At the door to her cabin, Nissa tried to ignore the taste of Justyn lingering in her mouth. If she wasn’t careful, she’d fall headlong into an addiction for that flavor. Her body was still tingling all over.
Her cabin door was closed and looked normal, but the tension pumping off Justyn and Rynan behind her reminded her that it wasn’t. She opened the door and gasped.
All her things were tossed about the cabin like a rabid dog had been let loose inside. The bunk had been ripped open and synth-stuffing littered the room like snow.
“What the fuck?” Justyn swore.
Her stomach did a fast turn. “The notes!” She raced to the desk.
All her handwritten notes and the few original documents she’d been looking at were gone. Her Sync lay in the center of the desk, blue screen blinking.
“No.” As she tapped in commands, she already knew what she’d find. “They uploaded a virus into my Sync.” She looked up. “Everything’s gone.”
Justyn swore again, snatching the Sync from her. “We have backups, but we have to see how far the virus went. If it made it into theNomad’ssystem…”
“Nico’s up in security control.” A forbidding look was etched on Rynan’s face. “He’s one of my best with tech. I’ll get him running security checks on the system.”
“We need to get to the office and check the stuff we had stored on the consoles,” Nissa said.
The three of them jogged to the cabin housing their makeshift office and accessed the computer consoles.
The virus had targeted everything they had referencing theNeroand the Constitution. It had all been wiped clean.
Nissa pressed a shaky hand over her mouth. “Who would have done this?”
“Someone who wants the Constitution.” Justyn scowled.
Rynan had just finished talking with Nico. “At least the virus only targeted the records referencing the Constitution. The rest of theNomad’ssystems look okay.”
Justyn nodded, his gaze distant. “We have a mole onboard.”
She sank back into a chair. It had to be one of the crew or one of the passengers. “How would they know what we have planned?”
“Who did you tell about our hunt?”
Nissa’s heart skipped a beat. No way was she telling him that Admiral DeRuyter knew. Besides, the admiral wouldn’t have sabotaged the hunt. “No one.”
“Your crew, your bosses?”
“I told them I was taking a leave of absence.” She gave a small laugh. “Goddess, if I told them what I had planned, they’d have thought I’d lost my mind.”
“Sorry.” He rubbed the nape of her neck with his thumb. “Don’t worry. We’ll stick with our plan of going to Hydrae.”
She swallowed. Why did it feel so terrible to lie to him?
He glanced at his brother. “Ry, you able to get anything back?”
A brief nod. “We should be able to get most of the records back. It’ll take some time, though.”
“And we’ll be able to recreate the important stuff,” Justyn said. “Besides, we’d found everything we could. Now we’ll just have to see if Hydrae really does have any answers.”
“Wait!” Nissa sprung to her feet. “I found something. It was the reason I came down to your cabin in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, so you weren’t after my body?”
She pulled a face. “Unlike your lost friend.”
Rynan cleared his throat. “Think I’ll join Nico in the security center. When you’re ready, Nissa, I’d like to hear what you found.” He made a swift exit.
