Chapter Ten

 

Bree spent the hours not engaged in physical therapy in front of a computer embedded in a desk made from a foot-thick slab of glass. In her quest to find information leading to Cam Tucker, she’d learned more about her new world. The people of 2176 had settled Antarctica, and lived on the bottom of the sea. They’d built space stations as big as cities, traveled to Mars and Saturn, and put a few colonies on the moon, too. But nowhere did Bree find anything about an audacious blond bombshell of a southern belle who’d walked out of a cave dressed in a flight suit.

Elbows propped on the desktop, Bree dropped her chin into her hands and watched a digest of the day’s news stories. “‘We have no new information’ state those close to Supreme UCE Commander Aaron Armstrong, whose efforts to free his son of all charges stemming from illegal entry into the Kingdom of Asia have so far met with failure. Negotiations will continue, sources say, though at the time of this report, they have broken down.”

The image cut to a severe-looking man dressed in a crisp black trench coat and a high-crowned, General Patton-type hat trimmed in patent leather. He had sharp cheekbones and a hard mouth. The general strode to a sleek waiting car with a woman clinging to his arm. She wore a black scarf wrapped around her neck and pulled over her mouth and nose. Dark sunglasses kept the rest of her face hidden as security people ushered the couple into their vehicle.

The general looked as impossible and arrogant as Kyber said he was. Kyber said he had designs on the UCE presidency, now a government-elected, not a people-elected position, and that he wanted to see a military dictatorship in its place—with him in charge, of course. Now his son was biding time in Kyber’s comfortable dungeon, waiting for the posturing to cease so he could go home. But maybe, before he went home, Armstrong’s son would be able to tell her about Cam. All her other efforts thus far had failed. She was beginning to see Tyler Armstrong as her only hope, her only link to Cam, and the cave in which they were hidden all these years. But would the younger Armstrong help her? With a father at the military helm of the greatest imperial power the earth had ever known, why would he bother?

Somehow, she had to make him want to bother.

But how?

Joo-Eun, one of the subservient Park “sisters,” entered Bree’s hospital room, her arms laden with flowers and a beribboned box. Bree turned in her chair. “Wow. What’s all this?”

“Gifts. From Prince Kyber.” Joo-Eun’s smile was sweet and shy.

Clone. No matter how hard Bree tried to block it, the word intruded when she saw Joo-Eun. The girl didn’t have a father or mother; someone had created her in a lab. But, though the girl was a little slow on the uptake, and Bree took special pains not to speak to her as if she were a child when in reality she was seventeen, Bree had made a vow not to treat her differently than anyone who’d started life in the traditional egg-and-sperm way.

She sensed that Joo-Eun had noticed, and that in return, the girl had given Bree her loyalty. Bree hoped so. Friends were valuable when you didn’t know who your enemies were.

The bouquet was a fragrant cluster of three dozen long-stemmed aquamarine roses. Another marvelous, bioen-gineered feat, she thought. Tucked within the flowers was a note in Kyber’s handwriting. Tyler Armstrong will join us for dinner at 8:00 p.m., it said simply.

Bree’s heart skipped a beat. Tyler Armstrong. To her, he was no longer the blue-eyed diver-thief; he was the man who would tell her how to find Cam.

Joo-Eun gave Bree the package next. “It would please the prince if you wore the dress to dinner.”

Bree tore off the ribbon and lifted a bundle of rustling fabric from the box. Shaking out the dress, she held it at arm’s length. “Whoa. It’ll please me, too.”

The gown was a floor-length gorgeous lavender confection made of diaphanous silk and pale amethyst gem-stones. Despite the knots in her stomach and her lingering numbness, something melted inside her as she contemplated wearing the gown. Kyber had made no secret of his romantic interest in her, but so far, she’d pretended not to notice and he hadn’t pushed it further. Did the gifts foretell a turning point? Choosing Kyber would be as good as consigning herself to staying here, and that’s what she couldn’t do. As long as hope existed for finding Cam, she wanted no promises holding her back.

But letting go for one night didn’t mean surrendering all her nights to come, did it? Bree clutched the dress in her hands and touched the shimmering fabric to her face. What plans Kyber had made after dinner, she didn’t know, but he sure was doing everything right.

 

* * *

 

Guards appeared outside Ty’s cell just after the heat peaked for the day. He’d been dozing with his back propped against the wall—more specifically on the scrawled letters that spelled out Freedom! He didn’t consider himself a superstitious man, but he figured it couldn’t hurt, sleeping next to the upbeat graffiti.

Stiff and sore, Ty got up warily and waited for them to unlock the gate. The guard who opened the cell was a moose of a man whose ancestry appeared to be the same as some of the pirates Ty had fought in the Raft Cities.

Many of them were of Indonesian, Malaysian, or Maldivian ancestry who hadn’t thought to—or wanted to—resettle on the mainland after the ocean took their island homes. Ty empathized with their plight, if not the piracy.

“UCE. You, shower,” the big man grunted, as if speaking to Ty was too far beneath his level of contempt to bother using full sentences.

Ty lifted his brows. “A shower? No kidding.” He rubbed his T-shirt. It clung damply to his skin. Sweat had long since erased the bloodstains. “What’s the occasion?” If he was getting out, good. But if he had to leave Banzai here, not so good.

The guard didn’t answer, instead stood back to let him pass by, wrinkling his nose at Ty’s stink. Ty scratched his beard. “Will your disinfectant kill lice?” He pinched something in his fingers and studied it. “These look like lice. Or fleas.” He thrust his fingers at the guard. “What do you think?”

The guard arched out of his way. “Go,” he growled, pointing farther down the dank passageway between the cells. Ty suppressed a smile, squared his shoulders, and strode on ahead.

Two other moose-like men waited for him with ion-rifles in their hands. They fell in step with him, and did not meet his eyes. Ty studied their faces, however, analyzing their level of tension, their size and strength. He shifted to study the doors and exits, and the location of additional men. No, not yet, advised his SEAL’S intuition. This was not the right time to make a run for freedom. And he might not have to take that chance; if they were giving him a shower, things were looking up.

Or, down. Kyber might like to clean up his prisoners before he put them out for public execution.

Ty walked with the guards to a shower room that looked as if no one had used it in a century. A guard commanded the water on. As it swirled down a drain in the middle of the stone floor, it took with it decades’ worth of grit and God knew what else.

Barefoot, Ty stepped under the spray. Lifting his face to the stream, he closed his eyes. Little else had ever felt this good, he decided.

“Clothes off!”

Ty opened one eye at the guard. “If only the women I meet would say that.”

“Off!” The guard jerked his rifle butt menacingly.

No humor, Ty thought. He stripped off his T-shirt and baggy, tattered prison pants. Taking his time—he’d waited long enough for this—he soaped his body, scrubbing the sterilizer into his skin, stopping shy of abrasion. Then he did the same to his hair and scalp. By the time he stepped out of the shower, he felt ready to face whatever they had planned for him.

The guard threw him a towel, which he tied around his hips. They climbed a staircase made of stone that ended near a magtrack with pristine silver coils that indicated infrequent use. Here, the air wasn’t thick with rot. Ty thought he smelled pine trees. Somewhere, a window or door was open to the outside.

Another hundred paces brought them to a room similar to the ones Ty had sat in during interrogations. Yet here, a young woman waited for him with a pair of sharp scissors in one hand and a razor in the other. She pointed to a stool. “Sit there, UCE.”

He gave her a salute and took a seat. Silently and efficiently, she cut his hair and shaved his beard. Brown clumps of matted hair spilled onto the floor and his bare feet. Within minutes, his hair was trimmed, not quite to military specs, but shorter than it was.

“Nice job,” he remarked, rubbing his smooth chin and cheeks. “What’s next? An oil massage? A sports rub-down?”

“Come, UCE.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

Ty rolled his eyes at the guards and followed. “Yes, ma’am.”

He followed her up yet another flight of stairs. Judging by the freshness of the air, he’d say they were now out of the dungeon proper. Life was improving by the minute.

In a locker room the size of a small closet, he found a brown shirt and pants made of thin, soft fabric. They were ugly and functional, and a little too small, even accounting for his weight loss, but a giant step up from prison wear.

When he’d dressed, the woman handed him a mouth-cleaning kit and a bag of toiletry items. She abandoned him in another room with a real sink, a toilet that wasn’t a hole in the floor, and a wall of mirrors. “You have fifteen minutes, UCE.”

“I’m a man. I only need two.”

She ignored his smile and slammed the door.

Exhaling, Ty faced the mirror and began running a comb through his wet, freshly trimmed hair. He didn’t know what Kyber had in store for him, but he had decided he was going to show up looking good.