Rennan sat upright in the white healed bed and took a deep gasp of air in. He had exited from the dream too early, he knew. The dream must have followed Siri, that would be the only explanation for his abrupt awakening at that exact moment. If the dream had followed Finn, then he would still be asleep and watching Siri dream in the past. He would not be allowed to dream in more than one layer. The human mind was not built to take that kind of subconscious abuse. He yanked the needle out of his arm and put a hand to his forehead, wet with cold sweat once more.
He shouted in frustration. Siri was with Daniel Finn—or, was, in the very near past. She met Finn the day she had left him. That was not long ago. Then what? Would she actually believe the things he was saying to her? Of course, once she tried the compound for herself, there would be no going back. She was always one to keep her promises, a rare virtue in these parts. Siri was all kinds of rare. She was beautiful, more than beautiful. She was kind, and generous, and always willing to help others out even if it meant she would lose something when all of everything was said and done.
She had left him for a reason. Her note had been cryptic. One line, fifteen words:
I’M SORRY. I AM LEAVING. DO NOT LOOK FOR ME. THIS IS FOR YOUR SAFETY.
But did she not understand that the world without him there was more dangerous for her? How could her departure be for “his safety?” He had not understood. That is why he needed to find her. He needed to understand what she was hiding.
He swung his legs off of the bed, touched his bare feet to the floor that was neither cold nor warm, and walked over to the window. The sun was coming up again, Athena trailing closely behind it. The towers across the sparkling inlet were still lit up from the evening. He needed to get out of here. That was where he belonged, over there. The tallest tower across the inlet, the Tower of Eyes, blinked and flickered as the lights cycled through their stations, taking innumerable photographs and video clips every second to monitor the citizens of the city. The cameras could take photos from an unbelievable distance. He was sure that one had photographed him, just now, and every time he had stood at the window before. Some darkly comic part of his mind hoped that they had taken a good picture of him trying to kick through the window with his bare feet. The dent he had made in the window had since healed. The scars on his bed were no longer there, either.
He had an idea of where he was. He was probably in holding by the corporations for something. He was unsure of the crime he had been caught for. It was not a matter of his innocence; he had committed more crimes than he was able or cared to count during his career as an intel man. He had never heard tales of this type of prison though. He had never heard of the corporations using the experimental Compound X Y Z on its prisoners of espionage. The only time he had ever heard of the compound was from a black market drug dealer back when he was still with Siri. The drug dealer had ended up dead a few days later, and Rennan had thought nothing of it. And then Daniel Finn had brought it up for a second time with Siri.
Rennan had hated Finn. He had pretended to be friendly with him—and he knew that Finn had acted the same way, even before the slimy weasel had mentioned it to Siri in his dream—but ended up giving him incorrect information about everything to throw him off of Rennan’s trail. Finn underestimated him.
Even with all of that, even with their animosity disguised as amiability, Rennan knew he would not be able to do something as dire as kill Finn. Not before anyway. He had seen Finn threaten Siri, and while Rennan at least said he was confident of Siri’s ability to defend herself and take care of herself (even though he really did not think she could, not here on Geneda anyway), there was no excusing Finn for threatening the woman he loved. If Finn was actually still alive, he would have to kill him for that.
But Finn had also suggested that Rennan would be the one to kill Siri. There was no possible way. There was not. He would never harm a hair on Siri’s head, not even by accident. He had always treated her with the utmost care, even when she asked him not to.
But what if he was right?
Rennan’s head hurt. He conveniently found another glass of water and two nutrition pills against the wall. He took the pills without water, but drank the entire glass of water afterward in three big gulps. He sat back down on the bed and stuck the needle back into his arm. He realized as his eyes were closing that when all was said and done he would have a scar there, or several.
Maybe he would need a scarf around his arm.
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