Except with Felice. Then he was both. And neither.
You’re Kieran
, she’d said to him.
Mitch would make sure she was all right—Kieran didn’t have to worry about Felice being safe. That left him the ability to miss her, and mourn that he’d never see her again.
Felice had given him so much. Though she’d come to Kieran with nothing, she’d left him with the understanding of true happiness.
Rees, he saw, watching Rees’s set face and grim expression, was also grieving. Rees loved Talan deeply, had an amazing connection to her. Talan was gone—Rees was acting like a man with nothing left to lose. He was probably right. Even if Kieran and Rees could escape the city to the wasteland beyond, without water or a way to stay cool, it wouldn’t matter. The desert would devour them.
No transport at all would get out the way Rees was pulling down the system. No trains would run, no water would pump to houses from the Serestine Quarter to Pas City. The entire planet would grind to a halt until the holes Rees was making could be bypassed.
“Stop,” Kieran said.
“No.” Rees went on tapping things and pulling wires. Kieran couldn’t follow his complicated machinations, but he knew it was bad.
“Justin’s daughter is out there,” Kieran said. “Talan’s foster mom—what’s her name?—Lady Pet. Judith’s friends. You’re messing with them.”
“I can try to patch them in,” Rees said without stopping.
“That looks like wholesale destruction to me. What about Dr. Laas? If power goes down to her compound, she’s dead.”
“She has Baine.”
“Baine uses the power already in the system. He doesn’t create it. Right?” Kieran had no idea—Rees was the genius—but Kieran thought that might be the case.
Rees didn’t answer. He kept yanking things, his work light wavering. It was hot enough already down here—what would happen when air stopped blowing through these tunnels?
“You’re going to punish the whole damn planet for what a few scientists did to us twenty years ago?” Kieran asked him.
“Scientists, DNAmo, the ruling council, and everyone who sat by on their asses and let it happen.”
Kieran shared Rees’s anger, but at the same time, what Rees was doing seemed kind of crazy. “Most people out there don’t even know what we are,” Kieran pointed out. “Have never even seen a Shareem.”
“That makes it okay, then?” Rees snapped.
“
They
didn’t do anything to you. Or me. And now they won’t be able to fend off the sun, or stay hydrated. They might die—because you’re pissed off?”
“Kieran.” Rees stopped his frantic work to turn on him. “They’re going to kill us. I’d finally found a purpose for my stupid existence—Talan—and now I’m not even allowed to have her. For twenty years I’ve been trying to help Shareem, and when I at last had a way to give us all our freedom, I only succeeded in getting half of us killed. This isn’t revenge, my friend. This is justice.”
“We’re not dead yet,” Kieran said as Rees returned to the power block. “You’ve fucked things up pretty good already. Let’s take advantage of it, find another transport, and get the hell out of here.”
“Leaving the rest of our friends to rot?”
“They’re not stupid.” Kieran grabbed Rees’s wrists, stilling his hands. Rees glared at him, but Kieran refused to let go. “Get over yourself, Rees. You think you’re smarter than any other Shareem—well, okay, you are—but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are dumbass little babies waiting for you to tell us what to do. I bet most of them are heading for the nearest transport even as we’re sitting here. You did it, all right? You messed up Bor Narga—now we can go.”
“How the hell do you know?” Rees asked, voice harsh. “For twenty years, they’ve waited for an excuse to terminate us. Now I’ve given them one.”
“You did what was right. What else were we supposed to do? Hole up here and live like rats the rest of our lives? Worse than rats. You gave us a chance. Now stop fucking it up. I’m not willing to make other people we’ve never met miserable, maybe dead, because I’ve had to live in a crappy apartment and take sterilization drugs.”
Rees’s hands relaxed under Kieran’s, and Kieran released him. Rees just looked at him and didn’t go back to shutting down the city. “They took Felice away from you,” he said, his voice flat, dead. “They took Talan away from me.”
“Talan and Felice are safe. That’s the only thing that matters to me. That Felice is safe. What matters most to you?”
Rees watched him a moment longer, his chest rising and falling with his tortured breathing. His eyes shone in the dim light of the work lamps, the blue nearly black. “You fuckwad,” he finally said in a quiet voice.
Kieran reached past him and slid the panel closed on the grid. He didn’t trust himself to turn on what Rees had turned off—he’d probably blow something up—but at least he could stop the damage.
He cranked himself to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go find a transport before the patrollers trace the outage to here.”
“They won’t,” Rees said.
“Even so.” Kieran held out his hand to his old friend.
Rees took Kieran’s offered hand, then abruptly hauled himself upright and took a swing at Kieran’s face. Kieran blinked, and blocked the punch, but found another, and another coming at him.
“Rees, what the fuck?”
“You asshole,” Rees said. “Why’d you stop me? There’s no way we’ll get a transport. I’m not running out of here straight into a patroller with a shock rod. I’m done with shock rods.”
Kieran lost his temper. Didn’t happen often. He grew angry, yes, but the chemicals that suppressed him always kept him from letting go.
Felice had changed him in the short time he’d known her, had released something buried deep inside him, something chemicals and pieces being sliced out of his brain couldn’t stop.
You’re Kieran
, she’d said. Not the Dom, not the level-three, not a Shareem.
Kieran.
Kieran roared, every bit of anger he’d bottled up for years pouring out of him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He went for Rees, his perfected techniques for subduing subs homing in on one big, annoying Shareem. “You’re a full-of-yourself, fucked-up, pain in the ass who’s busy feeling sorry for himself.”
Rees threw no insults in return. He fought back, his punches and holds matching Kieran’s.
Kieran got Rees in a headlock. Rees batted at him, plunging his elbow into Kieran’s ribs. Kieran held on. Fighting and snarling, they made it across the floor, and Kieran started to drag Rees up the stairs. He’d haul the asshole all the way to the cargo bay of a freighter and sit on him. Rees could swear and yell at him
after
they made it to safety.
Rees fought him every step, the madness Rees possessed manifesting. Kieran was pretty pissed off himself, but he’d
mastered
control, while Rees’s brain was busy losing it.
Up and up, into the dungeon, and then the stairs on the other side. Fire stairs, because the lifts weren’t going to work, thanks to Rees.
Halfway up, they were surrounded by a dozen patrollers coming down. Patrollers not only carrying stun guns, but with hypos full of nasty things hypos could be full of.
“Shit,” Kieran said, as Rees was ripped away from him. “So much for this place being secret.”
“Thank his woman,” the patroller said, hypo in hand as five others held Kieran against a wall. “Lady Talan d’Urvey told us where to find it.”
Kieran had the satisfaction of Rees looking utterly shocked before the hypo touched Kieran’s struggling body, and that was the end of that.
Chapter Nineteen
Kieran woke up on top of Rees, who was mostly naked. As Kieran’s awareness grew, he realized that he was mostly naked too.
Kieran had woken up plenty of times on top of other Shareem, after they’d done a ménage a trois or foursome or fifth-some with a woman, or women. He preferred waking up on the women or the women on him—he only put up with the other Shareem because the ladies enjoyed it.
Rees grunted and kept his eyes closed. Kieran started to peel himself from Rees’s body when the business end of a stun rifle poked him.
“Stand up.”
Kieran blinked his bleary eyes a few times. “I must be uptown,” he rumbled. “Better class of patroller.”
This patroller wore a crisp black uniform, not the dusty gray coveralls of the Pas City variety. She had every hair in place under a square hat and no expression on her face. None at all. She might be an android—if Bor Narga had androids.
The patroller didn’t repeat the command. She simply waited for Kieran to obey. She’d make a good dominatrix—if Bor Narga had dominatrices.
Kieran pushed himself off Rees and got unsteadily to his feet. Around him, under a high ceiling with a hologram of sunlight streaming through stained glass windows, other Shareem were standing up, shaking off stuns, looking around.
All the Shareem who hadn’t made it off planet seemed to be here. Eland was across the room, the man looking lost and alone without Jeanne. Kieran saw Rylan, and with him, never far from his side, Maia. Then Justin, stoic without his Deanna.
To his absolute dismay, Kieran also saw Mitch. No Judith, just Mitch, waiting with another patroller. He hadn’t been stunned or tranqued—he didn’t have the just-woke-up look the Shareem had.
Mitch
here
meant he wasn’t flying off to a space station with Judith and Felice. Did it mean he’d been there already and come back? Or hadn’t been able to leave? Or had Mitch betrayed them?
Kieran started across the hall for Mitch, only to be stopped by black-clad patrollers who pointed stun weapons at him.
“Stand still,” the dominatrix patroller snapped. “She’s coming to speak with you.”
“Who is?” Kieran asked.
The patroller didn’t answer. She didn’t have to, because at that moment, the room dimmed, the rays through the stained glass focusing on a raised platform at the far end of the hall. A procession of women, each covered head to foot with multicolored robes, entered in a slow and stately manner, and arranged themselves on the raised platform.
The holographic sun—why fake sunshine when Bor Narga had so much of the real thing?—narrowed to one point, and into that light stepped a woman.
She was tall and knew how to use her height to her advantage. Her back was straight, the opulent robes covering her not too ostentatious but elegant enough for attention.
Her face was covered, and after one dramatic moment, she pushed back her veils. She looked familiar, but Kieran knew he didn’t recognize her from vids, because he never bothered watching them.
The woman raised her hands for silence, and she got it. A commanding personality. Another dominatrix. The highborn were hiding them up here, were they?
When the woman began to speak, Kieran realized where he’d seen her, or rather, someone like her. She was an older and more arrogant version of Brianne d’Aroth, but lacking Brianne’s softness and warmth, her show of compassion. This must be Brianne’s grandmother, the head of the ruling family.
“Shareem,” Clothilde d’Aroth said, some sound system carrying her words clearly the length of the hall. “Twenty years ago, I signed the order that stayed your execution, allowing you to live on this planet if you followed certain basic rules.” Her tone turned ironic. “It seems you aren’t satisfied with that.”
“Would
you
be?” one of the Shareem yelled. Laughter followed. Resigned laughter. They were going to die; they might as well go out being pains in the ass.
Lady d’Aroth went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “You have violated one of the most basic rules the council laid down, that of not leaving the planet without permission. You are a created species, genetically engineered in laboratories. We can have no idea what we’ll spread to other populations if we allow the specimens to leave the planet.”
“I’ve got your specimen right here, sweetheart,” another Shareem shouted. More laughter.
Rees said nothing, only stood with his arms folded, expressionless, his gaze fixed on Clothilde d’Aroth.
“Let her talk,” Kieran called out. “The sooner she says her piece, the sooner we’re done with this shit.”
Lady d’Aroth pinned Kieran with a sharp stare before she went on. “For violating this rule, the punishment is termination. In the last twenty years, however, the Shareem have gained some . . . influence. Very powerful women have spoken up for you, begging for your lives. You stand before me arrogant and angry, but the only reason you are alive at all this night is because of
them
. I would be humbled.”
The laughter dissipated a little. Rees didn’t move, and Kieran’s heart thumped.
“Who are these sweeties?” Eland called. “We’d like to thank them.”
Lady d’Aroth inclined her head. “I will name them, so the record shows which women of Bor Narga had the bad taste to favor Shareem. Lady Elisa n’Arell, once a celibate, a director of libraries. Lady Katarina d’Arnal, a brilliant doctor who turned her back on a prestigious hospital to work in a Pas City clinic. Lady Talan d’Urvey, daughter of one of the highest families of Bor Narga. My own granddaughter, Lady Brianne d’Aroth. Nella of Ariel, of the ruling family of that world. Lady Ursula d’Mato, formerly of the Way of the Star. Less highborn women as well—a dock worker called, I think, Jeanne. Deanna Surrell, once a city patroller. Felice Henderson, an elite fighter from Old Earth.” She paused for effect. “
These
are your champions, gentlemen. Women, whom you would enjoy seeing subjugated, are ready to do battle for you. Think on that.”