The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(42)

Marce nodded.

“Good.” Ghreni considered Marce. “I do apologize about this. This wasn’t how I would have done it. And I realize this will make things awkward between us from here on out.”

“For starters,” Marce said, echoing Ghreni’s comments from earlier. Ghreni smiled and exited.

Marce went to the cooler, took out a bottle of water, and drank from it, looking at his surroundings again. Table lamp, chairs, toilet, cooler. No cot. A cold metal floor and cold metal walls. He walked to the front of the room, not too close to the wide doors, and heard voices on the other side, low, masculine. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.

This is lovely, he thought. The only good news in any of this was that Ghreni gave back his data crypt, which was rather more valuable than he knew. Otherwise, this was a mess. By now his father would probably have been contacted by Ghreni Nohamapetan. Marce didn’t know how his father would react. On one hand this was exactly the sort of thing he’d push back against. On the other hand, Ghreni was right that the only things Dad really cared about in this life were his children.

There was also the matter that somewhere between a week and a month from now, Interdependency marks were going to be worth less, pound for pound, than dirt. That being the case, Dad might hand the money over simply because it wouldn’t matter in the long run, or even the slightly-longer-than-short run.

But then this uprising, which was beginning to look like it might sort itself out, and not in the duke’s favor, might get a new burst of life from those additional weapons. More death, more destruction, more people displaced from their homes—at a time when everyone on End’s life was going to be turned upside down anyway, because of the Flow stream out from the planet closing up.

Marce took another swallow from his water. He was afraid, and deeply concerned for his individual well-being—Ghreni Nohamapetan struck him as just the sort of smug sociopath that would in fact have him tortured just for fun—but he also felt strangely detached. Whether that was shock at his current state of being, or just awareness that human civilization was close to the end, so relatively speaking this was nothing, or both, was something he couldn’t parse. He was scared, but he was also tired. At the moment, at least, being tired was something he could actually do something about.

So Marce Claremont went back to his chair, sat in it, put his feet up on the table, crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and tried to take a nap.

Some indefinite time later he felt himself being shaken awake. “Look who’s here to see you,” said a familiar voice.

Marce opened his eyes, blinking, and tried to focus on the thing directly in front of him. It was Giggy, his stuffed pig. The person behind Giggy, waving him in Marce’s face, was his sister Vrenna.

“You found me,” Marce said, groggy.

“That’s what I do,” Vrenna replied, handing Giggy over to her brother.

“Why weren’t you electrified?”

“What?” Vrenna looked puzzled.

“Never mind. How did you find me?”

“I had help. I’ll explain later. Are you okay to walk?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then let’s get moving before the two chunks I stunned wake up.”

Vrenna led Marce out of the room, which was, as suspected, a repurposed cargo container, located inside a tumbledown warehouse. Marce’s container was not the only one; two more, presumably currently unoccupied, were lined up next to his. One of them had a long streak of blood curving away from it, as if a body had been dragged away. Outside Marce’s container two men lay on the floor of the warehouse, the same two who had grabbed him and pulled him into the van. They were breathing, which was more than Marce really wanted for them at the moment.

“What is this place?”

“It looks like an extracurricular detention center,” Vrenna said.

“For the duke?”

“Maybe. Come on.” Vrenna led her brother out of the warehouse, and pushed him toward a nondescript groundcar. Marce got in and buckled up while Vrenna put the thing into manual drive.

“Where are the others?” Marce asked, looking around.

“What others?” Vrenna asked.

“You came to get me alone?”

“I didn’t have a lot of time to make a project out of it.” Vrenna checked her surroundings and began driving off.

“What if I had been injured? What if I hadn’t been able to walk? What if there had been more than two of them?”

“I would have figured something out.”

“I have notes on this rescue.”

“I can put you back if you like.”

Marce giggled and clutched his stuffed pig tighter. “Don’t mind me, sis,” he said. “I’m just having a little post-kidnapping freakout.”

Vrenna reached over and took her brother’s hand. “I know,” she said. “Go ahead and freak out a little. I don’t mind.”

After a couple of minutes of relatively restrained freakout, Marce held up Giggy and looked at him. “You brought Giggy with you.”

“I did. I thought it might distract you from thinking too much while I got you out of there.”

“It worked, but I’m wondering how you got him in the first place.”

“He was given to me. Along with the rest of the stuff you had in a rucksack when you were kidnapped.”