Declassified

She chuckled a bit. “You’re already very charming,” she said, darting her tongue tip into one corner of her mouth. “I can see why Amity likes you.”

My blood chilled and my stomach churned as I tried to clear my head. “Pardon me?”

Aurelie’s eyes narrowed into slits yet still carried the power to make me feel as if they were boring into me and cause a wave of dread that momentarily superseded my disorientation. “Get up, Mister Pe

I was able to quell at least one flash of panic in my brain. In that moment, I appreciated my decision to leave my recorder at my apartment.

I went to push against the table so my chair would scoot away from it, but I evidently misjudged my strength as the whole table toppled, its metal top ringing as it struck the floor. I tried to stand but felt the floor turn to thick mud as my knees gave way under my own weight. Just when I thought I would fall to the floor, I felt a rough grip under one arm and then the other before I was hoisted into the air. I tried walking, but it felt as though only the tips of my toes were brushing the floor. I turned my head to see one of the massive green-ski

“Sorry, friends,” one of the guards spoke loudly, practically yelling into my ear as I was carried. “Got one who’s had a little too much fun tonight. Pardon us. Coming through.”

Above the din, I heard a shriek and recognized it as coming from Amity. I looked to see her rushing from one end of the gaming deck toward me, but I just kept shaking my head no and trying to wave her off. By then, my tongue felt too thick to attempt to speak, but I had no other way of warning her that Ganz and his men had co

I locked on to her rich, brown eyes, attempting to apologize and to soothe and to assure her this could be straightened out—at least those were my intentions. But just as quickly, I was carried past her, off the gaming deck and into a darkness I could not distinguish from sleep.

13

Light returned, or at least it had to one of my eyes. And that was followed by pain.

As best I could tell, I was back in the terrestrial enclosure of Vanguard. Judging from the level of light from the artificial sunrise, I guessed it was early morning. And from the cool, scratchy surface upon which the side of my face rested, I was probably lying on a paved walkway near a drinking establishment in Stars Landing. To any early risers, I simply would have appeared as a drunkard who had attempted to stumble home only to find rest and respite from his condition in the street.

I pushed myself to a sitting position and surveyed my location. I was correct in that the front door of Tom Walker’s place was a few meters behind me. I then managed to bring myself to my feet and take a look at my overall condition. My clothing was soiled and bloodied, ostensibly the result of the Orion guards dragging me about as I unconsciously endured whatever indignities they felt fit to serve me. I then looked at my hands, which for whatever reason had been spared from injury beyond a few cuts and knuckle abrasions I hoped were the results of my getting in a few wild punches rather than mere dragging. And—something for which I was equally thankful—I seemed to have suffered no joint injuries. My knees did not overly pain me to move, nor did my elbows. I felt a few twinges as I rotated my shoulders and windmilled my arms, but those were not new to my experience since regaining consciousness, anyway.

I then mustered the courage to shuffle to a storefront window and use the reflection in an attempt to ascertain the injuries to my face. Once I got a look, I wished I had waited until I had returned home. As I suspected, my right eye was swollen shut from what I assumed was repeated pummeling. My brow above the eye had been split, and blood from the wound had created a dried trickle of crimson around my eye and down my cheek, appearing almost as if the gore had been cried out rather than spilled. My swollen lower lip appeared to bear two splits, and each cheek sported abrasions I remember my mother calling strawberries when they occurred on my kneecaps. My left ear had been boxed pretty effectively as well.

“You should see the other guy,” I slurred to myself through my wounded lips, and when I did so, my attention was held by something I saw in my mouth—or did not see, to be more accurate. I pushed my lower lip down despite its throbbing protests to the contrary and spied a hole where one tooth had been.

“Well, shit.”

I made my way back to my apartment without further incident, managing to startle only a handful of fellow pedestrians along the way, and spent a portion of my morning in gingerly attempts to clean and dress my wounds. As pain can be a clarifier of thinking as well as a duller, I managed to have my wits about me at a level I frankly did not expect, considering the potency of the drink I had been served. Then again, maybe the Orion intoxicant was created to be as quickly purged from a system as assimilated into it. In either event, I was not suffering exaggerated symptoms of a traditional hangover, as I had initially suspected.

Once I was back in order, the equally pressing matter at hand was to determine the whereabouts of Amity and hope she had not been equally brutalized. My recording device, which also served as a communicator, registered no contact from Amity, and my repeated calls to her device, which I began making as soon as I had reached my apartment, went unanswered. A hurdle I had not anticipated until that moment, however, was my ignorance of where she lived during her time on Vanguard. She had not divulged that information, and none of our few meetings had ever occurred in her quarters. In a typical situation, I would have relied on myself to do the footwork and determine the whereabouts of her living quarters. At that moment, I chose to call in some assistance and contacted Lieutenant Ginther from my recording device. He answered the audiovisual co

“Security. Ginther.”He paused as the look of my visage registered in his mind. “Pe