The Soulmate Curse

Ingenuity

"What about the presentation?" Zhen asked Finn, as she quickly gathered her stuff to leave.

"Let's just say, MechSoft declared war," said Finn, already walking towards the elevator. Zhen followed. "And I'm going to make them regret it."

Zhen felt the blood rush into her head as she thought about how they were really doing this. For the moon to be her final astronaut swan song, she couldn't be happier. You could even say she was over the moon about it. Just as they walked into the apartment, Zhen's wrist wrap buzzed. She answered.

"If Finn is there, don't say my name," said Jesse from the other side.

Zhen looked at Finn and feigned a coy smile. "I'm going to take this in my room. One-night stand. Undying affection, promises of eternal love, please come back to me, blah blah blah. You know how it is."

In the privacy of her room, Zhen put down her stuff, took a deep breath and spoke to the one person on the planet whom she'd give anything to be just so she could effortlessly love Finn. Which also meant it was the one person on the planet Zhen had ever been jealous of and really didn't want to talk to.

"What do you want, Jesse?"

"She's been ignoring my calls in the last hour and she isn't at work. She's decided you're going, hasn't she?" Jesse said nonchalantly.

"I don't think she can be convinced otherwise," said Zhen, collapsing on her desk chair. "If that's what you're calling to ask of me."

"No. When our girl decides to do something, she digs in," said Jesse with a sigh.

"Our girl?"

"She won't tell me what the hell it is about you two, but don't think I haven't seen how you look at her," said Jesse, pausing for a beat. "How she looks at you."

"I ask again, Jesse," said Zhen, ignoring how happy she was with that previous statement. "What do you want?"

"I don't know if she's told you, but MechSoft has my men."

"She told me."

"I need you to help me get them back."

"We have to be at the rocket site in three hours."

"That means you've got three hours to help."

"Why should I?"

"Because this is your fault."

Zhen laughed. "Really? And how do you figure that?"

"Can you honestly tell me that she isn't doing this for you?"

"She was already working on this to free the engineer," said Zhen, a little too defensively. "Like you said, when she gets into something, she doesn't let go."

"And yet, she only started doing anything significant about it when you became a part of it," said Jesse. "She'd do anything for you, Zhen. Even if it means endangering my men's life. Her life."

"You're wrong, Jesse."

"Am I?"

Zhen hesitated. Was she?

Zhen stood up from her chair and stared at her door. "If this is going to come down to the wire, I can't do it alone."

"You have a whole team here to help you."

"You don't understand," said Zhen with a sigh. "Finn sees patterns and does stuff that I can't. I need her there. Or it won't work."

"Fine, I'll try calling her again."

"No, that's okay," said Zhen, walking out of her room to find Finn bringing her packed bag to the living room. "I'll talk to her."

Zhen hang up. Finn looked at her quizzically. "That wasn't a one-night stand was it?"

When they walked into the warehouse, Jesse and Zac were waiting for them in the hallway that led to the inner rooms with the server farm. Jesse walked over to Finn and kissed her. It was deep and meaningful and explosive, and Zhen hated every second of it. When they pulled out, Zhen heard Jesse whisper an apology.

"I just want to clear up one thing," Finn said, sternly and loud enough for them both to hear. "I'm not doing this for you, Jesse, or for you, Zhen. I'm doing this because MechSoft is about to kill an innocent person and perpetrate the greatest act of biopiracy that the world has ever seen and this is the right thing to do."

Finn walked away, leaving the three of them looking after her. Zac chuckled.

"Looks like neither of you is getting any tonight," he said. Jesse and Zhen turned and glared at him. He raised his hands in surrender and followed Finn.

Before they followed, Zhen reached out a hand to stop Jesse and, without turning, said, "If you break her heart, I will break you."

"Back at you," Jesse said, roughly pulling away from Zhen's hold before following Finn and Zac.

"I thought your men each had a tracker?" Finn said as they discussed how they could find them.

"They did. But they were all removed and left at the ambush site," Jesse said.

"So, what makes you think we can find them?" Zhen asked.

"Because the leader had two trackers," said Zac.

"One in an obvious spot, the bit of flesh between the index finger and thumb," Jesse explained. "And one in a not so obvious spot, between the big toe and second toe."

Finn's brows furrowed. "Why not track that?"

"We tried," said Jesse. "But they didn't just take off the trackers. They transported them in some sort of digital shield. We think this type of Faraday Cage digital scrambler tech is part of their vehicles and compound. We just need to find where they might be. Once inside that shield, we'll be able to find our men."

They worked to break through MechSoft's system together. Zhen did the sledgehammer work, breaking through firewalls, Finn was shielding the warehouse server from detection and retaliatory attacks, while Jesse, Zac and the five others were either helping Finn or Zhen. They'd been going through the motions for about an hour, trying to find any useful information when Finn stopped them.

"Wait, stop," said Finn.

"What's wrong?"

"They know we're on their system," Finn explained. She showed the piece of code that was designed to lead them in circles, but ingeniously disguised to make it seem like they were getting through. It was being coded in real time. Someone was on to them. Leading them on.

Zhen cussed. She'd been unfocussed. She hadn't seen the labyrinth until Finn pointed it out. Then it was as clear as day.

"It's been an hour!" said Zhen in frustration. "We're running out of time."

"We need a new plan."