by Claire Kent
She was a full human being with a soul and a free will, and she was going to use it to make the decisions she wanted to make in her life.
“What’s the matter?” Jenelle asked, evidently seeing something on Talia’s face.
Talia shook her head fiercely. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Jenelle clearly didn’t believe her. “Don’t do anything stupid, Talia. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. One man isn’t worth it. He’s just not worth it.”
Talia stood up and met her friend’s eyes. “It’s not about him.”
For a long stretch of time, Jenelle didn’t do anything. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move a muscle.
Then she finally gave a very slight nod.
As if she understood.
With a rush of feeling, Talia stepped over to take Jenelle’s hand. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”
Jenelle nodded again, something like loss in her eyes.
Talia turned to leave. She couldn’t waste any more time, now that she’d made her decision.
She extended her arm as she stepped away until her hand finally slipped out of Jenelle’s grasp.
Then she hurried.
Down the hall. Through the common room. Out to the main corridors. To the guest wing. To Desh’s room.
She buzzed and kept buzzing until the doors slid open.
Desh was coming out of the bathroom, looking sleek and handsome and determined in formal attire.
He was going to the banquet tonight.
He was almost on his way.
“Talia,” he said, his blue eyes widening. “What are you doing—”
“You need to get out of here. You need to leave right away!”
“What are you talking about? I’m going—”
“You can’t go to the banquet. Marshall suspects you. He said he was going to check up on you. He’ll find out who you are and whatever you’re hiding, and he’ll arrest you. He’ll catch you, Desh!”
He took in her urgent flurry of words, and then his expression settled into that doomed one she’d seen on his face more than once. “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “It will be too late then.”
“What? What? Desh, please!”
“You shouldn’t be here. I know what I’m doing.”
She grabbed for him, clutching at the front of his jacket. “Desh, please just get out of here.”
“Talia, I can’t. I told you. I have something to do that’s more important.” Despite his words, his eyes were lost and aching.
Heartbreaking.
“But I’m telling you that you’re not going to be able to do whatever it is you want to do. Marshall isn’t going to let you.”
“He won’t be able to stop me. I just need to make it to the banquet tonight.”
She dropped her hands, growing still as she processed his words. “What happens at the banquet?”
“I’m finally in the same room as the High Director.”
“But what does that have to do—”
“It’s what I’m here for. I can finally take off my mask.”
He was scaring her now, sounding cold, ruthless. “Will he… will he recognize you?”
“Oh yes,” Desh breathed.
“But then he’ll know you’re a criminal! The fake record won’t mean anything. You’ll get arrested and not be able to do anything.”
“All I need is a few seconds.” He cleared his throat, suddenly looking more like himself. “Talia, please, you need to leave. You’re putting yourself in danger by being here, and it’s making it harder for me to do what I need to do. I can’t let you tempt me to be… soft.”
“Soft?” Her mind was finally putting the pieces together. She had all the pieces she needed now. “Desh, what are you planning to do? You think you’re going to… going to… kill him?”
Desh didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
She saw the answer on his face.
She almost choked. “You came here to kill the High Director?”
“Yes,” he said very softly, no expression at all on his face. “Somebody has to. He has to answer for everything he’s done.”
“That was your plan all along? It’s some sort of rebellion you’re part of?”
He shook his head and licked his lips before he answered. “It’s no rebellion. It’s only me. It’s just… an answer.”
“But it’s a terrible answer! They’ll kill you! They’ll kill you, Desh!”
Very slowly he turned his eyes to meet hers. “Some things are more important. This is my answer.”
The words nearly knocked her down.
Desh added, very softly, “My life was over a long time ago.”
That brought her back. She nearly snapped her teeth as she bit out, “You idiot! You’re still trying to punish yourself, to suffer because you think you don’t deserve to be happy.”
“I can’t be happy. I can’t. Not in a world that’s gone so wrong. I need to answer it.”
She understood him. She believed him. But she also knew something else. “Then answer it! Answer it for real! Not like this. What exactly do you think this is going to accomplish? Even if you do manage to kill him, nothing will change. It will all be for nothing. And you know it. You know it! This isn’t a mission. It isn’t a real answer. It’s a suicide. It’s a suicide that you’ve been drawing out for years now.”
His expression flickered just slightly.
She sucked in a sharp breath. “You know it. You already know it. You’re not a heartless assassin, Desh. You’re not like that. You’re—”
“I’m not weak,” he cut in with a biting tone.
She reached out to take his face in her hands. “Of course you’re not weak. You’re so strong. But it’s your heart that’s the strongest thing. You’re going to get to that banquet and stand before the High Director, and you’re not going to be able to do it. No matter how much you want to, no matter how much you hate him, you’re never going to be able to kill a man in cold blood. You know it. And you know you’re going to die in the process. All to prove what? Prove that you’re not weak? Prove that someone needs to do something to fix things?”
She was almost crying again, but she was too filled with anger and feeling and outrage to do so. The words kept pouring out. “So then fix things. Fix things for real. Do something that means something instead of throwing your life away on a suicide mission that won’t accomplish anything.”
Desh’s expression was flickering even more, and she knew he was hearing her. The cold hardness she’d sensed in him the moment before was softening into the man he really was. “Talia, sweetheart, there’s nothing else I can do,” he murmured hoarsely.
“Yes, there is. There is! If you’re brave enough to do the harder thing. All those stories I read about worlds being made better, all of them start in exactly the same way. One person decides to do what’s right instead of what’s easy. One person throws off the shackles of fate and makes a different decision. One person goes against the current of the rest of the world and changes the direction of the tide. Why can’t that person be you? If you go to that banquet tonight, you won’t be doing what’s brave, what’s strong. You’ll be submitting to fate, to everything that’s wrong in the world. You’re better than that. You’re stronger than that, Desh. You’ve always felt this calling to answer what’s wrong in the world. I think you’ve felt that for a reason.” She paused when she ran out of breath and then added hoarsely, “So why can’t the one person who changes everything be you?”
His face twisted with emotion, and his eyes were glimmering with something that looked like tears. He gave her a poignant smile. “Because it’s too late.”
She made a little sob. “No, it’s not, Desh! Why do you keep believing that?”
He released a soft huff of amusement. “That’s not what I mean, sweetheart. I mean someone has already done what’s right in the face of all that’s wrong. Someone has already taken the first step to change everything. An
d that person is you.”
She sobbed for real then, her hands coming up to cover her face briefly. When she lowered them, Desh was smiling at her.
Desh.
Her Desh.
The real man.
Not the hardened warrior he’d tried to be for so long.
“So what will you do?” she asked, a rush of excitement filling her like nothing she’d ever experienced before. “You need to get out of here right away.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She jerked in surprise. “But you said we… we didn’t have a future.”
“I said that because I didn’t believe I had a future. If I do something else, if I don’t… do what I planned, then I don’t want to do it without you.”
“So you…” She was almost strangling on a different kind of tension in her throat. “So you want me to come with you?”
He reached out for her hand. “I told you I loved you. Didn’t you understand what that means?”
She swayed on her feet, opening her mouth to answer, to try to express everything she was feeling.
But she didn’t have the chance.
The doors to Desh’s room slid open without warning, and two guards stood in the hall outside them.
Two guards.
And Marshall.
Talia’s vision whited out in fear.
Marshall’s face reflected shock when he saw Talia in Desh’s room. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “He’s a criminal. I told you I was— Are you helping him?” He sounded angry, horrified.
Talia tried to make herself answer, tried to think of any sort of excuse or justification for her presence here.
There was none.
She was guilty, and Marshall would know it now.
Just on the verge of finding freedom for the first time in her life, she was going to be arrested and convicted of aiding and abetting a criminal.
This was the Coalition.
Her sentence would be just as harsh as Desh’s was.
Desh had moved closer to her, and his arm had gone around her. She gasped when she felt something pressing into her back.
It was a weapon.
She couldn’t see what kind, but it was sharp. A knife or something like it.
“You think a whore would have helped me willingly?” Desh asked in that nasty voice that wasn’t at all like him. “She didn’t have a choice. Just like you don’t have a choice right now. Let me go, or I’m going to kill her.”
Marshall laughed. He actually laughed. “You think the life of an escort is enough to stop us from arresting you? I did a facial recognition search on you. You know there’s security cameras all through the Residence, don’t you? You took off your mask earlier, so I ran a search. I don’t know how you changed your identity record, but I know who you are. I know you were arrested twelve years ago for sedition. And I know who your father is. We’re taking you to the Headquarters right now. Kill the girl if you want to. It’s not going to stop us.”
He meant it. Marshall really didn’t care if Desh killed her.
She was nothing but an object to him.
That was all she’d ever been.
She wasn’t an object to Desh though. He knew her as human. He loved her as human. And he was doing what he could to protect her right now.
He pushed her away from him, causing her to stumble and fall against the table, knocking over a couple of glasses and the silver bowl that had held the grapes and landing on the med device she’d been using on Desh after his fights to heal his injuries.
“Much good you turned out to be, whore,” Desh snapped at her. He was doing a good job at convincing Marshall that she was absolutely meaningless to him.
It was the only way she could remain safe.
Talia started to cry. She couldn’t help it, but maybe Marshall would believe it was because Desh had used her so roughly. She was still draped over the table, and as she stood up, she palmed the med device and slipped it into her pocket.
Other than the knife in Desh’s hand, the med device was the only thing in the room that could be used as a weapon.
She’d barely pulled her hand free of her pocket when Marshall turned to look at her, and she covered by using her sleeve to wipe the tears off her face.
“If you’d come to me the first time he tried to use you,” Marshall told her, looking annoyed and impatient, “you wouldn’t have ended up getting hurt.”
Evidently believing he’d said all he needed to say to her, Marshall turned to the other guards. “Cuff him, and get moving. There’s a shuttle waiting to take him to Headquarters.”
Talia watched through her tears as Desh was put into cuffs. He didn’t fight back, and she was convinced it was because he didn’t want to put her in any more danger. When he was shoved forward toward the door, Marshall said to him, “I wonder what the High Director will say when he discovers I’ve arrested his traitorous son who’s supposed to be dead.”
Talia froze as the words registered in her mind.
She didn’t even know the High Director had a son.
Apparently he did.
And apparently that son was Desh.
All the missing pieces fell into place with that one detail, Desh’s whole life laying out in crystal clarity in her mind.
Now she understood that Desh’s plan here was even more of a suicide mission than she’d initially believed.
Desh was a good man.
He would always be a good man.
If he couldn’t kill just any man in cold blood, he never would have been able to kill his father.
The fact that he’d believed he could just showed how far anger and desperation had taken him.
He would die now.
Capital punishment might be outlawed by the Coalition as a barbaric custom, not befitting a civilized society that had progressed so far, but there were plenty of ways around it.
One way or another, Desh would die for what he’d done.
And Talia simply couldn’t let that happen.
She was just one girl. A leisure escort. Not even worthy of being a legitimate hostage.
And all she had was a medical device in her pocket.
She had no idea what she could do to stop it.
Eight
Talia might have had a chance—not a good one, but a chance—had they left her in Desh’s room when they left, as she assumed they would.
Marshall and the guards appeared to believe what Desh had wanted them to believe. That he’d used Talia and threatened her to get her to help him.
She thought they would take him to the shuttle and leave her alone to return to the leisure suite, appropriately chastened for not reporting Desh immediately the way she should have but facing no further consequences.
Once they left, she would have a very small opportunity of doing something to help. No one would be watching her. She could do… something.
But before he left the room, Marshall turned to glance at her over his shoulder. “You better come along.”
Talia jerked in surprise. “But why?” She didn’t have to pretend that her voice was weak and trembling. “Am I… am I in trouble?”
“No, but we need to get the whole story from him, and you can fill in some of the gaps.”
“The whore doesn’t know anything,” Desh snarled. “Don’t waste your time.”
“I’m not a whore,” she said, shrinking away from him, her mind racing as she tried to figure out what was best for her to say, how was best for her to act. “And you deserve everything you’ll get.”
“I’ll decide what’s a waste of my time,” Marshall said coolly, shaking his head at Desh. Then he turned to Talia. “You better come along.”
She stared at him with wide, scared eyes.
He rolled his eyes as if he were getting tired of this whole situation. “You’re not in trouble as long as you tell us everything we want to know.”
“Is he really…” She shrunk away from Desh again, acting like she
was turning to Marshall for protection. “Is he really the High Director’s son?”
“I think so. The facial recognition matches. But I need to do more research, and I need to get him to talk. We’ve got drugs that will make him tell us everything at Headquarters. And if that doesn’t work, we have other methods of interrogations. We’ll get the whole story.” Marshall turned stone-cold eyes on Desh. “And then we can tell the High Director that his long-lost son has been found. It will be quite the family reunion.”
Talia shuddered in terror, but she still had a role to play. “You haven’t told the High Director yet?”
“No. I’m not that foolish. You don’t approach the High Director until you have all the answers to questions he might ask. Now get moving. You can ride with us in the shuttle over to Headquarters.”
Talia nodded and dropped her eyes, walking beside Marshall down the corridor.
Desh was cuffed. The two guards were armed, as was Marshall.
There was absolutely nothing she could do to get away from them, much less get Desh away.
And even if she somehow managed, she’d never be able to leave the Residence. All entrances and docking bays were monitored. An escort would never be able to leave without prior permission.
She was trapped here, as much as she would have been trapped on a prison planet.
She didn’t want to leave without Desh anyway.
She searched her mind as they walked, but no miraculous plan of escape came to her. So she ended up on the shuttle with no clear idea what to do. She was sitting across from Desh and one of the guards. The other guard was piloting, and Marshall was in the copilot seat.
She listened as they communicated with the guard tower for the Residence, explaining they were on their way to the Coalition Security Headquarters, which orbited Earth just like the Residence.
She met Desh’s eyes across the shuttle, hoping for a brilliant plan for escape.
He gave his head the slightest shake.
He didn’t want her to do anything.
He was clearly telling her not to.
He was scared for her. She could see it in his eyes.
He wasn’t scared for himself.
He was scared for her.
He’d rather go to his death than put her at even the slightest risk.