Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (28 page)

The man shouted and ran toward
them. Sean straddled the bike. Sara climbed on behind him and wrapped her arms
around his torso. He engaged the booster and shot past the man and the other
racers’ berths. When he hit the racing tube, he increased the throttle. Bikes
flew through ahead of them, but Sean was gaining fast. Sara hugged his waist
tighter and watched the faint royal blue lights that marked the three hundred
sixty degree lanes strobe by.

Metal screeched on metal, and
sparks filled the dim tube as two bikes clipped each other. A rider flew in the
opposite direction as his bike spun out of control on its side. Sean jerked to
the left to avoid the collision, sending their bike up one side of the racing tunnel.
Sara buried her head in his back to shelter her eyes from the intense wind. She
also didn’t want to see if they crashed.

Sean kept to the wall lane, but a
racer from behind jockeyed for position, trying to force them down. Boosting
the throttle again, Sean curved further up the wall. They were almost inverted
before he rocketed past the racer and crossed all three ground lanes to reach
the wall on the other side. His momentum was so great they almost ran onto the
ceiling. She hoped he remembered they weren’t actually in this race.

Excitement stirred inside her,
bordering on pure delight. The feeling was so foreign after all this time that
she wanted to laugh and cry out so loud that she might even be heard above the
whir of the engines. Instead, she slid her hand up Sean’s chest. She liked the
feel of him. His heartbeat was only slightly elevated. Maybe all those restors
he took robbed him of any true excitement. It was then she realized her dull heartbeat
matched his, even without the aid of drugs.

Much too soon she felt him
decelerate. Racers zipped under and around them until they were alone and
coming to the end of the tunnel. She peeked around his shoulder to watch their
emergence into the Underground.

Sean made a quick right and
exited the track up a small grade. He stopped the bike at the top, giving her
an incredible view of the cavernous world under Latulip. Above ground, fancy
boutiques and expensive restaurants stood in perfect rows along pristine
pedestrian streets with manicured fronts. Down here a glowing network of
mismatched buildings abutted crooked streets stuffed with bikes, transports,
and every type of citizen imaginable. It was a world of perpetual nightlife
covered by a ceiling of steel and concrete that was as vast and far away as the
sky to her.

Sean reached back and squeezed
her leg. “I know a place we can go. Disappear for a while, then decide
what to do next.”

“I hope it has food and a
shower,” she said.

“It will, I promise.”

They coasted down to street
level. Betting salons, bars, v-game parlors, and flesh clubs shouldered around
places advertising
INTRA-TATS - just like the ambasadoras
and
Change
your genes!
The desperation of Lowers impacted her more and more as she
moved among them. To the Upper Caste, manually manipulating your genes was not
only illegal, but more shameful than marrying below your status or even being
sterile, yet honorable suicide ranked low among these people.

Smells wafted from several
unmarked eateries. Sometimes nauseating, sometimes arousing, depending on what
notes got stirred about by the passing traffic.

The Underground’s decadence was
beautiful. Sean had mentioned how no monitoring signals, including those from
voyeurs and mind minstrels, could move in or out of the Underground thanks to
comm shielding built right into the ceiling. Exactly what they needed in order
to get lost.

She wanted to lay her head
against his back as fatigue set in, but the possibility that he might be a
fragger made images from Palomin trickle through her mind. From the moment she
had met Sean, she thought of him as shy and harmless. Now she imagined him with
v-mitters, fighting alongside the fraggers at the canyon rim. He showed he had
a fighter’s skill when he took on the mob back at the Tredificio.

But what bothered her most was
wondering if he was the one Simon believed could lift his curse. If so, Sean
became the best bargaining chip she had. She hated herself for the thought. To
push it away, she hugged him tightly and rested against his back. It was better
when she thought he was just shy Sean.

Chen Starrie slumped down in the
soft white armchair, glad that the Kelahem Hotel had finally changed out the
rigid formal furniture for something a little more inviting. A tall, lanky man
stripped parts from a cender on the coffee table. Chen was disgusted by
Tennor’s too-small nose and lack of muscle tone, but the man’s pupils grew
within their dull green irises when he caught Chen staring at him.

“How can you be sure the
fraggers believe Sean Cryer is responsible for the intel dump?” Chen
asked.

“His idents are all over it,
just like that e-pulse at the Tredificio.” Tennor walked over to a mess of
glowing wires on the bed.

“And, how do I know you’re
not going to get remorseful the next time you see Cryer in the V-side?”

“He’s
not
Sean Cryer
in the V-side. He’s Zak.”

“Not interested in the man
behind the av?” Chen asked.

“No, just Zak.
Zak
is
powerful. Cryer’s nothing, just another Socialite living on a pleasure cruiser
and pretending to be more important than he is. That’s why he doses so much. To
keep the real world out and his delusional world intact.”

“Maybe he’d prefer you as
Ariel, too,” Chen said. “I’m sure I would.”

Tennor shot Chen an acidy look.
“The price just went up for your decrypter. You want more—”

Chen stopped listening to
Tennor’s rant when one of the vidclips bouncing around on the viewer in front
of him caught his attention. All showed some headline about the Tredificio
disaster, but Chen enlarged the one which read,
Ambasadora Sara Mendoza
Feared Dead in Biome Collapse
.

Finally.

Chen had assumed Sara died at
Palomin. When she debuted as a Face of the Embassy Chen couldn’t believe her
good luck. Or his bad luck. Thoughts of what she may have told them about him,
or promised to give them for that kind of status upgrade, made his head throb.
At least now she was no longer a threat.

“So you can finally
relax,” Tennor said. “The amour is dead. I just hope Zak made it out
alive. Maybe he killed her for you.”

“We were never
married,” Chen said absently as a message came through on his reporter.
The transmission signature was from one of the rogues he sent to the
Tredificio. Chen scrolled through the message:
Mendoza at Embassy Hub. With
Cryer. Off the grid. Underground.

“Looks like your lucky
day,” Chen said.

“Zak’s alive?”

“And apparently helping
Sara.”

The darts were as ineffective as
the eruption. They should have gone with force over subtlety. No matter, Chen
welcomed the opportunity to kill Sara himself.

Sean pulled the bike into a narrow
alleyway which served as a street. They wove their way through spills of
luminescent fluid and broken down transports. Several dosed citizens staggered
along the side and occasionally out in front of traffic. Sean and Sara had to
stop and wait several times while pedestrians crammed into the street after
v-games let out.

Too many times Sara was touched
by passersby; the contact with so many people in such a confined, dirty area
made her angry and guarded. She pretended it wasn’t because most of the citizens
here were Lowers. She had never had strong opinions about the caste system
before, simply ignored it because she was on the better end of everything. Not
anymore. She still had her privilege, more so because of her appointment as an
ambasadora, but just like the Lowers, she was a prisoner of her status.

Sean stopped again, but Sara
couldn’t see any obstacles in front of them, just an illuminated green sign
with nude bodies forming letters which spelled out Carnal Escape.

“We need to stash the bike for
later.” He pulled it up to a stumpy parking attendant. “Can you put
this some place safe and out of the way?”

“Safety costs these
days,” the bearded man said.

Sean pulled a razor disc from his
belt and handed it to him.

“I got plenty of
these.”

“You don’t have plenty of
what’s inside.”

The attendant inspected the disc
further and slid the top off. His eyes lit up at what Sara couldn’t see inside.

“You’ll get the other half
when I come back for the bike.” Sean slid off the seat, but kept the bike
idling so it still hovered. He helped Sara down.

As they walked away, she asked,
“What was in the disc?”

He hesitated. “Half of an
electronic siphon that can pull data from any reporter within a ten meter
distance.”

“Oh, is that all?”

He took her hand. “It’s best
if we look like a couple, otherwise you’ll get some nasty proposals.”

“I can handle myself,” she
said, though she intertwined her fingers with Sean’s, not planning to let go
any time soon.

“I’ve seen that first hand.
It’s just that I don’t want to have to pound some poor drunk in the face
because he made a crude remark toward you.”

Sara was flattered by his
protective gesture, but she wouldn’t let him know that.

The monstrous bouncer at the door
reminded Sara of David. Same jaw line, same physique, no doubt same Armadan
bloodline. He waved Sean and Sara through, but stopped an inebriated woman with
small hips and a pot belly waiting behind them.

“They know you here?”
Sara asked.

Sean didn’t respond. He let her
step through the open door first.

They entered on the top floor.
Below them on varying levels lay dance floors, stim dens, v-game and coiting
parlors. Bright green lasers zigzagged from one floor to the next. Bluish
vapors wafting up from the lowest level formed a turquoise cloud one level
down.

“Ever been to a flesh club
before?” Sean asked.

“Not one like this.”
She and Chen had gone with their rogue companions for post-mission indulgences
on many occasions, but those were elite parlors and almost antiseptic compared
to the rawness here.

“I’ll get us a sky
box.” Sean gestured her toward a bank of elevators.

When one opened, a mixture of
guests poured out along with some of the blue mist. She and Sean pressed in
with a large group of men and women, all dressed in black leather with various
body parts exposed. They ignored the newcomers, too busy touching each other.
Now Sara was the one who felt a little shy. She stared through the glass
elevator doors.

The smell of the mist reminded
her of blue star lilies. She took a deep breath and the floor of the elevator
dissolved into transparency until it disappeared from under her. If she
concentrated hard enough, she could see a white capped building at the bottom
of a hazy energy well. She stumbled forward with vertigo.

A hand steadied her elbow.
“You okay?” The voice sounded muffled.

“She’s just having a good
slide.” This high-pitched voice came from a fragger balancing on a board
over Palomin Canyon just in front of her.

“Sara, look at me.” She
felt a hand nudge her chin.

“Rainer?” She didn’t
know if she said his name out loud because all exterior sounds died away. All
she could hear was the thumping of her heart and the blood rushing through her
ears. The world darkened into night, then the blackness became blacker. She
thought she felt arms picking her up. Either that or she was floating.

Time passed like a dream. At one
point she thought she heard two heartbeats, not quite in sync. Then the blood
washed through her ears again and onto her face. She woke gulping air and took
in a mouthful of water. Adrenaline shot through her. She struggled against
hands holding her and blinked through droplets to see the water’s source, a
large showerhead raining down on her. Sean held her up from behind. His shirt
sleeves were soaked, as were the ruined threads of her gown.

“Thought that might wake you
up,” he said.

The spattering of the shower on
their clothing sounded muffled compared to the drops hitting the tile floor of
the huge walk-in shower. Sean released Sara and said, “Take your time.
I’ll get us some food.”

“Do you know why I came to
the
Bard
?”

Sean stopped at the glass doorway
of the shower. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Not after they’d made
it this far. It had loomed at the back of his mind since he met her, and he
knew it was inevitable. Still, he tried to be coy, hoping he could stop it from
playing out, stop either of them from having to say the truth. “The
Embassy sent you.”

“It wasn’t my choice,”
she said. “Neither was becoming an ambasadora.” Sara backed against
the shower wall and slid to the floor.

Sean didn’t say anything, just
sat against the wall across from her and waited. The water kept running, as
though they spoke from opposite sides of a small, delicate waterfall.

“I never told anyone what
happened to me at Palomin,” she said. “But I need to tell someone. I
need to tell you.” She didn’t wait for his response.

“I was there celebrating.
Chen and I had just become enamoured. He gave me a black bracelet that night,
and I should have realized something was wrong, that it was too sudden, that
contractors always have ulterior motives. He used me to bit siphon data from
the archives.”

She was there that night, the
night of the uprising.
Now Sean knew who siphoned the data. It was probably
Chen, or someone working with him, who slipped the data mine into the V-side,
framing Bullseye. Separate parts of the same story came together as Sara told
her side.