Marcus’s fingers brush the felt of the mobile, and I make my decision in the space between two of his heartbeats. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe wrong.I lie there with my joints locked under the silk, watching him through the slit of my eyelids, my heart a serrated rhythm I drag down to a flat, deliberate stop.To the shackle on my wrist, to the Argus pod overhead, to Marcus Vane turning the gutted star over in his glove, I am a sedated woman, deep in the chemical sleep his brother’s doctor prescribed, no more a threat than the crib she sleeps beside.He holds the hollow star up to the room’s low light. Inside: the slagged housing of a listening bug, its lens shattered, its wiring fused into a single bead of silver-violet slag, the unmistakable residue of a Sovereign discharge.He goes very still, the satisfaction settling into his face like a man tasting something rich. This is the moment.If he photographs it, if he bags it, if he carries it to a forensic bench, the five percent dri
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