29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Immediately, all the reasonable things I’d been planning to say flew from my mind. As we approached the ship, I twisted my hands nervously, unable to break eye contact with Tobago, no matter how much I wanted to. “I take it you’ve seen it, then,” I said as we drew near.
“Get inside,” he returned.
Well, that was a good sign, anyway, that he wasn’t going to leave us on Amazonia. “It isn’t as bad as it looks,” I prattled on as we boarded. “I mean, how many people even pay attention to those bulletins, anyway?”
“Get. Inside.” Tobago turned back to everyone in the crew who’d gathered around to watch. “All of you.”
There was no choice but to obey, really. He was the captain—and he sounded so cross. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Tobago. “If I’d had any idea—”
Tobago didn’t respond, just pressed the sequence to pull up the ramp and shut the cargo bay doors. The whirring of the gears effectively drowned out anything else I might say, which was ultimately fine, since it turned out, I had no idea how I could possibly make any of this right, anyway.
Tobago, Val, Ursa, and I went directly to the bridge, while the rest of the crew dispersed to get the ship ready for liftoff.
Actually, now that I think about it, Zenny came along, too.
If it had been even a day before, I might have attributed this to her having it out for me and wanting to see me suffer, but now I realized she might just be nosy.
Once we were all inside, Tobago shut the door behind us, as Val took a seat and began manipulating one of the screens.
I watched them both nervously, waiting for them to speak—and then, unable to bear the silence any longer, I began myself. “Who told you about the wanted poster?”
“Wanted poster?” Tobago echoed, his jaw tightening.
Whoops. He clearly hadn’t known about that. “Then how did you . . . ?”
The dash screen darkened until it was opaque, and a vid message began to play across its surface. A man sat facing the camera, facing us.
Rawley.
I stiffened at the sight of him, my heart seizing. He wasn’t here; it was a recorded message, so I knew he couldn’t see me. But seeing his face, hearing his voice, took me straight back to the forest—the last time I’d seen him, as I’d been running for my life.
Behind me, I felt Ursa’s shoulders tense. He wrapped a protective arm around me and snarled at the screen, clearly not understanding the nature of video messages quite yet.1
“It’s all right, my love.” I did my best to comfort him, even as I eyed the man onscreen uneasily. Rawley looked almost exactly the same. I suppose that shouldn’t have been surprising. It hadn’t been that long.
But at the same time, I’d lived an entire life since then, and seeing him so unchanged was unsettling. The only unusual thing about him, really, was that his assistant, Meridian, wasn’t hovering behind him like a shadow.
“Hello.” Rawley was using his lecture voice—cultured, polished, and ever so slightly condescending.
He smiled, putting on his approachable, trustworthy expression—I knew he was, indeed, putting it on, since I’d once seen him practicing it in a mirror.
“I’m Professor Augustus Rawley, head researcher on an expedition that will shortly return to Haven 3 from Earth. ”
The sound of his smug, smirking voice2 was deeply unpleasant to listen to, but at least it succeeded in transforming my earlier fear into blood-boiling rage.
If it were up to me, I would have shut him off then and there—but then again, unlike the crew of the Trojan Horse, I already knew the story he was about to tell.
Or so I thought.
“When our expedition first arrived on Earth, I was accompanied by my fiancée, Minerva Smithe-Canfield.”
He left out my title of doctor, of course. Very on-brand for Rawley. Though I’d noticed he’d made himself professor, even though so far as I knew, guest-lecturing about quack science at a university did not make one a professor.
“As you can see from the warning bulletin I’ve sent ahead of me, Minerva is an unusually plain, mousy creature.
” I certainly did not imagine the barely contained relish with which he uttered that sentence.
Bastard. “Ours was an arranged relationship, motivated by a mutual respect for scientific discovery.
We both understood that there was nothing romantic in the nature of our connection, or so I believed.
“Back on Haven 3, shortly before we left on our expedition to Earth, Minerva surprised me by one day removing all of her clothing in front of me and demanding that we consummate our relationship.”
Of all the things I’d expected Rawley to say, that was the very last of them. A squeak escaped my throat—a sound of protest? An aborted attempt to defend myself? Even I wasn’t certain. With all eyes on me, my skin heated with mortification and anger.
It wasn’t true, of course. Well, in the strictest of terms, there was some truth to it, but I certainly hadn’t demanded anything. We’d been engaged! And it was before I knew what a monster he was, before I saw those poor women down in his lab. Before he poisoned my mother.
Rawley certainly did seem as though he was enjoying himself in the telling of his tale, even though he was supposedly so grave and morally affronted.
“Naturally, I declined, and I convinced Minerva of the sense of maintaining a cordial but platonic relationship. Or so I thought. It seems that by the time we reached Earth, Minerva must have felt so needy because of my rejection—”
The absurdity of the statement deserved nothing more than an elaborate eye roll. “Oh, really.”
“—that it made her depraved. When she reached Earth, she began aggressively pursuing our male colleagues. I have on record a Mr. Jay Coulson—”
Mr. Coulson? The Earth expedition guide? We’d had a handful of conversations, nothing that could be even remotely construed as an aggressive sexual pursuit. I had a very difficult time believing he would have lied, but perhaps he’d been coerced into something? Promised some sort of bribe?
“—Dr. St. John Burke—”
Ugh. Now that one, unfortunately, tracked. Not that I’d ever willingly touch that sycophant’s unnaturally baby-smooth skin,3 but Rawley wouldn’t have even had to promise him anything to get him to gleefully tarnish my reputation.
“—and a Dr. Eugene Waters.”
. . . What? I didn’t even know who that was!
“All three men are willing to testify that Minerva sexually harassed them and demanded their participation in acts too obscene to be listed. And there are others, many others, still too terrified to come forward.
“When all of this came to light, I had no choice but to confront Minerva. I assumed we could reach some sort of understanding, but to my shock, Minerva used a taser to stun me, then beat me to within an inch of my life. She left me with broken bones, barely breathing, and proceeded to escape into the wilderness of Earth, just outside our research compound.”
I didn’t know which was the most absurd part of this story: That I’d been so distraught by Rawley’s rejection that I’d become a sex-crazed maniac who forced myself upon countless men, apparently against their will.
Or that I’d somehow managed to overpower Rawley—a man twice my size—with a simple taser, then beat him nearly to death, presumably with some sort of tool.
Or was I meant to have done so with my bare hands?
It was all too absurd for any reasonable person to give even a moment’s credit to. Though, I realized as I glanced over at Zenny and saw her eying me warily, perhaps Rawley was banking on convincing all the not-entirely-reasonable persons who heard it. “It isn’t true!” I snapped.
Her eyebrows inched up ever so slightly. “No, sure. You seem totally in control of your emotions.”
I wanted to protest, but seeing as it had been just over twenty-four hours since I’d thrown myself across a table to attack her, I could see where she might be coming from.
Oblivious to us, Rawley continued, “. . . attempts to find her, we finally located her living like a savage in the wild. Eating raw meat, sleeping on the ground, and wandering the forest naked. I tried to offer her help, but she used my sympathy against me and attacked and shot me, once again leaving me for dead.”
Now that was just a blatant lie, one that could be obviously proven false. He didn’t have a bullet wound in his chest! That kind of wound would leave a scar. He must be very confident that no one would challenge him on these ridiculous accusations.
“Somehow, Minerva has managed to escape Earth and is—we believe—heading back toward Haven 3. If anyone sees her, it’s imperative that she is detained and held separately from any fellow prisoners.
I would strongly advise against conversing with her or getting too close, as she is a volatile, unpredictable person who will likely resort to violence, maybe even murder—”
Tobago cleared his throat. “I think that’s about the gist of it.”
Val obediently pressed an icon on her dash screen to stop the video. The two of them exchanged a long glance.
I shifted nervously. “None of it is true, of course. I should hope that goes without saying. I’m happy to explain anything you might have questions—”
Tobago held up a hand, silencing me, though he did not address me. “The reward is gonna be a problem.”
“Reward?” I echoed. Tobago still wouldn’t look at me.
“That Rawley guy is offering fifteen million credits for your capture and return to him,” Zenny spoke up. “Seems like a pretty nasty piece of work.” She considered Rawley’s frozen image up on the screen. “But still pretty kelvin.”
At my aghast look, she shrugged defensively. “I’m not saying I like the guy. But I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating a box of crackers.”
Val continued speaking to Tobago as though none of those horrifying words had just been uttered. “Fifteen mill is pretty steep. A lot of people will be vying for that, keeping eyes out for her. That means more eyes on us.”
So here it came. They were deciding if Ursa and I were going to stay on the ship. I’d been too hasty in assuming all was settled now that we were back onboard. We hadn’t left atmo yet, had we? Tobago could easily reopen that hatch and dump us here on Amazonia like unwanted cargo.
If it had been Trini in his place, I know she would never have left me behind, not even if it meant putting herself in danger. Trini was unwaveringly loyal.
But Tobago? Was not his sister. He was clever. He was funny. He had been my friend for a very, very long time. I loved him, and I knew he loved me.
And I also knew without a shadow of a doubt he would leave me here if he thought it was in his crew’s best interest.
For a while, Tobago was silent, considering the prospects. “Family meeting,” he said decisively.
Val nodded, leaning over her console to activate the ship’s intercom. “Family meeting!” she echoed grimly.
I know it might sound daft, but in the overwhelming emotional whirlwind of spotting my wanted poster, seeing Rawley’s face onscreen, and hearing those insidious lies about me, it didn’t strike me until we were being marched down the hall toward the galley for a family meeting that Rawley had left something rather important out of his story.
Ursa.
Let me walk that back—Rawley had left out rather a few integral truths and fudged some key details.
Everything in his ludicrously fabricated story had, more or less, matched some corresponding event in reality, however skewed.
But in all those highly twisted details, there was a rather marked absence of Ursa.
Why? Surely if Rawley wanted to put out an intergalactic bulletin to capture two “fugitives,” choosing the larger, far more distinct individual of the pair would make more sense?
Ursa would be much, much easier for a stranger to spot and identify.
So there had to be a reason for leaving him out of the story. The only one I could think of made me distinctly uneasy, which meant that—knowing Rawley—it was probably true.
Rawley didn’t want anyone to know about Ursa’s existence.
He had likely destroyed any video capture that had been taken of Ursa’s cell during his time in captivity, as well as any records that described bringing a wildman onto the base.
And the reason he didn’t want to leave any paper trail of Ursa’s existence?
Was so he could perform his inhumane experiments on him—as he’d done to those poor women in the lab—without any interference or legal repercussions.
The thought was chilling. I instinctively reached out to grip Ursa’s hand, reminding myself that he was there with me, safe on the Trojan Horse. Ursa gave me a confused look but tightened his fingers around mine.
He must have thought my present terror was for the upcoming family meeting.
I was nervous about that, but not terrified.
If the Achaeans decided to abandon us on Amazonia, it would be frustrating, worrying, and deeply inconvenient, but we would survive.
Ursa and I would be together. What couldn’t we face, the two of us side by side?
1. Still, it was sweet.
2. Don’t ask me how a voice can be smirking. All I know is that his smirks.
3. Again, very much hope you see this someday, St. John, you worm.