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I let out a huge sigh of relief when Nadir returned. When they’d taken him, I’d feared I’d never see him again. However, his grim expression had my stomach knotting with dread again.
The unhooded guards collapsed the force field and pushed him into the cell. Electricity sizzled as the field reactivated.
“Are you all right? What happened?” I hugged him then pulled back to study him. He did not appear to be injured. They hadn’t beaten him. “You were gone a long time. I was getting worried.”
He gave a short, humorless chuckle. “I found Prince Lomax.”
“He’s alive? He’s here? He’s a captive, too? Is he all right? He’s not injured, is he?”
“He’s the lieutenant.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“The group that abducted us? Prince Lomax is one of them. They call themselves the Galactic Justice Warriors. They believe if they can discredit and destabilize the League of Planets, it will end alien species trafficking.”
“That’s crazy! That makes no sense.”
“The decimated township? The GJW did that, figuring if they destroyed an entire village and displaced the people, the LOP would cancel the summit.”
“Isn’t the purpose of the summit to discuss how to stop alien species trafficking?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t the Galactic Justice Warriors be in favor of a summit?”
“If they were genuinely interested in stopping alien species trafficking. But they’re not. Their anti-trafficking rhetoric is a ruse. The Galactic Justice Warriors are anarchists. Their aim is to wreak chaos and dissension. They have hijacked a legitimate cause to convince well-meaning people to join them, promising the destruction of the existing social order will bring about the desired change. In reality, they don’t seek anything better; they only wish to destroy what exists. They’re trying to dismantle the League of Planets by claiming the league is systemically corrupt and secretly promoting alien species trafficking.”
“And Prince Lomax is involved?” I hardly knew him, but I couldn’t reconcile the affable, easygoing royal with anarchy, bombings, and kidnapping. The king would have a cow—or whatever kind of bovine mammal was native to Nomoru.
Nadir nodded. He sucked in a breath, grabbed his horns with both hands, and paced our small cell. He exhaled through his teeth. “Near as I can figure, they recruited him a couple of years ago. He was probably captured, isolated, drugged, and bombarded with GJW propaganda. Drugs can soften a person’s resistance to new ideas.”
“You mean he was brainwashed?”
“Brainwashed.” He nodded. “Hopefully, Mnemonians weren’t involved. If they brainwashed him, it will be irreversible.”
“Mnemonians?”
“Mind controllers from planet Mnemonia. The Mnemonians follow a strict code of conduct, but a rare few without an ethical core sell their services.”
Oh great. Mind-controlling aliens. Could the situation get any worse? Sometimes, ignorance was bliss. My dull life on New Terra looked pretty darn good from the vantage point of this prison cell. I wish I could slip on a pair of magical ruby slippers, click my heels together, be transported home, and forget all of this ever happened. Except I would never abandon Nadir to deal with this alone.
Besides, running away, denial, and ignorance allowed a problem to spread. Isolated from the galaxy, we New Terrans had been oblivious to the troubles brewing, and the problems had found us anyway. Traffickers had abducted us. And now there were rogue Mnemonians?
I wrapped my arms around Nadir from behind and rested my cheek on his shoulder. He hugged my arms then removed them, turned, and embraced me. For a couple of minutes, we clung to each other. His heart beat against my ear in a reassuring thump.
He had devoted his life to getting things done in challenging situations. If anyone could get us out of this mess, he could. I was no slouch either, if I did say so myself. Nobody worked harder and longer without complaining than me. Well, okay, not the complaining part. But the rest was true. Anyway, we were a team. Team Alien Ass-Kickers. There. I named us. We were official now.
We’ll get through this together.
We had to because the alternatives were not acceptable.
Nadir cleared his throat as if getting ready to speak when one of the tiny spy orbs zipped over and hovered outside the electrified barrier.
“Fuck off.” I flipped it the bird. I’m sure it was wishful thinking on my part, but the camera bot seemed insulted as it flew out of the cell block.
“We have to get out of here,” he said.
Agreed. If we couldn’t break out, we’d be left singing the blues with our Aurelian cellmates. And that was the best-case scenario. “Now would be the time, while the spy cam is gone.” I assumed it zipped off to surveille another area of the bunker. Maybe the GJW had a limited number of spy bots and had to rotate them. “Got a plan?”
“Not yet.” He reached up and grabbed his horns again. His gesture betrayed his uncertainty. Since he rarely let his guard down, it revealed his vulnerability. He trusts me. Feeling gooey inside, I stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
“What was that for?” He blinked, but his cheeks dimpled in a pleased smile. Those dimples were so darn cute it made me want to kiss him again, but escape had to take priority.
“A kiss for luck?” I suggested.
“We’re going to need it.” Dimples vanished. “The situation is precarious.”
“Well, yeah. We were abducted by anarchists seeking to overthrow the League of Planets.”
“Anarchists who take no prisoners,” he said grimly.
“We’re prison— What do you mean?”
“They’re after recruits, not prisoners. Captives undergo reeducation.”
“They’re going to brainwash us? Like hell!” Would a Mnemonian invade my mind? The ultimate violation, brainwashing robbed a person of autonomous thought. The Galactic Justice Warriors seek to enslave our minds. They’re as bad, if not worse, than the cartels.
Nadir shook his head. “Prince Lomax believes I’m too stubborn for reeducation to work. I doubt they’d try it on you because you don’t speak the language. You wouldn’t understand what they were telling you to think.”
So maybe ignorance could be bliss. When our captors spoke, all I heard was, “La, la, la, la, la.” Then a thought struck me. “What if they implant me with a translator?”
“Then it could be successful.”
“Hey, I’m stubborn, too.” I hated the idea that I could be manipulated, that the GJW could mess with my mind and supplant my values and beliefs with their propaganda. It made me sound malleable, weak.
“I’m afraid they’re going to kill us,” he said.
Kill us? I couldn’t have heard correctly. Grill us, maybe. Interrogate us. Thrill us? Would be nice, but I doubted that one. Drill us at a POW camp?
His face was so grim, I couldn’t fool myself I’d misheard. “B-but Prince Lomax? He wouldn’t do that to us, to you. You’re the royal advisor to the kingdom of Araset. He’s the lieutenant, isn’t he? Can’t he intervene on your behalf?”
“He has changed. He has become one of them. We have to escape.” He strode to the force field and held up his palms.
“Don’t touch it!” I cried.
“I’m not.” Like a mime trying to find his way out of an invisible box, he ran his palms just inside the electrified portal. The force field crackled and sparked. “It’s extremely hot,” he said. “We can’t bust through it. We’d get electrocuted.”
The spy orb hovered on the other side of the force field. It bobbed like it was laughing at us.
Using both hands, I flipped two birds. It zipped away and disappeared.
Nadir glanced around the cell. “If we had something to break through the force field, it might short it out, but we have nothing.”
“Not even a chamber pot,” I said, realizing I needed to pee. Like, really bad. If they didn’t bring us a pail or something soon, I was going to have to squat in the far corner of our cell, and I hated to do that in front of Nadir. We had not yet reached the point in our relationship where I felt comfortable going to the bathroom in front of him. I mean, we’d only had sex once—well, three times in the same night, but I counted that as one encounter. Call me vain, but me squatting in the corner was not the last image of me I wanted him to have. But, right now, I felt like I could pee buckets.
I narrowed my eyes at the invisible force field and then at Nadir as a crazy idea struck me. I rolled my eyes. It would never work.
He looked at me. “What is it?”
“It’s too stupid to mention. You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Well, Art Smart, the AI company I work for? It got sued a few years ago. It was implicated in a terrible freak accident. Not the company’s fault, but deep pockets, you know?”
“Why would I laugh at that?”
“I haven’t gotten to the punch line. A woman was charging up her service bot. She had it plugged into a bathroom electrical socket. Somehow, the charging bot fell into the tub of water while she was bathing. She got electrocuted and died.”
“That is not funny at all.”
“It shorted out the electrical system in her flat. The entire place went dark. If we shot liquid at the contact points, wouldn’t it short out the force field?”
He stroked his chin. “Maybe. Perhaps when they deliver a meal and some water, we could use the water for that purpose.”
Considering they probably intended to kill us, getting a meal seemed iffy. “Yeah...or you could pee on it. I don’t know about you, but my bladder is about to burst.”
He curled his lip and wrinkled his nose. “You want me to urinate on the force field?”
“That’s the funny part.”
