“I think you'll make food appear when you want it.”
“I wanted it in the Needle! I told you I needed to eat!” She barked the words like she was giving orders.
Dugan was unmoved by her sudden outburst. He was accustomed to dealing with far worse personalities than hers. Paradoxically, he only felt more compassion for her each time she reminded him of her flaws.
He considered the bizarre circumstances of her life, the isolation and obvious lack of social interaction.
“You're right,” he told her. “You need to eat. It'll get rid of that attitude.”
“I doubt it.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw her chin raise defiantly.
“Had Keti ever let you be hungry before today?”
“No. Never. I feel like my stomach is eating itself.”
“Hunger can make anyone mean. A little food will help. I promise.”
She gave no response.
He saw her tense up as the outskirts of the inhabited area came into view. She mentally reached out for Keti, whose protection she now realized she'd taken for granted.
“Hey,” Dugan said gruffly, interrupting her. “Nobody wants to bother me here, so nobody will bother you if you're with me.”
She didn't want to admit how vulnerable she felt, so she kept quiet as they approached the outlands.
I hate this feeling, she thought. I hate this feeling. She couldn't make her brain form coherent thoughts. Her legs and arms felt weak and shaky.
She thought about food. She'd seen ads for all the food that Citizens could eat, that she'd never been allowed to. Plus+Minus bars had to be amazing. In ads for them, boys and girls her age ate them in clubs while bots served them colorful drinks.
Dugan stopped. The toughness was gone from his face.
“I need to think,” he said finally. “I came to the Needle so I could say that I'd tried to get in. I didn't plan on this. It's worse than unsafe.”
“Food,” she politely reminded him.
“Fine. That's our priority.” He pulled a thin restraint from his waist pocket. “Hold out your hands.”
“What?” she stammered.
“Nobody will question me bringing a captive through the outlands. It's that, or making them think I'm paying for an hour with you.”
“That's a thing you people do?”
“Not me.”
“Wow. Wow.” It was the catchphrase of Lana on Pink Wall, but Dugan apparently didn't appreciate her impression.
She held her wrists together for him. Fear gripped her for a moment, but it couldn't overcome the thrill of the moment. She was free, she realized; free from Keti, free from the Needle. It was everything she'd ever wanted.
“I feel like I'm living in an acvid,” she said in reference to CG action videos.
Dugan looked in her eyes.
“What?” she asked. “It's true.”
“Out here, things don't end well for anyone. Now keep your hood up and don't raise your head. Not once. Don't say a single word until I tell you it's safe.”
She winced as he pulled the restraints tight.
She did as she was instructed. Dugan gripped her wrist restraints in one hand and led her into the inhabited area of the outlands.
She heard various men greet Dugan cautiously as they walked, but none of them questioned him about her.
All she could see as she walked was the road they walked on, which needed to be repaved. The surreal feeling that she was living in a vid persisted.
Living in the Needle, she had imagined the outlands as a muddy stretch of land that smelled like thousands of unbathed men. In her mind, it was questionable whether the buildings would be made of materials as modern as concrete.
The vids she'd been allowed to watch omitted the existence of the outlands. Her favorite shows never mentioned it.
If all the worldly, non-crime-committing people lived in the City, the outlands was clearly the place where all the worst people were: murderers and robbers and violent people who did things she was too sheltered to imagine.
She'd often wondered if the women there were as bad as the men must be; it was hard to believe.
What she was discovering as they walked was a place where all varieties of people had to coexist. The sound of children laughing broke out above the crowd noise and strains of odd music.
The music was foreign at the same time it felt familiar. It followed the same rules as the music she was familiar with, but, she realized, wasn't produced electronically.
It was kind of terrible.
Just as she heard a woman's voice in the crowd, Dugan jerked her down an alley.
“You're doing fine,” he mumbled under his breath. “Don't fuck it up now, we're almost there.”
She almost asked where, out loud, but caught herself.
He led her out onto another street. It sounded like there were just as many people here but they were speaking in subdued voices.
Dugan stopped her in front of one of the buildings. The Empress didn't dare raise her head, but she noticed that the sidewalk was at least in better condition than elsewhere.
There was silence for a full five seconds before a man's nasally voice spoke from what must have been a speaker.
“Level?”
“Three,” Dugan answered.
“Best I can do is security two.”
“Three,” Dugan repeated tersely.
“I'll check.”
After a pause, the man said, “Please don't make a habit of asking for this, Dugan.”
She felt a vibration under her feet grow in intensity. It stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the door in front of them opened.
Dugan gripped her arm a little tighter as they crossed the threshold.
Without warning, her vision went dark as something was pulled over her head. With practiced dexterity, the hood was immediately secured around her neck by a metallic ring clicking into place.
She gasped, barely restraining herself from saying Dugan's name.
There was no conversation as Dugan led her along a hallway and around a corner. She could hear footsteps trailing them. Did they really believe she was that dangerous? Were there girls in the outlands who were dangerous enough to require restraints, and extra security?
She thought of An.four, a female assassin in an acvid that she'd seen the beginning of. She had turned it off because it felt too unrealistic. Or so she had thought, at the time.
If the outlands had need for places like the one she found herself in now, then these people might believe that she was someone just like An.four.
That inspired her to act the part; she hissed and rattled her wrist restraints.
Whoever was walking behind them grabbed her shoulders and forced her back against the wall. The ring around her neck clicked into a slot in the wall, leaving her immobilized.
Next to her, she heard a door lock disengage with a dull pop.
She fell away from the wall as she found herself suddenly free from it.
Dugan pulled her into the room, saying, “Let them know I appreciate being accommodated,” before closing the door.
With a muffled snap, the ring around her neck disengaged; Dugan pulled the hood off her head but motioned for her to stay silent.
Mounted on the wall was a thin white rod which Dugan waved around him. The Empress frowned in confusion.
The rod glowed green. Dugan replaced it on its holder.
“Okay, no one's listening.”
“No one will bother us here?” she asked in a whisper.
“It’s less likely than if we were anywhere else,” he said without conviction.
The Empress turned in a slow circle, taking in the room. In one corner was a slot for a prisoner's neck ring to connect to. A bed was bolted down in the opposite corner, out of reach.
The only other object in the room, excluding the wand which Dugan had used upon entering, was a screen on the wall facing the bed. The walls were a dull, undecorated white.
> “It's the best I can offer you, Empress.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, then bounced slightly to test its stiffness.
“I won't complain. Thank you.”
She couldn't read his expression as he looked at her silently.
“It's just unexpected,” he explained. “I'm looking at the Empress, sitting in LDH, wearing a natak like an outlander.”
“Natak?” She looked down at her robe.
“Other than being pink, it makes you look like one of us.” He saw in her eyes that she wasn't sure if she was displeased.
“Well,” he said, “I'll get you some food. Just...” He looked around the room. “Maybe lay down.”
With that, he walked to where the door had been. A grid of light appeared around him before spreading out like a web. When it reached her, verifying her distance, a section of wall retracted to reveal the door.
He left without looking back.
The Empress closed her eyes. She couldn't hear any sound from outside the room. It dawned on her that the room was windowless; she was in a worse cell than the one she'd woken up in.
Keeping her eyes shut, she inhaled deeply. The room had no discernible smell. She grabbed part of her robe in one hand and pulled it to her nose. It smelled of people and asphalt and synthetic materials and grasses.
She breathed through the robe's material until the smell no longer registered when she breathed it in.
Dugan returned twenty minutes later, finding the Empress kneeling on the bed with her eyes closed. On the screen in front of her, a hostbot chased a Citizen through the stark white rooms of her apartment.
The Empress held her hands in front of herself as if she supported an invisible weight on them.
He paused uncertainly, waiting for her to react to his presence. Her breathing, he noticed, was so shallow as to be nearly unnoticeable.
It was unnerving; the longer he watched her, the more he feared that her eyelids would open onto all-too-familiar black nothingness. The world had functioned well enough in Keti's absence that Dugan didn't want any sign of her return.
She breathed in sharply and opened her eyes.
“It'll be okay,” she told him. Her hands fell to her lap.
“We'll see,” he said.
“I have a role to fulfill. We both do. Once we have...” She trailed off.
“Did you see something while I was gone?” he asked. “You looked like you were in a trance.”
“I was reaching out. I felt...there's still harmony around us. I couldn't see what was coming, but whatever I felt didn't scare me.”
Dugan paused to process her words. “You know,” he said finally, “I can't tell which side is the real you, and which one is an act. The Empress? Or the girl who sent me to find garbage she saw kids eating in some shitty vid series?”
She stared at the bag in his hand. “What did you find?” she demanded.
Dugan exhaled, a small laugh, and placed the bag on the bed.
“I guess I can't judge you. I still think you'd like some fresh stir fry more, if you want to try food you've never had, but if this is what you want...”
She reached in the bag without looking inside. The first thing she pulled out was a strawberry Elpha bar. The wrapper depicted a cartoon elephant in sunglasses. In response to her touch, endless waves of color rippled in the elephant's sunglasses.
As she set it cautiously next to her, the image became static again.
She reached in again, and for a split second her eyes squeezed shut in anticipation.
When she opened them, she had pulled out a NowFastMeal package. It showed a steaming plate of synthetic beef and authentic vegetables.
Dugan leaned down to put his hands on each end of the package.
“What you do is pull these pieces out, and it cooks the meal in a few seconds.”
She bit her lip. She knew how they worked. She had watched Molly Chiu eat one in every Chiu On Her Own vid.
She set it aside impatiently and reached in again.
When she withdrew her hand, she was holding a green Plus+Minus bar. The label said it was Off+On flavor; whatever that was, she knew she'd like it.
In Plus+Minus commercials, girls always, always were sipping fluorescent pink drinks while eating the bars in virtual clubs.
The Empress held the bag open to look inside, where she found a sealed test tube of bright green liquid. It matched the Plus+Minus bar, which was enough to satisfy her.
Dugan interrupted the moment to say, “I mainly eat a different kind of unhealthy food, so I wasn't sure what to buy you. This is whatever was the most colorful.”
She didn't hear him; she was too busy looking at the Plus+Minus bar on her open palm while the bottle dangled from two fingers of her other hand.
Sitting in a sparse room in the outlands as its annihilation approached, the Empress's face showed quiet contentment. For the first time, everything felt right.
Please look away, she thought.
Sensing the change in her mood, Dugan told her to allow him half an hour to go buy “necessities.”
She turned the vid screen off, opting to watch her own reflection in it as she ate and drank.
The Plus+Minus bar's taste was hard to describe. It was foreign in a way that she knew she'd convince herself to enjoy.
Chapter Seventeen
Lorenz stepped out of his private office, allowing the door enough time to hiss shut behind his back.
“Send him in,” he said.
A nervous-looking man walked in the common room. He brushed greasy hair away from his eyes, and peered back at the doorway he'd just come through.
“You saw Dugan,” Lorenz prompted.
“Uh, yeah yeah, he took a prisoner in the Secult building with him.”
“A female prisoner.”
“Yeah, that's what she was. He couldn't have gone more than security two, just walking in like he did. I was, uh, lingering in the area, I guess you'd say?”
Lorenz made eye contact until the man looked down.
“Is he there now?”
The man heard the menace in Lorenz's voice but didn't understand its cause.
“I-I-I don't know! I wasn't trying to stalk him. How did you even hear that I saw him?”
“Are you friendly with Dugan.” He stated it without inflection. “Will he confide in you, if given a chance?”
“Hell no, sir. Dugan doesn't like anybody. There's rumors that he only gets close with Citizens but, you know, I can't tell you what's true or isn't.”
“What is the shortest amount of time which Secult will provide a room for?”
“Uh, you can get a supervised cell for an hour if you're waiting for someone to come take them. But to get a room, you have to keep your prisoner there for 24 hours.”
Lorenz breathed in slowly. His mind worked to consider every variable in the circumstances.
“Leave,” he said after a long moment of consideration.
“Well, but...I can, I'll leave like you said, but...yeah...”
The man wiped his hand on his chest before pressing the button to open the door he'd entered through.
Lorenz returned to his office. As he had anticipated, the central screen was pulsing green. He activated it on his CR ring.
The man who appeared on it was not in a mood for light conversation.
“You continue to fail. You provoke us, and fail to get any satisfactory results to tip the scales in your favor.”
Lorenz was unfazed. “The Empress is here. In the outlands. In Secult.”
“I was prepared for misdirection from you, and here is the form it takes. Your mercenary removed her from the Needle but you do not have her. Now you will ask for more time to deliver an outcome you know you can not.”
“It seems that Dugan is scheming. He'll attempt to negotiate with me, I'll meet his demands - which will be tragically small - and the Empress will be brought to me.”
“Keti should have razed the outlands along with everything el
se outside City limits. You, Lorenz, are the best the outlands has to offer...and you are useless to us.”
“I predicted this reaction, sadly. You're right, to a degree; not about what you said about me, but what you left unsaid. I can't guarantee the success of any plan to secure the Empress.
“There are too many ways it could go wrong, and surely one of them would occur. I realize that I would pay with my life. Instead, the Empress will pay with hers.”
“I would like to see that,” the man said. “For the goddess to allow someone like you to steal her prized jewel; now that would be extraordinary.”
Before Lorenz could respond, the screen went blank.
He held his hand up to his mouth, and activated his CR ring. “Have Ellis choose five people to accompany him to Secult. Tell him to wait for Dugan to leave, and kill him on sight. If anyone is with him, kill them too.”
As Dugan entered the Secult building, the guard nodded to him.
“I've never known you to leave a prisoner alone this much, sir,” he said. “Especially one in Security Three.”
“Have you heard anything about my funeral?” Dugan asked.
The guard raised an eyebrow. “No, sir.”
“That's because I’m still alive because I know what I'm doing.”
“Sir.”
Dugan brushed past him. As he approached the room, he saw a pair of security bots guarding it. No one in the outlands used bots, except possibly Lorenz. Newer technologies, those that came from Keti, were destroyed on sight. Even Secult wouldn't use them.
The bots swiveled to face him. Before he could react, they glided away from him and rounded a corner.
If Lorenz had prepared an ambush for him, there was likely no way for him to escape it now. Lorenz wouldn't leave him a way out. Dugan held his hand on a panel beside the door. The walls went transparent at his touch.
The Empress was inside, unharmed.
Keti stood at the foot of the bed, speaking to her. She paused to look in his direction. Her black,vacant eyes locked on his for one long second.
He saw the Empress mouth What? to her. Because the wall was only transparent from Dugan’s side, she couldn’t see him.
Keti turned and was gone before he could get the door open.
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