SynTracker | ONC 2021 | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Eleven: Saturday-Sunday

⚠ WARNING: ⚠ if you're reading both novellas, read BioSynth first this week.

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Like any other metropolis, the city of Lyz didn't sleep. Street cameras kept recording, public transportation kept running, the world kept turning. At night, as during the day, people went about their business. They greeted the sun with hurried steps and the moon in a garishly bright display of neon colours, features painted in light or obscured by shadow. Some out to have fun, others to work.

Light and dark were relative concepts.

As a rule of thumb, none of this bothered Ian; tonight was different.

Tonight, Quentin's dot blinked. Beckoning Ian. In a night like this one, with rain so thick he could barely see his hand in front of his face, and no longer having a car of his own, it was the difference between reaching Quentin in three hours or five.

Next to him on the cab sat the biomaglock hovercase, ready to assemble with a single click. Where he used to transport captured BioSynths, he now had to convince Quentin to hide in for safety. His work nexus was back at the house, Tracking app rerouted to the untraceable one he had on now. If anyone tried to contact him, he wouldn't get the call; his location wouldn't ping any suspicious hubs.

Whether he pulled it off depended on the level of surveillance SynSec had him under.

He was drenched the moment he stepped off the cab, clothes clinging to his skin as he waited for the train to arrive. With nothing but a fool's hope whoever had Quentin's codes had decided against going after a low value target on a rainy Saturday night, or that they were even farther away than Ian was.

Heat eradicated raindrops the instant they touched the train's glass windows, as if having an undistorted view of the world outside was paramount. As if human beings didn't distort everything else and kept on running, well-oiled machines in which the squeaky wheel was annihilated and replaced, rather than greased.

They'd created life and sent it off to war. Then they'd declared it worthless when it refused to be a tool of destruction any longer. An object. Invalid.

'You're the monster here.'

There were no raindrops on the window; all the drops in his reflected face had to be his own.

Had he really told Quentin weapons didn't weep? The hubris. What had Ian been for twenty years, if not a weapon? Methodically ripping apart lives, dreams, freedom?

The train gave way to a crowded bus, to a subway, to a different train. Quentin's dot never moved. The rain never let up. Until he stood at last in front of the building where Quentin had to be.

He hoped Quentin would listen before trying to run, if only so Ian could give him the credits and warn him about SynSec.

The flat's door was broken in. Ian's breath caught, his gun drawn the next moment.

There was a strong possibility what lay on the other side of that door wasn't Quentin at all — that the codes Travers had sent him were nothing but bait — but, if that were the case, why give the game away by breaking down the door? Quentin's dot was still blinking. Still alive.

Ian let calm be his anchor. He opened the door.

"Ian," Quentin said in the darkness, his voice laboured. "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to. Walk away while you still can."

He'd Tracked in the dark before, his eyes adjusting quickly to discern shapes, if not features. Quentin. Shaking on the floor, back to the wall. Ian noticed the gun in his right hand. He couldn't take in other details, but it was Quentin's left hand that drew his gaze. What was left of it. There was only a skeleton arm and Quentin's frame wracked by gasps.