He was a scary man. There must be something wrong with her to want to play with fire! He was out of her league on too many levels to count.
She still hadn’t managed to banish her disappointment when Caleb and Joshua arrived to collect her, but their appearance brought her fears to a head. Her stomach cramped and she couldn’t blame it entirely on her anxiety about climbing into a coffin equipped with a propeller.
Caleb entered the room dangling her nightgown from one finger and her panties from another. “You want to put your own clothes back on?”
She sent him a drop dead look, stalked across the room, and snatched her clothes from him. “So I can run around the city in my nightclothes? I don’t think so! I’m taking the damned robe! You can have it back when I … we … get to my place where I can dress.”
He shrugged, grinning at her a little lopsidedly. “I liked the way you looked in it.
What’s wrong with it? It’s dry now.”
She gaped at him, trying to decide whether to ask him if he’d liked the way it looked wet or dry. As thin as it was, it probably hadn’t covered much when it was wet.
She felt her face heat just thinking about asking, though, and she decided against it. “It’s for sleeping. People don’t usually run around in public in the clothes they sleep in,” she muttered.
“You sleep in clothes? Why?”
He wasn’t feigning flabbergasted, she saw. “Because … just because,” she retorted. Because she was more comfortable when she was covered up and because when she was naked she was too aware of every brush against her skin. Because she didn’t enjoy looking at herself and she feared being looked at by anyone else. And it just plain felt indecent!
She realized she envied their complete comfort in their own skin, but she supposed they had every reason to be confident and it seemed doubtful they had ever known it any other way. Their living quarters were like anybody else’s, but just going about their daily lives meant that they were in and out of the sea all day long, and that wasn’t even counting those who worked outside—like Caleb and Simon. They probably got tired of dragging the robes on and off, which would explain why they dispensed with them regularly.
It presented her with an interesting question. If they were so accustomed to nudity, did they actually pay any attention to it? She hadn’t been able to get her mind off of it, partly because they were all just plain gorgeous, but also because the sight of naked flesh was completely alien to her—almost. It sent a jolt through her every time and it took her several minutes to recover from it and even try to behave ‘normally’.
She saw when she emerged from her thoughts that Caleb was still looking at her questioningly. “Because it’s the custom on the surface and it’s what I’m used to.”
“So it … bothers you that we don’t wear anything?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it does, doesn’t it?”
“No, no! It really doesn’t!” she lied, wishing he would drop the subject.
He frowned. “I was thinking about trying to talk you into stopping by the station to give us some descriptions, but you aren’t going to be comfortable with that, are you?”
So much for thinking there was anything flirtatious or suggestive about the discussion! It was an opportunity to put off the inevitable, though, and she didn’t want to lose it. “I could do that.”
He cocked his head questioningly. “You’re sure you wouldn’t mind?”
“No … I mean, I’m sure!”
His smile lit up his handsome face, lit her up and turned her insides to molten putty. No man should be able to do that with no more than a smile, she thought a little dazedly as he caught her elbow and escorted her through the house, make her feel weak all over and breathless and faint just by smiling at her.
She felt the same way when they reached the foyer and the pool she only vaguely remembered arriving through and she looked down to discover the metal ‘coffin’ she’d feared attached to it. “How … how clever!” she gasped weakly. “It’s a … uh … docking station, too?”
“Be careful climbing down the ladder. The rungs might be a little damp.”
They were, but she did all right until she stepped on the trailing hem of the robe and pulled the thing half off. Grabbing the neck, she yanked on it to cover herself and managed to dislodge her foot from the rung below her completely. Fortunately, she only missed the last one. Her knees buckled from the scare, though, and she landed in the floor—actually the front window of the thing since it was docked nose down, which scared her almost as badly.
Joshua was already trying to help her up when Caleb hooked his feet on the sides of the ladder and slid down it. The hard part about getting up was trying to straighten without disrobing at the same time. She finally managed to get her feet free of the damned thing, though.
“You alright? You hurt?”
“No,” Anna said shakily, trying to ignore the throbbing on her hip, shin, and along her ribs on her back. She actually wanted to examine the pain to see if she was just bruised or bleeding, but she was embarrassed enough about her clumsiness that she decided to wait until neither of the men were looking.
“Let me help you get strapped in,” Caleb said soothingly, helping her into a seat.
She was shaken enough from the fall and the discovery that she’d landed on a glass window that she was grateful for his help. She wasn’t sure how long it would’ve taken her to figure out how to get the harness fastened without help.
“Too tight?”
She shook her head.
“You sure you aren’t hurt?”
“Oh! No! No!” she assured him. “I may be bleeding internally—heh-heh—but otherwise I’m sure I’m fine.”
He frowned at her.
“I was joking.”
He still looked skeptical, but he settled in the seat beside her and strapped in.
“Ready?” Joshua called back to them.
“We’re ready.”
Anna gripped the arms of her seat as Joshua started the engine and she felt the bubble-like transport begin to vibrate all over.
“Does it always do this?” she asked uneasily.
Caleb frowned. “I guess. I never noticed.”
Oh! That was reassuring!
A jolt went through her, traveling all the way down her spine and making her sphincter clench when she heard a loud clang behind her. “What was that?” she gasped.
“He just closed the hatch.”
“Oh.”
“This will be a lot more comfortable than the trip down.”
She smiled at him weakly. Then Joshua dropped the damned thing. It suddenly fell. Her stomach leapt into her throat and tried to choke her, which was fortunate because it prevented her from screaming her head off when he swooped upward again and her seat rotated. She thought for several unnerving moments that it was going to keep rolling until she was standing on her head. Instead, it righted itself and began to rock back and forth, slowing gradually to a gentle rocking and finally stopping and clicking in place.
“Wasn’t that fun?” Caleb asked cheerfully.
She discovered when she glanced at him that he was wearing a pleased grin. She gave him a drop dead look. “You might have warned me my damned seat was going to flip!”
He looked surprised and vaguely annoyed. “I thought you’d enjoy it.”
“I don’t enjoy getting the shit scared out of me!”
“Well, pardon me all to hell!” he said tightly. “How was I supposed to know it would scare you?”
He had a point, but there was a world of difference between ‘enjoyment’ and ‘scared half to death’. She might not have been frightened and still not enjoyed it! She sulked about it a while, but she began to feel guilty about being so nasty when she lost some of her fear. “Sorry,” she muttered. “It scared me, ok? I’ve never been in one of these things and I’m a
fraid of heights.”
He relaxed fractionally. “We’re in the ocean.”
“But I still felt like I was falling and it’s black as pitch down there.”
“The sun isn’t up yet. During the day, there isn’t much light this far down, but the water sort of glows.”
No wonder she felt like hell! Why they’d thought it necessary to drag her out of bed when she probably hadn’t been asleep more than a couple of hours was a mystery to her—except they seemed determined to torture her with sleep deprivation!
She struggled for something pleasant to say to smooth the waters. “I’m sure it’s beautiful.”
He smiled more easily. “You’ll have to tell me when you see it,” he said, pointing to a glowing patch of water ahead of them.
She stared at it, watching it spread through the water, watching the ripples catch it and refract it until the water around them seemed to glitter with gems. Loathe though she was to admit it, it was pretty.
And then Joshua turned the craft and she saw the city for the first time. Her stomach went weightless as she stared at it, watching the brightening water slowly envelop it. It almost looked … magical, as if fairy dust had been sprinkled over the city.
The buildings were nothing like anything she’d ever seen. Built like domes set upon tall stalks that reached down to the sea floor below, surrounded by the greenish-blue water, it almost looked like a garden on an alien world.
“It is beautiful!” she gasped in surprise a split second before she spotted the rubble, saw the twisted metal and chunks of jagged, broken concrete that littered the center as if someone had waded through the garden, carelessly lobbing the flowers from their stalks. Her smile faded. The pleasure she’d felt only moments before became distress as she stared at the gaping holes and realized this was where so many people had died, or been maimed for life.
As the light reached down to chase the shadows, she saw the merfolk moving between the buildings. At this distance, they looked more like the creatures of fable than real people and it increased the sense of staring at a magical world even while it reminded her that it must have looked much the same the day of the bombing.
She swallowed a little convulsively, feeling guilt creep through her insidiously, as if it was somehow her fault.
And maybe, in a sense, it was—though not the way she felt it. She hadn’t wished it on them. It wasn’t her fault that her father was a murderous lunatic, but wasn’t she just as guilty as everyone else of simply ignoring the problems the colonists faced? Wasn’t she ultimately as responsible as everyone else for doing nothing? Atlantis might be a territory, not a state, but it was still a part of her country and they were countrymen.
Had she, even once, thought that their problems were their own and for them to solve because she disapproved of them? Was it ever really right not to help someone, someone who was family, just because you didn’t approve of the way they lived?
And what if they hadn’t chosen to break free of the society they came from and establish the territory? Most of the energy they used to make their lives comfortable came from the labor of these people.
“This was your father’s doing,” Caleb said grimly.
Anna sent him a hurt look. “I know, but I didn’t know he was going to do it. I couldn’t have stopped him—this.”
He shook his head. “I meant, this is his doing, not yours.”
Did he mean he didn’t hate her because of her father? She hoped so. It was hard enough to bear the responsibility for one’s own actions, but at least you could attempt to make amends. You knew you were the one who should pay for the mistake. To have to make up for someone’s faults when you had no control over what they did and knew beyond that that you might spend the rest of your life trying to clean up behind them was just too depressing to contemplate.
She could deal with being ignored, with being alone, not having friends, not having anyone anymore. She’d been dealing with that. She didn’t think she could deal with having people hate her, of feeling cold condemnation in their gazes every time they looked at her.
She was so distressed it hardly unnerved her at all when the transport docked.
Chapter Five
“This is the Watch Center?” Anna asked as Caleb and Joshua escorted her briskly down a short hallway and through a fairly large room that seemed to be bursting at the seams with men, desks, and equipment.
“This is a sub-station. The Watch Center was too badly damaged in the blast to use until we can get someone in to repair it.
“Oh,” Anna said uncomfortably. “I guess that’s why it’s crowded?”
“That and it’s shift change. The night patrol comes in to file their reports. The day shift reports in for assignments.”
The three of them paused in front of a door and Caleb rapped on the panel.
“Come!”
Anna’s heart executed a little double step when she recognized the voice, but Caleb opened the door before she could brace herself. Simon looked up with a scowl from the report on his desk. The expression was wiped from his face so quickly that it might have amused Anna if she’d been in any condition to enjoy it. Unfortunately, memories of their argument only a little earlier were bombarding her.
“Anna came to help.”
Simon seemed to drag his gaze from her only with an effort to look at Caleb almost blankly for a moment. “Good,” he said finally, slowly. “Take her into the neuro-center down the hall and get her hooked up.”
“You have a neuro-scanner?” Anna asked in surprise and with more than a little uneasiness.
Joshua glanced at her. “We appropriated it from the Water City PD.”
Anna gaped at him. “Really?”
He chuckled. “No. We bought it.”
“I’ve never had a neuro-scan,” she said uneasily when they’d helped her into the reclining seat and Joshua moved behind her to settle the scanner over her head.
Caleb planted his hands on the armrests and leaned toward her until he was almost nose to nose with her. “It doesn’t hurt, sweety. It’s a little disorienting, but there’s not even a tiny sting.”
It was very disorienting having him so close, distracting enough that she hardly noticed when she felt the pressure of the scanner helm settling against her scalp.
“Promise?”
He winked at her. “I’d promise you anything. You want me to stay and hold your hand?”
Desperately! She smiled at him weakly, knowing he was teasing. “I’ll be fine,”
she said doubtfully.
He leaned closer. “You are fine,” he whispered near her ear, the warmth of his breath sending a shiver along her arm.
Warmth blossomed inside of her as he leaned away and she saw the look of appreciation in his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to keep her focused on happy thoughts very long.
Joshua settled his hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Ready?”
She squeezed his hand back and nodded, unable to speak past the knot of nerves in her chest.
“Good girl! Now just relax, breathe slowly, close your eyes and think back to the night you went to the party, focus on the things you remember seeing—one thing at the time—and try to see if you can create a detailed memory of the image in your mind. The more details you can remember, the better our picture. Understand?”
Anna nodded a little jerkily. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Start with Paul asking you to go.”
She tensed at the new voice—Simon’s. She could tell from the sound that he wasn’t in the room, but it didn’t make it any easier to relax when she realized he must be watching.
“Relax. I’m going to turn off the light to help you relax, ok? We’ll be in the next room monitoring the scan.”
She did relax, relieved the moment he turned out the light because she didn’t feel as if she was on display. They wouldn’t be watching h
er. They’d be watching the screen, she reminded herself.
Coaching herself to relax fully, to allow her mind to drift for a few moments, she began trying to remember every detail of the conversation with Paul. She remembered thinking he was sort of cute and that he liked her. Focusing finally, she tried to summon details, the shape of his face first—long and narrow—the way his hair framed it, his chin.
He had a weak chin. It wasn’t bold and cleft like Simon’s. It formed a little rounded knob. His lips were full, a little fuller than she liked, and his mouth wide. When he smiled it was very toothy, almost like a predator—and his lips, the entire mouth area, protruded slightly further than his chin. His nose was long and slightly pug at the end.
His eyes were close set, the eye sockets shallow, his eyes small and almost almond shaped. His eyebrows were dark, like his hair, and formed almost perfect arches, almost as if he plucked them to shape them.
“What about his cheekbones? High? Rounded? Flat?”
She considered it and remembered they were high and sort of pointy—his ears looked almost pointy looking at him straight on, giving him a sort of elfin look.
A small screen above her head flickered on, startling her so that she opened her eyes.
“Is that him?”
Anna stared at the image she’d created with her mind feeling a sense of awe. “It looks just like him,” she said, amazed, feeling her heart thump with pleasure and excitement that she’d managed to remember so many details. Tamping her excitement, she studied the image carefully, trying to decide what was just a tad off. When she closed her eyes again, she knew what it was. The image was broader across the cheek area and his features were grouped a little closer together. Satisfaction filled her when she opened her eyes again. “That’s it. That’s him.”
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