by Lisa Lace
"Oh no. Take your shower and get nice and clean. I have plans for us."
My skin heated at the thought. I knew I was blushing.
"You do?"
I shivered and hurried into the bathroom.
"No need to dress when you come out," he called from the other room. "You won't need any clothes."
Chapter Twelve
JESSE
All I had wanted was to lose myself in Annalee's body. We lay in each other's arms. I watched her breathing softly. We had made love and fallen into a deep sleep. I had just woken up, and I wasn't sure what time it was. I thought it might be early morning.
"Jesse?" Annalee asked, sounding drowsy but happy.
"Yes?" I smoothed her hair back from her forehead.
"Why doesn't the Underground set up a way for those who want technology to leave the planet? Why do you bother fighting the Bureau of Purity?"
I sighed. "It's complicated, Annalee."
"Explain it to me. I want to understand," she said, lifting her head.
"The Underground isn't interested in getting into a war with the Bureau. We want to reintroduce technology in a controlled manner that's safe and makes life comfortable for everyone."
"What do you mean?"
"We don't want to change things and make Yordbrook into a modern planet. But we don't want our best and our brightest leaving Yordbrook to use the Internet, either."
"Don't you think once you open the dam, even slightly, all the water will come rushing out?"
I laughed. "We hope not. We believe we can bring technology in a way that makes it invisible. If we keep it hidden, the beauty of our planet won't be disturbed. A slow introduction will let us evaluate everything and decide if we want to incorporate it into our lives. We're not going to have a war again."
"That sounds idealistic."
"Technology nearly ended our race. The Underground hasn't forgotten it even though traditionalists think we have. We have no desire to repeat the sins of the past. With strict rules in place, Yordbrook will never have that kind of violence or devastation again."
"Oh," she murmured.
"We hope to gain the convenience of technology. We know it can break down barriers, provides education, and connect us to each other. The trick will be avoiding the bad things that come with it. In time, an elected council can make decisions, and the burden won't be on the monarch alone."
"You're pretty passionate about this."
"Yes," I said. "I suppose I am. I believe in the Underground. We will be successful in reintroducing modern inventions in a way traditionalists can accept."
We were interrupted by banging on the door.
"Jesse!" It was Porter. "Get your ass out of bed. The Bureau has captured Dayne."
"Who's Dayne?"
I didn't answer Annalee right away, but got up and started putting on my clothes. Since Annalee was only wearing pants and a T-shirt, it took moments to make us presentable again. I opened the door and Porter stormed into the room.
"Annalee, Dayne is another Underground leader. Where was she taken, Porter? What happened?"
"I'll explain as we go. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Porter said. We headed for the main control room with Annalee marching behind us. "The Bureau of Purity is doing simultaneous raids all over the world. It's a new tactic, and it's useful to them. There was nowhere to run. They attacked all our safe houses at once."
"How could they locate all our locations?"
"We think there must be a traitor among us. There's no way they know every place we're hiding."
"Have Sheera begin questioning everyone."
Porter nodded. "You'll need to take over Dayne's area as well as yours."
"Why me?"
"You have the least responsibilities right now, Jesse. You've been undercover. One of her advisors will brief you on what's been going on."
"Who's getting her out?" I asked.
"Sheera is putting a team together as we speak."
When we arrived at the control room, it was a mess. Everyone was talking at once. We were trying to communicate to everyone that our safe houses weren't secure, but it was a difficult thing to explain. Every minute was crucial.
Sheera came to us immediately. "Have you heard the news?"
"We heard," I said. "We need to start questioning everyone."
She looked at me strangely. "The king is dying."
Porter and I froze. "Are you sure?" Porter asked. He had always been sick, but it seemed like he would live forever.
"Our source at the palace says the doctor has given him only hours to live."
"Maybe this is our chance," I whispered, looking back and forth between my old friends.
"Maybe," Sheera said grimly. "But if he dies and we get the chance to negotiate with the new monarch, we need to be ready — and preferably not with our organization in shambles."
"Exactly," Porter said. "We need to find the traitor. I'm going to run scans on all the equipment used in Dayne's area. I might be able to trace the security breach to a particular device. Then we can figure out who used it."
"Was she wearing her locator patch? We should be able to correlate the position of the device and the location of the agent to identify our suspect," Sheera said.
"I'll get on it." Porter reached for a console that was floating near his head.
"Can I help?" Annalee asked. We had forgotten she was there. Porter and Sheera looked at me.
"I'm not sure," I said. "We can try to find something for you to do. In the meantime, why don't you get some rest?"
I was trying to be kind. I could tell she wasn't interpreting my response as kindness. She looked dead tired. I knew Sheera, Porter, and I would be busy for hours. At the same time, I knew she wanted to be useful.
She nodded and started walking away, but not before I saw the hurt look in her eyes.
"Annalee, wait," I said, catching up to her and touching her shoulder. "I'm not going to give you a mindless task so that you can feel better."
"Of course not," she said, with tears in her eyes. "I don't know everything that's happening here, but as an off-worlder, there should be something I can do."
"When we think of how you can help out, you'll be the first to know." She nodded, rubbing at her nose. I kissed her forehead.
"Sleep. You won't be any good to the Underground if you're too tired to see straight."
"That's true." I hoped she was feeling better. "Thanks, Jesse."
I watched her walk away until she was out of sight. I had to figure out a way to protect Annalee, discover her potential, and fulfill my responsibilities to the underground.
Sheera cocked her head at me. "That's something new."
"What?"
"I haven't seen you worry about people's feelings or be considerate before."
"I've been known to be thoughtful from time to time," I said, mildly annoyed with my old friend. I hadn't liked her treatment of Annalee. Sheera was one of my oldest friends in the Underground, and she always acted like an older sister.
"You could have fooled me."
ANNALEE
I was confused and tired. I was also having culture shock again, having learned about a hidden civilization on Yordbrook that wasn't in the travel brochures.
I made my way back to our quarters and lay down on the bed without changing my clothes. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about Jesse and Sheera. Had he slept with her? Jesse hadn't shown any reaction to her, but it seemed like he had some history.
Jesse and I had almost nothing. No history and barely a friendship. We were good in bed. But two people who go home from a bar for a one-night stand could be good in bed together. There was nothing unusual about that. I felt ill, and I slowly recognized the emotion simmering in my body.
It was jealousy.
I felt mildly disgusted with myself. How low-class! My mother was the kind of woman who would be jealous of someone working with her man. I certainly didn
't want to be anything like my mother.
Jesse was my husband, and he had promised to protect me and honor me. I had to believe he would keep that pledge.
I must have drifted off into an angry nap because an explosion woke me up. I jumped up and ran out of the room. There was chaos everywhere. People burst out of their rooms, and everyone was talking at once. The lights in the hall weren't working. I felt my way along a wall, trying to remember the way to the control room.
By the time I arrived, there was light, but there wasn't anything I wanted to see. The members of the Underground fought with men in navy clothing — the Bureau of Purity had found them. There was an enormous hole in the wall where a bomb had gone off. I didn't want to enter the scrum because I wasn't particularly skilled at fighting.
I tried to find Jesse and finally spotted him in the corner of the room. He and Porter were fighting back-to-back as if they had done this many times before.
I was about to try and escape on my own when I felt a cold blade at my throat.
"What have we here?" I couldn't see the man's face, but I recognized his harsh voice. It was the same nameless Bureau agent who had captured me back at the inn. I didn't say anything, but I wanted to cry out for help. My heart was pounding in my chest. I wondered if Jesse would assist me again.
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I got mad at myself. What kind of a modern woman would expect her husband to save her?
"Come with me," he said, putting additional pressure on the blade. I slowly moved with him out of the room. He led us down the hall and took a turn I hadn't used since I arrived. As I moved further away from everyone else, I became frightened, and my imagination took off.
What was he going to do to me? If he was going to kill me, why didn't he do it right away? Where was he taking me?
We emerged in a garage full of personal hovercraft and boarded one. By this time, I had an idea of what he wanted. Once we were on the ship, he finally took the knife away from my neck. The Bureau agent forced me into the rear of the vessel where there were no doors. He moved into the pilot's chair.
"Where are we going?"
He looked at me emotionlessly. I squirmed in my seat. He was making me more uncomfortable than before.
"We've learned more information about you, Mrs. Melnyk. We didn't know the full extent of your husband's criminal activity. He's more than another Renegade."
Shit. He knew Jesse was one of the Underground's leaders.
"You will make fine bait," he muttered to himself.
"You can't use me to trap Jesse. I won't let you."
"I don't think you can stop me. And once we've caught you and your infamous husband..."
He became immersed with pre-flight procedures and didn't finish his sentence. I had to know what he was going to say.
"Once you've caught us?" I said. "Then what?"
"With the Underground fractured, there's no way for them to regroup without their leaders. We're going to make a public example of both of you to discourage others."
"What kind of an example?" I asked.
"We're going to kill you."
Chapter Thirteen
JESSE
I slammed my fist into a man's skull, and he fell to the floor. Unconscious or dead, I didn't care. Porter smashed into me when his head was knocked back by a particularly brutal punch from a Bureau man. Porter came under his guard and delivered two blows to his guts, bending him over. After he had kneed him, the Bureau agent fell to the ground.
The brawl was coming to an end, and it didn't look like our side had won. I could see some of our people on the ground. Others had been dragged off by the Bureau.
"It's time to get out of here, Porter," I said. "Through the back. Annalee's in my quarters."
"Are you crazy?" He glanced across the room to the door that led to housing. If we wanted to get to the bedroom, we would have to get past a bunch of Bureau agents.
"You're right, Porter. You can escape and save yourself. Help me if Annalee and I get caught."
He rolled his eyes. "As if I'd leave you with this lot by yourself," he said.
We took off running and screaming at the top of our lungs, looking like madmen. The Bureau men were slow to react. We manage to barrel through three of them, but the next one knocked Porter on his ass.
Porter was up again in an instant. We took his assailant down together, kicking him a couple of times to make sure he didn't get back up. The next thing I knew, something hit me on the back of my head, and I fell flat on the ground. I blacked out for a moment. When I managed to get on my feet, Porter was in trouble. I jumped on the back of the man opposite him, giving Porter the edge he needed to finish him off.
By now, the way to the bedroom was clear. We took off running out of the control room. I was glad Annalee had been safe when the trouble broke out. If she kept the door closed, she wouldn't have even heard any noise.
I visualized what would happen in my mind. I could get her, grab a hovercraft, and hide out somewhere, as long as it wasn't a safe house. If we were able to lie low until everything blew over, we would be secure. Raids weren't anything new to the Underground. We couldn't lose the opportunity to present our agenda do the new monarch and the new government.
Porter reached the door first and knocked loudly, then threw it open when he didn't get a response. She wasn't in the room.
"Maybe she's in the bathroom," I said, opening the door. I looked around the small, empty room in dismay.
"Where is she?" Porter asked. I knew he suspected the worst because I did too.
"I don't know. She's not here."
There was a commotion in the hallway. The Bureau was beginning a systematic search of the area.
"We have to go, Jesse. We can't let them catch us."
I nodded. It would be the end of the Underground if they caught all the leaders. We left, quietly making our way to the garage. It was quiet and dark; apparently the Bureau had left this part of the facility untouched.
As we sped off into the early morning light, I wondered where Annalee was and if she was okay.
"There must be some way to track her," I said. I was finding it hard to think correctly.
"You know the Underground exists for a reason, right? It's going to be difficult to find her without any advanced technology. I don't suppose you happened to put a GPS patch on her?" Porter said.
I shook my head. "If I stored things like that at home, the Bureau would have taken me prisoner along with her. I didn't think it was necessary."
"Our options are limited, then. We don't have enough manpower to search all Yordbrook on foot."
"There are only a couple of possibilities, though. The Bureau could have captured her again, or she might have escaped with one of our agents. Either way, we should be able to track her easily. It rained recently, and they probably left a trail."
"That's right," Porter agreed. "If she's with one of our people, they headed for the rendezvous point, and we'll find her there, assuming the Bureau doesn't know about it already. If the Bureau captured her, then they'll take Annalee to Willford."
Neither one of us wanted to guess if Annalee was alive or dead.
"Sounds like we have a plan. Let's find some people to help us look for her."
By nightfall, we had been unsuccessful. We had found some other members of the Underground who escaped, but she wasn't anywhere in a five-mile radius. I didn't want to give up the search, but Porter made me face reality. The Bureau had captured her.
We had no choice but to go to Willford. Further searching on foot wasn't going to help. We returned to the hovercraft and Porter set the course.
"Why do you think they would take Annalee instead of killing her outright? They knew she was a wanted woman."
"It's likely they circulated her picture as soon as she escaped. Every man ought to have recognized her. There's only one reason I can think of," he said.
"They're going to use her against me, aren't they?"
"I think th
ey'll use her to lure you in so they can capture you, and then they'll kill you both and make an example of you. We still don't know where Sheera is either, in case you've forgotten." Porter sighed. "What are we going to do?"
"The same thing we always do - figure things out as we go along," I said, laughing at him. "Don't worry. Annalee is strong."
I thought she was strong, but internally I was worried myself. We were going into enemy territory with nothing but our wits.
ANNALEE
My guard pushed me roughly into the prison cell. I had spent so much time in Bureau captivity on Yordbrook it seemed like my second home. I stumbled and fell, hitting my head on the corner of a desk in the room.
"Fuck," I said. I put my hand on my head and felt a trickle of blood running down my face. The guard barely acknowledged my injury as he shut the door.
I held my hand to my head in an attempt to stop the bleeding. I now had a pounding headache to go along with my sore cheek. My legs started to feel weak, so I sat down on the single chair in the room and surveyed my surroundings.
The cell was small, cold, and dark. The only illumination came from a high window. It was more like a hole in the wall; it looked barely big enough for my arm to fit through. On the bed was a narrow cot with a wool mattress, like the ones at Jesse's house. A worn but clean sheet and a threadbare blanket completed the furnishings.
I hoped they treated their prisoners well here. I wasn't sure where I was, but by eavesdropping on the conversations around me, I thought they had moved me to Bureau Headquarters. I didn't know why they bothered. I was just a random off-worlder. Why were they making such a big deal about me?
They were keeping me alive as bait in a Jesse trap. But they didn't need to bring me here like I was someone important. My hands were free, at least. I slipped off my shoes and sat down to rest.
I had only been left alone for a minute before the door violently opened, and a blonde woman wearing a bright red dress walked in. Her scarlet hood framed the pale white skin of her beautiful face and made her look terrifying. Her eyes were light blue, like chips of ice.