The rain hit the glass dome of the Stygian Botanical Station, turning the neon glow of the city outside into a smear of sickly green. Leon Vance lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. Twelve years as an industrial spy, and he still wasn\u2019t used to bodies. Hal Abrams lay sprawled between two rows of engineered orchids, his throat opened like a second mouth. <\/p>\n
Leon had been hired to steal a research prototype, but now he was staring at the man who had once saved his life. A chess move he hadn’t seen coming. The exit doors locked behind him\u2014security alert. They\u2019d find Leon standing over the corpse with blood on his hands. <\/p>\n
His contact had set him up. No honor among thieves, no clean escapes. He glanced at Abrams\u2019 lifeless eyes and felt the weight of old debts crushing him. Maybe he had never outrun who he was. <\/p>\n
The sirens closed in. No use running. He dropped the cigarette. It fizzled against the sterile floor, its brief glow the last warm thing in the cold, endless night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No honor among thieves. No way out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction"],"_wp_attached_file":null,"_wp_attachment_metadata":null,"_thumbnail_id":"856","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}