She woke her third day in Tarentino Bay to the confirmation from Jimmy that Jenna, the kids, and Mrs. Smitz had all been kidnapped. She watched his attached vid with forced calm, but the sight of all three children lying lifeless in medical capsules froze her blood. Her Jenna was bruised and clearly worse for wear, and so still she could have been a mannequin with a dead power cell. Finally, Marian shook out of it. It is better to know what we are dealing with, she told herself. It did ease her mind immensely to know that all five were alive, at least for the time being.
Of course she had forwarded that vid directly to the local officer assigned to the case as well as to Richard. When the news that the missing Forrests had been kidnapped flashed through the community like wildfire, people reacted with outrage. Apparently, they took it personally that some outsiders had come into their town and stolen some of their own. Tips started pouring into the search center with information on every stranger that had set foot in Tarentino Bay in the last month. Marian had been visiting the small office that had been dedicated to the search for an update when one of the more credible tips came in. A woman named Selma reported that about a year ago a stranger had come around the farmers market asking questions about the Forrests. Jimmy had seemed concerned and had asked her to get his name if she saw him again. She had forgotten all about it, but then the man had appeared again last month, though he wasn’t asking questions this time. He’d purchased some tomatoes from her, she said, and she’d asked about his line of work. He’d shown her a business card and said he was in town researching development opportunities for a client. Selma had never passed the information on to Jimmy, she explained. She’d forgotten all about it until she learned that the Forrests had been kidnapped.
Had the stranger been gathering information about the family to plan the kidnapping? Had someone been researching them for over a year?
The thought was disturbing.
In the meantime, the search teams that had been organized to search for people were reorganized, and a few select teams were sent back out to scour the area around the lake for any clues to their disappearance. Before sunset on her third day in the town, they had found one: the body of the kids’ robotic puppy. He had been shot with a diffusing laser, and his body had been covered with brush. They found him a few meters off the main trail that led from the reservoir back down toward the Forrest property, about a twenty-minute walk away from the house.
The area was cordoned off just in time for an Armada forensic team to arrive. Tarentino Bay didn’t have those kinds of resources, but the Armada did, and all Richard had to do was put in a request. He was calling in every favor anyone owed him this time, and over a thirty-seven year career, he had banked a lot of goodwill. Though it had been useless in trying to get Andie back home from Corizen (a mere admiral stationed on Zenith of all places had little influence with the Union Security Council), it might just save the lives of Jenna, their grandchildren, and Mrs. Smitz.
Of course, Marian hadn’t left it all to her husband. Her own career as a public relations consultant for the Armada gave her many high-level connections with both the local Armada brass and some of the planetary government. It was Marian’s friend Reba who ran the Omphalos intelligence office and had agreed to pull all the aerial photos of the Red Zone during the evening of Jenna’s disappearance. When an Armada image analyst confirmed that the men in the photo with Jenna had been wearing Quintan Security uniforms, it was Marian’s contact in the planetary governor’s office who had gotten Richard a meeting with the governor with the unheard-of short notice of only two hours.
Richard had reported that the Quintan Security wing had come up clean, which was the only place the governor had authorized them to search. They didn’t even have proof that Jenna had entered the building, though it seemed inescapable that the men she faced in the photo had been the ones she had been traveling to meet. Why had she gone to them? Why had she left without even her flipcom? Marian could only guess that at some point after Jenna left the table in the restaurant, someone had approached her with proof of the children’s kidnapping and had ordered her to go to the Red Zone without contacting anyone. But what did Quintan Security have to do with it? Richard of course was certain that this was all a ploy by the Quintans, but what reason did the Quintans have to kidnap Jenna and the kids? The question gnawed at her so much that she had to take another sleeping med to get any rest that night.
In the morning, the answer popped into her head the minute she opened her eyes. Jay Forrest had come to Zenith. Richard had seen him when he served the search order at the QE. Marian had never met Jimmy’s father; when she had thrown an extravagant party to belatedly celebrate Jenna and Jimmy’s wedding, he had declined to attend. Even when each of his three grandchildren had been born, he had never come. Marian had always found this slightly strange and unbelievable—she’d been giddy with excitement with each addition to the family, and holding a new grandchild was one of the best compensations for choosing to have children in the first place. Jimmy’s breach with his father explained some of it, but not enough in her book. For some reason, Jay needed to avoid Zenith altogether, despite having significant business ties here. What if the Quintans wanted Jay Forrest on Zenith, though? Needed him here so badly they went to the extreme of kidnapping his grandchildren to get him to come? It didn’t exactly explain why they’d wanted Jenna—except that Jimmy had said that Zane Quintan was back. Marian had never really been aware of Jenna’s relationship with Zane until it was over (Jenna had always had a better relationship with her father, and he was the one she had usually kept in contact with) but she got the impression that for some reason neither Jenna nor Jimmy was very happy with him. Perhaps he had wanted Jenna involved for reasons of his own. Marian shuddered. Her imagination was too vivid for her own peace of mind.
A hot shower helped drive out the worst of her imaginings. She dressed quickly, studiously avoiding the reminders of her missing daughter all around her. In the kitchen, she helped herself to some toast and cheese (one of the neighbors had brought the most marvelous homemade bread) and headed out of the house toward the front gate. Another neighbor (a lovely older woman named Garnet) sent a comm yesterday promising to have a hot breakfast for Jax this morning.
Garnet was prompt. The comm letting Marian know that she had arrived came right on the hour. Marian deactivated the security and opened the gate to find Garnet standing with a smile and a covered casserole dish. She had a young boy holding a small cloth bag standing next to her. “My grandson, Travin,” she introduced.
“Good morning, Travin,” Marian greeted cheerfully. He looked right about the same age as Kendra, or maybe a little older. He smiled at her but ducked his head. Garnet nudged him in the shoulder, and he peeked up again, holding out the bag.
“For Mr. Forrest,” he said shyly. Marian took it and looked inside. There were four ruby corazons, one of the exotic fruits that grew here on the Mandel continent.
“How delicious!” she exclaimed. “I’m sure Mr. Forrest will love them.” She hooked the bag over one arm so she could also take Garnet’s proffered dish. As she shifted to one side, a sudden glare nearly blinded her. She blinked and moved again, looking across the road. Something metal must have caught the morning sun at just the wrong angle. But there was nothing but a patch of trees directly across from the front gate. Marian frowned and shifted again.
There. There was something metal hidden by the low flowering bushes that sprouted up along the road.
“Mrs. Donnell?” Garnet asked curiously, noting Marian’s distraction.
“There’s something over there,” she said as she began to cross the road. She reached the edge, pushing aside some branches and gasped.
It was a medical capsule, and it still had someone inside.
18. Lenata
This time Jenna woke up knowing exactly where she was. She was even weaker than she had been before. She couldn’t even manage to open her
eyes, even as the low conversation around her began to make sense.
“You don’t have orders to get rid of any more of them,” one voice protested. “There are pending bids on each.” There was no voice distortion box in use this time. Jenna could tell that it was a woman’s voice, deeper and mature. Maybe Jenna’s age.
“Look at that capsule,” the other voice hissed, a young man. He sounded barely out of his teens. “Have you ever seen a med capsule glow like that?”
“It’s probably just a faulty capsule. You are getting jittery about nothing.”
“Nothing?” The voice was not even soft. It was rising, like it was panicking. “There is something wrong with that girl, Lenata. We should have killed her the first day.”
The other voice sighed. “She’s a little girl, Archer. She’s not a threat.”
Suddenly, Jenna realized that her guards must not know that she was awake. Why else would they be using names and not covering their real voices? But she was still lying in the medical capsule. The liquid had drained away. Someone must have started the reanimation process.
Then the meaning of the first words she had heard sunk in. “Get rid of any more of them.” Who had they “gotten rid of”? What did that mean? Had they killed one of the children because she had tried to get away?
The panic that she had lost one of her children gave her the strength to open her eyes. The room was still darkened, and she could see a hazy glow coming from the right side. Exerting all her willpower, she managed to turn her head slightly to the side. There was light pouring out of the capsule next to her, as if there were glow tubes stuck inside instead of a person. It was Kendra’s capsule, assuming they hadn’t moved everyone around since the last time she’d been awake.
How long had it been? Why couldn’t she move? Were the others all right?
“You weren’t there when we took them,” the man called Archer protested. “I was. Dirt flying in our faces, tree branches coming down all around us, and that girl standing in the middle of it with her eyes closed. It was unnatural.” The voice was filled with fear. “She’s unnatural.”
A whimpering filled the room. Jenna’s breath caught. That was Erik.
The woman named Lenata swore.
“Why is the boy waking up?” she demanded, her voice growing slightly more distant as she crossed the room.
“Mommy,” croaked another voice. Berry.
A string of curses followed this. Footsteps hurried to her side, and she saw the face of a young man with short-cropped black hair and pale skin staring at her in horror. She still couldn’t move more than her head, but she knew he saw her open eyes.
“They’ve all reanimated!” he exclaimed. He bent to the side and slapped the capsule. “The panel is shorted out!”
“These ones too,” Lenata called. “What is going on here?”
“It’s that blonde girl, I tell you!” yelled Archer. His voice was terrified. “She’s doing this somehow!”
“That’s ridiculous! She’s the only one still unconscious.”
Erik’s whimpers morphed into earsplitting shrieks.
“Erik!” she tried to call. Her voice came out as a hoarse mumble. Jenna desperately tried to lift her head, but it felt like trying to drag up a slab of concrete. Her fingers twitched, but she couldn’t even raise her arms. Berry was crying full force now too. Jenna’s heart seized up. Her babies needed her, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
“Archer, comm the boss while I try to get this under control!” Lenata ordered.
“You can’t handle them all by yourself,” protested Archer, grunting. Erik’s screaming paused while he took a breath, and Jenna mentally cringed. She knew what was coming. Then Erik burst out with another earsplitting scream, loud enough to make her ears ring.
“Shut that kid up!” bellowed Archer.
Jenna shoved her legs, willing them to shift. If she could just sit up! But her muscles refused to respond. It was if someone had dropped a massive weight on her chest. Maybe she was paralyzed. She shoved that thought away. It wouldn’t help her now, and she needed to find a way to get up. She had to calm the children before trigger-happy Archer decided to silence them in a permanent way.
“Archer, look at the woman. She can’t even move. Her body must not be reacting well to the abrupt end to the suspended animation. I can handle the kids. You need to comm for instructions where you can be heard.”
Jenna turned her head again. From her current angle, she couldn’t see past Kendra’s capsule. It wasn’t glowing anymore, though. She heard clicking footsteps and then Lenata murmuring, “Shhh, hold still for a second.” There was the sound of a struggle and Erik’s screams got even louder. Suddenly, they died out.
No! Jenna yanked against her body and managed to lift her head just the tiniest bit. “Erik!” she tried calling again. This time it came out as an intelligible groan. Progress, though he certainly couldn’t hear her over Berry’s continuing sobs.
“Your turn,” the woman said cheerfully.
Berry swallowed, and her voice sounded rough, “I want my mommy and daddy.”
“Your mommy is right over there,” Lenata said, her voice calm. There was a tiny squeak from Berry and then nothing. Tears leaked out of Jenna’s eyes. She had never felt so useless in her life.
The woman appeared back over her face. “Your children are fine, Mrs. Forrest, just sleeping again.” Her cold hands probed Jenna’s body, taking her pulse. Jenna immediately recognized her. It was the same woman who had shown Jenna the live feed of the children in the restaurant restroom. Jenna wanted to lash out against her, but her limbs were just leaden weight again.
“You, however, I’m not certain about. You may have damage to your central nervous system from the abrupt reawakening, especially since you were just awakened once recently.”
She shone a penlight in Jenna’s eyes. Jenna blinked and turned her face away.
“Some neck control, that’s good,” the woman muttered. “Can you speak?”
“I hate you,” Jenna whispered, her voice crackly and faint.
The woman chuckled. “Too bad. I’m all that stands between your children and certain death. I’m your new best friend.”
Jenna closed her eyes, willing this woman to go away. Somehow she had to manage to move. If she couldn’t move, how was she going to keep the kids safe?
“Mrs. Smitz?” she groaned, the words rubbing her throat raw.
“Already gone,” Lenata answered. “They didn’t intend to abduct her in the first place, I understand, but taking the kids got a little rough, and they had to bring her along.” Jenna’s heart squeezed. Had they killed Mrs. Smitz? Just because they hadn’t intended to “bring her along” in the first place?
“Who are you?” Jenna breathed.
“The less you know, the better,” the woman commented, glancing at the direction Archer had gone. “Though now that you’ve seen our faces and know our voices, the boss will likely be tempted to kill you. Luckily for you, you’re probably worth more to us alive. Assuming you get the use of your limbs back. Your buyer won’t want you if you can’t move.” This was stated matter-of-factly, as if Lenata were merely observing the outcome of a jumpball match. Jenna’s mouth twisted. Apparently her “buyer” was that anonymous man who had wanted to watch her walk around by flipcom.
Stomping footfalls announced the arrival of several men. Lenata moved away from the capsule. “I’ve got everyone contained again,” she announced.
“The boss says move them into the red room,” Archer responded. “He says the auction is finished and we need to keep them well, but new med capsules will take too long to obtain.”
“Understood. You’ll have to carry them into the room, though. Everyone is unconscious again.”
Jenna took the hint and closed her eyes. Staying motionless was easy, since she could barely move anyw
ay. Maybe the men would believe that she was sedated like the kids. She didn’t know whose side this Lenata was on or if she intended to help the kids, but for now, she seemed to be Jenna’s only chance in a bleak situation. She would take it, though she didn’t trust this woman at all. In the meantime, she would try to find some opportunity, some weakness she could exploit to get her children to safety.
She would not fail.
When the two men dropped her unceremoniously on the floor, she risked opening her eyes just a slit. The room was lit by a single red globe, allowing her to see nothing but bare concrete floors and featureless walls. There were no windows or doors in her line of sight. She couldn’t see any of the children either. She closed her eyes again and waited, straining her ears for any sound at all that would give her a hint of what was going on.
The trudging footsteps returned, and an inert form was lowered next to her. She risked another quick peek and saw that it was Kendra. Boots stood next to them both until another pair of black boots joined them. Jenna noted that they were military boots, similar to the ones she had seen the ground troops wear when she was growing up on base. Were these guys ex-Armada? Or were they just an organization that acted as military as possible, including using military supplies? That made her extra nervous.
The man wearing the second pair of boots squatted and gently laid Berry on the ground next to Kendra. The very gentleness of his movement caused just the tiniest flicker of hope to bloom inside Jenna. Maybe this crew worked for a man with as little mercy or restraint as Lev Quintan, but that didn’t mean every person in the crew was a heartless monster who wouldn’t hesitate to murder a child.
I’m all that stands between your children and certain death. Lenata’s words echoed in her mind.
She kept her eyes cracked open until she saw Erik safely deposited next to his sisters and then closed her eyes again. Maybe the men would leave them alone together in this room. Maybe her body would start to recover, and she would be able to move. If only their captors gave them enough time. “The auction is finished” sounded ominous. What was going to happen next?
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