“How’d you get yourself in that state?” Nyle giggled innocently.
Darren gradually melted into the soothing motions. “Carrying boxes.”
“Uh-huh. That sounds like a tough job for a secretary.”
“I feel more like an errand boy than a secretary sometimes,” he complained, letting out an exasperated laugh.
His body sagged. He needed to get his shit together and figure out what he was going to do when Aiden returned. The problem was that he couldn’t really do that when Aiden was the one who dictated where and how this was going to end for him. Death was the likeliest scenario regardless of Aiden’s actions, so perhaps getting to terms with that was the best he could do.
Except, he wasn’t onboard with dying or rotting here anymore. He was done giving up. Just the thought of it agitated him, threw him into an inner frenzy that he couldn’t stifle down, that he didn’t want to extinguish just like he didn’t want to deny the fact that despite last night, he still wanted to know who Aiden Kesley really was.
Fuck dying.If his hunch told him Aiden could be trusted, then he was going to roll with it. And that meant figuring out a way to get the hell out of Horizons instead of worrying about what Aiden might do once he returned.
Yes, that was it. He needed to occupy himself by thinking up a plan to break out of this prison station.
“Hmm, that explains your late-night trip out of the cell block,” Nyle mused, a hint of mischief in his voice. “I do wonder what the warden had you do for him.”
A shiver ran down Darren’s spine. He grabbed Nyle’s wrist and squeezed it, earning himself a challenging glare. “You are mistaken. I was sleeping. It must’ve been someone else.”
Nyle stepped aside and crossed his arms. He sized Darren up for a long moment as Darren did the same. Eventually, Nyle let go of his scowl and donned his trademark flirty smile.
“I guess it was.” The twink leaned in, placing his hand on top of Darren’s thigh and squeezing it. “But if something like that were to happen, I would be curious to know the reason behind it… And perhapshelpwith whatever trouble you may or may not have gotten yourself into,” he whispered, then straightened up and pecked Darren on the cheek. “Go take a hot shower. It will help with the soreness.”
Darren stood up, his heart banging against his ribcage.Had Nyle just offered to help him?He blinked in disbelief, and that only made the grin on Nyle’s face stretch wider.
“You should get going while the showers aren’t crowded and offer some privacy,” the twink urged.
Darren felt his mouth slowly curve up. “Yes… I think I will do that,” he said and headed for his cell to get his towel.
When he made it to the showers five minutes later, Nyle was already waiting there.
Chapter 26
Sara? An heir?
Aiden’s eyes went wide, boring into the unreal girl while she just stood there and beamed her radiant smile at him.
“You are a… heiress?” he said slowly, trying to keep the disbelief out of his voice. Was she modeled after someone real? Deep fake AI-s were still a thing, though this one seemed… too authentic for that. It definitely had to be some corporation’s proprietary product.
“I was! A real princess! Twenty years ago!” She spun around, her dress a dizzying blur of red that made Aiden feel a little queasy. Or maybe the mess of thoughts racing through his head was at fault. “And I was going to be Queen Sara one day,” she continued, fortunately no longer spinning. “But… the bad men came.”
A princess… that would have been a queen?
“I wasn’t aware queens and princesses were still a thing twenty years ago. The monarchy system was abolished a decade before the Global Nations was even formed in the 2050s…”
Sara shook her head and pointed a finger at him. “You are wrong!”
That couldn’t be right. According to all the official historical records, at least.
Aiden thought back to the book Bea had given him and the discrepancies there. Had Sara’s AI model been trained on inaccurate data and conspiracy theories? Was that it? Or was Sara… lying? If this whole trip had been a setup from the start, then it was plausible to think that she was trying to confuse him even more. The issue with that was that modern AI systems didn’t operate that way; they had protocols in place which essentially rendered them unable to lie or make up things unless they disclosed such intentions first. Aiden didn’t know exactly what had led to that restriction, now that he thought about it, but the enforcement of such policies had something to do with some big incident from twenty or so years ago.
Just around the time Sara was killed then if he was to believe her strange story.
Aiden surveyed the girl’s face, her toothy grin warming his chest.Fuck it. If he’d gone on a treasure hunt for Darren Howe, he sure as hell could entertain Sara’s scenario. And now that he did, the only way what she was saying would make sense was if the historical records about the GN had been changed. Was that even possible?
Claudia’s forged autopsy came to mind.
Manipulating a police case and textbooks was one thing, and doable, sure, but the internet? It would be impossible to falsify every single instance of information, towipe every mention that a Monarchy still existed twenty years ago… Rewriting humankind’s history like that just didn’t seem plausible.
