Page 103 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
It’s tempting, and it is what I wanted. But I wanted it on my own terms.
“No,” I tell him. “I need more than that.”
He sighs. “All right. How about this: ‘Ashlynn’.”
I freeze. His pronunciation of my sister’s name is flawed, but clear enough. It’s the secret word I picked for Sigise to use if she had to activate the extraction plan. No Khavgren would know it or think of it. Having Nerox use it either means that the whole plan has been compromised and ruined, or that Sigise stands ready to get me off Khav.
My eyes go narrow. “Who told you that word?”
“Colonel Grast told me that if you were the way we think, you might need to hear that before you’d come. She and her people are coming for us. I will return to the living room while you change. Be quick.” He spins around, does that flourish thing with his cape, and closes the door behind him.
My gun hand drops to my side. “Vera, is this a trap?”
“I have no idea. But the use of the password indicates that it might not be. This setup corresponds to one of the scenarios that Colonel Grast prepared. Prince Nerox was never a part ofthat, of course. But a stranger giving you the code word was mentioned as a possibility.”
I open the closet and find the black jumpsuit that I asked for, specifically for night extraction. “Have you told anyone about my sister’s name?”
I swear the AI snorts. “Of course not!”
I quicky discard my dress and put the jumpsuit on. “Could they have hacked into you and found it there?”
“Umbra, my sensitive data are encrypted so well that even I can’t access them without taking close to a full second to open them. That’s an eternity.”
“So as far as you know, nobody has.”
“Nobodycan,” she tells me firmly. “Space Force takes security very seriously indeed. I’m as close to hack-proof as anything on Earth. They’d have better luck trying to hack into an orange with a highway offramp.”
“That’s a weird image.” I get my military gun from the back of the closet and put it in the holster that hangs down my back. If I need it, I’ll have to reach over my shoulder. It’s the only way I can bring the baseball bat-sized thing with me.
“Perhaps. But perfectly apt.”
I tie a black bandanna around my hair, and then I’m done.
I draw my gun and slowly open the door to the living room of the apartment.
Nerox is standing in the middle of the dark room, only lit up by fake sunlight from the screens that are showing early dawn on a tropical island.
He looks me up and down. “That should work. Have you ever shot with that gun?”
“Not yet,” I tell him tersely as I replace it in its holster. “But Ireallywant to.” I give him a side eye.
He gives me a little smile. “‘So don’t try anything’, is what you’re saying. We will leave the same way I came in.”
He goes to one of the fake windows and pushes at it. It smoothly swings away from the frame, revealing a dark space behind it. “This took hours to do.” He climbs through the hole and turns to me.
All right, I guess we’re doing this. I’m still worried about it being a trap, but I never sensed much malice from this prince. He’s more irreverent than evil, I think. So I’m taking a chance on him not having been tricked by anyone into doing this.
I go over to the fake window. The screen is being held up by a squat utility robot that looks most of all like a forklift without the driver’s cabin. “Was that always there?”
“The screen was securely fastened to the wall,” Nerox says softly. “I had the robot help detach it and hold it up. Now it will screw it back in place while we escape.”
I step over the low threshold. It’s a big storage room with a high ceiling, dark and empty. It’s a weird feeling, because the fake apartment doesn’t feel the least bit fake from the inside. But from the outside it’s all raw, unpainted walls and metal supports to keep the walls up, like a movie set.
Nerox walks ahead to the corner, where there’s a dusty stairway going up. “They tried to block access to this whole floor, but Iknow a way.” He quickly climbs the stairs, and I follow at a safe distance.
The steps are tall and there are many of them, mildly spiraling as we climb.
“Most of the buildings of the palace aren’t just one structure,” Nerox says, no longer whispering now that we’re out of earshot of the Calanians. “They’ve been added to and expanded over the centuries, and I don’t think anyone’s kept track of how they’ve grown. We’ll soon be in a different building from where you were kept. And then another and another.” His voice echoes from the stone walls.
