Page 23 of Exit Strategy

“I doubt you were dumb,” I said.

“No, if I was smart, I would have figured out the trick. I wouldn’t have fallen into their game, and I would be free now, not hiding in a tub nursing a concussion.”

“Can I ask? Or if you prefer, I can absolutely mind my own business—”

“Your own beeswax?” She smiled. “No, it’s fine. I trust you enough to tell you, maybe not all the details, but enough. New Eden is a cult, you know that now, right?” I nodded.

“I didn’t know, growing up in it like I did, but after my fifteenth birthday, it didn’t take me too long to figure it out.” She looked sad and then the silent and grim bravery was back in her expression as she shrugged again. “By the time I did, it was too late.”

“Yeah, they sell that bit about the environment, living green, save the planet. I bought that line. I thought that bit was legitimate – just a bunch of hippy green freaks out to save the planet. That the job was a safe bet. Nothing shady there.” I shook my head. “I know that New Eden talks about green stuff, but the longer I was around? Well, I didn’t really see any of it in practice. That should have been my first clue.”

“There really isn’t terribly much to see,” she said and then looked as though she was gathering her thoughts. “So, its environmental lobbyists and green lawyers funding people through college to turn them into scientists and geoengineers, hydrologists, botanists—”

“Right, everything you would need to save the world from turning into Mad Max smoking angel dust,” I said. She nodded.

“I thought that was where I was going to go, really aiming for a judicial appointment or even public service as a representative in the house, work my way up, maybe become a senator. In my dumb fever dreams I thought I could be Madam President, the first Green President of the United States. I wanted to change the world, turn the oceans blue, the forests all green, save us from poverty and crime, pollution, everything.”

I smiled, hearing the vibrancy come out in her words.

“I was blessed. I was the First Among First Daughters, a Goodwill Ambassador for the New Eden Centre. My Presentation of Youth and Beauty was to August Elijah Ellison Emerson himself. I was… groped, inspected like a horse being sold at auction, and then I was given, as a gift, to Rex. He is one of the New Eden Centre’s largest supporters.”

“That part I know,” I said. “Tithes his box office to the Centre, always selling the green angle.”

“I was given to him when I was ‘legal’ by state laws.” She put “legal” in air quotes with her fingers, raising her hands from the bath, the water streaming and tinkling as it fell back into the tub. “I was married the literal day I turned sixteen. He took my virginity that night, but my innocence had been stolen long before the first time he mounted me.” I looked away. This sort of candid confession left me feeling helpless and awkward, wanting to punish these assholes for what they did to her, and Lord, God, knew what they had done to other people.

“I’m sorry it makes you angry,” she said. “I’ll be quiet.”

Her words made me look up sharply, the math I’d been doing forgotten.

“You aren’t making me angry,” I said.

“Your body language changed. You’re angry,” she said again.

“What they’ve done makes me angry, not you, I promise.”

“Maybe some more wine, and less talking?” she suggested. I agreed and poured another round. The wine was middling at best, but the offerings were limited to the cash I had on hand, and that would run out quickly, trying to play at the celebrity level. My cash would have to last until I could get somewhere that was advanced enough to let me cash out some of the EdenCoin I had been given as a hiring bonus.

“Help me up, and towel me off,” she said, sliding up in the tub after depositing her now empty glass on the side.

“Pardon?”

“I’ve had wine, and a knock in the head. There is no one else here but you,” she said, looking at me like I was being obtuse.

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “Don’t you do this yourself at home?”

“Well, actually, no,” she said. “I have two ladies-in-waiting that do everything with me., I’m never left alone. Someone is always watching.”

“Oh,” I said. She was being serious. She stood with my help and stepped out of the tub, and waited for me to literally buff her dry with the towel as she swayed on her feet, trying to concentrate on keeping them under her. I kept my head turned and tried to be as non-involved as possible. This was too strange; she was so petite, and I felt incredibly awkward. I could feel the flush in my goddamn face. I had handled being shot at by a sniper better than I was handling this.

She laughed.

“Kurt?”

“Yeah?”

“Pay attention, you aren’t going to break me. I know I’m pale but I’m not a bone China doll. If Arik didn’t break me, you aren’t going to cripple me with a terrycloth towel.” I looked at her, and she gave me a hint of a grin. “Dry me off. C’mon now. I don’t like to drip dry, it’s bad for my skin.”

I did so, and feeling her body through the towel, the sweep of her back, her hips, the swell of her small breasts, I couldn’t tell if my heart was racing because it thought I was handling a bomb or racing because I was excited. Maybe both.

---