Jianne has survived despite being in the wrong place at the right time. With one injured eye replaced with a cybernetic enhancement, she lives her life in solitude, hidden from the very Guardians that she dispatches to help their world.
A new batch of Guardians brings a surprising blend of talents and one man who wants her for what she doesn’t do.
Cowl’s race can lock people in their tracks with just a flash of skin. Jianne’s mix of mechanical and physical sight allows her to see him and not fall under his thrall. His talent will not mesmerize her, but his charm, grace and persistence will soon have her under his spell and into his bed.
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Rock chortled. “You should have looked away.”
“Oh, you are funny. Land on the building with the blue triangle.” She snorted. The laugh was that she wore a cybernetic implant where her right eye should have been. She couldn’t look away when the feed was being sent directly to her brain.
A fistfight with a Yinshin noblewoman had sent her to Janial. Her instinct to choose the right place at the wrong time sent her into a prison riot, and her eye had been the casualty.
She didn’t regret it. Blocking the clawed strike had saved the life of a timid young thing who was released the next day. That young woman was the daughter of the governor of Cadar.
The people of Cadar were soft and pale pink, their hair resembled candyfloss. Their temperaments were placid, but they lived on a rich world, which made them targets for more aggressive races. The Guardians were here to offer them a measure of defense.
After the injury at Janial, she had been released and given all the treatment that the Nyal Imperium could offer. Her eye had been replaced with a cybernetic enhancement, and she had been offered this prime position as dispatcher for the Cadar Guardians. Despite the Guardians being on a rotation, she was given Cadar citizenship and allowed to anchor herself to the world in any way she saw fit.
Jianne chose to make herself useful, and she kept a private residence, whose location was unknown even to the Guardians. The walls of her home were lined with monitors, and she had routes into all of the Cadar surveillance cameras around the globe. It brought a new spectrum to working from home.
Whistling silently to herself, she checked and double-checked the feeds while the Guardians settled on the building she had pointed out.
“Dispatch, have you identified the factor?”
Jianne looked through her feeds, and when one person began to glow brightly, she nodded, though no one could see her. “A woman in a blue work dress. Keep her alive and this will all end well.”
She could hear Echo looking through the data. “What about the child or the pregnant female?”
Jianne was firm. “The woman in the blue dress. Save her and this all goes smoothly. Let her die and everything goes to hell.”
Cyber cleared her throat. “Understood, Dispatch. Keep us posted for any shifts in the factor.”
“Will do, Guardians. Go get them.”
Jianne watched the battle from the safety of her home. It was kind of sad. This was the final assignment that these Guardians would execute on Cadar. The new Guardians would be arriving in two days.
