Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nera looked around. “We need to climb. Up there.” She pointed.
Nik spotted the mezzanine display level that ringed the lobby. “What if they can climb?”
But she was already pressing a small button on the wrist of her gloves. After New York, they’d both traded their regular gloves in for these upgraded versions the security team used. She pressed a hand to the wall and then climbed upward like a spider.
She glanced back at him. “If you have a better idea, I’m open to it. After we put a little distance between us and them.”
He pressed the button to activate his nano-gloves. The tech in them let them adhere to the wall like old Earth geckos. He shot a final glance at the converging zombies, and climbed.
He reached the ledge a moment after Nera did and pulled himself over. He looked down at the lobby.
The zombies couldn’t climb. They could jump, and a few of them were slamming themselves against the walls, trying to reach Nik and Nera. But the ledge was too high.
“They don’t have enough coordination,” Nera said.
Nik touched his ear. “Galen? Avril? We’ve reached a safe location on a high ledge in the lobby. But there are too many zombies. We can’t make it out.”
Galen cursed. “Fuck. Okay, hold on for now.” He sounded a little out of breath, and Nik guessed he and the others were running back to the ship.
“How long until we reach radiation exposure?” Nik asked Nera.
She stared at her timepiece. “Twenty-five minutes.”
He closed his eyes. There was no way they’d make it back in time. “Gunn. That asshole made sure the zombies herded me right across the damn lobby.”
“Really?”
That low, lethal voice raised the hairs on his neck. He opened his eyes. “You can’t kill him. And you should have gotten out when you had the chance.”
“Shut up, Niklas.”
He sucked in a breath. Then he reached out and grabbed her hand. “Hell of a second date.”
She made a small, choked sound that might have been a laugh.
Galen’s voice was back on the line. “Okay, Phoenix. We can’t mount a rescue. The streets are teeming with those things. The sun’s setting and it looks like they come out at night.”
“We don’t have much time left before we need the radiation meds.”
“Yeah. I have a plan. I’m going to send a drone in to you guys carrying enough meds to get through to sunrise.”
They looked at each other. “But each injection loses potency, right?” Nik said. “If we’re still exposed, the antidote won’t work.”
“The antidote won’t work as well as it would on the ship, yes. But the radiation levels are lower here, so that helps. Not gonna lie, you guys are going to be feeling the effects come morning. It’s the best option we have right now. Sit tight.”
And trust Galen to save them. Nik rubbed his brow. Maybe his brothers were right about this mission. He wasn’t going to make it out alive.
Nera pulled food rations from her backpack. “Kerala Curry or Vegetarian Pizza?”
“Both taste like crap, right?” Niklas said.
“Yes.”
“Fine. The curry. I don’t know how you can call something pizza when it comes in a tube.”
They munched on their replicated food in a silence that was occasionally punctuated by the footsteps of the milling creatures below, and the odd low moan.
Here they were, trapped, and likely to die before sunrise of radiation poisoning or zombie attack, and all she could think about was the man by her side. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He turned his head, his face just shadows in the growing darkness. “Me, too.”
The ledge was quite spacious, several meters wide and it ringed the entire lobby. Farther down she saw a large statue, and several more directly across from them. She figured if the situation wasn’t quite so dire, Niklas would have enjoyed studying them.
She heard the drone before she saw it, a faint buzzing sound, like an annoying insect. It flew in through the front door and then zoomed up, out of zombie reach. It hung in front of them for a few seconds, its multiple rotors spinning. Then it headed toward them.
“Phoenix and Darc, the attached pouch contains the necessary meds. There are also some rations.”
It was Agent Ryant’s stern voice coming from the drone’s speakers. Nera was still a bit surprised the man hadn’t written them off as a lost cause.
“Got it.” Niklas detached the bag. “See you in the morning…hopefully.”
“Stay where you are, and we’ll come as soon as we can.
We’ve also included a temporary emergency shelter.
It’s the small silver box. Just press the controls to activate it.
It will provide some limited protection from the radiation.
” A pause. “It’ll be a tight fit, but the drone couldn’t carry two. ”
“We’ll be fine,” Niklas said.
Nera watched him fish the shelter out of the bag. It was a small box no bigger than his palm, but she knew with one press of the controls, it would open into a clear protective dome. She’d spent an uncomfortable few hours in one during a poison rainstorm on Digila V.
“Good luck,” Agent Ryant said.
The drone whizzed away, this time rising upward. It maneuvered through a small hole in the dome and disappeared.
Niklas pressed the control on the box and set it on the floor. A clear, flexible bubble appeared. Big enough for one person and pretty damn tight for two.
“I’ll go first.” He climbed in and sat.
Nera ducked inside, the door sealing behind her with a hiss. “Cozy.” She settled beside him, putting her boots up on the curve of the shelter’s dome.
“Well, now it’s just you and me,” he said.
She studied his rugged face. There was no panic, no sheen of perspiration, no nerves. Just calm, steady Niklas. Most people she knew would be having a panic attack by now. “Us and several hundred flesh-hungry zombies.”
“Yes, well…they aren’t the politest of companions, are they?”
With a smile, she looked up through the enviro shelter and the dome, and saw that night had fallen and the stars were coming out. Then she looked down at the stirring mass of monsters.
“So you think they’re people who lived on Earth?”
“Not these ones,” he answered. “The original humans would have been irradiated, then over the years they bred, somehow. Evolved—or devolved, may be a better description—in their own way. That’s what these poor creatures are.”
Nera shuddered. “If I get bitten, kill me.”
He turned to look at her. “No. I couldn’t do it.”
She blinked. “You’d condemn me to that?”
“No. I’d contain you, and work until I had a cure to turn you back.”
Something warm bloomed in her chest. She leaned over and pressed her mouth to his.
He made a noise, his arms wrapping around her. He took control, kissing her in that all-consuming way that made every nerve ending light up.
He pulled back, breathing heavily. “This isn’t really what I had in mind when I fantasized about seducing you.”
“I don’t need silk sheets and simulated candlelight.” She’d had that once. Silk sheets still made her shudder.
“But you deserve more than dust, an enviro shelter, and irradiated zombies.”
She stared at his face. They might not make it out. What if she lost him, before she’d ever had him? Emotions swirled inside her, messy and chaotic. Everything she’d avoided her entire life.
Maybe she should give him what he really seemed to want from her. Now, her heart thumped so hard she was sure it was twisted into a knot. She stared blindly at the mass of moving shadows below. Was she really going to bare her soul to him? A soul far uglier than the zombies beneath them?
“I was born on Luvanoi. A moon of Klavinoi.”
He stilled and was so quiet she couldn’t even hear him breathing.
“All the moons and planets in the system pay tribute to the Klavinoi overlords every year.” She swallowed. “A tribute in slaves. My looks became apparent when I was very young and I was earmarked as a tribute.”
“How old were you when they took you?” His voice sounded rusty.
“I was eight.”
She sat quietly for a moment. The memories had been dulled by time. In the early years, she’d tried a great many things to dull them, eradicate them, or replace them…until she’d learned that she had to just learn to live with them. They didn’t hurt so much anymore, but they weren’t pretty.
“My mother cried when they took me. But really, I’d been gone to them from the day I was tribute-marked.
I think my father thought of me as just an extra mouth to feed.
I was taken to the harems of Vina, Klavinoi’s capital city.
I was beautified, trained, educated. The sex slaves of Klavinoi are the most skilled in the galaxy.
” She looked at him now, trying to see his face in the shadows.
She sensed the tension in him, and finally, he muttered a curse.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful and pretty they make it, it’s barbaric. All slavery is. No one can ever belong to someone else.” His hands grabbed hers. “Unless they choose to give themselves. And even then, that isn’t slavery. And no one—no one—has the right to turn a child into a sexual toy.”
“It’s not just about the sexual acts. The most skilled are trained in everything—dancing, combat, household skills. You’re a bed partner, a valet, a bodyguard.”
“Slaves in every sense.”
“Yes. You give them everything.” They took your individuality, your soul.
“Was your…master kind?” Nik’s words sounded like broken glass.
“I had a master and a mistress.” She shot him a thin smile. “They weren’t the cruelest of all slave masters, but they weren’t kind either.” Oh, no, they’d had a sadistic streak a mile wide. And they’d demanded obedience in everything.
Nera stared at the zombies. They weren’t free, either. They were slaves to the desires that drove them. They had no choice, and for so long, she’d had no choice either.