# Chapter 3: The Search

Tags: Mecha, mystery, Mature, adventure, Action
Description: The Search

Six hours ago, Alex Summers had been the most beautiful woman at the Terran Defense Coalition's charity gala. He'd worn a black silk dress, a wig, silicone, and seven-inch heels, and he'd slapped a famous pilot across the face in front of half the station's elite.

Four hours ago, he'd been a ghost in black latex, slipping through the service arteries of Pinnacle Station with his sister's name burning a hole in his head.

Two hours ago, the ghost had made a mistake.

A security drone had caught him crossing an automated maintenance lane. Its optical sensor painted him red in its targeting reticle, and it tasered him before he could dodge. The dart caught him in the shoulder, blew a fist-sized scorch through his infiltration suit, and sent him to his knees on a catwalk outside the officers' locker wing, hissing through his teeth. That was where Fleur Visconti had found him.

She'd looked at the crumpled boy on her deck, at the shreds of his black latex, at the alarm strobing blue down the corridor. The mask she wore hadn't even twitched. "You're the boy who slapped Brick Callahan," she'd said, "or rather, the boy who was the girl who slapped him. I saw you leave the ballroom." Then, after a pause: "Get up. Before someone sees you, you idiot."

Now he was standing in the middle of her wardrobe, wearing nothing but his undershorts and a bandage, being offered a dress.

"It's," said the young cadet nervously, holding the garment up on its hanger like she was presenting him a holy relic, "the only thing that's going to fit you, s—" She caught herself, turned red, and started over. "The only clothes we have."

"Female clothes," Alex said flatly.

"Servant uniforms, mostly. And some of the commander's evening wear." She nodded toward the far rail, where rows of dark gowns hung in garment bags. "There's a men's dress jacket in the back, but it belongs to a man who's six foot three and built like a Striker frame. It would drown you."

Behind her, a second cadet popped her head around the corner of the wardrobe, took one look at Alex, and vanished again with a noise that was definitely a giggle.

"She's not wrong," said Fleur Visconti from the doorway. She wasn't …