Free Zero World by Jason M. Hough Page A

too.
    “The moment?” a man asked.
    Alia Valix took a few more steps into the room. Melni heard a soft brushing sound. A hand across paper, perhaps. “The moment. The final test. The proof of concept. That moment. Why else would he have gone to the lab to see it turned on?”
    “Ah, yes. Yes he did. Never missed a final run, not that I can recall, anyway.” The man coughed. “I am sorry, Miss Valix. About the loss. The losses, I mean. We all are.”
    The famous woman sighed. When she spoke again Melni almost thought it a different person, so sudden and complete the change was. Sincerity and regret had vanished. Callousness, and that well-known inventor’s drive, were filling in. “Bring all of these papers up to the mansion. I’ll review his progress myself and try to work out the conclusions.”
    “Right away.”
    “Right away,” Alia repeated, in a way that implied they had very different ideas of what that meant. “These papers should never have been left sitting out. We’re lucky no water worked its way through the ceiling yet. You can already see it saturating up there, look. I won’t have this research put at such risk. It’s critically important. Does that resolve?”
    “Perfectly, Miss Valix.”
    Low voices in the hall. Someone ran off the way they’d come.
    A silence followed, disturbed only by the occasional drum of fingertipson stacked paper. “Can the building be saved? The lab?” Alia asked.
    “We are not sure yet,” the man replied.
    “Guess.”
    “It is not really my place to—”
    A new voice from farther out in the hall now. A young woman. “Our initial assessment is no, Miss Valix. Not the lab, at any rate. A report is already on its way to your office.”
    “I wish you’d brought it along.”
    “We did not know you were—”
    “Obviously. I just wish you had, that’s all.” She took a long breath through her nose, as if trying to inhale patience like oxygen. “I look forward to the report. Let’s go see the lab.”
    “This way,” the man said.
    The group departed, trailing behind the click-clack footfalls of their corporate leader. Onvel once said that talking to Alia was like talking to someone who already knew everything you were going to say, and the simple act of waiting for clumsy words to roll off your tongue was torture for her. Every single conversation the woman ever had was, for her, an exercise in patience akin to waiting for a child to draw a conclusion you’d known for years.
    They would return, and soon, to carry the stacks of papers away for Alia to review. Her tone had implied the utmost urgency. Melni risked a glance out into the hall. They’d left no guard behind. There was no reason to, but she wanted to be sure.
    One ear perked for returning footfalls, Melni moved back to the center of the room and tried to put herself behind Onvel’s eyes once again.
Where would I hide things in here? Would I even do that?
There were stacks of papers on the desk surfaces and in the corners on the floor. A few shelves on the wall were similarly cluttered. All just like the man’s flat. “It’s not that I shun organization or cleanliness; it’s that I’d rather not have to cross the room to find something,” he’d said when she’d met with him there for the first time late one night a year ago.
    She’d shuddered at the sight of the mess. It went against every instinct she had.
    Footsteps outside, so close she couldn’t believe she’d missed them.
    Melni turned to see a demure woman of perhaps twenty walk into the office. She carried a stack of cardboard boxes, and was so preoccupied with not dropping these, she never saw Melni. Never saw the flat-handed strike that hit her windpipe.
    The woman gasped at the sudden blow and fell backward. The boxes clattered to the floor. Her head smacked against the tiles with an audible crack and she went motionless.
    Melni had acted without thinking and instantly regretted it. An attack would raise questions with obvious