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"Sign on, sir?" I scrubbed my face with both hands and let out a sigh. "I have yet to be informed as to what the project even is. I don't know the parameters. I don't know what my pay will be." I went for broke, then. I'd already thought I'd lost this job, so I may as well put it all out there. "Fact is, Mr. Thorvaldsen, I've answered half a billion questions about everything from my thoughts on Linux to how I feel about the fucking Cranberries. And then you appear here, in Alaska, asking me if I'm ready to go? Ready to go where, sir? With all due respect, I need a bit more information before I can make any kind of a decision."

"Call me Linus." He smiles at me. "And that's a perfectly reasonable response. Unfortunately, the project I want you for is top secret, so I can’t tell you anything until and unless you sign on, which includes a draconian NDA." He claps a hand on my shoulder. "What you need to know, Jax, is that it'll pay a king's ransom; it’s a short-term contract with an absurdly generous option for permanent retention, if such is mutually agreeable to all parties. It's an on-location job, as the software you would be coding is heavily sandboxed and air-gapped."

Ah. AI, then, almost certainly. Almost nothing else requires sandboxing and air-gapping—only highly secure, highly confidential, and potentially dangerous software. Such as AI models that could go sentient, or semi-sentient, and possibly escape their confines.

Which is Uncle X’s entire point about AI: if it needs a cage, should we really be playing around with it? I don’t disagree, but we do also play around with deadly viruses in labs, so…

"I see,” I said. “Location and duration?"

"The specific location is confidential, but suffice it to say you would not leave the state of Alaska, but a quick commute home will not be possible. And you'll need cold weather gear." A pause, and then Linus’s gaze fixed on me. "Duration is estimated at six months."

"Continuous?" I asked. “Would I be allowed to visit home at all?"

"Visit home, no. Communicate home? Yes."

"I see," I answered, mulling it over.

The pilot was standing just behind Thorvaldsen, openly staring at me, her features expressionless and hard, only her eyes glittering with some emotion I couldn't translate with any accuracy, but which read "I HATE YOU" to me. I could be wrong. Maybe she just has resting murder face.

I tried a smile—not the full-charm one that my cousin Ella stupidly calls my Panty-Melter Five Thousand.

Her eyebrows knitted and her green eyes flashed fire, and she just stared at me with that unreadable expression.

"This is my newest employee, until you sign on, at least," Thorvaldsen said to me. "Lt. Commander Tea Tiernan. She's my pilot, obviously, and she'll be bringing us to the site. Tea, this is Jax Badd." He paused, glancing at her expectantly, but she didn't respond. Didn't even give a hint of having heard him. "Tea? TEA!"

She jolted as if startled out of a daydream or something. "Sorry, sorry. Yes, I'm…yes. What?"

Thorvaldsen just laughed. "I just wanted you to meet my newest acquisition, Jax Badd."

Acquisition? We'd have to have a chat about that word.

I stepped toward her and extended my hand to her—she took it and shook it. Her grip was firm, and her hand was warm and dry, and very, very small. And soft. And strong. I couldn't help looking down at our hands; I've always had big hands, a family trait, Mom says. And Tea's are just…tiny. Not delicate, oh no. Just teeny-tiny little hands. I could probably engulf her whole fist inside mine.

"Tea," I said. "Nice to meet you."

"Yes." Her voice was low, quiet, tense.

I waited for more, but that's all she said. Yes. Just that? Weird.

Maybe it's not anger in her eyes but something else. Maybe she's twitterpated by my devilish good looks and debonair charm.

I almost laughed out loud at my own idiocy but managed to keep it inside. As it is, I was grinning at her like a fool, and she was just staring at me like I was from the planet Zorplongus or something. "I hear we're gonna get to know each other soon," I said.

Her eyes fly wide. "Excuse me?" She blinks at me, and then looks at Thorvaldsen. "What?"

Linus’s grin, then, was definitely knowing, although what he knows I couldn't say. Social awareness is not my biggest forte. "You're flying Jax to my project,” he said to her. “You’ll be in close quarters with him for the next few days while I deal with wedding plans here."

The way her expression shifted was concerning. It went from hard and featureless to dismayed, to confused, to something I couldn't name, to blank again in the space of less than ten seconds. "Oh, I…oh." She turned on Thorvaldsen, then. "But…you're staying here to deal with wedding stuff, and I'm staying up there?"

He nodded. "Yes." He indicated me. "It's a trial run, you see. Get him acquainted with the location and the work, just to make sure everyone meshes well. I will be with my daughter, who detests the more ostentatious displays of wealth, like a private driver. So instead of making you fly back down only to go back and get him seventy-two hours later, you're just going to stay up there." He shrugged. "You've spent your career thus far on military bases here and overseas, and I am fairly confident the quarters where you're going will be better than that. Not the Ritz, but comfortable. And you're being paid to sit around and wait.”

I watched Lt. Commander Tea Tiernan process this, only a slight, subtle tightening at the corners of her eyes giving away even a hint of tension. She nodded once, crisp and precise. "Understood, sir."

Linus frowned at her, annoyed. "I thought we discussed the sir business, Tea."

"Over a decade of deeply ingrained discipline is very difficult to break, s—Linus."

He just smirked. "I suppose you may have a point."