Asher, p.3
Asher, page 3
Asher couldn’t deal with this, not when he was already behind schedule thanks to last week’s trip to Vemion. “Please don’t destroy this office. Someone will be back to take care of you shortly.” He backed out of the room and engaged the lock.
Whatever was going on, Remy could handle her.
Asher smelled the faintest hint of smoke as he marched through the hallway to his private quarters and knew it was wafting off him, a sure sign of draconic frustration. Once he was alone in his room, he took a moment to calm down, using the same techniques that had kept him from lashing out at his brothers when he was a child. Once his frustrations were buried deep enough to be forgotten, he opened his eyes.
His room was small and spotless. As lord-governor, he’d have an entire mansion to himself. As lead administrator, his main perk was a private bathing room and a small nook where he could get work done away from his public office.
He sent a note to Remy to have her run Zoe’s name and vital information through their system to see if they could learn more about her. Once that was done, they’d have the doc check her out. Nothing about her made sense. People didn’t act that way, not even when they were suffering mental affliction. It was as if she was living in a completely different world than him.
Humans weren’t incredibly common on Vemion or the other dragon colonies, but there were some. Several of his cousins were mated to humans, as a matter of fact. He knew the human home planet of Earth was not wise to the expansiveness and life outside of their small solar system, but humans had been abducted from their home and spread all across the galaxy over the millennia. Zoe must have been one of them, otherwise she would have been too shocked by being on another planet to act as she did.
If she realized she was on another planet.
She was a puzzle, one parts of his mind were eager to solve. But Asher had no time for interesting women and the problems they caused.
He checked his messages again, but there was nothing from Shade. Could the matchmaker not find one dragon ready to be his bride?
His comm screen lit up with an incoming call and he tried not to be disappointed when he saw it was Lady Nova. She’d put him in charge of getting this place ready, and she’d trusted him more than anyone else ever had. He had to impress her. He took another calming breath before he engaged the call.
“Ma’am, it’s good to hear from you,” he answered with a polite smile.
Lady Nova was a woman in her sixties who had the energy of a twenty year old and the exacting standards of a decorated general. She was sister to the king and terrifying in her own right. She was also his cousin somehow, though the family tree was convoluted enough that he didn’t feel like untangling it.
He expected her to want a report on the progress before her visit next month, but that wasn’t what she spoke of. “I have a report you went to Vemion last week.”
So his movements were being monitored. Lovely. “Yes, ma’am, just for two days.”
She nodded and confirmed she knew exactly what he’d been doing. “To meet the matchmaker. I’m glad you took my suggestion.”
Suggestion? At the time it had felt like an order. He wasn’t stupid enough to say that. “It is time I found a bride, one who—”
“Is worthy of your position, of course. If only my sons were so dutiful. They’ve—” Lady Nova took a deep breath and forced a smile. “I’m sure you will find a wonderful wife, one who will stand behind you once you have earned your new position. I have spoken to my brother about you, you know.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Your confidence is—”
She waved his words away. “Yes, yes. Now tell me about the breakdown of the thresher in the Outer Bounds. Will it delay things?”
“No, ma’am.” Asher was thankful to turn the conversation to a report about terraforming and let himself sink into his roll.
But by the time the call was done, he was still thinking about the human woman in the holding room. How had she gotten here?
And why did she set his body on fire?
4
This game made no sense. Zoe had no idea of her objective, and the Asher character was an unfun stick in the mud who wasn’t even a proper boss she could battle. Not that she had anything to battle with. Shouldn’t she have acquired some items by now?
And how long had this game been going on for? It felt like she’d been playing for hours and her stomach rumbled in agreement. She hadn’t eaten dinner before stepping into the VR machine.
Pizza. She was definitely picking up pizza on the way home.
“I could really use a hint!” she called out, on the faint hope that someone working the machines would hear her. She didn’t know how to quit the game—definitely an oversight—but she wasn’t giving up yet.
A moment later, and possibly summoned by her plea, the door opened again and the same woman who’d found her outside stood there. She wasn’t as glowy now, so that might have been a trick of the light. But there was still an ethereal quality to her that made Zoe feel frumpy by comparison.
“Hello, Miss Gershwin, my name is Remy and Asher has asked me to assist you. Please hold out your hand.” Remy spoke swiftly, with a tone of quiet confidence.
Zoe held out her hand before she realized she was following the order. Remy held a small scanner over it and a bright light flashed. It was warm, but not painful. A moment later, the light went dark and Remy slid the scanner into a pocket of her dark jumpsuit. “What’s that?” Zoe asked.
“An identity scan. Please follow me, I’ve prepared sleeping quarters for you.” Without waiting for more questions, Remy turned and strode away.
Zoe had to jump over the forgotten chair to follow. She waited for Remy to offer more information, to perhaps give her some clues for this mission, but she said nothing.
Okay. Maybe it was up to Zoe to find out herself. Really, this game could use some guides. Did they know anything about design and flow? She was going to have a lot of notes on the review questionnaire at the end.
“What’s VMC12? And where is everyone else? Is there some kind of… trouble?” There had to be a problem for her to fix, something that would lead to the level ending.
Remy came to a stop before a door and gestured for Zoe to raise her palm to a discreet reader. It scanned her and the door slid open.
“We are on VMC12,” Remy answered. “It’s the twelfth colony of Vemion and will be renamed once migration begins. No one is wandering the halls because they are busy working, and what kind of trouble could there be? I’m not sure what you’re up to, but I will find out.”
“I’m not up to anything.” Zoe tried to imagine how Star Commander Xira would handle this, but she wasn’t her favorite heroine and could only approach this as herself. There was no changing her character now when she was in the middle of the game.
Remy made a humming noise in the back of her throat. Zoe wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. “You may remain in your quarters, use the bathing suite down the hall, and get food in the cafeteria. Stay inside except during scheduled time in the Verdant Sector. You may explore the sector when the light above the exterior door is blue. If the light is not blue, stay inside unless it’s an emergency. If you venture outside, remain in the Verdant Sector, it’s dangerous to go beyond. I need your word of honor that you’ll follow these rules.”
“You’re not locking me up?” Not that Zoe wanted to be a prisoner, but now at least she was getting a few game clues.
“You are a mystery, but I will not treat you as a criminal until you show yourself as one. We do not have the personnel to waste on guard duty for mysterious women. Now, your word?” Remy looked at her expectantly.
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Easy enough to lie.
But it satisfied Remy. “Dinner service begins in two hours. If you have questions, you may send me a message on your comm screen.” She pointed into the room at a black panel on the gray walls. “Do you have any questions?”
Only a million, but Zoe shook her head. “I’m good, thanks.”
Remy pulled out the scanner that she’d used earlier and examined the screen, her brow furrowed.
“Is anything wrong?” asked Zoe.
“No. I’ll see you later.” Remy left the room and closed the door behind her.
The room was nothing special. And it was freaking tiny. Smaller than her dorm in college and only a breath or two bigger than her office. There was a bed that flipped down from the wall and a small mirror hanging on the door of a minuscule closet that proved to be empty.
She wasted a bit of time touching everything. She couldn’t get over just how tactile this game was. Even with the lackluster story direction, the gameplay was neat. But she didn’t want to waste any more time feeling surfaces when there was a game to play.
Remy had finally given her the clues she needed.
If the only place she wasn’t supposed to go was outside, obviously that was where she was meant to be. There had to be some sort of obstacle out there for her to discover, some sort of problem to solve.
Still, Zoe waited another couple of minutes to give Remy time to leave the hallway. No use getting caught immediately. She’d have to be sneaky, they already suspected her. But at least there were no guards to worry about. So far this didn’t seem to be a violent game. Zoe was more used to blasters and evil aliens, but she could appreciate a complex puzzle.
If there were an appropriate amount of clues.
Satisfied that Remy would be gone, Zoe slipped out of her room and searched for an exterior door. She found one just past the bathing suite, the light over it a forbidding yellow.
Zoe let her hand hover over the sensor for a second. Was there going to be an alarm? Should she be sneakier or maybe wait until the light turned blue?
No. The game had been clear. The clues would be in the Verdant Sector when no one else was out there, so Zoe had to go now.
She took a deep breath and opened the door, braced to hear a warning siren. But nothing sounded. Yes!
The door slid shut behind her and she started walking. Getting further from the building would be the smart thing to do, just in case there were perimeter guards or security cameras.
The Verdant Sector was everything it promised to be… green. Thick bushes and trees ringed small sitting areas, and she spotted more than one fountain burbling happily. With no one outside, the place was eerie.
Zoe followed a stone path and wondered what the thumping hum was that she heard in the distance. The air was a bit thick and something tickled the back of her throat.
How was the VR machine doing that? For real.
Was it possible this wasn’t a game?
She thunked down onto a stone bench and pondered the thought, the impossibility of that warring with the super-real experience all around her. If she hadn’t climbed into a VR machine with the intention of playing some new sci-fi game, she… well, she wouldn’t know what to think.
Had she been abducted by aliens or something?
The absurdity of the thought startled a laugh out of her. Right. Aliens. A hyper realistic VR machine was way more feasible than freaking aliens. She’d spent her entire academic career peering at the stars in the vain hope she might find life out there some day, but this was beyond ridiculous.
“I think I’m ready to be done now.” This game was weird and didn’t have a plot, and whatever they were doing to her was really messing with her sinuses. But the game didn’t respond to her wish.
Zoe raised her hands to her face, trying to feel for some kind of headset, but ever since she’d woken up here she hadn’t felt a hint of the machine she was in. It had to be a trick. There had to be a way out. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, ignoring the thick air. She reached out in front of herself, hoping to feel controls.
Nothing.
Damn it. What the hell was going on?
“Seriously, I quit!” She was louder this time, but nothing about her surroundings changed.
For the first time, Zoe started to feel worried. She chose to play the game. What fun was it if she was forced?
Nothing happened. The game went on around her as if she wasn’t there. What happened if she couldn’t get out? Would she die in here?
Her stomach rumbled again, a reminder that she hadn’t eaten in awhile.
Why could she feel that, but nothing else about her body? Zoe couldn’t face the possibility that the things around her were real. It didn’t make any sense. At worst she’d somehow been abducted to some weird park outside the city. There was nothing here that screamed outer space.
Okay. Maybe she was experiencing something, and maybe it was sort of real. That’s why the game wouldn’t end. So she just had to find a way out of here.
Something scampered over her foot, and Zoe jumped up off the bench and looked around wildly for a rat. Instead she saw a…
Cat?
A lizard?
The creature stared at her with big eyes and strange green scales that ended in gray fur. It chirped and then took a cautious step forward.
There definitely weren’t cat lizards on Earth. And she couldn’t think of a single cat that would deign to wear a costume like that. But bio-engineering was a thing. She could still be… somewhere.
The cat-lizard took a few steps and then looked back at her, as if it wanted her to follow.
Was this the game? Was she in the middle of discovering some kind of creature? Whichever it was, Zoe followed.
The cat-lizard pranced off the path and she quickly lost her bearings. But it wasn’t long before the greenery coalesced into a dense wall and she spotted the outline of a door.
Yes! She was one step closer to home.
Out of a sense of thanks, Zoe reached down to pet the cat-lizard as she opened the door. Instead of accepting the affection, the damned thing swiped a gouge in her arm and darted out of the door with a hiss.
She clamped a hand on her arm to stop the bleeding. The pain was sharp and burning, and there was no way in hell this was a game. She was bleeding actual blood.
Hopefully home wasn’t too far away.
But outside the door, the terrain transformed from a lush garden to a barren desert. It stretched all the way out to a mountain range in the distance. She spotted some strange… plane… possibly flying that way, but it moved like a bird… if pterodactyls still existed.
That had to be a trick of the light. Maybe it was just a really big eagle.
She skirted the edge of the wall and hoped she’d find a parking lot or something that would give her a clue of where she was. She was beyond sick of this game and wanted to go home.
The distant hum she’d heard inside the Verdant Sector grew louder. Could it be train tracks? It didn’t sound exactly right, but she was getting desperate.
Zoe headed towards it, even as her survival instincts screamed at her to stay away.
Dust was so thick in the air she couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of herself, and sound travelled strangely.
Then a dark shadow the size of a building rose up in front of her and Zoe had to bite back a scream. She stumbled back and tripped over her own feet. And by the time she scrambled back up, the machine was closer and moving impossibly fast.
What was it?
No time to worry about that.
She ran like a bear was chasing her, but no matter how fast she pumped her legs, the shadow of the machine grew larger. There was no outrunning it, and it was too big to dodge around.
Was this how it ended? Crushed by a mystery machine in the middle of a weird-ass abduction?
A different shadow crossed over head, and Zoe looked up just in time to see a giant dragon diving over her, claws out and headed straight for her.
She screamed and dove to the ground, covering her head as best she could.
5
The human had a death wish. The certainty of that fact rang through Asher’s mind as he rushed her to the medical station in the compound. No one else would be foolish enough to leave the safety of the Verdant Sector and stare down a terraforming thresher.
Two utility crew members jumped out of his way as he swung around a corner, and he nearly plowed over a lunch cart and the cafeteria staff member pushing it. Asher ignored them. He had to get Zoe to the doctor.
She’d lost consciousness the second he grabbed her in his claws, and he was concerned he might have hurt her in his hurry to save her. The moment the breach warning had sounded, everything in him had known that it was her and Asher had taken off. It didn’t matter that there were staff members responsible for retrieving anyone who ended up outside the Verdant Sector.
Asher had to save her.
It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t a foolish man and neither was he impulsive, but something deep inside of him had demanded that he take off and find the troublesome human before something bad happened to her.
But she wouldn’t wake up.
His heartbeat pounded wildly, sweat beaded on his brow, and he knew his expression had to be forbidding. If anyone dared approach him right now, he would… well, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do, but it would not be kind.
He shouldered his way into the medical center and glared at the medbot that handled the most common scrapes and bruises. He wanted a person seeing to Zoe, not a hunk of wires and metal.
The medbot tried to intercept him, but Asher danced around it and proceeded through the door back to Cirk’s office. The doctor jumped out of his chair when he spotted Asher, his face going red and a puff of angry smoke haloing his head for a moment before it dissipated.
He opened his mouth to say something, but then he noticed the unconscious woman in Asher’s arms. “What did you do?”
Anyone else who took that tone with him would be out of a job and on the first ship back to Vemion. But the doctor understood just how vital his position was, and he wasn’t afraid to stand up to Asher. Asher gently lay Zoe down on the examination table, his fingers gliding down her arm before he forced himself to take a step back. “She left the Verdant Sector. I grabbed her in my claws before a thresher could get to her, it was less than ten meters away. She lost consciousness immediately. She’s human,” he added, as if it needed to be said.
