“Please don’t argue. Not here. Trust me.”

The way she looked at him made him hungry.

A Brink’s squad jogged around the corner escorting a medical team which spread out to all three corpses. From her door, Colby called, “Titus, Abbot, Inea, come in here. It’s safer.” Then she asked the medics, “Are they all dead?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” answered a woman who supervised them.

While Colby attended to the officials, Titus retreated to the chair opposite the vidcom and dropped into it, burying his face in his hands. He had known a sort of intimacy with Langton. It was amazing how much her death hurt.

Abruptly, the room filled with the crackling of flames. His head snapped up on a rush of adrenaline, then he realized it was only the news broadcast. As the camera closed in on a burning house, the neighborhood seemed strangely familiar.

“. no one inside at the time of the blast. World Sovereignties Police will investigate, but firefighters on the scene say it’s clear the house was bombed, and is a total loss. Dr. Shiddehara has not yet been reached for comment, though we have a reporter on Project Station and should have something for you by morning. This is Solomon Lawrence reporting for Independent News, North America.”

“My house,” muttered Titus.

“Oh, Titus,” said Inea. Her sympathy almost undid him.

“No, you don’t understand. The master copy of my catalogue’s gone.” But now they’ve no reason to kill me.

Hours later, Titus dragged himself to his own apartment. More than physical fatigue, he felt inwardly battered.

Colby had pulled herself together to deal with all the details of the official inquiries into three more deaths in addition to the guards in the cryo-lab. Ebony had sold her life for four others, but they had all been Brink’s guards, not key scientists. The Project was not at all damaged-except possibly by the publicity.

And Colby was ably managing that. She hadn’t allowed Titus and Abbot to be questioned, insisting that Titus’s work was only just beginning, and Abbot’s time was too valuable to divert just now that they must prepare a new cryogenic room.

She had them both record notarized depositions, and as soon as the reporters started calling in, she told them she would replay the depositions at the meeting in the morning, and would supply each of them with a copy.

Promising to send the reporters home tomorrow as scheduled, she cleared everyone out of her apartment. Seeing Titus to the door, she added, “How soon can you get us some reliable numbers? The situation on Earth is very bad. We’ll have to move the probe launch up again.”

Titus had grinned ferociously, and promised, “You’ll have Pliable figures when you’re ready. Depend on it.”

Now, trudging toward his door, he wondered if he could deliver. In the morning, he thought, he’d sift through every Taurus region entry in the two copies of the catalogue. Maybe he’d spot the tampered entries if the substitutions were clumsy. But now, he needed a meal and some sleep.

Fishing in the pocket of his disposable suit for his door key, he remembered it was with his clothes in the cryo-lab. The guard had been withdrawn from his door. He smacked his open hand angrily against the door. “Shit!”

He turned away, shoving his hands in his pockets. The transmitter component was tearing a hole in the flimsy suit.

“Titus?”

He spun in his tracks. “Inea!” She stood in the open door of his apartment. “What are you-how did you-”

“I still have your key, and you’ve got mine. Are you going to stand out there all night?”

He went in, shut the door and leaned against it. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Your key is in my pants in Biomed. Want me to go get it?”

“Tomorrow.” The microwave bleeped. “I figured you’d be hungry, so I heated some water. I hope I set it right.”

“Inea, why are you doing this? You threw me out this morning. Or was that yesterday? And in Segal’s Castle, you still wouldn’t.”He didn’t want to think of the condition Abbot had left her in. “And then when you’d bested Abbot for me, and I had to help him win anyway, I thought-”

She turned away. “Maybe we’ll never be lovers again, but we’re partners. You owe me answers, but I’m not cruel enough to question you when you’re hungry.”

Titus went toward the microwave, tossing the metal box onto the table as he passed, noting that she’d straightened the room up a little. “You got the setting right.” She had laid out the packet of blood and the scissors just as he always did. He put one hand on the packet. She loves me.

The truth of that poured into an aching hollow within him that he had not known was there. “You did this beautifully,” he told her, meaning, I love you.

“Thank you,” she answered abstractedly.

Titus turned to find her studying the pewter-colored object. “Titus, this is a smart power source for a miniature motor.”

“It is?” He hadn’t examined it closely.

“Where did you get it?”

“That’s a long story. But I’ll tell you all of it.”

She sat down at the table to study the thing more closely. “Have your dinner first.”

“Not now.” The thready hope beating through him made him willing to wait.

She met his eyes and offered brusquely, “I’ll hold the cup for you while you drink, but I won’t sleep with you.”

He felt her love tearing her apart. He went to his knees beside her. Folding her in his arms, he kissed her in the deep, open communion that stirred her to the core.

For her to feel it, he had to let himself soak ectoplasm from her which roused his own craving for blood to a sudden fever pitch. But before she had a chance to struggle, he forced himself away. “That’s what we could have-tonight if you will it.”

She bit her lip, breath suspended, then shook her head. “I’ll hold the cup for you, Titus, but don’t ask for more.”

He knelt there, lips only centimeters from her bare arm, but blocking the deep contact. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Feeding was reflexive, a function of the senses that supported Influence. “I thought you understood. It isn’t for me; it’s for you.”

She took his face in her hands, her lips working. He felt her temptation, and her confusion. “I can’t. Not yet.”

He stood her touch as long as he could, blocking off his hunger, then flung himself away to fetch up against the sink.

Gasping for breath, he arranged his features into a calm k and turned to find her folded over, face in her hands.

She straightened.

“Inea, I dare not accept your energies if you won’t allow me to restore them.”

Mutely, she shook her head. “I can’t. Just the blood.”

“No. Eventually you’d become weak, listless, depressed. You’d sicken and die even with the best medical attention.”

“Like Mirelle de Lisle?”

“What?”

“After I left the demonstration, I headed for the mall, but I saw Mirelle coming out of an apartment. I’d seen her with Abbot before, and it suddenly occurred to me he’s been-taking her?” At Titus’s nod, she repeated, “Taking. What a horrible term! Anyway, Mirelle looked absolutely ghastly-wan, dark circles– she staggered as if drunk. At first I thought only to help her, but then we got to talking and I realized what Abbot had been doing during the demonstration.”

Titus nodded. “But one thing you didn’t know-she wears his Mark. Though I’d expect him to treat her better than that.” And he recounted the incident at Goddard Station when Abbot had stolen Mirelle from him in retaliation for Titus’s destruction of one component. “He wanted her only for her position in the Project. She can’t keep anything from him.”

“I refuse to believe he can be all that invincible.”

“Oh, he’s not. That,” he said gesturing to the box on the table, “is another component of his transmitter. I had it on me all that time and he never knew.”

She gaped. “Holy shit. And I thought you needed help!”