How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis
Ada meets up with a contact to deliver the goods she stole from Roundabout, the nanobot prototype and the key. She knows the coding of the nanobots is corrupted and that everything's going to go really bad when they are released on Earth. The contact questions her about what happened on her mission and she mentions eating great food and that they did a horrible job crashing, making her life difficult, and meeting Rian White. The contact is intrigued. Ada hands over the prototype and the key, gets paid a decently handsome amount, and is offered another job. Nah… A month passes and she's offered again. She requests a ridiculously high payment. They turn her down so she turns them down. They try again in another month, needing her to contact Rian. She requests her ridiculous sum again, and then even more, and finally relents when they say that's literally all the money they have. They know she'll help because she actually, genuinely cares about Sol Earth.
Ada arrives at a charity gala at the Museum of Intergalactic History in a very expensive, very rare, very gorgeous dress made of sea silk. She also has the earrings that she always wears and a small reticule holding lipgloss and a data recorder. There are camera drones all around and she knows they don't care who she is because she's no one, but damn does she look good in this dress. She sees protestors outside who are protesting sending aid to Sol Earth? Dicks! Soon enough she is grabbed on the arm by none other than hunky, blue-eyed stud Rian White. He questions why she is there, for him she says, and to steal something, obviously. He leaves her alone after staring dreamily at her with his dreamy eyes.
Everything at the gala is a relic from Sol-Earth being auctioned off. Presumably some money will go to help out on Earth, but it's also paying for all the cameras and superstars and every other extravagant thing surrounding them. Ada knows that they're going to reveal the prototype later and she also knows that it's going to go horribly, but for now, she's biding her time, and maybe causing distractions and maybe staring at Rian who is maybe staring back, watching Ada’s every move.
Ada knows what it's like to be prey. When she was younger and living at Yellowstone National Park, she snuck out of the park’s protected zone at night on a stupid dare from her stupid friends. She frolicked around outside the safety zone feeling invincible, but when she went back inside, she watched the security footage, you know, to relive her glory. Turns out, a cougar was stalking her the entire time and could have eaten her at any moment, pouncing as soon as Ada made it back to safety. Now Ada is prepared. Rian thinks he's stealthily tracking her? He has no idea.
Ada and Rian explore the museum, Ada quickly spotting the people she thinks are working with Rian. They spend some time at the display of Tutankhamun’s tomb and canopic jars, which are currently up for bidding. There's talk of Victorian unwrapping parties which is when Ada notices that Rian is wearing a rose, probably from his family's farm on Rigel-Earth, and an o-ring, which can only be in reference to her story from book one. Is he searching for the flaw in her current plan? The crack in her o-ring?
Ada has two cons she's working on currently, one for her client, one for herself. Her future self, actually, because it's going to take a long time for it to work and has lots of moving parts. Rian asks again why she is at the museum and she again says for him, and maybe he might believe her this time, but then she asks why can't she just be there for the museum? She takes him away from the crowd, who are tittering nervously at Ada and Rian’s close proximity, and up a staircase. It's meant to be used, but people generally prefer using the lifts, so the staircase isn't busy at all and they sit. Ada says that the place they are currently sitting can't be seen by any cameras, which is perfect, because they kiss. Luckily she's wearing smudge-proof lipstick because soon, a woman in red strides up the stairs and they probably shouldn't be caught smooching.
This woman in red is obviously working with Rian and of course Ada realizes it. As the woman passes, Ada asks Rian her name and he reluctantly replies Phoebe. Phoebe heads up the stairs and comes back down, then Ada heads up, too. A part of her long con is up there in a room featuring lots of equipment from the Apollo 11 mission. Strom Fetor, the man supposedly responsible for the nanobot prototype and who is going to save Earth, except he's just a rich idiot who purchased the company and is taking all the credit, is who Ada is after. He's going to end the night with a big, climate-cleaning, world-saving speech. Oh, and he paid for the protestors out front, too, just for more publicity. Ada hates him and tells him so, right to his face but with a smile so he thinks she's just being cute. Nah, she hates his guts out immediately. He has all the security shut off in this room and says he's going to buy the red Houston-we-have-a-problem phone, even though it's not for sale and plays with the receiver, putting it back incorrectly. Yeah, he's a dick, but don't worry, Ada fixes the receiver.
Ada questions Fetor about his speech and if he's really going to announce the climate cleaning nanobot project and he says that he is. She leads him out of the Apollo room and to another with a display of portal technology and the woman, Skye Martin, who Fetor says invented portals, but she didn't invent them, she just made them better and faster. Travel that used to take months now only takes days. Ada teases Fetor, but really Rian, about the nanobots and the fact that the original prototype was stolen. Fetor of course doesn't know Ada was the one that stole it and goes on and on about the government being in charge and that things are going to go well. Nah. When does anything ever go well when the government is involved? Phoebe comes to alert Fetor that he needs to test the stage for his speech and Rian goes with him, leaving Ada with Phoebe.
Ada and Phoebe are left alone in the portal room when Rian and Fetor go off to get ready for the presentation. Phoebe is the contact that Ada was supposed to be looking for and it's interesting that she also knows Rian. Phoebe doesn't seem to think that Ada's going to do the right thing, hand over the asset at the end of the night, but Ada will always do the right thing. After some bickering, the two finally get on the same page. If Fetor releases the nanobots on Earth, he will own the entire planet. Sure, it looks like he's saving the water supply, but as we all remember from book one, the nanobots are programmed to fail and Fetor will be the "only one" who can fix them, and he'll only do that for a price. Sure would be easier if he'd just fall off the stage, the hover stage, during his presentation.
Phoebe leaves and Ada spends some time just watching. She sees several people who must be working for Rian keeping their eyes on her. She also sees a youngish guy who looks pretty squirrelly. Ada decides to follow him to see what he's up to since everyone else only seems concerned with her so no one is paying any attention to this nervous kid. She was right to do it. The nervous kid, after a quick chat, is obviously working for the Jarra. Ada knows the Jarra hate Fetor and just want everyone to fuck off about Earth and let them do their own thing, but the way they try to accomplish that is through sheer destruction, which is why this kid has control of a bomb. Ada has fifteen minutes before Fetor's presentation is set to begin to stop this kid from fucking everything up.
Ada convinces the kid to let her see his transponder and she checks his code. He's pretty proud of it and the fact that it just messes with the holograms of Fetor's presentation, turning the images into, presumably, a giant penis pointing at Fetor's head. Unfortunately, the kid didn't realize that the Jarra hacked his code to make the safeties of the stage fail so it will fall from its hover and violently explode. When she shows him this, she tells him it's fine, he just won't activate the detonator, but oh, he already did. Right before she sat down. Well fuck.
The kid runs off, leaving Ada to deal with the mess, but hopefully not the aftermath. She rushes to the stage, which hasn't begun its hover and is still waiting to be ridden pompously out from the backstage area by Fetor. Security guards chase her but she maneuvers the stage up out of their reach while she tries to figure out what to do. She sees Rian below and signs to him, asking if he trusts her. No, no he absolutely does not. Since the stage is programmed to overheat, fall and explode, Ada yanks a bunch of wires free. The stage falls from its low hover and doesn't explode, thank goodness, just as it's time for Fetor to begin his presentation. As security swarms Ada, Fetor, pissed, pretends that nothing is wrong and the show goes on.
Ada is questioned by Rian and Jacques Winters, the coordinator of the gala. She tells them the truth about that kid and shows them her data pad and the kid's code. After some testing and analysis, they know she's not lying and that she stopped the Jarra from a terrorist attack. Ada tells Jacques that she promised Fetor the red Houston phone, which isn't at all hers to promise, but hey, she did stop the stage from becoming a "raging inferno of death and destruction," so that should be worth something. Jacques leaves, probably to deal with chaos, and Rian and Ada sit closer together. Ada tells Rian that killing people is a line she won't cross, and he sexily asks her what other lines she won't cross, but, hey now, this isn't a date and they shouldn't be acting this way. Ada insists Rian show her a good time now that the gala is almost over and has successfully distracted him from what she actually came to the gala to steal.
Ada and Rian stand backstage listening to Fetor's presentation. Rian questions why Ada hates Fetor so much, obviously because he's so so hateable, but it's actually because of his immense wealth and greed and desire to take all the credit for life-saving things. Years ago, Fetor's company was responsible for distributing vaccines to combat radiation sickness on Earth. It took eight years of testing and then three more charging people for the vaccine before it became widely available, and in those eleven years, Ada's father died without receiving the vaccine that would've saved his life. Fetor is definitely responsible and definitely hateable. Rian tells Ada that even though she stole the nanobot prototype, she only delayed its release and didn't stop it. She knows this, and she knows lots more, too, but she can't tell him everything just yet. As Jacques gives Fetor the red Houston-we-have-a-problem phone on stage, Ada smoothes on some lip gloss and gives Rian's ear a little lick.
Ada and Rian head toward the exit, but before they make it very far, Ada decides to pick a fight with Rian, questioning him wearing the O-ring on his lapel. She thinks he is mocking her by wearing it, but he is actually wearing it to remind himself that the smallest thing can make all the difference in the world. It's quite romantic even though he probably means that he knows Ada can fuck everything up if she wants to, but it's pretty swoon-worthy anyway. They kiss but are interrupted by Strom Fucking Fetor, inviting them to an afterparty and thanking Ada for the phone. Ada turns down his invitation and Rian tries to figure out why. Ada explained before about setting up the best way to steal something and Rian is sure that she wanted to steal that phone, but, as she told him before, she's only there for him. As they leave, Rian getting loopy from the psychotropic drug in Ada's lipgloss, Ada sees Phoebe, who nods in approval at them leaving together.
Rian wakes up in Ada's bed, but don't worry, she slept in the cockpit. As double-entendred as that sounds, nobody did anything sexy with anyone else, whether they were mentally aware of it or not. Consent is key! Ada finally explains to Rian that the nanobots, although the prototype was delayed, are going to be released on Earth in a week and that there was a bit in the code writing in planned obsolescence, meaning it's going to fail and it was written to fail, and the only person who can fix it is Fetor, and that's very bad because he's a trillionaire and he didn't get that way by being the good guy. He's not good, and the government is not good, as much as Rian is and wants them to be. But don't worry, Ada has a plan.
Ada's plan is to replace Fetor's rotten code with a code that will correct it. Rian wants to get this going immediately and to call his superiors, but Ada tells him that they have already been told about the situation and, unfortunately, they just don't care. Yay for the government fucking over their constituents! Ada's plan is for them to get into Fetor's office and replace the code, and with Rian's clearance, they'll be able to. It's a good thing they're in a portal heading for Sol-Earth right now. They'll be able to replace the code before Fetor arrives and he won't know the difference until it's too late.
Ada is in communication with Phoebe who is upset with how things worked out, despite the fact that she gave Ada a nod when she left with Rian. Apparently Phoebe just wanted Ada to tell Rian about the corrupted nanobots, not kidnap him and take a portal to Sol-Earth and solve the nanobot problem herself. Apparently she doesn't know Ada very well. Rian meanwhile is dictating notes to himself on a data recorder about Ada rather than talk to Ada. They'll have three days before the scheduled release of the nanobots to correct the code, which means that he's going to have to trust Ada to save the earth. Fuck. And what about that fucking red telephone?!
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