“Erik.” Lila stumbled, fell to her knees, and caught herself on Erik’s ottoman. She was acting, and she was not. It was easy to act like you’d been beaten senseless when you had. “They’re going to bomb the facility.”
In an instant Erik was at her side. He helped her lean up against the ottoman, then studied her face, her bloody shirt. “We caught her. She was trying to pass herself off as you, but I know what you look like.” He reached out, then brushed her hair with the gentlest of touches before turning to the soldiers. “Find a doctor.”
Both soldiers froze. “We were told to kill her.”
“Did you hear what she just said? How do you think she sustained these injuries?” Erik shouted. “By helping them?”
They left to fetch a doctor.
“It was a coordinated attack. Five of our production facilities were hit.” He studied her face.
“What is it?” She touched her nose. “Am I bleeding again?”
“I’m trying to read your expression. Part of you must be glad about these attacks, even if you tried to stop them.”
The front door clicked open. “Lila? Lila.” Kai rushed to her, pushing between her and Erik. “Oh my God. What happened?”
“I was attacked by rebels,” she said.
Kai slid his hand behind her back. “We have to get you to a hospital.”
“I’ve already sent for a doctor,” Erik said. “I have everything under control. I’d suggest you make sure your son is safe. Things could get bad out there.”
“Where is he?” Lila tried to sit up further.
“He’s at Charlie’s, down the street.” His voice tight, he added, “I’ll get him.”
Erik relaxed visibly after Kai left. If anything ever happened to her, she wondered if Erik would kill Kai. She was confident he’d make sure Errol was taken care of, but she worried about Kai.
“What did you mean, ‘things could get bad out there’?”
Erik turned on the TV, tuned it to the channel that was not a channel—the Eye in the Sky, the live feed only defenders could access. He tuned it to a surveillance camera on a street corner in a city Lila didn’t recognize, where defenders were going berserk. The air was hazy; in the background smoke poured from the broken windows of a wide, flat building Lila recognized as the Moscow production facility. They were pulling people out of a grocery store and lining them up against the wall. A defender was going down the line and shooting each person in the head. Three men broke away from the wall and ran: They were torched by a defender with a flamethrower. In the street, four defenders in a jeep were strafing the upper floors of office buildings with automatic weapons.
“I’m so relieved you weren’t involved in this. I knew you wouldn’t be.”
Lila looked at her hands, to avoid having to watch the screen. Most of the people being butchered hadn’t been involved in it, either.
“They’re going to execute the woman who impersonated you tomorrow. Why don’t you join me for the execution? I have excellent seats.”
After nearly choking with surprise, Lila managed to say, “I’d like that.” Erik had presented it as an invitation, but Lila knew he wasn’t asking her, he was telling her. Her presence would prove her loyalty and give the other defenders in power a chance to see what had been done to her face.
71
Dominique Wiewall
October 18, 2047. Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada.
She wasn’t sure whether to feel ecstatic or dejected. They’d disabled five production facilities, but not seven. When those two were added to the Easter Island facility, the defenders could still roll out about 80 percent of the new troops they’d planned, if they ran the facilities full tilt, cracked the whip on the technicians. Security would be super-tight at those remaining facilities, so hitting them again wasn’t an option.
Someone knocked. “Come in!” she called, hoping it was Forrest.
It was. Gasping from the cold, he pulled off his gloves, a big, goofy smile on his face.
“What?” Dominique said.
“Nothing.” He went on smiling.
“What?”
“Have dinner with me?”
Dominique gave him a puzzled look. They had dinner together every night, though usually he didn’t phrase it quite like that. Usually it was “You going to dinner?” or “You ready?”
She checked the time on her screen. “Dinner’s not for another hour and a half. Unless you’re taking me to a swanky new restaurant I don’t know about.”
He clapped his hands together, spun in a half circle. “Damn. You guessed my surprise.”
Lila raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, maybe not a new restaurant. Blake agreed to cook us dinner early, so we could have the cafeteria to ourselves for a change.”
“Blake did? Wow, what did you have to trade for that, your last pair of warm socks?”
“Don’t even ask.” Forrest looked pained.
“Wait a minute,” Dominique said. She put her hands on her hips. “Are you asking me out?”
Forrest nodded. “Bad idea?”
Dominique shook her head. “Excellent idea. I could use some cheering up. Or should we be celebrating? I have no idea.”
The meal was creamed spinach and corned beef hash on toast, not exactly swanky restaurant fare, but they each claimed one of the remaining bottles of beer in their ration, and Dominique found herself excited by the idea of a shift in their relationship. Any change was welcome, but even if they weren’t trapped in this arctic hell, Dominique would have liked this guy.
“Did you hear Barry shot a walrus?” Forrest asked. On the way over they’d agreed not to talk about the resistance. All anyone ever talked about was what was going on through Earth2. There’d be plenty of time for that when the others arrived for dinner.
“I didn’t. How nice. I mean, nice that we’ll have fresh meat.” She tilted her head. “Do walruses have meat, or just blubber?”
“Mostly blubber, I think.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever had blubber.”
“It’s considered a delicacy in some cultures,” Forrest said.
Dominique grinned. “What cultures are those?”
Forrest cleared his throat, shrugged. “I can’t list any specific cultures, but rest assured, it’s a delicacy in some cultures.”
Laughing, Dominique put her hand over Forrest’s, which was resting on the table. He looked down at their hands, turned his over, spread his fingers.
“So what was it like, studying at COGE?”
Dominique turned her gaze toward the low foam-tiled ceiling. “Weird. Exciting, but weird.”
“You really weren’t allowed to leave the island?”
“Not for the first three years. I was in a college run by the equivalent of the CIA. They were teaching us things the US government denied it knew how to do.”
Forrest shook his head. “How times have changed. It’s hard to imagine there were such hard, fast lines between countries back then. State secrets. Cold wars. It all seems stupid now.”
The door flew open; Dominique and Forrest quickly unclasped their hands, as if they’d been caught doing something wrong.
It was the president. “We think the defenders have infiltrated Earth2.”
Both Dominique and Forrest leaped from their chairs and followed Wood through the supply room, into the operations room. Nora was at the computer. Dominique watched over her shoulder as she controlled Island Rain. Rain was in a bar, speaking to two male avatars. One was dressed in a black ninja outfit, the other in jeans and a T-shirt. Both were clearly newbies, given their generic appearance and the stiffness of their movements.