The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (10 page)

“To get to the queen, I need to
get past the moat. You are going to lower the draw bridge for me. Do you
understand?”

“Yes.”

“The drawbridge takes ten
seconds to come down. I will count backwards. When I am done, the drawbridge
will be open. 10…9…8…7...”

Jill saw the drawbridge falling
in her own mind as Gordon counted.

“…3…2…1. Is the draw bridge
down?

“It is,” said Carolyn.

“Good. Now I’m going to walk
across it. When I get to the other side, the guards are going to let me in.
Okay?”

“Okay.”

“It takes me ten seconds to walk
across. 10…9…”

Jill imagined Gordon walking
across the drawbridge of her own castle. It was a soothing, pleasant image. He
was welcome here.

“I’m inside the castle walls
now,” said Gordon. “I am walking to the tallest tower. No one is trying to stop
me. It takes me ten seconds to get there. 10…9….”

The counting was irresistible.
Jill felt herself falling deeper and deeper into the fantasy with each number
Gordon said.

“I’m at the base of the tower
now. The guards are letting me in. I am going to climb the stairs. It takes me
twenty seconds to climb them. Here we go. 20…19…”

Gordon was trotting up the steps
of Jill’s mind, his feet quietly hitting the stone in a soothing rhythm.

“I’m at the entrance to the
queen’s chamber now,” he said. “I’m going to knock three times. You will decide
if she lets me in.”

Gordon reached down with his
fist and rapped gently on an end table three times.

In Jill’s mind, the door swung
open and the woman in the black leather jacket brought Gordon inside. But in
her ears, Jill heard nothing.

“Carolyn?” Gordon said.
“Carolyn, may I come in to see the queen?”

“You may,” Carolyn said. “She’s
opening the door for you.”

“Very good. Starting now, you
will play the role of the queen. Anything she would say, you will say. Nod if
you understand.”

Jill found herself nodding, and
now she was the woman in a leather jacket and jeans. She couldn’t wait to show
Gordon her computer of secrets.

“Your majesty, I am here to
speak to you about the law of the land,” Gordon said. “
You
created the
law. And you wrote it down in here. Do you agree?”

Yes
, Jill thought.

“Carolyn, do you agree that you
created the law?”

“I…don’t know,” she said.

“That’s alright,” said Gordon.
“We don’t have to know who created the law. We just have to know what it is,
and the law is written in here. You have it in this tower.”

“I do?” said Carolyn.

Yes, I do
, Jill thought.

“The law is simple,” said
Gordon. “The law is short. It may be only a single sentence long. Or a single
paragraph. Whatever it is, the law is written down here, and the queen makes
sure the rest of the kingdom abides by it.”

“I understand,” said Carolyn.

“Find where the law is written
down,” Gordon commanded, softly.

For Jill, this was easy. She
imagined herself sitting down at the computer. Her blue jeans and sleek leather
jacket tightened around her body as she sat at the terminal and typed away
until the law of the land came up on the screen.

“I’ve found a piece of paper,”
Carolyn said. “Is this it?”

“You tell me, Carolyn. Are you
looking at the law of the land?”

“I don’t know. I just…”

“Tell me what it says. Read it
to me.”

Carolyn made a whimpering sound.
Jill didn’t understand why this was so hard for her. In Jill’s mind, the law of
the land was already up on the screen for her to read.

It was a single sentence. She
didn’t know what to make of it.

You are not your mother.

“Carolyn, I am here to see the
law of the land,” said Gordon. “You let me into this tower so I could read it.
Tell me what it says.”

“I can’t….read it,” said
Carolyn. Her voice was trembling. “I want to read it, but it’s all gibberish.”

The poor woman sounded
heartbroken that she couldn’t read what was on her paper. Jill felt for her. In
her own fantasy, the law was crystal clear.

And yet, also, quite strange.
Why did it say,
You are not your mother
?

“Carolyn, it’s okay that you
can’t read it,” said Gordon. “I will help you figure out what it says.”

“It’s nothing but symbols,”
Carolyn said. “Squiggles and dots and swirls all over the paper.”

“You can put the paper down,”
Gordon said. “We’ll try this a different way.”

“I’ve set the paper on a table,”
Carolyn said. “I want to leave. I don’t like it in here.”

“Carolyn, we can’t leave yet.
Don’t you want to know what is on the paper?”

“No. I’m not meant to read it. I
shouldn’t be in here.”

“Yes you should, Carolyn. You
are the queen. This is
your
fortress.”

“It is not my fortress! This
palace belongs to the king! I just live here.”

“The king?” said Gordon. “Who is
the king?”

“Walter is the king,” said
Carolyn.

Still comfortable inside her own
fantasy, staring at the strange line of text on her computer screen, Jill heard
the words come from her mother’s mouth, and she wanted to cry.

Walter is the king
. This
was her mother’s programming. Not that Jill was surprised, but to hear Carolyn
say the words, to know that she saw the palace of her own mind as a place that
belonged to her husband…it was disgusting.

“Is this the law, Carolyn? Does
the law say that Walter is the king?”

“The law is what Walter says it
is. The purpose of the law is to please the king.”

“But why does the king need to
be pleased?”

“I…I don’t know.”

Silence for a moment. Then
Gordon said, “I will address you as Your Majesty, because
you
are the
queen of this fortress. Your Majesty, the reign of your king is nearing its
end.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes, it is, and when I finish
counting down from ten, you and you alone will rule in this fortress.”

“But how can that be?”

“The fortress is yours. It
always has been. 10…9…8…7…”

The countdown took Jill deeper
into her own fantasy. Gordon spoke the words in almost a whisper, and Jill
couldn’t help but focus on every syllable.

“…3…2…1…you are the queen of
this fortress, and the law is whatever you say it is. What do you want the law
to say?”

In Jill’s mind she was sitting
at the computer, looking at the words,
You are not your mother
, and
feeling embarrassed at their silliness. This was the law in her land? This was
the law she had dictated to herself?

“The law can be a single
sentence long,” Gordon said. “A single sentence at the heart of everything you
do. What do you want it to say?”

Jill erased
You are not your
mother
from the computer screen. As soon as the words were gone she felt an
extraordinary sense of possibility. She could write anything she wanted here
and it would become the law of the land. A single sentence to sit at the base
of Jill’s mind, to inform every thought that sat on top of it.

With the sense of possibility
came realization. Jill had been living her life with
You are not your mother
as the law of her land. What a horrible way to live! Had it really been so
important to her that she wasn’t her mother?

All the decisions that brought
her to this moment had a new gleam to them. She saw her life in a completely
new way. She was in the Network, risking her life and fighting the most
powerful people in the world because
that was the exact opposite of what her
mother would do
. She was using her tremendous skill with computers to
undermine her mother’s skill, the two of them playing out an epic battle in the
digital realm for control of information, with Carolyn spying on behalf of the
vampires, and Jill spying on behalf of everyone else.

She was going out in the world
and stirring up trouble. She was being courageous and bold and trying to change
the world for the better because her mother did just the opposite. Her mother
hid in a study on the third floor and did whatever her husband told her to do.

But now Jill knew better. Now
she understood that her mother wasn’t some evil monster to be shunned; she was
just another victim. It was time for Jill to quit using her mother to define
herself.

Still wearing the black leather
jacket and blue jeans of the fantasy, Jill raised her fingers to an imaginary
keyboard and typed in a new law of the land.

I choose to do what’s right.

The room was silent. Gordon was
waiting for Carolyn to change her own law. Carolyn was sitting perfectly still.

Jill opened her eyes. She felt
fresh. She felt new. She and Gordon shared a glance. He smiled at her, and
winked.

“Carolyn,” he whispered, “write
a new law, just for yourself.”

Carolyn sat in place, her head
tilted off to the side, her eyes closed. She looked like she was totally
asleep.

Jill wondered what was happening
in her mother’s mind. For Jill, the fantasy had been as real and as vivid as
any dream. The fortress was fully drawn. The castle was a real place. When she
wrote the new law, she felt it take effect immediately.

I choose to do what’s right.

As she sat there watching
Carolyn, Jill knew her mother was still a slave. For Jill, this exercise was
invigorating. It made her strong. But for Carolyn, it did just the opposite.
She looked like she was struggling in there. Her lips were pulled back in a
scowl. Her body was awkward and slumped.

“Only Walter can change the
law,” Carolyn said.

A look of frustration came over
Gordon’s face.

“Let’s not speak of Walter,” he
said. “You are the queen.”

“And Walter is the king,” said
Carolyn. There was a bit of defiance in her voice now.

“Walter does not live in this
realm. Only the queen is in this tower. The fortress exists only to protect
her.”

“And she exists only to serve
the king,” Carolyn added. She pulled herself upright in the chair. As she did
so, Gordon sighed. He looked defeated.

“Carolyn, what if the queen had
another purpose in her life?” he said.

“Her purpose is to serve Walter!
I hate this! Stop this now! I don’t want it! He doesn’t want this! I have work
to do!”

She jumped out of her chair and
ran from the room, stomping up the stairs and slamming the door behind her. As
she ran away, Jill could hear her sobbing.

“What just happened?” Jill said.
“How could she leave the session like that?”

“It’s her choice when the
session ends,” Gordon said. “That’s how it works. You should know. You fell
into the quite the state yourself.”

Jill bowed her head. “Sorry
about that,” she said.

“No, it’s good,” said Walter. “I
wasn’t expecting it, but it’s good. Clearly you needed to relax.”

“I guess I did,” said Jill.

Upstairs, another door slammed
shut.

“She’s gone back to the
bedroom,” Jill said. “She went right back to the laptop.”

“It’s soothing for her,” said
Gordon. “We should leave her there for a bit. Give her some time to come back
to herself.”

“What do we do now?”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing more
we can do,” said Gordon. “The part of her mind we need, the law of the land, so
to speak, is inaccessible to her. Melissa made it that way.”

“There has to be something,”
Jill said. “We could try again tomorrow. Maybe we went too fast. She was coming
along. She was role playing with you. Maybe you could bring her back there and
take --”

“No, Jill,” said Gordon. “I’m
afraid you don’t understand. This isn’t a simple reprogramming like a servant
from one of the mansions. Your mother’s programming is unlike anything I’ve
ever seen before. She is a highly functioning person with a mind running on all
cylinders. She has a very simple command placed deep in her subconscious and
she has restructured all her thoughts around it. But she cannot see what the
command is.”

Gordon put his hand on his chin
and closed his eyes. He exhaled heavily.

“What?” Jill said. “You’re
thinking of something.”

“The programming on this woman
is so stellar. I mean, look at her. She’s a brilliant computer scientist! How
many other slaves have ever done something like that? None in my experience.
She’s truly remarkable. And the depth of thought we saw on that hypnosis
experiment. The reason you went under too is because we had to keep going and
going and going. Her mind is just enormous! Far too large to explore without a
map. I wish we knew the command.”

“I don’t know how we’ll ever
find it,” Jill said.

“I have a feeling Melissa might
have recorded this one,” Gordon said. “Melissa is an artist, and your mother is
her masterpiece. I imagine Melissa was quite proud of her. She would want the
others in her clan to see her brilliance and recognize it. She wrote down the
command somewhere.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jill.
“Melissa was breaking Daciana’s law when she created my mother. All of the
records I found were hidden. I had a…”

Jill trailed off, realizing she
knew exactly where to look for the command.

“I’m sorry, what? You had what?”

“I have a huge trove of stolen
data,” Jill said. “I stole it from Tremblay Property Management.”

Gordon’s eyes got huge. “You
broke into TPM?”

“If the command is in there,
I’ll find it,” Jill said. “Then Mom and I will be back.”

“Where will you go until then?”
Gordon said. “You’re supposed to be on the run.”

“Yes, the Network wants me out
of here,” said Jill. “But I’m not leaving my mom behind. It wouldn’t be the
right thing to do.”