane person was starting to wane. Because a smart person would have run from the room the second John – I mean Zel – had attacked Robert. Heck, a sane person would never, ever have followed this man here in the first place. "... Finder?"

"Soldiers of fortune hired by members of the 10 Families to find objects through the multiverse."

That did it. My jaw felt like it unhinged as it opened. I wanted to say something – scream at him that that was impossible – but nothing would come out.

"This is the bit where you ask what you are. The answer is – a hell of a find." He ticked his gaze up and down me, but there was no lecherous quality to it – just the sharp attention of a valuer. I felt like I was some mud-covered ruby that had been pulled from a river bank only for this guy to brush off all my imperfections and stare into my depths.

His gaze was so prying, I instinctively brought an arm up and locked it around my middle, receding into my shoulders as they drew toward my ears and my head pushed down. "You're mad."

"No, I'm an alien. Well, kind of. I'm half human – or at least half a human from my own dimension. That being said, I seem to have a close biological match to the humans on this planet."

"You're mad," I whispered again, tears starting to fill my eyes.

"No, I told you – I'm a finder. And I found you."

Fear catapulted through me, making me stand straighter, making my cheeks droop further. "What... what are you going to do with me?"

"Take you back and hand you to the Aquins. I've got no idea what you're doing hanging out in this dimension, and I'm not sure I care. But that," he pointed to the little disk in my hand, and I instinctively closed my fingers around it as if it was up to me to protect it, "will be worth my weight in dalium ore."

I started to shake my head. And once I'd started, I couldn't stop. I shook my head at the rain this morning, at the fact all this had started because I hadn't been able to get an extension on my stupid bill. At the fact I'd been desperate enough to sell my grandmother's last memory. At this guy. At Robert thinking he could actually sell me. But more than anything? At this damn disk in my hand. Because the more I clutched it, the more it seemed to... feed back into me. As I gave it the heat from my palm, it gave back double. As I clutched hold of it with all my might, it gave me might in return.

And maybe it finally gave me the strength to do what I should've done the first second I clapped eyes on this fallen God. I opened my mouth, and I got ready to scream.

I didn't get a chance. In a flash, John was behind me, latching a hand over my mouth.

I jolted hard, trying to elbow him in the back, but he shifted his weight, let his hand drag down my face, and pressed a thumb between my eyes.

"Better get the frequency right – wouldn't want to harm your pretty little brain," he muttered.

I felt something jolt from his thumb into my head, and instantly blackness swamped me.

I remained conscious long enough to flop back into his arms, to feel them loop around me as he plucked me up with the ease of somebody carrying an empty sack.

This was a dream, I tried to tell myself. And when I awoke, everything would return to normal.

But that? That was the dream. For when I woke, my life would never be the same again.

# Chapter 5

Zel

I'd expected to find nothing of use on this planet – apart from the sun calendar.

Boy, had I been wrong.

Very occasionally I would get lucky like this – go out in search of some find only to find a greater one by chance.

This?

I smiled down at the woman in my arms as I walked casually down the corridor.

Around me, people dropped like flowers.

They'd wake up – in an hour or two. They'd have thunderous headaches, and to be honest, they sounded like they would deserve them.

I'd always thought I'd had questionable morals and I'd grown up in a twisted galaxy – I could see this Planet Earth was no better.

I was hardly one to talk, but at least I didn't sell people. I'd seen the look in that asshole Robert's eyes back there – and he would've done anything for money.

I walked up to the mechanical apparatus at the end of the room that would take me to the roof of this building.

Two security guards came thundering down the corridor, but they couldn't come within 20 meters of me before their legs just cut out from underneath them. Their eyes rolled into the backs of their heads, and with two loud thumps, they struck the ground.

I was aware of the fact there were rudimentary security cameras in this corridor. I'd already switched them off. I hadn't allowed a single camera to take footage of me since I'd stepped foot in this building.

No evidence. That was the mantra of a finder. At least when you went through the Hall of Doors. Nobody cared in my galaxy what you did. Everyone was aware of aliens, and everybody knew who was in control.

Out here, you had to follow the rules. Break them, and you might not ever be able to travel through the Hall of Doors again.

Hall of Doors, ha? That just got me thinking of the woman in my arms again, and as I repositioned her, her wet, bunched hair trailing around my fingers, I looked down at her with a frown.

I'd pulled the sun calendar out of her pocket and secured the Aquin lock in there instead. It was best to keep the two of them close for now.

That lock alone would bring me one of the greatest windfalls I'd ever received. But the woman who the lock belonged to?

I had to stop myself from salivating at precisely what she'd get me.

Of all the 10 Families, the Aquins were by far the most mysterious.

It was said they were the first family to utilize the Hall of Doors, walking through the multiverse to acquire their dreams.

It wasn't unheard of for their people to be left behind. Presumably that's what had happened to this woman. Though the fact she didn't know she was an Aquin was curious.

Maybe she'd been born here. Maybe she'd been kidnapped and taken here. Maybe she was a member of the ruling class, and in bringing her back, maybe I would finally make it big.

As I shifted her closer to me, using my elbow to press the button on the rudimentary panel by the door, I moved my grip until it pressed against her pocket, holding the lock in place.

Though the mysteries of Aquin technology were largely beyond me, I could appreciate that those locks were no longer made. They were unusual, highly advanced technology the Aquins had inherited from an earlier, more sophisticated time in their history. That's why they were so valuable. That's why with that lock alone, I could probably retire.

The elevator arrived.

That large brute who accosted me in the atrium was in it. He took one surprised look from me, out to the downed security guards behind me, then over to Helen in my arms.

He opened his mouth. I extended the effect field from one of my many implants to him, and it shot through his nervous system in a single second.

His eyes rolled into the back of his head just as his mouth jolted open. He fell back, slipping down the smooth wall behind him and falling into a heap.

As I walked in, I pushed him with the toe of my shoe, making room. I turned around, and rather than access the input panel for this mechanical lift, I made a remote link to it with one of my implants instead.

With a ping, the doors closed, and we began to rise.

It was time to head home.

Helen was strangely heavy in my arms. There was no reason for her slight form to affect my muscular strength. I was only half human, and the rest of me was a specifically bred genetic mutant designed for speed and strength.

Her slight 55 kilos should be nothing to me. Then again, my arms weren't dragging low and my back wasn't stooping. The weight I was feeling was internal. This... confusion.

No, confusion was too strong a word.

Second guessing was more accurate.

As a finder, I appreciated that everything had its worth. To someone else, at least. The worth of an individual to themselves, however, was irrelevant.

That was a fancy way of me saying that it didn't matter that I was plucking Helen from her life. That I would take her from the simple cradle of Earth to a galaxy she wouldn't even be able to begin to imagine.

She belonged there, and in returning her, I would benefit.

That's all that mattered, right?

... Right?

I shook my head just as the doors opened to the upper floor of this building.

I'd already done a quick structural scan of it, and I could appreciate that from this top floor, I'd be able to access a flat roof. There I would wait until the next scheduled gate would open at night.

As the doors opened and I walked through, several startled people stared at me. A wet man dripping water everywhere as he cradled a comatose woman to his chest was obviously not a commonplace event on Earth.

One woman darted toward me, concern flattening her features. Before she could get close, I shut her down – just like a computer.

She crumpled.

Somebody came from their office – they crumpled, striking the door and sliding down it until they thumped against the carpeted floor tiles.

Everybody who walked out fell.

As I walked down the long corridor, it looped around the side of the building until I saw a long bank of windows that offered a view over the city.

It was a dump. Even the worst shit-holes of my galaxy were better than this. Rudimentary transport that belched unacceptable levels of pollution into the atmosphere could be seen driving over the streets below. Ineffectual, badly designed, unstable buildings reached for the sky like crippled, arthritic fingers.

The storm that had plagued the city all day continued to hail down, the clouds thankfully dark and ensuring few pedestrians were out. Few pedestrians meant few potential witnesses.

I turned hard on my foot, heading toward a nondescript door to my left. Pinning Helen to my chest with one sturdy arm, I reached out and tried the handle. It was locked. With one twist of my grip to the side, I broke the mechanism and shoved forward. The door opened out onto a set of stairs that led up onto the roof.

I took them, one at a time, each step making me wonder just how much I'd get for Helen.

If I was truly lucky... if I was truly, truly lucky, I might even be able to buy a pass.

My back extended and shuddered at that thought. Then I quickly pushed it away.

Passes were legendary things that were obsessively talked about in the finder community, among soldiers, among servers – among all those who weren't in one of the 10 Families.

And what were passes?

Licenses to resettle.

It wasn't enough for the 10 Families to cast their net through the multiverse, searching out any object they fancied. The intelligent Families kept informants in particularly rich dimensions, and those informants were paid to look for valuable information, objects, and riches.

It meant you could resettle in a dimension – in a place other than my twisted galaxy.

It was a chance at another life.

"Put it the hell out of your head," I muttered to myself hard, my tongue striking the top of my mouth with the force of a hammer against rock.

I finally reached the top of this short stairwell – despite the fact it had felt longer as my thoughts had taken me.

I didn't even bother to open the door. I brought a leg up, fired up the implants in my knee and ankle, and kicked through.

I miscalculated the move, expecting more resistance and sounder structural integrity. The result was that door blasted into a thousand pieces, scraps of wood scattering everywhere, scattering around me, and striking Helen.

I brought a hand up and brushed them from her face, pulling her up and in until her body was more protected by mine.

Then I tilted my head up and assessed this city – this world.

I had to be careful.

I couldn't allow the joy of this find to unsettle my nerve.

There was every possibility I wasn't alone on this planet – that I wasn't the only finder here, let alone the only alien. Of course I wasn't the only alien – the one in my arms was evidence enough Earth had been settled.

I didn't have weapons. Only my body, the implants within it, and the simple matter calibrator I'd managed to build upon landing on Earth. It was rudimentary, but enough that I'd managed to scan this world's simple planetary database – something they called the Internet. And with that, I'd found the design for this suit, and critically, a scan of this country's money.

The calibrator was in my pocket and was already integrated with the implants of my central nervous system. All I would require was a thought, and it could print me what I wanted.

It would be useless when it came to weapons – of any sufficient caliber, that was. If there were other aliens out there – and God forbid, if there were other finders – any weapon I could print with my device would be like taking a stick to an ion-cannon fight.

Assessing the roof fully, I found the door to a maintenance cupboard that would lead down into the air conditioning primary unit. I walked up to it, and this time carefully opened the door, turning around and closing it behind me.

Rather than pushing Helen down on the cold concrete ground and waiting for nightfall, I sat down, keeping her pinned to my chest.

Let her go, my heart told me, and this find would easily slip from my fingers.

I kept a scan on conditions outside, locked my gaze ahead, and didn't blink once until night fell.

My mission to Earth was over.

And it was about time.

# Chapter 6

Helen

I dreamed.

Of palaces – in the sky, built along the side of spire-like crystal mountains. Of ships with the wings of angels. Of cities – a vast civilization stretching between the stars.

They were the most vivid dreams of my life. They seemed to claw their way up from some hidden part of me. And as they arose, they opened my mind to more.

But the dreams couldn't last.

I started to become aware of my body, my arms hunched in, my head rolled to the side, my forehead resting on something warm. Something that continued to rise in and out methodically like the wall of someone's chest as they breathed slowly.

I was cold. And yet I was warm – this unusual pressure spreading from some point in my left hip.

It felt like a doorway – back into something I'd left behind. Something—

I felt something move around me – and it didn't take me too long to appreciate they were arms. Two strong, warm arms. One was fixed underneath my legs, the other around my shoulders as I was tilted forward.

And that's when I appreciated I was being held. My forehead didn't just feel as if it was resting against someone's breathing chest – it was.

I could discern the intake and expiration of air as it shifted over my cheek and tickled my hair.

For a second, I allowed myself to be enfolded by the feeling of being held firmly.

It was easily the most stilling moment of my life.

There was no stress, no danger, just that breathing, just this warmth, just the feel of those arms around me.

But it didn't last.

Whoever was holding me took a sharp intake of breath. "About time." They rose.

I rose with them. I didn't stand – I just finally pulled myself all the way out of unconsciousness. I grappled with my muscles, trying desperately to gain control over my face until finally I opened one eye.

That's when I saw a memorable set of eyes. They flicked down as soon as I shifted.

"Awake already? Obviously I didn't take account of your unique biology. Can't have you awake though, Princess. I'm pretty sure there's competition out there, and the less you can run away and scream, the better."

The words were sharp, but the sentiment behind them meaningless.

Princess?

Running and screaming?

I—

Suddenly my memories slammed back into my head. Or maybe something slammed into my hip – piggybacking on that warmth that continued to spread through me, holding me to the spot.

I remembered my day – right down to that mean cashier demanding I pay my bill.

The rain. Robert. My sun calendar. And more than anything?

"Zel," my lips opened, and his name sprang from them.

I heard him give a throaty chuckle. "You're coming around quickly. But like I said – time to—"

"No. Don't make me go to sleep. Please."

"No can do," Zel said smoothly as I heard the creak of joints and he stood. "We've got company out there. It's simpler if you stay down."

"Company?"

"Other finders. I was right – turns out a shithole like Earth attracts its fair share of aliens looking to cash in."

Earth. Aliens. Finders. The whole day flooded back in one piece, but so did something else. It was wrapped up with the dream I'd had before waking – those insane, specific, vibrant dreams that had felt like so much more than fancies.

Memories.

They were memories. And they were coming from whatever that weird metal disk was in my pocket. I attempted to move, slide a hand down my side, and pluck it up, but Zel stopped my hand in place. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"What am I?"

"I already told you – an Aquin. And if my luck holds out, you'll be a member of the ruling class."

I dwindled into silence, then I felt this... effect field pushing out from Zel. How I knew it was an effect field, I didn't know – but in a split second, I appreciated precisely what it would do. It would knock me out, and the next time I woke, I'd be there – back there.

Home. No – a sudden surge of emotion rose through my chest, clutched my heart, and felt as if it wanted to squeeze me to death. It wasn't home.

I'd fled that place, hadn't I? Or maybe someone had taken me from there for a reason. The point was, I couldn't go back.

"Nighty night," Zel said as he angled me up. He was bringing me closer to the implant in his brain – the one that had the ability to interrupt the nervous systems of simple biological creatures. With nothing more than a single thought, that effect field spreading from him could shut me down like a computer.

But I wasn't simple.

I was... an Aquin.

That recognition was like a bomb going off in my mind. It seemed to tear through not just my sense of self, but my memories. I felt like I couldn't trust anything that had ever happened to me. From the bill that had almost robbed me of my life this morning, to... even to my grandma.

What had they been? A lie? A distraction?

A story to keep me quiet and down?

For the first time in my life, I felt something rising through me.

It wasn't just anger – it was force.

I'd been angry plenty of times. Like I'd said so many times before – my life seemed perfectly programmed to keep me down. I'd felt despair and twisted rage before. But I'd never known what to do with them.

Now certainty rose through me. And it was just in time.

As Zel's effect field infiltrated my mind, I fought back.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

... I found myself connecting to that strange disk in my pocket, and even though I hadn't recognized it the first time I'd seen it, over the hours of it being close to me, it had connected to me in some vital way. Enough that with one single wish, it interfered with Zel's effect field.

I heard him splutter. "What the hell? We'll try that again."

The effect field doubled. It didn't matter.

"Dammit." I could feel as he tilted his head down, and even though my eyes were tightly screwed shut, I knew he stared at me. "What are you doing?"

I opened one eye. "Don't shut me down. Please. And don't take me off this planet," I added in a shuddering voice that sounded like I was dying of hypothermia.

"Listen, lady, we don't have time for this. I've detected a finder two blocks away. It's not gonna take them long to find us. That's what finders do," he said churlishly. "And as for taking you off this planet? It's not your planet. I don't know why you're here – but you'll be—"

"Worth a lot to you if you take me... back there," I said, not daring to use the word home. That place didn't dignify the use of the word home. Home was where your heart was, where you felt safe, and where you could grow. Back there? I'd be stifled like a flower kept in the dark.

"... Are you starting to get your memories back? Inconvenient," he concluded with a huff. "Now stay still."

I felt him pump more energy into the effect field until it blasted against me like a wave.

But I just squeezed my eyes closed, connected to the strange device in my pocket, and pumped it full of my singular desire to stay conscious.

A few seconds later, Zel took a harsh breath, his lips slicing hard over his teeth. "Just stop it – you don't want to be conscious for the next bit. Trust me. Unless you've gone through the Hall of Doors multiple times, it can be a life-changing experience. Not in a good way."

... Hall of Doors?

Those three words seemed to reach in and drag up a memory from my depths – it was one that was formless and dark, and certainly not something I could hope to understand.

I felt cold. All over. A sudden cold that reached into me and froze me from the inside out as if I'd swallowed an ice core.

Zel frowned. "I'm sensing a sudden decrease in core temperature. What are you doing to yourself? Is this a protest? Are you gonna kill yourself? That's not an option. Now just let me knock you out."

"Don't take me back there. Please. I can't go back."

"Have you got your full memories back?"

"... No."

"Then how can you even know what you're going back to?"

It was a good question. At least it would be a good question if it could ignore the weight of terror pushing through me. Yes, the only memory I had to go on was my dreams – and it was questionable that they were even memories and not constructs of a frightened mind. That wasn't the point. There was this undeniable sense in me that if I returned, something would happen. I'd be used, I'd be taken, and I'd be—

I felt tears start to trickle down my cheeks.

At the sight of them, far from softening, Zel sighed. He rolled his eyes. "Sob stories are not gonna work on me, Princess."

I took a tight breath. "How do you know I'm a princess?"

There was a long pause. "... Are you really a princess? It was just a pet name. But can you honestly remember that you're a princess?" Excitement punched through his tone. "Are you actually a princess of the Aquin family? Because you'll be worth—"

"The destruction of your galaxy?" I spoke over him.

"What?"

"You take me back there, and everything will fall."

"... Nice try. You've already admitted you can't remember most of your memories. Considering your halting speech, I'm guessing you barely understand anything. You're terrified – understandable considering you've just found out not only that aliens exist, but you're one of them. You don't know what our galaxy is like – so how can you know what it will be like to return to?"

I heard it – hidden in his tone. Trapped in his body, too. As he continued to pin me against his chest as if I was some find he would never let go of, I felt this wave of hatred and disgust pushing through him. It wasn't directed at me – just at his so-called home.

"No matter what you say, I'm still going to take you back."

"Then you're worse than I suspected." As I spoke, there was authority in my tone. Or perhaps authority was the wrong way to put it. There was... poignancy. Wisdom. As if not only did I know what I was speaking about, but I had the moral certainty to weigh judgment on this man.

I felt him stiffen, his lips slicing over his teeth again. "You're in no place to judge me. We are all products of our environments."

"We're only products of our environments as long as we prevent ourselves from breaking free. If you take me back there," every word slowed down as more certainty flooded through me, "you'll be condemning everyone."

There was a significant pause, one where I started to hope that I'd finally gotten through to him. "Yeah, well, maybe everything deserves to die in that galaxy." With that twisted thought echoing through the air, he pushed forward. "I can't afford to waste any more energy trying to knock you out. I warn you – if you try to run, I'll chase. And I'm a mean bastard who never lets go," he added as he tightened his grip around me, pushing me closer to his chest.

His fingers were one thing – steely stiff, determined, and hard like a vice.

His heart as it beat in his chest and the warmth of his circulatory system pressing into my face?

They were something else. And the heat of his body compared to the coldness of his voice was incongruous – two vastly different puzzle pieces that weren't meant to fit together.

"Dammit, he's scaling the side of the building. Shit. It's gonna take me at least 15 minutes to catch a gate. You'd better not try to run," he snarled down at me.

I opened one eye, then the other. I didn't say a word. I just stared up at him with determination flaring through me.

If I'd had this force – this desire to stop something from happening no matter the cost – Robert would never have been able to drag me through the court. I would've fought, tooth and nail, and I wouldn't be in this situation now. "I'll run," I said simply, meaning every single word.

I didn't know what I was running from. I didn't know what was waiting back there for me in whatever galaxy this brute of a man came from.

But I knew one thing. For the first time in my life, I had a purpose – and it would not be pulled from me like everything else.

Though I could tell his muscles were tense with the fact another finder was tracking us down, he stole a moment to stare down at me. As we looked into each other's eyes, I could appreciate we were not equally matched. He was an alien, he was studded with implants, and he knew far more about the multiverse than I did. But unlike him, I was rising.

The question was, would I rise fast enough and would this sense of purpose within me continue?

Or would it crumble as I lost and I was dragged back to that hell?

# Chapter 7

Zel

Not ideal. Far from frigging ideal.

This woman – Helen – though I guaranteed that wouldn't be her real name – was waking up. Far faster than I would have accounted for.

Maybe it was the lock? I'd remove it from her, but that wouldn't be a great idea.

Once an Aquin responded to their lock, the connection between them was like two powerful magnets. Drag them too far apart, and they'd just snap back.

My neck was itchy, and I wanted more than anything to bring up a hand and scratch it. Helen's bunched, scraggly hair was spilling around my throat and shoulders, but I'd just have to put up with the sensation. Because dropping Helen was not an option, despite the way she'd stared at me with daggers in her eyes.

I'd underestimated her.

Back in the park and in that lawyer's office, she'd looked as strong as a dead body. Now? There was something growing in her eyes.

Who exactly was she?

A princess – if her faulty memories were anything to go by.

But why then would she be so determined not to return home?

Emotions, I concluded determinedly, shoving that word into my mind and pushing out all doubt.

I'd never lost my memories before – but Helen wasn't the first sleeper I'd picked up, either. I'd been sent to find lost members of the 10 many times. So I knew that when they'd had their memories wiped – just like Helen – it would always take time for their original personalities to settle.

Right now it was time to focus on the situation at hand.

There was a finder out there – I could tell. My every implant was going wild.

If I'd only been able to take sophisticated armor through the Hall of Doors, I wouldn't be in this current predicament. I'd have weapons – defenses. The means to plow through that finder out there, wait for a gate to open, and get the hell out of here.

I didn't. And if my implants were anything to go by, the guy out there didn't have my disadvantage.

Just as I'd been able to manufacture a rudimentary matter calibrator in the few days I'd been on Earth, if this finder had been here long enough, he would have been able to develop far more sophisticated technology. Pulse weapons, shielded armor – you name it.

"Dammit," I spat viciously under my breath for the tenth time as I faced off against the door in front of me.

1001 plans trailed through my mind, grasping at my attention only to fall away when I realized they wouldn't work.

You see, I was hamstrung. By the woman in my arms, to be precise. Though a part of me wanted to appreciate she didn't look the kind to run – I'd seen that look in her eyes. Something was growing behind them, and it told me she would only become less controllable, not more so.

This was meant to be an easy mission, I reminded myself angrily. Then again, I wasn't meant to come across a hidden Aquin.

Everything costs, I thought firmly. There was no such thing as a free find. Your luck would only take you so far. If you wanted the big prizes – and Helen was an astoundingly big prize – then you had to work for them.

That thought settled my nerves. I backed up until my shoulders were pressed against the cold concrete behind me.

Closing one eye and keeping the other open, fixed as if I would never blink again – not that I had to, anyway – I logged onto my onboard processors.

They started to detect energy picking up all around me.

It would be the beginnings of a gate opening.

I thought, running through seemingly impossible quantum calculations in my mind with nothing more than my human brain until I got my answer. Judging by the particle buildup, it would take approximately 12.5 more minutes for the gate to open up.

The gate would not open up above this roof. It wasn't that specific.

Nor did I have the kind of connection to the guards of the Hall of Doors to get them to open a gate when I needed one. Instead, before you left and traveled through a door, you were informed of the schedule of openings.

The openings tapped into natural quantum temporal fluctuations in the multiverse.

In some dimensions, potential wormholes would open every few minutes. Heck, in some, they were permanently open – just like in my own universe.

But in others like this dimension, you had to wait. According to Earth hours, gates only opened every 24.2 hours.

"Come on. 12.5 minutes. We can do this." Though I usually wasn't one to mutter to myself, something about the situation was undoing my nerves.

Maybe it was foresight – my capacity to predict the future. Because going through the gate was one thing. As soon as I got through it, if that finder outside came with me – I'd just be taking the fight back home.

"You won't get through it," Helen suddenly interrupted, her voice low and cold.

Ha, cold. Despite the fact I should be paying utmost attention to this frenetic situation, that amused me.

The woman I'd met in front of that lake had been all doe-eyed, soft, and meek. Certainly not the kind to spit out a threat with the same vehemence that now parted Helen's lips.

With one eye still fixed open, I swiveled it down to her. "You're better off with me than you are with that other finder out there."

"How do you know?"

"I know you don't want to believe this, but I'm pretty moral compared to your average finder."

"Correct – I don't believe that."

Correct? Even her tone was starting to change, not to mention her choice of words.

Was that an imperious flash I could see in her eyes?

To think, she'd passed moral judgment on me earlier – and she was doing the same now. She couldn't even begin to appreciate what she'd become when her memories returned, though. This fear would disappear, and she would embrace her right to rule.

That settled my mind, my jaw tightening as I clenched my teeth and spat through them, "I have a code – I guarantee whoever is out there doesn't." Though I tried to keep my voice even, on the word code, it shook.

Because that right there was a deep part of me – a part I very rarely showed anyone. There was no point. Where I came from, you didn't get points for being moral. You got points for doing what it took.

It was only those who had the privilege of being protected from birth that valued their morality. Because they took it for granted. Me? I had to earn it. Every time I left another finder alive or didn't raze a city on some unknown plant to get to some object – I was making a choice according to my code. One that would cost me but benefit others.

Though I knew now was not the time to lose my cool – I could rapidly feel it unraveling around me. It was all because of the look in her eyes – the pointed judgment.

"Listen, lady—" I began. I didn't usually call women ladies. I'd looked it up on the Earth's Internet before coming to this city, though, and it seemed like a common enough phrase.

I stopped.

Until now, I'd been utilizing the rudimentary jamming technology of my implants to ensure the finder outside could not isolate my exact location.

But in a snap, my jamming field failed.

Helen opened her mouth, her lips moving like whips around her teeth. I could tell she was only going to continue the argument – but she suddenly stopped, her gaze swiveling to the side.

... So she could feel the finder too, ha? With my arms around her, I was keeping a continuous lock on her biology, and her vital readings had shifted. She hadn't started to come into the extended senses of the Aquins early. No – it would be her connection to her lock.

Short of understanding how much they were worth and the fact they could no longer be made, I had absolutely no idea what they could do. They were secret Aquin technology – and no amount of scanning would reveal the lock's secrets.

But was she tapping into the lock's abilities now? Was it alerting her of every threat in our surroundings?

There was no time to digest that thought.

"Move," she spluttered, thrusting into me, trying to pull me forward.

I complied.

In a split second – I had to decide whether to stay exactly where I was or follow her command – but dammit, I complied.

I didn't seem to have any option but to.

And it damn well saved my life.

Something suddenly blasted through the concrete behind me, sending chips scattering out everywhere. Superheated, they dashed against the fabric of my suit, burning it instantly.

I found myself instinctively crumpling Helen in, drawing her long form up and folding it against my chest so not a single scrap of dust could scatter over her face or exposed hands.

Immediately, my senses sharpened, battle data flooding into my implants and informing me the door behind me had been shot by a class-two ion pulse cannon.

Rudimentary stuff. If I was back home, it would be the kind of pea shooter you'd use at a bar fight.

I wasn't back home.

It would be more than enough to blast me apart – if I let the bastard out there get off another shot.

I spun to the side, legs pumping as I threw myself toward the aircon vent in front of me. I leaped up it, easily scaling the meter height, my boots indenting the thin steel as I pushed off, landed behind it, and paused for a microsecond.

"Move," Helen snapped again, her voice shaking with certainty.

I wasn't detecting anything – I'd located the finder, and he wasn't about to fire another shot. But as soon as Helen's voice echoed out and powered into me, it shook me to the core and forced my muscles forward. The next thing I knew, I pitched to the side. It was just in time.

From the side, a blast of hot blue light slammed into the concrete wall, instantly ate through it, and ruptured the aircon vent. The flimsy steel had no chance, and it erupted in unholy flames as molten chunks of metal splashed out everywhere.

This time I crumpled forward, folding Helen up and clutching her so tightly, it would've taken a tractor beam to pull her from my grip.

As the molten metal splashed everywhere, several chunks scattering over my back, instantly burning the fabric of my suit, and reaching my skin beneath, Helen dodged the blow.

But this assault was only getting started.

There were two finders.

Dammit – I'd only detected one, but that second shot had been fired by a man on the opposite side of the roof, maybe even a sniper located on some other roof.

My head spun.

"One of them is coming," Helen stammered.

I opened my mouth to ask which one – then I reminded myself I was a fully functional finder.

I could hear footfall, pick up the almost imperceptible creak of metal-assisted joints, breath, too. And if I really pushed my senses, I could feel the heat of someone's circulatory system. More than that – the growing heat source of some gun. It would be the level II ionic pulse gun that had ripped through the concrete earlier.

I stopped trying to calculate my chances. Because I didn't have any.

This would be one of those battles that would come down to split-second decisions – one after another as I fought for my life on fast forward.

I pushed up, spun to the side, and pitched into a roll. Let me tell you, it's almost impossible to do a successful roll when you have somebody pinned against your chest.

I managed it, my superior muscles holding Helen against my chest as I leaped and flipped onto my back then pushed up.

Another hot blast of ionic fire pulsed through the wall and landed right in the position I'd been standing.

These weren't lucky potshots – the two finders out there would have targeting systems. Systems that had locked onto me.

I was now a dead man walking.

Eight minutes. My background processes reminded me of that, a small percentage of my thinking power locked on the particles building through the air – the same particles that would open a gate when the time came.

But the time was highly unlikely to come. Because there was no damn way I could survive being sniped at for eight minutes.

"We need to get off this roof. We need to run," Helen tried.

"And how the hell are we going to do that? The mechanical lift in this building is far too slow. We'd be sitting ducks."

"Those... finders," she struggled with that word, "must've gotten up here somehow. Maybe whatever they used is still out there?"

... It was an uncomfortably good point. One I should already have appreciated.

My implants continuously created logs of recent scans, and I accessed them now, quickly appreciating that as that finder had scaled this building, he'd done so smoothly, my scans of him not registering any clambering, just a slow, steady rise.

That meant there was some kind of hover platform out there, didn't it?

If I could access it—

"We need to get out of here now," Helen spluttered.

She was right – remaining here was no longer an option.

I thrust to the side, calculating every single incoming point of battle data as fast as I could. From the direction of airspeed, to the ambient temperature, to the buildup of quantum temporal particles – all of it would affect how these finders operated, the precise destructive power of their ionic blasts, and most importantly, my chances.

I shifted toward the wall in front of us, intending to use nothing more than my unassisted shoulder to break through it. I had more than enough strength to do it, but—

Helen suddenly shoved a hand up, latched it on my chin, and turned my face to the side.

My body was primed – especially in battles like this – to ensure people couldn't move my form without my permission. If you became limp to somebody's touch and they tackled you, they'd take you like a dog ripping through a doll.

And yet, there was nothing I could do to stop Helen as she jerked my head to the side. "There," she had time to say.

I shifted forward, changing plans in a split second.

And it was damn lucky I did – two coordinated ionic blasts slammed past me, so close they didn't just slice through the fabric of my suit – they burned it into nothing more than its constituent gases, traces of ash tumbling down around me and marking the ground.

I threw myself forward. No more questions. No more time to question.

I rounded my shoulder, punched it forward, strengthened my skeletal system with a blast of energy from my implant, and I broke through.

Concrete hailed around me, the steel dividers within the wall breaking with the ease of a bear standing on a twig.

I didn't have to crumple further over Helen – she pulled her head in until she was pressed hard against my chest. Even then, I secured my arm further around her back, cradling her with everything I had.

As soon as I burst through the concrete wall, I saw two flashes. One to my left at approximately 90 degrees up – the other to my right at head height.

The finders.

I didn't have time to appreciate I'd been right. Obviously these two bastards had been on Earth for a lot longer than me. They hadn't just managed to develop themselves level II ionic pulse guns. They had hover platforms. Variable hover platforms. Don't know what I mean? Imagine this. Imagine a platform constituted by tiny millimeter-diameter hovering drones. Drones that could link into your nervous system and be controlled seamlessly by your mere thoughts. Think of flat footing, and they'd create a platform. Think of a swarm, and they'd arc around you, putting down a rudimentary shield.

You could use them as steps to walk through the very sky. You could use them as a rope to clamber down a building. They were as variable as your imagination.

But fortunately these finders were sorely lacking in that.

The hover bots were currently nothing more than small square platforms beneath the finders' feet as they rose through the air.

Both had level II ionic pulse guns. And both were trained on me.

And both muzzles flashed as the energy coils at the base of the guns ignited.

A single second. That would be all it would take before those two ionic blasts reached me and tore me down the middle.

I had one option.

Time to use most of the power in my primary implant.

I'd only be able to do this once.

Just as those two ionic pulse guns got ready to fire, I let loose with my implant, creating a massive effect field that blasted out like a chaotic storm. I wasn't trying to shut down these finders' central nervous systems. I was trying to interfere with the neural links they'd be using to fire their weapons.

A god-awful ringing burst through my brain as I set my implants to full. The kind of ringing that made you wonder if it was your brain cells bursting apart.

I stopped myself from wincing – heck, I somehow managed to stop myself from closing my eyes as the field blasted out.

It was the only thing that saved our lives.

A microsecond later – the finders fired. Two ionic bolts shot toward me. I didn't have the time or processing power left over to estimate their trajectories.

Fear filled my mind. I'd either saved myself, or this would be my last moment.

But just as I forced myself to take a step forward, the two ionic blasts landed. Either side of me – not into me. Though one was close enough that it caught the edge of my shoe, most of the shot's destructive power was absorbed by the concrete beneath me as the rudimentary leather of my shoe was blasted apart and burned to a cinder.

Concrete dust splattered everywhere, blasting up around me as smoke and power filled the air, lighting up the night.

Helen didn't even scream.

She didn't even scream.

She clutched a hand hard around my collar, squeezing her eyes shut and drawing her face in as crippling heat buffeted around us.

There was nothing I could do as I felt her skin blister.

I knew the secret to pulling off a successful mission like this was to not get emotionally involved. What was the point?

Emotions only fed into themselves. Follow your emotion, and you'd only find more.

If you wanted to find something in the real world, you needed to use reason to wipe away every last heartfelt feeling you could.

But as I felt Helen's skin blister and her nervous system go haywire as pain shot through her form, rage billowed within me.

I didn't stop moving; I started. As the clouds of acrid dust erupted around me, the concrete beneath my feet fracturing and caving into the floor below, I thrust forward. I leaped, jumping free of the fracturing roof just in time as it crumbled down and flattened the office beneath it.

The finders recharged their guns and reoriented their attacks.

My life flashed before my eyes. Not that there was that much of it.

I wouldn't say my existence had been routine – surely I'd led one of the most diverse and exciting lives of any creature in the multiverse. I'd been to more dimensions than I could count. I'd seen life in all its various forms. I'd seen the most extraordinary alien planets. And yet, what had my life been fundamentally?

One task after another. One soulless pursuit after one soulless pursuit. I found things, but nothing that mattered to me.

These thoughts – these haranguing, deep, gouging thoughts – were the ones I only ever had when I was in the Hall of Doors.

Now they assailed me – but at the worst possible time, when I was fighting for my life.

Helen still didn't say a word; her lips pressed against the fabric of my shirt as she tried to breathe through the smoke.

She no longer caught my chin or told me when to jump or dodge, and I wondered if her body was now too consumed by the pain of her burned skin.

That made me angry again, angry enough to try something desperate.

I had nothing left, right? I'd already used a last-ditch blast from my implant, and my processing power had been cut down to its minimum.

I was a sitting duck, as the humans of this planet would say. But I was also a desperate man.

I locked my gaze on the edge of the roof.

I pushed my body – used every ounce of strength I had in my muscles, forcing them to act like springs as I shot forward.

My scanners alerted me to the fact the two finders swept in, using their variable platforms to swing in behind us as they lined up their shots.

My mind blared at me, my onboard processors warning me that the coils in the back of the guns had reset and they were building with energy.

It was time to gamble. Then again, what was I thinking? This entire fight had been a gamble.

But this would be the worst gamble yet.

If I stood here – I'd be shot and Helen would come with me. Obviously these finder idiots had no idea of her worth. They were only after the sun calendar in my pocket.

So I could tell they would not shrug at killing us both.

Knowing that was one thing. Doing what I was about to do was another.

I could survive a drop off a tall building like this. I might be worse for wear considering the amount of juice I'd given up in that effect-field attack – but I'd live. With enough time, I'd heal, too.

Helen was another matter.

Even if I fell and tried to buffer the impact, it would still be too much for her weak skeletal system.

That didn't stop me. And she didn't stop me, either – even though a part of me told me she could.

As those two finders lined up their shots, I reached the edge of the roof. I jumped. I sailed through the air, over that knee-high lip of concrete, and out into the night sky.

In a flash, I saw the city stretching out beneath us, glistening like gems, the scum of the day washed away and obscured by the lights of night. Squeeze your eyes just right and travel as fast down the side of a building as I was, and the lights of those buildings were almost indiscernible from the scattered star fields and constellations of space.

There was no time to be distracted by the view.

The sun calendar was still in my pocket.

I'd plunged a hand into my pocket before I jumped off the roof.

I'd been sent to this planet to find this calendar. I certainly hadn't been sent to destroy it.

But I knew what was worth more. An Aquin with a lock was infinitely more valuable.

I had only a number of seconds. That was all I needed. I wrapped my hand around the sun calendar and squeezed, using the default strength of my form as my implants all but gave out.

It was enough to start warping the metal.

These finders weren't idiots. While they wouldn't bat an eyelid at me sacrificing myself over the side of the building – they would do anything to stop me from destroying their find.

Sure enough, as nanoseconds flashed before me, the pavement below flying up fast, I felt one of the finders sweep in from the side.

Their platform extended out beneath my feet, stopping my fall abruptly – in the blink of a damn eye. And unlike hitting the unyielding pavement below, the platform immediately initiated inertial dampeners, ensuring Helen's back didn't break on impact.

I wasn't on the same platform as the finder beside me – he'd made half of his split off and reform underneath me.

And now he was lining up a fatal shot.

I might have finally accessed a platform – but it would cost me my life.

But this was a gamble, remember?

I still had an infinitesimally small amount of juice left in my implant. It was a heck of a lot more sophisticated than the onboard tech these finders would have.

Sure, they'd developed themselves some fancy weaponry and had hover bots, but even though they were wearing visors that covered their faces, I could tell they weren't from sophisticated races.

They weren't even sophisticated finders – maybe only Level IIs.

It was time for them to appreciate what happened when you were six levels above.

I squeezed the juice out of my implant, using it to connect to the hover bots, to bypass their security controls.

In the back of my head, that scrap of attention I was using to lock onto the particle buildup in the air told me I had three and a half minutes.

Three and a half frigging minutes. Just as that Level II Finder connected to his gun and fired, I finally broke through the security controls protecting the platform beneath me.

It was one thing trying to remotely hack into a platform someone else was flying – but with my body connected to these hover bots, it was far easier for my implant to send a message through my feet into every single one of the millimeter-across bots under me.

The platform jerked to the side just as an ionic blast sailed past me. It wasn't quite in time, though, and this one caught me front on the shoulder.

Pain didn't blast through me. I'd already told my body to dampen any physiological processes that would distract me. And agony – specifically the kind of agony you'd get when a hole was blasted right through your shoulder – was distracting indeed.

Immediately the skin cauterized, not that I had that much of a circulatory system. And immediately, the small nanobots that made up my endoskeleton started to work feverishly to fix the hole.

Given time – maybe 48 hours if the blow was truly bad – they would reknit me a new shoulder. Given another day, the skin would reform, too.

Helen – for the first time – shrieked. It was bloodcurdling, trembled with fear, and it was all for me.

She pulled her face from my chest, her eyes filling with tears as they locked on the hole where my shoulder had once been. Fortunately it wasn't a deep enough wound that it had severed my arm. I could see and feel as my central endoskeleton started to bypass the destroyed neural pathways, rewiring them until I regained full control of my arm in a split second.

Now I had control of the platform beneath me, the odds of this game had changed.

The two Level II Finders could obviously appreciate that, as they no longer swept in close, nonchalantly lining up their shots.

I tilted to the side, the platform beneath me responding in a microsecond.

Rather than sprint out across the city and draw everyone's attention, I hugged the building, blasting down several meters and swinging in.

You'd think now I had this platform all I would do was scream out into the sky and keep my movements free.

Wrong. Like I'd said – these were just two Level IIs.

They didn't have the kinds of skills I did.

If they were fighting with platforms, it meant they were used to open-air battles.

Time to take them inside.

Orienting the platform until my good shoulder faced the glass pane in front of me, I plowed through a window into the building.

Halos of glass spat around us like spittle, and I was sure to crumple closer to Helen so they couldn't cut her as they spewed past, scattered into the air, and fell down to earth.

Behind me, what was left of my scanners confirmed the two finders were hesitating.

There were two and a half minutes left until a gate opened.

As my platform blasted me into a large office, I appreciated it was empty.

Hopefully once everyone had woken up in this building, it had been abandoned to figure out how everyone had fallen unconscious.

If there were any security guards left, they better be ready for the fright of their lives.

I pitched the platform to the left, angling my shoulder up again as I approached the door on the opposite side of the room.

With a grunt, I blasted through, wood fracturing everywhere, spreading around me, and dashing against my face. It felt like nothing more than kisses – despite their hard edges – compared to the ionic blast that had taken off my shoulder.

If I'd been in armor, that blast wouldn't have even dented it. Even standard armor would just have taken the energy, redistributed it, and stored it for a counterattack.

But you can't live your life with maybes and could-have-beens.

As a finder, that would just get you killed.

Helen still looked startled, her attention still locked on the hole in my shoulder and not the fact I'd blasted through a building with a hover platform.

Out in the corridor, no lights were on, and the light pollution of the rest of the city couldn't reach in easily. It drew attention to two things – the light bleeding out of the base of the hover bots, and the hole in my shoulder.

As my endoskeleton worked feverishly to repair the damage, a faint green illumination emanated out in a halo.

I didn't have night vision – I didn't need it. With my sophistication, I could see, no matter the illumination. So there was nothing to stop me from appreciating the surprise on Helen's face as she watched my shoulder reknit itself.

... It was in complete contrast to the determination she'd used to face me back in the aircon room. The determination that had crumpled her features, opened her lips wide, and burned in her eyes like a sun going nova. When she'd told me she would run at the first opportunity, I'd believed her.

Now? She looked like the same woman I'd met at the lake.

I heard two cracks as, presumably, the finders blasted into the office behind me.

Leaning on the platform, I directed it to the side, and suddenly blasted it through a wall, plaster scattering around me.

Thankfully Helen closed her mouth and pressed against my chest in time so she didn't breathe a lungful of the stuff.

Her nervous system was calming down quickly – quicker than an ordinary human's should. Was she still in pain? According to her elevated heart rate and blood pressure, that was a yes.

But she wasn't in the agony she'd been in when her skin had blistered. I could even detect an indication she was healing quickly.

That would be her Aquin side reasserting itself, ha?

Though I should be paying attention to the battle, I was distracted enough to wonder who she'd become when her memories returned.

And that? Just reminded me of the fear she'd used on me when she'd begged me not to take her back.

... It was just a fraught emotional reaction to appreciating she was an alien, right? ... Right?

One of the finders took a shortcut, slamming through the wall beside me.

Finally.

There were two minutes left.

Though maybe it would have been smarter to just stay out of these idiots' way, I had a point to prove.

As the finder burst through the plaster, clouds of white dust scattering over his metal visor, he brought his gun up.

Though I hadn't built these hover bots, I now had complete control of them. In the time it took the finder to heft his gun up, I logged into the bots' gravity generators to ensure they enshroud us in a tight grip as I tilted onto the horizontal. I directed the base of the hover bots toward the finder, and his ionic blast slammed into the base of my platform. But at the same time, I sent two bots splitting off.

They weren't large – remember, they were only a millimeter diameter. But small things still count if you know how to use them. And I knew precisely how to use these.

With full, perfect control of them, I sent them slamming out, shooting toward the finder just like tiny darts.

As the ionic blast slammed into the rest of my platform, it ate through half of the bots, causing them to explode in a hail of sparks that spat over the office, plastered over the carpet, and made it catch alight in an instant.

The carpet was irrelevant. The fact I'd just lost half of my platform was irrelevant too as the remaining bots reformed, securing beneath me like a beach reasserting itself after the last wave had receded.

The two bots I'd sent hurtling toward the finder – ah, they were key.

In the confusion of my platform being struck by a blast meant for my head, the guy couldn't scan in time. A critical mistake – a final one, too.

I sent those two hover bots around, blasting out in an arc, heading at him from both directions.

The guy had armor. In the chaos of this fight, I'd somehow managed to scan it for weaknesses. And there were two points – one on the left side of his neck, and one on his right hip.

I directed the bots right into those points.

Before the guy could lift his gun again, they slammed through his armor, gouged holes into it, and plunged easily through his soft flesh.

Blood didn't explode out of the wounds the bots left in his armor – but sparks did. Energy erupted out, scattering down the man's form and sinking into the platform at his feet, disrupting his control as the guy died, fell off, and thumped against the floor.

Helen stiffened to the point where it felt as if she'd become a statue, but she didn't scream. She didn't even breathe.

Me, I managed a grin – though it was fake.

I opened my mouth for a one-liner – it didn't come. There was something about feeling Helen's fear and disgust first-hand that was distracting me.

Tilting my platform to the side, I brought a foot up and twisted the heel in, connecting to the dead finder's platform, easily bypassing his security codes now he was dead.

His platform bots shot over to me, forming a much larger platform beneath me.

I smiled. For the first time since this fight began, satisfaction stretched over my face, dug into my cheeks, and proved to me I'd get through this after all.

Two minutes.

Only two more damn minutes until the gate opened.

I'd be ready.

To access the gate, you needed a word.

Sounds crazy, right? Sounds magical. But the word was not a spell.

It was a code.

The Hall of Doors, as far as I understood it, had an almost omnipresent presence wherever gates opened throughout the multiverse. Or at least that's how I chose to describe it. I imagined those two Anubis-headed guards would frame it differently.

To them, the words you used to open a gate back to the Hall of Doors would be mystical in some way. Maybe fundamental utterances that cut right down to the fabric of reality.

Whatever. Did I really need to know? Could I ever truly understand?

All I needed was that word. Say it aloud when gate particles reached their peak, and it would pull you from one dimension into another. Now that very word readied on my lips as my 120 seconds ticked down.

I couldn't let my defenses drop – that other finder was out there.

I would stay in this building, bashing through the walls, doing untold damage until those 120 seconds – I mean 118 – ran out.

Hopefully that would distract the other finder until the gate opened.

My heart beat harder – a feat considering it barely beat at all.

Helen was quiet. And every few seconds, though I knew I should be keeping my attention for that other finder – wherever he was – I looked down at her.

... Why? What did I honestly expect to see?

She still looked shocked, and from my tight grip of her, I could appreciate she was cold.

Had that one death of a finder affected her so much?

I'd looked it up on her world's Internet – people died on this planet all the time. Some of them peacefully, a lot of them brutally.

Why should a single person's death affect her like this? Especially considering that finder would've done anything to kill her, given a chance?

There were no answers, and there was certainly no time for questions.

I—

"Move!" Helen shrieked so loudly, I swore her voice was like a gate itself – some mystical word designed to blast through my defenses, to grab hold of my muscles, and to pull them.

And pull them they did. Right behind me, that remaining finder blasted through the wall, the platform beneath his feet electrified, arcs of energy slamming out in every direction.

If one of those caught my platform, it would disintegrate the bots beneath.

I had half a second to appreciate I'd been wrong.

Both of the finders had not been Level IIs.

The guy I'd killed certainly had been. This guy?

He was a Level VIII – just like me.

Suddenly the fact there was only 50 seconds to go until the gate opened was irrelevant.

I wouldn't make it. With only two seconds to go, I still wouldn't make it.

Though I hadn't noticed before, this guy had a much more sophisticated platform – and a much more sophisticated gun. He'd ditched the ion cannon he'd been using up on top of the roof – and he had a nerve blaster instead. If a single blast of it got too close to me – within less than a centimeter – I'd shut down. I was—

Helen uncoiled herself, snaked a hand into her pocket, and pulled out the lock. It happened in the blink of an eye – and even though I specialized in the blink-of an-eye, always acting in microseconds, I couldn't stop her.

She pulled up the lock, revealing it in her hand just as the guy leveled his gun at us. "This is an Aquin lock – I'm an—" she began.

I knew what she was doing. In the time afforded to me – I could appreciate her plan. By revealing who she really was, she wanted to buy us some time.

But this finder wasn't fucking around.

Though a neural blaster could be used to shut somebody down – if you actually coped a face-full of the red blast, it would be lethal. The energy of the shot would cut through anything – steel, shielded metal, and, of course, flesh.

I knew what the bastard would do a second before he did it. He fired, and he shot right through Helen's wrist. There was a splatter of blood, the crunch of bone, even the sound of her veins recoiling as they were split. I heard it all and felt more.

Her head jolted against me, her arm flailing as specks of blood rained out that hadn't been cauterized on impact.

Her hand fell to the ground, her fingers opening limply as the Aquin lock rolled out.

Anger had risen in me before. Now a new emotion rose through me, gripping my heart and squeezing it, squeezing it.

Helen didn't scream. She crumpled.

At least the neural blast hadn't been close enough to me to shut down my processes – and obviously it hadn't been coded for Helen's unique biology as it didn't knock her out like a ball to a bat.

I shifted back, pulling the platform beneath me, my heart beating. My heart goddamn beating in my chest. It shuddered, picking up from its almost nonexistent pace, feeling like a fist hammering on me, begging me to move.

As I pitched back, becoming horizontal once more, I commanded my bots to blast out of my platform, and I sent them toward that Level VIII finder.

He fired another shot of that neural pulser – but it slammed into my platform bots. I had to use 50 of them – sacrificing half. That didn't matter. It bought me another second.

As I shifted forward, using the remaining bots of my platform to shoot me toward the window behind me, I slammed out of the building. Once more glass hailed around me, scattering everywhere.

So did Helen's blood. As she struggled not to lose consciousness, she lost control of her injured arm, and it fell down beside me. There was nothing I could do short of stopping and picking it up to prevent it from being slashed against the window cascading around us.

A part of me watched her blood splatter out and sail down through the cold night sky around me.

The rest counted down.

There were 10 seconds to go.

I shot upward, struggling for half a second to figure out where to go.

It was Helen's gaze that did it. As I felt her body attempt to shut down, her eyes fluttered up, and her bleary gaze locked on the sky.

For some reason I took that as a sign – me, the rational man, the man who was not meant to have any emotion.

I shifted up based on nothing more than a hope.

It took one second for the finder to blast out of the building beneath me. He flew horizontally, his gun directed up.

I sacrificed another half of my hover bots, shunting to the side, hoping the coordinated move would be enough.

It was. By a hair's breadth, as the humans of this planet would say. My hover bots were enough to slow the pulse down, enabling me to get out of the way by a fraction of a millimeter. Seriously – a fraction of a millimeter was the only thing that prevented that neural blast from snagging hold of my central nervous system and shutting it down.

Five seconds.

There were five whole goddamn seconds left. To an ordinary person, it was nothing more than a deep breath. The time it took to say hello. The time it took to open a door or close it.

To me – it was an eternity.

The gate word readied on my lips, even though what remained of my brain told me there was no chance I could survive this.

The finder twisted up, and he used his much more sophisticated platform to put on a blast of speed until he drew level with me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye.

My grip tightened on Helen.

Three seconds.

Though the bastard was wearing a visor, I could tell he made eye contact with me. I couldn't look away.

Two seconds.

He would wait until the gate opened before firing.

One second.

Helen moved. She was meant to be unconscious. She wasn't.

With her good hand, she let it drop until her palm slammed onto my leg.

Something shot through her fingers, sunk into my knee, and blasted into the remains of my platform.

It happened in a nanosecond.

Too short for me to appreciate that somewhere in Helen's body – despite the fact she was no longer carrying her lock – she had the power to connect to my implants.

Some force jolted into the hover bots beneath me, forcing something into them. Specifically, all I had. Helen's mere touch was enough to eke out all of my energy. And it plundered it, sinking it into the bots, giving them a sudden surge – enough that we reached higher, that we flew just out of that Level VIII Finder's grip. As he fired, his shot lanced past my bots, missing us.

And my lips? They opened.

I said the gate word.

And the gate surrounded us.

It was time to leave Earth.

But the journey? The journey was just beginning.

The end of Finder's Gate Episode One. Finder's Gate Episode Two is currently available.

Odette C. Bell has written over 100 books. For free series starters, serials, and news, check out www.odettecbell.com.

