Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(40)
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Angela said. She put her hand out and suffocated the urge to recoil when the young man took it and shook it excitedly. She could almost feel the biocontaminants attaching themselves to her skin. Burrowing. She breathed. “Are you getting enough food, settling in?”
“Oh yeah, they’re treating us like kings, but you know how it is. We all just wanna go home.”
“Surely you have seen the vids,” she said before she could catch herself. Mobile Bay wasn’t going to be a safe place for humans to live near for a long, long time. For this man and his family, there would be no going home.
One side of his mouth pinched up, and he shrugged. “Can’t hide out here forever, I guess, but we do appreciate the help in the short term.”
Angela wasn’t sure what to say. He was deliberately ignoring reality, pretending that his story was going to have a happy ending, home and the picket fence and everything back the way it was. But life didn’t work that way. The world didn’t work that way. She couldn’t speak that truth, though. She couldn’t tarnish that halo of trust he seemed to be living under. Instead she smiled, asked his name, met his family, let them touch her.
They all knew Kellen, of course, and he was so easy in their company. As she made her way through the room, heading in a general path toward the buffet line and then her table, she met lots more refugees, learning all their names and stories. Suraya, Benito, Cass, Isit, Yanaghando, a giant named Viktor, an infant whose mother insisted would choose his own name someday. They approached her haltingly, weighted down by manners and gratitude and awe. Some assumed that she was a guest. All assumed that she was here on a mission of benevolence or at least a photo op.
Angela could have told them the truth, that she hadn’t come here at the behest of her government. That in fact, as far as she knew, her government had no idea these people had survived the disasters they’d fled. But she sensed that truth would be crueler than the lie at this point.
So she met them. Touched them. Endured them. By the time she got to her table—her plate piled with beans, tortillas, and sliced tomatoes—and sank to the plastic bench, she could no longer smell the body odor. Or if she could, it was just part of the place now, part of the moment.
It wasn’t even a terrible moment. And it felt like…fucking hell yeah, she’d just done that. Skinny-dipped in acid and stayed unburnt.
She waited for Kellen to point out how well she’d done, to say how proud he was of her. But he didn’t, and she thought herself foolish for expecting a pat on the back every time she accomplished something. God. Her handlers had trained her well, hadn’t they?
“Bean tacos, best stuff ever,” Kellen said, sliding into the seat beside her. Real beans and tortillas, no matter how much spice Adele had poured on them, were a veritable feast for anyone not of the elite class. “How you taking to all this, Miss Mari?”
Across the table, Mari Vallejo wiped some red juice from the side of her mouth and shrugged. “You mean the food, the place, or the comp’ny?”
Goodness. Her accent was almost as horrible as Kellen’s.
“All the above, and the rest of it. You been through something of a wringer lately. You doin’ okay?”
He’d always been like this, concerned and caring and saying just the right thing. However, right now the look he directed across the table at the other woman stabbed Angela with a tiny, bright-green sword. Jealousy? It wasn’t a worthy reaction or one Angela was anywhere near confessing. But it lay there, sharp-edged and pokey, definitely not dulled by the fact that Mari Vallejo was tall and pretty and apparently had won the grand prize of boobdom, which her shred of a blouse did little to hide.
Angela focused on her taco. Once she got into it, it tasted kind of heavenly. All fresh ingredients, no protein flakes or fillers. Fine food, shabby setting.
Mari answered Kellen’s query with a minxy grin that dug trench-deep dimples in her cheeks. “Heron’s okay. I’m okay. Got no complaints. I’m even getting sciency these last couple days. We’ve been testing my theory that this clone-brain-slice technological zombification that folk did to my body has now made me essentially unbreakable. It’s been…intense.”
“Now, you know I can’t approve of experiments that put you in danger,” Kellen admonished.
Mari laughed, loud and clangy and infectious. “If you have to worry over somebody, it should probably be Heron. Pretty much all our experiments so far have involved the two of us and nekkid.”
Heron didn’t even twitch. He raised one imperious eyebrow, swallowed a forkful of beans, and said, “A rigorous research environment suits her.”
“I tell you what would suit me more, though,” Mari said. “And that’s getting a stab at one of these rescue missions you folks go on. Garrett here”—she indicated the quiet young man who had been facing away from the elevators when Angela arrived and who seemed overly focused on his dinner—“has been telling me all about ’em, and they totally sound like my kind of crazy. I know my way around a fight, might be of some use. Plus, it sure would be nice to wreak my special brand of havoc for the good guys’ side for once.” She flicked a glance at Angela when she said this, but her gaze shifted away and down too fast for Angela to respond.
Was she still feeling guilty about killing Daniel? How strange that his murderer would mourn the man more than his wife did. Not that Angela wanted to explain.