"What happened?" Saidan grilled one of the lab assistants. In a sinking moment, I recognized his face. He was one of ours, number Nineteen-Fifty-Four. A huge gash leaked blue blood. He half-heartedly held a bandage to it, but it was soaking through quickly.
I didn't understand it. I started to feel fear running through my veins as I contemplated the possibility that it was a warning designed by the Sisters to let us know we were treading a fine line.
"Everything went pop." The lab assistant babbled in his fear. "Don't know why. Just did. Blood everywhere. Research all gone. Sorry."
Saidan's hand clenched into a fist. He must have been feeling guilty at that point. We'd been lying on a beach, making love, while his science team had literally exploded. They might have been drones, but they were still the only people he'd known for a long time, and they didn't deserve the kind of pain and confusion they were obviously suffering now. Saidan pushed past me and into the building. I followed, carrying the box of supplies and samples as if it was all business as usual.
The scene inside was chaos. Blue blood splattered the walls. Windows had been blown out, and broken glass lay scattered across the floor. A janitorial team was working on the clean-up. A Valerian doctor knelt down beside an injured drone. I thought he was going to patch the drone up, but he simply pinned a number to him, stood up, and walked away.
"Saidan? What's going on?"
Saidan lowered his head. "The numbers mean there's nothing they can do. It's a number in the line to be euthanized."
"Euthanized?" We had voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill on Earth, but nothing like what I was seeing. "His wounds don't even look that bad!" I moved to go to the man's side, but Saidan grabbed my arm and shook his head in a warning. I was torn between my conscience and my safety. I was no doctor of medicine, but I knew enough that I might have been able to patch the drone up. I stood there, completely stunned. The drone passed into unconsciousness. I knelt down beside him and felt for a pulse. I didn't know where the Valerian pulse might be, but Saidan's had been strong as he'd lain beneath me. I felt nothing and realized the drone was dead. A doctor pushed Saidan aside and regarded me with a quizzical expression.
"We are much more fragile than you," Saidan said. "It does not take much to kill a Valerian. Even a small amount of blood loss can lead to death. With our somewhat limited medical understanding, sometimes euthanasia is the kindest option we have." He walked away. I heard broken glass crunch under his feet as he walked into the lab. I followed, leaving the doctor with the deceased Valerian scientist.
One stood in the center of the room, assessing the damage. Her face was impassive as she directed drones to clear up the mess and remove the dead and the dying.
"What happened here?" I preempted Saidan's question. I knew it would sound better coming from me, the always-curious off-worlder.
"A gas explosion." One pointed to the propane tanks in the corner, or what remained of them. "Apparently Nineteen Twenty-Nine left the flow of gas on and lit a match." She shook her head. "A waste of time and research. We won't be replacing your team. The Sisters have shown me that your continued research on the Forbidden Zone has been fruitless."
Saidan hung his head. I wanted to go to him, to put my hand on his shoulder and support him, but that wouldn't have been acceptable. Instead, I had to stand still and pretend to be impassive while my lover's heart was breaking.
"What will happen now?" I asked.
"You will be reassigned. There is other research that could use your attention, off-worlder. Nineteen Twenty-One, you will be confined to your room while an investigation is carried out. You should have left a competent individual in charge while you left the city to collect samples."
"We were close to a breakthrough," I said. I would have said anything in that moment to preserve our project. No Forbidden Zone meant no more time together. I knew that we might even be split up and placed on different projects.
"How so?" One turned to me with a penetrating gaze.
"We found life." My lie came easily, born as it was from desperation and a lack of respect for the system. "We tested one of the new samples in the field and we found something." Saidan must have known I was lying but he was silent and impassive, trusting me to carry out the bluff.
"Show me." The Ice Queen loomed large over me while I pulled a sample from the box, one I was pretty sure had been contaminated by my sloppy work. I was counting on it now. I walked over to the intact side of the lab and dropped it in a petri dish. "Sisters, enhance." The computer window popped open in mid-air. I held my breath as I spun the image around. I almost breathed a sigh of relief as I saw evidence of bacteria. "Here."
"Sisters, speculate on origin of bacteria." The Ice Queen was not easily fooled, and I held my breath again as I waited for the Sisters' response.
"Origin unknown. Advise further research."
I think One knew that something was afoot, but unable to put her finger on it, she conceded. "Fine. You will be given one more chance to produce results. One more round of sampling and testing after this one. Do not think you can fool me, however. Disobedience brings points to whomever might consider it." She marched away, leaving the drones to clean up the bloody mess.
Saidan shot me a look of pure relief before walking away. I knew I had saved us, but for how long? One had reminded me how much she and the Sisters controlled our destiny. With one command, the whole house could come tumbling in on us. Our fledgling love could die with our extended separation. The risks that we might take to see one another would surely be our undoing.
I knew we needed answers, and soon, but I was not sure there were any to be had. I made my way up to my room with the project on my mind. Reflection Time was cut short, but I spent it analyzing the data the Sisters had on file. I saw the tiny, squiggling bacteria that were certainly naturally-occurring human microbes from my hand, and wondered how long we could keep up the ruse. The Sisters might have been fooled by my alien bacteria for now, but the three A.I.s were bound to figure it out eventually.
When I settled down into my pod, my mind was racing with images of all I had seen. Saidan had become my lover, a terrible accident had shown me the fragility of Valerian life, and I was faced with an impossible, insurmountable problem with the research. I knew both Saidan and I might end up depending on whatever lies I could conjure up. I just hoped that I was intelligent enough to fool the Sisters, or we were probably both in for an extended stay at the Re-Education Building.
I wished that I had Lankis's help. I felt that he would have known what to do. He would understand my predicament better than any other. He knew the difficulty of balancing love and science. He was the one who had warned me of the dangers of my very human heart. I wished I'd not been so cock-sure in my assessment of myself, but I suppose it's only by experience that we learn. I was learning very fast who I was and what I was capable of.
*~*~*
Feeding Time the next day was a grim affair. I had trouble telling the Valerians apart, but even I could sense the emptiness in the room where many of our lab assistants had been. The chatter was muted, and more than one discussed the events of the previous day.
Saidan sat quietly by himself at a table. I wanted to offer him reassurance and tell him that it was not his fault, but I knew it was not safe to do so. The cameras were always watching us, and I wanted to give the Sisters no reason to look into the lies I had told them.
After Feeding Time, we headed down to the new lab. Chemistry had been moved down the hall to an empty lab, and so we had a large research room mostly to ourselves. Our lab assistants were not being replaced and so we had to make do with just ourselves and a couple of others. I didn't mind, really. The fewer of us there were, the less chance there was that someone would have a brilliant moment and reveal my secret.
We analyzed the samples from the beach. They were all dead except for the ones I'd accidentally contaminated. Saidan and I knew that the signs of life were phony, but the assistants were excited. I felt guilty for leading them up the garden path, but it was a necessary evil. The more people who believed our lies, the better it would be for us.
"We should make another trip to the beach," I said to Saidan. "We should collect more samples and confirm this bacterial find. Then we can start to speculate what it might be."
"Agreed. I'll set up the expedition." He shot me a conspiratorial glance and I simply nodded.
In hindsight, I think we were pushing too fast, too hard, and too soon. Saidan was eager to see me again, and was reckless in his planning another trip so soon. For my part, I didn't fight back. I wanted to see him just as much as he wanted to see me. The danger felt distant when I had the warm fuzzy feelings of love to comfort me at night. I no longer listened to the instincts that had been finely tuned over the years of my life. I silenced the alarms and the warning signs, concentrating only on the positive feelings that we shared. Love made me bold... and foolish.
Perhaps it wouldn't have been any different if we hadn't taken that final trip. Our trick was bound to be discovered at some point. I think we both knew that it was only a matter of time. Drunk on love's endorphins, we didn't care that danger was coming our way.
The bus stopped in the same place it had parked previously, and we made our way over the hill and out of sight of the cameras before coming together. It had been two long weeks that felt like forever, and my lips explored every curve and aspect of Saidan's face while they had the chance, my hands roaming along his back as if I could save the very shape of him in my memory.
Our breaths grew ragged, and I looked down to find I wasn't the only one with a telltale bulge in my jumpsuit. I laughed, a sound that seemed alien to me after so many weeks of drudgery and monotony. I grabbed his hand and ran down to the beach like a sixteen-year-old, where we fell into the sand and rolled over one another in a mock fight, wrestling for dominance. I pinned his wrists to the sand and kissed him deeply, my cock pressing against his through the fabric of the suits. I ground into him, and the friction felt good. He moaned, moving his hips under mine. I pulled back, worried I might come in my suit and leave a stain that was difficult to explain. As if realizing this, Saidan worked on stripping me. He was ruthlessly efficient and my jumpsuit soon lay abandoned in the sand. The breeze caressed my naked body and his mouth soon followed, making a line of hungry kisses down my body to my cock.
He tentatively took my dick into his mouth and I gasped at the heat. I gave him an encouraging moan and he continued his ministrations, his tongue swirling around my head like I was an ice cream cone. My eyes were open, watching the innocent-looking Saidan take me in his mouth. My mouth was dry at the sight of him working me, loving every second of it. I dug my hands into the white sand around me as if we could somehow dissolve into it and hide from the world.
That was when the ground fell in. One moment I was on the edge of heaven, the next I was tumbling downwards in a dizzying spiral. Up and down, pleasure and pain all mixed in the matter of a few seconds. I fell onto something hard and felt a jolt of agony travel up my spine. My first fear, however, was for the fragile Saidan.
"Saidan!"
"I'm all right."
I looked up to see we'd fallen a good fifteen feet. The light that illuminated our surroundings faded away as the hatch we'd fallen into closed behind us and we were trapped in absolute darkness. Saidan grabbed my arm and we held each other close, feeling naked and vulnerable in this strange place.
A light on the floor startled me. Another one lit up, then another, low, blue lights that seemed to be illuminating a path. A light in the wall sprang to life, and Saidan found our jumpsuits. We dressed, not wanting to explore this strange place in the nude. My back hurt, but I didn't seem to be bleeding. My erection had deflated at the shock and pain.
"What do you suppose this place is?" Saidan asked.
"I have no idea," I said. "Perhaps it holds some answers for us."
We followed the lights on the floor until we reached a broken door. The panel to one side of it was sparking out, but it was open wide enough for us to squeeze through. Saidan went first, then helped me climb through the gap.
The room we were in was cavernous. Lights lit up the walls, thousands of twinkling little stars that seemed to stretch on into eternity. Movement caught my eye and I took a defensive stance before I realized the movement came from maintenance robots. Whatever this place was, it was alive and well, kept in perfect working order by a small army of metal creatures. Low-level emergency lighting lit up at our arrival, and I once again had the feeling of being watched. There was no doubt in our minds that the Sisters were present.
"Could this be part of an ancient civilization?" I asked.
"I don't know," Saidan said. "I've never seen anything like this." His eyes shimmered with awe and fear as he looked around at our unfamiliar surroundings. I saw an array of gigantic missiles set against one wall and a ceiling that looked like it might open.
"A launch bay?" Various warnings were splattered on the walls and I considered the Valerian symbol for nuclear material with increasing dread. "I had no idea the Sisters had nuclear missiles."
"Neither did I." Saidan's tone was one of awe and fear as he contemplated the warning symbols. "The Sisters truly have us under their total control. They could wipe out the city in an instant if they wanted to."
"We should keep moving." I was leery about the thought of the aged nuclear material leaking as I ushered Saidan forward. We tentatively made our way through the launch bay, following the lights. A small elevator took us down to ground level. Hundreds of tunnels branched off in different directions.
A huge screen was set into the far wall, but it remained blank. I didn't see any cameras, but I still had the sense that we were being watched.