EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2019 Jacey Holbrand and Elizabeth Monvey
ISBN: 978-0-3695-0008-3
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
Thanks to my writing partner, Jacey, for being a wonderful and understanding friend. ~ Elizabeth
To my friend and writing partner, Elizabeth—It’s been such a blast creating the Project Mars world and writing with you! I’m looking forward to our continuing collaboration on this series. Thanks for being an amazing friend! ~ Jacey
FUTURE, BETRAYED
Project Mars, 2
Jacey Holbrand and Elizabeth Monvey
Copyright © 2019
Prologue
Dain stomped into the dimly lit bar and made his way to the counter. He sat down on a stool and signaled for a shot of synthesized whiskey, slapping a credit chip on the smooth surface. He knew he shouldn’t be spending e-coos so carelessly, but he needed a few stiff drinks to take the edge off. He had never fought with his husband, Ben, in the year of their marriage, and now all they seemed to do was argue.
“I’m with you, Ranger,” Dain stated. “My uncle died trying to get to Mars. My father never got over losing his younger brother.”
Ben snuggled up against Dain. “I’m sorry about your family, but those propulsion problems have been fixed. Can you imagine relying on each other in a brave new world? Imagine how close couples and family could get in that kind of situation.”
Ranger joined Nate on the new-to-them couch. “Shit, you could do that here. Go live on one of those condo cruise ships. You’d be stuck together in a domicile on a ship for long stretches of time, traveling to different places, but wouldn’t have to leave the planet.”
Dain chuckled. “And run the risk of being capsized by a rogue wave or one of those intense tsunamis from a quake? I’d heard on the news the other day of that happening to the MS Tradewind. Some rich guy my boss knows almost bought an apartment on that. People think living on land is bad? Doesn’t seem much better on the water.”
“Well… we might find out,” Ben stated, looking at Dain.
“What did you do?” Dain asked.
“Last year, when you and I met, when I was on a vacation with Marcus—”
Dain snorted, interrupting Ben. “That dude with an endless bank account.”
“Yes. Marcus had some money, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway,” Ben looked over at Nate and Ranger, “we were in south Florida. Since they were one of the three places hosting the lottery, I thought what the hell. Let’s get in on the action. So, we went to one of the participating pharmacies, got our blood drawn, numbers assigned, and chips installed.” Ben rubbed the inside of his arm a couple inches from his wrist, looking back at Dain. “Marcus bought him and me a year’s supply of entries. I didn’t know I’d meet you, dump him, fall in love, and get married.”
“But if your number gets picked and you pass the exams, you’ll go to Mars. What about me?” Dain asked.
Ben picked up Dain’s hand and intertwined their fingers. “The odds of my number coming up are astronomical. Like one in several million. I don’t think we have to worry. But if my number does get called, you’d come with me because we’re family.”
“That’s no guarantee, and you know it, Ben! We haven’t even discussed this.”
“Truthfully, I hadn’t given my entries much thought until just now, and I only have a few left.” Ben glanced at Nate and Ranger again, then focused back on Dain. “This planet is dying. We all know that. It makes sense to try to find a better life, right?”
Dain broke their linked hands. “Damn it, Ben, you should’ve told me before. What other secrets are you hiding?”
He downed the shot, ordered another, and only then did the alcohol take the edge off his anger. That argument days ago still replayed through his mind, mainly because it invoked a heavy dose of guilt that didn’t seem to ease, no matter how much he told himself that his own secrets weren’t really his to tell. Ben thought Dain was a simple security man who knew a lot about weapons, when in reality the truth was far more complicated. Although knowing Ben’s former lover had bought him a year’s supply of entries into the Project Mars Lottery made him jealous as hell, the true fear was what if Ben won? How would he explain his own betrayal?
When the barkeep came back, he ordered a beer, wanting to stretch out his time before heading back home. His hope was that Ben would be asleep so he could crawl into bed and not answer any questions. As he nursed his drink, a woman came up and sat next to him. Lost in his own thoughts he didn’t really acknowledge her until she spoke to him.
“Haven’t see you here before.”
He turned his head. A stunningly beautiful redhead smiled at him, her short skirt hiked up to show off toned and tanned crossed legs. The dress dipped low enough to showcase her ample cleavage. Most men in the bar stared at her with lust-filled gazes, but he didn’t give a flying fuck about the pleasures she had between her shapely thighs.
“Sorry,” he said, turning back to beer. “I’m married.”
“I won’t tell your wife if you won’t,” she all but purred.
“My husband will find your proposition hilarious,” he said, stressing his commitment. “Not interested.”
She looked him up and down. “No way. I did not have you pegged for an androphile.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I love my husband.”
She stayed silent for a moment, and when he finally looked at her, she had a bemused look on her face.
“Well, now I seem silly, don’t I?” she asked.
“About what?”
She placed her purse onto the bar’s countertop. “About trying to solicit you.”
“No need. We’re all trying to make a living, aren’t we? But you’re fucking beautiful, so what are you doing around these parts? You could make a fortune on the Upper Strip. I work security there for the high-class, and you’d have no trouble finding a daddy.”
She opened her clutch and pulled out a glamor cube. “I don’t really look like this. Like you said, we’re all trying to make a living.”
As she tossed the little cube back into her purse, sorrow for her hit him. As rough as it was working for the posh who lived on the Upper Strip, being a woman in this shithole city had to be worse. He wondered what she looked like without the glamor cube but didn’t want to hurt her chances for finding a john for the night.
She touched his arm. “My name is Cara Mia. Let me buy you a drink. To say sorry.”
“Dain,” he replied. “You don’t have to. Save your e-coos.”
“No, please. Grab the bartender’s attention and get whatever you want.”
“I’ve got a beer, so how about you order your own drink and we can toast to survival?”
She smiled. “Sounds perfect.”
Dain turned his head and signed for the bartender, who came over almost immediately. Cara Mia ordered a beer as well and a moment later she clinked her glass to his.
“Thank you for understanding,” she said. “For not judging.”
“Nothing to judge.”
He took a large drink of his beer and watched as she downed her
own. Afterwards she let out a small belch and laughed, only it wasn’t just a simple chuckle. Instead, her face contorted, and the laugh turned into a high pitch shriek that caused him to wince. He couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from how weird she looked and wondered if her glamor cube was malfunctioning. He tried to ask her about it, but his lips weren’t really cooperating. She leaned closer, but he was unable to pull away.
“What is it, lover?” she asked, her mouth very close to his own. “Something seems wrong.”
He tried to say “help”, but again, couldn’t form the words. Was he having a stroke? An aneurysm? His brain screamed at him to do something, but his limbs wouldn’t budge, as if they were being held down by invisible clamps.
“Here, let me help you,” she murmured, and kissed him. Her tongue pried open his mouth and swept back and forth inside like a damn snake. He was trapped inside his own mind, being assaulted by a woman who didn’t seem to want to help him.
When she finally pulled away, she reached into her mouth and extracted a small pellet and from her purse she pulled out the glamor cube. He watched as she slipped the pellet into the cube and pushed a button. A moment later her eyebrows rose.
“Wow, you’ve got fantastic genes,” she said. “You’ve also been inoculated against Polluted World Pneumoconiosis. Only the very elite get the PWP vaccine, Dain, so who exactly are you?”
He tried making a fist. Tried moving his arm. He even tried blinking, but his body had betrayed him. Only his thoughts raced and shouted No, but the word never passed through his lips. He was being violated in the worst possible way because all his secrets were being exposed.
“Hmm,” she mused. “There’s a security block on your DNA. You were once someone important, weren’t you? I bet my finder’s fee just went up a hefty profit.”
Cara Mia grabbed his arm and placed it on the counter. Then she pulled out a small hand-held piercing gun and placed it against the flesh on his wrist. A second later, a stinging pain shot through him as she injected him with something.
“There,” she said. “Congratulations, Dain. I believe you’ve just hit the jackpot. And before you go thinking you can remove this lotto chip, I want to warn you it has a tracker, and that we’ll be watching you and your husband. If it’s deactivated, one of you will pay the price, and I’d hate to see that it’s your loved one.”
He understood the threat. Ben would be hurt. Or Ranger and Nate. What the fuck had he just gotten himself involved in?
Chapter One
“I’m going to ask you again, what’s wrong?” Ben asked Dain as they entered the living area. “You’ve been quiet since that night you came home drunk.”
Dain wished his husband would just leave well enough alone because he’d like nothing more than to forget the incident that happened almost a week ago. “Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing. I never see you anymore, and you barely eat!”
“I’m just not hungry, Ben.” He shifted his gaze away, but not fast enough to see Ben narrow his eyes.
“Dain—”
“Just stop, Ben! Fuck, not everything is about you, okay?”
Fortunately, the lottery music blared across the view screen, effectively shutting everyone up, much to Dain’s relief. What happened at the bar still haunted him, and he rubbed the small bump on the inside of his wrist, unsure of what to do. Dain watched in grim silence as the festivities at a secret location under strict guard took place on the wall screen. A gray-haired man with an idiot sidekick from reality television appeared and explained how the drawing would take place. Then Bing Bing began his lame ass job, calling each number, and he knew without having to check that he’d just won the fucking Project Mars Lottery. All the people wanting to go, and that included his cousin-in-law, Nate, and here he’d won without spending a single credit. He’d been set up, and that meant his time at a normal life had come to an end.
“I know you entered,” Ben murmured. “Did you win?”
“What?” he asked sharply, and a bit panicked. Did Ben know about the woman’s kiss? “How did you know?”
“I felt it under your wrist,” Ben said, pointing to the slight bump. “So, did you win?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, check.”
“I don’t want to.”
“What? That makes no sense. Obviously, you wanted to win since you bought into it.”
They stared at one another. Ben’s classic good looks had first drawn his attention, but it was his kind blue eyes that made him fall in love. Then Ranger bellowed, dragging Ben’s attention away, and Dain breathed a sigh of relief at the temporary reprieve.
“You bought a fucking ticket, didn’t you?” Ranger swung his feet to the floor, then stood in one fluid motion. Rage etched his features as he looked at his husband, Nate. “You bought a fucking ticket, didn’t you?”
The argument escalated, but Dain half tuned them out.
“What is going on, Dain?” Ben asked him.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Just something I’ve got to handle.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Dain glanced at Nate and Ranger, who were deep in their own argument. Two fights side-by-side wasn’t something he wanted to participate in, so he headed to his bedroom with Ben.
“Wait, don’t walk away!”
His hope for a moment alone was dashed a second later when Ben followed him into the bedroom.
“What the fuck, Dain? Don’t walk away. Why won’t you talk to me?”
He turned his head away, not because he wanted to but because he had to. Never did he think he’d have to come up with lies for the man he loved the most, and he couldn’t think fast enough to snowball the ones he’d already spread. He was getting tired of the lies, though. They were now an albatross weighing him down.
“Damn it, Dain! You’re my husband. The one person I’m supposed to trust above all else.” Ben held up a finger in a number one gesture. “Do you … do you not want to be with me anymore?”
“What?” Dain asked, shocked. “No! What made you think that?”
“Because you don’t talk to me anymore! We live together. We fuck. Eat and sleep, but I can’t remember the last time we had a deep conversation.” He placed his hand on Dain’s arm. “I love you. Please. Talk to me.”
Dain cupped Ben’s face and kissed him on the lips. “I’m just … it’s just work stress.”
Disappointment crashed through Ben’s face. He pulled back, out of Dain’s arms. “Yeah, okay. Whenever you want to talk to me, I’ll be waiting.”
Ben turned away and walked out of their bedroom. Dain sank onto the bed, rubbing the spot where the lotto chip had been placed. He had to get rid of the damn thing, and once he straightened out that mess, he vowed to come clean with Ben. No more secrets. Grabbing his respirator, he marched out the door, leaving them all behind. Ranger and Nate were nowhere to be seen, but the raised voices on the other side of their bedroom door showed this Project Mars lottery nonsense was more trouble than it was worth.
****
He made his way out of the hermetically sealed apartment building, putting his mask in place and entering the two-way exit chamber. The first door opened, and he stepped through, waiting a few minutes as the door sealed behind him to keep out the toxic atmosphere from outside. He didn’t know how the Earth had been before the planet had gone to shit, but he’d seen pictures of what nature had looked like. Green forests, blue skies, crisp rivers, it all seemed like paradise lost. What remained now was bleak, to the point of being inhospitable.
Still, the hermetically sealed environments allowed humans to survive. People like Nate thought the future had to be on Mars, but he knew firsthand that planet was even more messed up than this one. The corruption was simply hidden better.
He rode the public transport back to the bar he visited the other night, this time on the mission of finding the fucking Sector scout that had given him the damn chip. When he walked into the diml
y lit lounge the same old crowd still resided there, as if the patrons had never left. Despair and apathy clung to every person like a virus, with no possible cure in sight. Dain slid onto a stool and waited for the bartender to walk over.
“What’ll ya have?”
Dain shook his head. “I’m actually looking for a woman that might frequent here?”
The bartender raised an eyebrow. “Lots of working girls come in here. I’m sure if you wait long enough, you’ll have more than your share to pick from.”
“No, I’m trying to find a specific girl. Red hair, really pretty. Said her name was Cara Mia. She was in here a few days ago.”
“Yeah, I remember here. Glamor cube I suspect.” The man chuckled. “You probably don’t want to know what she really looks like.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. But do you happen to know her name? Or where I can find her?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, man. Working girls come and go here. You want a beer?”
Disappointed and a little irked, Dain nodded. “Sure.”
As soon as he flipped a credit down, the bartender set a beer down then moved away to help someone else.
“Oh my God,” a voice muttered from behind him. Dain spun around to see Ben standing there, looking at him in horrified disbelief. “You’re soliciting for a prostitute?”
“What are you doing here?” Dain asked, started.
“Following you,” Ben muttered, shaking his head. “I suspected another lover, but not a woman. And definitely not a working girl. Damn you!”
He turned toward the door, and Dain rushed after him.
“Wait! Ben, stop!”
Ben did as he asked, turning to confront him. “If you’re weren’t happy in our relationship all you had to do was tell me! You didn’t have to fuck around behind my back!”
Future, Betrayed Page 1
