Suddenly, a voice boomed across the courtyard that raised Zander’s hackles. It was a voice he’d heard before, from the edge of unconsciousness aboard the Valerian. Where is it? he’d said before he slapped Ace—before he hurt his love. Ignacio’s voice was filled with the same lilting condescension now as he spoke to the men gathered in the central courtyard.
“You!” he yelled. “Take a third of the men and put out that goddamn fire before it spreads. You—what’s your fucking name? Bruno.” He sighed dramatically, as if reaching around in his empty brain for the man’s name was extremely inconvenient for him. “Round up another third to come with me to the storehouses. No, you can’t have him! Not you, Bruno. YOU! That one’s in my group, he’s the best shot.”
Zander rolled his eyes so hard he nearly passed out. He listened to the shuffling of feet around the courtyard as the men determined who went with which group. It took an absurdly long time, and Zander thought a group of schoolchildren could likely form teams faster than these fools. He smiled in satisfaction when he heard Ignacio let out a growl of frustration and bark at the men to move faster.
“You lot leave through the front. I’ll go out through the study in the west wing. The rest of you, stay here, and don’t let that fucking woman out!”
Zander darted quickly behind the door, plastering himself to the wall just before it swung open. Nine men rushed across the foyer and down the hall, heading for the double doors at its end. Ignacio was positioned in the middle of the line, four men in front of him and four men behind, a cushion of safety for his precious, pampered ass as he ran away from the fire and toward whatever treasures laid in his storehouses.
Zander watched silently, his view partially obscured by the door as they entered the study at the end of the hall and exited through a door on the west side of the building. Then, all was quiet.
He took a few steadying breaths and stepped out from behind the door.
Zed, Yuna, and Teshva landed on the desolate planet of Carthosi, just outside the abandoned city of Nurk. The signal Yuna detected hailed from the center of the city, near the only structure left standing among the ruins: a temple, its twisting, spiral corners stretching into the blackened sky. Most of its grand turrets had crumbled away, but the sacrificial altar jutting from its peak remained, a gruesome relic of the city’s past.
The three hunters emerged into the barren landscape silently, breaking apart in a formation each knew by heart. Zed took the lead, heading for the temple as his partners flanked him on either side like ghosts. He held his gun aloft, ready to shoot on sight—she was wanted, dead or alive.
As the temple loomed closer, Zed could hear a gentle melody drifting toward them over the landscape. As the shadow of the grand building enveloped them, he realized it wasn’t a musical recording like he initially guessed. She was singing.
He didn’t know why, but it unnerved him. He’d never thought of her as someone who might sing, or dance, or appreciate art. To him, she had always been a criminal, a number with a payday attached. Over time, she’d morphed in his mind into a monster, all shadow and teeth and noxious poison.
But the woman he saw before him was no monster.
She sat at a makeshift table of fallen rubble in a large open-air receiving area lined with columns, the dark temple rising behind her. Her feet dangled from a wooden stool, her black hair falling in sheets on either side of her face as she tinkered with something. Wrinkles around her eyes showed her focus, but she sang like she hadn’t a care in the world. It was beautiful.
Zed forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, fighting a strange, infuriating urge to stop and stare. But then she looked up, and their eyes met, and despite himself he stopped.
“You,” she said.
A gunshot rang out from the right. Yuna’s shot flew past her head, so close her curtain of black hair whipped around her face, obscuring it. She bolted. Zed followed. In moments, his companions were running alongside him.
“Where is her ship?” Yuna hollered.
“I didn’t see it,” Zed said, leaping over a fallen boulder as he ran. Their quarry zigzagged between pillars and ducked behind barriers, but her destination was clear: the staircase at the back of the open room, leading upward, curving out of sight and into darkness.
“We need to find her ship before she does,” Teshva said. “Yuna and I will split up and find it. Zed, continue pursuit.”
Zed nodded silently, his eyes still fixed on the woman before him as his partners broke off. He could hear her breathing heavily as he ran up the spiraling staircase, but she remained just out of sight. Frustration rose in him, not at the pursuit, but at his inexplicable desire to see her face again.
Eventually, they emerged into blinding day at the top of the temple. There was nowhere else to run.
She’s mine now.
But she didn’t stop. She ran across the open roof toward the sacrificial platform. Would she jump? It would make his job easier if she did, but the thought disturbed him for some reason, and he choked back a cry of fear.
“AMAYA!” he yelled as he approached her. She was standing at the edge of the altar, looking down. “It’s over, Amaya. Surrender.”
She whipped around to face him. Her pale skin was flushed, her chest heaving from exertion. From where he stood, he could see the striking green color of her eyes. Like emeralds.
“Why are you chasing me?” she asked him, her voice level despite the fear in her eyes.
“You know why,” he answered, still closing in, his gun trained on her. “You’ve done terrible things.”
“The only terrible things I’ve done were to terrible people.”
Zed’s breath came in short bursts as he advanced. A strange, heavy feeling descended on him. He felt his hand drop a fraction of an inch, as if gravity itself was begging him to put the gun down.
“You don’t know me,” she said. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, yes I do,” Zed countered. “I know you placed a proximity alert on my ship.”
“I just want to live in peace.”
“So do I,” he said, and raised his gun to shoot.
As he prepared to pull the trigger, Zed looked into the eyes of the monster he’d hunted all these years. She simply stood there, her hands limp at her sides, her hair swaying in the wind. She looked sorrowful. Defeated. Resigned.
He’d seen that look before. It nagged at him, somewhere deep in the recesses of his memory. It was too familiar, too intimate. It crawled beneath his skin, and instead of the victory he thought he’d feel with her life in his hands, he felt like he was being torn apart from the inside. He inexplicably felt that if he pulled that trigger, his own life would end there on the altar, a sacrifice to the gods of The Directorate.
In shock at his own hesitance, he lowered the gun, and the two enemies stood at the sacrificial altar in silence, a strange sense of comradery hanging in the air between them.
Then she nodded at him, a silent thanks in her eyes, and stepped off the edge.
He gasped, his hands reaching out to the empty air. Something inside him shuddered, threatening to break—until he saw her float upward from beyond the ridge. Her right arm gripped a buzzing drone that carried her away toward wherever her ship was hidden.
She looked back at him, and he barely heard her words over the wind.
