Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (43 page)

It had been nothing short of torturous to walk away from them. Corinth had held it together until she’d turned to go, then he’d thrown a fit, refusing to leave without her. His powers raged out of control and he’d even launched Vayne across the room when he tried to calm him down. It took all of her energy, false calm, love and devotion to Corinth’s well-being to make the case that leaving without her was best for him. He still didn’t believe her, but when she’d finally begged him to agree to leave for
her
, he relented. His tears had broken her heart, and his final words still rang in her head.

You said you’d never leave me.

She’d barely made it to the wedding after that.

She struggled to keep a pleasant expression on her face as the wedding officiate lectured about the virtues of marriage. Couldn’t he just declare them bonded for life and end it? Her shoulder still ached and she wanted to visit Vid in the recovery ward.

A disturbance in the crowd caught her eye—someone moving toward the center aisle. Someone as desperate to escape as she?

Crimson robes made a loud statement as Prince Trebulan and his people exited to the center aisle. Trebulan walked in front, the others arranged behind him in a stream of blood-red solemnity. The official stuttered to a halt and everyone turned to see what was going on as they made their way to the foot of the dais.

A flicker of unease laced the expectant hush that fell over the crowd. Security personnel gathered around the perimeter started filtering up the aisles.

Trebulan’s voice boomed into the silence. “I see so many of you gathered in accord for such a frivolous event, and it pains me. Here you are, every ruler from every last province in the empire, coming together for a game.

“Yet when a quorum was called on a plan of action to stop the spread of the Tetratock Nanovirus and provide relief for those planets suffering, less than one percent of you came forward.” He scanned the gathered crowd on both sides, his gaze blazing with scorn. “Less than one percent.”

He stood as tall as his crooked form allowed, looking regal even with the ever-present tremor shaking his body. Regal and furious. A sense of foreboding crept in as their earlier confrontation came to mind.

“The TNV is the most important crisis our empire—our people—have faced, and nothing,
nothing
should be taken more seriously.” He slid a hand into his robe and retrieved a cylindrical silver object. “But I can see that you won’t act if your own interests aren’t threatened. I’m here to make the situation more immediate for you.”

Unleash it
, he had said.
Unleash the TNV on the Ordochians if they won’t help.

Holy shit.

He raised the cylinder to eye level, thumb hovering over a button.

“He’s got the TNV!” Kayla shouted, and the microphones on the dais blasted her words across the arena. “He’s going to release it!”

The crowd exploded into chaos.

From the corner of her eye she saw Malkor rushing toward Trebulan but she was quicker. She grabbed a fistful of skirts, took three running steps and launched herself from the dais to crash into Trebulan.

They landed in a jumble of fabric and limbs and shouting. She’d aimed to knock the canister from his grip but his hands clung, claw-like, to the metal.

Did he manage to activate it? Am I covered in the TNV right now?

The horror of that possibility stunned her like a blow to the head, and only her
ro’haar
training kept her fighting.

His elbow smashed her nose and she clamped her hands around both of his, locking his fingers in place. If he hadn’t released the virus yet, she wasn’t going to give him a chance to move even a micron closer to the button. Someone yanked on her hair and a red-robed Velezed kicked at her hands. Through it all Trebulan shouted, but it was impossible to hear him over the stampeding crowd.

“Malkor!”

Another kick to her hands. Where was he? “Malkor!”

The sea of crimson fabric around her parted as Malkor crashed down through the tangle. Two of the Velezed staggered back creating the only opening he needed. He disabled Trebulan with a punch to the temple and the cripple went limp beneath her. The canister felt like fire in her hands—had it been activated, or was it just the heat from their struggle?

Her instinct was to fling it as far away as possible.
Save yourself!
her mind shouted. Instead she fought the urge and knelt upright to wrap the canister in the dense layers of her skirts. Would that slow the spread of the virus if released in aerosol form?

All around her was screaming and running and terror.

Malkor gripped her shoulder, mouth at her ear. “Did he release it?”

“I don’t know!” She could be breathing in the TNV right now. It could have already infected her. Infected Malkor. They could only stare at each other as around them the spectators fled

Alarms blared, overriding even the crowd’s frenzied noise. Malkor cupped a hand to his earpiece. “They’re sealing the doors, but hundreds of people have already escaped outside.”

Her own fear of infection was nothing compared to this new possibility. “They could be spreading it! Malkor— If this gets out into the city, the planet…”

An automated voice came on the speakers telling everyone to remain calm, that the doors to the arena would be sealed as a safety precaution against further contamination. Someone in an official indigo and turquoise uniform came sprinting toward her, carrying some kind of equipment.

“Cover her face!” he yelled at Malkor, even as he aimed a nozzle at her. Malkor stripped off his coat and wrapped it around her head as the first freezing shot of liquid hit her.

It was over in a minute, and the officer told Malkor he could remove the coat. She was sealed from neck to floor in a foamy, sudsy green material that hardened into a solid cocoon as she watched. It crystallized her to the floor in her kneeling position, making any movement impossible.

“It’s a biohazard containment foam, gas impermeable. If that canister is still leaking the nanovirus, this will seal it in.”

With me.

She supposed she should feel relieved, but all she felt was horrified.

Was she already dead?

Thank the void her brothers had gotten off the planet.

“What now?” she asked, and Malkor leaned down to hear her. Ardin was nowhere in sight.

“Now we wait. They’ll send medical personnel with scanners to see if the TNV is present, if it’s been released.”

“And if it has?”

Malkor looked at her and his gaze held regret. “Then at least we’ll be incinerated together.”

* * *

“You know you’re a fool, right?”

Kayla had told him that more than once in the last three hours. Malkor sat beside her on the arena floor, wishing he could strip the Isonde hologram from her and see her face. This might be the last time he ever sat with her like this. Well, she still knelt, encased in the green containment foam, while he sat.

“You’ve been cleared,” she said. “Get out of here.”

It was true, he was TNV-free, but with Kayla potentially contaminated by the canister she’d wrapped in her skirts, he could never truly be free. He tucked a lock of Isonde’s auburn hair behind her ear. “Where else would I go?”

The arena was empty except for the two of them. In the last three hours the building’s sensor system had been realigned to scan for the TNV on a broad basis, and the space seemed to be nanovirus-free. It wasn’t as refined as he’d like, but there hadn’t been another way to determine safety without sending in a bevy of technicians, potentially exposing them to the nanovirus.

Reports from outside indicated chaos. The wedding spectators were quarantined in the secondary wing of the arena until they could be individually scanned, but word of the attack had gotten out. All of the Empress Game contestants and their families staying in the massive housing structures abutting the arena—those who hadn’t made it to the ceremony—had poured into the streets to escape infection. Panic spread through the city like a rising tide, and even an official statement that a TNV release had not been confirmed couldn’t hold it back.

“When they crack this foam open,” she said, “you’ll be as dead as I am if the TNV escaped the canister.”

“It didn’t.” He tried to sound firm but it was impossible to know what had happened in the struggle with Trebulan. Images kept flashing through his mind, autopsy shots of people killed by the TNV. Body cavities, thick with a black layer of nanites, opened to reveal organs eaten away, damage that had been done while the victim still lived. Cysts of nanites erupted through the skin. Faces, bloated and distorted, each an unholy gray as the nanites infiltrated the capillaries of the skin.

“Dying a gruesome death in the name of love might sound romantic now, mister, but wait ’til—” Her words cut off with a cry of pain, and suddenly he was looking into her brilliant blue eyes.

“Stars be damned, that hurt!” She worked her jaw, one of the only parts of her body she could move. “I think the biostrip just shorted out.”

“Your hologram’s dropped. Shit.” He grabbed his coat. “Quick—tilt your head down.” He draped the coat over her head to hide her face just as a voice sounded in his comm.

“Agent Rua, I’m First Sergeant Carsov, Biomech Containment Team. I am entering the arena now.”

Great. The imperial military. Just what he needed.

The IDC was still in charge of security for the Game complex due to the Empress Game and that meant they controlled the visual feeds inside the arena. Hopefully he’d acted quickly enough to hide the hologram malfunction from those agents watching live. As for playback when the incident was dissected and catalogued later… He opened a channel on his comm. “Rigger. I need you to do a little artistic manipulation for me…”

Neither of those would hide the truth of Kayla’s existence from the biomech tech when he arrived. Malkor jogged out to intercept him as the man entered from the far door.

Carsov moved slowly in a copper-colored suit that looked made out of tissue-thin metal. It covered every centimeter of him, toes to crown, so that even his face was shielded. The head section bulged outward and a lens protruded where Carsov’s eyes would be, the camera feeding images to him on an internal screen.

When he spoke, his voice came from a speaker. “Agent, you need to exit the building. Now.”

Malkor pointed to the man’s suit. “Will that protect you from the TNV if in fact it has been released and trapped in Isonde’s skirts?”

A pause, then, “Probably.”

“Probably? And yet you’re going in.” Had Carsov volunteered—or been volunteered—for the possible suicide mission?

“It’s my job, sir. Now please, exit the arena. Techs are waiting in the quarantine zone to confirm that you’re clean.”

“I’ll stay, thanks.” If Commander Parrel couldn’t order him from the building, no one could. “However, we need to talk about your equipment.” The man had a large backpack with poles jutting out of the top and a carry case with him, neither of which concerned Malkor. “You’re recording everything and transmitting data in real-time back to your team leader, I assume?”

“It’s protocol.”

“Cut the feed.”

Carsov’s gloved hand tightened on the carry case. “Excuse me, Agent?”

“I said cut the feed. And it’s IDC
Senior
Agent.”

“My apologies,
Senior
Agent, but I can’t do that.”

Malkor took a step closer. “Don’t mistake this for a request. You will cease visual and auditory communication with your team this moment, or you will turn around and exit the building.”

He could imagine the fit the Biomech Containment Team Leader was having on the other end of this transmission—he almost felt sorry for putting Carsov in the middle of it.

“Are you incapable of doing your job without someone in your ear telling you what to do, First Sergeant?”

“No, sir.” The voice from the speaker sounded decidedly stiff. “But protocol mandates—”

“The IDC retains jurisdiction over the Game complex until reassigned by Emperor Rengal himself, and as ranking IDC agent, I am in charge.”
Well, all in.
“I deem the extraction mission of the TNV canister too sensitive to be broadcast pre-screened. The information can’t be tightly controlled, and therefore poses a security risk.”

How’s that for bullshit?

“It’s not as if we’re sharing the live feed on the local vidscreens,” Carsov said. “We know how to handle confidential material.”

They probably did it all the time. Still, this wasn’t just his secret to keep.

“You will end transmission with your team or you will send someone else in who knows how to follow orders.” He leaned toward the camera’s lens until he blocked out all else. “Do you need my boss to explain to your boss how jurisdiction works?”

Parrel was going to kill him for dragging him into this if Biomech didn’t cave. And either way, Malkor was going to pay for it later. If there was a later.

“Fine,” Carsov said. “The IDC can take the blame if this goes to shit.”

Malkor commed Rigger. “Can you confirm?”

A minute passed in tense silence. It was an eerie faceoff with a faceless man—hard to look a biomech containment suit right in the eye.

Rigger finally answered. “Yeah boss, his suit is no longer sending or receiving transmissions. Good luck down there.”

One problem down, at least. Now there was just Carsov to deal with.

“What you’re about to see is classified.”

“Did you really just use that line on me?” Carsov shouldered past him and started down the center aisle.

Malkor followed him to where Kayla waited, the coat draped over her head and shoulders acting like a deep hood.

Carsov set his gear down, then pulled a scanner from the carry case. “And the reason for the coat is…?”

Malkor knelt beside Kayla and waited for Carsov to do the same. His coppery suit shimmered under the lights as he moved. Malkor lifted the edge of her makeshift hood just enough to reveal Kayla’s face to the tech.

“That’s not—” A whistle came from the suit’s speaker. “No wonder you have a stick up your ass about jurisdiction and ‘sensitive material.’ The IDC’s frutting with the entire empire.”