Chapter Twenty Five

Beck ushered Lisbet into the bathroom and started filling the oversized tub.

“What are we doing?” she asked as she used one of the many mirrors to help her remove her mask and the black lace covering her eyes.

“We’re getting ready to go to my father’s party,” he explained. “There’s all this water here. We might as well use it.”

“So, we’re really going?” she asked as she removed her wig and fluffed her hair that had been crushed under it.

“I want to talk to one of my cousins. His name is Shattern. He has always been sympathetic toward me. He might be willing to help us escape.” Beck took a deep breath in. “He’ll be helpful anyway, even if he can’t help us return to Noachis. He can help me convince my father to evacuate. Honestly, the reason we’re trying to go back to the city is to get connected to your PR contacts so we can convince the miners to empty their pleasure palaces. We might do a better job of it here with my father than over the media outlets.”

Lisbet watched the swirling water fill the sparkling tub. “Are you having a bath or is all that water for me?” Lisbet asked from over his shoulder.

“It’s for you, princess. We’re lucky my parents took as long a visit as they did. Now the water is warm.” He ran his hand under it to check the temperature.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked stiffly, standing over him like a watchtower.

“Fire away.”

“Am I married to you?”

He did have the good sense to look mildly embarrassed when he nodded. Lisbet would have been annoyed that he showed such little feeling, except that she was learning that was Beck’s specialty, to hide how he was feeling.

“And you’re not going to pressure me to be your pleasure princess?” she asked, rubbing her shin against his thigh.

Beck stood up beside the tub. At his full height, he was much taller than her. He looked down on her. “Feeling frisky?”

She shrugged, annoyed that she was having to make the moves on him.

Seeing her hesitation, he stepped away from her. “We’ll see if you’re still feeling frisky later tonight. Why don’t you choose what you want to wear to the party and I’ll approve it? Like old times.”

“Those old times were last week,” Lisbet reminded him.

He waved a loose hand at her and went to leave the bathroom. “I assume you know how to turn off a tap.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m good at turning things off,” she said, giving herself a little insult.

“And turning things on,” he said, giving her a little compliment as he closed the door between them.

***

They would probably die soon.

That was what Lisbet thought as she lay in the tub with a mountain of rock above the ceiling over her head on the red planet.

They would probably die, but she had missed warm water so desperately that at that moment, she didn’t care at all.

When the water turned tepid, she got out, covered herself with a fluffy housecoat, and wandered into the closet built like a ring. It was like clothes and parties and fun times were displayed on a merry-go-round that went around and around forever. It was dizzying.

Beck told her he wanted her to choose something to wear. She walked around, unable to focus on any one closet because these were not clothes that were meant for a lady. She found closets with nothing but underwear. There were others with nothing but cheap costumes that no woman of culture would ever wear even in the privacy of her bedroom. The dresses were the same. She realized with a heavy heartbeat that the dress Beck had chosen for her to wear to lunch was an anomaly. She would have to hunt hard to find something that covered her as much as it had because it was completely out of the question for her to wear it again.

After what felt like an exhaustive search, she had decided to layer two dresses. One had a spectacular ruffled skirt, that covered everything below the waist and covered almost nothing on top. The second dress had a top and almost nothing for a bottom, but if she wore both of them at the same time, she was covered.

Beck came out of the bedroom and saw her. He was wearing a suit with no shirt under the coat and it was suddenly more obvious than it had been before why he was so careful about his eight-pack.

“How did you get cleaned up?” Lisbet questioned immediately. “I was in the bathroom!”

“Do you think the master of the pleasure palace is required to share a bathroom with his consorts?” he asked her quizzically.

“Oh… was I in the small bathroom or the big bathroom?” she wondered.

“The big bathroom. There’s no point in refusing to spoil you,” he said, pulling the strap of the ruffled dress off her shoulder.

“Hey!”

“You can’t wear that. My fake mother will wear something that shows more skin than that.”

“Your fake mother?” she asked, making a failed attempt to get her strap back up.

“Of course,” he said as he flicked his cigarette on and blew a puff of smoke. “She would never lower herself to give birth to a baby herself. She had a slave girl endure the pregnancy for her.”

“Oh… does that mean that she had a surrogate? It was your father’s sperm and your mother’s egg and someone else’s body?”

Beck shook his head. “For a while, that was the story they told Hessia, but my father was screwing a maid and so he told Hessia they’d put the eggs they harvested from her into the maid. It wasn’t true. I had my DNA tested later. He’s my father, but Hessia’s only concerned about looking like a good mother. It’s a shame that what looks like a good mother in a pleasure palace is so far from one.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Lisbet thought of the bubble story and bit her lips shut. Since Beck and Vantz were the same person, it seemed like it was about him.

Beck walked between the closet doors casually until he found something that pleased him and tossed it to her. This time when he threw clothes at her, she caught them.

It was an angel costume.

“On the bright side, you do not have to wear the lace under the mask to this party. If we make you wear it, you won’t be able to see anything, and it will be so dark that I don’t have any worries about someone seeing your violet eyes.”

Lisbet went behind a closet door and put the costume on. It had sleeves, which Beck said they needed in order to cover her arms, but it did not cover much else. Her stomach was on display, the neckline was low, the hem was high, and she did not know how she could go out in public wearing it. Most importantly, unlike the dress from that afternoon, it showed the bruises that had not yet healed from the shooting at The Boiler Room.

She came around the corner and grunted.

Beck saw her and laughed. “Relax. We’re not finished yet.”

He gave her a wig that covered her chest in long white curls. Then he gave her thigh-high boots that covered her legs. Finally, he put a large pair of wings on her back. They were gauzy with wires that came up as high as her eyes. She could cover herself with the wings if she was desperate.

“You need to look like you belong at this party, but you also need to look a little boring. This kind of look is beyond basic. You will not get any attention wearing this. It will be so dark no one will see the bruises on your stomach and thighs. And…” he said with a sorrowful expression on his face, “after this party, you will not be the same.”

“Why?”

“Because, unfortunately, you will see things you never wanted to see, things you didn’t even know people did, things that will make you want to blow up Mars as much as I do. I’d spare you from it. I’d planned to spare you from it, but we’re here now and I can’t leave you here, in my palace, without me. As a matter of fact…” he pulled out some handcuffs and knocked one loop over his wrist and one loop over her wrist. “I do not want us separated. Put your mask on. It’s time to go.”

***

Maybe Lisbet thought that Carlos and Hessia were like the gentility she had known back on Earth. Maybe Lisbet’s parents had sheltered her so completely that she didn’t know what rich people on Earth did with their money, but in the underground canals of Mars where power was unchecked, Lisbet saw things she never imagined.

It was a whirlwind of activity where the rave lights caused seizures and the beat of the music broke eardrums.

Beck held Lisbet’s hand rather than let the handcuffs cut into both of them. She covered herself shyly with her wings while triplets gushed over Beck and how much they missed him. They screamed that he was the best lover they’d ever known.

Over his shoulder, she saw a girl get electrocuted and fall to the ground.

Someone spilled a goblet of blood down the back of Lisbet’s dress.

“It’s cow blood,” the guy who spilled it reassured Lisbet. Five seconds later he whispered into Beck’s ear that it was Katrina’s, but she was a cow, so everything he said was true.

Beck laughed. It was the most perfect laugh Lisbet had ever heard. It was a planned laugh, a practiced laugh, a laugh used for a moment like this to defuse any situation.

After the bloodspiller had gone, Beck drew her closer to him and whispered in her ear, “How uncomfortable is the blood?”

“It’s fine,” she said in a half-lie. It had been more of a splatter than a stream and the only part of her panties that was wet was a patch on her hip.

“Good. The purpose of that was to force us to detach while you went to clean up,” he whispered. “If you can stand it, please do. I’m still looking for Shattern.”

Lisbet looked around too. The cavern the party took place in had been heavily inspired by ancient Roman architecture. There were columns everywhere. There were baths in sectioned-off square spaces. Lisbet had never seen so many people undressed in her life before. She thought it would be fine until one of those undressed bathers was electrocuted in the water and a surge of hot laughter bubbled.

“No one has ever died that way!” someone shrieked.

Something smelled burnt.

Beck slid his cigarette between her lips and put his lips near her ear. “Inhale.”

She did so and felt a measure of herself return to her. She could be as stoney as him.

She saw Hessia take off her top for a tableful of women. Apparently, she was showing them the incisions from her latest breast augmentation and she didn’t mind at all who saw.

In another direction, she saw a man carrying a trayful of drinks. He had a whip coiled around his neck and he was tripping over someone who was recovering from an electrocution on the floor. He was being dragged like a dog. The drinks were spilling. Lisbet got the backsplash of that. The front of her dress was soiled in white wine.

She pulled her angel wings closer.

“We have to find Shattern,” Beck said as he rushed her through the rooms.

Each room was worse than the last, so much so that Lisbet stopped looking. She just held onto Beck and kept her eyes on the floor to stop herself from tripping.

Then Lisbet heard something she had not expected to hear. It was a frightened squeal. It was Tiffania. Lisbet looked up to see her. Tiffania had a choke chain around her throat. Not a plaything like the things in Beck’s closets. It was an actual choke chain. She had dark bruises on her face and the skin around her Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet was charred.

Lisbet’s eyes followed the leash and saw the man that was holding it. That must be Antar, her buyer. Lisbet had not realized how gentle Beck looked, not just his face, but his aura and his manner. He looked very gentle compared to Antar. Antar looked like an open wound, like everything about him was pinched and pained. His shoes were too tight, his socks were too tight, his belt was too tight, his collar was too tight, and even the glasses on his face looked like seeing through them was a horrific struggle because the lenses were the size of quarters.

Another group of women had clustered around Beck and all of them were saying how they missed coming to his pleasure palace and how he was the wildest lover they’d ever known.

It was odd how so many of them made the effort to come over and say such things. Lisbet did not think of Beck as the virginal type so some of what they said had to be true, but what seemed more true was that they had been trained to say such things. Beck said something at lunch about how they could be trained. Did he train them to do that? Was that a wise decision? Didn’t it make the other men jealous?

Then she realized how much he had taught her to say, just to a different crowd with a different message.

Tiffania looked up and saw Lisbet.

Could she recognize her when she was wearing a mask and a wig?

Her sister stood up.

Apparently, it was without permission because Antar pulled her back down with a cruel twist of his wrist and slammed his fist into the cheek that was already bruised.

Lisbet flinched hard in sympathy.

Beck touched her chin and turned it away from her sister. “You can’t help her. It would blow your cover.”

“I can’t leave her like this!” Lisbet hissed. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Beck to buy her sister from Antar right there on the spot when she remembered that no matter how rich he was to the outside world, he was as poor as porridge when the books were laid out. He didn’t have the money to buy Tiffania.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Beck mouthed in her ear. “This isn’t your fault. This is the chance she took when she sold herself, but this is the reason we have to change Mars forever.”

Lisbet looked down at her bracelet. She had been shocked once, but her skin had not changed colors. How many times did someone have to be shocked before their skin looked like Tiffania’s?

If Beck wanted to… what could he have done to her? What could he have forced her to do to him? It didn’t matter that she was so much older than him, he could have put her on her knees and ruined her dignity as firmly as Tiffania’s was ruined.

He hadn’t done any of those things to Lisbet and finally, as he turned her head away from her sister and led her to the next room, he was no longer younger than her. The math could tell a different story if it wanted to, but in Lisbet’s mind, the details no longer mattered. She clung to Beck’s elbow and went along with him.

For the first time, they were together as a couple. It was a different feeling for Lisbet. She had rarely been part of a couple, but she wanted the feeling to continue. She held onto him tighter.

“I can’t see Shattern anywhere,” Beck said as he finished their first loop. “I think we’ve put in enough of an appearance for my father that we can go back to my palace now.” Beck rang for a transport and helped her move toward the doors. The hand on her back was bloody when he removed it.

It was only spilled blood.