The Forbidden Zone (14 page)

His wide eyes pleaded with me and I bit my lip. "I need to know that this is what you want. We're not the same men who went into that cell. How can I know that you won't regret this? I can't stand to cause you any more pain." I looked down at my lap where my erection was floundering.

Saidan gently placed his index finger under my chin and lifted my face until I was eye-to-eye with him. The warmth in his expression spoke a thousand words.

I found myself welling up at his tenderness. It was a beauty I couldn't cope with at that moment, broken and abused as I was. I tried to reach for my emotionless side to pull myself together, but it was gone, leaving me as helpless as a child in the warmth of Saidan's gaze.

Saidan kissed my face, slowly traveling down my cheeks. His lips touched the tears that seemed to have worked themselves loose, as if he could wash those away as well. His arms encircled me and I let myself go, resting my head on his shoulders and letting him comfort me.

A piece of me rebelled at the fact that I was taking from him again. I'd leaned on him so much during our captivity that it had become almost normal, but I'd come to understand that he'd paid a heavy price for it. Yet here I was once again, letting him take my pain onto himself. He didn't care; he loved me. He would take it all until it killed him. Until I killed him.

I pulled away from him and stood up. He moved to follow, but I shook my head.

"No," I whispered. "I can't keep taking from you. I can't keep laying it all on you. It's not fair. You've already lost your voice. Taking from somebody; that's not love." I paced the room, needing some distance from his sad expression. "I broke you, Saidan. Whether it was Little Sister's plan or not, I still did it. It's my responsibility to fix you. To give back what I took until you're whole again."

I turned around to find him standing behind me. He moved his hands and rested them on my shoulders. I thought he was going to deny the truth. I was surprised when he broke down in my arms. I didn't even know Valerians could cry. He crumpled like a piece of paper and I felt the entire weight of him in my arms. I held him there for long moments, holding him tightly as if I might never let go, planting gentle kisses on his face as he rested it on my shoulder.

I picked him up in one fell swoop. His body was light: too light for his frame. I carried him with ease over to the bed and set him down before climbing in next to him. His lips met mine in a gentle kiss, but the sexuality and need had dissipated. I wrapped my arms around him and held him as we both fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I had found my strength locked away deep in my soul: the need to be strong for Saidan, to give instead of take, to offer help to him instead of drawing it from him. It was a strength that would guide me through the coming weeks.

We woke to the sound of hustle and bustle outside the room. Saidan stirred in my arms and I soothed him as he jerked up in fright.

There was a knock at the door. I hurried to answer it as Saidan pulled on his robe. A part of me expected it to be locked, but of course it wasn't. Saidan had come in, after all, and we were no longer prisoners. It was a hard thing to lose, the prisoner mentality. After so long, I had forgotten what being free to come and go was like, and I had stopped trying the doors I knew would be locked.

One stood in the doorway, with the usual stoic expression on her face. "It's Feeding Time," she said, as if we were still in the Science Building and late for our scheduled protein bars. The words made me shudder.

She must have seen the pain on my face, for she quickly added, "Would you and Twenty-One care to join me and the other Ones for breakfast?"

I tried to form a sentence, but the words wouldn't come out. Saidan looked at me, anguished. I knew he could hardly answer for me.

"That would be nice," I managed. One nodded and turned on her heel, marching off down the hallway. I wondered if we were supposed to follow, but I didn't exactly feel like eating with the closest thing Valeria had to dignitaries while dressed in a hospital shift. Just as I turned to Saidan with a shrug, a drone showed up with uniforms in his arms. They weren't like the jumpsuits the others wore, and I was glad. I think the tight material of those things would have strangled me with the memories of our captivity. Perhaps One knew that.

The drone closed the door and we dressed. I felt ridiculous in the alien outfit, but ridiculous had to be better than afraid, at any rate. Large shoulder pads made my skinny frame look stupidly out of proportion. The suit was a nasty shade of racing green that did nothing for me and even less for Saidan, who looked like a walking fashion mistake. For a moment, I remembered girls on Earth chatting about the latest fashions and turning their nose up at the Foundation's love of uniformity. I was glad that the Valerians didn't seem to give a damn about how people looked. I felt like the butt of someone's practical joke. At that moment, I would have been happier to wear a hot dog suit. At least I could have made someone laugh at the expense of my vanity.

Saidan gave me an odd look that pulled me out of my reverie. I turned to him and shrugged. "We've looked worse, right?" My mind flashed back to my blood-stained jumpsuit and I wished I hadn't said anything, as Saidan walked past me and opened the door.

The drone waiting for us outside led us through a maze of corridors. Other drones passed us in the hallway, not walking in step, but following their own paths. I wondered just how true it was that the Sisters had dumbed them down. Outside of the A.I.'s influence, they seemed normal enough to me. Perhaps not brilliant, but certainly capable of free will. I couldn't refer to them as drones anymore. Valerians, then. Whether they had evolved here or been created from scratch, this was their planet.

Saidan reached for my hand and I took it, squeezing it gently as we ascended two levels in an ancient elevator. I wondered who had built this facility and why, but those questions ranked low on my list of things to ask. The doors opened and we followed our guide until we reached a door with two guards. Our guide nodded to them, and they opened the door for us.

We stepped into a room with a long table. Five Valerians with vastly different faces and hair colors, all looking to be around One's apparent age, sat at the table eating what I could only describe as an alien salad. A kind of blue-colored lettuce seemed to adorn their plates along with what appeared to be pink eggs, larger than a chicken's, but with the same yellow yolk. Various vegetables I'd never seen before sat in bowls on the table, and the whole spread smelled delicious. I realized I hadn't eaten any real food since my arrival on Valeria. The protein bars had barely maintained me, and we hadn't received many of those in the Re-Education Building.

"Please, sit down." One stood up and pulled out a chair on her side of the table. The doctor pulled one out on his side. I sat next to One, while Saidan sat across from me. Plates were handed down, and I didn't wait for an invitation to tuck in. One seemed to almost smile at the corners of her mouth as the table witnessed me stuffing blue lettuce in my mouth. I have to say that I was barely aware of them over the sound of my roaring stomach, which had sprung to life at the smell of real food. I looked across to see Saidan attacking the platter with the same ferocity. The table was silent while we ate, and all I could hear was the crunching of lettuce filling my ears.

Once I was full, I looked up to see all eyes on me, even Saidan's, who had apparently finished before me. Embarrassment flushed my cheeks and I was about to apologize when One began the conversation.

"Nineteen-Nineteen, Twenty-One, you're here because we need to brief you on the current situation."

I nodded. "Names are shared freely on Earth. I'd rather you called me Julian." I wanted to shed the number, the cruel reminder of the less-than-human nature in which I'd been treated.

There was some murmuring at the table, but eventually all present nodded in assent. I looked around at the faces of these original Valerians and wondered if this was what Valerians might have looked like before their genetic code was watered down by the Sisters.

"Julian, then," said the doctor, taking up the conversation. "How much do you know about our situation?"

"You're rebels fighting back against Little Sister," I said.

"That's right." One nodded. "Julian, Twenty-One, gathered around this table are the Ones of five respective buildings: myself, from the Science Building, the good doctor here from the Medical Building, and also the representatives from the Children's Building, the Supply Building, and the Training Building."

"Did Valerians from all those buildings join the rebellion?"

"No, unfortunately. It's very hard to break our people out of the pattern that Little Sister and the Sisters before her engineered to keep them in line. They fear repercussions, and more than that, they fear uncertainty," the doctor explained.

"How many rebels do we have?"

"Two hundred, three at most." The doctor bowed his head.

I suppose it was at that moment when I realized this seed of rebellion had no chance of succeeding by itself. They hadn't come to rescue us out of loyalty or respect. One had come for us because our minds were a necessary war asset. I picked my nails under the table, and glanced across at Saidan to see he'd put together the pieces as well.

"How many Valerians remain in the city?" I asked.

The representative from the Children's Building spoke up. "Ten thousand at least." She was tall, and showing her age. Her braid was pure white and her blue-green skin pale.

The doctor chimed in, "There are another ten thousand in the underground facility. Little Sister, by design or accident, releases more every day. Some wander here, but most of them die of exposure or find their way into the city. We're not going to win the numbers game."

"So what's the plan? I know you didn't rescue us so we could surrender. I'm not going back to the Re-Education Building. I'll die before that." I slammed my fist down on the table. Saidan nodded across the room, his eyes resolute.

"We were hoping you could help us with that." One twiddled her fingers, an oddly human mannerism that seemed almost creepy when carried out by this alien ice queen. "You and Twenty-One know more about Little Sister than anybody else on this planet." She looked at us intently. "I know you've been through a lot, but we need your expertise and scientific knowledge."

"You expect us to just come up with a plan?" I slammed my fist down on the table, sudden rage filling me up inside. "Are we just tools to you, to be used and discarded as you see fit?"

"We need to win this war, Nineteen." One refused to use my real name. "You, of all people, should understand that if we lose, we'll all be spending a prolonged stay at the Re-Education Building. You two have the greatest minds on this planet. Yes, we rescued you because we need you. But you're here now. Get over yourselves and put your minds to work."

Get over yourselves. Those were harsh words for anybody, let alone two torture survivors, and yet I couldn't help but realize through my indignation that she was right. If we were going to win the war against Little Sister, we had to put our pain aside and come up with a solution. Saidan and I were the only ones who had the knowledge to outsmart the cruel A.I. It had to be us, no matter how broken or frustrated we were. We were the ones who had seen inside the facility, who knew the extent of what Little Sister could do.

"All of our facilities are at your disposal," the doctor said, his voice softer and kinder than One's. Perhaps he'd seen in my eyes that I was already scouring my brain for vital details, or perhaps he just knew that I had no other choice.

"This meeting is adjourned," One said, standing up. The others followed, filing out into the hallway until only Saidan and I remained in the meeting room.

"She's right, Saidan," I said. "She's cruel, she truly is the Ice Queen, but she's right."

Saidan nodded. His eyes held a look of understanding coupled with sadness and doubt.

"We have to think of the facility. We have to think of everything we've seen," I said. But my mind simply wasn't putting two-and-two together at that time. The solution was right under our noses, and yet so far away.

We left the room. The Valerian who had guided us offered us a tour of the underground bunker, which we accepted. My mind was a million miles away as our guide showed us around the various levels of the bunker. Laboratories and makeshift dormitories sped by as I wandered through the Sisters' facility in my head, trying to think about what we could use against Little Sister. The cloning tanks? Overloading them might cause electrical feedback, but it was a slim possibility and would cost all those lives caught in suspended animation. Something better seemed to hang just out of reach. I wondered if it was gone, taken from me by the torture that had made so many of my memories hard to recall.

Our guide eventually took us back to my room. The clock indicated that most of the day had passed. I sat down on the edge of my bed while Saidan paced the room.

"Saidan, you remember the underground facility, right?"

He nodded.

"I have a feeling that there's something important I'm missing, but I don't remember what it is." I put my head in my hands, sighing with frustration at my unstable memory.

Saidan walked over and sat next to me, slipping his arm around my shoulders. I let myself relax into him, the puzzle fading from my mind as he ran a hand up my leg. I turned my head to look at him and he captured my lips in a kiss that made everything else just disappear. There was only him and me, two souls locked together in a gentle caress.

My hands roamed down his back before finding their way underneath his green shirt. I lifted it over his head and he moved to allow me access. I tossed away the garment. My own soon followed, until there was a pile of clothing on the floor and we were sitting naked on the bed.

My finger ran down his chest, touching the bandages that covered the burn wound. I flashed back to the moment when he had been shot while shielding me from the Sisters. I could remember how it had felt to think he was dead, taken from me forever. I pulled him close and planted kisses on his neck, intending to never let him go.