Chapter Thirty Three

When Lisbet opened her eyes, she was woken by a bright light in her eyes. No kiss for her. She breathed deliberately a few times and let the air fill her lungs like balloons. She did not want to wake up if Beck wasn’t waking her with a kiss. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but it was impossible. Her cryochamber lid was open a crack and uncomfortably cold air was seeping in.

She opened the lid and the smell that hit her was surprising. It was like red cinnamon, like one of Beck’s cigarettes. Was he nearby?

When she sat up, she saw that she was in a helocarrier hangar. The doors were wide open and sunlight was all over her face.

She paused.

The sun was too small.

She had thought for a moment that she was on Earth, but if the sun was that small, if the light was that slanted, she was on Mars. She let her lungs fill with the spiced air a second time.

No one was around. Despite the scent of Beck like his presence hung in the air all around her, she was alone.

Slipping out of her cryochamber, she noticed a few figures moving in the distance on the other side of the hangar. They were far from her and uninterested in her movements. It was good that she wasn’t utterly alone.

Slowly, she walked toward the light coming in through the wide doors. She was wearing socks, not boots, and the air was crisp, but the floor under her feet was chilly through her socks. She clutched at Beck’s sweatshirt that covered her body.

No matter what happened to Beck or what would happen to her in the future, she had to see what he had made.

Mars.

He’d made Mars livable.

Standing at the wide doors, she looked up at the sky and saw Phobos. The irregular moon hung in the sky like a single crescent jewel hanging alone. That was when she realized that the sun was rising and not setting. She was witnessing the beginning of a new day.

Unable to resist, Lisbet stepped out onto the sand. The sand dunes were large around her, like mountains, protecting her from an unvarnished landscape.

She heard a man yell something. Was someone yelling at her?

Scanning the area, she heard him yell it again.

“Found it!”

She came around the edge of a dune and saw a team of men excavating the rubble. There was a pile of twisted metal wreckage and a crane that had all its right angles.

She approached and looked into the hole. They were winching a cryochamber out of a gaping hole in the sand like they were archaeologists removing a sarcophagus from the Valley of the Kings.

How long had she been asleep?

She was about to say something to one of the hard-hatted excavators when she realized something odd about the cryochamber. It was hers.

It wasn’t the one Iona had put her to sleep in. It was the one Beck had bought her in. She could tell by the pink and gold line. She was put inside an advanced cryochamber because she was a gold edition model. Except the whole thing was battered with burn marks on one side.

“Who’s inside?” she shouted.

The men turned to look at her and in the process, the man operating the crane dropped the cryochamber. It was still attached to its chains, but it fell back in the hole.

All the men gazed at her, recognition on their faces. They knew who she was. Everyone knew who she was. At one time, she’d made announcements on media outlets every day.

“That’s Lisbet Bloomburg,” one said.

“What’s she doing out of her cryochamber? Vantz’s instructions were that she was to be left in cryostasis until given the order to wake her up,” the man operating the crane said as he corrected the controls and tried to stop the cryochamber on his line from swaying.

One of the men in a hard hat and a reflective vest approached her. He was a hard-looking man with a twinkle in his eye. “Hi, Lisbet. It’s a real honor to meet you. I’m Tuton and I’ve been working on the Mars terraforming project alongside you, even though we’ve never met.”

“I’m pleased to meet you too,” she said, extending her hand for a handshake.

“You’re not supposed to be awake. Did someone wake you up?” the wrecker asked.

“No. My cryochamber popped open on its own as far as I could tell. Who’s in that cryochamber?” she demanded, pointing to the one that was slowly being raised from the hole.

He looked at her funny. “We don’t know for certain, but we’re hoping it’s Beckett Beltrose, but the cryochamber doesn’t say who is inside when it sends out its distress call.”

“So, it’s functional enough to send out a distress call?” Lisbet asked, sending out a distress call of her own.

“Yeah. It survived a bad explosion,” Tuton explained.

“Beck is inside,” Lisbet said with certainty. “The thing that exploded was the rocket he rigged, wasn’t it?”

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“Yeah. It did so against our schedule–”

“I know,” Lisbet said, interrupting him. “I was in Carlos Beltrose’s pleasure palace when the first bomb went off. It was odd because Vantz had been speaking to Carlos and he said that they had five hours to evacuate, but then the connection was cut and a minute later, the place started to shake. That means that Vantz wasn’t going to let the main bombs go off for five hours, but Beck detonated the rocket early.” Lisbet was careful to keep their names separate just in case there was still a reason for Beck to have an alias. “He did it to scare Carlos into action, and it did. He put me on a pod and sent me into orbit.”

“Yeah… that’s what happened. Beck did set it off early. It was a huge gamble considering his plan was to protect himself by being in a cryochamber that was that close to the blast area. But, Lisbet, orders are orders and I have to get you back into cryostasis as per Vantz’s orders.”

“No,” Lisbet said, her voice insistent. “He only wants me in cryostasis because he promised me that Beck would wake me up. That’s all. If Beck is in that chamber, which is absolutely certain, then it’s fine if I wake him up.”

Tuton gave her a funny look. “Listen, I know you Sleeping Beauty Inc. models have that weird ritual where you get woken with a kiss like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or whoever gets woken with kisses in those kids’ stories, but the fact is we’re not going to open the cryochamber here on the sand. We’re going to take it to the medical bay and have Invocation open it and give Beckett a physical. It’s unlikely he was completely unharmed by the event even if it didn’t kill him.”

At that moment, the crane lowered the seared cryochamber onto the back of a land rover. The sounds of the chains hitting the deck peeled through the air.

Lisbet looked at it.

The wrecking crew was moving around on the back of the land rover. They were removing the chains from the crane and replacing them with towing chains from the back of the rover.

Tuton put his hand around Lisbet’s upper arm. “So why don’t I take you back to the hangar and find out why your cryochamber popped open?”

Lisbet refused. “No. I can’t leave Beck.”

“Listen, honey,” Tuton said, dragging her attention away from the cryochamer on the back of the rover. “I haven’t had my hand on a woman’s ass in quite some time, but I will haul you over my shoulder, with my hand on your ass, back to the hangar if you don’t come nicely.”

Lisbet was stunned that he had just said that to her. She gritted her teeth for a second before she said hotly, “Don’t touch me. Vantz wants me to see Beck as soon as possible. That was why he made his order. That’s why my cryochamber is here and nowhere else. Why don’t you ask him if it’s okay if I go with Beck to the medical bay before you get handsy?”

“If only we had time for that,” Tuton said as he stopped listening to Lisbet and neatly threw her over his shoulder.

Lisbet was stunned by how much his thick shoulder cut into her belly. She tried to lift herself up. “Beck!” she screamed, trying to see his cryochamber clearly even though her entire body was bouncing.

The chains had been placed and the land rover started rolling out. Except the sand wasn’t sturdy and one of the tank tracks fell into a sinkhole. Then another one fell. The whole front end of the rover was in a hole, and sinking fast.

Lisbet shouted to Tuton to let her go. “The land rover is sinking!”

Hearing the shouts from the other crew members, Tuton lowered her to the ground and turned to see what was happening.

The hole was growing and the land rover fell on its side. The chains holding the cryochamber in place were not placed to expect that kind of movement and the chamber slid half out of the chains. Part of it had sunk in the sand and the other part hung dangerously from the rover that was still sinking.

All the men stood clear.

“See? It’s dangerous to be out here. The planet is still settling.” Without another word, he grabbed Lisbet by the arm and hauled her back toward the hangar.

There was a series of alarmed sounds coming from the men back at the excavation site, but Tuton didn’t stop to see what was happening. He just kept marching forward.

Lisbet turned her body back to see.

She wasn’t sure what had happened. Everything looked the same, except the workers in safety gear had jumped up on the rover. Why would they do that?

A moment later, she saw why. The lid had come open.

“You have to stop!” she shouted at Tuton. “The lid of the cryochamber came open. You can’t put me back in the box. I need to go to him!”

“Why? He’s not your husband,” Tuton retorted clearly.

Lisbet hesitated. How much longer did she need to keep secrets? How many more lies did she need to tell? She breathed the air on Mars and suddenly, she was done.

“I’m not married to Vantz. I’m married to Beckett Beltrose and I need to go to him. Now!”

Tuton stared at her like she was crazy and then something in his face changed. He let go of her arm. “Walk back along the path we walked on and don’t get too near the rover. Stay a safe distance. You could fall through the sand and be smothered faster than we would be able to rescue you.”

Lisbet nodded and hurried along the trail.

Beck was out of the cryochamber and walking toward her with the excavation crew walking with him.

When he saw Lisbet, he started running toward him with the sunlight outlining his silhouette.

The sight of him was unlike anything Lisbet had ever seen. He ran on the sand like running on sand was the most natural thing in the world while her feet felt like lead. Finally, at this moment of beginnings and ends, he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It was impossible to believe that all that beauty was for her. That his ability to turn his dream into the world they were breathing was so great, Lisbet felt like falling to her knees.

She breathed and it was the most precious breath she’d ever drawn into her lungs, like breathing him in everything around her.

“Do you smell that? Are you breathing this?” he shouted.

“I smell it. It smells like you! The whole planet smells like you!” she screamed in joy, chasing toward him.

She ran, her feet heavy in the cold sand, her breath coming in cold puffs that she could see.

Beck caught her.

They kissed.

She pulled off. “You taste horrible.”

“So do you.”

He kissed her again. He picked her up and spun her around.

“Why are you awake? I was supposed to keep my promise to you by kissing you when you woke up,” he said, taking her hand and walking along the path to the hangar.

“I don’t know. My cryochamber opened when it wasn’t supposed to,” she answered dreamily. “Why are you awake? That cryochamber survived an explosion and it didn’t open. Why would it open by merely falling off a land rover?”

“Well,” Beck said, swinging her arm. “Cryochambers open if they run out of power or if they receive an urgent message.” Beck snapped his fingers. “Vantz did it. He opened both our chambers.”

“But why?”

Beck shook his head. “I don’t know. Some reason.”

“Where are we going?” Lisbet questioned.

Looking around, there was nowhere to go. Every piece of infrastructure on Mars seemed to have been buried. There was no Castle Ares, no Boiler Room, no hotels, no tunnels, no pleasure palaces. There was just the makeshift hangar in front of them.

“You’re going to the medical bay. Both of you,” Tuton said as they approached the doors. “Oh, and I should apologize for grabbing your ass. I did wire a communication to Vantz and he was not impressed. He says you’re the Beauty of Ares and no one should grab you. Sorry. I was just trying to do what he wanted.”

“It’s okay… probably,” she said with a slanted smile.

“Invocation is waiting,” Tuton said, showing them the way to the medical bay.