“Of course,” Grace muttered.
“Anyway, I want you to call me anytime night or day.”
“Wednesday, eight twenty a.m.”
“Grace, it’s Sam again. Matt won’t say what’s going on but he’s sent some people after you.”
They went on like that for some time, only occasionally interspersed with messages from her mother or other perspective clients. Grace had never heard Sam so bent out of shape before. The thought of him in a panic made her smile.
“Ex-boyfriend?” Alex asked.
Grace stopped the flow of messages and snapped her head around to face Alex. “What on earth gives you that impression?”
“Well, someone has left you a lot of messages. At first I figured it was family, but then you started smiling in a way that made me think it was someone you’re glad to see worrying over you.”
“I thought we were done talking,” Grace said. “Don’t you have a video game to play?’
“I got sick of video games about two hundred years ago. They’re all the same.”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s one of the few areas of technology that seems to be advancing instead of going backwards! Every year there’s new and better virtual reality. Not that you can get it on your portable. What was it, a hundred years ago when they came up with the holoroom so you didn’t even have to wear the suit?”
“One hundred three years ago, to be exact, and the plantation house has such a room. It’s all right.”
“All right?” Grace said, skeptically. She had always wanted to try one, but even rental time was prohibitively expensive. “If we ever get out of this alive, you’ll have to let me use your time slot.”
“It’s a date.”
Grace gave him a searching look, but saw nothing but humor in those sparkling green eyes.
“So, who is he?” Alex pressed.
“No one important. Someone I thought I loved long ago. A lifetime, in some centuries.”
“Thought you loved?” Alex asked. “Don’t tell me–he broke your heart so badly that you don’t believe in love anymore.”
Grace scowled. She suddenly wanted to sit in silence again. “Doesn’t love, by definition, last forever?”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said. “Love is something we do, and even if we choose to stop loving someone, it doesn’t mean we never did. It also doesn’t mean we can’t embrace it when it’s here.”
Grace thought about that for a minute, drawn into his view of love, even if she wasn’t sure she bought into it. “Were you ever married?”
“Yes, for a long time. My wife left me shortly after I came to work here, though. I don’t think she ever forgave me for giving up that spot on the colony ship. She could have come, too, you see.”
“Oh.” Grace wanted to think she would have forgiven him, but how could she be sure? Idealism aside, the colony ships were a one-way ticket off this miserable planet.
“We have two kids–Angie and Ben. They’re not children anymore, long since. In the grand scheme of things, they’re my age. It feels so weird. You know, when I was a kid I wouldn’t really think of having a peer relationship with someone thirty years older or younger than myself. They were too old or too young, completely not of my generation.”
Alex got a faraway look in his eyes before shaking it off. “My kids live in Des Moines. They settled there after I took the job. Angie decided to forswear all science and chose art as her passion and her profession. She actually makes quite a good living off it, though. She does commissioned work for the rich and famous and is in quite a bit of demand. It gives her the money to do her ‘real’ work, she says. I don’t really understand any of her work, to be honest. I was always so mathematical and I simply don’t see the layers of paint as being anything other than that–paint. Sometimes she paints something pretty. I have one of her paintings in my quarters. It’s got this river on it that somehow looks like it’s flowing. It’s an optical illusion, of course, but I thought it was impressive that she could free-hand it like that. I reproduced the effect on the computer, but for some reason, Angie didn’t speak to me for a year after that. I don’t suppose you understand it?”
“Sort of, yes,” Grace said. “I’m glad she’s talking to you again, though.”
“Who said she was talking to me? That was last year.” He smiled and added, “I’m winning her back over, though. I sent her a one-pound brick of chocolate last month. She sent it back. So I sent two pounds, then three, then four... Finally, she kept the ten-pound brick. I think that’s a good sign. Either that or it got lost in the mail. Do you think I should go ahead and send more?”
Grace smiled and shook her head. “What’d you do with all that chocolate she sent back?”
“I’m glad you asked!” With a flourish, he opened the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out the largest chunk of chocolate Grace had ever seen. It must have cost a fortune. Even a small candy bar was hard for her to justify on her inconsistent salary.
“Wow,” Grace murmured despite herself.
“As long as we’re going to be stuck here for a while...” He broke a chunk off and handed it to Grace. “Enjoy!”
He brushed her hand as he passed it to her, and the touch lingered long enough that she began to wonder if it was on purpose. She took the chocolate, still feeling the warmth of his hand on her skin, not to mention the ripples of awakening desire.
Stuck in a room alone together for an unknown length of time, that touch could easily turn into something she didn’t want–or did she? It’s not like she hadn’t had flings before, and Alex was better looking than most, not to mention more intelligent. It was that spark of conviction, though, which made her nervous. It made her think she could never just have a fling with Alex. She had spent a good amount of time avoiding men with the potential to touch her heart.
She shook herself and stood, glancing at the stairs. “How long are we going to be here?”
“It might be best to wait here for a day or two...make them think we’ve disappeared.”
“Oh God, just what I need. Two more days of making small talk.” Yeah, as if the talking worried her.
“Sorry if I’m so boring,” Alex said. He stood, too.
“I didn’t mean that; I just hate feeling trapped, especially with some strange man.”
“I thought that was the point of getting to know one another.”
“I’m in the middle of too much right now. I don’t have time to stop and get to know anyone.”
“Sure you do. We have one or two days.” He looked amused. “Are you afraid of getting to know me?”
For a moment, Grace tried to remember what her mother had said a few days—about at least trying to find someone—then she shook it off. When she looked up, Alex was standing very close to her. She swallowed, not really wanting him to move away. She tilted her head up towards his, parting her lips slightly.
He turned away and sat back down on his steel chair.
“Wh–” Grace stopped short of asking what he had meant by that. It didn’t matter.
He answered her unspoken question anyway. “You’re not ready to take a chance yet, and I have a feeling you’d willingly take a one-night stand in lieu of anything real.”
Grace’s face burned, whether with anger or embarrassment she had no idea. “Are you trying to rescue me again?”
Alex shrugged. “Do you need it?”
“No.”
“Then how could I rescue you?” With that, he sub-vocalized a command into his portable and lost himself in whatever amusements he had found there.
Chapter 18
To ensure the most accurate data, portables uploaded time, date, and weather data from the nets. This meant Grace could not request the time. With no windows to show her if it was day or night, the only way to know how much time had passed was her own body’s signals. She wasn’t sure she wanted to fall asleep here, but her body took the decision out of her hands.
She dreamed at a million
miles a second, as if she’d never properly dreamed before and needed to make up for it. People and places she knew came and went in her mind’s eye, jumbled in ways that only partly made sense. Her mother would speak to her in Alex’s voice, and then suddenly she was her mom, searching for her lost daughter on the intercity rail.
She felt things, too, but the feelings didn’t always match the things she saw. Sam, wearing Matt Stanton’s body, made her afraid, whereas Carl, flanked by a William Edgers bent on her personal destruction, made her angry. She wanted to help someone, but couldn’t think who. She saw a small child, a blind woman, Meg, and Sam all trapped on the farm, chained to the ground like wild animals.
“Wake up.” The voice was sharp, demanding, and near at hand. It seemed to be coming from the barn, but horses don’t talk.
“Grace!”
She blinked. The barn disappeared and a handsome, green-eyed face appeared in its place. “What?”
“We’re going.”
“Now?” Grace blinked sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Two in the morning. We’re leaving.”
“Did that man come back? Is it safe?” She cursed herself for having been so deeply asleep that she missed someone coming into the room.
“Of course it’s not safe,” Alex said, “but I don’t think it’s going to get any safer. Mr. Cooper took a turn for the worse tonight, and the doc says he probably won’t make it through the night.”
Grace sat up and stretched. “All right. What’s the plan?”
“We head for the garage. Unfortunately, this isn’t an elaborate system of hidden rooms. We’re going to have to come out in the open well before we reach it, and then there’s no guarantees who we’ll run into or who they’ll be loyal to. I was hoping to get all my people in place along a certain route but...well, we’ve got some. Let’s hope it’s enough.”
She didn’t question him further. The odds didn’t sound good, but they’d have to deal with this escape as it came. “Do you have a weapon?” Grace asked.
Alex patted a disruptor at his side. Then he handed another disruptor, complete with holster, over to Grace. It wasn’t hers. “Where’s mine?”
“Yours doesn’t stun. I work with these people. I won’t kill if I have a choice.”
She briefly thought of pointing out the fact that Carl hadn’t set to stun, but dismissed the notion at once. It didn’t matter. She accepted the new weapon without complaint. Sometimes a stunned man could get off a shot a dead one couldn’t, but it would do. She strapped the weapon to her side over the gray slave garb, then changed her mind and positioned it so the shirt would cover the weapon. If she had to wear the clothes, she may as well make a proper disguise of it. Slaves didn’t carry disruptors.
Finally, she stowed the diary into her backpack and started to fling it over her shoulder.
“Do you need the diary?” Alex asked. “If we get captured...”
He didn’t need to finish. She had brought it with her because she feared people searching her apartment while she went to the farm, but now the risk of capture outweighed the risk that someone would search this room. She reopened the backpack, took it out, and shoved it in the bottom drawer with the chocolate. Then she took out a brick of chocolate–probably three pounds–and put it in her backpack.
“Help yourself,” Alex said with a small smile.
“No sense letting it go to waste.”
“Well, you’d better let me take the backpack. Slaves don’t usually carry them.”
He was right again, but she felt practically naked as she handed her pack over. With the exception of these past days on the farm, it had gone with her everywhere for five years. She expected it to stay by her side for at least fifteen more. The way she used it, they just didn’t make them more durable than that. In fact, she didn’t think they’d improved the design in her lifetime. Yet another sign of a decaying society.
“Stay behind me but stay close,” Alex warned as he started up the narrow staircase.
When they’d arrived, he’d parked his hovercar on the third floor, so Grace expected them to go up three flights of stairs before leaving the hidden passages. To her surprise and dismay, the stairs only went up one flight, and then ended abruptly at a solid wall like the one that led back out of the small room downstairs.
“This is it?” Grace said, despite herself.
Alex gave a curt nod, and then flipped a switch to open the wall. It led into the back of a storage closet similar to the one Cohen had questioned her in the day before. For all she knew, it was the same closet.
Alex stepped to the door and pressed his ear against it. They stayed there for a while, frozen in inaction, until Grace heard a faint patterned knock that must have been some kind of signal. Alex opened the door.
Outside, endless institutional corridor stretched into empty silence. When Alex moved, Grace a step behind him, they passed the farmer who had been helping their escape. Alex gave him a curt nod, then headed down hallways that felt almost too quiet, like they were waiting to pounce.
At the foot of a staircase, Alex paused for another signal. It came less than a minute later, and they proceeded up the narrow backstairs.
Something made the hairs on the back of Grace’s neck stand up. Perhaps it was the back staircase. If she were watching for two people trying to escape, the back ways would be at the top of her list to patrol. In fact, where were the patrols?
They reached the top of the stairs without incident, though. Another farmer stood off to the side and nodded at Alex. Perhaps his network of farmers had done a good job of watching their path. Perhaps.
A few paces down the hallway they turned and headed up a flight of stairs leading to the third floor. The hairs on the back of Grace’s neck still stood at attention, and a cold shiver ran down her spine.
She turned. The farmer who had nodded to Alex had his disruptor out, aimed at her. She went for her own sidearm, ducking and rolling as she did. A gold stunner missed her by inches.
It took her precious seconds to fumble her own disruptor from beneath her shirt. She rolled again, towards a corner she thought she could use for cover. Another shot missed her, but this time curses accompanied the miss.
She freed her sidearm, sited along it, and prepared to fire.
The farmer was already on the ground, and Alex motioned at her to move. Without waiting to be told twice, she did, gripping her disruptor.
Her heart raced, but she took deep breaths to still it. She had to concentrate on the world around her, which she couldn’t do with blood pounding in her ears.
The hairs on the back of her neck still stood at attention, and she found herself thinking, he wouldn’t have attacked without reinforcements nearby.
He had waited until her back was turned, but he still should have waited for backup. Unless he had been stupid enough to risk trying to bring them in singlehanded. She had once known a cop on the force who had tried something like that. Captain Flint had dissuaded anyone else from trying again.
The blood slowed in her ears and the hum of the heaters echoed in its place. Up the stairs to the third floor, but how far to the garage? How far to the car? How far to the exit?
Straight. Left. A sound from off to the right. Before Grace could react, Alex led them into an empty office. Breathe. The footsteps passed.
“We’re almost there,” Alex said in a voice so low Grace could scarcely hear him. “The man at the door should be mine, but the last one... We’re going to run for it.”
Grace nodded once.
Back through the door and around the corner, Alex broke into a run with Grace on his heels.
The first stunner came as Alex reached the door and pulled it open. He went through but stopped just inside, leaving Grace exposed to whoever was firing–somewhere to the right.
She flung herself to the left as the second stunner came from that direction. Ducking to the ground, she got off a shot and thought she heard someone hit the ground.
&nbs
p; Uh oh. That either meant she had gotten off a supremely lucky shot or there were so many people over there she was sure to hit one.
The answer came clear less than a second later, when the trap closed in around her. Alex backed out of the garage with his hands in the air, his weapon gone. Several men followed him through. To the left and right, a line of farmers threatened her with disruptors and behind her, albeit distantly, she could hear the footsteps of more men approaching.
Grace threw the disruptor on the ground and put her hands in the air. She spotted Carl behind the line of farmers he had sent after them, and their eyes locked for a moment before he said, “Stun her anyway.”
She felt the stun hit her squarely in the chest, and then, once again, everything went black.
Chapter 19
Grace kept trying to open her eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. Maybe she was still unconscious. Or dreaming. She hated the dreams that wouldn’t let go no matter how hard she tried to wake.
She remembered her failed escape attempt. She supposed it had been doomed from the start, especially once Mr. Cooper passed away.
But she still couldn’t seem to open her eyes.
And then it hit her–her eyes were open. It just happened there was nothing but blackness to see.
She reached out with her other senses, especially touch. They had her seated and tied to a cold, metal chair. Her hands were twisted behind her back and secured at the wrists with what felt like wrist cuffs–they didn’t come off without the key. Even worse, they could be used to send varying levels of pain through her body. She tried to move her feet, but found them bound at the ankles by another set of cuffs anchored to the floor. One final binder kept her waist pinned to the chair.
They had not tied her mouth closed, but somehow screaming didn’t seem like a useful pursuit.
At least she hadn’t packed the diary. “Thanks, Alex,” she whispered under her breath.
Suddenly, she heard a sound like that of a door sliding open, and then the lights came on at full strength, blinding her as surely as the blackness had. She shut her eyes against the brightness and listened for the sounds of anyone approaching.
The Immortality Virus Page 17
