Read Online Zero World by Jason M. Hough - Free Book Online Page B

theater she’d joined a year earlier. The props and costume room proved quite useful for her night work, as did the occasional bit of acting. She lived her life as an act and found that the extra practice and exposure to Northern accents and body language kept her at the top of her trade. As an added bonus she would then act badly in rehearsals, guaranteeing she’d never be put onstage, at least for any appreciable length. The theater only kept her around because she’d so enthusiastically offered to help catalog and maintain the props.
    There were few people amid the Loweast office blocks at this hour. Those who were had their weary heads down, hurrying home, done with whatever task had kept them at their desks so late. Melni strode past the glass-walled frontages, under dimly lit signs for engineering, aerospace, and materials firms. All seemed built lasterday, all cut from the cloth of Valix Corporation. Partners, emulators, or hopeful competitors.
    She walked taller, swung her backpurse from one shoulder now. The slacks implied she herself had just left the office. Danna, an advert designer, she decided.
    As she walked her thoughts drifted to Onvel.
    It would take years to replace him. To turn another with his kind of access, not to mention his talent and eagerness. Years the South most certainly could not afford, not at the rate the North was advancing thanks to their golden inventor.
    Two chin-ups strolled by her. She favored the officers with a thin smile, one that spoke of a late night working, something they could relate to. One smiled back; the other didn’t notice her. They both had the dark brown skin of true Northerners. Her pale skin and purple eyes marked her as the spawn of Desolation refugees from Central Valgarin. Many generations removed, yes, but still an outsider in either half of the world. If she had the coloration of a true Southerner, and those narrow ice-blue eyes, she would never have been sent here to spy on Valix. Southerners in the North were very rare and placed under constant scrutiny.
    Three blocks later the charred building came into view. She found a shadowed redbrick alcove with a decent view of the burned lab and waited for the streetlights to dim hour one. Another hour fifty after that and Garta would rise. That was okay, she thought. No need to walk home again at that much more suspicious hour. No. Twenty minutes inside, tops, then a short walk to the safe house on Bandury Lane. It was a miserable little cave but it had a bed and bathroom and the rent was paid up the last time she checked. Then back to the
Weekly
’s office, bags beneath her eyes and in a skirt that spoke of another wild night with her actor friends. Nothing unusual.
    It took her until the lights dimmed the hour to spot the duty guard. She or he stood under the awning of the lab’s entrance, arms folded, leaning casually against the blackened doorframe. After a few minutes the woman—Melni could see no masculine drape of hair to the shoulders so it must be a she—began to circuit the perimeter,handheld electric lamp sweeping across the damp avenue and sleek corporate façades that lined the road.
    Melni slipped off her oversize shoes. Underneath she’d worn dancer’s slippers instead of socks. She pulled her backpurse around and secured it tight across her chest. With one last look around she sprinted, running on her toes, crossing the span in ten heartbeats. She leapt across the empty space where the front door had been and bounded to the far wall of the reception area with only two taps of her feet. Her slippers left smudges on the damp, ash-coated tiles. Nothing anyone would notice unless there was a reason to look.
    She crept forward, navigating by nothing more than the memory of a crude map Onvel had once drawn for her, until the third bend in the hall. There, in the pitch black, she waited and listened. Other than the distant patter of runoff water, she heard nothing. Satisfied, Melni slipped a flashlight