The chip still didn’t scan. Kalie’s chest tightened.
“Are you going to make us wait all day?” a man demanded. “I can get you fired if you don’t start moving faster, I paid for priority boarding?—”
Grunting, the Angeos man tapped his earpiece. “Boss, problems with a chip. Sending her over to you?—”
“No, scan it again. It worked at the ATM, it’ll work, it always works?—”
The guard leveled her with a hard stare, muttered, “roger that,” and raised his voice. “Wait here. My boss is coming to sort this out.”
Kalie wiped her clammy palms on her beige trenchcoat. “Please, if you do the scan again…”
His stern stare didn’t waver. She swallowed her protest and adjusted her bangle, praying the signal blockers would kick in.
“Chip problem?”
Kalie’s breath seized. She raised her eyes up the young human guard’s cream-colored uniform, across his tan face and chiseled jaw, up to his short sun-bronzed hair. He was the sort of man Ariah would’ve jumped on. Muscular, tall—so tall, that as he stopped next to the old guard, she had to crane her neck to make out his hardened features.
“Scanner isn’t sensing anything.”
“Stupid thing.” The young man seized the scanner, knocking it against his palm. “I put in a request for new ones, but with the budget cuts?—”
His eyes darted to her, and his face froze.
So did Kalie.
Maybe it was her imagination, but she’d been taught to read people before she was taught how toread. His face settled into a blank mask—but not quickly enough, because she’d caught the look a moment before when his nostrils flared, the corners of his narrowed eyes crinkled, and his jaw tightened.
Kalie stumbled back.
“I’ll take care of it.” The young guard’s disinterested tone didn’t fool her. “Get the line moving. You.” The word curled with scorn. “Follow me.”
You.Even as her veins turned to ice, she seethed at the contemptuous way he addressed her. Balling her hands into fists, she marched after him, past the lines of passengers waiting to enter the boarding tubes, towards a wall of frosted glass panels. He swiped a card over a door’s codebox, and wonder of wonders, he had enough courtesy to hold the door open for her to enter.
The room was mostly barren, aside from a few cabinets, two cheap chairs, and a plastic table where a holopad and scanner waited.
Kalie shuddered as the door clicked shut.
They were alone.
“Wrist, please.”
Kalie swallowed thickly and held her left wrist out. He seized it, and as his thumb brushed over her pulse point, just above the chip, a shock shot up her arm. She jolted back. Judging by the way he recoiled, grimacing, he’d felt it too.
She didn’t dare look at him. Didn’t dare speak.
Scars stretched across the young man’s knuckles as he seized the scanner and held it over her wrist. Blue light shone for the third time. She held her breath, praying it would beep and the holopad would flash green. When she was under her own identity, the chip scanned instantly, but several moments passed and the scanner didn’t chime. Her heart raced. Did the scanner measure her pulse? If it did, he would know she was nervous, and if he saw that, he’dknow. But he’d know anyway if the bangle didn’t work, and Carik would find her, and then?—
It chimed. The holopad flashed green.
“Ariah Rivers?” he asked, his tone plainly disbelieving.
Oh, thank the gods. “Yes.”
He grunted and ran through the rest of the questions. Date of birth, place of birth. Her voice grew more confident with each lie she told. His face grew colder and colder.
“Orbital scan will match all that?”
Kalie nodded.
