Chapter 15 - Zion
Zion
“It’s stuck? What sort of rotten whale blubber is this lift? Why in the entire ocean would they put her in that death chamber when there’s a perfectly good lift around the front of the building?” I pace in front of the exterior lift door we’ve just come up.
“I’m sure it’s not stuck. Sterling must be pushing the stop button again. To give his orders,” Clark says.
I flick my eyes at him. Poseidon, I hate it when he does that. It makes me want to punch him in his swim bladder. “He needs to stop it.”
“You’re not wrong.” Forrest leans on the end of the sofa, his hands folded on his lap.
“No, Delmar says they’re stuck. It’s not moving.” Alexei holds up his block to show us what? Proof that I need to smother Sterling in his sleep. I might need help if he wakes up. I glance over at Clark.
Clark puts his arm over my shoulder. “Stop it. We need to be on our best behavior. Unified, not acting like podlets. And no, I’m not helping you murder Sterling.” How did he know what I was thinking?
“It would solve a lot of our problems.” I throw my hands up. “I’m kidding. Mostly. Why is the elevator not moving?”
Alexei’s immersed in his block. “Clark called it; Sterling hit the stop button. Grayson hit the go, over and over until the thing gave up.” His brow furrows.
“What?” I’m over to him and trying to read over his shoulder. But he tilts the block away from me. “What?”
Alexei stands, shaking his head. “Yeah, that won’t work,” he says under his breath.
“What won’t work?” Forrest stands too.
“Maintenance wants them to shift and break the glass. They’re dealing with another issue right now. Airlock in a flat downstairs.”
“Well, that’s obviously not going to work. I’ll message the director of the building now.” Forrest’s heels thud across the floor, and he vanishes down the hall to his office where he must have left his block.
“How are they going to get Blair out of there?” My stomach flips, bile rising up my throat.
Alexei positions his back to me.
“I’m not freaking out. Relax. I’m sure Blair would have been fine in the lift if Sterling hadn’t mucked it up.
But you can’t expect her to hold her breath and swim to an airlock.
” I don’t mean to raise my voice, but fuck, the frustrating phobia is getting in my way.
It’s not logical on land, and they’re right, it’s nonsensical in the Veiled City.
Then Alexei’s shoulder twitches. His whole back twitches, and a full body shake goes through me.
“Obviously, that’s not the solution.” Alexei’s finger flies over his block.
“Fuck the Tinom dome. We need a new dome,” I say.
Clark moves next to Alexei. “You know that’s not true. There’s nothing wrong with our dome. The lift is a rotten shrimp shell, but we can fix it.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “She’s got to be scared out of her wits.” I wrap my arms around myself.
“There’s got to be another solution.” Alexei puts his block face-down on the sofa table.
“Is there?” Because I’m betting whatever they come up with, not getting that hunk of junk to move is going to lead to one sweet female having nightmares she doesn’t deserve. And what follows will be her never speaking to us ever again. Let alone wanting to join our pod.
My throat is closing up. I have no idea where all this negativity appeared from. Even in my career, even with what happened to our former mate, Anya, I was the voice of reason. The silver lining. Things worked out until they didn’t. Then, especially when they didn’t.
With Blair in my arms the other night, it felt like things were going our way again.
Like an invisible block had been cleared.
Like moonbeams through the dome, breaking through the layers of water, illuminating the way for the last half of our lives.
And I’m fucking pissed that I can’t see that future anymore.
Both for us and for her. I don’t want her to end up with some clownfish like Kade Driftwood.
Everything Forrest has shared with us about Blair, and everything she told us about herself, says she deserves better. Fuck, she deserves better than us.
Forrest’s thumping announces his arrival before we can see him come around the corner of the main hall. Clark, Alexei, and I are staring at him when he bounds into the room. “We’ve come up with a solution. It’s not good, and she’s not going to like it. But it’s the safest thing we could think of.”
“And?” Clark’s on his toes, ready to jump down Forrest’s throat.
“They’ve found a welder’s kit.”
“Scuba gear?” Clark asks.
“Yes. A maintenance team’s going to have it ready for her. The guys will hold her up, break the glass and shift. It’s not an elegant answer to the problem.”
“No, that would be fixing the damn lift car.”
“It jumped the track. It’s being held down by the emergency cable.”
“Fuck, that’s the answer. Who are you talking to? Give me your block.” Clark holds out his hand, and Forrest gives it to him.
He’s messaging, and his lips are moving as his fingers speed over the block. He winces, and three furrows appear between his eyes. “Because it will work,” he says to the screen.
“What will work?” I ask.
“The car is being locked in place. But the dome’s force field can take some of the brunt.
They’ll put a weight on the bottom of it so it doesn’t rise too fast, then ease it on the bracket even though it’s not on the track.
They can cut the main cable and the emergency one too.
The car will lift on its own buoyancy. Maybe faster than anyone would want it to—hence the weight.
The track ends upstairs at the grand dame duchess’s apartment. ”
“Whoa,” Forrest comes back with. That’s his mother’s apartment. And I get what he means. Having Blair come into his mother’s place in an emergency situation? Forrest’s parents are traditionalists, and a lot. But what are we supposed to do? Not use a decent plan to save her?
“We’ve got to do what we can do.”
“Fuck.” Forrest nods.
“Delmar thinks that’s a good plan. I keep asking how she’s doing, but he won’t give me any details, and that can’t be a good thing.”
“Indeed,” Forrest rumbles. “How long before they can make things happen?”
Clark’s got his head in Forrest’s block again. “Half an hour, but they’re going to stand by with the scuba tank.”
“I’m going to go up there and see if I can convince as many of my parents as possible to go out for afternoon tea,” says Forrest. “Or dinner, or a trip to Athens. What else can I do?”
I make the decision to strip off my clothes and head for our own airlock before I know I’m doing it.
I’m through the first airlock and into the second one.
The water hits my ankles, and when it reaches my neck, I duck down under the water, blow the air out of my lungs, and shift.
I push the button for the airlock to open, and I’m out next to the dome.
Thirty stories below us, I see the stuck lift car.
There’s three maintenance omadas around it. I head straight down.
I’m here too, Alexei projects to me. Forrest and Clark are going to run the technical side from the penthouse.
Good. I’m swimming straight down and not letting it get to me. I’m only thinking of Blair.
Blair
“That’s going to be better. We’re going to move fast, though. They’ve got another line on us. And if we don’t rise on our own, they’ll try towing us up with one of the omadas. They have to find a long enough cable to pull us straight up the track. So this is the first thing they’re going to try.”
“No more talk about breaking the glass?” I’m trying really hard to have what my mom called grit.
Right now, I am not so gritty. I’m cornmeal, or more like plain white flour.
Or paste. Or butter. I’ve got no lumps; I’ve just had enough.
I’m not new Blair. Nope, I’m old Blair, hiding my daughter from my drunk husband out in the barn because she’d made too much noise or hadn’t done a chore to his liking.
“Hopefully not.” Grayson’s holding me in his lap. Yeah, no grit. His arm is around me like a safety belt. Delmar’s holding my hand when he’s not messaging. Sterling glares at the workers outside.
My breathing is under control. Or at least, I think it is, when there’s a rap on the glass and I jump a few inches off Grayson’s lap.
It’s Zion, and Alexei’s behind him. Zion places his hand on the glass, and I reach out and place mine on the other side.
It’s odd. I know I can’t feel him. But there’s something about it that makes me feel so much better.
“You can do this, Blair. We’re going to be fine.”
“I’m going to be fine,” I say like a parrot who doesn’t know what she’s saying. But I’m going to believe it. We’re fine, we’re fine, was what Marlee and I said all the way to Arizona when we fled the farm. And we are. She is. We’re good, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Zion’s blue-gray eyes shine at me though the glass.
Alexei’s deep blues too. Only Sterling’s not looking at me, like a mountain of a little boy who knows he’s done something wrong.
He likes respect. My ex wanted respect—unearned respect, at that—but never once had any remorse.
Sterling might not be saying much, but his whole body is shouting it.
I flick my eyes up to him. He holds my eyes for a fraction of a second before he goes back to glaring at the workers outside the car.
Delmar clears his throat. “I’ve got a message from Forrest. He wants you to know that he hasn’t told the Portsmouth clan. But if you want them here, he will.”
“Oh, goodness, no. I don’t want to worry AD and Marlee.”
“AD?” Delmar asks.
“Annabelle. It’s my brother’s nickname for his daughter. I don’t use it much.” Only when I’m nervous. And why would I be nervous? “No, please don’t tell them.”
“Okay, Forrest wants you to know . . .” Delmar stops. “He wants you to know that you will be fine.”
“Right, fine.” I hold Delmar’s gaze, but I have a strong suspicion that wasn’t the message. But I don’t need to worry about that, not now.
“We’re ready to do this. Remember, Sterling and Delmar are going to hold you around your waist,” Grayson explains.
“The maintenance crew will raise us up, and we’ll get out at the penthouse.
If that doesn’t happen, we’ll be breaking the glass.
Hold your breath until I get the regulator into your mouth. ”
The three of them strip their clothes off.
Sterling takes one arm and Delmar my other.
I’m trying really hard not to look at them below their waists.
But then, I don’t want to look out of the elevator either.
Doing both but neither is really hard. My eyes land on Grayson’s in front of me.
He does make for a nice distracting wall of muscles.
To my sides, there are muscular forearms and abs for days.
“Blair, just hang on to us,” Delmar says.
All I can do is nod. Sure, I’m scared, but I’m more tongue-tied by hormones that I thought had dried up and blown away on a dusty day.
Zion moves away from the window, and it’s then I focus on his tail. It’s so dark black it’s purple and I can’t stop staring at it. Alexei’s behind him, and the silver flecks in his tail in the waves distract me.
“Do you see it, Blair? Zion is counting down.”
His fingers go down one at a time. And when he’s holding up two fists, there’s a snap and a low moaning that sounds like a recording of a whale that my fifth-grade science teacher used to play when he wanted us to calm down. There’s screaming. It’s me. I’m screaming.