Still, she glared at him. “Having a good time, causing other people pain?”
“I don’t want you to scrub out,” he said, his voice hitching slightly. “But if you’re determined to go, I wanted you to know the truth first.”
“The truth?” Lori couldn’t help the scorn in her laugh. “There’s no such thing in this place. You just want to keep everyone inside and under your thumb, with so many rules . . .” Lori choked on her words. She didn’t even know what she was trying to say.
Mark remained silent and let her push past him.
“I’m sorry, Lori,” Hannah called out from the screen. “I’m sorry they did this to you. But I thought you should know—”
Lori didn’t hear the rest. She burst out of the confessional booth into the curving corridor and nearly collided with Leah and Trent, carrying their full duffel bags.
Registering Lori’s distress, Leah reached out to touch her shoulder.
“Better grab your gear,” Trent said. “They’ve called for an elimination at the main airlock. Everyone’s invited.” He gave a rueful chuckle and continued on his way.
Leah lagged behind. “Are you okay?”
Lori shook her head and brushed away her tears. “I’m fine.” Her voice was tight in her throat, and she knew Leah heard the lie. “I’ll meet you all at the airlock.”
She turned and ran down the curved corridor, not caring that she was going the wrong way.
Mark stood among the eighteen other Mars Ho candidates at the biodome’s primary airlock. They stood in small clusters of three and four, their voices low as they eyed each other. Across from the sealed door, the screen mounted on the curved wall remained dark. As soon as it flickered to life, one of them would be sent packing.
Several yards away, Emily Frill fingered the straps of her Mars Ho duffel bag and readjusted its heft on her narrow shoulder. On the opposite edge of the loose scrum, Govind stood talking to Dina Bishop, another candidate Mark barely knew. But according to April, one of the three—Emily, Govind, or Mark himself—would get cut from the program in just a few minutes. Unless someone volunteered to scrub out.
Mark felt sick to his stomach.
Lori was still nowhere in sight.
Mark crossed his arms over his chest and slowly shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was careful not to let the cameras see his anxiety, even though high-definition screens across the globe would be showing his face in extreme close-up. Had he done the right thing, telling Lori about her ex-boyfriend’s betrayal? The man’s behavior was despicable, and the manipulation by the production team no less contemptible. No one deserved that kind of abuse.
But he’d poked his nose into her personal life and violated her trust. And he’d quite possibly ensured his own expulsion, shunting his own dreams out of reach, all because he didn’t want someone else to make a bad decision under false pretenses.
But it wasn’t just anyone else. It was Lori.
April stepped up beside him and rested her fingers on his wrist. “Nervous?”
Mark nodded.
“Me, too, even though it’s not my neck on the line. Funny, huh?”
Mark tried to give her a smile. She had proven herself an ally by coming to him. She’d revealed her own advantage in the game and enlisted his help, for Lori’s sake. But he wasn’t sure Lori was all that grateful for their assistance.
The monitor brightened with a sudden clattering of the Mars Ho theme music, a grandiose techno-symphony that was oddly horn-heavy. Gary Nelson’s professionally tanned face and manufactured smile filled the screen just as Lori quietly took her place beside Govind and Dina. She met Mark’s eyes briefly before she trained her gaze on the screen, her face a mask of numb resolve.
“Greetings, future Martians!” Gary announced with too much enthusiasm. A collective groan arose from the assembled candidates.
Gary dipped his chin to convey sympathy and gravity, though his cheerfulness didn’t quite dim. “I’m afraid your gathering this evening is not a happy occasion, for this marks the first candidate elimination from the Mars Ho program.” The picture zoomed out to reveal a dozen experts in white coats standing behind the plastic host, their identical clipboards held close to their chests.
Mark had done his homework and could identify each expert on sight. They represented the disciplines of medicine, biochemistry, psychology, ecology, physics, technology, and economics, and the five countries whose resource investments in the Mars Colony Program were the greatest. The twelve stood together in a rigid line, all stern and unsmiling.
“It’s an unpleasant task that our experts have taken on, and their decision hasn’t been an easy one,” Gary continued, his gestures stiff and empty. “But they have narrowed the list down to three candidates who are eligible for elimination.”
Mark leaned against the wall and tried to keep his breath even as a defense against the atomic butterflies rising in his stomach. He glanced at Lori, but her steady countenance gave nothing away. Chances were high that one of them would be passing through the airlock within a matter of minutes.
“Govind Nara.”
Govind jumped awkwardly to attention as Gary announced his name, the color draining from his face.
Gary clasped his hands together in front of his chest. “In the agriculture challenge, you left your grow lights on too strong, and your plants burned up as a result. Mars colonists will need to grow much of their own food to survive, and your mistake could have cost lives. The experts have identified you as a candidate for elimination.”
Govind swallowed hard as he tightened his grip on the straps of his Mars Ho bag. He made no attempt to defend himself, and Mark respected him for it. Dina rubbed Govind’s shoulder in support. Mark noticed Lori’s sideways glance at Govind, and then her deep breath as she looked at the floor. Mark got a sinking feeling that she was about to raise her hand.
“Mark Lauren,” Gary announced. “While your heroics during the airlock challenge distinguished you as a potential colonist who would put the lives of others ahead of his own, your fellow candidates describe you as distant and difficult. Your inability to accept assistance from others during the agriculture challenge left experts wondering about antisocial personality traits.”
Mark hardened the muscles in his jaw and his gut, an instinctive preparation for the coming blow. He wasn’t about to protest the experts’ findings. With his personal and professional life laid bare before he even entered medical isolation, the experts and producers had to know he was under duress. But so was everyone inside the MHCH.
Gary looked directly into the camera as the picture zoomed in on his suddenly somber face. “And lastly, we have—”
“I volunteer. I’m scrubbing out.”
Mark’s heart caught in his throat. Stung by the surge of adrenaline, he was confused when he turned to find Lori looking just as bewildered as Govind and Dina beside her.
“It’s time for me to leave.” Emily Frill raised her hand and stepped forward. “You don’t have to have an elimination after all.”
Emily turned to face her fellow candidates. “I’m sorry, everybody. This is just not what I thought it would be. I’ve reconsidered my priorities.” She swallowed the sob that caught in her throat. “I know you’ll do well. You all deserve to go to Mars.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the screen. Gary nodded, and the lights beside the airlock door changed from red to solid green. There was a whoosh of equalizing pressure and a loud, thudding click as the door unlocked and swung open. The candidates parted, and Emily pulled the airlock door wide and stepped through.
On the screen, Gary launched into some closing remarks. “It is always a sad day to say goodbye to a colleague. The Mars Ho crucible weeds out the chaff, leaving only the best of the best to embark on the dangerous and historic mission of building the first extra-planetary human settlement . . .”
Ignoring the offensive mess of Gary’s mixed metaphor, Mark was still catching his breath when he glance
d again at Lori. She looked absolutely stricken, her face white and her eyes hollow. Meeting his gaze, she nodded blankly and then walked away down the corridor.
7
Lori had been to the fitness room, the kitchen, and the multipurpose room. She’d poked her head into three confessional booths but gave the fourth a miss when she heard the unmistakable sounds of a vigorous make-out session coming from within. She also tried the two remaining men’s bunk rooms, but she still hadn’t found Mark.
As a last resort, she ventured to the dome’s lower-level grow unit. At least she could check on the progress of her plants.
But Mark had beaten her to it. He was alone, kneeling on the ground between his plot and Lori’s, his orange jumpsuit a sharp contrast to the sea of green plants. His lips were moving as he hovered over the plots. Was he talking to the seedlings? He was gentle with them, lifting a young leaf to examine its underside and test springiness. He patted the soil around each plant, gauging the level of irrigation and making comparisons between Lori’s plants and his.
Lori watched from inside the doorway, wondering how such a cold man could be so tender with plants. Then again, why would a prickly pedant put his own future on the line just to make sure she knew the truth about Charlie?
She had been very wrong about Charlie. Maybe she’d misjudged Mark, too.
The heavy door clicked shut behind her, and Mark looked up. Lori walked toward him, conscious of making each movement fluid and casual even though she felt anything but. She took a deep breath and realized the air pressure had been returned to normal.
“I thought I might find you here.” The light tone felt false in her mouth, and the awkward laugh didn’t help. “I mean, my next step would be pulling on a pressure suit and hunting for you outside.”
Mark quirked a smile, but it looked more polite than an expression of genuine amusement. He turned back to the plants. “I wanted to see where I went wrong before.”
Lori wove her way toward him, skirting the garden plots and irrigation apparatus of the other candidates. Govind’s plants had shriveled to blackened husks beneath his too-intense grow lights, which had been mercifully switched off. Probably by Mark. She stepped around the puddles seeping from Emily’s plot, where the irrigation system had flooded her plants and the neighboring plots. Lori guessed Mark had turned off the overflowing water, too.
When she reached him, he had one delicate leaf suspended on his fingertip. He released the plant and gestured toward April’s plot.
“I understand now why you gave her the tips you did,” he said. “Like alternating the pots, to make more room for the adult bush beans and the tomato cages. I wish I could have been in a better frame of mind to see it before.” He rested back on his heels and peeled off his dirty rubber gloves. “I know this challenge is over. But I want to learn, so I can do better for the colony. If I get to go.”
“You almost gave up your place for me.” Lori watched the breath move through his shoulders and back. Even with the ugly fabric, the jumpsuit fit him rather well.
“It wasn’t quite that dramatic. It still might have been Govind or Emily. It seemed the right thing to do.” He examined the settings on each of Lori’s grow lights.
A long silence followed while Lori tried to figure out what she should say to this man who had saved her from herself, and from the machinations of the Mars Ho producers. But it hadn’t just been Mark. She owed an equal debt to April, and even Hannah.
Lori took another step toward Mark, so that she hovered over him as he knelt. “Mark, I just wanted to thank you . . .”
“You know there are cameras in here,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “At least, we have to assume as much. Left over from the gardening challenge. I can’t imagine they’d want to miss anything.”
Lori stiffened as she scanned the walls and low ceiling. Of course the cameras would be on. Mark may have just saved her again, though she wasn’t sure she would say anything different to him if they were truly alone.
Effecting a blithe posture, she rested her hands on her hips and laughed. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to get used to the constant surveillance. When I remember that they’re watching, it almost makes my skin crawl.” She rubbed her arms, then stopped. Every move was being recorded.
“I’ve been told it takes a couple of days before it becomes second-nature.”
“Who told you that? One of the producers?”
“My aunt. She was on one of the old seasons of Survivor. In Vietnam, I think. She said I’d learn pretty quickly where the cameras are—the dorms, for instance—and where they aren’t.”
“The bathrooms.”
“From there it gets adopted into your behavior.” He sighed. “Though I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, either. I don’t think I’d want to.” He looked up and studied her for a moment. “I don’t get the sense that that’s in your nature, either.”
Lori crossed her arms and massaged her shoulders. It was one thing to be reminded the cameras were there, and another to speak openly about them. She didn’t like being laid bare for all the world to see. She was having an even harder time opening up to just one person.
Mark rose to his feet. “Best get used to it, because you’re probably headed to Mars.”
She laughed, more genuinely this time. “You sound so sure. Even after I nearly ruined everything.”
He rested a hand on her elbow and smiled. “You’re going.”
His hand fell back to his side, and Lori took a half-step closer to him. “Why are you so reserved?” She was astonished by her own directness. “You’ve armored yourself against the cameras, and from the beginning you’ve been all about the rules—”
Mark laughed, and she almost stepped back in surprise. She expected him to bristle and turn away. Instead, he was softening.
“You might not believe it, but I’m normally a much more affable fellow.” He glanced up at where she assumed cameras had been placed, and then met her gaze again. He lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “There was some, uh, unpleasantness I had to deal with just prior to the program. You could say I’m still sorting it out.”
Lori nodded as if she understood. But maybe she did. She’d been stewing in the whole Charlie mess as she entered isolation, and then got snared in it again just as she thought she’d worked herself free.
“I should apologize to you,” Mark continued. “For my behavior at the strip search station.”
Lori smiled up at him. “I think it’s called Pre-Entry Screening.”
Mark’s smile mirrored her own. “Yes, well, whatever innocuous name anyone cares to slap over it, I was rude and intrusive, and rather insensitive as well. And I’m sorry. I should have said as much long before now.”
Lori felt the tension melt away as she laughed. “At least someone got to see me in my real underwear one last time, instead of the industrial-grade stuff they have us wearing from now on.”
She drew in what felt like the first free breath she’d taken since entering the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat, and she smiled at the stirring tingle in her solar plexus. Was she flirting with Mark Lauren?
And was Mark Lauren blushing? She saw the pink tint rise in his cheeks as his own smile broadened. He dipped his gaze.
“Well, you looked very nice in your lacy things.”
Before she knew what she was doing, Lori curled her fingers around his wrist and pulled him close. She whispered to him about April’s spreadsheet, and about the comments from the other women in her bunk room when she first arrived. In exchange, he told her some of what had gone on down the hall in the men’s quarters, and Lori quickly realized the departure of Ric Vargas was a blessing.
“Every woman?” she asked. “That was his goal?”
“Apparently so.”
They kept talking, their words spilling over and tangling as Mark and Lori inched closer together. She felt pulled toward him like gravity, then giggled and couldn’t explain the joke. It was so easy, to be drawn into him.
She didn’t want the conversation to end, and now he was teasing her.
“So, Ms. Ridgway, is that why you’ve sought me out in the grow unit? Come to run an experiment of your own? Will you sample the merchandise and report back?”
Lori’s laughter was free and light, and she could have kissed him for it. Instead, she took a breath and looked him dead in the eye. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not playing that kind of game.”
The smile fell away from Mark’s face as he grasped her by her shoulders. “What kind of game are you playing, then?”
Before she could answer, Mark pulled her against his chest, his lips finding hers while she was still puzzling over his question. After days of self-conscious bewilderment, his kiss was like oxygen and she surrendered to his embrace. Her lips parted beneath his as her hands found his biceps and then his strong shoulders. She felt his hand slide up the back of her neck and into her hair as he kissed her, long and deep.
The tiniest moan escaped her as she pressed her body against his, but then just as suddenly as he began, Mark released her. His face was a breath’s distance from her own as his gaze traveled over her face, lingered at her mouth, and settled again on her eyes.
“Because I’m not playing any game at all,” he said.
8
They were in the grass then, lying together on an expanse of green that Lori hadn’t noticed before in the grow unit, out of range of the cameras and other prying eyes. It was an easy thing, to waltz their way from uneasy compatriots to becoming lovers. All thoughts of Charlie evaporated from Lori’s mind as Mark curled his fingers in her hair and pulled her close again to press his lips against hers. She breathed in the earthy scent of him as she traced the strong line of his jaw, her fingers catching on his sharp stubble.
They laughed as they shrugged off the hideous orange jumpsuits and Lori got her first up-close look at the men’s version of the program’s branded underwear.
Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1) Page 10