He said, “Nobody could ever see it. I was always just the catalyst for the rest of you. You were the devices by which every part of the plan was played out. None of you could see how necessary my role was.”
She back-pedaled a step, and he came forward. Her heart hammered in her chest as she realized that she had walked right into something both deadly and dangerous. “We all knew how necessary you were. You are our leader. We would’ve been nothing without you. We would have failed early on. You brought me into the resistance, remember? I had no idea it even existed until you took me into the tunnels and into the command center.”
His eyes flashed. A smile, so evil and vicious that it took her breath away, lifted his mouth. He looked like a complete stranger now, and she took yet another step back, knowing that he would pursue her if she tried to run. His hands were so much closer to his weapons than hers were to the ones she wore. She might have a chance to get off a shot, but not before he got off one of his own.
He said, “You were the easiest one to convince. I already had your loyalty. All it took to buy you was to elevate you from the tunnels to the training grounds for the Capo. It cost me nothing but a few words to own you.”
She had to buy some time. He was going to kill her. She knew it. She heard faint noises from downstairs and hope lifted her spirits, but not for long. That might be his reinforcements, come to aid and assist him in murdering her, and whoever else might be left in the house.
She had time to reassess the situation however when he paused for a second, a slight frown marring his face as he too heard those voices and footsteps below. That he was obviously not expecting someone made her feel better about whoever was down there not being an ally of his, but then again, they may not be allies of hers either. They could be Federation officers ready to kill anyone who moved.
Her gaze flicked back to his face to see that he had come forward yet again. She had missed her window of opportunity to draw fire upon him. His attention was focused back on her again.
Jessica knew, deep down in her heart, that part of what kept her weapons sheathed was a vast sense of loyalty to this man. He had indeed taken her from a life that had been far beyond awful and placed her in the hallowed above-ground life. She knew, with every fiber of her being that the life she had had up there, in the sunlight and air, would have been completely beyond her otherwise.
She owed him her life, but was she willing to let him take it from her?
Hell no.
She had to placate him. She held her hands up, her empty palms showing. “So you own me. I don’t mind that. I have never minded that. I have always known it.”
She had known it. Deep down in her soul and heart where it counted the most, she had known that he had played upon the loyalty that she felt for him and used it to take her into the resistance. It had not taken much convincing though. Every single day of her life she had seen the injustices that he had sworn had to end, and she had wanted them to end as well.
He said, “You I am going to regret having to kill.”
She managed to get out the words, “Then don’t kill me.”
His face contorted. “I don’t want to. I always loved you. Even after you no longer loved me, I still loved you. I did everything I could to get you off this planet, and what did you do? You opened your mind just enough to get yourself wiped and put on a slaver ship.”
Her breath hitched in and out of her throat. “What are you talking about? I was betrayed, and I was captured. You know that. They were trying to mine my brain and memories for any hint of who the resistance leader was, but they couldn’t find it. They couldn’t find any of the information that you gave me. That’s why they put me on that slaver ship.”
He shouted, “I had planned for you to be betrayed! You were supposed to hold out from interrogation long enough to be shipped off to one of the penal planets, where you could have been rescued. But no. You had to come back here and start a war between those who live above and those who live below and wreck my plans.”
He drew his weapon. He kept it steady and aimed right at her heart. Jessica gathered up every bit of her dignity and courage as she spotted a movement near the door of the study. “It is you, isn’t it? You are the Federation traitor who wishes to take over the entire universe.”
Yori said, “I have a plan. It can be done. There must be one ruler, not all of these delegations and planets with other rulers and all of this constant back and forth and checks and balances that only make certain that some are privileged while most starve. There must be one ruler and one way of doing things.”
“And why must you kill me?” That question burst from her lips before she could stop it.
He said, “Because you are my one weakness.”
Talon said, “Mine too. Put the weapon down, or I will blow your head right off your shoulders.”
Yori’s face didn’t change. His smile turned bitter. “I always knew you’d be the one to betray me, Jessica.”
Talon’s weapon settled right on Yori’s temple. He said, “You had to have heard us downstairs. What betrayed you, you idiot, is talking too much. Let that be a lesson to you: if you’re going to hold somebody and kill them, do it. Don’t try to talk them to death.”
Jessica’s eyes flickered downward. Yori’s smile got even wider and far more evil. That was when she understood.
She screamed, “It isn’t him! He’s not the Federation traitor! And he’s wearing a kill pack! Run! For God’s sake, run!”
Yori’s hands dropped to his waist. He had been buying time; this whole time he had been holding her there because he was buying time, but for whom and what and why?
Those questions were blown away by the force of the blast.
Memories ran through her mind. Her life flashed and pulsed. Her mother, stooped and tired. The dim and swaying illuminator bulb that had been all they could afford in their one-room tenement. The dark corners that always held shadows where she went to cry quietly on nights there was no food.
Her father, coming home, his injury severe. The shouting between him and her mother. Her mother’s voice, “She’s going to starve to death anyway. The shortages are driving the cost of a loaf to heights we can’t afford if you don’t work.”
