Free A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) by Michael G. Munz Page A

luck, Holes? Reaching Felix?” Maybe if he could talk to Felix he wouldn’t have to worry about it.
    “Nope,” came the answer.
    Caitlin arched an eyebrow again. “Nope?”
    “Yeah, it’s— He does that. I guess.”
    “Felix likely left his laptop at his place. At any rate, he didn’t bring it with him today.” She sighed and bit her lip as a scowl formed that seemed to be turned toward herself. “If we go now . . . ”
    Michael considered it. If something was wrong with Felix, or if he was in trouble, wouldn’t he want them to help him? Wouldn’t Felix do the same for them if the situation were reversed?
    He closed up the pack and slung it. “I’ll keep trying to reach him, but let’s head to his place just in case.”
    “Aye. I’ll try him a few times myself on the way.” Caitlin stood, and Michael followed suit. Jade extracted herself from the ivy.
    “Felix gave me his word he wasn’t involved in anything, Michael. Even in something he couldn’t tell me about.”
    Michael hesitated. “His word? He put it that way?”
    Caitlin’s gaze shone steady through a storm of concern. “Aye. I gather I don’t need to tell you what that means.”
    Felix’s word was his bond. Michael had never known him to break it, nor, to Michael’s knowledge, had anyone else who knew him.
    He swallowed. “We’d better get going.”

 
IX
    HE SET THE CANISTER in the transfer bin beneath Biolab D’s window. Only six inches tall and barely as wide as his thumb was long, he’d easily concealed the canister in his jacket. Unmarked and ordinary, with a stainless steel casing and a rubber seal, it would have appeared harmless enough even in the open. It was also empty, for the moment.
    He closed the transfer bin on his side and then listened to the sterilizers hiss into activation. They scrubbed the canister’s exterior of contaminants before the New Eden researcher opened her side of the bin and withdrew it. In the few seconds it took the researcher to examine it, he took in the details of the bio-lab behind her. Little had changed since the last time.
    The researcher’s blue eyes flicked up to him from behind the plastic visor of her hazmat suit. The speaker on his side of the window carried her voice from her suit mic. “Looks fine. Sit tight.”
    He grunted with a nod. She turned and walked a few paces between two lab counters festooned with computer screens, processing equipment he could not identify, and at least a dozen other canisters like the one he’d just brought. She slid his canister into a receptacle, which he gathered had something to do with sterilizing the inside, then linked it to a tube that extended out of a closed fume cupboard, the contents of which he could not see. A silver liquid rushed through the tube, and a few moments later, the process complete, she returned the now full canister to the transfer bin.
    “Latest version,” she said with a little smile. “Don’t be a stranger, hmm?”
    He grunted again and ignored her efforts to flirt through the glass while the sterilizer finished its cycle.
    “You never smile, do you?” she tried.
    Felix opened the transfer bin, took the canister, and slipped it back into his coat. “Not while I’m here.”
     
    One elevator ride and two I.D. checks later, Felix passed through a doorway into a darkened room. The door slid closed, and he stood locked in the near-complete blackness with only the blinking lights on the computer consoles to fill the void. His artificial eyes could have adjusted to the darkness if he let them, but what was the point? He slipped the data chip from his pocket almost without thinking about it.
    “Well?” he snapped. “I’m back! Open the pod bay doors or whatever.”
    A screen blinked to life with a blast of white light before it faded into a purple haze that formed the vaguely feminine silhouette of a head and shoulders.
    “If you’re going to keep forcing me to come here,” Felix told her, “the least you could