by KH LeMoyne
“Analena say hugs make everything better,” the girl whispered in his ear.
He gave her an awkward pat on the back and finally looked around, desperate for someone to extract the child before she killed him with memories of his own precious innocent.
“Bits, come with me.” Hena moved close enough to pull the child from his arms and, without looking at him, left the room.
***
Analena followed Onyx through the tunnel. His stride lengthened with his attempt to flee. Not before she got a few things perfectly clear.
His revelations had shocked everyone, herself included. She’d trusted this man with her secrets, making herself vulnerable to his agenda. In theory, he should be no more of an enigma than he ever was. Several years of helping her save her kids should have bought him some trust. The fact that he’d worked to save these kids, doing the very thing she risked her life on, warred with her uncertainty.
“I can arrange payment. I didn’t pull anything from the labs this time that you might want—didn’t have time.” She glanced back down the long tunnel. Gar sat beside Aaron.
She saw Trace follow her look, a speculative expression crossing his face. Just like that, the unbidden image of danger to her kids flashed through her mind and jolted her into response. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him further out of sight, the low gray light hiding nothing of their expressions.
“I only brought you here because I didn’t know what to do for Gar. But those children aren’t payment.” She hissed and pointed back down the rock pathway. “They are not up for auction.”
His glare forced her to take a step back.
She’d been certain after her first comment that she’d seen shock on his face. She’d almost backed off. The anger there now said something completely different, something familiar that she couldn’t dissect, and it frightened her. Not a comfortable feeling.
Her emotions and fears were racing ahead of common sense. These children were her responsibility. Even if she’d trusted Trace from a distance, she didn’t have the luxury to trust anyone else with their lives.
The fact that he’d been so good with Gar had thrown her off her game, made her lose her hard edge, made her drop her scrutiny—not something she could afford.
“What are you offering me?” He gave a pointed glance from her head to her feet that left a strange flame in its wake, one that died as fury morphed in his expression.
“I’ll offer you whatever you want as long as you don’t tell anyone about these kids.”
“Anything?” His growl rumbled as he crossed his arms over his chest.
She swallowed hard and nodded, stepping closer, though uncomfortable with her overture. He hadn’t refused. If he let her barter with something other than the children’s lives, they’d be even. Maybe he’d even be placated enough to respond to her call if she had a desperate need in the future. He’d always refused monetary credits, said he didn’t need them. She had nothing else.
“Yes. If this makes us square then anything.” She stepped closer, biting the inside of her cheek to squelch the cold spike of fear. It was only her body. It would be over before she knew it.
She pressed against his hard body, sliding her hands behind his neck and rising on her toes to reach his face. A real stretch and he towered over her not bothering to help. She pressed her lips against his and met granite. No give existed in his hot, dark expression—only fury. There was no mistaking the emotion now.
Too late in realizing her mistake, she started to step away only to have his arm whip out and circle behind her back, pulling her tight against him. One hand cupped the back of her head, and he pulled her nose to nose.
“If you’re going to offer yourself, you have to sell it, Analena.”
His mouth clamped over hers in a harsh, hot assault. Too stunned to move, she lost control of the little measure of her sanity as his tongue licked at her lips, forcing a gasp and taking control. His claim, unlike the clumsy attempts others had tried to force on her, cajoled and enticed. With a wicked, sinful kiss, he explored, conquered, and destroyed.
A deep whimper swirled in her throat as she sought more of what he delivered. He pulled back and forced her away at arm’s length, anger still painted on his face, but mixed with another expression.
“I don’t trade in flesh, not yours and never a child’s. No matter what kind of a monster I am, I’d never sacrifice their safety.”
Without a backward look, he picked up his duffel and headed down the tunnel.
Analena bit her lip, his name on her breath as she finally connected the elusive expression she’d seen on his face—self-loathing. A fair match for the regret in her heart.
Granted, she’d been finding and protecting these kids for years. She had a right to be overprotective. But he’d been helping her do the same thing, and from Aaron’s investigations, she knew Trace had done the same for others even longer.
His announcement to the kids had been brutal, for them and for him. The gentle man of earlier with his treatment of Gar provided a hard, painful contrast to the truths he’d delivered. The confession had been too raw and stark, intended as a self-inflicted wound.
Damn, she’d handled that badly.
Chapter 5
Aaron stood as Analena returned. “You want me to follow him?”
She waved her hand and shook her head. “Our time is better used in other ways.”
“You can’t be considering trusting him?” Hena’s question ended on a high pitch. “He could have been there when—”
“No.”
Analena and Hena both turned to look at Aaron.
He stared back at them, resolve and indecision waging a battle over his lean features. “He’s worked with you for over six years, Analena. The word from Down Below has him in hiding and helping others for several before that. It’s unlikely he had contact with any of us.”
“You can’t prove that,” Hena insisted.
Aaron pressed his lips into a thin line and glanced at Gar.
The boy had been sitting at the table, staring straight at his hands, now he turned to Analena. With shock, she realized he could see her. The glazed blind look, gone, replaced with a fixed, alert, light gray in his eye. A determined glint matched the stubborn set to his young jaw, Trace’s discarded sampler syringe gripped in his hands. “He didn’t have to help me or care about any of us. He’s not one of them.” He looked pointedly at Bits in Hena’s arms.
Analena blinked. The boy had taken in everything he’d heard, probably able to view Trace’s face as he’d delivered his answers. Yet, Gar’s steadfast commitment to the doctor was obvious and she respected his need to push for answers. One way or the other, they needed to know the truth. Honestly, she needed the truth.
She turned to Aaron. “See what you can find out. We’ll settle this once and for all.”
Relief eased Aaron’s features. Evidently, he didn’t want to give up on Trace after he’d helped save so many of the children in her small family. She didn’t either.
“But don’t take any risks.” She pushed her finger into his chest and pulled him close for a quick hug, just as quickly pushing him away. “Don’t take too long getting back here, either. I don’t want to have to come looking for you.”
“Yes, Mom.”
The dark smirk didn’t quite touch on happy. Yet, it was better than the concerned scowl he’d had when she’d returned from dealing with Trace. She watched Aaron amble soundlessly into the farthest dark passage with equal measures of pride and worry.
First of the children she’d saved, only nine years younger than her, Aaron carried the weight of their survival as if born to it. A shame. Then again, that any of them existed in their condition was a shame.
Analena walked down her private tunnel to the laser-drilled fifteen-by-fifteen hole she called hers, and slid into a flexible plasma chair in the corner. The chair had cost her forty credits, a ridiculous thing to drag to the caverns. But after years of isolation in the camps,
the tiny luxury let her pretend a warm, caring body curled around her.
That she had a dozen caring bodies to cuddle wasn’t the same. There were few similarities between her and the kids. Her experiences, while austere and cold, hadn’t caused her to risk loss of limbs or body parts. That loss had occurred before she’d woken up on a steel slab with tubes running into her chest and shoulder.
Attempting to expel the visions of Dr. Paresh and his long fingers testing her skin, she blew out a breath and tapped her fingers to her lips. Years of his inspections and monitoring had built up her defenses against anyone’s random touches or probes. Strapped to a table for clinical evaluation, she’d endured hundreds of grueling hours of indignities and pain. The weaving and spinning of tendons, veins, and flesh as her arm had grown back were harder to wipe away.
Ironically, it had been worth it in the end.
Her experience didn’t compare to what the kids in her care had endured, much less what the other children she’d witness Paresh use as test subjects to reproduce her results had suffered. What she’d survived, so many had not—injections, mutations with nanites, painful adjustment of flesh and organs. Her designation, a roman numeral twenty tattooed over her hipbone, marked her as the only successful experiment in his batch of human lab rats. The only one to survive.
Eight years she’d endured Dr. Paresh’s experimental study to provide an alternative rejuvenation method for the Regents. And while she was generation twenty, he would have considered her disposable once he managed to replicate his success. He’d kept her safe from the organ and body parts harvesting, isolated and lonely in her own small cell. His paranoid ego had luckily kept her progress from the Regents’ visibility. No doubt, he’d wanted surprise as the ultimate leverage when he finally revealed his scientific prize. Another blessing. What the Regents didn’t know about, they couldn’t put into production.
Eight years of tests and exercises, and she’d come out ahead. When his body had flown through the air, colliding with the locked door of her cell during an explosion from the detention riots, she’d come out far ahead of the children in her care.
Eight years had provided her with the time to study the doctor, to learn skills of stealth and subversion, to hack into his files when he foolishly left her alone, and to learn of the Regent agenda. Almost as important, Paresh hadn’t credited her with the knowledge to create her own plan in anticipation of an opportunity to bolt.
The fractured carcass of Dr. Evan Paresh against her door, the dent he’d made in her security containment field, provided her with freedom. Two minutes of downloads had delivered his remaining monetary creds into her fresh new account.
Reward for losing two loving parents and an arm. Hardly.
But that and the Down Below underground had provided her a good start, though her social skills had never caught up with her subversive ones. Hiding on the streets at sixteen had proved almost as hard as surviving Paresh’s lab of horrors. She’d slipped into a renegade roll early on, being lucky enough to procure a laser cannon in the Down Below market for at least ten times the credits it was worth.
For better or worse, her naïve transaction had allowed her to distract Regent guards from taking a young mother’s infant. It had also flagged her to the leader of the underground, code name Radar.
She’d prided herself on evasion only to find herself one night twenty feet from a Regent patrol squad and in a face-to-face introduction with Radar. One of less than a handful of individuals who knew what she looked like, he’d helped her escape and offered her a slot on his team. He’d defined rules to keep her safe, pushed her in the direction of the caves when he’d realized she’d never integrate, even on the fringes of Down Below, and made the difference between her success and death at an early age.
Her one claim to relationships, a series of messaging commands from faceless members of the team. At least what she considered closest to a relationship. Physical relationships didn’t count. Sex, she’d tried once or twice. A fumbled, unpleasant exercise she’d been glad to leave to the people who felt compelled to procreate.
Desire and want had never entered her life—or her thoughts—until the crystal flooded her with images of haunted brown eyes and Trace Boden had walked into her life. Perhaps the reason she fought so hard to keep him at a distance. Her life worked. Complications were something she didn’t need.
***
The path out was easier than the path in. And slower, giving Trace plenty of time to berate himself for expecting a successful outcome and ruining his chances.
He waited precious extra minutes at the crack in the earth beyond New Delphi’s perimeter to make sure no one waited to note his exit. No one would gain access to the entrance and jeopardize Analena’s safe-hold from his actions.
At least six hours had passed underground. Dawn’s light framed the dark lumps from last night into clear, concrete foundations of satellite dishes and pyramids of rubble beyond the tall grass and weeds. The way looked clear, but warning tingled along the back of his neck. Choosing caution, he dropped to his knees and then down to his belly. The blades tickled his face, and the weeds itched against the back of his hands. He slithered the fifty feet to the dark cover of the New Delphi grid’s edge.
Hidden behind a pillar and some rubble, he stood, canvassed again, and then activated his face shield.
The grasses were clear. However, a large, armed surveillance team, escorted by two men wearing the bright orange insignia of immunization technicians, worked their way through the housing ruins twenty feet beneath the grid’s edge.
A knock echoed from their position. The annual census list required constant update, all residents routinely approached, checked, and verified against previous lists. All new children summarily added to the roster and inoculated against tactile infection from the bacteria.
Trace swallowed back his disgust at the obvious way to target prospective harvest victims like cattle. He waited for the group to move further into the quadrant, and made a beeline for the nearest open market stall. Dawn pulled people from their hovels in a false sense of security fostered by the break of sunlight. The crowd of people seeking to replenish their supplies offered him cover.
He headed toward the far corner of the market and Rasmond’s stall. Wrapped and cloaked from view, her gnarled hands were the only clue to her advanced age. He’d guess ninety and given the conditions in Down Below, her longevity astonished him.
The burly outline of her son, the youngest of her brood and the largest, framed against the tarp at the back of the stall. He pushed through to stand at his mother’s back.
With a nod, Trace made a pretense of sorting through the old replacement parts Rasmond stocked for hover vehicles and solar bikes. Few in the Down Under had any need for such items, though only a local would notice. The truly useful items, the illegal ones, lay buried in the baskets beneath. His target—several ion batteries to recharge the tools he’d used on Gar and to run further tests back at his house.
A man peered over Trace’s shoulder, eying his selections, and then moved on to another stall, appearing more interested in newer technologies. From within his vid mask, a rear projector followed the man until he disappeared in the crowd.
Hardly coincidence, the unsubtle reconnaissance flagged that he needed to get moving.
Noting the same thing, Rasmond pointed to the bottommost basket. “Three in yesterday, fully charged.”
“A woman after my own heart.”
She cackled, but her son moved closer, seemingly not trusting any relationship of business. Three hundred pounds of body at her back allowed Rasmond more leeway for trust. “I received a supply of programmable super metal as well, if you’re interested.”
“How much?” He pawed through the box, testing the charge on the batteries and palming all three. “For the metal, too.”
“One hundred and thirty creds.”
He started to put the batteries back, when she leaned in closer, covering his hand so he wou
ldn’t release the items. “I’ll make it worth your while with information.”
“Information first.” The barter between them was typical. The woman charged exorbitant prices for her merchandise, which was old and of only fair quality, though clean of tracking devices. Her information, however, was always well worth the difference.
“The Regents have levied a head-price for capture of the insurgents who broke into the camp the other night.”
“Hardly surprising, Rasmond. Not sure what good it’ll do them. The breakouts have been running for years. The guards have been looking just as long. They pick up one person, and someone will fill the hole and start again.”
Her hood bobbed, the gesture giving nothing away.
He knew better. Rasmond had lost two grandchildren to the detention camps. She held no love for the Regents or their practices. Then again, he wouldn’t trust her not to sell him out. Whether she knew he’d provided medical aid when her daughter had been attacked, he didn’t know. Even so, it would only buy so much loyalty.
“They’re leaking information on movement of a new child.”
“Who?”
A nail gestured toward the immunization squad now entering the market.
He pocketed the batteries, retrieved a cred coin from his pocket, keying in the amount and his authorization ID. Neither were traceable, thanks to decades of his family’s paranoia in safeguarding their money. “I’ll take the metal, as well.”
“They’re going for more than one. A big show.”
Her hand searched in the bowels of her cloak and produced the tiny box of metal, which he added to his pocket.
“Keep your head down, doctor.”
He froze, but her fingers urged him to move quickly. He dove into the crowd before the squad reached the stall.
Avoiding the obvious routes in favor of the darker, tighter spaces, he sped faster toward his first safe house while contemplating hard choices.
