CHAPTER ONE

VESPER

Sometimes in life, you have only bad options.

Like planning to commit corporate espionage in the morning, becoming a whistleblower by noon, and trying not to be murdered by midnight.

Those thoughts—and a dozen disturbing visions of my own potential murder—zipped through my mind as I perched on the sofa and stared out over the low table in front of me.

Screwdrivers, laser cutters, and other handheld tools covered the scarred faux wood surface, along with colorful gelpens and clear plastipapers boasting sketches and schematics of everything from household appliances to shock batons to a pair of gloves designed to mimic the look and feel of human skin. Squiggles and doodles of blue eyes and black arrows adorned the edges of the thin, reusable plastipapers, since those odd symbols had haunted my dreams for as long as I could remember. Wires snaked out from underneath the papers, while a cup squatting on the corner of the table held the remains of a raspberry protein shake that had stained the clear plastic a dull, sickly pink.

I leaned forward, picked up the miniature spaceship in the middle of the mess, and turned it around in my hands. The cheap plastic model was a little larger than my palm and had been spewed out by one of the multidimensional printers at Kent Corp, where I worked in the research and development lab. Yep, I was a lab rat, responsible for fixing flaws in Kent Corp designs, as well as dreaming up new products for the Regal-family-owned company to sell to further increase House Kent’s already hefty coffers.

Velorum was grooved into the side of the model, in the same place it had been on the actual ship, and I traced my fingers over the letters, my skin sinking into the tiny dips and empty curls. Kent Corp products always had boastful, grandiose names, whether it was a new space cruiser, a solar-powered blaster, or a can opener.   

I snorted. Hubris would have been a much more appropriate moniker, especially given the small but deadly flaw in the cruiser’s design.