Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (19 page)

Sara snapped her attention to Green Hair. But, David was up
from the floor and charging the male contractor. She’d heard that Armadans
could produce excess adrenaline at will, but didn’t think it was true, until
David picked Green Hair up by his shirt and flung him three meters into two
more contractors guarding the doorway.

“Head for the hangar,” David said.

Sara skirted the contractors sprawled in the doorway, but
one grabbed her ankle. She yanked it from his grasp and kicked him in the face,
then took off. Scuffling sounded behind her. She considered going back to help
David, but lost her balance as the floor shimmered in front of her. She barely
felt the turn of her ankle or the rock slamming into her knee. She crawled to
the wall, but it kept bending away from her at irregular angles. Pulling
herself to her unsteady feet, Sara closed her eyes in an attempt to thwart the
dizziness. Heavy footfalls raced up behind her.

“Come on.” David grabbed her arm, dragging her
along beside him. She tried to look back to see if the contractors followed but
saw no one. If a retired captain could dispatch a handful of combatants by
himself, contractors would be in trouble if they ever had to face Armadans in a
real fight.

When she and David rounded the corner back toward the Great
Hall, he gave into his disorientation, tripping and slamming his shoulder into
the stone wall, dislodging one of the giant tapestries. The birds continued to
fly as the black sheet of fabric folded to the ground with a snap.

“Can you make it to the hangar? I have talk to someone
about opening those doors,” David said. His voice seemed normal now. She
could barely get out a “Yes.” She wondered if he could fly them
out
of the hangar.

Sara continued navigating the hallway, trailing a hand
against the stone wall to steady her wobbling form. The fuchsia light from the
Great Hall sconces warped into long flames then retracted to compact orbs. When
she passed the massive stone fireplace, several people still milled around, but
as she had suspected earlier, no voyeurs. No real witnesses. A woman up ahead
caught Sara’s attention. Magenta-streaked dark hair. Faya. So she was here.

Sara staggered up to her, rage pulsing through her thoughts.
She spun the woman around and grabbed her by the throat. A startled whimper
escaped too small of lips, and green-flecked eyes stared back at her, not
Faya’s grey irises. Sara released her.

David stood yelling at a guard to open the airlock doors. A
voyeur floated just above him. Relief surged through Sara; the live feed to the
Media would ensure their safe passage out of Nanga Ki. Venture wouldn’t dare
allow her to be hurt in front of the Media, and neither would Simon. As if on
cue, the inner chamber doors opened. David stood in the doorway and ushered her
inside. He no longer seemed to be under the influence of the drugs. Had they
already worn off for him, his size able to handle more than her small frame, or
did he take something to counteract them?

She needed something, something to stop her slide, and she
knew exactly where she would get it.

“Open the door, Sean.”
Sara slapped at the door’s sensor.

Its halfmoon of bluegreen light
made her uneasy. She watched it collapse into a small orb and jerked her hand
away before the energy could burn the flesh from her bones.

“Stop!” Her voice
echoed in the empty commonway.

She slid further into a
hallucinogenic reality. She might be able to minimize the effects, at least
keep part of herself ground in the real. She beat the sensor with her skinned
knuckles.

No respite came this time. She
barely even felt the pain.

Please answer the door.

It was obvious after meeting
Sean, and seeing the mess of bottles and paraphernalia in his suite, that he
was a doser. She’d pay triple for whatever he had on hand or just break down
the damn door and take it. She needed a distractor to keep Faya’s horrors at
bay.

The metallic smell of chlorate
burned through her nasal passages. She bit her lip against the onslaught of a
thousand pins pricking the lining of her sinuses, and pushed her palms against
her closed eyes. Holding her breath helped.

Sweat dampened her hands and
crept down her wrists. Only it felt gummy and too sticky. She wrenched her
hands away from her face and stared at the blue mucus that covered her palms.
Her breathing came in shallow bursts. In a panic she wiped the mucus onto her
gown. The fluorescent ooze ate through the shiny fabric and dripped onto her
legs like acid. She grabbed handfuls of the gown to keep it off her skin.

It’s not real.

She didn’t care. Most of her
believed it was real. Carbonizing flesh overpowered the ammonia-stench as her
fingernails blackened. She watched each finger curl up and burn like leaves.

“Sara, what are you
doing?”

She spun at the voice. Her gaze
settled on a pair of silver v-mitters. She screamed and backhanded the fragger
before falling against the closed door. With one shoulder pressed into the wall
for support, she stumbled forward. Hands grabbed her shoulders. She whipped
forward and smashed her forehead into the fragger’s chin.

She heard a grunt in response,
but the hands only tightened.

“What is your problem?”

The voice sounded familiar. Rainer?
The hope gave her pause.

“Sara, what’s wrong with
you?” She saw a square jawline and a thin upper lip. Her gaze moved past
the trail of blood coming from the man’s mouth up to his eyes—Sean Cryer’s
brown eyes, not colorless v-mitters.

She fell against his chest in
relief, then remembered her burnt fingers. “My hands.” She inspected
them to find healthy olive skin, except the bloody, swollen knuckles on her
right hand.

Sean loosened his grasp on her
wrists and turned her hands over in his, inspecting them. “What did you
hit? Besides me?”

She looked at him, but saw
Simon’s face. Her hands balled into fists. “Let go of me.”

“You’re sliding, aren’t you?”
It was Sean’s face again.

“Yes.”

“Judging by your pupils and
breathing, you’re headed into a full slide. I didn’t take you for a
doser.”

“I need something.
Please.”

Sean helped her into his suite.
She saw him take a step into Faya’s modification cell and pulled away from him.
“I won’t let her touch me again. I’ll kill her and you and Simon. He put
you up to this, didn’t he? How could you?”

She grabbed an empty bottle from
the table in front of her and hurled it at Sean’s head before running down a
corridor. She had imagined escaping down this corridor before every session
with Faya, but never had the chance to until now. She ran into a sitting room
and stopped. This wasn’t part of the modification area, not part of Simon’s
complex. It lacked his cold luxury. This place was familiar. She lost her panic
to confusion. A quick survey took in all the bottles and pillows scattered
about and the piles of clothes covering the couches. She bypassed all of these
and stumbled over to a chair and picked up a crumpled grey shirt.

She held it to her chest. Instead
of the comforting woody scent she expected, she thought she smelled clay mixed
with freshly raked leaves. Her mind flashed to fingertips brushing across her
open palm and a face full of dark blonde stubble.

“Sean?”

“Yeah.” His voice
carried from across the room.

She glanced in his direction, then
quickly away. “Do you work for Simon?”

“Prollixer? No.”

Her peripheral vision caught his
slow movement toward her. She’d forgotten what she’d asked. This was how her
games with Faya always began, volleying questions at one another until Faya
became bored and either started to break Sara’s toes or hooked her up to the
blade cuffs.

Sara squeezed the shirt like it
was a lifeline to sanity. “Sean?”

“I’m here.”

She couldn’t find him.

“Why don’t you tell Faya
what she wants to know?”

Not Sean’s voice. Rainer’s. She
shook her head.

“David Anlow isn’t a
fragger,” she said.

“I could have told you
that.” Sean’s voice, right next to her. He slipped an arm around her and
pressed something into her neck. Images of blade cuffs slicing her face and
neck played through her mind as she twisted and fought against Sean’s grasp. He
held her tight to his chest. Her breath came in shallow spurts, and her mouth
moved in unvoiced words.

“It’s okay. Calm down.”
His voice was soothing as he rubbed her back. “This’ll stop the slide and
take care of all that stuff in your head. You’ll work it out of your
subconscious through a few bad dreams.”

The dreams were worse than the
reality. Sara was already drifting into unconsciousness. Her knees buckled. Sean
lifted her and carried her to his room. She didn’t want to be alone to battle
her way back to the real through endless nightmares. Her mind separated from
her physical form, but she thought she clung to him, burying her face in his
neck. If Sean left her alone, she’d never know. It would be okay. They always
left.

And she still survived.

Several bottles clinked to the
floor as Sean hurried to grab one of his clean shirts from the stack on the
couch. He doused a corner of the soft cotton shirt with cold water from the
bathroom faucet. Cries from the connecting bedroom sent him straight back to
Sara. She thrashed against the mattress as though fighting an invisible
opponent. His throbbing lip reminded him to approach her cautiously. She’d also
caught him above his right eye during her last episode.

“Sara, it’s Sean. I’m the
only one here. You’re safe.” He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder.

She stilled. Only her chest
moved, rising and falling with ragged breaths. Her eyes never opened. He didn’t
know if she could actually understand him or if she was just responding to the
tone of his voice. He sat beside her. Sweat beaded on her forehead and the
scent of roses suffocated the room as it dripped out of her pores. He was
beginning to hate the heady smell as much as she did because he associated it
with her torment.

He pressed the cool cotton of the
shirt against her forehead. He could feel the heat radiating from her skin, and
that worried him. Having survived a couple of full slides in his teens, he
always relied on restors to put him out so he could sleep it off. He’d given
Sara a double dose already, yet that hadn’t calmed her much. He was afraid
she’d overdose if he gave her any more. She either had a tolerance that
surpassed his own or someone had used some powerful shit to mess with her mind.

At least she slept, though it was
more like a nightmarish trance. She murmured constantly, sometimes shouted. He
could make out a small amount, pleas for help mostly, which made his chest
tight. And names. Some he recognized like Rainer, Chen, and Simon. He was pretty
sure that last one was in reference to Simon Prollixer. Though there weren’t
many familiar enough with the Sovereign to throw his first name around, except
in secret and adding a punchline to follow it up.

One name that he didn’t recognize
always brought about the most violent episodes. If this Faya had been around
tonight, he believed Sara would have torn her apart with her bare hands. At
this point, Sean could have done that himself.

The lights of her intra-tat
bounced around in erratic pulses in a frightening way that wasn’t alluring like
when he first touched her hand. Tonight they were a physical sign of whatever
horror she was experiencing.

He brushed her damp hair back
with his fingers and whispered words of reassurance, knowing this could be the
biggest mistake of his life. She had been sent here to flush out a fragger
operative, that much he knew. Right now she and the Embassy thought David was
their man—he didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or be insulted. If
that’s what her Embassy intel was saying, then it might be easier to bring down
this government than he thought.

“Sean.” She reached out
to the empty space beside her.

He put his hand over hers.
“I’m here.”

When she whimpered and shook, he
lay down next to her because he knew what it was like to go through this alone.
He knew what it was like to go through
everything
alone. Folding Sara in
his arms, he pulled her tight against his chest until her body relaxed against
him. He kissed the top of her head to soothe her.

If she betrayed him later, he’d
deal with that when it happened. It’s not like he hadn’t thought of offing
himself, and not the pleasant way with passing drugs and a bedside full of
family crying for him. Maybe she’d be doing him a favor. Sean’s older brother
had killed himself. He told Sean before he did it that Sean wouldn’t understand
because he had never known their father, so couldn’t really miss him. But Sean
did miss having a father…and an older brother.

Sara’s breathing deepened with
exhaustion. So did Sean’s. He rested his cheek against the top of her head and
fell asleep.

Rainer looked out the curved
window of the Embassy council’s chamber. The noon sun glinted off the water at
Shiraz Dock far below, and small shadows followed the bustling pedestrians
scurrying along the elliptoid pattern of the Hub’s blue pavement.

The interior here was cold and
gloomy today, and not just from the dark filters on the massive skylights or
the room’s climate controls. Lately, it was always dismal whenever the Sovereign
met with his council.

“Does this have anything to
do with the recent fragger uprisings?” Archivist Harlo Andravo asked.

This was the argument Rainer had
been waiting for after ten minutes of strained pleasantries and mundane
business discussions. He shifted his attention to Prollixer’s diminutive frame
draped gracefully over a leather armchair at the head of the long snaking
table.