That night,
Verona was unable to sleep. She tossed and turned for hours. Two twin weights
threatened to crush her – the pain Verona could feel from Analia, even with
their reduced link, and the lack of news from the Absolutes.
She spent
much of the morning pacing her cell. By eleven, she was nearly at her wits’
end. At eleven thirty, her cell door was flung open. A middle-aged policewoman
came in, flanked by two guards. Verona stood up and allowed them to handcuff
her. After the tension of the last few hours, she felt oddly numb, as if her
body had given up on emotion.
The woman
read from a hologram over her wrist, sounding bored. “Verona Sheif, transfer to
Lunar Penal Colony, effective the thirty-fifth day of the eighth month of the
year 1478. Time served: twenty years.”
At the
mention of her sentence, Verona felt a pang in her stomach.
“I can take
her from here,” the woman said to the guards. They filed out to resume their
patrols.
The woman
guided Verona out of the cell and down the sterile hallway to the processing
chamber. Suddenly, she spoke in an urgent whisper.
“Listen to
me, but don’t respond. There are cameras and microphones everywhere. My name is
Ulna, and I’m from the Absolutists. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Verona had to
fight to keep her expression neutral at this news. She was saved! Her legs felt
weak with relief, but she forced herself to keep walking as if nothing had
happened.
“You’re to be
teleported to the Lunar Colony,” Ulna continued. “You’ll go just outside the
station with a blocking ring on, to make sure you don’t go anywhere. The
transfer official – in this case, me – will teleport you. If you don’t let me into
your mind, they’ll drug you and do it by force. But that won’t matter, because
your blocking ring will be faulty. As soon as you step outside, you’re free to
go.”
Could it
really be that simple? It almost sounded too good to be true.
They reached
the processing chamber, and Ulna fell silent. It was a small room with the
scanning equipment, a desk, and a few chairs. Behind the desk sat the
processing official.
“Just stand
right here, please, and we’ll make this short and easy,” he said, guiding
Verona to a taped-off square on the floor. “It’s just to make sure you’re in
good health, and you aren’t trying to sneak something past us.
He adjusted
the scanning equipment and pressed the button to start the scan. It came up
clean on all counts.
“Looks like
you’re good to go,” he said. He scrawled something on a piece of paper and gave
it to Ulna. “If you both could just sign here.”
Ulna signed
the paper, then unlocked the handcuffs so Verona could sign too.
“That’s it,”
the official said. “She’s all yours, Ulna.”
Verona
hesitated. She had to ask. “Is there somebody here to see me go?”
“No,” Ulna
said, looking puzzled. “Were you expecting someone?”
Verona tried
to tell herself that it didn’t matter, but it did. Losing Analia had been the
worst part out of everything that had happened.
“Not really,”
she said. “But I was hoping.”
Ulna fit the
faulty blocker on Verona, and they were ready to go.
A few minutes
later, Verona stepped outside for the first time in three weeks. She had held
her breath as Ulna opened the door, hoping she was right and the blocker would
do nothing.
The weight of
the blocking field lifted from her mind. Nothing replaced it. She was free!
“It worked?”
Ulna asked. Verona nodded, closing her eyes and finding the doors in her head
with no trouble.
“Good!” Ulna
said, unlocking Verona’s handcuffs. “Now, I’ll just teleport to the Lunar
Colony, and it’ll seem to everyone as if you disappeared in transit because
your blocker was faulty.”
Verona saw a
problem. “Um, Ulna, I’ve never been off-planet. I have nowhere to go. Anywhere
I teleport, I’ll have to go through customs. They’ll catch me for sure.”
“Don’t worry,
we planned for that,” Ulna said. “Just around the corner is another
Absolutionist. She can take you to one of our headquarters. We are officially
extending you an invitation to join us. We’ll protect you, keep you out of
prison, and in return you’ll help us. If not, you can be on your way – we won’t
try to stop you, as long as you don’t betray us. But you have to make the
decision quickly, or they’ll start wondering what’s taking so long.”
Verona’s
heart lept. An opportunity to join the Absolutes! Normally, she wouldn’t have
taken the offer – it was too risky. But it wasn’t like she had anything to
lose.
“Of course I’ll
join you. Thank you so much for everything. I’ll help in any way possible.”
Ulna smiled,
the first affectionate emotion Verona had seen from her. “I’m glad to hear it.
Now you’d better hurry. Nirvana be with you.”
“And you,”
Verona said, stepping away. Ulna closed her eyes for a second, then vanished.
Verona watched the space where her savior had vanished for a moment, then
turned and ran around the corner into a small alley. And there, waiting for
her, stood Lani.
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