by K. A. Gandy
“Please do.”
“All is not as it seems with the New Life Program. You know I received a match, and that she’s exceptional.” He pauses, and his father nods confirmation. “It’s like we were made for each other. Well, not everyone was so lucky with their match. One of Sadie’s friends, Josephine, is a very strong-willed girl, and got matched with a man she despised. She complained at one of the gatherings and, rather than address her concerns, they dragged her off like cavemen. We were told she was sedated for her safety, but it was like she vanished into thin air.”
“That doesn’t make any sense—every girl is meant to be given a backup match, in case the first is unacceptable to them. A veto option was built into the program at its inception. It’s inhumane to be forced into a marriage with someone you hate.”
Patrick nods. “You’re right, it was. But the latest round of emergency provisions making the program mandatory simultaneously required marriage to the highest eligibility man, if there was only one.”
“No, that can’t be right, son. I’d never sign off on that.”
“I believe you, but I’m telling you it’s true. I’ll send you a copy of the document.”
“Please do, we must correct that at once.” He runs an agitated hand through his hair. “What does this have to do with your kidnapping? I fail to see the connection.”
“Ahh . . . it goes back to Josephine.”
“It’s always about a strong-willed woman, in my experience.” The king sighs in resignation.
“After she was pulled from the meeting, it was like she vanished into thin air. Sadie asked to visit her, but was stonewalled. Eventually, they told us they moved her to another facility.”
“Well, perhaps her secondary match was located in another tri-state? I could look into it for you.”
“No need, we already found her. Before I explain, I need to show you something.” Patrick pulls a rolled piece of paper from his back pocket. “Do you recognize this?” He hands his father the copy of the document authorizing the building commission for the secret research facilities.
“How the devil did you get your hands on this?” he asks sternly. “This is classified.” He scans it briefly before looking back at Patrick.
“So, you know what it is?”
“Of course I know what it is, but you shouldn’t. Not yet, anyways. Eventually you’ll go through an entire transition plan once you’re settled and ready to begin your training.”
Patrick’s face tightens in disbelief, but he presses on. “Can you tell me what it is now, please?”
“Well, the cat’s out of the bag, I suppose. As you probably recall, the honeymoon resorts were funded as a result of a single large donor’s final bequest. However, the trust is still managed by a legal group, and the key requirement of that trust is that any and all negative environmental impact caused as a result of the resorts must be offset. If we should fail to comply, we will revert control of the properties to the trust, and the current legal heirs of the beneficiary. To prevent that happening, next to every single resort, an Environmental Impact Center was built. They are fully staffed with scientists, monitoring equipment, and anything those scientists determine is needed to protect the surrounding environment based on their readings. The budget is absolutely ludicrous, but the cost to replace those centers would be higher, so we abide by the plan.”
Patrick’s shoulders sag with relief. “They’re supposed to be monitoring the environment? That’s it, you’re sure?”
Patrick’s father levels him with a steady gaze. “Of course, son. I signed this as part of a package of Environmental Impact guarantees provided by the donor’s trust, years ago. This was the hook that came with all the flashy bait. Although at this point I’m more concerned about how you were able to get your hands on it, and if there’s a leak in my office, or the trustee’s office.”
“We’ve got bigger problems, Dad.”
“There are always problems in this line of business, son, you’ll learn that soon enough. Now, again, I beg you, tell me what the EICs have to do with your disappearance? And is your lovely bride okay?”
“Sadie’s fine for now, Dad. But, those are not EICs. They may have sold them to you that way, but that’s not what they’ve been used for. They’re essentially medical research detention facilities. Here, I don’t have all of the footage yet, but this was taken inside of one in the past week.”
He pulls a small device from a cargo pocket and passes it to his father. The sound of boots running plays over our speakers, and even though I can’t see the screen, the look on the king’s face says it all when the women are displayed.
Horror washes across his face, and in that instant, I know that he’s innocent. “Good, holy God. Are these women ill? Why wasn’t I told? What’s the meaning of this?!” His voice rises at the end.
Patrick’s voice remains calm. “Dad, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Those facilities you signed off on—they aren’t being used as intended. Sadie’s friend Josephine was taken from a normal meeting at the NLC for ‘acting out,’ and instead of being taken to a veto match, she was drugged, and disappeared. With the help of a friend, we followed her trail from Georada to Mairmont, and we chose it for our honeymoon in hopes of finding her there happy and well. Instead, she was nowhere. We searched for weeks and eventually found a facility in the woods, a short distance from the main resort buildings. Inside, we found women sedated, pregnant, and strapped to beds. Josephine wasn’t given a veto match, she was sedated, and inseminated. She’s still there, as far as I know. We weren’t able to get her out because we didn’t know what she’d been drugged with, or what would happen to all of the other women once the people behind this knew they’d been discovered.”
His father’s face pales. “Who could do such a thing? It’s abominable.” He looks shaken, and after a moment sees a bench on the far wall, walks to it, and sits down heavily. “Let me guess, you’re here today because you think I authorized this travesty?”
“No, but I had to know for certain. This has to be stopped.”
“Immediately,” his father agrees.
“I’m glad you think so. We need your help with something. We raided another center this week, and obtained that footage. We were able to rescue the four women inside, before destroying the building. However, one of them is in critical condition, and the doctors available to us haven’t been able to wake her. Do you have a physician you trust who might be able to help her?”
“I will see to it immediately. Of course, that means you’ll have to tell me where you are.”
Patrick grimaces. “I can’t. That’s one of the conditions of our being allowed to stay. However, we’re working with Atlas’s people to procure and stock a safe house in western Colkanska, where we could safely bring her and meet your specialists. Do you think you could make that work?”
“I’ll make it work if I have to walk into our chief of surgery’s office and convince him myself,” he vows in a hard tone.
“Hopefully he’ll be happy to do a favor for the king,” Patrick says wryly.
Patrick’s father shakes his head sadly before answering, “I never wanted to be king, son. And I never wanted you to be forced into a life you don’t want. Yet here we are. And I’m afraid the people need us even more than I knew.” He glances back down at the now-lifeless video player in his hands, looking sick at the memory.
“There’s more to do than help this one woman, son, if half of what you’ve said is true, there are many more than need to be saved. What can I do to aid you?”
“Nothing yet. You can’t tell a soul about this, until we find out who’s behind it, and who the leak is. If you signed this years ago, and the trust is involved, this goes deeper than even we expected. We have to root out the source, or they’ll just continue to work underground. We’ll have the safe house ready in forty-eight hours.”
“I’ll have your doctor there, but I won’t just sit on my hands, Patrick. This injustice must be dealt wi
th swiftly,” his father argues.
“I agree, Dad, and we’re working as hard as we can to stop this. I’ve got the best people in the world on it as we speak.”
His father gets back to his feet and passes the device back to Patrick. “I don’t say it enough, but I’m proud of you son. It took courage to confront me, but then, you’ve always been courageous when it comes to living your own life. You have one week before I step in. Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t. Thanks, Dad.” They embrace again, and a single tear escapes and rolls down my cheek. I quickly swipe it away, and realize I’d been holding my breath as I watched their exchange.
Patrick’s face on the camera looks mournful as he watches the king exit the building and climb back into the waiting hover car, which zips away as soon as he shuts the door. With his back ramrod straight, he walks to the exit himself.
“It’s time for the next phase, team,” is all he says, and the staunch determination in the set of his jaw makes me proud to call him mine.
Drawing Board
From our kitchen back in the Resistance compound, I hear the men’s voices as they argue over—I mean, discuss—what our next steps should be. With the king’s innocence proven—at least to us, if no one else, yet—we’re back to square one on who’s behind it all. The trust and current heirs are a good lead, but Glitch is pulled between rebuilding the video footage we need as our foundational proof, and trying to simultaneously track down this mysterious trust, and who the beneficiary is. Meanwhile, Helena and crew are breathing down our necks for repaired footage, and information on the meeting with the king, which Patrick has refused to provide.
I stir the vegetables in our borrowed skillet, mulling it over in my mind. The person orchestrating this has to be close to the king, but not in the ultimate position of power they crave. The next possible layer of people would be the queen, assistants, and office personnel, and then his fellow politicians. But my mind keeps fixating on the queen for some reason. She’s been so cold in the few interactions I’ve witnessed. Something about her reminds me of Helena, frankly.
When news of our marriage leaked, she knew. When we were pushed to do that awful interview, she knew. It could be personal bias, or she could be involved. I’ll have to ask Patrick later.
“Dinner’s ready!” I yell, suddenly too tired to walk all the way to the living room if I don’t have to. This baby is sucking the energy out of me at a rapid pace these days, but the nausea has mostly passed, which is nice. Nell volunteered to cook, but so far she’s only managed to serve us a charred roast, so I’ve been giving her cooking lessons in our spare time. Her aunt and uncle never much cared what the kids ate, so most of her childhood with her cousin was spent eating out of graham cracker boxes and fruit packets when available. I will throttle those useless people if I ever get my hands on them.
Nell bustles in first, smile wide. “It smells delicious, Sadie. She grabs a plate from the stack on the counter, and starts spooning food out while I settle in at the island to rest. “Did you four make any headway? It sounded heated in there.”
“Not heated,” Patrick says mildly as he walks in next. “Just trying to work out the best way forward. Glitch has almost got the footage fully restored, but we’re not going to share that tidbit yet. Until we know who’s behind this, we can’t trust anyone. The only two leads we have are the mystery trust, and that the person has access to my father.”
“Which is why we landed on setting a trap and seeing who falls into it,” Atlas states from his place behind Nell at the stove.
“A trap? What kind of trap?”
He shrugs. “Probably information. Maybe a short clip of the footage makes its way onto the king’s desk, and we offer the rest in exchange for money. We’d be betting that whoever’s stealing information finds it, but it’s all we’ve got until Glitch cracks the trust. Plus, the trust could be legitimate, and just another tool used by this mole, whoever that may be.”
The possibilities make my head hurt. “Well, that sounds like a good plan. But what if they don’t want the footage? They can take new footage of the facilities any time they want.”
“Well, we were discussing a second option that they might find more enticing—” Atlas begins.
“But it’s not an option,” Patrick growls.
I narrow my eyes at the two of them. This must have been what they were fighting about. “What is it?”
“It doesn’t matter, because it’s not on the table,” Patrick insists, accepting a plate from Nell.
“Would you two knock it off? It’s you, Sadie,” Nell says with a bored tone. “Atlas thinks that if we pretend you’re blackmailing the king, and you’ll be the one to bring the footage, that they’ll risk coming to pick you up.”
I groan. “Seriously? I am so sick of all of this.” I drop my head into my hands and allow myself a momentary pity party. “I’m just one person. I’m not a polymorph, a princess, a genetic prize, a broodmare, or a royal. I’m me. Sadie Ann Taylor Royce. That’s it. That’s all I want—to be normal. And I want french fries.”
Patrick sets the plate of food in front of me, and slides both of his arms around my waist. Even sitting at the counter, he’s tall enough that I fit beneath his chin, and I tuck myself into his chest. “I hate to break it to you, but you’ve never been normal.” He drops a little kiss on the top of my hair, and I ignore his words in favor of listening to his steady, calm heartbeat. “You've been extraordinary from the start. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you in that hallway at the NLC. Before I knew who you were, or about your stellar genes.” He drops another kiss. “You’ve always been someone special to me. Which is why you’re not doing this.”
I sit back and narrow my eyes at him accusingly. “You’re trying to sweet talk me into sitting this out, aren’t you?”
“Not at all. I’m flat-out saying no. It doesn’t have to be you this time. You’re pregnant, and exhausted. Why risk it if we don’t have to?” His tone brooks no argument, but I’m not backing down.
“Well, someone has to go, do they not? I assume you’re not going to give our footage to somebody in the Resistance to possibly spread around or hand it off to the media to start a smear campaign which would put the women at risk.”
“No, of course not,” he agrees.
“And you all agreed after talking it through that me going is the absolute highest likelihood that the person we’re after is going to show up?”
He refuses to answer, which means yes. I turn to glance at Atlas. “I’ll do it.”
Rather than answer me, he slides his gaze over to Patrick’s and back. “I’ll let you two talk it over.” He takes a plate from Nell, dropping a kiss on her waiting lips in the process, and exits the kitchen. Glitch hurries to do the same, shooting me a sympathetic look over his shoulder as he leaves.
Nell is the last one—she grabs a plate for herself, and a second one, which she slides in front of the seat next to me for Patrick. “Don’t kill each other. Remember, you like each other most of the time.”
I snort, and Patrick shakes his head at her as she sashays out of the room.
“Sadie, please, please don’t insist on doing this. I understood the last mission because we all had to go. But, I couldn’t bear it if you did this and I lost you and the baby. Let Atlas do it. Heck, let me do it!”
My lips press into a thin, annoyed line. “It’s no better for me to lose you, or Nell to lose Atlas, Patrick. One of us is going to be taking the risk. Not to mention, I don’t think anyone will believe you want to blackmail your dad. Isn’t it well known that you two get along well? I’m just the hick from Georada who got a golden meal ticket and tried to cash it in early. Plus, of the four of us, I’m the only one with the genes they want bad enough to take the risk for.”
He runs a hand through his hair in frustration, dinner plate ignored. “One, you are not a hick. Two, you’re probably right that it can’t be me.”
“I was just making a point. The whole wo
rld sees me as this interloper who lucked out and won the genetic lottery to get matched with the prince. Atlas is the head of an intercontinental security firm, and nobody knows who Nell is—at all—so she would have no motive to try to blackmail the king. It has to be me, Patrick. Honestly, tell me you can see that?”
“You’re wrong—it could be me,” Glitch says from the doorway, and I startle. I hadn’t even heard him come back in. “I can claim to have hacked the footage, and I know Patrick well enough from working with him to have convinced him into a trap and kidnapped you both. They can look me up in their system and see we worked together for years. Went on leave together. It fits. Maybe it’s enough if they think I have you.”
“Glitch, you don’t have to do that,” I protest.
He waves me off, determination in his eyes. “Neither do you. I’m always the one at the back of the pack, but I can do this. Please, trust that I can do this.”
Patrick doesn’t say a word, just stares at me, putting the decision on my shoulders. I fidget with the end of my braid, thinking over what he’s said. “That’s very brave of you, Glitch. But I don’t think it’s enough.” His shoulders sag, but I keep talking, “I think you’ll need proof that you’ve kidnapped us.” He straightens in surprise. “I think I’ll need a visit to the medical center . . .”
✽✽✽
That night, I lie in bed staring at the ceiling as Patrick finished his shower. One hand on my belly, one hand under my pillow. He opens the door with one towel tied around his waist and drying his hair with another. Satisfied with his hair, he hangs that towel over the doorknob, and comes to lay on his side of the bed. “Penny for your thoughts?”
I’m quiet for a long moment, trying to find a way to express what I’m feeling. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful.”
He chuckles. “Sadie, just tell me. Whatever it is, good or bad.” He rolls to his side and props himself on his elbow to get a better look at my face. It’s an impressive display of muscle, and I get distracted for a moment, just taking him in.