“You probably didn’t notice,” Matron said. “Nerves and all.”
“I did notice,” Jemma said. “There were only twenty people in the crowd.”
“Shh.” Matron waved her hand at Jemma and looked back to the wall screen, where Jemma was walking across the stage in that gorgeous red dress. She took Lawten’s hand, and the two of them stood there. Jemma hadn’t paid all that much attention to what the task director had been wearing, but she did now. He was in a white suit with red accents. They matched. Like a couple.
Her stomach churned as she watched them sit side by side on the sofa across from Luella.
“Jemma, darling,” Luella said on screen. “Tell us, how far along are you?”
“Just a few weeks,” Jemma said.
The real Jemma froze. “What?” That wasn’t what she had really said.
“And isn’t it true that this is a miracle baby?” Luella asked. “Conceived in the natural way?”
“Yes.” Jemma smiled.
“The baby is ours,” Lawten said, and his hand lowered onto Jemma’s shoulder. The camera zoomed in on the task director’s lined face. His eyes were teary, as if he were emotional over the news.
“No!” Jemma shook her head in horror. “That’s not what I said. I said it was Levi’s baby.” Why had they done this?
The camera flashed back to Luella. “Tell us what this means for you.”
“I’m very excited,” Jemma said.
And back to Lawten, the close up on his face. But his eyes weren’t teary now. “I know there’s much controversy over the subject of lifers. But Jemma and I, we share a bond that’s stronger than pleasure alone. This child. We created this child through our passion for each other.”
At the harem, Jemma cried out and stood, horrified at what he was saying. “That’s not what happened!”
“Jemma, please sit down,” Matron said.
On screen, the task director said, “In fact, I am so in love with this woman, I want to exchange vows with her.”
Jemma lost her breath and sank back into her chair, staring at the screen, horrified at what was happening.
“What kind of vows?” Luella asked.
“In the Old days, couples who wanted to spend their lives together exchanged vows of promise before witnesses,” the task director explained. “Jemma and I have decided to do this.”
The camera switched to Jemma’s face. “I felt it would be a good gesture.”
No! “They’ve twisted things around. That’s not how it happened.” Even in her horror, she realized that she should’ve seen this coming.
On screen, Luella looked into the camera. “And so, Safe Landers, we’re going to have a party. The date has been set. January twenty-fourth. You won’t want to miss it.”
Then the camera changed to a view of the couches with the task director holding Jemma’s hand. Animated letters flew across the screen like a spilled puzzle and arranged themselves to say “Vow Exchange, January 24, 2089. Don’t miss it.”
“That’s not the way things went!” Jemma cried. “They changed things. He made it seem like I’m going to marry him.” Tears rolled down her cheeks at the thought of Levi seeing what she just saw. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t understand,” Alawa said.
“How could they change it?” Jennifer asked. “It’s recorded, isn’t it?”
“And why would they bother?” Mia asked.
“I don’t know, editing?” Jemma wrung her hands together. “The people who filmed us. They rearranged the things I said. And they changed the task director’s words. That part when they zoomed in on his face, they must have recorded that another time. And they played the things I said out of order to make it sound like I said things I didn’t say.”
“You should be happy,” Mia said. “You like romantic things.”
“This is not romantic.”
“Sure it is. It’s like that story in the Bible you like so much. You know, the orphan Hadassah, living in exile with her uncle in Susa after King Nebuchadnezzar conquered their home.”
“That’s romantic?” Alawa asked.
“Only because of how the story ends,” Mia said. “Hadassah becomes Queen Esther, marries King Xerxes. He chose her out of all those others.”
Jemma glared at Mia. “This is not the same. Hadassah wasn’t married. I am. And this baby is Levi’s, not the task director’s.”
“It really doesn’t matter who the donor is,” Matron said. “It belongs to the Safe Lands.”
This comment poured ethanol on Jemma’s anger. She wasn’t acting like a prisoner. She was failing to play her part. “He could have at least told me what he was going to do.” Jemma stood up. “I want to talk to him. Take me to the task director’s office. Now.”
“You can’t see him without an appointment,” Matron said.
“I am the new Safe Lands Queen. I can do whatever I want.”
Matron’s eyebrows furrowed as if she wasn’t certain what to do. “Jemma, dear, let’s not get upset. Why don’t you use the Wyndo wall screen in your suite to tap him? That way, you can talk to him right away or at least make an appointment. He’s a very busy man.”
“But I don’t know how to tap anyone,” Jemma said.
“I’ll help you. Come along.”
So Jemma let Matron escort her up to the Citrus Blossom suite. Inside, Matron walked up to the wall screen.
“Wyndo: power. Tap: Lawten Renzor.” The screen faded into white with text on it. “Wyndo: zoom. Wyndo: zoom” The text got larger, then larger again. It said:
Renzor, Lawten. 79 Summit Road.
Renzor, Lawten. City Hall.
Renzor, Lawten. Safe Lands Guild.
“Wyndo: select: City Hall,” Matron said.
The wall screen went black and the logo of the Safe Lands rotated on the dark screen.
Then a woman’s face appeared on the screen, slightly misshapen as if the camera was at an odd angle. “Lawten Renzor’s office, City Hall. How may I help you?”
“This is Matron Dlorah at the Highland Harem. Our queen, Jemma Levi, would like to speak with the task director. Might we set up a tap appointment?”
“Just one moment and I’ll see if he’s available,” the woman said.
The screen went black and silent again, and the rotating Safe Lands logo filled the screen.
“See now?” Matron said. “Isn’t this easier than driving over there?”
Jemma shrugged, though she had to admit it was. She wondered if there was any way to talk to Levi on this contraption.
The task director’s face suddenly appeared on the screen. “Jemma, shimmer, I thought I might hear from you. Hay-o, Matron.”
“Hay-o, Lawten. I hope you’re finding pleasure this day.”
“Indeed, I was, until this tap came through. My queen’s expression weighs heavily on my mind. She seems upset. Would you give us some privacy, Matron?”
“Of course.” Matron nodded to Jemma and left the room, closing the door behind her.
“Why did you do that? You said so many lies!” Jemma yelled.
“Everything I did was for your benefit, shimmer.”
“Don’t call me that! You don’t have any right to call me anything.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry. You asked to be the Safe Lands Queen.”
“Then you lied! And you made it sound like I’m going to marry you. I’m already married to Levi.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!” She stopped talking and took several deep breaths. How could she do this? Share her anger yet still play the part of a rebel who’d changed sides? “I might not believe in the rebel cause, but I still love my husband. I mean to see him again someday.”
“You will, shimmer. This whole broadcast was for his benefit. When he sees it, he’ll have no choice but to comply with my demands.”
“What demands?”
“That’s not your concern. If there’s noth
ing else, I have much to do.”
Questions jumbled in Jemma’s mind. “Nothing else now, no,” she said, almost to herself.
“Then we understand each other. Good. Oh, and don’t wear that muddy color again. It completely washes you out.”
The screen went blank. She glanced down at her shirt. It was dark tan, almost the color of her skin.
Why did he think he could tell her what to wear? She sat on the couch and thought over what had happened. The task director was up to something. He was using her to blackmail Levi, but why? How could he even communicate with Levi?
She still smarted over Mia’s comparing this to the story of Esther. Mia had no doubt said it out of her own anger of Jemma having taken her place as queen, but what if there was some truth to it? If Jemma could play this role of Lawten Renzor’s lifer, perhaps she could learn things that not even Luella Flynn knew. Like what he wanted from Levi and maybe even the truth about liberation. Maybe Jemma could use her position to save her people. Maybe she had been brought to the harem for such a time as this.
CHAPTER
18
Where did you get this?” Levi asked Zane. He and Jordan had come to the nest the moment Nash had brought word that Lawten Renzor had left them a package. It was an envelope made of gold foil with Levi’s name on the front in black type. Inside was a little square of plastic with a metal strip on one end, like a tiny Old video game cartridge.
“It was left in theater nine,” Zane said. “We decided to open it there just in case there was some sort of tracker on it.”
“You sure it’s safe?” Jordan asked.
“I looked it over, shot it with a SimScanner, put it in an off-grid GlassTop to scan it for spy adds. There’s no other way I can think of to put a trace on a data card. It’s clean.”
“So, what is it?” Levi asked.
“It’s a video — two, actually. One is footage from this morning’s Finley and Flynn Morning Show. Jemma was on it. The other is a message to you from the task director general. He’s trying to blackmail you.”
“How?”
“He wants Ciddah. Best if you watch.” Zane took the plastic from Levi and inserted it into a slot in his GlassTop computer. A few taps later and the video filled the GlassTop screen. Another tap and the video appeared on the wall screen as well.
Jemma had been a special guest on the ColorCast program. They’d dressed her up in a fancy gown and had her sitting with Renzor. And Renzor was touching her. Holding her hand and putting his arm around her. Levi’s stomach clenched. Then that Luella woman said Jemma was pregnant with Renzor’s baby. And Jemma looked happy about it.
Why would she look happy?
“That scum-licking maggot,” Jordan said.
Then Renzor announced that he and Jemma were lifers and were going to exchange vows. “This isn’t real,” Levi said. “Right? Tell me this is a fake. How could she be pregnant already? She’s only been there a few days.”
“They made Shaylinn pregnant after a few days,” Jordan said.
“Thank you for pointing that out,” Levi said.
“The video is fake, sort of,” Zane said. “But it’s what they showed the nation this morning. Jemma was there when they recorded this, but there are discrepancies. Like when they zoom in on Renzor’s face, the lighting is off, as is the position of his body. I don’t think Jemma was sitting beside him when they shot those lines.”
“Just like those videos they made of Jemma and Naomi,” Jordan said. “The ones they showed us in the RC. Naomi told me she never said those things, that they’d been told they were acting a part in a play.”
“Jemma told me too,” Levi said. “You think they edited this to make it say something different than it did in real life?”
“They always do that to a certain degree,” Zane said, “but that would make the most sense.”
“So she’s probably not pregnant.” Levi grabbed a chair and sat down, relieved. “He’s just messing with me.”
“Let me show you the second file.” Zane tapped around his GlassTop, and soon Lawten Renzor’s face replaced the image of Jemma.
“Mr. Elias, it pains me to greet you in such a way after I’ve taken your lifer from you. I’m sure you’d like her back. So, I propose an exchange. Your Jemma for my Ciddah. It’s that simple. Leave your reply by Monday morning in the same place this package was found.”
The screen went dark.
A chill ran up Levi’s arms. “That’s it? He wants Ciddah?”
“Do it,” Jordan said. “And send her donors along. I’m tired of having to watch them.”
Oh, how he wished he could. “I’d love to trade, but it’s not that easy, brother. She knows too much. Everything. She could lead them right to us, and we still don’t know that her presence here wasn’t Renzor’s plan from the start. Plus, Shaylinn needs her.”
“The other women delivered Harvey Jr. just fine on their own,” Jordan said.
“But they had Jemma, who was learning about that stuff from my mother,” Levi said. “Jemma’s not here. And Shay’s been glad Ciddah’s here because she was worried about the twins coming early.”
“Why would they come early?” Jordan asked.
“I don’t know,” Levi said. “It’s just something she said. Look, none of that matters. I don’t trust Renzor. What’s to say he’d really give us Jem? Or if he might give her up, but hurt or even killed? If he does have her . . . pregnant already, then she’s important to them. They’re not just going to give her up.”
“So what do we do?” Jordan asked.
“We’ve got to get her out of there,” Levi said. “That video said she was at the ColorCast Studio. You think that was true?”
“It looked like the studio to me,” Zane said, “only the theater doesn’t seat that many. They could have faked that too, though.”
Levi thought that over. “So maybe she leaves the harem sometimes to do this stuff. And if they’ve made her queen, she’ll have to leave more often, right?”
Zane nodded. “I guess.”
“So we attack when she’s in a vehicle,” Levi said. “There can’t be more than two enforcers that would go along. We could take down that many.”
“Yeah, but I can’t sit here twenty-four seven waiting for her to leave the harem,” Zane said.
“I could,” Jordan said.
“You have a wife and kid, brother,” Levi said. “But we could take shifts. Can’t you train someone else to watch the cameras?”
Zane sighed. “My father won’t let just anyone have access to this room.”
“What if you and your dad and Nash helped out, just for a day or two of constant surveillance?” Levi held his breath. Please say yes.
“You’re going about this the wrong way,” Zane said. “We need to get her schedule — or better yet, Luella Flynn’s schedule. She’ll be doing all the ColorCast interviews monitoring the pregnancy. If we can get a peek at her schedule, we’ll know when and where she’ll be seeing Jemma.”
A surge of hope swelled in Levi’s chest. “How can we get it?”
“We break into the ColorCast Studio offices,” Zane said.
“We do?”
Zane tapped Levi’s chest. “You do. I’ll help.”
Levi batted Zane’s hand aside. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
“And for fun,” Zane said, “why don’t you go as the Owl?”
Nash dressed in an enforcer uniform. Levi dressed as the Owl. He also had a tiny device inside his ear that allowed Zane to speak to him. Zane had found it after Levi had again refused a SimSpeak implant.
They’d come through the storm drains into the Highlands. The night air was icy and the sidewalks slick under Levi’s feet. The nights were getting cold. Winter was coming. Halfway up Snowmass Road, they picked up one of Dayle’s DPT trucks, which Nash drove to a garage near the back of the ColorCast Studio lot.
“I’ll be waiting right here,” Nash said. “Don’t take your time.”
“
Don’t worry.” Levi climbed out of the truck and crept through the dark garage. There were only two vehicles inside, and the one they closely passed by was covered in a layer of dust.
At the back of the garage, he found the corridor that led to the studio. He walked quickly, but as Zane suggested, didn’t run. Zane had taken over the camera feed to the Surveillance Department, but later, the enforcers would be able to play back the footage and witness the Owl’s confident entrance. To make this look like just another Owl act, Levi would spray the Owl’s mark on the set of The Finley and Flynn Morning Show. Either Luella Flynn would leave it for shock value or she’d have it painted over before the show aired tomorrow. Either way, Zane was recording the footage to play later on one of the Owl’s broadcasts.
He reached the back entrance to the studio and stopped at the door there. No handles.
Levi touched his gloved fist against the SimPad and the door popped open. Thank goodness for the ghoulie tag. “It worked.”
“I see that,” Zane said.
Levi slipped inside. So far he’d seen no one. It was dark, and he stood still for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He stood in the corner of where two hallways intersected. An emergency light down the left hall was the only light that was on.
“Walk into the light,” Zane said in a low singing voice.
“Ha, ha.” Levi crept toward the light, and when he reached it, he was in another corner. But this turned into the back stage of the theater.
“Go ahead and leave some marks on the stage,” Zane said. “Maybe a nice big one in the middle of that white couch.”
So Levi climbed onto the stage and set to work, using cans of spray paint and Omar’s Owl stencil. When he finished, Zane directed him up the center aisle of the theater and out the front doors. That led him to a lobby with red carpeting and white walls.
“Take the elevator to the fourth floor,” Zane said.
The elevator opened to another lobby, though this one was more of a waiting room filled with chairs and a reception desk. A sign over the desk said Communication Department.
“Walk right past that desk and down that hall,” Zane said. “Now, I’m not sure which office is Luella’s, since there are no cameras in any of the offices. But I’ve seen her enter two rooms more than any other. The third door on the right. And the one across from it.”
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