Mercury (The Pendulum Arts #1)

Chapter 2

2 — 48 Hours Earlier

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Coming out of cryo sleep is like being born. Except you remember it. The pod’s top opens with a whoosh, and you wake up instantly, assaulted by too bright lights and too loud sounds and people speaking a language you can’t yet comprehend. You’re covered in warm gunk from the pod’s defrost process, and most of time, you start screaming because you don’t recognize anybody around you.

The first thing I see when the pod fog clears is a guy with a giant, blue, triangular face staring down at me, his massive saber tooth fangs hanging over his lips. And my first thought is: Oh shit, I’ve been captured by aliens! So I scream.

Then I remember I work with aliens. Because this isn’t twenty-second century Earth, where aliens are the bad guys and invasions take place once a year. This is…actually, I don’t when this is.

I stop screaming and sit up. Blue face tosses a towel over my shoulders. He must be the on-duty pod technician. He mutters something in a guttural language and points to the set of basic workout clothing on a table a few feet away. I haul myself out of the cryo pod and try to pretend blue face isn’t chuckling at my naked, goop-covered body. Yeah, first thing that happens when you wake up from cryo: some jackass alien makes fun of your penis.

Once I wipe all the gunk off and dress myself with cold, shaking fingers, blue face points me toward a door that leads to a hall that doesn’t look familiar. At all. The agency must have swapped bases sometime in the last…however many years I’ve been asleep. There’s a man in a uniform with an agency patch on the shoulder waiting for me. He looks mostly human, but his ears are a little too pointy, and his eyes are neon yellow.

“Inspector Avian?” he asks (in a language I do understand).

I pat my chest. “Looks like it.”

The guy gives me a blank look and types something into his data pad. “This way, please.”

I follow him down the hall, into a elevator, and up fourteen floors. When the elevator door retracts, I’m greeting by the sight of the operations room. Operatives man every computer station, running simulations, gathering research, sending info to inspectors in the field. In the middle of the room is the command center, a large holographic map the key feature. Kasha and a couple of inspectors I’ve never met before are having a heated discussion, complete with angry hand gestures.

When Kasha spots my approach, she waves at me and motions for me to join the group. “Avian, glad you could make it.”

“Really? Because last time we spoke, it didn’t really end on a good note.” Last time we spoke, Kasha was tier two inspector, and we were paired for a mission to the Lyre Moons that involved a train jacking, a businessman held at gunpoint, and several fusion bombs. There may also have been a short fling with the businessman’s daughter that Kasha didn’t approve of.

Now, it appears that my old partner has gotten herself a few promotions. Regional Captain, going by the pin on her lapel. Which puts her a rank above me.

She’s also gotten older. Since agency operatives are utilized based on their skillsets, some are active more frequently than others. Kasha’s soft tan skin has gained about a decade’s worth of deeper lines, which means she’s been out of the pod for an unusually long time, or I’ve been in cryo for…

“What year is it?”

“3280,” says the inspector to Kasha’s left. A big guy with a crew cut and biceps built like boulders. Ex-military. The other inspector is a round-faced feminine man who looks harmless at first glance. A covert operative.