Once they were far enough away from the house, the couple changed their suits into a drab green (Ben) and a boring brown (Lucia). They dashed down to the monorail station, boarded a deserted train, and rode in silence to a stop not far from Padric Sufur’s house. By now it was almost four-thirty. A quick run brought them to Sufur’s house. The entire neighborhood remained dark and quiet as they crept up the stairs leading to his platform. Lucia halted and took out a small scanner before they reached the top. Ben stared at the house and felt a sudden urge to charge into it and beat Sufur bloody. No more shattered statues—this time he could take the real man apart, bone by bone. The power of the emotion rocked him and he trembled like a tree in an earthquake.
He tried to focus on Ara and Evan, on how much they needed their father. Kendi had been right—it wasn’t up to Ben to meet justice out to Sufur.
The hell it isn’t, he thought. He killed Mom. My kids will never know her because of him.
Ben stood there, caught between conflicting impulses. Lucia’s scanner beeped.
“No external security measures that I can find,” Lucia whispered, jarring him back . “In fact...” She crept to the top stair, edged close to the house, and ran the scanner over one of the windows next to the front door. “We’re lucky. The alarm system doesn’t seem to be active. He must have forgotten to set it before he went to bed.”
“Yeah,” Ben said warily. “Lucky. You know what my mom used to say? ‘Luck means you get to choose your own casket.’ “
“Do you want to leave?”
Ben thought about it. “No. We need his computer.”
Lucia took Ben around to the house’s back door, where she pulled a lead from the data pad clipped to her belt and plugged it into a flat rubber square the size of a postage stamp. She pressed the rubber square over the thumb plate by the front door. Lights flickered busily on her data pad.
“What’s that for?” Ben whispered.
“Lockpick. It picks up latent prints left by the last person to thumb the plate and uses to recreate an acceptable print. The lock should open in—” There was a click, and Lucia cautiously pushed the door open. A whiff of cooked sausage drifted out. The darkness gaped like a pit. Ben stared into it. A monster lived in there. A monster who ate sausages for supper and slept in a fine bed.
“Mask,” Lucia said, pulling hers up over her face. Ben copied her. He didn’t like the suit. It seemed like he could feel his skin flakes gathering beneath the fabric and skittering around like dust mites trying to escape. Lucia moved to enter the house, but Ben made a snap decision. He grabbed her wrist.
“You stay out here and keep watch,” Ben said.
“But—”
“Stay out here, Lucia,” Ben said in a low, icy voice. “If I make a mistake, there’s no reason for both of us to get caught.”
Lucia looked at him for a moment, then nodded. Ben took a deep breath and entered the house.
Lucia dePaolo watched Ben go, not at all certain she had made the right decision. It was hard for her to refuse Ben anything. He was the son of Irfan, and although constant contact with him had proved to her that he was an ordinary man, she still felt the occasional thrill of awe. And she had born his child. Irfan’s child. Vik’s child.
Lucia’s hand went to her neck, automatically feeling for the figurine of Irfan she had worn as long as she could remember. It was no longer there. She had removed it the day she had learned about the lawsuit. Lucia no longer prayed to Irfan twice each day, had disabled the timer that reminded her to do so. But she hadn’t gotten rid of her personal altar to Irfan either. Irfan was still a serene, wise, and powerful woman, still an incarnation of the divine. But her Church...her Church had tried to take Lucia’s child away. That she could not forgive.
Lucia hadn’t spoken to her mother since Ara’s birth. They hadn’t exactly argued when they parted. Mother had simply kissed the top of baby Ara’s head, touched Lucia’s cheek as she done since Lucia was a child, and left the hospital. The family hadn’t tried to visit Lucia, hadn’t even called. True, the birth had only been a few days ago and they knew Lucia had plenty of help with Ara. But there seemed to be a chill in their silence.
Maybe Lucia was reading too much into it. The Church had been absent from her life for only a few months, and she was long used to her family’s loud, near-constant presence. The lack of both boomed through the silent days like a thunderstorm. Once it swept through, things would go back to normal, except that Lucia would never set foot in a Church building again. That made her sad.
The house in front of her remained silent. Night lizards chittered in the trees and a few early insects buzzed about. Lucia kept a watchful eye out, but the neighborhood slept, completely oblivious to the presence of Padric Sufur and to the people breaking into his house. In the darkness it seemed like Lucia could see the faces of Finn and Leona Day. She started to say a prayer to Irfan about their souls, stopped herself, then finished it anyway. The Days, whatever their crimes, should have their path to the afterlife cleared. Lucia doubted she would say anything if Padric Sufur were to die.
“n alarm whooped inside the dark house. Lucia jumped as sirens sounded in the distance as if in answer. Ben burst out the door, data pad in his hand. The sirens grew louder.
“Run!” Ben snapped, and Lucia obeyed. They fled down the stairs and along the walkway. Lucia’s mouth was dry and her heart was pounding. What had gone wrong? Ahead of them, Lucia saw a police scooter zipping toward them on the walkway, lights whirling like angry whirlwinds. Ben leaped over the railing, and Lucia dove after him. They both landed on the safety net underneath. It stretched like a spiderweb but didn’t break. The scooter zipped past them overhead. Ben and Lucia skittered along the stretchy strands until they came to a walkway intersection. Ben reached up and grabbed the edge of the walkway, hauling himself back onto the boards by sheer strength. A moment later, he reached down and hauled Lucia up like she weighed nothing at all. Lucia felt the power in his arms and upper body. For a moment she felt a little flushed and she fully understood the attraction Kendi had for Ben. Then they were running down the dark walkways again. Behind them, police lights converged on Sufur’s house like wasps dive-bombing an invader.
They found a shadowy stairwell, and ducked into it to catch their breaths. Lucia pulled off her mask and changed her suit from swirls of gray and black into its simple, nondescript brown. Ben’s suit shifted into drab green as he removed his own mask. Lucia took Ben’s hand and leaned her head against his shoulder as they moved unhurriedly away, a couple out for a very late stroll. Lucia’s heart beat like a triphammer.
Serene must you ever remain, she told herself. Serene, serene, serene.
Her heart slowed, and the police lights and noises faded in the distance. Lucia released Ben’s hand. They passed under a rare streetlight and Lucia saw his face. It was set in a grim mask.
“What happened in the house?” she demanded.
“Not here,” he said. “Home.” And he refused to say anything more.
The darkness was freezing. Gretchen Beyer shivered and tried to reach for the covers. Her hands wouldn’t respond. She tried again and managed a twitch. The cold was so bad, it felt as if her bones would shatter like brittle icicles. With a small groan, she wrenched her eyes open. A translucent barrier curved just above her nose. Disorientation made her head swim and her teeth began to chatter. Where the hell was she? The last thing she remembered was ...
Her apartment. The man and the woman. The fight. The dermospray. A spurt of adrenaline cleared her head and gave her energy enough to press her hands against the plastic. It came to her that she was lying in a cryo-unit, a coffin-sized tube designed to put the inhabitant into frozen hibernation. By all rights, she should be asleep. So why—?
She pushed, and the lid opened, giving her the answer. The unit hadn’t been closed completely and therefore hadn’t activated properly. The bone-cracking cold made her entire body shiver like a spring leaf in a blizzard. Gretchen gathered h
erself and forced her shuddering muscles to half-roll, half-heave her out of the tube. She flopped unceremoniously onto hard ceramic. The floor was probably cool, but to Gretchen’s half-frozen body, it felt deliciously warm. She pushed herself to hands and knees and managed a look at her surroundings.
She was in some kind of cargo hold. Plain gray walls stretched up to an equally plain ceiling. Five other coffin-like cryo-units were lined up on the floor, taking up most of the space. Gretchen was kneeling next to one of them, and it exuded a wonderful warmth. Gretchen clung to it, a baby huddled against a mother’s breast, until she stopped shivering. She stood up and noticed for the first time she was barefoot and dressed in a white jumpsuit she had never seen before. Clearly the dark-haired woman and the blond man had brought her here, but why? And where was “here”?
A quick check told Gretchen the other five units were occupied. She thought about waking the other people—victims just as she herself was—but decided against it until she knew more about what was going on. She padded noiselessly over to the windowless door and pressed her thumb against the plate. To her surprise, it slid smoothly open. Her kidnappers must not have expected anyone to wake up and try the door.
The gray corridor beyond was lined with doors but otherwise empty. More cargo holds? Gretchen eased down the hallway, heart pounding at the back of her throat. She needed to find a weapon, or maybe a communicator. Her earpiece was gone, of course, even if it had enough range to reach anyone. Gretchen’s stomach tightened. This place felt like a ship, or maybe a space station. If that was the case, she could be light-years away from help.
Story of my life, she thought. Okay, girl—keep moving. You can’t be the only person on board.
The corridor ended at a larger doorway which opened at Gretchen’s command. The space beyond boasted a set of elevator doors and a ladder that lead upward through a hole in the ceiling. Letters marched across the elevator: LEVEL 3 S”T 7395-”5-11. A tiny bit of relief touched Gretchen. She was on board a satellite, probably in orbit around Bellerophon. Worse than being on the ground, better than being on a slipship. If she could find a shuttle, or a way to call for help—
The elevator doors slid open. Gretchen leaped for the ladder and scuttled upward. The rungs bit into her bare soles like hard fingers. Human conversation floated up to her from below.
A...re-check the units and then transfer everything to the ship within the hour.” Gretchen recognized the voice of the dark-haired woman. “Then we hit slip.”
“Shit. How are we supposed to keep to that schedule?” It was a male voice, not one Gretchen could identify. “We’ve been pulling double shifts for three days now and I’m sick of hanging out on the stupid satellite with nothing to do but work.”
“Welcome to life at Silent Acquisitions,” the woman said. “We love our job.”
“I just better be loving my bonus on this one. I haven’t seen my wife in—”
The voices cut off as the door slid shut. A chill slid down Gretchen’s spine. Silent Acquisitions. Padric Sufur. God damn it! She should have killed him, no matter what Kendi said.
Grimly she climbed the ladder. If she was on level three and the emergency ladder only went up, the satellite was a small one with only two more levels above her. Experience told her the command center of the satellite was probably on the first level. She hurried as best she could, but her muscles were still twitchy from the aborted cryo-sleep. In her mind, she saw her captors checking the cargo bay and noticing her cryo-chamber was empty. Any moment they’d raise the alarm. Her lungs worked hard in her chest as she passed the second level and finally reached the first, emerging into the elevator bay. The double doors leading out of the area had actual windows in them. Trying to keep her breathing under control, Gretchen sidled over to the exit doors and stood with her back flat against the wall next to them. The only sound was the soft hum of the ventilation system. A line of exertion sweat prickled her hairline. First she had been too cold, now she was too hot. Holding her breath, Gretchen eased an eye around the edge of the window until she could peek into the room beyond.
It was a large, round chamber ringed with workstations. A man sat at one of them. His back was turned, but even from behind Gretchen recognized the blond man who had delivered the balloons. Gretchen’s thoughts raced. The other two would probably discover her absence in a few seconds. She had to act now.
Gretchen thumbed the plate and the doors slid open. The blond man didn’t look up from his board. Gretchen rushed across the room at him.
“That was fast,” the man said, tapping at the panel before him. “Or did you forget something?” He spun his chair and saw Gretchen charging him. “Oh, sh—”
Her fist drove straight into his midriff, cutting off the expletive. She followed with a hard left to his jaw. The pain in her hand was mitigated by the satisfying crack the blow made as it connected. He keeled over and spilled groaning out of the chair just as an alarm blasted through the room. Gretchen ran back to the doors and slammed her hand against the plate.
“Lock!” she shouted, and the plate turned red, indicating obedience. The idiots hadn’t bothered to program the satellite’s systems to respond only to authorized personnel, probably because they hadn’t figured anyone would escape the cryo-chambers. Their mistake, her advantage. Gretchen sped around the outer ring of workstations, scanning each one. Where the hell was the communications board? The alarm continued to blare. She got almost all the way around the outer wall before she found it not far from where the blond man wretched on the floor. Gretchen kicked him.
Someone pounded at the doors. Gretchen wasted five precious seconds orienting herself to the unfamiliar comm board. She slapped a control and was gratified to see the panels spring to life with blue and green lights.
Glass shattered. “Get away from there!” shouted the dark-haired woman through the broken window.
Gretchen found the regulator, spun it to the emergency frequency, and tapped the control to open the channel. “Emergency!” she barked. “I need help. I’m on board satellite number—” What the hell was the number? It was on the elevator door. She fumbled before her Silent memory training took over and the number popped into her head. “Number seven three niner—”
The panel exploded in a shower of sparks. Gretchen leaped backward and spun around. The dark-haired woman was aiming a portable gravity beam at the board, presumably the same one she had used to shatter the window. She aimed it straight at Gretchen. Before Gretchen could react, a green beam slammed into her. Gretchen flew backward, crashed into the wall, and slid to the floor. Her entire body went numb, but she retained consciousness. The blond man staggered to his feet and stumbled over to her. Blood streamed from a split lip. Gretchen tried to move, but her body refused to respond. She felt consciousness slipping away.
“Bitch.” The man spat blood. “I’ll feed you through the meat grinder.”
He drew back his fist, but Gretchen was already out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Nothing destroys a relationship faster than suspicion.”
—Daniel Vik
Ara fussed and cried in Kendi’s arms. Kendi rocked her in the chair, trying to calm her down. She refused a bottle. She didn’t need changing. She spat out a pacifier. Kendi rocked and rocked and hummed a desperate little tune. The sound of Ara crying unnerved Kendi. Was something worse wrong with her? Was she getting sick? Maybe he should wake Harenn.
In his own crib across the room, Evan slumbered peacefully, completely oblivious to his sister’s cries and his Da’s distress. Kendi wondered if Ara fussed because she could sense Kendi’s restlessness. The wrongness of Sufur’s plan tugged at him. Originally Sufur had wanted to remove all Silent from the Dream and destroy it. Now, it seemed, he had scaled back a little and contented himself with trying to remove just the human Silent from the Dream. He was going to do it by getting all the human Silent in one place and damaging their Silence so they couldn’t enter the Dream.
That was t
he problem. Bellerophon and S” Station had a lot of human Silent, but nowhere near all of them. Even if Sufur waved a magic wand and all the Silent on Bellerophon and S” Station dropped dead, there were enough human Silent scattered around the galaxy to replenish the population. And then there were people like Vidya and Prasad Vajhur, people who weren’t Silent themselves but who produced Silent children. They didn’t seem to be on Sufur’s little list.
Then there was the problem of execution. Every kidnapping, every trip up to the cargo satellite, every transfer to the hidden slipship was a chance to get caught. Sure, the hostage situation kept Kendi’s mouth shut, but all it would take is one innocent witness to a kidnapping or a single suspicious neighbor to call the police and the authorities would slam Sufur to the ground before they even knew the hostages existed. A few people—including Gretchen—would die, but Sufur’s main plan would sink like leaky ship. Sufur had to know that. So what was Kendi missing? Maybe Ben and Lucia would turn up a clue at Sufur’s home.
Ara continued to fuss. Kendi rocked and worried. A thousand things could go wrong with Ben and Lucia. The police might catch and arrest them. Sufur might wake up and catch them. The information they sought might not be stored on Sufur’s computer. Ben might not be able to hack in. Lucia might—
A noise in the hallway halted his line of thinking. He got to his feet just as Ben and Lucia entered the nursery with the rope ladder. Relief washed over him.
“What’s wrong with her?” Ben asked, holding out his arms. Kendi handed Ara over, and her cries instantly stopped.
“Sounds like she just wanted her daddy,” Kendi said. “How did it go?”
Offspring Page 38