Chapter Fourteen

When Tiffania arrived at The Boiler Room to make her appearance, the sensation was much larger than when Lisbet had arrived. The biggest reason why was that when Lisbet made her first appearance, the soreness of war was fresh. There were casualties and many of the inhabitants of the above-ground cities had still lost people who had fought on the side of the minders. Meaning that Lisbet’s arrival had been heralded by a death in many households. Many weeks had passed since then, and even though the ravages of the first war in space were still hanging in the air… a lot of people on Mars didn’t have windows and they were ready for something fun. Tiffania was more vivacious than Lisbet and her arrival was so interesting! She was Lisbet’s sister and she had sold herself to one of the miners on the opposite side. Everyone wanted to talk to her about her story.

Lisbet heard it from Bridget before she met with her sister. She could see her. Everyone could see everyone in The Boiler Room. Tiffania was dressed in a deep red costume with feather trim that made her look like a circus performer. It was an outfit that had been designed to garner as much attention as possible… the exact opposite of Lisbet’s wardrobe, which Vantz chose to make her look classy.

Bridget told her about how Tiffania’s purchase had been met with shock. Selling yourself on Earth with Sleeping Beauty Inc. had a number of different meanings. The same was true on the more civilized Jovian moons, but on Mars, a sale meant something else. Being sold to a miner on Mars meant that she could be taken underground to a secret pleasure palace and never returned to the surface. Tiffania choosing that path set the entire world aflame with curiosity. Certainly, if someone was choosing to go underground, the slaves there must not have it so bad.

Except that many of the noisier voices on Mars knew more about pleasure palaces than either Lisbet or Tiffania knew. She was instantly labeled as worse than a bad girl because she was labeled a stupid girl.

Lisbet didn’t know what to make of the public image her sister had been immediately smeared with. She hadn’t realized how important it was for Vantz to keep their relationship so public. That was why he had to marry her in front of the whole galaxy and train her to be a respectable source of information. Seeing everyone’s reaction to Tiffania’s very public temporary sale to someone like Antar, they were equal parts intrigued and disgusted in the same breath. They thought she was the stupidest person in the solar system, but they also wanted to see what would happen to her.

Lisbet thought of the black rectangles over the text of the court documents and her mouth went dry.

Except that Lisbet was facing a PR crisis first thing in the morning because Tiffania was her sister and her bad-girl reputation was threatening to undermine Lisbet and her evacuation efforts. Obviously, that had partly been Antar’s intention when he bought her.

Lisbet went to her hammock room. The walls of glass provided the sound privacy she needed. She pointed herself toward the outward window and used her bracelet to call Beck. She told him the story and waited for his advice.

“How do you want to handle it?” he asked, sounding bored and inconvenienced.

“Do I have a choice? I would think that you’d want me to disown her right here and right now.”

Beck smacked his lips. “No. You don’t have to do that. It would look bad if you did. We need to let the people of Mars know that you want to help people who have put themselves in dangerous situations for money… like Tiffania.”

“So I’m allowed to greet her?” Lisbet asked with a relieved sigh.

“Yes,” Beck said kindly. “Take care of your little sister, but be aware of the dangers that she represents. You can’t tell her anything about your real life with Vantz, even if she is family. You have to stick to the same PR bullshit we tell everybody. You also need to know that even though she probably doesn’t have any scary stories today, in the future, if she tells you something that Antar has done to her that you can’t stand… You need to know, there's nothing we can do about it. Nothing. The location of Antar’s pleasure palace is known, but he’s not very high up on our list because his palace is part of one of the largest complexes, so we will not be rescuing her anytime soon.”

Lisbet turned and looked through the layers of plate glass at her little sister. Tiffania had blondish hair and green eyes that looked at odds with her red attire. The skin on her cheeks looked so delicate, it almost looked like glass.

“How much danger is she in?” Lisbet asked Beck, a desperate edge to her voice.

His shrug was audible over the communication line. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on how the next few months go. Whatever happens, she’s a grown woman. Do not get sucked in. She was brought here to manipulate you and trap you. Can you see that?”

It was weird for Lisbet to get a pep talk from Beck. During all the time they’d spent together, nothing he’d done had hinted that he was hard as nails.

“I need to hear you say you understand what you have to do,” he said unflinchingly.

“I get it. I’ll be everything I’m supposed to be,” she replied, trying to sound as cool as him.

“Good,” he said encouragingly before he cut the line and got back to whatever he was doing.

Lisbet turned her back on the view of The Boiler Room that included her sister. What would happen to Tiffania if her owner decided to take her into the old mines? Black rectangles floated in front of her eyes. They represented redacted information most people couldn’t handle.

Lisbet was furious… and yet… something very similar had happened to her. She had been sold off to someone on Mars. What if that someone had been less honorable than Vantz or Beck?

A tap came at the door. Bridget was waiting for permission to let Tiffania into Lisbet’s glassed hammock area. Lisbet greeted her sister with a hug she wasn’t supposed to give anyone and acted like seeing her was the most magical thing that could ever happen. She had to. There were about a million cameras pointed at her.

Tiffania looked fresh off the boat, in that she was wearing makeup and had a lot of product holding her curls in place.

Lisbet let them take pictures of them for fifteen minutes before she shooed the reporters away so she could have some alone time with her sister.

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Lisbet ordered drinks for them, offered her sister a hammock, and took a seat herself. “I’m so excited you’re here,” Lisbet said. “I thought I was never going to see my family again. Now you’re here, we can meet here every day! Won’t that be something?”

Tiffania acted just like Lisbet. They weren’t sisters for nothing. “We should have dinner together,” Tiffania cooed. “You know, like a double date?”

“I’m so glad you contacted me,” Lisbet said in a hushed whisper with her eyes brimming with hope. “You’re here because Antar wants to empty his pleasure palace and secure his slaves in cryostasis, right? I’m sure we can do it discreetly. We can be so quiet that no one will even know that’s what he’s done.”

Lisbet said that. She knew she wasn’t putting words in Tiffania’s mouth. That wasn’t what her sister had come to say. She knew that, but she had to make it clear from the get-go that was what was on her mind.

Tiffania’s expression fell in deep disappointment. “I haven’t been instructed to give you that message.”

“Okay,” Lisbet said, giving her sister a gentle expression she hoped didn’t put too much pressure on her sister. “We’ll just chat then, but please pass that message on to Antar. He needs to know that kind of arrangement is possible.”

Tiffania looked blank, like she had just been thrown in the deep end and she didn’t know how to proceed.

“How long have you been on Mars?” Lisbet asked breezily.

“I got here the day before yesterday,” Tiffania said, picking up the rhythm of a simpler conversation.

“And you’re already out in public? I wasn’t ready to see a soul until I’d been here for a solid fourteen days, but I imagine I have a different relationship with Vantz than the one you will have with Antar, but here you are at a social club already. I’m delighted to see you.” Lisbet patted her sister’s knee carefully, aware that any touching anywhere else might shock both of them later. “What else is on your social calendar? Certainly, you’re not here just to see me?”

“Antar was hoping we could have a dinner date with you and Vantz,” Tiffania said, trying to sound like her social calendar was full when actually there was no one else she was supposed to see.

Lisbet leaned in and said kindly, “I have to refuse. We don’t do that. Vantz is very busy with the activation of the magnetic towers. He works all the time when he’s not with me or asleep. We haven’t been accepting invitations from anyone. You can meet me here. You can even bring Antar. I’d like to meet him, but I can’t promise that the four of us can have supper together. That’s impossible.”

Tiffania looked confused. Obviously, the first job she’d been given was to get Vantz and Lisbet to agree to a dinner date. Tiffania was stunned Lisbet was saying no to her. Lisbet had never said no to her.

“Maybe we can work something out after the towers go online. Vantz will be less busy then,” Lisbet said. She was lying, but the lie was good enough to pacify her sister for now.

“Will that be soon?” Tiffania asked, knowing nothing about Mars or how many years had been spent by how many scientists in order to give Mars a magnetic shield that still hadn’t been activated even though it had been finished secretly months ago.

“I couldn’t say,” Lisbet said brightly. “Tell me how your interviews with the reporters are going. What kind of questions are they asking you?”

Tiffania melted a little in her hammock. She had never been interviewed by reporters before. “Ah, they have a lot of questions about Antar’s pleasure palace.”

“Have you been there?”

“No. I only got here yesterday. I’m staying in a skyscraper they’re calling a castle.”

“I live in one like that,” Lisbet joined in. “Mine is called Castle Ares. What’s yours called?”

“One forty-two, I think. Why are you in one named after the God of War and I’m in one that only has a number for a name?” Tiffania complained.

“Because I’m married to the God of War,” Lisbet explained with a heavy dose of humility. Holding something like that over Tiffania’s head would not help anything.

“Yeah, I’ve heard him called that,” Tiffania said as she looked out the window at the pink sand. “Tell me about Vantz. What’s he like? You’ve been married to him for months.”

Lisbet smiled. “Naturally. What do you want to know?”

Tiffania proceeded to ask Lisbet all the normal questions the reporters asked her. Tiffania should have done better. She should have had better questions for Lisbet, but she didn’t. If Lisbet had to bet, she would have bet that Antar took fifteen minutes with Tiffania to get her ready to talk to Lisbet. All she was supposed to do was ask Lisbet to go to dinner and she was going to have to leave empty-handed. Lisbet told her all the things she’d already told everyone. It was a very dull conversation for Lisbet.

Their conversation finished late in the afternoon and Lisbet told her sister she had to say goodbye. It was her normal time for leaving The Boiler Room. They said their goodbyes and Lisbet promised to meet her the next day. Tiffania looked hopeful and Lisbet got ready to go. She put on her fur piece, grabbed the strap of her handbag, and went down the elevator to where she would pick up her transport.

Except something unexpected happened.

The moment she stepped into the transport tube, she was attacked. An underground transport screamed past, ramming her transport vehicle and pushing it out of the way down the tunnel. When they passed her, she was pelted with rubber bullets and as each of them hit her in less-than-ideal spots, she knew that each one of them represented an electric shock she would receive later.

She screamed and hit the floor. The bodyguards fired at the vehicle as it disappeared down the tunnel, but it was too late. Lisbet was covered in bruises, red paint, and a dart was sticking out of her side that had a memory card attached to it.

She pulled the dart out.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to do that,” one of the guards warned.

Lisbet forced her breathing to be calm and got to her feet. “I’ll put darts out of my body if I want to,” she snarled. “I’m okay. Don’t touch me. For now, I need to go back inside and talk to Bridget.”

She met Bridget in the atrium, but Bridget wasn’t fast enough to get her into a private room before a floor full of the most important people on Mars saw that she had been attacked and that her white dress was covered in red. Whether it was blood or paint, they didn’t know.

“Should I call your sister?” Bridget asked once they were alone.

“No. Keep her out and let me clean this thing. If you have other clothes for me to wear, that would be appreciated. I need to call my castle and arrange for another transport. Otherwise, I prefer to be left alone. Please do not let anyone in here.”

Bridget agreed and ducked out to find her new clothes.

Lisbet was about to call Beck, but she got a call from him first. “Busy day?” he inquired darkly.

“Did you see the number of times my sister touched me in a way that is likely to piss off Vantz, or the location of the underground transport, or the number of times I was hit by rubber bullets to add to how I’ll be punished later?” she wheezed, almost crying. “Is one of those the reason why you’re calling me?”

“Wait. What happened?” he asked, his tone appropriately altered.

She heard the clacking of his keyboard through the communicator in her bracelet.

“I just told you,” she pressed. “I was the victim of a drive-by shooting, but I was lucky they didn’t use real bullets. My ribs hurt like a son of a bitch. I was also hit by a dart. There’s a memory card attached to the dart. It’s in my purse. Seriously, Beck, is there something we can do about the shocks tonight? None of that was my fault and… I’m hurt really bad. I think one of my ribs is broken.”

“Did you see who attacked you?”

“Hilariously, no.”

“Are you getting medical treatment there? I don’t want just any doctor to look at you. I have a doctor I can call up from the fortieth floor.”

“The one I was supposed to meet for my initial assessment?” she asked snarkily.

“I’m sorry about that. He’s been busy. Here and there. Obviously, he hasn’t been here, but he is now. I’ll come and get you in a fresh transport. Hang on.”

Lisbet was not happy when he cut the connection. She wanted to keep talking to him. She sat and waited for Bridget to come back and refused to acknowledge the tears running down her face.