Clean Install by R. Z. Held

Author:R. Z. Held
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: planetary empire, conquered planet, nanites, nanite install, carbon composite wings, ex-military
Publisher: Rhiannon Held
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Read on for a sneak peek of the next book in the Amsterdam Institute series

DIRTY BURNOUT

After dropping Eriope off, rather than go back to the lab, Genevieve headed up to her own rooms, to do some charging in truth in the late summer sunlight on her own balcony. She needed to bleed off some of her frustration with the whole situation.

The universe seemed to have the opposite in mind for her. She stepped off the elevator on her floor to find two soldiers hulking in front of the door to her suite. “Are you with Abidjan? I thought she already left,” she said, fetching up in front of them. They were both clean-shaven, both wore the Pax Romana standard-issue military haircut and “casual” clothing that was far too snappy, too similar in its cut—so as to allow a shoulder holster, she was sure—but when her system tried to ping theirs, she got nothing back. Not Installs, then. She snapped out her wings, carbon composite plates unfolding like feathers along the central ribs, silver-gray with a touch of black like patina. In case they might have forgotten she was an Install. “If you’re supposed to be inspecting the lab, it’s several floors down. These are personal quarters.” Lemna had always done her own poking around before now, but maybe this was because of Eriope’s behavior?

“Amsterdam Genevieve?” one of the men said. “We need to speak with you.” The lack of any kind of reciprocal introduction hung in the air.

“Unless I’m some other Install with the codes to her rooms, I guess yeah, that’s me.” Genevieve presumed she was supposed to invite them in. She sent her codes to the door and gestured inside when it opened. As she followed them in, she glanced around her living room to make sure it was presentable, but it wasn’t like she really lived here anymore. She spent her nights a few floors below in Pyrus’s rooms, and had for years, so the worst problem here was the dust on uneven surfaces the automated system couldn’t deal with. All plastic, metal, and glass. Blue-gray color scheme. Bland.

“So?” she prompted, when the two men watched her silently. “What does Abidjan want that she couldn’t tell me herself?”

The spokesman cleared his throat. “Were you aware that though you were the first Install who received nanites through infection who survived, since that time, nearly fifty other Infecteds have survived, most of them not Pax Romana citizens?”

“Forty-six. Even if we weren’t keeping meticulous track of our results, they’re all part of my research group now.” Recently down from forty-eight. And each of those successes so hard won—was she “aware”? Fuck him. Disquiet was rapidly knotting Genevieve’s muscles, however. She was no citizen of the empire herself. But the Pax Romana were well aware of that, and had cleared her for her research years ago. Why bring it up now?

Genevieve opened a private channel to Carex, attaching pictures of the men’s faces. <Who are the goons? I assumed they were with Abidjan, but—>

All her channels went down, full lockout.

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