Free Overload Flux by Carol van Natta Page B

past, and she didn’t want to repay him with evasions and lies.
    As it was, she couldn’t resist opening her senses around him, indulging in the sounds and sight and unique scent of him. When she ran with him, she was careful to always stay two strides behind him and let him set the pace. He seemed to need running as much as she did.
    After he went to bed, she checked in with the external night-shift security guard that La Plata had assigned, which only a week ago might well have been Mairwen. Each night before she left, she stood for a few minutes in the mostly dark living room and listened to him breathe, because it settled something nameless in her.
    The night of the berserker incident, she had decided that Foxe deserved her taking her new job seriously, even if it meant exposing more of her unusual skills than was wise. She hadn’t expected to find a use for them in the normal, civilized world. She wasn’t sure why she experienced the increased sense of duty, but it was undeniable. It felt like a kind of justice to use the skills the CPS had shaped and sharpened to protect instead of destroy.
    She’d found a martial arts studio with an open sparring session to test how badly out of practice her personal combat skills were. Running, plus her regular strength and stretch exercise regimen, had kept her fit, but it was exhausting to keep her reaction times normal and to take hits she could have easily avoided. She was sore and sweat-soaked by the time she left, but the workout felt good enough that she planned to add it to her routine. She knew she’d have to avoid the better schools or risk being noticed. Fortunately, nearly every weapons shop in Etonver had an associated studio of some sort, so there were hundreds to choose from.
    She knew nothing about Foxe’s specialty, so she spent her downtime reading about crime scene reconstruction. His intuition was well suited for his profession, and she wondered how he’d discovered it. He was, surprisingly, the author of a dozen or so technical articles in his field, and was still a certified expert in the interplanetary High Court. He’d presented and testified in hundreds of proceedings.
    His last case had been horrific, involving a pair of pedophiles who had kidnapped, abused, and killed dozens of children over several years. The media had dubbed them “the Collectors” because they’d turned a converted commercial interstellar ship into their nightmare playhouse. Foxe’s crime scene reconstruction had led to the capture of the pair, but he’d been badly wounded when he’d cornered the one who was trying to escape.
    Was she any better than the sadistic twists who collected and killed children? The CPS’s procedure and training had made her into a remorseless, deadly machine. In choosing to live, she’d done what they demanded, but she never liked the killing, even when it was deserved. To some, that might be a distinction without a difference, but since escaping the CPS, she hadn’t so much as bruised anyone until the berserker, and she’d only done that to protect Foxe.
    She would always be a killer, but now it was her choice how, when, and why.

    CHAPTER 6
    * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.032 *
    O n Monday, Foxe went to the office, so Mairwen began her afternoon shift at La Plata, taking over from Velasco, who complained about having to hang around the office all day instead of just being on call. He implied it was a waste of his considerable skills, but as far as she’d seen, his only skills were blathering on about nothing and staring at women. Fortunately, her small breasts weren’t worthy of his attention.
    She went to Foxe’s office to check in, but he had commandeered the conference room again, where he was reading multiple files on a large display and referring to a holo of a data hypercube. He saw her and smiled, and her breath caught momentarily.
    “Morganthur. Good, I was afraid this was your day off.”
    He waved her toward a chair in the