“And the musicians.” April hugged her knees to her chest. “And they’d have to take Charlie in order to get you back, hero of the airlock. I get it.”
That was the thrust of Lori’s own argument, but hearing it from April’s lips made it sound flat and naive. Charlie was a college drop-out who made his living as a ranch hand, and Mars didn’t need any cowboys. But the man had other skills, of a more personal nature. That had to count for something, right?
April pulled out her tablet and started scrolling through data that didn’t look like any official Mars Ho documentation or communications. She was probably snooping again. Lori hadn’t asked how April had managed to hack into the Mars Ho system. If she was leaving, maybe it was better that she didn’t know.
Lori slung the bag over her shoulder and took a last look around. She couldn’t muster any sentimentality for the dull room, ubiquitous Mars posters, and metal bunkbeds. Cecilia and Leah were somewhere else in the dome, probably sweating in the fitness center or trying to make sense of the food printer in the kitchen. It was entirely possible Cecilia was making the same partner-and-polyamory pitch to Leah.
April jumped up from the bed. “Could you hold that thought, just for a minute?”
“What?”
“It’s just that they’re getting ready to do a candidate elimination. So, one last good deed?”
Lori rested her bag on the floor. “If I scrub myself out at the elimination, I could save someone else from being kicked out.”
“It’s worth a shot.”
Lori sat down on her bed, feeling simultaneously relieved and impatient. She’d already chosen her method of execution, and now April was asking for a temporary stay. That meant waiting inside these curved walls when she could be outside, breathing fresh air and strategizing with Charlie on how to get back inside. She’d make him see that he wanted to be here, too. “How long?”
“An hour? Maybe two. And . . . Oh.” April’s eyes narrowed as she stared at her screen. “It’s between two candidates for who will be kicked out. Mark’s one of them.”
Lori tried not to laugh. Why shouldn’t her last act inside the dome be saving Mark Lauren? She slid her feet out of her boots and laid back on her bed. “Sure, an hour.”
“Don’t go anywhere or do anything with out talking to me first, okay?” April tucked her tablet under her arm and dashed out into the corridor.
Now that she was leaving, Lori noticed that her bed was actually rather comfortable. The mattress sponsor was probably already benefitting from the product placement, and she wished the company well. She closed her eyes and replayed Charlie’s message in her head.
He should have asked her not to go into the dome, though he’d never make her choose between him and Mars. Letting her go was the biggest mistake of his life. If he had it to do over again he would spend every day and his last breath trying to make her happy on Earth, and that maybe he’d find a way to share in her dream . . .
Lori’s hopes mixed with and finally supplanted Charlie’s actual words as she drifted off to sleep. And Mark Lauren would get to stay. That was good, and just. Mark would go to Mars. The colony would succeed because of Mark. Her sacrifice would make that possible. She smiled and nestled into her pillow.
Mark had been wandering the halls for the last hour or so, following one curved corridor after another. Around and around and around. If he’d been paying attention, he would have had the biodome layout memorized to perfection.
Instead, he’d been turning over the problem of Lori Ridgway.
Since the program began, he had been deliberately aloof with the other candidates, especially the women. He wanted to advance within the competition based on his own merits, without having to resort to the predictable reality show shenanigans of forming alliances and playing out a succession of devious strategies that would pit his fellow contestants against one another.
He would play a clean, dignified game—better yet, he wouldn’t play at all. He’d endure Mars Ho and its trappings as the cost of a spot on the colony ship.
But that wasn’t the real reason he’d been distant, and it was time he came clean with himself about that. It was because of Sarah and those last days before his Mars Ho medical isolation began. And it was still fresh.
Now there was Lori Ridgway. He hadn’t expected any of the female candidates to catch his eye, but Lori had done considerably more than that—and not just because of her underwear.
And he’d been naked, he couldn’t forget that part. She was indignant without being obnoxious or off-putting. She’d handled that awkwardness with grace and aplomb. And it was that, more than her curves, that had gotten his attention.
Well, also her curves.
If Mark had to spend his next decades cramped in a small space bracing against a hostile, alien environment, he didn’t think he’d mind combining his colony duties with getting to know the intimate details of Lori Ridgway. The idea filled him with warm anticipation and even hope.
But then his heart tugged and winced and reminded him that it was still broken.
He passed his bunk room and the MHCH laundry and utility room. Farther ahead, Govind mopped his face with a towel as he exited the fitness center. Mark acknowledged him with a curt nod and kept to his plodding pace.
He’d made a mess of things in the grow unit challenge. He knew next to nothing about growing things in the dirt. He could build fires from pine needles and lint, and construct an emergency shelter out of tarps and twigs. He was handy with a map and compass. He was an expert in surviving avalanches. He knew about foraging in the wild.
And then he’d nearly been defeated by a bunch of garden pots. He could blame his behavior on the air pressure but that didn’t change the fact that while he’d been trying not to look weak or stupid in front of Lori, he’d ended up portraying himself as precisely that.
Why was he so intent on doing everything himself? That he needed to prove himself was obvious enough—he was a contestant in the world’s biggest reality show. But when it came to interpersonal skills, he feared he’d left the Mars Ho audience with the impression that he was an angry man who had a problem with women.
One woman. This woman. A woman who appeared to be as straightforward and earnest about her participation in the program as he hoped to be. She’d helped him in the grow unit even after he’d grumbled at her. And she wasn’t scrambling to sample the male candidates the way some of the women were.
Or maybe Lori had seen enough back in the changing rooms. Maybe she’d taken his measure and found him wanting.
Mark tripped over his own boots, and grimaced when he realized the cameras had caught it.
He came around to the kitchen again for at least the fourth time. Leah, Jacki, and Trent were still trying to get the spare coffee maker set up and not making much progress. It was some not-yet-commercially-available model that did double duty as a soda fountain, all squeezed into a quarter-meter square box. If the thing worked, it would be worth four times its weight in fertilizer on Mars.
Mark frowned at the aroma of burnt cola that wafted into the corridor.
Trent waved at Mark and made some excited gesture toward Leah and Jacki, as if to say, “Look at me! Talking to girls!”
Mark chuckled and continued on, picking up his circular thoughts on another lap around the biodome.
There was no denying his attraction to her, to her mind and body and everything promised by both, but it was too soon to form attachments. What was the point of forging a genuine bond when they were both in danger of being eliminated? Then he’d be back to where he was already, stunned and stung and less than eager to try again.
“Mark!”
He turned to find April jogging toward him. She was nearly out of breath by the time she caught up to him, and he grasped her shoulders to keep the tiny woman steady on her feet.
“Where’s the fire?”
April shook her head. “This is serious. It’s Lori. And you. It’s both of you.”
�
��I know you’re watching!” Mark shouted at the dark screen inside the confessional booth. He leaned his weight onto his fists as he stood over the shallow desk. “I know you can hear me.”
April hovered in the doorway, silhouetted against the light flooding in from the corridor. Mark looked at her over his shoulder. “How do I get them to talk to me?”
April checked her tablet’s display. “There’s not much time left. They’re going to call for an elimination—”
“This is bullshit.” Mark plopped down in the chair in front of the console. The wide screen immediately came to life.
“Maybe there’s a sensor in the seat?” April suggested.
Mark peered at the options on the screen. He could check his electronic and video mail. He could look at biodome status reports and “outside” atmospheric conditions—all simulations of what they’d get on Mars. He could submit a supply request. He could record a confessional video.
He pulled up his messaging screen.
“You can try sending the producers a message, sure,” April said. “But there’s no guarantee they’ll get it in time.”
Mark started typing. “Anything going outside is monitored, right?”
He felt April step up next to him, murmuring as she read his words aloud. The outside door closed behind her.
“. . . And that’s why this whole program needs to be shut down before there are any more deaths or psychotic breaks. We’re dying in here . . .” April blew out a long sigh. “No, Mark, I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“No?” He finished typing and looked up at her.
“No. I think it’s a sure-fire way to get yourself kicked out of the dome. First, you’re just plain lying. Second, you’re trying to contact the media . . .”
“Yeah.” Mark rested his hands on the desk. “I just wanted something sufficiently incendiary, so that someone would be forced to intercede. Then we’d have their attention.”
A few taps on the keyboard, and his message was deleted. He pulled up the confessional screen, and April stepped out of view of the camera.
“Here’s hoping there really is always someone watching.” Mark sat up straight. “I’m making this statement for the record, for anyone in Mars Ho who might be monitoring these feeds in real time, and for the viewing audience, too, if it comes to that.”
He glanced at April and could tell from the look on her face that she had no idea what he was about to say. He had only a vague clue himself.
“I know my name is on the short list of candidates for elimination, coming up in maybe a matter of minutes here. Don’t ask me how I know. And if it’s time for me to go, well, then there’s not a whole lot I can do about it. But I need to warn you that you’re about to lose the best candidate this crazy program has, and I’m sure as hell not talking about myself. She’s about to scrub out. If someone doesn’t do something—and I mean right freaking now—your viewers are going to be watching Lori Ridgway walk out the airlock door.”
He paused. He wasn’t sure what he hoped might happen. Maybe one of the producers would cut into his recording? Or for klaxons and flashing red lights to go off, the biodome on lock-down, nobody in or out? But technically they were on lock-down every minute they were inside this place.
“I was a righteous jerk to her.” His words surprised him, but it was the truth. “She was just trying to help, back in the grow room. Maybe she was trying to encourage some real camaraderie among the candidates. Or maybe Lori is just a good and decent person. Maybe she’s the only one in here who isn’t playing some kind of game—”
Muffled groaning noises echoed down from the air ducts over his head. Someone—or a pair of someones—were getting busy somewhere in the MHCH.
In the shadows, April leaned against the wall and held a hand over her mouth to keep her laughter from being picked up by the camera.
“Hell, it’s just about impossible to know who to trust in this place.” Mark balled his hands into fists and then let out a frustrated laugh. “You want something real for your broadcast? How about this: Everyone inside the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat is working a personal agenda, some strategy for winning the game. Big surprise, right? Instead of making this about the success of the colony, you’ve got competitions and eliminations and people getting randy just to come out ahead in your popularity contest. But I can tell you it’s going to get real ugly in here. It’s going to make what happened with Sarah look like . . .”
He grimaced and shook his head. “You want me as a pawn in your game. You think I want to get played? All I can be sure of right now is that if you let Lori Ridgway leave, then this program has lost its soul.”
Mark sat motionless for a long moment, trying to formulate a closing statement to punctuate his outrage. But this was the most emotion he’d displayed in a good while, and he didn’t think there was much more to be said.
“Mark Lauren signing off,” he said. “Maybe for the last time.”
Mark pushed his chair back and stood up. He turned to April and they headed for the door.
“Mark! Wait!”
He glanced back at the desk and found Hannah’s face filling the confessional screen. So, someone was there after all. He wasn’t sure that was comforting. Mark sat back down.
“I need to talk to you.” Hannah spied April lurking by the door. “You, too, April.”
April moved closer and leaned over Mark’s shoulder. “So, how many people do you have watching, exactly?”
“One of the interns saw Mark’s confessional and came to get me. Look . . .” Hannah glanced over her shoulder and then leaned toward the camera. “I found something that I need to show you, and you’re really not going to like it.”
“I don’t understand what I’m looking at.” Lori sat in the confessional booth with Mark and April on either side of her. The monitor was split into two video panes, one playing Charlie’s recorded message to her, the other showing a live connection with Hannah.
“I’ve already seen this,” Lori protested loudly, making an effort to drown out Charlie’s tender words. She knew his message had been viewed by someone at The Ranch before being passed along to her, but couldn’t she at least pretend that Charlie’s professions of love were for her ears alone? She felt prickly listening to them again with an audience in such close quarters. “I don’t know what you expect me to see that I’ve not seen before, and I don’t appreciate that you’ve been digging into my private communications—”
“Shh!” April cut her off with a sharp hiss. “Trust me, Lori. Just watch.”
Lori pressed back into the chair, wishing she could disappear into the shadows of the room. She wanted to preserve her memory of sitting in the booth and watching Charlie’s message alone, rather than having the experience diluted by her irritable company. She resigned herself to getting through whatever reveal these three had planned, and then she’d get on with the rest of her life.
But with each passing second, she felt her resolve slipping. Charlie on the screen didn’t quite match with what she remembered. His voice was flatter, his smile forced. He still seemed awkward and nervous, but he also appeared rehearsed.
“Okay, so you’ve seen this part before,” Hannah said. “But this is the original video, Lori, not the edited version that landed in your inbox.”
Lori’s eyebrows shot up. “The edited version?”
April rested a hand on Lori’s shoulder. “You know you can’t trust the authenticity of anything in here, right?”
On the screen, Hannah’s shoulders slumped. “She’s right. I’m sorry, but that’s why you have to see the end.”
The video pane of Charlie scrambled while Hannah advanced the recording. His image resumed normal speed for the last part of his message to her. “I love you, Lori. I never should have let you go.”
Lori crossed her arms over her chest. She deliberately did not look at Mark, though she was itching to gauge Mr. Stickler’s reaction to Charlie’s earnest declaration of affection. “Okay, so I don’
t get what . . .”
“Wait,” Hannah said.
The recording continued beyond the end of the message Lori had seen. She leaned toward the monitor and watched him wipe at his eyes and clear his throat. He reached for a glass of water. Then he looked at someone behind the camera and his lips curved into a clever guile that she’d not seen on him before.
Except she had. The night she broke up with him, when he refused to go to her second-to-last going away party and demanded that she stay put with him. He’d been increasingly unreliable as her time grew short, like he resented that every minute was more precious to her. She’d said as much to him and was walking out his door when he grabbed her arm and gave her this same look.
“You’ll be back,” he’d said.
Lori felt suddenly cold. “No,” she whispered.
On the screen, Charlie took a sip of water. “That take felt like the one, you think? Fourth time’s the charm?” He laughed at some off-camera comment Lori couldn’t hear. “Was that enough, or should I grovel more and really turn on the water works?”
Lori gripped the edge of the desk. “Who’s he talking to?”
“Another producer,” Hannah sighed. “It was a set up, Lori. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Look, it’s your bankroll,” Charlie chuckled in the recording. “You’re paying me by the hour here, so if you want to run it again and juice it up, I can do a full-on bawl—”
“I don’t want to see any more.” Lori pushed herself away from the monitor and found her exit blocked by Mark and April. “Just let me go.”
“And, hey, did they decide how long I’ll have to date her, after she quits?” Charlie’s voice continued on the screen. “I mean, nice piece of ass and all but I should get paid for that time, too. And Steve said he’d cast me in his desert assassin movie. You know the one where my guitar is a laser gun?”
“Lori.” Mark’s face was a mask of shadows in the dimly lit booth, but his eyes showed genuine regret.
Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1) Page 9