Chapter 16 · Matched Set

"You two really thought this was about a bio-lock."

The voice came out of the grate speaker, low, amused, not rushed at all — like it had all the time in the world and we didn't. I had Milo's forearm in my fist before the sentence finished, dragging him flat against the scrubber wall, my badge scanner up and useless and still up anyway because old habits don't care about override denials.

"Who is this," I said.

"Somebody who's been reading your file longer than you've been reading his throat." A pause, wet static. "Six minutes, Captain. Maybe use them."

Milo's back hit steel behind me, and for one second neither of us moved, chest to chest, his breath slamming into mine in the dark, hot and close enough that I could taste copper off his split lip again. Bone against bone where his knee had wedged between mine to keep me from bolting.

Gravity pin, his hand flat on my sternum, mine flat on his collarbone, both of us braced like we were about to go through the wall instead of talking to it.