Page 16 of Even Robots Die
Earlier I wanted to destroy the world and Brice with it, but now? Now I just want to go to sleep and forget that I was tricked.
What is going to happen to the girls without me, though? Dad is on his way back to them, but will he keep his head straight long enough to take care of them?
I’m feeling deflated. This is the first time I’m not in control and it’s making my mind spiral.
This isn’t good.
I can’t start spiraling while I’m under the enemy's roof.
Because I know that for sure now.
My stupid body may react to the handsome specimen that is Brice, but I’m not fooled anymore.
He’s the bad guy here. He is my jailer.
And I’m going to make him pay.
Maybe after a good night of sleep, though.
I get up from the ground where the asshole dropped me like I was the worst kind of burden and take a look at my new cage.
To be honest, it’s a lovely cage. It’s bigger than my room in Paris—and I have to share that one—and has a king-size bed with bed sheets that look so soft from where I’m standing. I don’t want to touch them now though, because with all the fighting and being on my hands and knees to wake people on the ground and such, I feel like I would soil them.
Like Brice said, on the right side of the room there is a closet that I’m sure he filled with whatever he wanted for me to wear. The douchebag probably doesn’t even know my size, so I have no doubt nothing will fit.
I discover a bathtub behind a panel that I push slightly to the side on the other side of the room.
It looks like the bath has been filled already though and I don’t know what to make of it.
Did he get someone to draw the bath while I was healing his men, or was it already prepared even before he came to meet me? If we can call it ‘meeting’…
I dip my hand in the water, and it’s deliciously hot.
If I go in now, it’s probably going to make my skin red, but I need it.
I slip more of my hand inside and ask Milton, “Can you run some tests on what’s inside the water?”
I don’t think there is anything toxic in that bath, but better safe than sorry. I don’t know why, but Brice needs me here, so it would bestupid for him to poison me. He could put something in it that would make me sleep, though.
“All clear,” Milton tells me. “Do you need the exact composition of the water?”
“Only if there is anything that has been added to it,” I answer.
“Nothing has been added. Not even soap.”
Then we’re all good.
I grab the chair that’s next to the closet, drag it to the door and slip it right under the handle.
I’m not sure it could stop a shifter but at least this way, if someone tries to enter, I will be alerted by the noise for sure.
I remove my gloves, the vambraces I wear on my forearms that have small throwing blades, the row of blinding grenades I have on my left biceps like a bracelet, and all the other weapons I have stashed against my body.
Once everything is on the ground next to the bathtub, I feel naked and vulnerable for the first time in a very long time.
I have no idea why Brice tricked me into coming here. What does he want from me? Why would it warrant kidnapping my dad?
I mean, I’ve worked with him in the past, so what was preventing him from just giving me a holo call to hire me? It’s not like holo numbers are a secret nowadays. With just a name you can find someone’s holo number easily on the interweb.
