Chapter Eighteen

“Undo the top two buttons of your shirt,” Invocation said to Lisbet in a voice of perfect disinterest.

He was holding a stethoscope, so she did as she was told.

Invocation was entirely too attractive for words. It wasn’t that he had a cute face because his face wasn’t that cute. Beck was cuter. It was that he was all man in a way that put Lisbet on edge. Surely a person built like that wasn’t real. He was a doctor, so did he have other doctor buddies who could sew a person together so perfectly that they caused brain damage to the average person just by looking at him? She kept wanting to poke him with her finger to find out if there were finally artificial people walking around. It was all very suspicious. However, she’d never poked a medical professional in her life, so she kept her fingers to herself.

“Your heartbeat is too fast and the beating is a little erratic,” he noted as he put the stethoscope around his neck in the way doctors do. “People I examine always have fast heartbeats though.”

“They’re that excited by you?” she asked drolly, trying to act unaffected.

He favored her with a quirky smile. “Usually. Let’s look in your eyes and ears.”

Other things were bothering Lisbet besides Invocation’s impossible looks. The night before, if there could be such a thing in outer space, Lisbet had stayed up and thought about Beck and what he’d said. She really had no idea he was so unhappy about her rejection. Why he should allow himself to feel that way confused her. What right did he have to expect her to love him? If she thought about all that he had said and done since she arrived, he had made his wishes known, but he hadn’t exactly coated them in sugar. The bitterness he suddenly exhibited surprised her. Still, even though he had done things that were heroic, helpful, and caring, somehow he hadn’t crossed the threshold inside Lisbet that made her want to break down her romantic walls to be with him.

A part of her still wanted Vantz, wanted to be his champion, his queen, his wife… even if he was out of reach.

While Lisbet had her overdue medical exam, Beck was asleep in the bed Invocation had vacated. The medical examination took place in cabin two.

Invocation left Lisbet’s field of vision when he looked in her ears. “Did something happen to upset you?”

“Yeah,” she said smoothly. “Beck told me a fairy tale last night and it really bothered me.”

“I heard it through the wall,” he said smoothly like it didn’t bother him at all. “He was telling a story I know from an interesting angle.”

“You know the story?” Lisbet asked curiously.

“Yeah,” Invocation nodded. “My brother, Theology, was one of the servants taken into the very first pleasure palace on Mars. If you’re looking for a happy ending, my brother got one. He threw the dead ‘queen’ out of the cryochamber and put the empty box on the underground railroad that was supplying the pleasure palace with necessities. He got aboard and escaped. Then he ratted out the whole operation and the ‘cruel king’ went to jail where he died. But,” Invocation said with a heavy sigh, “it might have been better for everyone, if not Theology personally, if they had all stayed underground. Ever since it was discovered how to pull that kind of stunt, it has been a common problem on Mars. It’s just that there are so many natural underground caverns on Mars that someone doesn’t even need to be a miner to find the perfect place to hide out and do whatever they want.”

“So you’re working with Beck and Vantz to spoil all those places and change the face of Mars?” Lisbet asked cautiously.

Invocation gravely nodded. “Yes. I’m a doctor and for the last ten years, I have been offering free medical care to anyone who can give me the location of a pleasure palace. Of course, the whole thing has been funded by the terraforming operation, and I haven’t always worked for Vantz. Every time I see a patient who knows something, I become more convinced that the plan to blow Mars up is a great one.”

Lisbet wetted her lips with her tongue as she prepared to ask something else. “Beck told me another fairy tale.” From there, she did her best to tell the story of the bubble girl who burst.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Invocation listened intently.

She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him. She wondered why she had bothered to tell him the story at all. Did she want to hear that it was a fairy tale or that it was a true story?

When she was finished, he leaned against the supply cupboards and said, “Hmm… You’re wondering if Beck is the boy in the story who changed when the girl ‘popped’?”

She hesitated. “I wonder if it’s Vantz.”

Invocation let his eyes travel around the room like he was wondering how to broach his difficult answer. “I don’t know a thing,” he stressed. “The thing about pleasure palace survivors is that they can’t talk about what they experienced underground freely.”

“Why not?” Lisbet asked. In all the literature Vantz had provided her, they hadn’t said more than the basics of abuse. They said what everyone already knew. After that, there was the covering of black rectangles to stop anyone who didn’t know exactly what happened in pleasure palaces from learning about their horror.

“For one thing, if they talk about it, they relive their trauma. And for what? Why should any survivor take you to the worst part of their life and let you pass judgment on them for what they did? For another thing, it wouldn’t do you a lick of good to hear what happened. The things that happen down there have been designed by people who have been nursing twisted fetishes for decades and perfected how to achieve their climax on someone else’s pain. It can be a source of curiosity to people who are seduced by secrets. Are you one of those people?” He looked at her levelly.

She didn’t answer but kept her violet eyes on his blue ones defiantly.

“The biggest reason not to tell anyone what you’ve been through is that sometimes the person you’re talking to is interested in that sort of thing because they’d like to reenact it,” he elaborated coolly.

Lisbet was very sorry she had brought it up, but she wasn’t a complete coward in the face of Invocation’s accusation. “Look, I’m from Earth. Maybe I don’t need to understand exactly, but I’m scared and he’s scaring me more with the stories he’s telling.”

Invocation’s aura instantly lightened. “Oh, well, if that’s your problem, let me put your mind at rest. What I can do is reassure you that the work we’re doing with Vantz is vitally important. These people who have holed up underground have to be stopped. I’ve been working on this problem for over forty years and nothing will get them out. It’s time to pour boiling water down the ant hills.”

“Forty years?” Lisbet asked cautiously. “But you’re thirty.”

“I am not thirty,” he said steadily. “I’m much closer to seventy, but I don’t look it. Looks can be deceiving… my looks, Beck’s looks, Vantz’s looks, and your looks.”

Lisbet swallowed painfully. She didn’t know the answer.

Invocation turned his attention back to the medical exam and asked her quietly, “Do you want a full pelvic exam, or do you merely want to use the wand to check for abnormalities? It’s up to you. It’s not like you’ve been up to no good since you came to Mars with that bracelet on your wrist.”

“Just hand me the wand,” Lisbet answered, extending her hand. She didn’t care if Invocation knew all about her sexual history or the lack thereof. It was clearly more like a merit badge when working with a doctor who primarily saw sexual assault victims.

Invocation gave her miles of space as he leaned against the door on the other side of the room and waited for her to finish with the wand between her legs. “Got any plans for when all this is finished?” he asked conversationally to stop the mood from being so weird.

Lisbet had been sold for a lifetime contract She knew Vantz had said that she would be freed when he was prosecuted for causing the deaths of so many people, but a part of her had believed that Vantz was wily as a fox and he would find a way to skip prosecution. Then she could meet him as she was his wife as well as his bought woman. Maybe then…

She smiled wearily for Invocation. “I don’t have any plans. What’s the point of making them anyway when we’re at this phase of the plan?”

“Ride or die girl? I like that,” Invocation said as he took the wand back from her and read the results. “You look great. So great actually that I’d say you look like you’ve never had sex.”

Lisbet gave him a deathly glare.

“Really?” he asked, astonished. “You never had a handsy babysitter? Never gotten curious in a swimming pool? Never fooled around with a guy in the graveyard?”

“Who does that?” Lisbet interrupted furiously.

He gave her a sly smile. “You’d be surprised. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you manage such a thing? I know your parents were pretty controlling, but why didn’t you sneak around a little under their nose?”

“I guess I was waiting for the right man,” she said with a surly knot in her eyebrow.

He cocked his head to the side. “Sorry I asked.” He tilted his head toward the flight deck. “I gotta go check to see if my ride is almost here. If I don’t get a chance to talk to you more, I want to tell you what an honor it has been to speak with you. Beck did well when he recruited you. Your interviews were fun to watch. In case you are wondering, you really lived up to your nickname after the battle.” He shook her hand briefly and left her alone to do up her buttons.

After he was gone, Lisbet did a double take. She had a nickname?