Page 45 of Spark Transform

The cleaner’s question niggled at him. Neirra Veremba had healed him too many times to count, especially after Davidro stopped seeing Renner as a person.

She’d also made him memorize random strings of multilingual words and told him it was for his benefit. Since he’d assiduously tried to forget entire years of his life with Davidro, he’d assumed she was teaching him to be more selective in what he remembered.

Now he was rethinking that. But if they really were keys, like the cleaner suggested, Renner couldn’t guess what they unlocked. He also couldn’t fathom why Neirra gave them to him, of all people.

He’d expected to die when Davidro did. He wasn’t even cosmic debris on a forecaster’s chessboard. Nor was he a filer with a perfect memory. His version of long-tail strategy was adding a timer to a cube of explosives. Or figuring out how to keep himself and Charrascos alive for another week.

They’d both seen too much and had dangerous memories, her new shields notwithstanding. Renner suspected they were now both tagged with “kill if necessary” in the cleaner’s databank.

For that matter, he probably had the same tag in the minds of the conspiracy group. Per a rumor Haseem picked up, Renner’s refusal had convinced the fanatical Be’un he was a naak, an info broker with few loyalties and many paying customers.

He and Charrascos both needed to vanish for a few days to let tempers and tensions die down. Too bad her idea of lying low was spending a few hours in her office while sending and answering pings.

It was like Neirra had often said. Freedom that’s free isn’t worth the price. The cost of Ayorinn’s forecast would be astronomical.

The neighborhood alley that looked like a dead end actually had a narrow slot between building walls. A series of dark grates covered one of the major neighborhood runoff ducts that shunted excess rainwater into Ridderth’s massive system of storm tunnels. Signs threatened fines and detainment for walking on the grates. Had it been a less upscale neighborhood, the grates would have been stolen years ago.

The slot shortcut took him to within a few meters of the back gate of the townhouse complex. He slipped into the dark shadow along the wall. Since he was alone, he sent tendrils of his talent out as far as he could.

Power lived everywhere. Static, ephemeral, in motion, or quiet in batteries, waiting for his talent’s touch to set it free. He’d recently read a basic-school textbook that compared electricity to plumbing, but kept saying it was “like water, but not,” without further explanation. It made him glad he’d jetted out on basic school.

Twin tiny surges of power entered his detection zone. They felt like flying spy eyes, or maybe advertising bots. Irritable Renner used to zap their delicate innards whenever he had the chance, but ordinary Faraday Brenner had to let them be.

Besides, Faraday should be inside the townhouse, soaking up the warmth from the solardry, not standing in the cold rain with the ghosts of his past and dilemmas of his present.

He wasn’t holding up his end of the bargain with Charrascos. He found it impossible not to like her. He’d been grateful that she hadn’t used her extraordinary gift for friendship on him again, but he envied the camaraderie that blossomed in her sphere of influence.

After only a short time together, Tōn Ko, N’Dwama, and Minan were already a cohesive unit, supportive and aligned in their mutual goal of keeping their charge safe. The studio’s martial arts students not only welcomed Charrascos’s unpredictable visits but also had become more engaged with each other. Coworkers at Novo Granica orbited her in ways he doubted they noticed.

Far more disconcerting was his physical attraction to her. Pleasure-addict and twisted exhibitionist Davidro had forced Renner to be the audience for a near-constant parade of sexual encounters. He’d ruthlessly trained himself not to give Davidro even a micrometer of response.

After rehab, his new, healthy body no longer obeyed him as far as sexual arousal. It had been easy to dismiss it as nature’s instinctive physiological function until he’d begun sharing the townhouse with Charrascos.

She riveted him. Little things, like wondering if her ears were as sensitive as they looked. Big things, like wondering how it would feel to be close, body to body, skin to skin. Or to kiss her, or please her. To be touched by her.

There was absolute zero chance of that happening. Her orbit was way above his. He wasn’t a security professional; he was an undereducated ex-enforcer with flexible ethics and an astronomically high body count. It was a violation of their contract to care.

Based on her history, she was overdue to pull up her planetary anchors and move on. Once they terminated their agreement, he’d be free to talk to her about feelings and sparks and shit, but what was the point? Even with what she’d been paying him, he couldn’t afford to follow her to the orbiting space station, much less across the galaxy.

A shiver snuck up on him. Standing in an empty alley like a mugger too dimwitted to stay out of the rain wasn’t solving anything.

He released the threads of his talent and headed back through the complex to the dark and quiet townhouse.

The kitchen’s cold box offered half a leftover mystery-protein roll, which he heated and ate while reading the security console logs. Nothing out of the ordinary.

After a manual check of the doors and windows, he paused outside her bedroom door to confirm she was in her room. He pretended to himself he hadn’t already brushed her unique signature with his talent several times the moment he’d come within range.

On his bed, a written note from Charrascos told him to read his messages. He let his percomp sync to the net while he hung his damp clothes over the solardry and fished the sleep pants out of his bag.

The message said she was leaving tomorrow afternoon with Tapio on a trip to Concordance Prime, home of the galactic government’s High Council, to personally witness a landmark court judgment. Since it was such short notice, she told the team their presence was optional.

He’d wanted the chance to vanish, and here it was.

Despite her assurances that Tapio traveled with a small army of security, the rest of Arco’s team had already signed on immediately. Not surprising, since he and the others had privately agreed that Tapio’s staff clearly believed they had an easy-glide gig and acted accordingly.

He pinged his own acceptance, then crawled into bed and waved his hand over the control to douse the light. Renner would have used his talent.

Spires, the fantastically beautiful showcase city of glass, was the primary base for the Central Galactic Concordance government’s high everything. It teemed with self-impressed politicians, deep-pocketed lobbyists, and gawking tourists. See-through this, infinite reflection that, and color-morphing walls everywhere. It was like walking in an overcrowded fishbowl full of rainbow glitter. Security was a fucking nightmare.