"You're injured!"
"They shot me. I don't even know what caliber it is or anything, but I know it hurts like hell and my arm is going numb. I'm going to need to stop the bleeding before I pass out."
"Swap places. I'll drive. I know of a place we can hide on this level."
"Are you sure?" Rav asked, somewhat reluctant to give up control of the only thing he had that could get him to safety.
"Absolutely, mate. You can trust me."
"Can I?"
Vance stared into Rav's eyes for a few moments before patting his uninjured shoulder. "I heard Nemo's screams. He's my son too, Rav. We need to do everything we can to get him out. If at any time you feel that I am no longer an asset, you can kill me again with your mark of logic and I'll have to find another data point to enter. I won't fight you with that. Please trust me."
"It's not like I have much of a choice." Rav slid to the center of the seat and grunted as Vance crawled over him. "Get to it."
He put the hovercar in gear and raced towards the outer walls of the city. "You bet, mate. We'll get you out of here."
Chapter 9
Leah Morgan leaned back in her chair at the computer desk in her room on board Sandra's ship. She removed her thin glasses to rub her sore eyes that were burning from staring at the six screens in front of her for hours on end. She picked up her cup of coffee and took a long, needed drink. The glow from the displays danced across her ivory skin and the strands of her red hair that had come undone from the bun on top of her head. This was difficult and demanding work. Never before had she hacked into an Olonictian computer program to control a single character that was created out of another person's memories.
She tapped her long red nails against the ceramic mug as she watched Vance driving the hovercar through the streets of the Odyssian Under City. They seemed to be doing all right without her for a moment, so she stood to stretch. No sleep in two days, microwave burritos, and far too much caffeine had left Leah running on nothing but adrenaline and desperation. Holding her boyfriend's life in her hands was a nerve-wracking job.
Not that Rav was officially her boyfriend. But she could hope.
No one other than her and Sandra knew the details of the mission. Sawyer only knew enough to help with maintenance and to keep the computers running the way they should so Leah could do what needed to be done. They had stumbled across the coding for the program by sheer accident, but she had the suspicion that someone had planted it there on purpose to help Rav. There was no way to know for sure at that point.
Leah jumped when a tiny hand patted her thigh. She looked down to see the young blond-haired boy with the mint green eyes and the long dark bruise on his cheek. "Nemo?"
"Hi."
"You're okay? You're here?" She turned to see another boy playing with her keyboard. "No, no, no. You can't touch that, okay? Come here." Leah picked up the boy from her chair and led the other towards the door. "Who are you two? Nemo clones? You can't be in here, all right? Does anyone know that you're on this ship?"
"Our daddy said we could say hi to everyone."
"Yeah. Daddy is making sandwiches. We're hungry."
"Well, you two are simply adorable. Who is your daddy?" Leah asked.
"Ben."
"Oh. Benjamin Trainor. I'll take you back to him."
"I'm right here, Leah." Ben stepped into the darkened room with a tray piled high with bologna sandwiches in his hands. He handed the tray to the two boys. "Can you two take these to your brothers while I talk to Leah? I'll be back in our room in a few minutes."
"Okay, Daddy!"
Once the boys had left and the door was closed behind them, Leah sat back down and pulled out a chair beside her. "Have a seat. It's good to finally get some time to speak with the man who stole away Vance Trainor's heart. It's nice to meet you."
Ben sat beside her in the rolling chair then cleaned the powdered cheese from his pink-rimmed glasses on his t-shirt. "It is a pleasure to meet you as well. I don't know much about everyone, but I'm willing to learn and to listen. I'm not really a social person, so please be patient with me."
"You are nothing like Vance. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes . . . yes, I know. You need to know, though, that Vance is dead."
"I heard. I'm sorry."
"You don't seem very concerned."
"Because I know he's still alive."
Ben's mouth fell open as he let out tiny confused whimpers.
"How did I know? Because you seem like such an emotional man, but you aren't showing the kinds of emotions I would expect from someone who killed his husband. As the hiring manager for the Red Sand Mercenary Company on Dualictum, I was in charge of finding new mercenaries. That took me learning to read people, even strangers, on a daily basis. Let's see. You are haunted by a dark past, you have some self-hatred issues, you are trying to do what's best for the universe, but you are currently playing on your own side. You lost someone close to you recently, but you haven't had a chance to mourn. You struggle to balance your religion with the way you were born because they sometimes conflict. You are gay and you are open about it. You embrace your femininity, but you secretly punish yourself because you think something is wrong with you because of what someone said to you earlier in life. Well? How did I do?"
"You . . . how?"
Leah smiled and patted his hand reassuringly. "Don't worry. Your secrets are safe with me. I just can't get over how different you and Vance are. He's so . . ."
"Loud? Obnoxious? Brusque? Hardcore insane?"
"All of the above. And you're so polite and quiet and gentle."
Ben bowed his head with his hand over his heart. "I take those as a compliment. I have tried all my life to be understanding and patient. I was a nurse for years. I guess that's why these Nemo clones are attached to me."
"Are you going to take care of them?"
"Of course."
"How many are there?" Leah asked.
"Fifteen. They remind me of my brother . . ."
"He's the one who died, right? You lost him."
Ben closed his eyes and fanned himself with his hands. "Yes. I don't want to talk about it. He was young and he was actually given my name after my father found out I was gay. I wasn't good enough to have that name. I was literally replaced. But through all that, I still loved my brother. Isaac was killed by Azimandians who shot down an Elysian civilian ship."
"I'm so sorry." Leah took the weeping man in her arms and rubbed his back. "Oh Ben, it's all right."
"Geez, I'm a mess today." He pulled away and wiped his eyes. "I didn't come in here to pile all my problems on you. All this stress is going to wreak havoc on my these crow's feet around my eyes."
"Are you serious? You look like you're fifteen years old. I don't want to hear you ever talking about getting old. Do you use face cream? You have to share your beauty secrets with me."
"Flatterer."
Leah laughed as she turned back to the monitors. "So, I'm sure you didn't come here just to exchange cosmetic tips with me."
"No, I wanted to talk to you about Rav."
"Oh."
"What's wrong?" Ben spun around in his chair like a little kid. "Don't like to gossip?"
"No, it's just that Rav is in a very sensitive place right now, balancing on the edge of life and death."
"I knew Vance couldn't have actually killed him. They have such a good bromance."
Leah looked away from the monitors. "Bromance?"
"Yeah, you know when two guys are intimately close, but they don't have sex? Bromance."
"Wow. Okay, then. You're right, though. Rav and Vance have always been extremely close. Are you jealous?"
"Of what Rav and Vance have? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't. But I have something Rav can never have with Vance."
"Yeah, yeah, I don't need the juicy details. What do you need to know about Rav?" Leah asked, sipping her coffee that was quickly getting cold.
"That's him on the middle monitor, isn't it? And that ma
n in the hovercar beside him . . . is that-"
"It's Vance. It's a program reproduction of Vance, made from Rav's memories of him."
"Oh, wow. That's so cool. So you're watching this alternate reality?"
"I can influence the artificial Vance's major actions, but he is programmed to act a certain way and I can't interfere on that level. I just have to make sure he stays around to help Rav get out of the program. This is classified information, by the way, so no gossiping."
Ben made a key locking motion by his lips. "My lips are sealed."
"As for your original question, Rav can be described in one phrase. Intensely devoted father. Nothing gets between Rav and Nemo. Rav managed to find his son even after they were separated on opposite sides of the known universe. He lives for his son."
"That's sweet."
"It's part of what I fell in love with about him. Other than that, he is set on doing the right thing and never giving up on what he believes."
"Admirable qualities, and ones that aren't found very much anymore."
"So, why do you want to know about Rav?"
"He is the closes person to Vance. I need to get inside Vance's head, but that's an impossible task for me. If I can know what Rav knows about Vance, then it gets a little easier."
"What drew you to Vance?"
"Honestly? I have no idea. He's not my type, like at all. I never in a million years would have pictured myself with someone like him."
"Was it a physical attraction?" Leah asked.
"Oh, God no." Ben snickered and covered his mouth with his hand. "Not that he's ugly or anything, but he's not what I usually look for in men. Maybe that's just because I saw him at his lowest before he even knew me."
"Huh?"
Ben's grey eyes glistened with tiny rainbows in the light from the screens. "He got injured really badly on AX-97. It's when he got his metal arm. I was his nurse. I think I fell in love a little every day while he was in a coma."
"That is so romantic!"
"Weird. I would have thought a nurse becoming obsessed with a patient who was unconscious as being stalker-ish, not romantic. Oh, sweet space. Am I a creepy stalker?"
"No, Ben. You're not creepy."
"We can't have a one-sided conversation about the men we love, Leah. How do you feel about Rav?"
Leah slowly shook her head and typed a line of code into the data on the lower monitor. "I don't know. Rav is-"
The young voices called out to Ben as fists pounded on the door. "Daddy! Daddy, let us in."
"We miss you, Daddy."
"Yeah, Daddy, come with us. We're sleepy. Can we go to bed, Daddy?"
"Are you ready for us? Which ones do you want tonight?"
"Can we not? I'm sick."
"I don't like it. Please don't hurt us."
Ben's brows furrowed as he listened to the tiny voices coming from the other side of the door. "Leah, are they suggesting what I fear they're suggesting?"
"I hope not. Have you done anything to them?"
"Leah! No. Absolutely not!"
"Sorry, I just had to ask to find out where this is coming from. They must have been hurt back on Star-World Zero Alpha. I think you should go take care of this. Do you need my help?"
"Not right now. Let me talk to them first."
"I'll be right here if you need me." Leah set her mug down. "Good luck, Ben."
"Thanks. I'm gonna need it."
* * *
"Do we have any knives that are long enough to pierce a warbringer's heart?"
Sandra and Sawyer both turned around in their chairs in the cockpit of the ship with absolute confusion plastered on their faces.
Slayven held his bandaged side where the stitches held his light grey skin together and trailed down his bare chest to his bony hip. "Did I speak in Azimandian? What's the problem? I just need a knife."
The woman with the curly black hair and the black 'R' on her forehead sighed. "Don't kill Kalimis, amigo. He's still recovering. Leave him alone. Sawyer, please take Slayven back to the med bay. He's bleeding through his sutures."
"I am not." Slayven glanced down to see the dark blood oozing through the gauze. "Oh, look at that."
"Have you even spoken to Kalimis?" Sawyer asked, running one hand over his green mohawk while he steered the ship with the other. "My money is on no."
"Hermano, he's just angry. He's so angry. The skinny alien is so angry."
Slayven's purple eyes narrowed. "Forget it. I'll find it on my own. Oh, and why are there are a ton of children running around the ship? They woke me up."
"They are clones of Nemo Tillman. Be nice to them." Sawyer raised an eyebrow. "You will be nice, won't you? Do you know how to be nice, Slayven?"
"Someone's going to have to be nice to these kids. From what I've heard, Benjamin is doing some very questionable things with them in his room. Now, I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I walked past to hear the boys asking what Ben wanted them to do to him."
"Oh my God." Sawyer stood up and stormed into the hall. He called back to his sister. "Take over, Sandra. I'm putting a stop to this."
Slayven hobbled along after him to stop in the hallway outside Ben's door. He listened uncomfortably to the muffled laughter, the yelping screams, and the squeaking of the bed. "You don't think Ben would actually do something to them, do you?"
"I don't know Ben. You do. You tell me."
"Ben's a good guy, but I swear to you that I heard the boys talking about some really inappropriate stuff."
"Then we'll check it out." Sawyer punched an override code into the keypad next to the door.
When the door slid open, they both gasped in surprise at what they found.
All fifteen boys were jumping on the bed and running around like they had gone insane. They brandished pillows like shields as others wound up towels to snap each other. Blankets and feathers from the destroyed pillows littered the room. Squealing laughter spilled out of the madness where Ben was too busy laughing and pouring soda into fifteen plastic cups on the dresser to notice the intruders.
Sawyer and Slayven looked at the chaotic mess, then at each other. They unanimously agreed to back away. Once they were safely out of sight, Sawyer shouted in the hallway. "Hey, Ben, get out here. I need to talk to you."
After a minute, Ben joined them with feathers stuck in his curly hair. "Hey. What's up? Are we being too loud?"
Slayven dared to peek back around the doorway at the craziness. "They look happy."
"Yeah. I wanted to give them one night of just being children and having fun, you know? These poor boys. They were separated from each other and given as gifts to different warbringers. And you know better than anyone what warbringers do to children, Slayven."
"That's actually what we wanted to talk to you about." Sawyer crossed his arms as his face hardened. "Slayven said he heard the boys making inappropriate comments and asking what you wanted them to do for you. Apparently it didn't sound like anything innocent."
"Oh, yeah, no. It wasn't innocent. But I didn't do anything. They thought I wanted that from them because the warbringers they belonged to would force them to do horrific things. I sat them all down and explained things to them and told them how I wasn't going to ever hurt them like that. Then I got soda and found cartoons on the television and we're having a pillow fight to get their minds off of those awful things. I've been in their place. I know what it's like to have a childhood ruined, so I was able to help them."
"See, Slayven?" Sawyer rolled his eyes and started back towards the cockpit. "It's all good."
"Sorry, Ben."
"No problem. I would rather you investigate things than let abuse go on. Children need to be protected." Ben flinched when one of the boys yelped and started crying. "Speaking of being protected, I think I'm needed in there. Anything else you need?"
"No. Good luck, Ben. I'm going to go find things to kill Kalimis with."
Ben frowned and picked down feathers from his hair. "Oh. Please don't. Talk wi
th him first."
"Fine. But only because you asked so nicely. By the way, it's good to see you alive again. Did you actually kill Vance?"
"He's dead, Slayven."
"And you're a bad liar." Slayven winked at him before clutching his side and heading down the hallway to the med bay. "See you tomorrow, Benjamin. Don't let the urchins kill you in your sleep."
Chapter 10
Rav groaned through his clenched teeth as the tequila stung the wound in his shoulder. Face-down on the concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse, he pressed his cheek against the cold surface and did his best to not scream out and give away their position. The sirens had died down minutes before and there were no signs of them being followed. They could still see the helicopters passing overhead as they passed through the purple neon haze from the lights around the tops of the Under City buildings.
"Hold on, Rav. I have to dig this bullet out now."
"With what?"
"I found a spork."
"A spork?" Rav moaned in both pain and aggravation. "They still make those things? Are you crazy? Just leave it in there."
"We can't leave the bullet in your shoulder."
"Why not?"
Vance took a step back and spun the spork between his fingers. "Because . . . because it's bad for you."
"So is having you ripping my muscles open with a rusty spork you found lying around in this filthy warehouse. It doesn't matter, anyway. Once I shut down this program, I'll be in a new body."
"Are you sure about that? If Brooke is mad at you, do you really think she will still let you into your new body?"
"I can't think like that, Vance." Rav sat up, holding the tattered scraps of his black jumpsuit against the bleeding hole in his shoulder. "We have to focus on getting out."
"So you can return to what, exactly? Fighting against Azimandia? Killing for Olonictu? Both sides will only use you, mate."
"They have Nemo."
"Who, I'm sorry, is probably dead by now. You know that too, but you're just too stubborn to stop and accept it."
"Just stop." Rav crawled over to the dust-kissed window where the pane had been shattered and jagged spires stood from the frame like mountain ranges. He sat there below the purple neon to watch the hovertrains speeding past in the distance. "I can't give up."
The Genesis Sequence Books 6-10 Page 34