Page 3 of Double Bind (Cosmic Mates #6)

It’s going to be a long year.

While his new wife said goodbye to her friend, Marshall retreated into their assigned cabin.

Oh, you’re kidding me. He dropped their duffels, and with dismay took in their new digs. Having been promised a “private domicile” by Lucento , the silver alien who oversaw Artisan’s Loft, Marshall had expected more—like more than one room.

He’d get no privacy or relief here. Only slightly larger than his quarters in the Dark Ops HQ bunker, the single-room cabin afforded them no place to get away from each other unless one of them hid out in the closet-sized lavatory he spied through an open sliding door.

Worse, they had only one bed. No sofa. The only other furniture was a wooden table with two chairs and an ugly stove monstrosity that burned dried horniger shit. “Herb cakes,” Lucento had euphemistically referred to them. There was a bin of them on the porch. The planet was overcast most of the time, so, to conserve the solar batteries, people burned herb cakes for heat, the alien overseer had explained. Marshall also had learned Refuge enjoyed two seasons—cold and frigid.

Kind of like his bride’s personality. The sweet, pleasant woman with the ready smile had morphed into a sharp-tongued termagant. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear a clone of the woman he’d met in Willow Wood had been substituted for his wife. She acted like he’d done her a disservice rather than a favor by marrying her.

Circumstances weren’t ideal, but when were they ever? He hadn’t put her in Dark Ops’ crosshairs—that had been Bragg’s doing. His pursuit of Faith could have blown the lid off the clone program. Marshall had wooed Amity under false pretenses, but he’d been trying to clean up the mess to prevent them all from ending up in the brig. He genuinely had liked her—at least the woman she was then.

Nobody had forced her to marry him. She could have hidden out on Terra Nova or Earth until a Cosmic Mates match came through, and then moved to some alien’s planet. That would have put her out of reach of Dark Ops. Instead, she’d chosen to accompany Faith to Refuge.

It wasn’t his fault her asylum request had been denied.

All things considered, his marriage offer had been rather magnanimous. Shouldn’t she be a little grateful?

If she’d had limited options, he’d had even fewer.

Beatings will continue until morale improves.

Perhaps realizing the agency had a “morale problem,” Dark Ops had been tightening the screws, beefing up monitoring and limiting freedoms to prevent desertions. Just before Bragg had been “born,” the agency had begun inserting tracking devices in all its clones.

Breaking free had been now or never. If Marshall hadn’t taken this chance to run, he wouldn’t have gotten another. He shouldn’t feel guilty.

Except, he did.

But not for the reasons Amity might assume.

A draft of cold air swept into the cabin as she entered.

“This is it?” She gasped, her dismayed gaze riveting on the lone bed.

“’Fraid so, wife .”

Her sour expression gave the impression she’d pulled a nasty retort from her quiver of ready insults and was nocking it into her bow, but she pressed her lips together, strode to the lavatory, and peered inside. “At least we have indoor plumbing.”

Hands on her hips, she took inventory of the meager furnishings. “The table and chairs look handmade.”

He’d reached the same conclusion about the rough-hewn wooden furniture held together by dowels instead of screws or nails. “I imagine this is the kind of stuff I’ll be building,” he said. Lucento had informed them he’d assigned him to the woodworking shop.

“You ever done carpentry before?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “I’m surprised they didn’t put you in the pottery shop.” She’d been assigned to the loom studio.

Refuge tried to align asylum grantees to jobs in their area of expertise, but obviously, that didn’t always work out. There couldn’t be much call for his skill set—undermining foreign governments, infiltrating citizen organizations, and disseminating disinformation.

“I’ve never thrown any pottery. I just ran the business side of All Fired Up.”

“Have you done any weaving?”

“No.” Her lips quirked in a merest smile. “I feel like we’re visiting a pioneer village. I guess the name, Artisan’s Loft, should have been a clue.”

He chuckled. “It’s no bigger than a loft either.”

“And I thought Willow Wood was small!”

With a sweep of his silvery arm, Lucento had been able to point out the “village” in its entirety—a mercantile, a mess hall doubling as an auditorium, a tiny infirmary, the “woodshed,” loom and pottery studios, an admin office, which included a library, and a laundry. If you rode through Artisan’s Loft and blinked, you’d miss the entire “town.”

“After the probationary period, we might be able to transfer elsewhere, but I doubt another hamlet will be much bigger,” he said. After the probationary period, we’ll no longer be together.

“I assumed in an age of faster-than-light space travel, an inhabited planet would be a little more advanced.” She blew on her cupped hands.

“I think eventually it will be, but building infrastructure takes time. Any new colony starts from scratch—everything manufactured must be shipped over. Hence, they rely on the natural resources. Living off the land lends itself to a primitive existence. At least the domiciles are composite prefabs and not log cabins.”

She blew on her reddened hands again. “I’m not sure that makes a difference. It’s freaking cold in here.”

“Let’s try out those herb cakes,” he suggested.

He took a quick gander at the antiquated stove, figuring out how it worked then stepped outside. He eyed the row of identical white cubes, wondering which one the others had been assigned to.

Grimacing, he grabbed two herb cakes barehanded and reentered the unit and shoved them into the belly of the stove. He lit them with a striker then ducked into the lavatory. For a man his size, the bath was a claustrophobic fit, reminding him of the clone tank that had birthed him.

Geneticists insisted clones had no memory of gestating, but Marshall did, recalling the confinement, floating in a viscous liquid, green light, voices, and other sounds. He’d get flashbacks and panic attacks during times of stress or extreme confinement, which was why his duty in the field had been shorter than most, and he’d been reassigned to a desk job.

He’d freaked while tunneling under the Kremlin and had blown the mission. Gods of space only knew what had been imprinted on his permanent record as a result. Ironically, aged clones unable to physically perform in the field got released like racehorses put out to pasture. With two decades of service, he should have been retiring around now. But since he’d been pulled from the field early on and been given a “cushy” desk job, Dark Ops would have kept him indefinitely. The only way out was to die—or desert. Given those options, he’d chosen the latter.

I’m free now.

Except for being shackled to a resentful, snippy ball and chain. But she’d be gone a year from now.

They seemed to be getting along at the moment, but he wouldn’t hold his breath as to how long that would last.

Stepping into the lav, he broke into a cold sweat and his heart began to pound. Quickly he washed his hands and leaped out. “Water’s hot,” he announced. When he showered, he’d have to leave the door open to get through it. If he could get through it.

“Are you okay?” Warming her hands over the stove, she peered at him. The smoldering herb cakes had begun to throw heat.

He strove to gain control of his breathing. He could feel a full-blown panic attack building. “Fine. Why?”

“You seem…I don’t know…forget it.” She shrugged.

He raked a hand through his hair and redirected the conversation. “You have any idea which unit is Bragg and Faith’s?”

She shook her head. “I came inside when Lucento led them down the street. We did talk about the four of us going for dinner at the mess hall.”

“When?” He struggled to sound normal. He felt like he could leap out of his skin.

“Dinnertime? We didn’t mention a specific time. They know where we are, so I imagine they’ll come here.”

Bile rose in his throat. The cabin seemed to be shrinking. He needed air, space. In two strides, he’d reached the door.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” she called out, but he was already on the porch. “Will you be back for din—”

He slammed the door, and, gasping, sucked air like a drowning man breaking the surface.

Motherfucker. He hated being weak. Hated panicking over a freaking lavatory. I’m free now. I’m free. He reminded himself he was no longer boxed in by Dark Ops.

He’d left the organization, but leaving the memories and feelings behind had proven much harder.

Redirect, redirect. He stomped off the porch and headed for the town. He’d do a little recon. Hopefully, the distraction would help him calm down.