Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (29 page)

“I got caught in some kind
of battle between fraggers and contractors on the rim. Chen saved the bracelet
and its data, but left me to die by a fragger’s hand.”

Sean’s muscles tightened at the
thought of someone from his organization hurting her. Then again, the same
group,
his
group, killed Ephemerata and set him up for mass murder. They
wouldn’t care about some Socialite who happened to be in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

“Rainer saved me, shot the
fragger.”

Sean recalled watching Rainer
kill the Embassy doctor. It seemed the contractor had made himself Sara’s
protector on more than one occasion.

“Then he shot
me
and
delivered me to Simon.”

This revelation was shocking.
Apparently Sean had misjudged their relationship. Maybe Rainer had been
protecting
himself
.

“Simon was panicked because
he thought I, or someone with me, had introduced the virus attacking his
longevity bots. He had one of his contractors interrogate me.”

“Faya?” Sean asked.

“Yes. How did you
know?”

“You mentioned her during
your slide.”

The water splashed rhythmically
in Sara’s sudden silence.

He knew she needed prompting.
“What did she do to you?” He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to ask
her because he was a coward on the inside, but he’d listen to every horrific
word because she needed him to.

“Do you know what blade
cuffs are?” Sara asked.

“I’ve heard of them.”
He’d actually seen them in action on an Embassy surveillance vid of a fragger
interrogation. The Embassy had leaked the vid into the V-side to deter
anti-government activity. He hoped the footage had been mixed and painted, for
Sara’s sake.

“There’s no way to describe
that kind of pain. Feeling your skin slowly sliced open in a dozen different
places, seeing it roll up in shreds.” Her voice caught in a sob. “You
never expect to experience something like that and live through it. It should
be impossible,
should be
. In a merciful world. But, in my world, it
happened every day for over a month. The only thing impossible in
my
world was escape.”

Sean felt physically ill. Acid
boiled in his stomach. His chest tightened so he could barely breathe.

“The physical abuse wasn’t
the worst part, though. The slides multiplied the horror ten-fold. I got lost
in my fears some days. The hallucinations were so real. I nearly went insane.
That’s when Rainer would come to me, clean me up, but he never got me out of
there.”

“Why?” Sean’s voice was
harsh, his angry incredulity spilling into his tone. He would have died trying
to save her, would give his life for hers right now if he had to.

“He said he couldn’t. Maybe
he was telling the truth. Or maybe he thought helping me was the easier way to
get information from me.”

“What information?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know
anything, Sean. I never did.” Sara doubled over sobbing. Sean moved beside
her and held her head against his shoulder, hating that he couldn’t take this
hurt away from her, hating the Embassy and Prollixer, hating Rainer, hating this
whole society.

After a long while, she pulled
her head away from him so she could look him in the eyes. “That’s why I’m
here. Because Simon finally believed I didn’t know anything, so he made me a
deal, gave me a new life with a new title to go along with my new face and
body, which I barely recognize in the mirror. To be sure I wouldn’t turn on
him, he hijacked my lineage.”

“That’s why you asked me
about the irradicae the first time we met,” Sean said.

“I thought you would know
how I could find out if Simon was bluffing. I thought a lot of things about you
during that first meeting.”

“Including that I was a
fragger?”

“No.”

Sean couldn’t hide the surprise
in his voice. “You really didn’t know?”

“Not until the
Tredificio,” she said. “That’s when I was certain you were the one I
was supposed to kill.”

“Then why did you disappear
with me?”

She leaned her head against his.
“Because by that time it was already too late. I cared more about you than
the deal.”

Sean closed his eyes and hugged
her close. He’d take this hurt from her somehow, then he’d make sure someone paid
dearly for it.

David ran through the crystal
trees in the foyer to catch Soli before she left with Rainer. So much about him
didn’t make sense, like why such a high-ranking contractor would be assigned to
guard one of sixty ambasadoras. Even more absurd was Soli taking him to her
estate so that he might meet Trala before recommending their child to Tampa
Quad’s best nursery. Then there was Rainer’s reaction to Sean being part Armadan.
It was as if the contractor had just been given the answer to the world’s
greatest mystery.

David felt as if he had somehow
betrayed a confidence by stating the obvious. Granted Sean never mentioned his
ancestry, but surely everyone else had noticed the signs too: enhanced skeletal
structure, evidenced from the hundreds of times Sean flew into a rage and
smashed his hand against some solid object without fracturing anything, and
more importantly, the way he could fly into a rage at a moment’s notice to
begin with. And, his penchant for dosing.

Maybe that final tell wouldn’t
have been a tip off to the others, but David had witnessed his share of stim
abuse at home and aboard the
Protector
. Maybe that’s why he was so hard
on Sean; they shared a kinship whether either of them would admit it or not.

David reached the gangway as Soli
and Rainer disappeared down its glowing throat.

“Soli!”

David didn’t miss Rainer’s left
hand slip to his cender.

“Why don’t I go with you? I
haven’t seen Trala in a few weeks.” Her response would tell him if she
were in trouble.

“Not right now, David.
Trala’s not feeling up for too many visitors. I’ll tell her how much you miss
chatting with her, though.”

Rainer tucked an arm around Soli
and walked her off the gangway.

Geir sauntered up beside David.
“None of us has met Trala.”

Exactly.

“I’m going for a walk,”
David said.

“Mind if I join you?”
Geir pulled a cender from behind his back.

“That yours?”

“Yeah.” He passed it
over to David. “But I could only get one, and you know more about using
this than I do.”

David heard a pair of footsteps
track across the foyer floor. He concealed the cender in his waistband and
covered it with his shirt.

Kenon clasped a hand on David’s
shoulder from behind. “Everyone heading out?”

Mari ran a hand up David’s back.
“Let’s go to Orlando’s. I’m starving.”

Things just became more
complicated. “Actually, Geir and I have an appointment with some potential
clients,” David said.

“What kind of clients? More
passengers? All kidding aside, I don’t think we can accommodate any more people
on here,” Kenon said.

“No, they’re clients for
me,” Geir said.

“Why do you need David at
your meeting?” Mari asked.

“It’s a group of
Armadans.” David spoke before he thought. Geir shot him a look.

“But, Geir
is
Armadan.” Kenon wasn’t helping.

“They’re troopers. Geir’s
never been a military man, so….”

“Troopers like Captain
Simpra?” Mari pulled her hand from David’s back.

“No,” David said.
“Retired, like me.”

“Which means they don’t have
a lot of time left, so we better get going.” Geir tugged at David’s
jacket.

David ignored the jab and focused
on the disappointment in Mari’s eyes. “You and Kenon go ahead. We’ll meet
up later.” He rubbed her shoulder briefly, even in front of the others.
“Sorry.” Every time he shut her out, she slipped a little further
away. One day she wouldn’t be around for him to disappoint. Maybe that would be
best, at least for her.

The smell of a million gardenias
draping the green filigree fence along this part of Carrey Bay masked the
water’s fresh scent. For as far as Rainer could see, white flowers speckled
their verdant trellises. Peeking from a hillside across the roadway were
various roofs and towers from this area’s mega-estates.

Solimar’s private gate stood
open, allowing the open-aired transport to continue up the winding drive
flanked by blooming plum trees. She must have been selling data for years to
afford such luxury.

He followed Solimar to the door.
She stopped to enter a pass code on her reporter, but Rainer pushed the double
doors open, knowing Faya would have disengaged all the locks and security
systems.

Sobbing came from a sun room just
off the foyer. Solimar ran toward it.

“Soli!” Trala croaked
out between sobs. The blonde pregnant woman pushed up awkwardly from the plush
green and lavender sofa. Her large belly impeded her enough without Faya’s
warning hand pulling her back down.

The passive expression on the
contractor as she twisted Trala’s wrist made Rainer wonder what she had done to
Sara when they were alone in that modification cell.

“Don’t touch her,”
Solimar yelled.

“Faya.” Rainer said her
name in warning. Then to the women, “This won’t end badly if you
cooperate.”

“The cache is over there on
the mantle.” Solimar gestured to the room’s far corner.

The marble fireplace curved away from
the white wall in a half-circle. One artifact adorned its rounded mantle, a
tall fish bowl cylinder alive with three small fish, their blue fluorescence
splashing the back wall with bits of turquoise.

Rainer led Solimar across the
tile floor by the elbow.

“There’s a false bottom
under the cylinder,” she said.

A cheerful melody sang through
the sitting room. Rainer glanced toward the entryway. “Where are the
servants?”

“Locked in a room upstairs,
unconscious,” Faya said.

Or perhaps dead.

“Then we’ll just wait for
your guests to leave,” Rainer said.

Everyone remained still. When the
door chime remained quiet after an indeterminable time, Rainer used both hands
to pull the large cylinder from the mantel.

“Take off the bottom,”
he told Solimar.

With shaking hands, she gave the
thick glass bottom a twist and pulled it free of the vase’s real bottom.

Water sloshed onto the toe of Rainer’s
boot, but his focus trained on the mix of surprise and horror in Solimar’s
eyes. He spun to look for Faya, but her cender already pressed against his
temple. “Hand it over, Rainer.”

“Faya, you’re an idiot.
That’s not the data Prollixer wants. It’s what
I
need, to prove Sean
Cryer is a fragger node.” He intended to offer it in exchange for Sara’s
lineage.

“Still not much of a liar,
are you? You couldn’t even keep your fallacy for
her
a secret.”

Rainer ignored the comment about
Sara. “This isn’t the Sovereign’s data.”

Faya took the glass disc from him
anyway. Ranier noticed movement out the glass patio doors in his periphery. David
quietly pushed open one of the doors with his cender. Faya hadn’t bothered to
lock it behind her.

The melody of the door chime
swept through the room again. Rainer let the vase fall and snapped his head
back to the left. With the edge of his right hand he struck the bundle of
nerves inside Faya’s elbow. Her cender slipped from her numb fingers as the
vase smashed on the marble floor. Rainer’s hands locked on her wrist and
twisted her arm straight over his right shoulder. He pulled down and splintered
her ulna.

David fired two shots between
Rainer and Faya. Geir followed on his heels, circling around toward Trala.

“Get back!” David
yelled, as Kenon Brudger and Boston Maribu ran in from the front entrance. He
lunged for the young Socialite as a cender blast zipped past her, destroying
the plaster wall behind them.

“Geir!” Kenon yelled a
warning that allowed him to dive behind a metal screen.

Faya turned her weapon on Kenon
and fired. It caught him in the side and dropped him. His head bounced off the
marble floor with a dull thud. Faya fired once more as she leapt through the
open patio door.

Trala doubled over, then slumped
to the floor. Soli shrieked and rushed to her fallen amour.

David and Rainer squared off,
each pointing a cender at the other’s face.

Solimar cradled Trala’s
blood-soaked body in her arms. “No, no, no! Trala.”

“Out of the way,”
Rainer said. “Let me call for help.”

“Geir’s already sent out a
call. Why did your partner doublecross you?”

“You know there’s more to it
or you would have fired already. Ask Solimar why I’m here.” Rainer’s words
stilled Solimar’s hand as it smoothed back Trala’s blood-slick hair. “She
asked me to help her with Faya,” Rainer said.

The archivist would surely see
this as a way out for both of them; the others would never know of his
coercion, or her deceit. She only needed to agree with him.

“Soli?” David asked.

She cried quietly. “It’s
true.”

“Now, stand down.”
Rainer kept the relief out of his voice.

Solimar placed Trala’s bloodied
head on the marble floor. “He was trying to save me.” Her voice
cracked. “To save
us
from that woman.”

David lowered the cender and
rushed to her side.

Rainer chanced a look around for
the glass disc. He saw it shattered with the rest of the cylinder among the
flopping fish, gasping with their wide mouths.

Solimar gasped for air, too, and
thrashed on the floor, pummeling David as he tried to console her.

Rainer regretted the loss of
Solimar’s child almost as much as the loss of the incriminating data. The
fallout from this violent episode would be far-reaching, especially if Faya
gained the Sovereign’s ear first. He had allowed his hope of saving Sara and
her lineage to dictate his actions. Now he could pay for that decision with his
life. He opened his palm to make a call.