Double Life

by S. Usher Evans

  "Now," Razia said, cracking her knuckles. "Let's see how good you are without your—ugh!"

  He lunged at her, without warning, and they went tumbling, the rough, uneven wood digging into her back as he lay on top of her. His sweaty palms connected with her wrists and pressed them hard into the planks. His face was inches from hers, and his breath, still heavy from the struggle, was warm on her face.

  "Got you," Relleck said, his eyes connecting with hers.

  She stared back, defiantly. There was no way he was taking her back without a fight.

  "You know," he said, his eyes still searching hers and a smile growing on his face. "I don't have to take you to the bounty office."

  "You what now?"

  "Contestant and I were talking," he said, sliding his hands up from her wrists to take hold of her hands. "And I think you'd make an excellent addition."

  "You want me to join your web?" She became acutely aware he was completely on top her, and she started to feel very uncomfortable.

  "Well," Relleck said, and Razia felt him move—if possible—closer. "I mean, Contestant wasn't completely sold on the idea....but I'm pretty sure I could convince him....if I were convinced."

  "Yeah, and how am I supposed to do that?" she snapped, really hoping what she was feeling against her leg was on his utility belt and not something else entirely.

  Relleck smiled lasciviously as he moved his hips against hers—just enough so she could connect her knee with his groin. Hard.

  He rolled off her with a loud cry, rolling around in a ball with tears streaming down his face.

  "First of all, how could you even think that I'd ever want to—ugh!"

  He continued to cry, his face red, as he rolled from side to side.

  "And second of all, I would never, never leave Dissident's web. Not for you. Not for anybody."

  She unhooked her floating canvas bag and glared at him. "And third of all, have fun in jail tonight."

  He lay on her canvas, writhing in pain, but not struggling to get away, as she trotted down the wooden streets. She needed to get him off this planet before any of his minions realized he was missing. He was going to make such a good story—Dissident couldn't be mad at her for this one. But even more—she was ecstatic that she finally had something on Relleck. No more of having to listen to his stupid jabs, his sexism. She'd finally proven she was better than he was.

  She hopped off the lift on the station, and her heart dropped to her stomach.

  Her ship was open.

  Panicked, she ran over, dragging Relleck behind her, a thousand nervous scenarios playing in her head. What if someone had broken into her ship? What if someone was lying in wait to capture her? What if someone had stolen all her equipment? What if—

  Her nerves switched to annoyance when she realized Vel was standing in front of her ship.

  "You son of a bitch," she said, knocking him slowly in the shoulder. "You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?"

  "I…um…." he whispered, looking at something behind her.

  "What is it?"

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see someone standing behind her.

  "Razia, I presume?" Pymus said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  She stared at Vel for a moment, wondering if she'd imagined what she'd just heard. Maybe she was dreaming, or Relleck had knocked her out. Slowly, deliberately, she turned around, her whole body tensed.

  It was indeed Dr. Pymus standing in the middle of this docking station, wearing his DSE lab coat and glasses. She stared at him as he examined her catch, amusedly looking between the man bound and gagged and her, mouth open, eyes wide, unable to speak.

  "Why don't you release that poor man and we can have a little chat, hm?" he said, replacing his glasses on his slimy nose.

  "I…" she stammered.

  "I suppose you wouldn't want him to hear more of this conversation, hm?" Pymus said. "Razia."

  She swallowed, understanding his intent. Almost instinctively, she reached down and began to untie Relleck. He watched her with shocked eyes as she pulled the gag out of his mouth.

  "Go," Razia said, her voice hollow. So much for her great plans.

  "What?" Relleck said.

  "Go, you idiot!"

  Without another word, Relleck stumbled off the gurney and ran down the street as fast as his legs and sore crotch would let him. She watched him go with a silent anger, and turned to look to Pymus.

  "What are you doing here, Pymus?" she said.

  "Dr. Pymus, my dear," he corrected. "I’m here for a little chat. And since it seems you're rarely at the Academy, I thought I might come find you out in your…other pursuits."

  "How long have you known?" she said, racking her brain to come up with some reason why he'd be there—or worse, how he could blackmail her.

  "Oh, since your brother here was 'kidnapped,'" Pymus said, smiling at Vel, who didn't smile back. "I'm rather surprised no one has ever caught on."

  "I don't usually run in the same circles," she said.

  "I think I'm most surprised your eldest brother hasn't noticed," Pymus continued, watching her face. "Jukin would be awfully interested to know what you've been up to."

  "What do you want?" she repeated, bracing herself for the worst.

  "I'd like to know about Leveman's Vortex," Pymus said predictably.

  "It's this big swirly thing in space that destroys everything," Lyssa deadpanned.

  "Yes, but what I would like to know is how you get inside," Pymus said. "I hear you have the mathematical angle for entry, after all."

  Her heart fell into her stomach, and she immediately looked at Vel, unable to hide her emotions. Shock and hurt immediately turned to rage—more at herself for believing for even a second Vel wasn't like the rest of them. He was a Peate, after all—a backstabbing, selfish lineage that cared more for themselves than the welfare of anyone else—most especially her. She never should have trusted him.

  "You see," Pymus continued, "I'd like to see the inside for myself. Do my own experiments. Make my own observations."

  "Have a good trip." There was nothing he could offer her or threaten her with that would make her set foot—pre-death—in that place ever again.

  "I thought you might say that. So, if you don’t take me to the Great Vortex, I shall have no other choice but to cancel the bounty on your head."

  "Bounty?" She laughed, shaking her head. "What bounty?"

  "The bounty that propelled you from near obscurity to a number I assumed would've resulted in your capture. What are you, twenty-five? Thirty?"

  "You…?" Her eyes widened again. She'd assumed her bounty had shot up so high because she'd kidnapped Vel—other pirates maybe chipping in as a sign of solidarity, or perhaps Mother in an attempt to save Vel.

  But it was Pymus.

  "I even added to it, five million, ten million," Pymus continued, gleefully watching her face. "I contacted your runner—Dissident, is it?—to see who I could get to capture you for myself. He put me in contact with that Relleck fellow, who promised me he could capture you within the week—if I paid him an additional fifteen million."

  Her head spun. The past few weeks had just been a sham. The only person with money on her head was Pymus. But not only that, Dissident had set her up—and told Pymus who would be the best to take her down.

  Harms was right. She was a joke.

  A chocolate-fetching joke.

  "An investment, it would seem, that was wasted in the end, because your dear brother here was able to find you in just a few hours," Pymus said, turning to look to Vel. "You must have taught him this bounty hunting trade very well. I daresay when he's expelled from the Academy, he will have a bright future in piracy."

  Vel looked at him sharply, but said nothing.

  "So, shall we go?" Pymus said. "Or do I have to go through the trouble of canceling your bounty then letting your eldest brother know exactly where to find you. From the way that Dissident fellow talked, it seems
he would be happy to be rid of you. As, apparently, would the rest of your family."

  She could feel the world crashing around her, and could take no more. Defeated at last, she quietly walked past him before pausing and whispering.

  "Let's just hope it's in better shape than when I left it."

  ***

  Lyssa lay on her bed, her eyes on the ceiling but her mind somewhere else. Outside, the stars were whirring by, as the ship sped toward the Great Vortex.

  She'd thought she'd gotten so far. That once she'd broken into the top fifty, she would finally get the respect and adoration she deserved.

  Her mind floated back to standing in that diner, staring at Evet Delmur. Perhaps she should've just taken the hint then and saved herself the pain and trouble of thinking she could ever be anything more than Lyssa Peate. Perhaps it was time to just accept she was to be punished for the rest of her life, because perhaps she did, in fact, deserve to be.

  She wondered what kind of world she was going to come upon when they landed.

  She wondered how far she could take them before it blew apart again.

  She wondered if he was there.

  Her thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sounds of her door opening. She shook her head and rolled over away from the door so she didn't have to look at him. She felt him sit down on the bed next to her. After a few quiet minutes, he began talking.

  "Three months ago, I started asking around the Manor to see if any of our older brothers had spoken to you about Sostas. Somehow Pymus got wind of it and worked out a deal to get me this internship in exchange for sharing anything I found. I never..." He sighed heavily. "I never planned on actually telling him anything. I just wanted to find out about Father."

  She shifted, but didn't respond.

  "Then...well, you know, the kidnapping thing." Vel paused for a moment. "After you dropped me off at the Manor, I went to Pymus, and I told him I didn't want to work for you anymore." He chuckled. "I had a whole story, even tears ready. But he stopped me before I got one word out, and told me he knew."

  She continued to stare at the wall.

  "He said he no longer needed me, actually," Vel continued. "Said he'd put this huge bounty on your head, and he was going to 'let the law figure it out.' I thought he was going to turn you in to Jukin, so I told him I could find out more if I..." He swallowed nervously. "If I got you to trust me."

  Her mouth tightened, but she stayed silent.

  "My goal though, was to get him enough so he would leave you alone, without you having to know," he said quickly. "When you said you could find anyone using their bank account, I thought...I thought I could find out everything, but..." He sighed. "I found nothing in Father's bank account."

  She shifted again.

  "When we returned to the Academy, I tried to give him the sensors. I thought it was what he really wanted. I mean, I told him to forget the damned Vortex, he could make billions with these things," Vel said. "But he didn't want that. I told him the calculations to the center of the universe were lost. But he didn't believe me."

  "Imagine that," Lyssa responded dryly.

  "I was going to leave it alone. By that point, I knew you could take care of yourself. But then Sage told me Harms had caught wind of some guy offering a 15 million credit bonus for anyone who captured you, and Relleck had taken the job," Vel said. "I knew he'd be gunning for you, so I told Pymus I could find you. And...well..."

  She said nothing, and he stood up. She heard him walk toward the door before he paused.

  "Actually, there is one more thing."

  "Of course."

  "I want you to know from the bottom of my heart, with every single fiber of my being, and from the depths of my soul, how very sorry I am," he whispered. "I never wanted to...I just wanted to know.... I..."

  The ship began to tremble slightly.

  "Guess it's time," she whispered, brushing by him without another word.

  She walked onto the bridge with Vel in tow, ignoring Pymus, who was happily sitting in one of the jump seats. She kneeled down in front of her dashboard and tapped on the sides.

  "What are you doing?" he drawled.

  "Getting our way in," she snapped, as the hidden door swung open. Inside was a single, worn black journal, which she pulled out and began flipping through.

  "Is that?" Pymus gasped.

  "Not yours," Lyssa responded, pausing on the page covered in a long string of numbers and equation symbols. She opened her green-red application, switching the view from the green-red dot to a display of the back-end computer code. Slowly, she compared the code on the screen to the numbers on the page, changing a number here and there.

  "Are you sure you got it right?" Pymus snorted.

  "You'd better hope so," she snapped. "Otherwise it'll be a short trip."

  That seemed to shut him up as she finished her comparison. Then, hearing her father in her ear complaining about how sloppy she could be, she checked the code again. Satisfied, she switched the code back to the red-green, currently showing green.

  The tremors were increasing, as was the pressure. She sat down, glancing back at Vel to make sure he was strapped in before tightening her own belt.

  "It is going to get a bit rough," she said, watching the debris fly by faster and faster. Her eyes were glued to the green, her hands on the joystick were starting to feel heavier—everything was starting to feel heavier. Bits and pieces of space debris clouded the window, but disintegrated from the sheer force of the Vortex. Lyssa double-checked her numbers again and swallowed nervously, trying not to second-guess herself. The green was still green—

  Suddenly, it flashed and displayed an odd error.

  "What does that mean?" She heard Pymus say.

  She couldn't respond—but she started to feel the familiar push and pull of the gravity as they approached the center. Her body felt heavy, then light as air, then felt like it was going to be crushed into nothingness. Now there was nothing outside the window—the comets and meteors and other debris having been pulverized to a white dust surrounding them. Very slowly, she began to realize the push and pull of the gravity was gone, replaced by the sense of...nothingness.

  Looking up at her dashboard, her instruments were showing completely different readings from each other. Out in front, it was hard to even tell they were moving—it was just white outside her window.

  "Are we here?" Pymus called from the back.

  "Yes…we’re here," she whispered.

  ***

  She opened the hatch of her ship, but didn't step off, staring out into the white landscape in front of her. She searched the plain for a ship, or, more importantly, a person. But all she could see was the emptiness. She'd never expected to be back there again.

  "Well?" Pymus said behind her. "We're waiting..."

  She rolled her eyes, and stepped off the edge of the plank...

  ...and immediately found herself standing in the basement hallway at the Manor.

  She stepped back on the ship, nervously, the world turning white again.

  "Lyss?" Vel said, concerned. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong."

  "Then shall we get a move on? I don't have all day," Pymus said.

  She turned to give him a dirty look, but then faced the whiteness, taking a deep breath and stepping off her ship.

  Again, she found herself standing in the basement of the Manor.

  "Son of a bitch," she whispered, stepping back onto her ship. She could see whiteness.

  "Is this your way of trying to be cute, because it's not working," Pymus said impatiently.

  "Can it," Lyssa snapped, nervously biting her thumb and thinking. She knew this was a vision—a hallucination brought on by the intense magnetic field. So why did the sight of being in the Manor cause her such panic?

  Seriously, she told herself. Stop being ridiculous.

  With a determined glare out into the Vortex, she firmly placed both feet into the hallway of the Manor. She closed her eyes.
This wasn't real. She wasn't about to run into Mother again.

  Opening her eyes, she wondered why that thought had jumped into her head.

  Slowly, she began to walk, passing the kitchen, empty of servants and the smells of the upcoming meal. It was as empty as the night she'd been at the Manor.

  No, she told herself. She'd dreamed that. It was as real as what she was seeing right now. Because this wasn't real. She was in Leveman's Vortex.

  She could hear her footsteps echoing off the walls, and see her reflection in the shiny marble floor. Her heart was beating out of her chest, but she tried to keep her face emotionless.

  She stopped, standing in front of her father's laboratory door.

  In the back of her mind, she could hear voices, but all she could see was the door in front of her. Slowly, she reached up to type in the access code—again, finding comfort in the combination of tones.

  The door didn't open, but a peculiarly familiar voice echoed through the hallway.

  Deep Space Exploration Vehicle Z-633, please identify yourself.

  Lyssa blinked, shocked.

  "What?" she found herself saying.

  You are requesting access to a Planetary and System Science location. Please enter your authorization code.

  Dumbly, she typed in her Academy identification code—9448639—and was surprised when the door clicked open. Gently, she pushed her way inside...

  And found herself standing in the middle of Harms' bar.

  "What the..." she whispered, taking a moment to look around. The dusty streets of D-882 were empty outside the bar, and the room itself was silent except for the sound of whirring fans above. And voices—some in the distance, but some close by.

  She was overcome by guilt for the way she'd treated Harms. He'd been trying to protect her—trying to keep her from herself. He deserved better than the way she'd spoken to him.

  Smiling, she saw him in his normal spot, talking with someone. But when she got closer, she realized it wasn't Harms at all.