Rebel's Consort - Phoenix Book 1 (6 page)

Her gratitude and the look of respect in Aaron’s and Hena’s eyes only grated on him. “I did what I was trained to do.”

Aaron frowned. “I didn’t know medics were trained?”

Trace winced at his own mistake. No, medics relied on software procedures and automation in lieu of training. A necessary grassroots evolution because all medical training came from Regent authorized facilities, which were difficult to gain access to and expensive. He’d intended this to be a simple job. Get in, help the kid, and get out. No messing in personal baggage and, definitely, no sharing the nasty details of his past. From the suspicion dawning in Analena’s eyes, it was too late to salvage that error.

“My training was in surgery.”

Aaron’s eyes narrowed, still in the puzzled stage, “But they all work for—”

Sounds behind Trace ceased.

Her expression fierce, Analena lifted her hand to motion the younger kids to stay back. “You did, as well.”

A statement, not a question, and no amount of details would make that suspicion fade from her golden brown eyes. Six years of fragile trust and interaction down the proverbial tube. What had he expected? They were right to fear him.

“You worked for the Regents?” Hena’s voice, filled with disbelief, hissed across the table.

“Yes.” That shocked them enough to bring on healthy anger. Aaron and Hena had obviously expected a denial. Their rigid posture matched the disgusted horror in their eyes.

Well, they’d asked, and he wasn’t lying. It didn’t bring the cleansing satisfaction or the numbing distance he’d hoped.

A movement from his side caught his attention. Gar, not able to see Analena’s command to stay away, stood awkwardly by the table, his fingers wide in front of him to detect collision. He’d frozen at Trace’s comment and turned his face to him.

“Gar.” Trace reached a hand to steady him. The boy flinched and backed away.

Analena rose, an arm circling around the boy’s chest, bringing him safely against her.

“You did these things?” The whisper came from Gar. His hand touching his own cheek cut deeper into Trace’s soul than the condemnation in Analena’s eyes. Or maybe they both hurt so much it didn’t make any difference. In penance, Trace answered the question spoken and unspoken.

“I did what they told me to do.” He’d had another choice, one he couldn’t reconcile then and still wouldn’t embrace now. Even knowing the outcome, he wouldn’t risk a different path.

“Why?”

Trace would have ignored the question had it come from anyone else, but from Gar—the boy had suffered too much to dismiss harshly.

“To save my wife and daughter.”

Gar pursed his lips and turned away. Analena rubbed her hand over the boy’s chest. Oddly, her look had changed from seething anger to cold speculation.

“Did it work?” Aaron asked.

“No.” Trace stood and walked back to the exam table to jam his tools back into the duffel. He didn’t need any more of their judgment, and he sure as hell didn’t need their pity. What he’d done, who he was, didn’t concern any of these people.

A muttered curse and the diminishing whispers signaled the others’ retreat, creating as much distance as possible from him.

At a small scraping sound, he turned.

A tiny doll of a girl with ebony skin and equally dark, shiny curls held a stuffed bear and shuffled toward him with a gait that made him cringe. He could guess what had been done to her, yet she didn’t look more than four and too tiny for any monster with a conscience to harm. Then again, the Regents didn’t hire men of conscience.

She grabbed his pants leg and looked up with one arm lifted for him to pick her up. He wanted to ignore her. He wanted to pry her off his leg and leave. Instead, he lifted her to his chest. As she clamped her arms around his neck, her bear poking at his back, he heard the sharp intake of someone’s breath.

“Analena say hugs make everything better,” the girl whispered in his ear.

He gave her an awkward pat on the back and finally looked around, desperate for someone to extract the child before she killed him with memories of his own precious innocent.

“Bits, come with me.” Hena moved close enough to pull the child from his arms and, without looking at him, left the room.

***

Analena followed Onyx through the tunnel. His stride lengthened with his attempt to flee. Not before she got a few things perfectly clear.

His revelations had shocked everyone, herself included. She’d trusted this man with her secrets, making herself vulnerable to his agenda. In theory, he should be no more of an enigma than he ever was. Several years of helping her save her kids should have bought him some trust. The fact that he’d worked to save these kids, doing the very thing she risked her life on, warred with her uncertainty.

“I can arrange payment. I didn’t pull anything from the labs this time that you might want—didn’t have time.” She glanced back down the long tunnel. Gar sat beside Aaron.

She saw Trace follow her look, a speculative expression crossing his face. Just like that, the unbidden image of danger to her kids flashed through her mind and jolted her into response. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him further out of sight, the low gray light hiding nothing of their expressions.

“I only brought you here because I didn’t know what to do for Gar. But those children aren’t payment.” She hissed and pointed back down the rock pathway. “They are not up for auction.”

His glare forced her to take a step back.

She’d been certain after her first comment that she’d seen shock on his face. She’d almost backed off. The anger there now said something completely different, something familiar that she couldn’t dissect, and it frightened her. Not a comfortable feeling.

Her emotions and fears were racing ahead of common sense. These children were her responsibility. Even if she’d trusted Trace from a distance, she didn’t have the luxury to trust anyone else with their lives.

The fact that he’d been so good with Gar had thrown her off her game, made her lose her hard edge, made her drop her scrutiny—not something she could afford.

“What are you offering me?” He gave a pointed glance from her head to her feet that left a strange flame in its wake, one that died as fury morphed in his expression.

“I’ll offer you whatever you want as long as you don’t tell anyone about these kids.”

“Anything?” His growl rumbled as he crossed his arms over his chest.

She swallowed hard and nodded, stepping closer, though uncomfortable with her overture. He hadn’t refused. If he let her barter with something other than the children’s lives, they’d be even. Maybe he’d even be placated enough to respond to her call if she had a desperate need in the future. He’d always refused monetary credits, said he didn’t need them. She had nothing else.

“Yes. If this makes us square then anything.” She stepped closer, biting the inside of her cheek to squelch the cold spike of fear. It was only her body. It would be over before she knew it.

She pressed against his hard body, sliding her hands behind his neck and rising on her toes to reach his face. A real stretch and he towered over her not bothering to help. She pressed her lips against his and met granite. No give existed in his hot, dark expression—only fury. There was no mistaking the emotion now.

Too late in realizing her mistake, she started to step away only to have his arm whip out and circle behind her back, pulling her tight against him. One hand cupped the back of her head, and he pulled her nose to nose.

“If you’re going to offer yourself, you have to sell it, Analena.”

His mouth clamped over hers in a harsh, hot assault. Too stunned to move, she lost control of the little measure of her sanity as his tongue licked at her lips, forcing a gasp and taking control. His claim, unlike the clumsy attempts others had tried to force on her, cajoled and enticed. With a wicked, sinful kiss, he explored, conquered, and destroyed.

A deep whimper swirled in her throat as she sought more of what he delivered. He pulled back and forced her away at arm’s length, anger still painted on his face, but mixed with another expression.

“I don’t trade in flesh, not yours and never a child’s. No matter what kind of a monster I am, I’d never sacrifice their safety.”

Without a backward look, he picked up his duffel and headed down the tunnel.

Analena bit her lip, his name on her breath as she finally connected the elusive expression she’d seen on his face—self-loathing. A fair match for the regret in her heart.

Granted, she’d been finding and protecting these kids for years. She had a right to be overprotective. But he’d been helping her do the same thing, and from Aaron’s investigations, she knew Trace had done the same for others even longer.

His announcement to the kids had been brutal, for them and for him. The gentle man of earlier with his treatment of Gar provided a hard, painful contrast to the truths he’d delivered. The confession had been too raw and stark, intended as a self-inflicted wound.

Damn, she’d handled that badly.

Chapter 5

Aaron stood as Analena returned. “You want me to follow him?”

She waved her hand and shook her head. “Our time is better used in other ways.”

“You can’t be considering trusting him?” Hena’s question ended on a high pitch. “He could have been there when—”

“No.”

Analena and Hena both turned to look at Aaron.

He stared back at them, resolve and indecision waging a battle over his lean features. “He’s worked with you for over six years, Analena. The word from Down Below has him in hiding and helping others for several before that. It’s unlikely he had contact with any of us.”

“You can’t prove that,” Hena insisted.

Aaron pressed his lips into a thin line and glanced at Gar.

The boy had been sitting at the table, staring straight at his hands, now he turned to Analena. With shock, she realized he could see her. The glazed blind look, gone, replaced with a fixed, alert, light gray in his eye. A determined glint matched the stubborn set to his young jaw, Trace’s discarded sampler syringe gripped in his hands. “He didn’t have to help me or care about any of us. He’s not one of them.” He looked pointedly at Bits in Hena’s arms.

Analena blinked. The boy had taken in everything he’d heard, probably able to view Trace’s face as he’d delivered his answers. Yet, Gar’s steadfast commitment to the doctor was obvious and she respected his need to push for answers. One way or the other, they needed to know the truth. Honestly, she needed the truth.

She turned to Aaron. “See what you can find out. We’ll settle this once and for all.”

Relief eased Aaron’s features. Evidently, he didn’t want to give up on Trace after he’d helped save so many of the children in her small family. She didn’t either.

“But don’t take any risks.” She pushed her finger into his chest and pulled him close for a quick hug, just as quickly pushing him away. “Don’t take too long getting back here, either. I don’t want to have to come looking for you.”

“Yes, Mom.”

The dark smirk didn’t quite touch on happy. Yet, it was better than the concerned scowl he’d had when she’d returned from dealing with Trace. She watched Aaron amble soundlessly into the farthest dark passage with equal measures of pride and worry.

First of the children she’d saved, only nine years younger than her, Aaron carried the weight of their survival as if born to it. A shame. Then again, that any of them existed in their condition was a shame.

Analena walked down her private tunnel to the laser-drilled fifteen-by-fifteen hole she called hers, and slid into a flexible plasma chair in the corner. The chair had cost her forty credits, a ridiculous thing to drag to the caverns. But after years of isolation in the camps, the tiny luxury let her pretend a warm, caring body curled around her.

That she had a dozen caring bodies to cuddle wasn’t the same. There were few similarities between her and the kids. Her experiences, while austere and cold, hadn’t caused her to risk loss of limbs or body parts. That loss had occurred before she’d woken up on a steel slab with tubes running into her chest and shoulder.

Attempting to expel the visions of Dr. Paresh and his long fingers testing her skin, she blew out a breath and tapped her fingers to her lips. Years of his inspections and monitoring had built up her defenses against anyone’s random touches or probes. Strapped to a table for clinical evaluation, she’d endured hundreds of grueling hours of indignities and pain. The weaving and spinning of tendons, veins, and flesh as her arm had grown back were harder to wipe away.

Ironically, it had been worth it in the end.

Her experience didn’t compare to what the kids in her care had endured, much less what the other children she’d witness Paresh use as test subjects to reproduce her results had suffered. What she’d survived, so many had not—injections, mutations with nanites, painful adjustment of flesh and organs. Her designation, a roman numeral twenty tattooed over her hipbone, marked her as the only successful experiment in his batch of human lab rats. The only one to survive.

Eight years she’d endured Dr. Paresh’s experimental study to provide an alternative rejuvenation method for the Regents. And while she was generation twenty, he would have considered her disposable once he managed to replicate his success. He’d kept her safe from the organ and body parts harvesting, isolated and lonely in her own small cell. His paranoid ego had luckily kept her progress from the Regents’ visibility. No doubt, he’d wanted surprise as the ultimate leverage when he finally revealed his scientific prize. Another blessing. What the Regents didn’t know about, they couldn’t put into production.

Eight years of tests and exercises, and she’d come out ahead. When his body had flown through the air, colliding with the locked door of her cell during an explosion from the detention riots, she’d come out far ahead of the children in her care.

Eight years had provided her with the time to study the doctor, to learn skills of stealth and subversion, to hack into his files when he foolishly left her alone, and to learn of the Regent agenda. Almost as important, Paresh hadn’t credited her with the knowledge to create her own plan in anticipation of an opportunity to bolt.