Archon's Queen (58 page)

nna reclined on a lounge chair at the far end of a boxed-in balcony. She glanced down the length of her body, frowning at the black bikini crossed over it. For two days now, she had lain out here in the strange thing called sunlight, and had not succeeded in doing anything more than getting a nasty burn that required a stimpak to be rid of. She almost missed being a creature of the night. Cool vapor settled on her as a miniscule orb bot hovered about, puffing sprays of coconut-scented lotion.

Fluffy clouds drifted through a square of blue sky framed by monoliths of silver and glass. Towers blocked the horizon in all directions other than straight up. The apartment James had secured sat at the corner of one such building, affording a view of two streets’ worth of hovercars and advert-bots at all hours of the day. The sun had shown itself several days in a row, an event in and of itself confounding.

The faint hiss of glass doors opening came from behind. She glanced up and to the left, and rolled her eyes at a figure of arctic white.

“For heaven’s sake, Lauren, you’re outside. Put something on.”

Aurora settled onto the next lounge chair, sitting on the edge before kicking her feet over in a graceful transition to lying down. “We’re seventy stories up, and the hovercars are going by too fast for perverts.” She broke out in a sweat right away.

Anna chuckled. “You’ll knock pilots out of the sky from the glare.”

“Oh, like you won’t?” Aurora winked. “That little strip of cloth isn’t doing a damn thing; you might as well let the girls get some sun.”

“Trashy.” Anna grumbled, squinting at Aurora. “I’ll pass. Compared to you, I’m brown. You want some lotion?”

“You’ve got some cheek, calling
me
trashy.” Aurora winked.

Anna glared. All manner of justifications for her life flashed through her thoughts, not one of which made it out of her mouth.

“Sorry, that was out of line.” Aurora put her hands under her head. “It won’t matter, I don’t even burn.”

“Yeah… guess we both were.” Anna sent the floating bot over anyway. “Does it bother you being trapped inside all the time?”

Aurora closed her eyes as the tiny sphere covered her in mist.

Her laugh carried a hint of haughtiness. “Oh, I’m not trapped. I just wear sunglasses and claim to have a skin condition. It’s not as bad as you think. Especially in the city here, people are so busy, they don’t notice a damn thing.”

“It’s so hot here.” Anna walked to the edge of the patio, and leaned on the railing. “How can they live like this? Metal as far as I can see.”

The glare radiating from the shimmering city wrapped her with an oppressive heat that drew sweat from every pore. She took four steps to her right, stopping at the corner of the deck, and stared down on crisscrossing lanes of hovercars fifteen stories below; the ground well beyond them had about a tenth of the traffic. Sensing a person, advert bots drifted closer, and bombarded her with skin care products, cold drinks. One presented six images of Anna in varying shades of custom artificial tan. She scowled. It burst into flames and careened into the gloom below.

“So many hovercars…” Anna whistled.

Aurora laughed again. “Yes, well, the UCF doesn’t have a paranoid king. Anyone who has the credits can get one; not to mention firearms are unregulated. Just about everyone carries them here. I saw a little girl with a pink one yesterday.”

“That’s sad.” Anna shivered as she trudged back to her chair, sitting on the edge with her elbows on her knees. “At least they don’t arrest children for being psionic.”

The door hissed to the side as James emerged ahead of a rush of air conditioning. He held a drink in one hand with two others floating alongside. The levitating beverages glided to the women.

Aurora fanned herself. “They may not haul them away in manacles, but the government here watches them close.”

A shiver ran through Anna’s body at the thought. “They don’t put bombs in their ‘eads.” She squinted at James. “Do they?”

He smiled. “Not anymore, though everyone thinks they do.” James raised his glass in toast and took a sip. “It is certainly dreadfully hot. I am surprised to see you outside, Lauren.”

“I meant here.” Anna sipped her drink, savoring the cold on her tongue.

“Oh. No.” James frowned at the sea of endless construction.

Anna’s iced tea vanished faster than she realized. “Why did you pick such a humid place? Really, James, all the way in the south end of East City? Didn’t this used to be swampland?”

“Proximity to our goal.” He pointed at the skyline. “The Colony’s space programme still focuses a lot of resources in this area. The facility is a relic from the days when things getting shot into space could draw giant crowds of spectators.”

Ice rattling in her empty glass, Anna stood. “I can’t tolerate this dreadful heat anymore.”

“Wales was too cold. This place is too hot…” Aurora laughed. “You got a fickle one, James.”

“This place
is
too hot,” he muttered into his cup.

Beige interior carpeting squished soft and cool beneath her feet in contrast to the coarse hot concrete on the balcony. Anna basked in the air conditioning for a few minutes before she felt the urge to shiver. After wrapping herself in a dark blue satin robe, she flopped on a large sectional couch the color of sand. Soon, James joined her there, and she shifted up against him, leaning into the arm he put around her shoulders.

Aurora walked past in a black robe with a hem at mid-thigh.

“You joining a nunnery?” Anna sat up with mocking primness. “That robe is almost decent.”

“They wouldn’t have me.” Aurora kept going on her way to the bedroom. She paused, smiling as if she imagined the havoc she might wreak in such a place. “James, I’m going to scrub up a bit and do a little snooping around the facility.”

“This is a nice flat,” said Anna. “I thought your money was in a tangle back home.”

“The manager was nice enough to let us try the place for two months without a commitment.” He winked. “Of course, he thinks we paid for it.”

Anna whistled. “Naughty.”

“Well, we won’t be staying on the Colony’s east coast for long.”

“James, it’s 2413. I don’t think the Crown is going to take it back at this point.”

He brushed his hair over his ear. “Perhaps. So, how are you holding up?”

Anna snuggled tighter to his side. “Fine, I suppose. It was a bit dodgy having Lauren sharing my body at Heathrow. T’was like a voice in my head. At least my legs stopped hurting. Why didn’t she turn into a ghost and follow us? Did she just want to make me squirm?”

“I was asking about you.” He placed a soft kiss on top of her head. “But, it’s rather tiring on her to do that. Having a body is a lot less work.”

“And I don’t suffer the random attentions of restless spirits… and other things.” Aurora winked. “And there is the making you squirm bit.”

Anna fussed at his hair and drew in the scent of him. “I don’t know how I feel about learning the bastard wasn’t really my dad. Who was he? Do I still have a family somewhere? Did I ever? Ol’ Jack seemed to know my mother. Where did I come from?”

James brushed his hand over her hair. “I don’t have any of those answers, my dear. It was fate that brought us together. Somehow, you managed to hide even from Lauren. Do not waste another thought on that pitiful excuse for a person. You have to remember you were only defending yourself. You did what you had to do in order to survive. Knowing he was not your own blood should make it easier to cope with.”

“It feels so odd. The way he looked at me after.” Her fingertips teased at the inside of her wrist. “It hit me bad at first, but you know that.” She looked up. “Oh, I was chattin’ with Penny on the vid this morning. She’s doing okay, but I miss her. She wanted me to thank you for helping get her that job.”

“Think nothing of it. The school will keep paying her until she’s dead. She could dance naked and drunk through the halls and they would keep her on staff; you need not worry about her.”

Anna shot him a look.

“I know you care a great deal about your friend. I made some adjustments to a few brains on the board of trustees. Nothing harmful.” He took a sip of his drink. “They all think she is the bees knees.”

She relaxed, settling her head against him. “Are you still sore from the hot tub?”

He drew a breath through a grimace. “The numbness is gone. That little trait of yours is a bit of a nuisance.”

“Is there a way I can control it? I’m rather sick of blowing out NetMinis every time a rat scurries over my foot.”

“Oh, Anna…” His arm around her shoulders squeezed. “You’ll no longer be living among rats. Perhaps there is something, let’s have a look.”

He shifted to face her, drawing one leg up on the cushion, and locked eyes. Lightheaded euphoria came over her, followed by a strange sense of floating away from her body. She fixated on his face, once more adoring the surrender to his presence. He provided the sense of security she had craved for so long. When she had been doing jobs for Mr. Carroll, she possessed confidence and poise, traits starting to come back. With James in her life, in this place free from the CSB, she no longer felt the need to act meek as a survival mechanism.

When her thoughts settled back into the present moment, she noticed a smug smile on his face.

“Did you fix it?”

“Not entirely, although I believe I understand it now. Those who are born Awakened have some modicum of difficulty with their abilities when they are young. Some, like Lauren, experience visually obvious indicators of what they are. Others, like you, have an event or circumstance knock things loose. This is a great deal of power for a little mind to handle.”

“What happened?” She pushed at his chest, trying to squeeze the words out of him.

“You may have been a year or two old when you witnessed the CSB assassinate your mother. There is no conscious memory of it left in there, but given your circumstances and what has happened… I believe that to be the case. The event caused a connection between your emotional state and the part of your brain that governs your electrokinesis. While I believe it is physiological in nature, you may be able to overcome it with mood control such as meditation, discipline, that sort of thing.”

She sighed. “So I’m to become a Buddhist monk then?”

The unexpected quip made him laugh. “Well, that would certainly be one way to go about it, but I think it would be an unnecessary extreme. Besides they have a dreadful sense of fashion. Perhaps when I unlock the secret, I’ll better understand how to adjust such things.”

“What did you do with the detainees?”

A wave of his hand in the air brought a holo-vid screen up from the silver bar mounted to the wall. Endless confusing jumbles of program guides scrolled along the 120-inch screen.

“I sent them ahead with Terrence, who I have entrusted to run things in my absence, to the west coast. Not so different here, is it? Nine hundred channels and still nothing worth watching.”

Aurora emerged from the interior hall, dressed, and skirted the periphery of their vision so as not to disturb them. James wagged his fingers to scroll through the stations, eventually stopping on a documentary about the physiological effects of off-Earth colony life. Anna pulled her feet up on the couch, cuddling up to him and ignoring the brainiac drivel spilling from the screen.

“Where’s she off to?”

“That is the next part of the plan.” He stroked her hair. “The military over here is developing a starship, the largest yet attempted. With that machine, we can rid ourselves of prejudice and find a new home.”

“Are you touched? You’re talking about leaving Earth?”

“Indeed.”

Anna stared at her feet.

“Aren’t you excited?”

“I… Faye was beside herself with tears when I told her I’d left London. She begged me to come back. Penny and Spawny…”

“The girl has her own family, she will find her way. As for your friends, we can take them with us. If they want to go.”

“What do you need me to do?” Her voice came out of her, but she felt far away from it.

“Infiltrate the facility of the corporation responsible for the starship’s construction, and recover design specifications and access codes. The ship is still several years from completion, however. I need to make sure it will be capable of fulfilling our needs, and procure the means to infiltrate it when the time comes.”