He was doing it because she needed someone to show her how to survive in this place, and he was qualified to do it.
Maggie shoved her hands a little deeper into her pockets and tried to ignore the nip in the air. Cold wasn’t something she was used to experiencing. Hive cities were exactly what their name suggested—crowded places full of warm bodies. Getting rid of waste heat was a constant challenge, especially on the lower levels.
“I’ll get used to it,” she reminded herself as she walked, her breath condensing into a temporary cloud as her words hit the air. There was a lot to get used to these days. The gravity. The weather. New foods and languages. And now she was learning how to mix drinks she could barely pronounce with liquors she’d never heard of before.
It was tiring, challenging, and wonderful. Anya was a rare kind of boss, the sort that folded her employees into her family and made sure everyone felt welcome. The kitchen staff turned out to be a trio of mated Vardarians who worked together with the seamless flow of long practice. They laughed and fought and cooked some of the best meals Maggie had ever tasted.
She’d shared her cookie recipe with them, too, and they’d transformed it into a new dessert. She had no idea what they’d done, but her simple recipe had been combined with something similar to ice cream and a booze-infused fruit sauce that elevated the simple cookie into something close to divinity.
The coordinates to Striker’s place were in her tablet, but the damned thing was glitching. Or maybe she’d messed up linking it to her new comm unit. This one actually had positioning software so she could figure out where she was and how to get to Striker’s home. Hezza had sold it to her, giving her a fair deal and showing her how to turn the tracking system off and on so she’d only show up when she wanted to. She liked Hezza. The woman was grounded and infinitely practical, but she’d somehow avoided becoming cynical despite the life she’d led. Neither she nor Anya said it outright, but it was easy enough to tell that Hezza did whatever was needed to get by, and that meant bending or breaking more than a few laws along the way. The older trader had promised to try and dig up whatever information she could about Jade, too. It was a longshot, but she appreciated the offer.
Maggie hadn’t opened up about her life on Earth yet, but she got the sense that Anya and her mother had already guessed her hands weren’t entirely clean either.
“Dammit. I should be there by now,” she muttered and smacked the edge of the tablet. The dot that represented her hadn’t moved in the last few minutes. The thing was definitely malfunctioning. Maybe Striker could figure out what was wrong with it… if she ever found him.
She put the tablet away and sent him a message instead. “Can’t find your place. Positioning software screwed up. Your cookies and I need an escort.” Once that was sent, she held up her comm unit and took a quick video of the surrounding area and then sent that, too. Maybe it would help him figure out where the hell she was.
He answered her only a few seconds later. “On my way. Start singing. I’ll find you.”
Veth. He’d heard her singing to herself. That was embarrassing. She couldn’t carry a tune to save her life, but that didn’t stop her from enjoying it… when she was alone.
She started humming and then broke into full-throated song, stringing lyrics together as she carefully checked the tree behind her for anything alive before leaning against it.
About five minutes later she heard a triple-knock, like something rapping against a tree trunk. She banged her stick against the tree in response, sending a shower of water droplets cascading down on her head from an earlier rain shower.
“There are times the outdoors really sucks vacuum,” she grumbled and pulled up her hood.
The knocks came several more times, each one closer. She kept singing and rapping on her tree. Before long, she heard a noise in the brush and Striker stepped into view. He was wearing dark green and gray today, a mottled pattern that helped him blend into the woods. He held a metal staff in one hand, but then he touched it with both hands and it contracted to a bit of metal less than a