Hey all- brief message, this has been the longest lull between chapters, I know (but still, only a couple weeks, not bad :P). I was privileged to show in a local Art Walk this last week and leading up to the event took a lot of my time. But now we're back to our regular-scheduled programming (meaning 1-3 times a week, depending on how much time I get)! So shall we?

No Lullabies for Ryders

Ch. 7 - Machinations

Despite the fact that her team and family more or less kept things well under control, Sara struggled in the night to find rest. She couldn't escape the feeling that she was missing something, and with so many moving parts, even finding which part of her life in which something had gone amiss had become a challenge.

She considered the possibility she were paranoid, but her gut proved insistent enough to keep her awake, so she reasoned there must be something to the gnawing notion.

In the last hour, the Pathfinder's Omnitool lit the head of the bed, dimming under her instruction so as not to wake the snoring man at her side. She smiled fondly to his curled, sleeping form from where she sat, propped against the wall. His hair was a mess, and she resisted the urge to play with it, instead returning her eyes to the amber glow of her tool.

In her email, she scoured the lists and messages she'd passed between her team. Liam had begun a running task list for the baby, and the others had begun filtering anything they discovered in their investigation into their group messaging service.

In this way they were able to confirm within a day that the man who'd attacked Sara had at least traveled to Meridian alone. Cora acquired a list of all the possible players and supplied what background information she could on each; then, a few messages down, the same file reposted by Vetra, with marks to indicate those with known relationships to others in the group, or outside influences.

Soon the list of names and interested parties went over a hundred, and it became a barely-manageable maelstrom of information. Still, she'd read everything five times over, now. And still the feeling persisted.

With a sigh of growing disappointment, Sara flipped back to her personal inbox, shifting through messages in her private channel. She even delved into her outbox, just in case.

It was then her eyes landed on a short memo she had sent to Dr. T'Perro.

"SAM." She said his name in a soft whisper, not wanting to wake her companion. "Have we heard from Lexi? After the attack, I asked for her, but she never showed. Did she at least send a message?"

"Checking." SAM responded immediately. "Station records indicate Doctor T'Perro left for transit to the Nexus a few days ago. Her personal notes indicate she plans on returning shortly."

"Anything as to what she's doing?"

"Nothing I see here, Ryder. But perhaps she means to facilitate the exchange of medical equipment and files between the two. Her expertise in xenobiology has rendered her invaluable to many of our medical science teams."

"Hmm." Sara's brow crinkled, her lips twisted in thought.

After a few moments, she brought up a new message, fingers flying over the holo-keys.

xxxxxx

Lexi

I hope your work is going well for you. We're missing you over here. Please message when you get this; I have some news.

Ryder

xxxxxx

Short, vague; hopefully enough to earn a response without worrying the good doctor too much. Once it sped away, Sara sighed collapsed the display and tilted her head back on the wall, exhaling.

The pain in her lower back remained, though much more manageable now. She could convince herself not to think about it while she had something to work on. She silently willed the wound to the close and the flesh to mend well enough for Liam to relinquish his vice-like hold on her responsibilities. The window in which she could help narrowed further each day, and she couldn't afford a lot of time for healing before she'd have another reason she couldn't do the important/heavy stuff.

"Hey, SAM," she tried again, after ten or so minutes of staring at the ceiling with no promise of drowsiness to greet her. "The prisoner, from Kadara. Are they housed in an Initiative facility?"

"Negative, Ryder. They were transferred to a cell on the station."

"Nng," she grunted, disappointed. "I don't suppose you have access?"

"Not to the room, like on the Nexus or Hyperion. But I do retain access to the security feed."

"The security cameras? Really?"

"It's still Initiative tech. If security were alerted to this oversight, they would likely erect firewalls."

Sara smirked, face bouncing to attention as she drew her Omni-screen up again. "You sneaky bastard, Sam," she teased, "work your magic, I want to see them."

It took a few seconds for a the AI to establish a connection between the feed and her Omni-tool, but soon a small room flickered into replica on her screen, confining and cold.

Sharp, hunched shoulders of a man facing away from the lens came to view. The angles in his body seemed severe, though she couldn't tell without seeing more if it may be due to malnutrition, or perhaps drug use.

Even at this late hour, he remained awake too, a hand roughly disheveling his own, wiry hair.

From this angle, she couldn't recognize him, though she doubted she would anyway. Still, she found herself entranced for some time at his nocturnal nature, even contained to a barred room. Some got restless behind bars, others tried to sleep as much of it away as possible. He did neither. Awake, yet calm.

She wondered if he'd heard he'd failed yet. If he were plotting his next move, his escape, or even his next attempt.

Her eyes narrowed as the man flexed casually to stretch his limbs, then stood. He paced his small floor, and upon turning at the other end, she caught his hallow and bitter expression.

Familiar and strange all at once, he proved no one she knew, but a someone she had seen many times in her life. An invisible soul. Contritely calm about it. A person totally accepting of their fate.

He stalked back and forth a few times at a leisurely pace before he sat back down again, the tension still stiff in his narrow frame.

Fingers curling under her calf beneath the sheets startled her stare, and she jolted back into her surroundings. Liam's groggy face welcomed her, his body having turned and crawled tighter against her in her distraction.

Now, sleepy concern settled over his brow, eyes still adjusting to the soft dim light of her tool. "Hey, you okay?"

"Mmhmm, sorry. Just needed some time to wind down." She offered a half-smile and tucked it away for the second time that night, taking the amber glow with it and leaving them in cool darkness.

Sara slunk her way back under the blankets, Liam instinctively gathering her up in his arms as his nose found a resting place in her hair and neck. She slipped her arms around him in return and traced his spine and back soothingly.

"Mm, at this hour you belong to me," he mumbled against her skin, his eyes sliding closed again. She felt his warm lips clumsily press against her shoulder, collarbone, then neck in his drowsiness.

Still, his words brought a sweet smile to her lips. "Don't I always?"

He kept a lazy flow of kisses along her skin until he fell asleep again, face pressed somewhere to her shoulder by the time he began to snore once more. His bare flesh was near unbearably hot, but she couldn't bring herself to direct him elsewhere. Instead, she busied herself with the massaging trails her palms left over his back and arms, taking him in like her own personal worry-stone, to touch and caress until her mind finally dulled enough to submit to rest.

The next day, Sara was forced to commit to Liam's promise she'd attend out-patient care. Thankfully, Harry was willing to see to it himself, so he could coordinate with their OBGYN, Dr. Dawson, without including anyone else in the chain. He was quick enough, prodding her for sensitivity before he redressed the wound. Dawson had supplied him with a list of vitamins to prescribe, and Sara walked home a quick half-hour later with a full, rattling bag of med canisters under her arm.

Liam had insisted on tracking down some kind of trinket for Scott, which left the wife of the two behind to find a way to occupy herself after she'd finished her daily check-in at the dome.

Once back at the apartment, it was barely 10:00. Restless, she resigned herself to reorganize while she still could, finally shoving their couch to the side, and instead hauled over one of their storage crates to the center of the room in its place.

Dual-purposed, she set about getting what she needed out of it, then quickly threw a clean linen over top to improvise a desk.

Pen and paper felt a little outdated, but it reminded her of her childhood at home, before she were old enough for her parents to trust her with more expensive tools.

There remained something soothing about handwriting. About seeing the curves and lines of her own letters and knowing its loops were evidence of her unique existence. So simple a thing...

Like her mother before her, Sara was an organizer. Soon three separate lists littered her makeshift work-surface; one for the baby, one for the prospects, and one for the investigation. A couple pens and mug of decaf completed the mess, her omnitool also open to many a tab and report by the time a fresh knock at the door drew her from her deep focus some hours later.

She was about to call out before she thought better of it, paranoia having rooted over the last week. "SAM?"

"Friend, Sara."

"Come on in!" She rest a hand on her hip, her other arm still extended as she read the last few lines of her latest research quickly before the sound of boots reached her. When she finally tore her eyes to her guest however, her lips parted in genuine shocked surprise.

"Reyes?!" She gasped, but he easily sauntered, as he always did, over to her, a smug purr hiding just behind his lips.

"Ah, Ryder. Seeing you is always a delight." He waggled a brow at her, his usually flirting personality obviously still secure.

Sara shook her head dismissively, but she still smiled. She and Liam had already been well involved by the time she and Reyes met; and with the knowledge of her being so contently committed to someone else, Reyes seemed to relish in teasing and playing with her, even more brazen by his confidence she'd never take the bait.

Still, the ease about him was welcome. She still wasn't 100% sure she could trust him 100% of the time... but while they were just hanging out and buddies? Yeah, he was damned fun to be around.

"There's beer in the fridge, you'd better help Liam with it." She inclined her head to the coolbox behind him, and he helped himself. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be sitting on a shadow throne somewhere?"

Reyes matched her smirk before the horse-neck bottle tilted against his lips and he gulped a swig of cold brew. "I have associates for that. The throne wrinkles my gear."

He tossed her another wink before the bottle-butt landed with a dull thud on the counter. "I can trust others to that. Not this."

His tone shifted, and though he seemed obviously comfortable enough to come to her himself, it also meant he found it important that he talk to her in person, instead of through their usual weekly correspondence.

His gold eyes glinted with cunning, a strategist in every sense, as he paced the perimeter of the small studio. "Out of respect for our alliance, and our friendship, some intel must be delivered in person. Apparently."

He seemed a little miffed when he rounded on her, but not at her. "We've got a leak somewhere."

"I thought you were pretty good at sussing that sort of thing out," she half-teased. Though the uncharacteristic seriousness in his tone swelled, sobering.

"I wouldn't come myself if I didn't fear any message I sent could be intercepted." His words clipped at a faster rate in his anxiety, accent growing thicker. "A few weeks ago, we detected a piggy-backing bug on a few of our lines. To the Tempest, to the Nexus, and to here. Oddly enough, the one on the Nexus hadn't pinged in awhile. Even the Tempest line hasn't been tagged in weeks. So they're target is... well, you can imagine."

Sara nodded, and swallowed. This was it. This was the more.

"Outcasts?"

"I think so." Reyes sounded disappointed in himself at first, but when he spoke again, the words were edged with danger. "They're targeting you through me, I'm sure of it."

"How specific is this information?" She winced, defensively crossing her arms as if it could protect her.

The man looked a little guilty, as he dexterously slipped a couple gloved fingers into his pocket for a folded scrap of paper. He extended it to her, frowning. "When we set up a net, we caught what they were trying to pull last, before they did, and burned the line they used. But they'll make another."

She took the neatly folded note from him, and recognized his own scrawl. Clearly he hadn't even trusted his people to transcribe it, and she assumed the digital copy was already destroyed.

Target not terminated. Mission unsuccessful. Discovered Target with child. Await confirmation to proceed.

Sara blinked away horrified tears, her fingers shaking. "You said you stopped them from getting this?"

"This time," he nodded. "They will try again when they do not get a response. It's only a matter of time."

Sara suddenly felt the need to sit down. Her knees began to sink, and Reyes agilely moved to help her find her way to the couch's edge a few steps behind her.

"It's true, then?" He asked, when she buried her face in her hands.

"It doesn't make sense, hardly anyone knows. Not even my team." She felt... prematurely defeated. If she couldn't even keep it from coming out before she'd even told her closest friends, what chance did she have?

Beside her, the Kadaran shifted on his feet, uncertain of what to do. "I, uh... I'm sorry, Ryder."

Sara allowed herself only ten seconds. Ten seconds to adjust and accept that the news was either out there or would be soon. She needed to plan her next move. She needed to stop them.

She felt the note tugged from her fingers, and Reyes wandered to the sink. He produced a small lighter from his pocket, and caught the edges, watching the paper corners curl and darken under the flame before he dropped it into the basin and turned the faucet on until all was ash and rinsed away.

"Kaetus. You let him live, didn't you? You never killed him."

The smuggler's eyes grew dark and moody, even from the other side of the apartment, and he subconscious turned a shoulder to her, looking away. "I thought I did. Or... that if I hadn't, he'd be too broken for it to matter. A sloppy mistake."

"That's unlike you." She's aware it sounded like she were scolding him, but he took it well.

"I know, Ryder. At the time, it felt like victory had been so complete. I left him to die and assumed he would." The man scowled to himself. "Careless error."

Sarah breathed deep, pressing her hands firmly to her knees with straight arms to steel herself. "Any chance it's not him?"

"It's probably isn't, at least not directly," he came to rejoin her. "I doubt he's capable of taking the fight to you himself, anymore. But on the other hand, perhaps he's the only one who could still command enough respect, and enough people, to even pose a real threat to us. A plan like this would take at least a few agents, probably many. He could just be calling the shots. The Outcasts still consider you an enemy just on premise."

"I thought you took care of most of them."

"I did. Kadara is free, or at least, no one dares fly Outcast colors anywhere even surrounding the port. But they were successful smugglers as well, and claimed many places in the cluster in which to retreat. It's a big place to search."

Ryder exhaled sharply out her nose, composing.

"My people have tagged the other bugs. They could be burned like this one, but..."

"We'd lose an opportunity." She met his eyes, as if their counter-move came to play between their pupils at the same time. "You're right, if we torch them all they'll just leech on elsewhere and we may not be able to find them as smoothly. Maybe they just think you found the one..."

"And we could use it to our advantage." Reyes finally came to sit next to her, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward to steeple his fingers as he schemed.

Sara ran a frustrated hand over the top of her head and down her ponytail again, eyes darting between tiles on the floor. "We could use it if only we knew where the leak was."

"Who all knows about..?" his awkwardness at avoiding the word 'baby' didn't make Sara snicker as she might've, but it at least brought some levity to the situation, however brief.

"Myself, Liam, our doctor, and the surgeons who worked on me after the attack."

"That's a narrow pool."

"None of it makes sense. They've all been a part of the Initiative since the beginning- not the Outcasts, not even from Kadara. And if they wanted to kill me they could have done so in surgery and easily made it look like an accident."

They're eyes met again in disgruntled gloom, leads quickly running out.

"Okay," she finally sighed. "Someone else then. Someone who just... noticed? Overheard? That could be anyone."

"Then if we want to counter it, we need to fool everyone."

Sara peered at him questioningly, awaiting explanation, but the door slid open again, bringing their conversation to a sudden halt.

Reyes jumped first, but closer to her, not further; defensively extending an arm across where she sat, his gun already in hand. Until a moment passed for him to recognize her husband. He immediately relaxed and slung himself up to his feet to meet Liam, who cheerfully dropped his bag of spoils on the counter nearby and crossed the room with a completely unconcerned welcome.

"Ho! Here stands the Pirate King, blown little far from his port," the darker man teased, offering an arm for a firm handshake.

"I'm glad I caught you, my friend. I'm afraid I can't stay long, I must return soon." Still, the man bowed his head shortly in respect, even after the handshake had fallen apart to their sides. "I wanted to thank you for giving my people time and breathing room to get to Voeld. I'll make sure they fulfill their purpose."

"Of course, we needed the men." Liam smiled, then his eyes sought beyond the smuggler's shoulder to his wife, who apparently looked as distressed as she felt, when the corners of his mouth sank. "Is... everything okay?"

Reyes took a step back to the open the conversation to the three of them, graciously giving the couple room to greet one another. Liam came to kiss Sara's cheek, then went about taking off his jacket as she elaborated.

"I'm afraid not," Sara's fingers clasped together without her permission, anxious. "We've been exposed."

Liam's lips parted, and he hastened his pace until he could take Vidal's abandoned spot on the couch. His large hand delved to where her two small ones fidgeted, clasping them together.

"Don't worry, my friend," Reyes offered, voice lilting as the gears in his head turned. "We're working on a plan.

"But we're going to need the aid of your companions."

I hope you're enjoying! Or not? Let me know!