Chapter Five

Internal Exile

“Fuck it.” LizAlec punched her fist against a wall and swore, more from anger than pain. Split knuckles hurt, but not that badly. So LizAlec punched the door instead, harder this time. Its slick metal surface didn’t even clang. She’d tried shouting, screaming, even kicking the door but it made no difference.

No one came. Not that LizAlec knew what she was going to do or say if they did. She’d tried, “What do you want?” But that worked no better than, “Can’t we work this through?” and “Do you know who I am?”

The door was antique, NASA-made, with some kind of manual handle that had no electronic override. It was also sheet steel laser-bonded onto a titanium frame. There was no need for it to be so strong and there never had been, but the first NASA ground station had been a belt-and-braces affair.

LizAlec bounced her knuckles one final time against its unyielding, cold, unrusting steel and began to cry. Tears trickled slowly down her thin face, smudging what little was left of her Dior mascara.

Laughing Boy and Mickey had stripped her, not just of the stupid, stinking balloon suit that blew up around her like some bulimic rubber doll every time she went through a vacuum, but of her skirt and blazer, even her black socks and buckle shoes. LizAlec wiped her wet nose with the back of a hand and, without thinking, wiped it dry on one bare hip.

God, she’d never thought she’d miss the St Lucius uniform.

But Laughing Boy had tossed her a paper gown, the kind hospitals used, then growled at her to strip. When LizAlec refused, he’d waved a shockblade under her nose and offered to do it himself. She’d almost tripped over her own feet in her hurry to get the navy skirt unbuttoned. Now she stood dressed in a cheap grey gown, small breasts brushing rough paper, her back and thin buttocks exposed to the biting cold. And all she felt, apart from fucking freezing, was contempt for her own cowardice.

Frustration.

Shame.

Impotent fury. LizAlec despised her own fear, hated having stripped to order and loathed herself. But most of all, LizAlec hated the darkness. Holding her split and bleeding knuckles to her lips, LizAlec sucked at the torn skin and didn’t know what to do next.

The grab wasn’t a set-up, not even a sick gag. It was as real as the salt-taste of blood on her lips and the gown that somehow made her feel more naked than if they’d just stripped her and had done with it. The tall man in the mouse mask wasn’t Fixx. When LizAlec asked, he hadn’t even heard of Fixx. Nor had the other one, the fat sullen slob with the mullet cut and wraparound n/Vision spex. Neither even recognized the classic Bach, Strangeness and Quarms, on which Johann Sebastian jammed with virtuals of Tom Petty, Lou Reed and Goldie. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair and LizAlec was afraid.

Not worried or anxious, but fucking full-on terrified. Fear gripped her throat with hangman’s hands, her bowels churned like liquid. She wanted to shit but wasn’t yet desperate enough to just dump on the floor. And the bile that pushed up into her mouth refused to turn to vomit, no matter how often LizAlec knelt on the black grit floor, clutched her thin gut and pulled upwards against her diaphragm. Water was what it usually took. Two small glasses of warm water and a finger down her throat.

Something weird was going down. But LizAlec was fucked if she could work out what. If they’d wanted to rape her, they’d have done it already. And rape wouldn’t exactly have been a novelty act anyway, LizAlec thought angrily, at least not to her. And it couldn’t be the money, because she wasn’t the richest. No one at St Lucius came richer than that tiny Chinese girl and the man in the Mickey mask hadn’t even bothered to look at Anchee. Shatter her teeth, sure, but that hadn’t been personal.

LizAlec was goods, nothing more, but, try as the girl might, she couldn’t see how she had any value. She wasn’t filthy rich like Anchee, or a princess like Ingrid Bernadotte. She wasn’t Kira, there was no CySat copyright on her looks. She wasn’t even brilliant like the Aziz twins.

It made no sense. But then, she’d been hanging round with Fixx for the last six months, so she should have been used to that.

Time passed.

She was going to have to get used to that too...

She did.

Chapter Six

Our Lady of the Crystals

Biting back tears. How the hell do you bite back your tears, LizAlec wondered crossly to herself, wiping them away with the back of her hand. Laughing Boy had just waddled in to slop her down with a bucket of water. At least, LizAlec hoped it was water: the liquid was certainly cold enough, but she wasn’t taking bets. Not that she didn’t need it, even she could tell she stank.

And she’d been cold enough before Laughing Boy appeared. In fact, the air was so chilled it burnt her throat as she pulled it into her lungs. LizAlec wasn’t sure if the two goons had known in advance that part of this strange wrecked building was still pressurized, or whether they just got lucky, but either way, over the last week keeping her warm hadn’t seemed part of their plans...

Now one of them was back again, wrestling with the door. The hinges were old, not rusty but thick with grit. Which was how LizAlec knew someone was coming into her cell. All the same, she stayed curled into a little ball in the corner and kept her violet eyes tight shut, even though the stinking cell was way too dark for Mickey or Laughing Boy to see she’d been crying.

Except it wasn’t the fat depressive or the man in the plastic mask.

“Lady Elizabeth?” Someone clicked their fingers and for the first time in days light pushed in against her scrunched-up eyes. Without even being aware of it, LizAlec pulled her sodden paper gown more tightly around her.

The new voice was cultured, its accent well-bred Parisian. Lady Elizabeth Alexandra Fabio rolled away from the wall, blinking into the sudden glare. This was no simple lightstick like Laughing Boy’s. The new man held a small Braun lamp, the circular kind she’d seen on sale in the Rue de Rivoli. And his clothes were a whole gold card away from those worn by the two goons. Silk jacket padded at the shoulders to give him width, double cuffs kept closed with jade links, an obsidian signet ring circling the little finger of his left hand. Even his black English-made shoes were unscuffed by the dust.

He was tall enough to tower over LizAlec and he was so thin that it looked like someone had just lacquered his bones with skin and missed out the muscle. All of that LizAlec saw, but she missed the small enamel button in his lapel indicating membership of an Order that tithed five per cent of everything he earned and made Opus Dei look liberal. And she missed the discreet contacts that changed his eyes from green to grey.

Crouched back on her heels, bare knees tight together, LizAlec pressed her hands hard against the ground to steady herself and took another look at the man. He was in his early forties, maybe late thirties, with long swept-back hair that was flecked with grey. His face had character enough to pass for experienced, but was not so lined that it was yet old. The twist to his lips was natural, by the look of it. His sneer was practised, but not quite perfect enough to come from a surgeon’s lipid-coated scalpel. LizAlec had a nasty feeling she’d seen the man before, and she hadn’t liked him then either.

“Lady Elizabeth?” Impatience was what LizAlec heard and what she reacted against.

“It’s LizAlec,” she said shortly, pushing herself upright.

“No,” he said, “it’s whatever I want it to be.” And before LizAlec could reply, he caught her left arm and twisted it hard up behind her back until she thought the bones would break. LizAlec could almost feel his eyes rake down her naked spine and buttocks, and then he shoved her forward, bouncing her into a wall.