In the bathroom, she stopped only long enough to relieve herself before walking straight into the shower, turning it as hot as she could bear, and washing every millimeter of her skin and hair three times.
Putting her clothes back on was like donning a suit of armor. She immediately felt safer.
Back in the bathroom, she poured some of the dentifrice powder into the palm of one hand, added a little water, and stirred it into a paste. Using her forefinger, she brushed her teeth and tongue and followed that by drinking as much water as she could hold. Then she detached the dry comb from its slot, pulled it out on its cable, and ran it over her hair. It really must be a nice hotel, she thought incongruously. The dry comb only took three passes. Cheaper hotels used combs that took nine or ten.
With nothing left to do, she sat on the foot of the bed and assessed her options. In the end, she had only two: stay here until she was dragged out, as she would inevitably be, or go out there under her own power.
She was just proud enough to go on her own.
He sat in the same position, watching her. This time he was dressed in a different suit. On the table in front of him rested a flat silver case, about twenty-five centimeters on a side and only a few centimeters high.
“Good morning, Dr. Rivers. Did you have a good night’s sleep?”
She leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s the same day.” It had to be. She had not urinated enough for an entire day and night to have passed.
“No, it’s not.” He pulled a pad from the sleeve of his suit jacket, tapped it a few times, and turned the virtual screen toward her. It showed the headlines from the day’s news, and all of them were dated two days after her keynote speech.
“You could have manufactured that.”
“I could have, but I didn’t.” He indicated the outside door. “Would you like to try again?”
This was all a mindshek, as Ekatya would call it. He was toying with her. But if she didn’t try the door, then she would prove to him that he had already won. That was not acceptable.
When she opened the door and found the same man standing outside, she flinched and covered her abdomen with one arm. It was an instinctive but useless gesture.
The massive man tilted his head just as he had before, watching her.
She closed the door and squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry.
“Sit down, Dr. Rivers.”
Turning around, she eyed the high-backed chair, its built-in restraints open and waiting. “I’ll stand.”
His tone did not change as he said, “My assistant very much enjoyed taking part in your training yesterday. He would love to do it again today. I suggest you sit down.”
Ekatya would have used some deadly combat move against that man-mountain outside the door and escaped by now. Ekatya would never sit in a chair designed for restraint just because she was afraid of being hurt.
Until now, Lhyn had never thought of herself as weak. She simply lived a different lifestyle, too busy with her research and writing to throw herself into physical training the way Ekatya did. And learning hand-to-hand combat had never even crossed her mind.
Now she despised herself for her weakness, which left her helpless in front of this man. She was ashamed of not living up to Ekatya’s high opinion of her. But her fear of being hurt was stronger than her shame.
She crossed the room and sat in the chair.
The gold stud glinted in his ear as he smiled at her. “Very good. I knew you’d learn quickly. After all, you’re the great Dr. Rivers, the galaxy’s foremost authority on Alsea.”
“This won’t work,” she said. “Whatever it is you’re trying to do. There are people looking for me right now. If this is really the day you say it is, then I’ve missed two shuttles and a check-in.”
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
Because you’re an egotistical asshead was her first thought, but she kept silent, assuming he would answer the question himself.
He did.
“You’re here because you’re the best in your field. We need you to do something for us. And I’m here because I’m the best in my field. No one is looking for you. Your lover did call the night of your keynote speech, but she’s not worried anymore. You called her back yesterday.”
Placing the pad in the exact center of the table, he activated a file.
She started when she heard her own voice.
“Ekatya, I’m sorry I missed your call. And I wish I could see you, but the hotel was swamped with all of the attendees and apparently we blew out the video band on their quantum com. So it’s just voice messages for now until they get it fixed.
“And, well…I know this isn’t what we had planned, but I’m staying here for a little while longer. This hotel is so nice, and I have the peace and quiet I need to get these edits done. I’m already past deadline, and I want to have this out of the way before I meet you, so I can focus on being with you once I get there. I hope you’ll understand. It’s just for a few days.
“I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
He smiled at her shock as he replaced the pad in its pocket. “Voice patch technology. Elegant, isn’t it? And you made it so easy for us with all of those interviews. We have enough samples from you to keep you ‘talking’ for weeks.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that Ekatya would never believe that, but common sense grabbed her just in time. He knew too much about her, but he couldn’t know the most important thing.
“And how long do you think the video band excuse will work?” she said instead.
“Long enough to get what we need from you.” He rested his hands on top of the silver case, fingers intertwined, and she was not surprised to see that his nails were all an identical length and perfectly groomed. “Dr. Rivers, you’re about to publish a book that is very problematic. Fortunately, we intercepted the manuscript, and we know you haven’t yet delivered the final version. So there’s still time to do the right thing. We simply need you to rewrite the concluding chapter.”
She forgot her fear in the face of this ridiculous statement. “To match your bigoted views? Not in this lifetime or the next. The DOP are a bunch of tiny-minded cowards, and I would never compromise my academic integrity to lie for you. No one would believe it even if I did. I’m on record a hundred times, saying exactly what I know to be true. The Alseans aren’t a danger to us. We’re the danger to them, as we’ve already proven.”
“Oh, you’re not doing this for me,” he said calmly. “You’re doing it for the organization employing me. And yes, that is the Defenders of the Protectorate. They’re enjoying quite a surge in popularity these days, thanks to your Alseans. The right person at the right time could break into real power, surfing that wave. They just need a nudge.”
“They’ll have to find it somewhere else.”
He eyed her. “You’re very brave all of a sudden.”
“There are things worth being brave for. My academic reputation is one of them. So is my belief in the Alseans.” If they had studied her enough to know her habits, her voice patterns, her word choices, and her planned schedule with Ekatya, then surely they also knew her reputation for never backing down on an academic question when she thought she was right.
He sighed. “I did tell them you would say that. Would you like to reconsider?”
His calm manner was making her skin crawl. But she had no choice.
“I won’t.”
“Very well.”
He nudged up his pristine sleeve with a single finger and tapped a device on his wrist. It looked a bit like an Alsean wristcom.
The mountain-sized man entered the room from the outside corridor and stood with his arms hanging loose at his sides. “Yes?”
“Osambi, it’s time for the second lesson.”
Osambi looked at her,
his expression as impassive as ever. Then he smiled.
It was the most frightening thing she had ever seen.
She was out of the chair before the thought even registered, backing away from him as he approached. But there was nowhere to go in the unfurnished room, and he was huge. She screamed when he lunged for her, then screamed again when he caught her and yanked her around. Before she could take another breath, he had a thick arm clamped around her throat and both of her arms immobilized. She tried to kick backward, remembering something Ekatya had said about targeting the kneecap, but it was like kicking a tree.
Her vision was tunneling from the lack of oxygen, and her focus switched from escape to survival. Desperately she clawed at his forearm.
He tightened the choke hold.
She was limp and on the verge of unconsciousness when he slammed her into the chair and snapped the restraints closed on her wrists and ankles. By the time her vision cleared, her head had been locked to the high back by bands around both her throat and her forehead. She was utterly trapped.
The blond man had not moved.
“Let me explain what’s about to happen,” he said pleasantly. He tapped an access code into the front of the silver case, then held his thumb to a scanner. The top silently folded itself to the sides, and a padded ring rose up on three telescoping legs. When it stopped its motion, he lifted a silver circlet from the ring and held it up for her to see. Small round tabs sprouted from one side of it at irregular intervals, like leaves hanging from a vine.
“This is my own invention. I’m as proud of it as you are of your research.” He handed the circlet to Osambi, who took it and vanished behind her.
“And I’m as good at what I do as you are,” the man continued. “We have something in common, you and I. We’ve both worked very hard on our reputations.”
She wished she could fling a defiant curse at him or pretend a lack of concern, but she was so panicked that her entire body was trembling. When Osambi’s thick fingers brushed her forehead, she let out an involuntary squeak.
The circlet was pressed onto her head, its tabs sliding through her hair as Osambi settled it into position.
“That is an interface between your brain and my decisions.” The blond man took a small control from his chest pocket. “And this is where I input my decisions. With this, I can send commands to your nervous system, telling it to generate specific nerve impulses that will result in targeted muscular contractions.” He smiled suddenly. “It’s so rewarding to be able to explain this to someone who understands. Usually, I have to find simpler words for simpler minds. Your mind is a thing of beauty, Dr. Rivers. I’ve been looking forward to training it.”
Fucking stars, he really was insane. But the worst kind of insane: an intelligent sadist.
“Do you know what nociceptors are?” He waited a moment. “No, I see you don’t. They’re sensory receptors, part of your nervous system. They evoke pain in response to injury. Muscles, the periosteum—that’s the sheath around your bones—and the connections between ligaments or tendons and bones are particularly rich in nociceptors. That’s why a broken bone hurts so very much, or a torn ligament or muscle. Are you beginning to understand?”
She closed her eyes, summoned up every bit of her courage, and whispered, “I won’t do it.”
“I know,” he said. “Because you don’t fully understand yet. But you will.”
She kept her eyes closed, her trembling slowing as her body seemed to realize that what was about to happen was inevitable. But she could not watch. She heard a chair scrape, and then smaller, more nimble fingers touched her head. The circlet’s tabs moved slightly, and after a pause, she felt more than heard a hum as the tabs clamped down. Though they were not sharp, she envisioned a monster closing its jaws on her head, its teeth poised to crunch through her skull. She was on the edge of something terrible, and just as helpless as if her vision were reality.
The chair scraped again.
“Here is the beauty of my system,” the man said. “I can target any part of your body I want. I can cause very specific damage to muscles, tendons, or bones. Or all three. For instance, I could break the index finger on your left hand.”
She tensed, her left hand digging into the chair arm.
“But I won’t do that, because you need your hands to make those changes to your manuscript. Keep that in mind, Dr. Rivers. It’s a few small changes. It doesn’t even have to affect your overall conclusions.”
She tried to shake her head, forgetting that it was impossible. He saw it anyway.
“Yes, yes, you won’t do it. You won’t do it today. And you might not do it tomorrow. But I have unlimited time, while you have limited resources. Now, I did say I wouldn’t break your finger. But I’m going to break something else.”
Her body was rigid with anticipation as she waited, suspended between his words and the pain that hovered just above her, waiting to close its jaws.
When it came, it did not bite. It seized her upper right chest in an inexorable grip and slowly ground her ribs to dust.
As an active twelve-year-old girl, Lhyn had once missed a step while jumping from rock to rock on a mountain hike with friends. She had fallen awkwardly between two boulders, landing chest down on the protruding tip of a buried rock. It had fractured one of her ribs.
She had long forgotten the pain of that moment, but she remembered it now. This was the same pain, slowed down to an infinite agony. It was the exact moment of landing on that rock, over and over and over again.
And over.
And over.
Again, and again, and again and again.
She didn’t know she was screaming until the seizing of her chest finally stopped and the roar in her ears ceased enough for her to hear herself. She closed her mouth and coughed, then cried out because the cough sent a flame of agony through her chest.
“Open your eyes.”
She gasped for air, unable to take a deep breath without activating that excruciating flame.
“Dr. Rivers, open your eyes or I will break another one.”
Her eyes snapped open.
His expression was perfectly calm, as if he had just offered her a cup of tea rather than inflicting the most horrific pain she had ever experienced. Not even her broken arm in the Caphenon crash compared. She had been unconscious for that and too much in shock to feel the full pain when she woke.
“That was your second lesson,” he said. “I fractured your fifth rib on the right side. I could have fractured a lower one, which would have been much easier for you. Lower ribs don’t impact your breathing nearly as much. But you’re too intelligent, so I’m afraid your lessons will have to be a bit more…harsh. Now, I want you to think about what I’m asking you to do. It’s only a few words. Just change a few words in the last chapter of your manuscript, and you won’t have to feel this ever again.”
Shifting his gaze, he addressed the man who still stood behind her. She had forgotten he was there.
“Osambi, take her back to her room.”
Her chin slumped to her chest when Osambi released her head and neck. The tabs loosened their grip on her head, and she was vaguely aware of the circlet being removed and handed over to the blond man.
Osambi freed her wrists and ankles, then scooped her up into his thick arms as if she weighed nothing. The movement jostled her rib, and she cried out again.
Please, please don’t drop me on the bed, she thought.
He dropped her.
CHAPTER 40:
Missing
Ekatya came awake with a startled intake of breath, her hand automatically going to rub the ache in her chest. It had started two days after Lhyn’s departure, and she had developed an odd appreciation for it. In the calm of her quarters at the end of a long shift, she fancied that it was a little piece of Lhyn that was lodged in her heart, quietly missing it
s owner.
Not that she would ever say anything like that out loud.
She dropped her hand down to tap the pad by her bed, bringing up the automatic night shift illumination. Smoothly, the room shifted from pitch blackness to a soft, reddish light.
Swiveling in place, she brought her feet to the floor and then froze, staring at the control pad she had just tapped.
With her right hand, which had been rubbing the right side of her chest.
“What now?” she murmured. Yet another new aspect to their tyree bond? She didn’t enjoy these things cropping up when Lhyn wasn’t here to discuss them with her.
She picked up her robe from the foot of the bed and pulled it on as she walked through the open door. The automatic illumination, having been activated by the bedroom control pad, detected her movement and brought up soft lighting throughout the space. To her left, the living area seemed uncharacteristically boxed in. Without the large display creating a virtual window, the space looked as small as it really was.
She turned right, walking past her desk and into the kitchen area, where she pulled a glass from behind the wooden brace holding it on its shelf. With a quick tap at the sink she filled the glass with water, drank it down, then upended it and pressed it into the cleaning rack. The tabs snapped into place, locking the glass in position.
The motions were already automatic, trained into her from years of living aboard a starship, where it was never wise to leave things lying around. Space travel in a ship the size of the Phoenix was smooth as an oiled marble ninety-nine percent of the time, but that other one percent—usually during interspace transition—could make things very messy very quickly.
She and Lhyn had both laughed at how long it took her to break those habits, first on Alsea and then on Tashar. Eventually, she had taught herself to be a little careless. But she had fallen right back into her routines within one day of stepping aboard her new ship.
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