Wicked Attraction (The Protector)

by Megan Hart

  It meant something.

  She couldn’t remember what.

  Furious with herself and a little anxious that the memories were still eluding her, Nina forced her mind to focus on the series of exercises she was running through. By the time she’d worked up a sweat, she was hungry again. She pressed a few buttons on the tablet. Sometime later the portal door pinged and slid open, and her food was there. Still naked, she ate it in front of a program about dolphins that seemed more fiction than fact.

  She remembered dolphins. Swimming. Blue water. Crystal bubbles of air.

  Dolphins.

  * * *

  “You’d think they wouldn’t need warning signs for people to keep their hands out of the shark tanks.” Nina’s voice bubbles like air released underwater. All around her is the wavering blue and green of the sea. The sound of it soothes her.

  She is not afraid.

  “People will do dumb things. Get bitten reaching for stuff they don’t have a right to touch.” The male voice is behind her, and she turns.

  A man in the shadows. Figure, silhouetted. She knows him. She ought to know him, at least. His voice. The way he stands. If she could only see his face, Nina thinks, reaching toward him.

  Reaching for something she doesn’t have the right to touch.

  In front of her, a tank. Inside the tank, a pair of cavorting dolphins. One centers itself in front of the glass, its mouth grinning. Bubbles burst in clear, domed shapes from the top of its head. She can’t hear them through the glass itself, but a speaker must be transmitting their noises, because the distinctive skree-skree-eek surrounds her.

  “You’re in a cage,” the dolphin in front of her says. The words are metallic, robotic.

  The sign on the wall says these dolphins were part of an experiment in which they were raised as human children. Taught to speak using a translator box. The dolphin spins in the water, then swims away.

  “You’re in a cage,” the shadow man tells her without moving into the light. “I want to get you out of it. I want to save you.”

  “I’m the one who does the saving.”

  The man’s voice fades as he speaks. “Not this time . . .”

  Nina spins the way the dolphin did, her arms out. A slow circle. The floor beneath her feet is soft and warm; it has become sand. She is underwater, but she can breathe.

  She has become the dolphin.

  * * *

  Nina blinked. The fork was halfway to her mouth, and she finished taking the bite. The food was cold. Everything on the plate was cold, too. Her foot had fallen asleep.

  The viddy had not paused, but something about the program seemed wrong. On the screen, flowers bloomed and died in a series of time-lapse scenes while a soft-voiced narrator of indeterminate gender droned on about the life cycle of pollinating insects. Nina put aside her plate, not caring that the fork slid onto the white comforter, and leaned toward the viddy screen.

  Many species of pollinating insects had gone nearly extinct, according to the narrator, but several programs devoted to the reintegration of them had been successful in establishing new colonies of honeybees resistant to the diseases that had formerly almost wiped them out.

  Nina got out of bed. She went to the viddy screen. Staring. Trying to think why this meant so much to her. She spun in a slow circle, looking around the room, noticing the places that certainly hid surveillance equipment that she didn’t have to see to believe was there. The viddy screen went black, although she hadn’t touched the remote or even spoken aloud anything that might have been misconstrued as a voice command to stop the program.

  She closed her eyes, pushing her bare toes firmly against the chilly floor tiles. She centered herself. Breathing in. Breathing out.

  This was not a spa. It was not a normal hospital. This was someplace different, someplace other. She did not know why she was here, but she knew she was being watched.

  Something on that viddy program was a clue. She hadn’t been meant to see it. She focused on that. Flowers. Insects. The glimmer of a memory tried to surface and faded before she could dig into it.

  Be quiet.

  Get into bed.

  Go to sleep.

  Forget.

  “No,” she said aloud. “Get out of my head.”

  The sound of the door opening turned her toward it. A man in white entered. He didn’t look familiar, but something about the way he stared at her made it seem as though he should be.

  “Who are you?”

  “Get into bed,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ewan’s team had come up with a series of possible locations for Jordie Dev, and therefore Nina, based on information they’d been able to strip from the data stamps on Jordie’s viddy message. Ewan had also gone to a different sort of source. Katrinka Dev looked at him now with wide eyes and a thin, grim smile.

  “I have no idea. I truly don’t. You have to understand, Ewan, Jordie and I have not been . . . close. Not for the past few years.” Katrinka’s hand shook so much the tea in her fancy china cup sloshed a little. She put it down without sipping and clutched her hands together, wet fingers linked tight. She looked haggard.

  Ewan had considered her more of a friend than an acquaintance, but now he didn’t have much sympathy for her. “Is there anything you can do to help us? Please. I have my team working on tracing the origins and location of his message, but it was encrypted. Your son was very talented with coding, Katrinka. I believe he might have been one of the brightest kids I ever worked with. I know he could fool my team on purpose to send us on a wild-goose chase. I can’t waste that time. I need to find him.”

  Katrinka looked at Al, who stood silently next to Ewan. Her hands were hooked into her belt, which was hung with weapons. She hadn’t spoken since their arrival, declining Katrinka’s offer of refreshments with only a shake of her head.

  “When you find them,” Katrinka said, “please promise me you won’t hurt him.”

  Ewan shook his head. “I can’t promise that.”

  Al said nothing.

  Katrinka’s eyes glittered with tears. “Promise you won’t kill him, then. Surely you can guarantee that.”

  “I can’t promise anything.” Al spoke up, finally, her voice firm but not belligerent. “But I’ll do my best.”

  “If you know where he might be . . .” Ewan repeated.

  “I don’t, I swear to the Onegod, I don’t.” Katrinka shook her head, but then sighed. Her shoulders slouched. “He has an identity chip.”

  She’d said the last words in a voice so low Ewan wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “What?”

  “He’s chipped,” Katrinka said, louder this time. Almost defiantly, she looked at Ewan. “We had him chipped in utero.”

  A grim triumph filled him. “So he’s trackable.”

  “You know they disabled the GPS functions on those chips years ago. Too many problems. Jordie’s hasn’t been functional since he was a young child.”

  The in utero identity chips had been touted as the wave of the future, a permanent way to prevent identity theft, child abductions, and a slew of other dangers. Instead, they’d caused personality disorders, brain tumors, and a multitude of behavioral and health problems. Although it was impossible to remove the chips, the regulatory networks had all been disabled. It was illegal to discriminate against someone who’d been chipped, but it was also illegal not to disclose it.

  “I had no idea,” Ewan said. “Damn it, Katrinka.”

  “You wouldn’t have taken him on as an apprentice if he’d disclosed it. I know,” Katrinka added sharply before Ewan could reply. “You’re not allowed to refuse someone because of the chip. But you wouldn’t have taken him into your program, Ewan. You’d have found an excuse to pick someone else. What did you want me to do, tell him to be honest when I knew it would keep him from pursuing his dreams? I might be an excremental one, but I’m still a mother.”

  Ewan burned with a thin, fruitless anger. “
I wouldn’t have declined his apprenticeship. But I’d have paid closer attention when his behavior started getting erratic, Katrinka. I might have been able to help him—”

  Her bitter laugh cut off his words. “There was no help for him, Ewan, and you know it. Whatever’s wrong with my son might or might not be because of that chip, which is a fact I have to live with forever, but we really can’t ever know because they’ve never been able to prove a direct link. All I know is that he seems to have gotten himself into some kind of mess that I can’t help him out of.”

  “This mess isn’t only about Jordie. He’s taken it far beyond that. He’s involved with people who don’t care about him or his dreams.”

  Katrinka visibly blanched. “Who?”

  “We have leads that say it’s an offshoot of the League of Humanity.” Ewan’s team had not been able to confirm that, but it didn’t matter. “Whoever he’s working for, they’re going to use him up and throw him away. That’s what those people do. He’ll end up in prison—”

  “If he’s lucky,” Al said in a low voice.

  Ewan continued, “Or dead.”

  Katrinka grabbed for her tea but spilled it on the table. She didn’t even try to get away from the spreading puddle as it dripped onto her. With shaking hands, she set the cup back in the saucer. One fingertip traced a line in the spill. “They disabled the GPS systems, but you know even better than I do how to circumvent that sort of thing. My suggestion would be to start there.”

  “Can you send me his ID code?” Ewan stood, eager to get out of there. “I can get my team working on it.”

  Katrinka nodded without looking at him. A silver tear slid over her cheek and joined the puddle of tea. “I’ll have to find it. Once we couldn’t use it any longer, I didn’t keep it handy. It’s probably in a file somewhere.”

  “Please,” Ewan said, then added again, more softly, “please find that code.”

  At last, she turned her face to his. Almost angrily, Katrinka swiped away the tears, smearing the soft lines of cosmetics below her eyes. She lifted her chin, her gaze meeting Ewan’s without so much as a blink.

  “I know you have no reason to care about him, and you can’t promise me anything, but please, Ewan. Do what you can to bring him home safely.”

  There was no way he could make her that assurance, but Ewan nodded. He never expected Katrinka to lurch to her feet, but Al was between them before the other woman could so much as brush her fingertips against him. Katrinka gasped out a low cry and took a step back.

  Bitter laughter slipped out of her. “I was going to hug you, but I see you’ve got a new watchdog.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Ewan said without making a move toward her. He made no apologies for Al’s interference. Katrinka may well indeed have meant only to hug him, but she was also the mother of the young man who’d arranged for the kidnapping and detainment of the woman he loved.

  Katrinka nodded, chastened, and turned her back on them. “Please excuse me if I expect you to show yourselves out. I’m afraid I’m feeling suddenly distressed. I need to lie down.”

  “I need that ID code,” Ewan said.

  Katrinka shook her head. “I’ll get it to you, I just . . . I’m feeling sick to my stomach . . .”

  “Puke on the floor, then.” Al stepped up and gripped her by the upper arm to spin her. “We need that ID number now, not when you’ve finished your nap on the fainting couch. We’re not leaving here without it, so you’d better get hopping.”

  Fifteen minutes later in the transpo, the ID number already sent off to Ewan’s team so they could start working on getting the GPS system working, Al let out a low burst of laughter. Ewan did not feel like laughing. At the sight of what must have been his irritated expression, Al pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  “She about messed her pants when I grabbed her,” Al said. “She was totally sure I was going to put the hurt on her.”

  Ewan allowed himself a grim smile as he checked his personal comm for his team’s response. “I appreciate your diligence and swift reaction.”

  “Doing my job, best I can.” Al nodded and leaned back against the seat. “Kind of wish I’d been able to pop her one, though.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have your chance to pop a whole bunch of people, soon enough.”

  “Any word on the ID code?”

  “Not yet,” Ewan said.

  * * *

  Nina must have slept.

  They’d drugged her, put something in the food. Nina knew that as soon as she woke, mouth dry as sand, head groggy. She wore a new pair of pajamas, these adorned with small dots of red and blue, which was better than the ugly flowers. Her body ached, but with the good, solid pain of muscles that had been well-worked. Nothing else seemed to be injured, although she put swift hands beneath her hair to search for lumps, bumps, or any new scars that would indicate a fresh head injury.

  She remembered that she was not supposed to be here, but she did not remember how she got there.

  Someone had come to her . . . yesterday? Or sometime earlier. A woman who tried to tell her about this place being a spa. As though Nina were stupid. Had there been another person, too? Someone who didn’t try to pretend anything? She thought so, but the memory, slippery as a fish, darted away into the shadows of her mind.

  She waited now, watching the door, and sure enough it opened. A dark-haired woman came in. She wore a pair of faded, out-of-style jeans and a multicolored and oversized sweater that did not flatter her. She smiled and stood at the side of Nina’s bed, well out of arm’s reach. Nina noticed that. It was important. She sat up higher in the bed, her hands pushing at the soft mattress, her feet swimming under the blankets. She still felt logy, ill-equipped to speak.

  “I’m Adami, your guest consultant. I’m here to go over the Limone Luxury Health Spa rules and guidelines, as well as walk you through your guest privileges.”

  “That’s an interesting way of putting it.” Nina swallowed against the cottony sensation on her tongue. “Since I’m not a guest.”

  Adami’s smile faltered. “Of course you are, one of our treasured guests. I’m here to show you how to operate your entertainment and sustenance ordering systems . . .”

  They wanted Nina to think she’d just woken up here and to forget that she’d already met Adami. She noted this as whatever they’d put in her system dissipated, leaving her clear-headed. Her body still ached, but she’d been exercising. It was supposed to feel this way.

  Why were they trying to fool her into thinking this was her first time waking up in this bed?

  “I’ve already figured out how to order food. It wasn’t very good. I notice someone took away the plates while I was knocked out.”

  “You weren’t . . . I mean, we have staff to clean up . . . they’re trained not to disturb you.” Adami stumbled on her explanation.

  The other woman got points for thinking fast, but it wasn’t enough to convince Nina. “Thanks for the pajamas, they’re much nicer than the other ones.”

  “You remember—” Adami bit off her words and coughed lightly into her fist. “ . . . Ahem, you’re welcome. I’m glad the new pajamas suit you better. We here at the Limone Luxury Health Spa want to make sure you have everything you need.”

  “How about a key to get out of here?”

  Adami laughed jaggedly. “Oh, my goodness. You have such a sense of humor. Of course, we here at Limone Luxury Health Spa want you to have the finest experience possible. If you’d like to get out of bed, walk around the grounds, we have—” Again, Adami cut herself off, her head tilting as though she were listening to some unheard command. “I mean, your treatment regimen is customizable. When you speak with your . . . um . . .”

  “I thought you were the guest consultant. You can’t authorize me being able to get out of this room?”

  Adami’s smile stretched over crooked teeth. Cosmetic dentistry was the lowest bar of any kind of cosmetic tech available. Nobody had crooked teeth anymore, un
less they were making some kind of political statement. Nina frowned.

  “What kind of spa hires someone who doesn’t conform to societal standards of beauty?” Nina asked before Adami had time to come up with another set of lies.

  Adami looked surprised. Then angry. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I don’t believe this is a spa, I don’t think you’re my guest consultant, and I want to know what’s going on.” Nina looked down at herself, tucked up so neatly in a bed she knew wasn’t hers, but that she couldn’t recall getting into.

  She’d forgotten lots of things over the past number of years. Some she knew were gone forever. Pinpricks of blankness in her brain. Some could come back to her, if she tried hard enough. The difference between the two kinds of memory loss had to do with if she’d forgotten because of natural reasons, or if she’d been reset.

  This felt uncomfortably close to being reset.

  “Who do you work for, really?” Nina demanded. “Where am I?”

  Adami hadn’t come close enough to the bed for Nina to grab her. Still, she backed up a step. Her head tilted again, and this time her fingertips touched her temple for a second. “I told you, I work for Limone Luxury Health Spa.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “To recover from injuries sustained in an . . . accident.” Whoever had trained her hadn’t done a very good job. Adami stumbled over the explanation. “It’s our pleasure here at Limone Luxury Spa to provide a warm, safe environment for healing . . .”

  “You forgot the health part.”

  “It’s a spa!” Adami shouted. “You’re here to enjoy yourself! To recover after an accident!”

  “Get out,” Nina said. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “We have many methods of offering comfort—”

  Nina yanked off the blankets and started to swing her feet over the edge of the bed.

  Adami fled.

  * * *