by Nya Rayne
“What are you saying?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a reply before he continued, “Are you Phia’s life’s in danger?”
Dr. Lobush hesitated before answering, “There have been stories, none of them proven, but they’re out there, of the Higher Highness torturing women in her court for so much as looking too long at one of her personomales. So, if there is any truth to these stories, I don’t see how she’ll let Phia or myself walk away from this unscathed.”
“Torturing? What kind of—?” Donté blustered.
“As I said, they’re just stories,” the doctor tried to clarify. “I don’t know how much truth is in any of them, but the women involved in the stories all seem to have disappeared. Then again, maybe she’ll challenge Phia’s title to baroness. After all, Phia does come from a prominent family. Her disappearance would be a lot harder to explain.”
“I don’t care about being a baroness,” Phia interjected. “If she wants to take my title from me, she can.”
“Remember what I said last night. Even if I’m gone, you have to help my friends, and the best way for you to do it is as baroness,” Donté reminded her.
Phia’s stomach lurched as she was forming her response. She sprang from Donté’s lap and ran to the bathroom, bile rising in her throat. Dropping to her knees, she hugged the toilet, vomited, retched, vomited, and retched some more until her body was so weak she could barely hold onto the sides.
Donté was beside her, brushing her hair back and gently squeezing her shoulders as another wave of nausea hit her. She dry-heaved, her face planted firmly in the rim. She heaved again and again, her stomach hurting, her throat burning, and her nose tingling.
“Are you okay?” Donté whispered, dropping to his knees beside her. She leaned into his chest until another wave hit her. He stood helplessly beside her, holding her hair back with one hand and the sheet around her with the other. When the retching ended and she had rinsed out her mouth, Donté scooped her up and carried her back to bed. The doctor stood next to it, holding a bottle of ginger ale and a bag of pretzels.
“Here, sip this slowly and chew on one of the pretzels. The ginger and salt will help settle your stomach. You should let me examine you.”
Phia waved her off with a flip of her wrist. “Not necessary. I’m not used to being up this early and with everything that’s going on…”
Donté cut in, “Maybe you should let her examine you. Weren’t you feeling under the weather yesterday, too?”
Taking a sip of the soda and a small bite off the pretzel, she crawled away from Donté and fell on the pillows, exhausted. “What time?” she rasped. “How long do we have?”
“We should be in Jacksonville in forty-five minutes.” Dr. Lobush turned to Donté, who was sitting on the bed. “I destroyed all the files on you at the facility and didn’t register you with the facial recognition software in hopes of avoiding this, but she was probably able to get pictures of you from the Zoo. I believe she used those pictures to load your image into the database.”
“So this means what?” he asked as he rubbed his hand up and down Phia’s leg.
“It means until Darius comes for us, we’re going to have stay out of sight, keep our heads down, and talk to absolutely no one.”
Phia’s body began to relax, and her eyes closed. Donté studied her for a moment. “If they catch me, I want you to get her as far away as possible, Doctor. Don’t worry about me. I want your only concern to be Phia’s safety.”
“Of course, Donté, but we’re not going to let it come to that, right?”
“No, we’re not,” Phia mumbled stubbornly. “You’re not leaving me, and they’re not taking you. I mean it!”
Donté shushed her and leaned down to place a chaste kiss on her temple. “You’re right, I’m not going anywhere. They’re going to have to send an army after me to get me away from you.”
He smiled at her, his eyes as warm as hot chocolate on a cold winter’s morning, and Phia felt her heart melt.
“I doubt they’ll send an army, since more than two or three Retrievers would draw a little too much attention,” the doctor stated. “They’ll shoot you with a tranquilizer, and when you wake, you won’t know who you are or remember anything.”
“Surely, people will talk if that happens?” he asked.
“Yes, but they’ll say you were nothing more than a malfunctioning personomale.”
“This isn’t right,” Donté protested. “There isn’t a damn thing right about any of this.”
Phia fought past the desire to vomit again as she got up and scooted over to him. She couldn’t believe this was happening now, of all times, but then again, in the movies she’d seen and the books she’d read, didn’t something like this always happen after a declaration of love?
“Please get ready. We’ll meet in the last car in thirty minutes,” the doctor said. She peeked out the door, checking the corridor, and left.
As the door slid closed, Phia crawled over to Donté, slunk onto his lap, and laid her head on his shoulder. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to fight. There isn’t anything else for us to do if we want to stay together.” He looked down at her, kissed her cheek, and added, “If they do catch me, Phia, I want you to promise me you won’t do anything crazy.”
She shook her head. How could she ever promise him such a thing when she knew when he was taken from her, she would lose everything she loved?
“Promise me,” he demanded.
She looked up at him and thought for one second about lying to him. No. She held his face in her hands. “I’m in love with you, Donté. I can’t make such a promise to you. So I would advise you not to get caught.”
He sighed and kissed her forehead as he pulled her close. “Stubborn woman.”
An hour passed, and then another, as three sat side by side in the train station, their heads down, each praying no one noticed them.
“How much longer?” Phia was starving and needed to go to the bathroom, but refused to leave Donté’s side for fear she would come back and he would be gone.
“Darius should be here within the hour,” Dr. Lobush said, not looking up from the magazine she’d been reading for the past two hours.
Donté’s hold tightened on her hand, and she relaxed and leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder. She was exhausted. She was certain of the reason this time, since she’d only had three hours’ sleep, but knowing that did nothing to reduce the charms of slumber. If this were to be her last hour with Donté, she didn’t want to sleep through it.
“Are you okay?” he asked from behind the dark shades and cap he wore. Every time Phia looked at him, she wanted to laugh. He reminded her of a picture of a poorly disguised bank robber.
“I’m fine.” She sighed and tried to keep her mind off of her stomach, which was churning, groaning, and growling at her. She’d tried eating before they got off the train but threw it up. Now she was hungry again and couldn’t afford to do anything about it.
Phia glanced around at the red brick building. It was one of the last of the originals, and was in need of restoration, but it held a quiet feeling of lives long past. It made her feel that if she sat still enough, she would see apparitions of ancestors long dead: children holding their mothers’ hands while their fathers followed closely behind with their luggage; a dark-haired boy about four with rosy cheeks and vibrant blue eyes, chattering about childish things as he skipped a circle around his father.
She smiled at her thoughts. In the real world, a FAP pushed an empty baggage cart along the cement walkway. Another FAP, a conductor, stood near a painted steel pillar waiting on the next train to arrive. As if he felt her looking, he glanced up at her. She turned away and looked in the opposite direction, at the lobby area where women could purchase food, drinks, and tickets, and find out the departure and arrival times for various trains.
Her stomach growled at the thought of food and something to drink, so she pulled her attention away and s
canned the corners of the building. “Dr. Lobush,” she murmured, hardly moving her lips, “there aren’t any cameras around. How would the Higher Highness find us here? Shouldn’t we be able to move about freely?”
“Trust me, there are always cameras. Have you ever wondered why we don’t need cops or security officers?”
“No,” Phia said in a matter-of-fact manner. “We don’t need them because we don’t have any crime.”
“Not true.” Dr. Lobush’s voice was so low that Phia had to strain to hear. “After the war some women were just as bad as some men were when it came to murders, fights, robberies, drugs, and the like. So the Elites began installing cameras in the eyes of the FAPs. They are programmed to pick up on trigger words such as murder, knife, gun, and robbery, when said in anger or conspiratorially. Surely you get the drift.” She turned the magazine page and continued, “These words and a few more automatically trigger a recorder which is built into every FAP and begins uploading the entire conversation to a database which is monitored by the office of the Secretary of National Security. The person in violation is then located and dealt with if the conversation proves to be leading up to a crime or pertaining to a previously carried out criminal act. If it has nothing to do with either, it’s scrubbed.”
“Really?”
Dr. Lobush nodded. “We don’t use them nearly as much today, but FAPs are still the eyes and ears of the country. This is why you find them in every store, tram, healing center, learning facility, restaurant, and in nearly every home.”
“I had no idea. So, we’re constantly being watched, and we don’t even know it.”
“Ah, sweet Utopia,” Donté taunted through a soft chuckle as he keyed in a few letters on the Hang-Man game he’d procured during their first shopping trip. “How I love thee.”
Phia elbowed him. “Since when did you develop a sense of humor?”
“I don’t know. Right around the time I met you?”
She elbowed him again and continued her conversation with the doctor. “So, the Higher Highness will be waiting for one of them to report?”
“Yes, and if that happens she’s going to send in the Retrievers, who were specifically created to take down rogue personomales and anyone who poses a danger to our way of life.”
“Rogue personomales? I’ve never heard of such things.”
“Trust me, it happens more than you know. They just keep it hushed.” Dr. Lobush turned another page and finished, “They’re nothing like Donté or Darius. Usually it’s one of the FAPs. His wiring will get crossed, and he’ll get stuck in a loop and end up wandering off. There was one occurrence where a FAP crushed his mistress’s larynx during coitus.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I were. Think about it. If you had known about something like that before you knew about Donté, would you have ever come to Manco?”
“Yeah that’s a big fat negatory,” she murmured, not willing to believe she could have been so blind to the world around her. All the things she’d learned in the past few days about the country she loved, and the people she trusted to lead her…How could she have been so blind? How could she not have known all of this was going on?
Phia continued to cogitate about it as a slim, sinewy, muscled, honey-skinned man approached them. She met his ghostly gray eyes seconds before she realized her mistake. She looked down at her hands and leaned into Donté, her heart racing.
The man stopped in front of them but didn’t look down. He stared out at the empty tracks, looking for someone before he turned and whispered loud enough for them to hear, “Sweetness, must you always stay away so long?” He had a slight Caribbean accent. Phia wanted to say it was Jamaican, but she wasn’t sure.
Phia gasped softly and looked up at him as the doctor responded while standing up, “And I missed you every minute I was away.”
She was flabbergasted as she stared at the man and the doctor. They didn’t touch, but sparks flew between them.
Standing up along with Donté, who stooped to scoop up their luggage in one of his large hands, Phia couldn’t help but stare at the back of the man’s head, her eyes trailing down his lithe body. He was absolutely gorgeous. Not in a baby-doll sort of way, but in an I’ll-make-you-beg-for-it kind of way. She took in his movements and the way the doctor walked close enough to him to cause someone to wonder at the nature of their relationship, but not close enough to tell all their secrets.
“Are you going to leave me for him?” Donté asked, his tone telling her he was joking.
She blushed and looped her arm with his. “Don’t be silly. There’s only one you.”
“Good, I’d hate to have to break his neck.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, but I would, and very quickly, I might add.”
A breeze ruffled the trees around them and blew across her face and through her hair, tickling the underside of her neck. Phia reveled in a feeling of oneness, of freedom, of elation and love. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” she teased.
“I won’t tell you, then.”
As they rounded the red brick building of the main station office and started toward the row of parked trams, there was a loud whistle from behind them and a shout. Phia started to turn to look, but Dr. Lobush’s voice stopped her. “Don’t look! It could be a trap!”
Phia continued on, her heart rattling in her chest, her hand tight around Donté’s biceps. She couldn’t lose him, not now and definitely not to the Higher Highness. Another whistle sounded as she stepped up onto the tram, and then she heard a man’s voice shout from a few feet behind them, “Xavier! Hey, Xavier, what’s up? How you been, man?”
Donté stopped. She tugged him onward, but he turned, twisting his arm in her hand. She looked back over his head and saw the conductor FAP. Its arm was raised, pointing at them. Consciously, Phia didn’t recognize the silver thing it held in its hand, but her heart seemed to stop beating for a moment.
Donté’s body jerked. He whirled around and shoved her hard into the tram. Then he staggered back into the street. With his left arm, he reached around and pulled something out of his right side. He swayed, his eyes screaming apologies she didn’t care to hear or see before rolling back in his head. A small black dart slipped from his hand, and he fell like a log to the street below him, arms outstretched, legs akimbo.
“No! Donté!” she screamed, and tried to scramble off the tram to him, but strong honey-brown arms held her back. She fought against them, kicked at a shin, and twisted until she found freedom. “Donté! No! No,” she screamed as she leapt down the steps.
The FAP walked stiffly toward Donté’s prone body.
Phia called to Donté again. Suddenly, her feet left the ground completely as hands she didn’t recognize and arms she didn’t know pulled her back against an unfamiliar chest and up into the tram again.
“We must go!” she heard Darius say. Phia thrashed in his arms, kicked out her legs, and tried desperately to regain her freedom. Her chest heaved as she stared from Donté to the FAP moving toward him.
“Get away from him!” she shouted. “Donté, get up! You have to get up!”
He didn’t move a muscle as the FAP crossed the short space between them.
The doors of the tram closed in her face as she watched the FAP come to a stop over Donté’s body, its eyes trained on Donté’s face. She felt her heart fracture. Her vision wavered in and out of focus, and her pulse thrummed in her ears. She heard, as if she were merely an onlooker, a wail born of pure agony rip through the air around her as the tram shot out of its parking space and away from Donté.
Chapter Nineteen
Dr. Lobush inhaled, filling her lungs with the stale, humid night air Florida was famous for. She wrapped her arms around herself, turned her face to the sky, and sighed as a solitary cloud floated across the moon.
How had things gone so wrong? Had she underestimated the Higher Highness so greatly? How had Her Highness figured it out so soon?
> She had made the changes herself to Donté’s replacement. She had traced her fingers over every inch of Miguel’s body, checking for any minute blemishes that might escape the human eye. She’d checked and rechecked his new specs against Donté’s. Everything was perfect, so where had she gone wrong? What had she overlooked?
Then there was the woman who had called to warn her about the Higher Highness. Had she purposefully misled her? Had this all been some kind of trap laid by the Higher Highness herself? Could the woman truly be so cunning or had she been so willing to believe there were other women who knew of the Zoo and felt as she did that she had closed her mind to any thoughts of treachery?
She sighed again, darkness weighing heavy on her mind and her soul. What was she to do now? What were they supposed do?
Phia had been utterly inconsolable on the ride to her home. She had accused her of betraying Donté and had shouted such hateful obscenities at her that Dr. Lobush found herself growing angry instead of sympathizing. But she could understand the woman’s rage. If the tables were turned, if someone were attempting to take Darius away, she would tear through heaven and hell to keep him.
During the ride from Jacksonville, she found herself checking the back window of the tram Darius had procured years earlier. He didn’t use it often, but when he did the out of service sign was always lit and it was always during a time when few women were afoot.
Dr. Lobush sighed heavily. They would be coming for her and Phia next. It would be foolish not to expect it. True enough, they now had Donté in their clutches, but it would never be good enough for the Elites. They would need to silence Phia. If she knew enough to try to run away with Donté, she also knew about the Zoo.
Then they would turn their attention to her, the doctor, who was sworn to secrecy and had broken her oath. She would lose her title and her home, and would be driven from society. This she could deal with, if she had Darius at her side giving her strength and propelling her forward. But they would take him and destroy him. Darius would fight to the death to protect what they shared. When they came for her, and they would, one way or the other, her life was over.