Chapter Thirty
Lisbet opted for a fork and a knife with a sharp tip to take apart the sofa. It wasn’t that difficult. A fork was remarkably like a crowbar when necessity demanded it. All she had to do was loosen the staples that held the upholstery in place. In some places, like the arms of the sofa, there were even visible tacks that were easy to pry loose. Tiffania was more than happy to help with this phase, but once Beck got stuck removing the chair from the cryochamber, she scooted off to the bathroom to tend to her injuries again. That was what she claimed. Lisbet could see her in Beck’s massive closet picking out clothes and fixing her makeup.
Beck gave Lisbet a curious look to see if she was irritated.
“It’s not annoying,” Lisbet said grudgingly. “It’s predictable that she bails as soon as things get tough.”
“It’s fine by me if she wants to play in the closet,” Beck said, taking an electric hex wrench in his hand. “I don’t want her around. I have wanted to be alone with you from the start. Curse me, I was even glad when you didn’t get along with Charcoal so we could be alone together. I’m even faking that I can’t do this by myself.”
“So, all the girls you know are as lazy as my sister?” Lisbet questioned, still hoping he’d give her more information about the girls who used to visit him in his pleasure palace.
“Tiffania isn’t like most of the slave girls my father owns. She’s more like the girls who have been raised underground and have slaves of their own. And yes, they’re very lazy. Yes, those types of girls do nothing but play in the closet and expect others to serve them.”
“Is that why I was gifted that huge closet full of clothes when I first arrived at the castle?” Lisbet asked in alarm. “You thought I’d like to play dress-up?”
Beck chuckled before turning on his wrench and making her wait while he removed a bolt. When he was finished, he had had adequate time to prepare a response. “Clothes are a mandatory part of doing business at The Boiler Room. They’re an essential part of every rich girl’s life. Yes, not all the clothes in the castle fit you, but they were clothes that covered your body, showing your supremacy when you went out in public. I didn’t know if they’d amuse you, and to be honest, from the expressions on your face in the pictures you sent me, you did not look amused. Which is a shame because I rather hoped I’d luck out and you would be amused, seduced, pleased, and have a bunch of excess sexual energy with nowhere to put it. But, you didn’t seem to experience any of that stuff. You seemed so self-controlled that it was difficult for me not to deliberately try to break you.” He stopped and looked at her, giving her a look meant to provoke her. “I’m still not sure what turns you on.”
“Do you want a list?” she joked.
He shook his head in the negative and looked inside the cryochamber instead of at her. “Nah. I want to discover those things myself, but perhaps you could tell me one thing that went well last night.”
Lisbet felt her stomach flip. “It all went well last night,” she admitted bashfully. “It went so well, I want to slap you.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I’m sure you know, or at least, you’ve been told… that a lady’s first experience can be trying,” Lisbet said, and truthfully, she never sounded more like a stiff and proper lady than she did at that moment. “For you to know how to handle that so perfectly worries me. How much experience have you had breaking in virgins?”
Beck glanced at her. “Not that much. I just had a lot of time to sort out how I wanted to make love to you, but I didn’t expect a flawless victory.”
“I thought it was pretty flawless,” Lisbet said with a little color on her cheeks.
“I’ll do it differently next time,” he said gently before he stood up and lifted the back half of the chair out of the cryochamber.
“It would be nice if there was a next time,” Lisbet said with a stressed puff of her cheeks. “I keep jumping at every sound, but it’s just Tiffania messing around in the closet.”
Beck got inside the empty half of the cryochamber and unwound the remaining bolts. “Well, that idea does give a boy a little kick to get going. How are you going to fit that upholstery in here?”
“I don’t think it is long enough to cover our feet. The sofa isn’t as long as the cryochamber,” Lisbet noticed.
“Go get some blankets from the bedroom. I’d prefer it if we didn’t take the time to bastardize another couch. When you go through there, tell Tiffania that she needs to put on some decent clothing for the sleep. Peek-a-boo dresses are the last thing you need at the end of the world. You can both wear my sweatpants and hoodies if there’s nothing else. I doubt there is. There’s nothing but feather boas and bikinis in there.”
Lisbet went and got the blankets for their feet. Beck had already removed the rest of the chair and he was pounding the tacks left over from the sofa arms to hold the upholstery in place. Looking down, Lisbet was shocked at how much it looked like a coffin. She dropped the blankets she’d brought from the bedroom beside the cryochamber.
“We’re done, right? Once you’re finished, you’ll want to put Tiffania and I to sleep immediately?”
He agreed.
“What if we don’t get any more time together?” she blurted. “What if things don’t work out and you die or I die and there’s no more of us?” she suddenly asked with tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
Beck stood up and put his arms around her to comfort her. “The faster I get out of here, the better our chances will be. We need to move, but there is one thing you can count on in all of this, I want to save you. I love you and I am going to try everything I can to save us.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Except get Vantz to call off the bombs?”
“I don’t have the authority to do that. I made the system operate that way in case I got weak, and I was right to do that because I’m suddenly feeling quite weak. We need to hurry. Run. Go get changed.” He flicked on his cigarette and offered her the first drag.
She sucked on it. “The only reason I’m doing this is because you do it. I want to do what you do.”
He breathed and straightened something around the waistband of his pants. “Then do what I do and go get you and your sister changed. I’m going to get changed too. There’s a lining I need to put on before I put on the heavy exosuit. Hurry.”
Lisbet regretfully joined her sister in the closet. “Hey! We need to wear sweatsuits. Why are you wearing sequins?”
“Can’t I wear both?” Tiffania asked with a flick of her tongue. “We’re going to die anyway. What does it matter what I wear?”
“For frick’s sake.” Taking a page out of Beck’s book, she went up behind her sister, grabbed the zipper, and undid it. “I can’t believe I have to dress you like a baby.”
“Hey!” Tiffania complained.
“Stop being whatever it is you are right now and be the girl who stabbed Antar with a serrated knife.”
Tiffania paled. “That was scary. I… uh… have been trying not to think about it.”
“Playing pretend that you’re a princess again and you’re trying on clothes in a boutique back on Earth? I understand the temptation,” Lisbet said, throwing her sister some of Beck’s old clothes. “Get these on. You will only have to be brave for about five minutes and then you’ll be unconscious.”
“That’s scary in its own way,” Tiffania breathed.
“It is, but Beck is fearless. He’s like no one I’ve ever met before and we have to follow him now.” Lisbet tore off her robe without regard for what her sister might see as she put on the clothes Beck said she needed to wear.
“Something is weird about that,” Tiffania said as she pulled the black sweatshirt over her head. “When Hessia told me that you’d had an affair with Beck, it didn’t seem like it was a real story. You cheated on your husband? How could that have happened? You’re not the type to do anything like that at all, especially with a younger man. Do you remember that pool boy I used to fool around with?”
“Vividly,” Lisbet replied, pulling a pair of Beck’s black socks up to her knees.
“Did you know that I was his second choice?” Tiffania admitted, grabbing a pair of socks from the stack Lisbet had robbed.
“How did you find that out?” Lisbet asked incredulously.
“He had written something on the side of his nightstand. He’d actually carved it out of the wood with a pocket knife. It was his name and your name, you know, the way some boys carve names into trees. He wanted to be with you. I saw it when I was lying on his bed. I was fooling around with him and his light was on. I looked up and saw it. I pushed him off me and made him tell me what that meant. He said that he had liked you and tried to get you to like him, but it hadn’t worked. You had refused him so hard he felt like a little boy with a slingshot. I wasn’t there at the time, so it was carved there before he met me. Once I heard that nothing had happened with you, that was enough for me and I just kept fooling around with him, but the idea that you pledged your life to a man and then slept with one of his tech boys… that story still doesn’t make sense. Even though I’m seeing it with my own eyes, it still doesn’t make sense.”
Lisbet cautiously did not want her sister to get wind of the truth. “Does it make sense now that you’ve met Beck?”
Tiffania didn’t answer.
Lisbet pressed harder. “Do you think he’s the kind of man I would throw everything away for?”
“Yeah… I guess. I mean, you have,” Tiffania said as she finished changing. “He’s very sexy, but so was that pool boy.”
“What was his name?” Lisbet said, trying to pull Tiffania’s focus away from her and Beck.
Tiffania chuckled awkwardly. “I don’t remember.”
“Come on, forgetful one… Let’s get to sleep. You said you didn’t sleep last night.” Lisbet pulled her sister back into the living room.
Tiffania looked down at the cryochamber that was now prepared to take two people instead of one. “That looks really creepy. It’s like we’re at our own wake,” she complained.
“Yes, it does,” Beck agreed as he came out in his very tightly fitting metallic bodysuit.
Lisbet and Tiffania looked him up and down before turning to look at each other. Then they averted their eyes.
Beck didn’t notice their glances and gawks. “With the two of you inside, it will run for eight and a half months. That will be more than enough for whatever happens.”
“That seems like a short time span,” Lisbet said, looking at it. “Shouldn’t it run for years?”
“It’s what I said. It will run for less than half the time with two people in it. It was bought twelve years ago, but it only had power cells to last three years. Then it would need to have its battery and supply tanks changed. I didn’t use it, but someone did because the power was lower than it should have been. I ran the math. With both of you inside, it should last a guaranteed eight months and two weeks. Maybe more if we’re lucky. Get in.”
Tiffania got in and put her back against one side of the cryochamber.
Lisbet looked at Beck like she couldn’t stand to be separated from him.
He held her gaze. “Do you want me to tell you a fairytale to ease you into dreamland?”
“No,” she got on her tiptoes and kissed him. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, you tell terrible fairy tales.”
He scooped her up. She yelped, but he lowered her in beside Tiffania. When his hands let her go and came away from her, Lisbet wasn’t sure she could go through with their plan. What if he needed her to stay awake?
Beck stood up straight and looked down at them. “I’ll kiss you when you wake up,” he promised before he closed the lid on them. He breathed smoke, like a dragon, like a man about to snap, like everything she had wished she knew how to wish for.
Lisbet could see him through the glass lid until he pushed the cryochamber back into its hiding place in the wall and closed the panel that covered them.
“Tell me what he’s going to do in that flashy suit,” Tiffania said as the gas filled the chamber.
“He’s going to go to the surface and call for help. Then he’s going to steal a transport for us to get back to Noachis.”
“That sounds useful. I don’t know if my bracelet will let me go as far as Noachis,” Tiffania said, taking the steadying breaths that they had been instructed to take at Sleeping Beauty Inc. headquarters on Earth when entering cryostasis.
“Then we’ll break it off,” Lisbet said savagely in the dark.
Tiffania took her hand. “Now we’re sisters.”
Lisbet agreed. Whatever relationship they’d had before, whatever bonds they’d had living in the same house with the same parents, they’d never been close. But now, surprisingly, they were.
“Am I Rose Red while you are Rose White?” Lisbet asked.
“Nah, we’re both Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Except I wasn’t beautiful enough to turn my beast into a real man. That’s why I had to kill mine.”
“Is he really dead?”
“I hope so,” she breathed, the gas in the chamber getting thicker. “You must have had a beast too if you’re sleeping with a stable boy who’s actually the prince of the underground troll kingdom. What a wild story you’ve had!”
“Vantz wasn’t a beast,” Lisbet said softly. “That was just a rumor they told about him.”
But it was too late. Tiffania was already asleep and in the next breath, so was Lisbet.