the order yourself, you might recall that I’m prohibited from any contact with the outside world while aboard your ship.” By now my voice pitched to a tone even
I found unpleasant.
“Why do I have the distinct feeling we’re fighting?” he asked heatedly.
“That’s the last thing in the world I want to do with you, Elyse Morgan.”
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“We’re not fighting,” I said, stunned that he’d used my full name. “It’s just
that— Well, the idea is more disturbing than I can really say. What if—what if
you found someone else—?” I hoped he could discern in my question what I
couldn’t put into words.
“That would cause a lot of trouble.”
“So, if you found someone you wanted to be with—” But I couldn’t quite
finish it.
“Then she would have to understand,” he said quietly.
“Understand? Understand that she would never be anything more than your
mistress? Than an affair? The other woman?”
His continued silence answered my questions.
“Well, good luck with that.” I snorted in disgust. “I mean, I know there are
plenty of women out there who would, Nicoli, but…” I shook my head, knowing
the inky black hid my effort.
“But you aren’t one of them,” he finished, surprising me.
It wasn’t a question. I tried to hear something in the way he said it.
Disappointment? Anger? Amusement? No, none of those. No emotion at all.
Either he deliberately masked his feelings about this fact, or he simply felt none for it.
“Absolutely not.” I tried to keep my voice as neutral as his. “Not if you’re
engaged—no matter the circumstances surrounding that engagement. And not if
you’re married. You, or anyone else.”
“Anyone else? Who else are we talking about here?” His tone slipped from
impartial to almost mad.
“No one. Or everyone. Ugh! Not just you. I’m talking about anyone. I didn’t
want to offend you,” I stammered. “What I mean is, it’s nothing personal.”
“Let me be sure I understand. I am engaged to a complete stranger—”
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“You said you met her. She’d be an acquaintance then, wouldn’t she?”
“Fine. I’m engaged to an acquaintance. A business acquaintance. Because of this engagement—this business transaction—you would consider it immoral for me to pursue anyone, or to allow myself to be pursued.”
“Because you are engaged to a person, I would consider it immoral. Marriage is not a business transaction. It’s really not that difficult a concept to grasp.”
“So you’re saying that…if I were to pursue, say… you, for instance…” he said huskily.
“Then you must like the idea of rejection,” I told him without hesitation and
with more confidence than I felt. My stomach fluttered at the surreal turn in
conversation. In a hundred years, I would never have imagined myself having
this discussion with Nicoli Marek. My cheeks burned with a heat more
magnified than the sun.
“Because of my engagement, you’re completely impervious to me?” he asked, his voice filled with mischief concentrate.
“Yes. Completely.” Also, I’m a ninja spy.
“Hmm. This sounds very much like a challenge, Dr. Morgan.”
Oh good grief. Of all the misguided… “Only you would think so,” I accused.
“You think the simple act of warming up on the virtual jogger is a challenge to
race.”
He snickered into the darkness.
“It’s not funny,” I muttered.
“I accept your challenge,” he said pleasantly.
“It is not a challenge!” I yelled louder than was really necessary in such close quarters. I crossed my arms and slumped in the seat. The man was beyond
infuriating.
“I can hear you pouting, you know.”
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“I can hear you smirking.” I hoped he couldn’t hear me biting my lip.
He chuckled. “You don’t need to be so nervous, Elyse, love. I’ve already
promised the safe passage of your virtue on our little outing, remember?”
“Yes, well, we both know how well you keep up your end of verbal
agreements, Nicoli Marek. Stop laughing.”
I could hear him smile into the darkness. “There’s no need to worry
unnecessarily about it this evening, love. You have all week at the beach house to devise ways to keep me at bay, remember?”
I froze. I’d be at his complete mercy for a solid week. No witnesses, no cadet-
constructed grapevine to force propriety onto him. And Dr. Folsom would be
there to throw us together at every waking moment. Do not let her out of your sight, Ralph had told him. I was in heaps and heaps of trouble.
“Elyse? Shall I change the subject? Let’s see… Have you said your goodbyes
yet?”
I welcomed this—sorely disguised—distraction. He was right—there’d be
plenty of time to prepare an escape plan. Six hours separated me from our
departure. I wouldn’t squander them with sleep.
“My goodbyes?”
“Yes, to your little cadet friend. What is her name? Ivory?”
I giggled, relaxing. “Ebony. Yes, I spoke with her this morning before she
left. I wished her well.”
The furlough wasn’t so much a rest as it was a stop to exchange trained
cadets for some green ones. Before Ebony’s transfer, we exchanged our best
wishes in the transport halls. Stanley had followed closely behind her,
exaggerating his salute to me as he entered the transport room. Neither had
questioned my orders to stay aboard the Bellator. By now, all the cadets would have been deployed.
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“What about that redheaded one?” he asked, wary.
“Liz? She is not my friend.”
“Good. I swear that girl’s an undercover reporter,” he blurted.
I laughed outright. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“I’m certain she was Lt. Sheldon’s informant. The one who told her that
fantastic story about your attacking Frank.”
“Oh! Speaking of Lt. Sheldon and fantastic stories—”
“I’d rather not.”
“No, Nicoli. I want an answer. I’ve given you far and away more answers
tonight than you really deserved. She’s the one who spread those awful rumors
about you and me.”
“It was her. That’s why I’ve had her transferred from the ship. She won’t be
returning after the furlough.”
“Oh,” I said, unable to think of anything more appropriate to say. “Will you
miss—?”
The pod rocked violently, and I almost climbed onto his lap in terror.
He chuckled softly, gently unwound my arms from his neck and placed
them into my own lap. “You’ll have to do better than that, love. That could
literally be considered throwing yourself at me. Another move like that, and my
promise about your virtue might not stick.”
“Wh-what was that?” I spluttered. Something had just happened to this
transport pod. Something big.
The lights outside the cabin flipped on. The most enormous eye I’d ever seen
stared into the pod, like a giant pee
ring into a keyhole—and we were the
keyhole. I stifled the urge to climb into the captain’s lap, to climb into the
backseat, to climb anywhere. But the yellow iris would find me on his lap, in the backseat, anywhere. The pupil alone was as big as my head.
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“Is—is that—a giant—?”
“Squid? Yes. It’s what I brought you here to see. Dr. Folsom thought you
might enjoy this little secret of ours.”
“Secret?” I squeaked.
“Yes. They’re supposed to be extinct, the last one dying in captivity in 2024.
We found this one in the area last year, and when our tracking devices picked it
up again this afternoon, she asked me to take you to see it. We haven’t
documented it officially. We’ve placed a request to the UOC for a marine
biologist to come out here to inspect it. We want to make sure it’s not a
completely different species.”
“Are they mean?”
“All squids are mean, in general. But this particular one seems to be curious.
Sometimes he’s not very nice and rocks the pod, or attacks it with his beak.”
“It doesn’t crack the pod?” I remembered reading that squids had sharp,
birdlike beaks.
“No. I told you, this isn’t a recreational boat, Elyse.”
For that I was—again—thankful. “How big is he?” I asked, unable to look
away from its intrusive glare.
“We haven’t been able to officially measure him, like I said, but we believe
he’s about one hundred sixty feet. His eye alone is three and a half feet in
circumference. If our estimates are correct, he would be the largest documented
squid in history.”
“You’re not supposed to be telling me this,” I guessed.
“Nope. I told you another secret. That one’s going to cost you.” He laughed.
“I don’t want to play this game anymore.” I crossed my arms.
“We don’t have to play any games, if you don’t want to,” he murmured in
my ear. “You could just give in.”
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I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck and scooted away from him, even
before the goose bumps showed up. He chuckled softly but didn’t pursue.
I licked lips gone dry and concentrated on the glass shield over us. Large
suction cups covered it, each one containing a serrated, hooklike appendage that
made eerie scraping sounds on the glass.
“He wants to eat us,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “But he’ll be disappointed, as he always is. He’ll lose
interest soon and leave.”
“Why hasn’t he flipped us over yet? He seems big enough to at least do
that.”
“I’ve anchored us into the sea floor. The pod injects long metal rods into the
ground, and when they’ve reached an appropriate depth, they span out into an
umbrellalike shape, making it virtually impossible for us to be uprooted.”
The physics of the explanation were sound, and I began to relax, easily
entertained by this underwater spectacle. The monster disappeared for a while
but returned twice, each time testing its beak and suckers against the anchored
sturdiness of the pod, trying to crack us open as if we were a giant, delectable
shellfish. We both seemed to enjoy the silence, and despite Nicoli’s recently
acquired mission, I felt at ease with him in the confines of the pod.
After it was apparent the huge eye would not return a third time, Nicoli said,
“Let’s head home.”
He retracted the rods, and the pod made a gradual ascension from the ocean
floor. The fireworks started anew, impressing me all over again. The rest of the
ride home was quiet, and I took the opportunity to review the evening’s
revelations.
After the water drained from the transport room, he lifted me out of the pod.
I took care not to look at him as I found my footing and stepped away from him.
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“I’ll have to bid you a good evening from here, Dr. Morgan. I have a few
things to do in the transport hall before we depart in the morning.”
“Good night, then,” I said, and showed myself out of the room. I walked
down the hall in a trance, the evening mulling over and over in my mind.
Nicoli was engaged. He was engaged to a stranger whom he did not love. He
was engaged to a stranger whom he did not love in order to strengthen his
father’s political alliances. An idea which I detested. And because I detested it so fiercely, I had inadvertently challenged the world’s most irresistible man to a match of resistance.
Also, I had accidentally seduced one Lt. Frank Horan.
In summary, I concluded my intelligence to be deficient, at best. And by the
end of the week, I’d wager my sanity would be too.
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Chapter Ten
I couldn’t sleep. May not ever sleep again, in fact. After almost two hours of
not even bothering to toss and turn, I threw off the covers, wrapped them around
my shoulders and headed to the elevator. I felt my drab pajamas were adequate
attire for reading in the lab. Even with a full crew, the lateness of the hour—or earliness of the morning—negated any chance of running into anyone. Still, the
ship felt empty without its cadets, the halls carrying only an echo of the activity here just hours before.
I didn’t bother turning on the lights in the lab. The light from my computer
illuminated a small portion of the room, and I folded myself into the chair,
burrowing into the covers. I picked up where I’d left off combing through the
onslaught of information, looking for survivors. I felt the hope being sucked
from me as I read experiment after experiment, test after test. Despair pawed at
me with each entry reporting another failure.
I found hospital records where the patients’ names had been omitted. Each
case number represented a flesh-and-blood person who’d gone through the
motions of a normal day just four days before they had died. Case Number 693
could have been named Mary. She could have had children. They could have
been Case Numbers 694 and 695. She might have given them a hard time about
brushing their teeth four days before their little bodies gave in.
I shivered, even in the warmth of the blankets.
“What are you doing? Why did you leave your room?” a rough, masculine
voice called from the door.
Anna Scarlett
I looked up to see Nicoli standing in the doorway, also in his pajama pants,
but shirtless and barefoot. He leaned against the threshold, black hair tousled, his arms crossed, regarding me with what appeared to be irritation. He’d been
sleeping. Soundly.
And then it occurred to me why he was there. Why he was unfailingly
everywhere I went on this ship. “Ah, I see. You’re tracking me somehow.
Wherever I go.”
He didn’t answer. He strode in the door and ran his fingers through his
upset hair. I tried not to find it endearing. He pulled a chair up, propped his
bare, behemoth feet on the desk next to my computer and leaned back, stretching
his muscled arms behind his head.
“Well,” I continued, “I don’t think you’ve had the opportunity to implant a device inside my body, but my clothes could definitely sustain a—”
He rolled his eyes. “Any time you enter or exit a doorway, your eyes are
scanned, giving me your location.”
“So, if I close my eyes when I leave…?”
“Be serious.”
I tried not to giggle. I knew he was irritable when he first woke up. “And
you’re tracking me because…?”
“Because I am responsible for you while you are on my ship.” Again, a
rolling of the eyes. “So? Why are we awake right now? Where’s the fire?”
“Are you so sure that you’re awake, Nicoli? Because if you were fully awake,
you would know better than to use that tone with me.”
He sighed dramatically. And then, a little more politely, “My apologies,
Doctor. I suppose I should just be thankful that you don’t sleepwalk.”
I made a mental note to start sleepwalking as soon as we returned to the ship
in a week. “So. That’s how you always know when I’m going to the gym.”
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He grinned slightly. It was the best he could do in his state of slumber. “How
long are we staying here?” he asked groggily.
“Why do you have to stay? You can see that I’m perfectly fine. I’m just going
through these files.”
He leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes. “Take all the time you need,
Doc.” He yawned. “Just wake me up when you leave.”
“Why do you have to stay? Nicoli? Nicoli?”
“Huh.” He didn’t open his eyes.
“Nothing.” I didn’t figure he was hurting anything, unconscious and all. I
did, though, cover him up with one of my blankets to keep from gawking at him
in his state of undress.
I tore my mesmerized stare from the sleeping anomaly beside me and started
to skim through the hospital records again. Hospital after hospital, case after
case. I began to doubt the usefulness of requesting the files after all—until I came across a journal entry that just shouldn’t have been there. I recognized the
stationery-type page as soon as I saw it. It belonged to the French doctor who’d
contracted the virus, along with his family. The handwriting was not the
Frenchman’s, but I did recognize the name Belle in the entry.
I glanced at Nicoli, biting my lip in indecision. I didn’t want to wake him but
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