Page 10

Zandrel

Marva’s office is a definite step up from Brivik’s.

Comfortably furnished, with a wide wooden desk, dark carpeting and walls, dim lighting, and a pleasant floral aroma from the vase full of fresh blooms on the sideboard.

Roslyn and I have been left alone to wait, sitting side by side in a pair of chairs before the desk.

The silence in the room is deafening.

Roslyn hasn’t said a single word in the last fifteen minutes, despite my brief attempts at whispered conversation right when they left us here. Arms crossed over her chest, stony gaze fixed at the far wall, she’s doing an admirable job of pretending I don’t exist.

Perhaps I should give it up now.

If she’s going to be this obstinate after what I just did to save her back there, perhaps I’d be better served by coming clean as soon as Marva steps through that door.

Only… what would that mean for me?

I’ve got no answer.

No way to explain away my behavior.

No clever solution to excuse lying to the crew, no way to provide any suitable reason for what I did.

Biting back a frustrated growl over my own idiocy, I try again.

“We need to decide how we’re going to play this,” I say under my breath, and Roslyn doesn’t react in the slightest. “They’re likely going to want to know more about how all of this—”

Outside the office door, the low clip of muffled voices interrupts that thought, though it’s hard to make out more than the tenor of the conversation.

The first voice is Marva, and the irritation in her tone is clear enough.

The second is deeper, quieter, smoother, and it’s not until the door opens that I realize who it is.

“Forgive us,” Geeno says magnanimously, sweeping into the room and taking a seat behind the desk. “We apologize for keeping you waiting.”

It strikes me immediately as… off.

His tone. His words. That he’s treating us like we’re some sort of special guests rather than a contestant and a guard who have already done enough to be booted off the show entirely.

Roslyn’s earned herself a one-way ticket back to whatever planet she calls home, and I…

I try not to shudder with the thought of what my next assignment will be if I’m demoted even further.

But Geeno doesn’t look like he’s about to deliver bad news, and I cut a glance at Marva. Her face is hard, impassive as she stands behind and to the side of where Geeno’s sitting, hanging back and letting him do the talking.

“We know that all of this is very… unorthodox,” Geeno continues, the picture of contrition. “Having you both escorted here so late at night, the questions you received from production. And I sincerely hope you won’t let it derail you on your journey here.”

It’s an effort to keep my face blank in reaction to whatever the hell it is he’s talking about, and when I glance at Roslyn, I see it’s a battle she’s already lost. Eyebrows knitted together, mouth set into a frown, she crosses her arms over her chest and I lament again we didn’t use those precious minutes to formulate a plan.

“Our… journey?” she asks.

“Yes.” Geeno nods sagely. “You and Zandrel. We realize the way you’ve come to meet and fall for one another must not have been entirely… ordinary, but believe me when I say our audience will absolutely be rooting for the two of you. Think of it. A human from the deserts of Severin, a veteran of the Sol Alliance, no less. And a mercenary from Revexor, a former member of the Aux, working here, with no idea he’s about to meet his match.”

The deranged little fable Geeno is spinning barely registers above the other details he’s just dropped into my lap. Severin. The Sol Alliance. The fact that Roslyn has at least some measure of military background.

I barely have time enough to file them all away, and no time to bristle over him calling me former Aux, as he continues.

“You’ll be known across galaxies. Your love story will be one for the ages. You’ll have the admiration of billions of—”

“What Geeno’s trying to say,” Marva cuts in, halting his rhapsodic monologue in its tracks, “is that we’d like you to stay. Both of you. As a couple. And we’re willing to talk terms.”

Ah. That makes more sense.

It’s not unheard of, this type of wheeling and dealing with contestants.

As much as Mate Match’s rabid fans might want to believe the fairytale, the mechanics of production aren’t quite so romantic. Producers regularly select contestants to build storylines around, offering proper incentive when necessary, and I’d much sooner deal with Marva’s blunt honesty about it than Geeno’s dramatics.

Roslyn shifts beside me, and has just opened her mouth to reply, but I cut in.

“We’ll hear your terms.”

I keep my eyes on Marva as I speak, but I swear I can feel the cut of Roslyn’s glare pulsing against my throat like a dagger.

“Wonderful!” Geeno enthuses, clapping his hands together. “Just wonderful. Marva, dear, I’ll leave you to the details, if you wouldn’t mind sparing a word before I go?”

She nods, and after a few more enthusiastic promises and words of exuberant praise from Geeno, Roslyn and I are left alone once more.

“You’re former Aux ?” she hisses under her breath as soon as the door swings shut.

I do bristle this time. I may have been demoted, but Mate Match still contracts with a very, very low-ranking offshoot company of the Aux for some of their security needs.

“Current Aux. But it doesn’t matter. When Marva gets back in here, we’re going to—”

“Worry about yourself. What I’m going to do doesn’t concern you at—”

“Roslyn.”

She meets my eye, and beneath her blustering anger I find a pulse of… fear.

It’s there, in the expressions I’m beginning to learn how to decode. A tremble in the corner of her lip. A slight sheen on her eyes as she blinks away a bit of dampness there. A hard swallow as she girds herself against me. A hitch in the breath at the back of her throat that she can’t quite hide.

My words die on my lips.

Whatever arguments I meant to make, whatever I was going to say to convince her, it all goes up in smoke in the face of that fear.

“Do what you need to do.”

The words have barely left me when Marva stalks back into the room and takes her seat behind the desk. She looks hard at me, then at Roslyn, then folds her hands in front of her and lets out a long breath.

“Name your price,” she says. “What’ll it take for you to stay and play out this charming little romance Geeno seems to think will resonate so well with our audience?”

I lean back in my chair and fold my arms over my chest, strangely comforted by her straightforward, unadorned opening salvo.

I can work with this.

“You first. What’s our time and cooperation worth to you?”

She looks me up and down, considering. “I already know what I can offer you to make it worth your time.”

“And what would that be?”

“Your rank. Restored. Your position with the Aux reinstated.”

Deep within my chest, my heart stutters, skipping a beat in a way I didn’t know it still could. It kicks back up in hard, aching beats, and though my face twitches, I keep it neutral. Calm. Collected. So Marva doesn’t know the blow she’s just landed.

I scoff. “Name something within your power to grant, and I might consider it.”

“You think it’s not? Two comms calls. A couple of favors cashed in from the deep pockets that fund production on this show, and you’re back in.”

Marva juts her chin up, fixes her mouth in a half-smile like she’s just waiting for me to try her.

A trickle of doubt lodges itself in the back of my mind, along with something that feels nauseatingly like… hope.

“Show me proof you can make it happen, and I’m in.”

The words aren’t even a choice.

A chance, any chance, even one as unlikely as this seems to be, is one I’m not going to pass up. To gain back my position, to get out of this fatesdamned assignment and back into the role I spent decades earning, to make good on my vow to go after the Aux’s recruiters…

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for a chance like that.

“It might take me a couple of days to confirm. Can you give me that?”

“Yes. I can give you that.”

Fates, if she only knew the things I would give to see my life restored.

“And you?” Marva turns her attention to Roslyn.

All that burgeoning hope withers to nothing.

I can’t do this without Roslyn’s agreement.

And I won’t blame her for turning down whatever they offer her.

She’d be a reckless fool to agree to work with me, to pretend to be with me for the sake of the cameras. I’ve already shown her she can’t trust me. I’ve treated her with suspicion from the moment she stepped on-world, and though tonight has shown my suspicions are more than justified, I know the damage is already done.

“A million credits has a nice ring to it.”

An exorbitant amount. Laughable, even.

I admire the gall of it, even as I wait for Marva’s flat refusal.

“Done.”

I don’t know who’s more shocked, Roslyn or I, but she speaks first.

“Done? Just like that?”

“Unless there’s something more you wanted to demand?”

Roslyn’s lips press into a thin line, and it makes me wonder exactly what type of service she was in. Whatever she was doing with the Sol Alliance, it must not have been spycraft, because I’m not sure I’ve ever met a soldier less able to keep her thoughts hidden.

Emotions flicker across her face in rapid succession, calculations I can’t even begin to parse out as her gaze bounces from me to Marva and then back again.

That terrible hope in the bottom of my soul sparks back to life.

Despite her flippant offer, there’s still something keeping Roslyn on this planet, something important enough for her to risk staying, risk breaking out into Eritin’s off-limits wilderness.

Perhaps important enough to risk agreeing to this farce, risk trusting me.

“No,” Roslyn says finally, voice hoarse. “No. That should do it.”

“Excellent.” Marva leans back in her chair and studies her for a moment. “Stay and film together, give a good performance and make it to the Choosing, and the credits will be wired into your account.” She looks at me. “Same goes for you. If the two of you pull this off, consider your rank restored.”

Impossible promises, nearly too good to be believed.

But there’s something in the hard set of Marva’s expression, something in the authoritative tenor of her voice that makes me want to believe her.

At worst, I’ll wind up right back where I am now, still on this cursed assignment and no closer to regaining my rank.

At best…

I make myself abandon the thought. Hope still tastes too much like ash on my tongue for me to put much faith in it, even when my eyes fall to the ring Marva’s begun fiddling idly with as she sizes us up. A thick band of jet black stone, inlaid at the top with a crest that looks almost like—

“Alright,” Marva says, standing and gesturing toward the door. “Off with you, then. Zandrel, we’ll have your things brought from the barracks to the bungalow shortly.”

“Hold on,” Roslyn says, still firmly in her seat. “When you say ‘bungalow’, I assume you mean—”

“Your bungalow,” Marva says, all business. “We’re all full up on accommodations, and couples who’ve committed to each other usually start cohabitating anyway. Since the two of you are already head over heels for each other, I don’t see any reason not to skip right to that step.”

She gives both of us a look as she says that last bit, and the implication isn’t lost on me.

Roslyn sets her jaw, and I can almost hear the thousand or so arguments she might make flipping through her mind.

But she doesn’t offer a single one, nodding slowly as she stands. “Right. I suppose… I suppose that makes sense.”

Marva’s gaze narrows. “All our procedures and requirements for contestant safety are still in place, and the bungalow is equipped with an alarm to sound if there’s any reason you don’t feel safe.”

Roslyn nods again, though some emotion clouds her expression. It looks very much like fear, and curdles sourly in the bottom of my gut.

I’m not a danger to Roslyn.

Certainly, I may be standing in the way of whatever plan she’s trying to carry out here on Eritin, but surely she knows I wouldn’t hurt her. Surely she knows she doesn’t have to worry about violence from me, that I have no intention of…

What am I thinking?

Of course she doesn’t know that.

Of course she’d have no reason to believe I pose anything but threat to her.

That curdled discomfort grows even more caustic, cramping into something that feels a lot like guilt.

What I have to be guilty for, I don’t know.

It was Roslyn who was about to break out of here tonight, violating not only the show’s security protocols, but Seventh Sector regulations protecting Eritin II. I helped her. I gave us both something to fight for. Rewards for our time here, if we manage to make it through filming.

I’m not in the wrong.

But I’ll be damned if I can make the ache in the bottom of my gut believe that, and I can’t do anything to stop the promise that rumbles up, unbidden.

“You have nothing to fear from me, Roslyn. I’d never hurt you.”

She looks to the floor, hiding whatever she’s thinking from both Marva and I, and who could blame her? I wouldn’t believe me, either, if I were in her position.

But there’s no more time to discuss it, no more promises to give, nothing at all I can do to reassure her as Marva gestures toward the door.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a meeting with my producers to decide how we’re going to handle the both of you and your… love story.”