The tank containing Manus darkens to opaque. It becomes the backdrop to holographic images, like the video walls at the palace.
My breath catches when a hologram projector shows Trey’s three-dimensional images in a rapid stream from his infancy to his childhood. Most of the younger images are Trey with his twin brother, Victus. There are several in which both brothers have one arm over each other’s shoulder with Trey holding a rather atrocious-looking fish out to the camera.
Next, in rapid succession, and while the hologram spins to show several angles, I view Trey’s adolescence to his early days of military training. My heartbeat accelerates; I can’t hide the smile that forms on my lips. Some of the tension I’m feeling melts away as I see him grow from child to adult in a matter of moments.
Then the holograms of Trey slow and blink off as the film changes. Booming sounds of cannon fire dropping nearby rumbles my chair from the holographic images that emerge next. Soldiers scramble to strip off blood-soaked clothing in exchange for clean smocks in a makeshift medical unit on the outskirts of a war zone. A few medics pace by the gaping mouth of the entrance to their enclosure with an air of expectation. One of them shouts for everyone to make ready. My empty hand goes to my mouth from shock as my other hand tightens on the znou petals when I recognize Trey in the center of a pair of soldiers being ushered into the medical unit. Tears spring to my eyes, and I fight them back when I see both of his legs are gone below the knees. He’s brought to a podlike surgery table. The table resembles half of a tanning bed positioned under an enormous laser mounted on a robotic arm. The laser-mounted tool goes to work, slicing Trey’s armor from what remains of his body. Bloody and torn apart, Trey moans as he writhes and trembles in pain from missing limbs and scalded skin. Agony and fear flatten my lips. The crackle and bubble of flesh is audible as surgeons cauterize the hemorrhaging arteries and scrape dead flesh off his sheared stumps. Trey’s repeated vomiting as his flesh is sutured to reattach his hand makes me taste bile in my own throat. One of the physicians screams at the anesthesiologist, directing him to put Trey under before the pain kills him.
I look away, unable to watch anymore lest I vomit. It is a wonder he didn’t kill me upon sight when he found me, I think. I look just like the monsters who did that to him.
“Manus won’t require the kind of extensive regrowth as this—” Minister Telek pauses. “Is this too much for you?” he asks with a bit of an amused laugh, then orders, “Console on.” A different holographic screen the size of a laptop illuminates in the air in front of him. He squints at icons, activating them by his eye movement. The small screen disappears as a compartment opens in the surface of the table between us. A stout but elegant silver urn with matching cups and saucers arises from the surface on a silver salver. “Would you like some kafcan?” he asks. Steam rolls from the spout of the pot. He pours the hot, dark-roast beverage that is very similar to coffee into a delicate cup.
“No, thank you.” I make a vow never to take a thing from him. Owing him would be a crime. He keeps the cup of kafcan for himself, setting it on the table near his hand.
“The Alameeda nearly killed Gennet Trey, did you know that?”
I nod my head. “I knew. He told me.” I swallow hard.
This doesn’t sit well with Minister Telek. His hand moves violently to swipe the steaming cup off the table. It shatters on the floor in front of us with a loud clatter. “Trey will do anything for you, won’t he!” he accuses with a growl. The abruptness of his rage is not a foreign thing to me. I saw it seething below the surface, and I know better than to answer his question.
When I remain silent, Minister Telek barks an order to his console. “Stream current headline.”
The hologram of Trey disappears and is replaced by three-dimensional images of Trey and me from just moments ago in the Sonic Rail Station. I’m throwing my arms around Trey’s neck. Trey leans down and kisses me hard on the mouth. My heart strains the wall of my chest. To Minister Telek, this is somehow damning evidence. The love letter Trey wrote on my paper heart is there; Minister Telek can read it.
His rage is barely restrained as he says between clenched teeth, “They’re calling you two star-crossed lovers, romanticizing your relationship. It was already viral by the time you arrived at my office.” He wants me to be penitent about it.
“That poses a problem for you,” I murmur. “You were hoping we’d look like criminals—that’s what you were going for by allowing the media to ambush us.”