The Scarlet Empress (23 page)

When she opened her eyes, it was darker. One small bulb lit the cell.

Someone cut her loose from the ceiling cables. She crumpled onto the cold cement floor. Impatiently, she was hoisted to her feet. The ringing in her ears surged. One, two steps, and everything went completely dark. . . .

The lights came on then, half blinding her. She blinked and found herself standing on a stool next to a gallows. Around her was a turbulent crowd.

Gradually, her awareness expanded to include uniformed strangers seated in what appeared to be a courtroom. She wasn’t on a gallows but sitting on a chair in the center of a dais, bathed in a circle of light. The crowd wasn’t real but an image displayed on huge monitors that dominated the walls.

Escape. Was it a possibility? Could she make a run for it? She didn’t see any guards, but at knee level a field wavered—a virtual cell, and almost as impenetrable as the real deal. Whoever had brought her here felt handcuffs appeared too tacky.

She tried to focus, somehow sensing that the proceedings around her were critically important, but her mind kept wandering. It was getting harder to ascertain what was real and what was not.

“Banzai Maguire.”

She jerked her head up at the voice. Ty? He stood before her, dressed in the unmistakable uniform of an executioner. Lifting his black hood, he revealed his face inch by excruciating inch. She knew that mouth, how it could appear so cold and yet kiss her with such aching tenderness.

He threw the hood off his head, and Gen. Aaron Armstrong met her stare of shock.

He no longer wore executioner’s garb but a UCE uniform.
Medals covered half his chest. Five stars sat on his shoulders.
He has Ty’s blue eyes,
Bree thought distantly. And they were cold, so very cold.

Didn’t Ty’s gaze turn cold when he was afraid?

Yes, but this man acted anything but scared.

Armstrong’s voice boomed. “Such are the charges against you.”

“What charges?” Had she blacked out again? Frantically she reviewed the past few moments and remembered nothing of a trial.

“High treason against the government of the United Colonies of Earth.”

“I never swore allegiance to the UCE.”

“Confess your crimes, Banzai Maguire, and you will be spared. Spared death.”

She answered Armstrong with as much pride as her degraded condition would allow. “I will never swear loyalty to a nation that knows no freedom.”

“Then days from today you will die.”

She shared a long, penetrating look with Armstrong that was gut-wrenching in its intensity.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

She drew herself upright, the rope falling loosely around her neck. Rope? When did the dais become a gallows? It didn’t seem real. And yet, it didn’t seem like a dream, either. “Yes, I have something to say.”

Infinitely calm, as if she’d been practicing for this moment all her life, she swept her gaze over the rapt faces of the audience, meeting as many of their eyes as she could. “Like Nathan Hale before me, I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

The crowd filling the monitors roared. She felt its
thunder. They must be outside the building. The people weren’t cheering, though, she realized; they were booing. And it seemed they were booing Armstrong!

Bree swayed in place, tears of pride stinging her eyes. The citizens of Central had given her back her strength when all seemed lost. She thrust a fist in the air. “We have it in our power to begin the world anew!” she shouted to them. “America shall make a stand, not for herself alone, but for the world!” Her voice rang out loud and clear.

She caught one glimpse of the crowd going wild before the giant monitors went black.

The light above her dimmed, throwing the audience into darkness, so that she could no longer tell if they were there. She stood on a stool, not the floor, she realized. Lifting her gaze slowly to meet the eyes of her executioner, she felt a knowing smile curve her lips. “You may kill me, sir, but you will never kill the revolution.” She drew in a breath and shouted, “Freedom!”

With a snarl, the general cut the rope and kicked the stool out from under her. The rope yanked tight and snapped her neck—

Bree’s inhalation was long, loud, and hoarse. Her arms jerked out, hands flying to her throat. She sucked in wild, gasping breaths before she finally convinced herself that she wasn’t suffocating; that she wasn’t hanging from a gallows, a horrified crowd below her.

She had just experienced many things, and she couldn’t tell how much had been her fevered imagination. All she knew was that she was lying on a bare mattress in a brightly lit prison cell. Alone. And for the first time in all the days she’d been in Fort Powell, she thanked God for it.

A heli-jet rose from the roof of the justice building. Nosing over, it accelerated, reaching the White House within minutes.

The general disembarked. Head down, he stalked across the rooftop to where security guards waited to take him down to Beauchamp’s little smoke-filled corner of hell.

He never made it that far. The president of the UCE stormed across the roof. “Stay back,” he barked at the young officers who tried to follow him, and continued his ugly march to meet the general.

“Mr. President.” The wind of the heli-jet’s vertical engines whipped Armstrong’s trench coat around his legs. “For a man who just got his wish, you look quite upset.”

“Upset?” the president bellowed. “I am much more than upset!”

“The top rebel has just gotten her comeuppance, and this bothers you? Surely you’re not forming a soft spot for
the terrorists crying for the overthrow of our legitimate government.”

“You televised the tribunal, Aaron! What were you thinking?”

“That many in the population were long overdue a peek at the consequences of treason.”

“Maguire couldn’t keep her eyes open. It was clear to anyone watching that she was drugged and weary.”

“That was my entire point. No one ever said the consequences of inciting rebellion weren’t graphic to watch.”

“She passed out on you—twice!”

“She was awake for the important parts,” Armstrong said. “She heard and understood the charges levied against her. She had ample opportunity to renounce all association with the rebellion. She chose not to.”

“And now it’s set off riots the likes of which we have never seen!” The president swept a hand out to the side, drawing the general’s attention to the streets of New Washington. Contained more or less in several pockets, as far as his eyes could see, were thousands upon thousands of demonstrators.

“Are you going to let them run wild, Mr. President? You are the leader of this great land. Do something.”

“I will,” Beauchamp growled back. “But I need your word you’ll not incite the masses any further with lamebrain ideas of scaring them.”

Armstrong smiled. “It worked, though. They’re scared.”

“Aaron!”

The general held up his hands. “You have my word. I will not frighten the rebels. I’ll let them do as they wish.”

Beauchamp scowled. “That isn’t what I’m asking of
you, and you know it. Permissiveness will kill us all.”

Armstrong matched the man frown for frown. “I’m relieved to hear it. For a moment there, I thought you were going over to the other side.”

“Other side.” Beauchamp made an ugly sound in his throat. “I will do anything to keep this great nation alive and well. I expect the same of you.”

“Have I not already proved my conviction in a speedy resolution to this trying moment in our history?”

Beauchamp let out a gust of air. “Yes, Aaron, you have.” The president turned away, running a hand over his face. He looked weary now that his fury had passed somewhat.

Exhaling, he waved in the direction of his office. “Come now, and let us discuss the details of the upcoming execution, wherein you will assure me that the only stage time allowed Banzai Maguire will be when the coroners carry her dead body to the morgue.”

Bree sat up on the edge of a thin mattress that had no sheets. Disoriented at first, she used the sounds of the twenty-four-hour-a-day media barrage in her cell to find her bearings. The shows that played along an entire wall of the cell were relentless noise; television shows, documentaries, war footage of UCE victories, a constant stream of information.

Technology in Fort Powell typified most places in the twenty-second century, dependent on computers that were small—microscopic, in most cases—and integrated so well into the building and various other devices that no one noticed or even thought about them. It was how the lights went on or off, how the walls could change
color, how the floor stayed bacteria free—and how these videos streamed into the cell around the clock, emanating from screens that weren’t only in the walls of the cell, but
were
the walls. In fact, the entire prison was so integrated with its computers that disabling security or anything else critically important would be impossible without taking down the computer itself—which, according to everything Ty had once told her about safeguards and remote backups, couldn’t happen.

Bree rubbed her neck and then her eyes. How long had she been out cold? It felt like days. Maybe it had been weeks. She knew she wasn’t aware of half the things that happened to her here.

And what horrible dreams this time. The tribunal. The cheering crowd. The hanging. It had seemed so real, parts of it. She’d dreamed of Ty again, too. Dreamed that he was alive and had changed sides.

Swinging her feet off the cot, she dropped her face into her hands. What did the dreams mean? Were they her own doubts surfacing about Ty’s loyalties? Or were the drugs designer hallucinogens that could tailor a person’s thoughts, twisting them to continue the interrogator’s work while the subject slept? Or did the visions reflect some events that had actually happened? Or
would
happen?

A chill went up her spine. Her thoughts were so confused that she didn’t know what to believe. The drugs. God, how she hated the drugs. They were making her paranoid, making her distrust the man she loved.

The man who left you here, all alone.

“Stop it!” She hunched over and moaned, hating her own weakness even as she retreated into it. . . .

Hair tangled, Bree lifted her head and stared numbly at the show playing on the wall, this time Interweb news.

“In other news, it seems the UCE’s favorite bachelor is back in action. . . .” A woman with short silver hair and makeup, even silver lips, animatedly addressed the camera. “Tyler Armstrong is back on the party circuit, according to sources close to the supreme commander’s son.”

Bree’s head jerked up.

“After an apparent terrifying experience with brainwashing at the hands of cult figure Banzai Maguire, Tyler, we’ve now learned, has accepted an invitation to sexy actress Lee-lee Sweet’s Christmas bash. Welcome back, Ty.”

Lee-lee? Ty had never mentioned anyone named Lee-lee.

The image cut to a news clip of Ty walking into a theater, maybe at a premiere. He was dressed in a dark, expensive-looking, understated designer suit; his hair was cut shorter, and in his left ear a tiny jewel sparkled. He didn’t look anything like the grubby, battle-worn man she’d fallen in love with. His arm was wrapped around a woman—a gorgeous, slinky, scantily clad woman. Miss Sweet, apparently.

Bree leaned forward, eyes wide, and watched Ty stop for a photo op with paparazzi and reporters like a seasoned veteran of the party circuit. To their delight, he drew the actress close. Hey, what was up with his hand? It was sliding way too close to her breast.

Bree’s head felt ready to explode.

“Can their on-again, off-again romance be on the mend? After a brush with death, it looks like this time
bachelor Ty may finally be ready to settle down.”

Bree started searching for a remote to shut off the program before it hit her that prisons didn’t have remotes—or even regular TV. At least, not Fort Powell. It ran twenty-four hours a day, designed, no doubt, to drive her crazy. And in this particular case, it might do exactly that.

She shoved off the bed as the feature continued: Ty Armstrong pictured with various celebrities; socializing on someone’s yacht; at the beach with that wench Lee-lee.
None of it’s true. It’s a brainwashing trick.

Then why did it hurt so much?

That’s what they want. Don’t believe anything they say.
It was all designed to break her down.

She paced, as if she could outrun her heartache and the lump forming in her throat.
You know Ty. Certainly better than he knows you.
She’d been revealing bits of herself, piece by piece, but Ty, he was an open book, so giving, so willing to love her and to patiently wait for her to feel the same.

Because he wants you to believe the lie. He’s working for his father. Has been all along. He’s on the fast track, the closest thing UCE has to royalty. The sky’s the limit when it comes to his future. Do you think he’ll give it all up for you?

“We’ll be leaders of the future, Bree. . . .”

“Stop,” she ground out, squeezing her eyes shut. The drugs in her system were arguing as loudly as her common sense.
You have to trust him. If he’s really alive, he’ll come for you.

Try to believe that,
she pleaded with herself. But she hurt so badly inside that she wanted to die.

And that’s exactly what they want to happen.

“Yes, they do. Or at least go crazy.” She continued talking out loud, sounding more and more like the raving lunatic the UCE no doubt wanted her to be.

Two guards appeared at the door to her cell. A shudder ran through her weakened body.
Not the interrogator again. Not this soon.
She needed time to regroup, to be ready for him. She feared her weakness—that she’d break before making it through another round of endless questions. And the torture . . .
Please, let me be strong.

The guards were new. She hadn’t seen them before. Nor had she seen anything like the hot meal they brought her on a tray. Salisbury steak—or something that resembled it—with mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas.