Unnatural
Page 71
CHAPTER 23
She emerged into another pitch black prison. The inside door handle resisted force, but that was what the back-up plan was for. Not to worry. Waiting, she dwelt on how irritating it was to be dependent on someone else, even Uriah. Especially Uriah.
The door remained shut.
Without the machine’s hum, Sabrina should have been able to at least hear him scrambling to reach the handle, but all that met her ears was silence.
She took a lesson from what she’d witnessed in the Mindscape, hesitating to jump to irrational conclusions. Perhaps the walls were just too thick to let much, if any, sound reach from the outside. Uriah could simply be exhausted.
But these were the real irrational conclusions, and she knew it. The simplest explanation was that Uriah wasn’t the one who had shut the Mindscape down. It was Zolnerowich. Uriah was dead, so was Jane. The secret was lost. It was over.
And she was buried alive.
She felt around for whatever buttons were there, supposing it was not yet time to rule out less devastating possibilities. They did nothing. It was impossible even to tell how helpful the Mindscape’s air holes would be for someone left inside indefinitely. Not that that made any difference. Death by asphyxiation would probably be more bearable and quick than dehydration. She beat her fists against the wall like a desperate child, sinking to the chamber floor.
Cry me a river, at least you aren’t Marshall. Framed so horribly, after a lifetime of gender dysphoria – which you only escaped thanks to technology, by the way – that your life will be absolute hell if you’re somehow rejuvenated from the Dethroning. That’s what Dad would’ve told her. God, if only she’d known who Marshall really was, before this all exploded.
She tried to actually think about solutions, but what was the use? Livingston had planned this, possibly with Marshall, and if he was half as meticulous as he’d always been, there were no loopholes here. And even if she escaped, what then? Tough guy or not, Dad was dead, and she knew worse than nothing about how to restore vitrified bodies. Cheryl – there wouldn’t be a chance to reconcile with her, to forgive her for treating Dad like that, not where she was going. She would die having killed a child she’d brought into this world, so what sane God would let her through the pearly gates?
More poundings on the chamber interior fell on deaf ears. Sabrina made herself as comfortable as was possible in this cold capsule, closing her eyes and trying to get some perspective on the situation. If she was going to die here, what thoughts did she want to be her last?
Cowering in the foxhole was no option. She had no right to expect a miracle or absolution, but that hardly stopped her from thinking about what her last prayer was going to sound like.
Sabrina heard the echo of Uriah’s words: “If you haven’t said it to me already, it would be fake if ya told me now.” Uriah … she liked to think she’d dispelled that shallow attraction to him from before. But now, the very words he’d used to criticize last impressions had created such a jarring last impression on her, she had to respect the man.
Dad had always said the highest forms of love are built on respect.
So whatever she was going to say to the being who loved her more than anyone else could, it had better be worth respecting, a reflection of what her actions could say louder.
Something blasted a hole through the wall, just a few inches above her head.