Chapter One

It was dark in the city of Sang above, but that didn't matter. Sunlight never reached the undercity of Winter. Kilometers below Sang's towering skyscrapers, Winter was always dark, lit only by the glow of shop windows and homefronts.

Connor Rattakul hustled through the maze of Winter streets, sometimes looking up at the distant fluorescent glow of Sang's neon signs. The upper city sprawled fifty kilometers in any direction, but Winter was easily twice the size. It had to be to hold the poor, the ruined, and the abandoned. Down here, where the smell of backed up sewers and rotting garbaged thickened the air, Sang's faint lights were stars.

He pulled his armor-lined jacket tight against curious eyes and the cold, letting the black material cover his chest and thighs.

And yet the people following him stayed close behind.

Sure, when he stopped to check his reflection in a grimy shopfront window, his pursuers drifted around corners and into hungry shadows.

But they were there. He heard their steps echoing in the quiet streets.

There was no time for regret, though. His job had brought him to Mara, the capital world of the sector. And as a fugitive from the Directorate—the Talon Sector government—he'd expected he might draw attention.

So soon, though?

Talon Sector had eighteen populated worlds spread across twelve star systems. Mara was the most important planet by far, the crown jewel, home to nearly ten billion residents, almost a quarter of the sector's total population. With a security apparatus made up of dozens of agencies and untold layers of bureaucracy, it should have taken days—weeks—for any systems to have flagged his arrival.

For whatever reason, that hadn't happened, and now he had some element of government security tailing him. Police? Border security? Intelligence agencies?

Maybe they were just thugs. Or they could be people with a grudge. He'd certainly made enemies in his mercenary career.

He would know soon enough.

Ahead, there was a sidewalk food cart, a bright white sun with soft mariachi music playing. An old woman with silver hair and puffy eyes patted out tortillas before setting them on the conveyor belt of her machine to be heated.

Dozens of carts just like it lined the warren of narrow and crooked streets, most brighter than the shops they hunched in front of.

This was the cart he wanted.

As he drew closer, the smell of the corn flour and seasoned meats and vegetable pastes made his mouth water. He tapped the menu placard to indicate a taco, and the computer embedded in his jacket completed the transaction. “Do you have green chili paste?"

A toothless smile spread wide in the veil of wrinkles. “Yes."

Her gnarled fingers moved with deliberate patience, first setting down a sheet of waxed paper, then the tortilla, then sprinkling diced onions and tomatoes. Finally, she scooped the spiced meat and drizzled the paste before curling the taco with the paper.

Connor took the taco with a slight bow. “Gracias."

She chuckled and returned the bow. In the white LED glow of her cart lights, her weathered skin had the same sort of pale, golden tone of his. Maybe in her youth her hair had been black like his, too. But her eyes were a deep brown, while his were a honey amber, and she could never have seen with those eyes what he had with his.

He tore into the taco ravenously, once or twice hunching down to scoop up fallen bits of the smoky meat with a napkin. No need to add to the stench of the undercity.

Plus, it caught his pursuers off guard. Six of them. Dressed all in black.

One was something to note. Two or three was a concern. Six was a problem.

Up ahead, the crinkle of waxed paper caught his attention. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a silhouetted form—an arm, a shoulder, a hip—as someone threw their wrapper into an anchored, metal mesh wastebasket dark with rust and filth.

Then the form slid into an alley.

His contact!

Connor gobbled down the last of the taco and picked up the pace. He crumpled the waxed paper wrapper and tossed it into the wastebasket with a broad flourish, then he hurried into the alleyway after the other person.

A light caught him in the eyes: He'd been sloppy.

He shielded his face. “Hey—"

“You're being followed." The voice was familiar—female, smoky. In his heightened state of alarm, he couldn't place it.

“Yeah. Six of them."

The light shut off. “Follow me."