The Moon's Fangs | 1

26 | security breach

I'd be lying if I didn't admit his backup plan sounded risky. Did I tell him that? Not in so many words. More so in the language of shifty eye contact and awkward smiles as we waited for his wounds to heal and for Luk to work on hacking into a waypoint within the outskirts of the oasis.

"So... hacking. You do that often?" I asked, dumping the sand from my boots and tugging them back on, keeping an eye on the pink crystals scattered around the area. None had made any movement yet, which meant Blaire wasn't close. Yet.

"When the job requires it." He said, reworking a series of multilayered codes on his projection. I couldn't tell who did the heavy lifting in the portal piracy – him or Luk.

"Sure, sure. Just out of curiosity, what's your success rate for these kinds of situations? Do you get caught like, what... once out of every ten times?"

After looking like a jumbled mess for the past several minutes, the circular codework locked together, and the projection dissipated as Reks turned to face me. He folded his arms, looking at me disapprovingly. But I found it slightly difficult to focus on the disapproving look when his sleeves were rolled up his biceps, allowing his muscles to silently seduce me.

"Are you finding it difficult to trust me, Outlander?"

"No! No, of course not." I waved both of my hands between us as my voice changed pitches like a game of hot and cold. "You are obviously very skilled at... many things, and totally know what you're doing. But I was just thinking, it would super suck if we ended up getting arrested and thrown in stasis jail, or... however that works. If that happened, we'd be screwed. Who would even save us?"

~Fun fact: Cryo is rarely practiced among orleizens, and is even looked down upon. It is quite unusual for the dais which contained Reks Arlen to have been set up on Orlaith since the species that specializes in the time-freezing technology chose to flee their planet to avoid being conquered by the orleizen empire. Before The Fall, mind you.~ Nox provided, then continued. ~If we did get caught and our captors followed protocol, we would be taken to the holding cell connected to the colosseum to await questioning.~

Huh.

Earlier, Reks had mentioned hacking into an oasis surface waypoints would cause a security breach, resulting in alarms to instantly alert the orleizen council, guards on duty, and possibly a unit trained for the circumstance. I played out the scenario in my head several times, trying to figure out how the two of us were supposed to outrun units specialized in hunting down runaways and fugitives.

Reks' cocky vitiate attitude is confident in his ability to escape unscathed, but that doesn't eliminate every high-strung nerve in my body at the mere thought of running from the authorities — alien or not.

I could already visualize my dad's hair going grey in my future telling of traumatizing adventures. Maybe I'd leave this part out, for his sake. Or... several parts, now that I think about it.

"If you don't loosen up, you'll struggle to keep up with me." Reks warned, albeit teasingly.

I shot him a glare. "I see your arrogance is still intact. A shame."

One of his brows arched as he slid his gate ring from his finger. "It's almost as prominent as your desire to push your limits with me."

"I— I do not. And that's beside the point. I'm just trying to look out for us, consider the danger you might be downplaying."

"You don't have to go. I'll drop you off at the lab, so long as you promise to be a good girl and not fall asleep until I come back."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't try to get rid of me. You can't go on about beautiful views, then rob me of seeing them. Now come on, quit stalling and open the gate. We're losing precious darkness here." I stretched my arms, as if that'd help me.