Diamond Sphere Read online

  “You’re not A.H.,” I said to the guy, pretty snidely. But he and his cohort really were exactly what I should have expected from Hu: a joker and a pirate.

  “Raise your mask,” The Joker growled at me.

  I lifted up my eyemask quickly, then dropped it down just as quickly.

  “Yeah, P.S.,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Was shown your picture. You in a cave.”

  Blood rushed into my face; I could feel Tan tense beside me. His eyes had never left The Joker’s face.

  “Now A.H. is into cave porn?” I spat at The Joker.

  “Let’s go,” he said. And The Pirate nodded fast at me and Tan—once—the nod looking like an order.

  “Now hang on a minute,” I said. “Where is she? I ain’t going anywhere till I see her. The deal was: she was supposed to be here.”

  “You really expected that? Stupid of you,” growled The Joker again.

  “We’re not budging till we see her,” Tan interjected.

  “Maybe this will make you budge,” the guy said as he whipped out a gun from inside his pompom-edged jacket. His pirate pal followed suit—his gun coming from somewhere inside his elaborate pink satin sash.

  *

  The giant joker and his pirate pal forced us into giving up our guns, and a few moments later they were pushing us out the hotel’s back door and into the night. Both Tan and I protested, but they only ordered and shoved us harder.

  Uneasiness had taken up residence in my spine. I was worried about Tan the most: I was afraid he would act first and think later. I didn’t want him to do anything stupid. He had seemed nervous all night, up until the point The Joker had pulled a gun. Then Tan’s eyes had turned a furious black—and remained that color since.

  With my eyes I now sent him let-me-handle-this signals, even while I didn’t feel the slightest bit confident in my assessment of the situation, especially when The Joker and The Pirate finally tied our hands behind our backs and put blindfolds over our eyemasked-eyes.

  At that moment, I groaned, for then I realized that here I was, Hu’s prisoner, once again.

  *

  They pushed us into a car where it seemed we sat for only moments. Then we wound up on a transport—at least I thought we had because I heard a transport motor running. Transport engines made a distinct clicking sound, and, apparently, as I was getting on, I almost tripped over the grating often used on their boarding ramps. Someone—The Pirate I think—held me up and gave me a shove forward.

  Somewhere farther inside, they finally whipped off our blindfolds.

  We stood in a small windowless room, the only light inside faintly streamed in from the open door ahead, where The Pirate’s shadow stood holding his equally shadowy gun.

  My eyes darted around, noticed the room seemed to be painted completely black—and I noticed this right before the whole room went black: The Joker had walked through the door, and The Pirate had pulled and locked it closed behind him.

  *

  Almost immediately, Tan’s voice came out of the darkness: “Wow, this is just great, Pia. Just fucking fantastic. Tell me again why I was supposed to agree to this?”

  I couldn’t blame him for his sarcasm: he and I were locked in a dark room on a transport to who knew where. And given both my dislike of flying and my fear of confined spaces, a totally dark small room on a transport wasn’t exactly my favorite place to be in the Universe.

  Only a moment seemed to have passed since the door had been shut, but the sweat dripped down under my wig and into my eyemask. And I could only shake my head to free my eyes of the water. Really, at this point, my costume name should have been changed to Snow Wet.

  “On a scale of one to ten for bad days, where would you rank this one?” Tan asked now, and he laughed weirdly, a highly taut inflection behind the joking.

  “Stop it, Tan!” I said, twisting around inside the ties on my arms. But it was no good; I could neither determine what the hell they’d wrapped over our wrists, nor how the hell to remove the restraints because I simply couldn’t see a fucking thing. I could, however, hear Tan’s breathing. Only it sounded too far away….

  “Where are you?” I called out to him. Then I heard him walk closer, felt him brush by the front of me. I twisted around, my bound hands shooting out and sort of grabbing hold of him. He leaned toward me, and I heard his nervous sigh near my left ear.

  “I need to sit,” he said.

  We struggled a bit to lower our bodies without falling, pushing up against each other harder until our asses finally hit the floor.

  With no reference frame among the darkness, I couldn’t figure out exactly how long we sat there, but we sat in silence for a while, the moving transport’s vibrations below us the only sound—I mean other than my increasingly rapid and increasingly loud heartbeats.

  Tan’s quiet voice finally broke through my thoughts, which had been bordering on frantic.

  “Pia?” he asked.

  “Yes?!?” I responded fast, thankful to have something outside my mind to occupy my mind.

  “Here’s the thing: no matter what happens, I love you.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat—or at least I tried to swallow it, but it wouldn’t budge. I felt a tear painfully slide from my right eye, and my hands struggled toward him beside me, finally managing to grab hold of his hand with both of mine. It was an awkward clasp, what with both our arms being bound behind us. But an awkward clasp was better than no clasp.

  “I love you too,” I said now, squeezing his hand harder, and while doing so, I realized his hand felt almost as sweaty as mine. “Tan, I know we can’t move very well, but do you have a flashlight?”

  “Where? In my nutsac? My parts can barely fit inside this tight getup. Mike must think I’m skinny as a stick.”

  “You always do look so slim,” I said, trying to picture him in my mind, but having a difficult time focusing on doing that. My heart was pounding too hard again, making my thoughts jump all over the place…. I sighed. “Just thought I saw you slip something in your jacket earlier—when I came out from the bathroom.”

  “That was my wallet,” he said.

  Suddenly I felt a change beneath our asses; the vibrations ceased. Tan must have felt it too.

  “Something’s happened,” he said.

  But before I could respond, there was a clicking sound, and then the room’s doors opened again, revealing The Pirate’s backlit form. I wanted to shoot up off the floor; I tried but I couldn’t. Tan twisted around to help me with both his hands, and a moment later, we were both standing. I’d much rather directly face whatever frigging shit would be coming—face it on my feet.

  The Joker emerged from behind The Pirate, and then three more people walked in, three wearing-robes people. One stood in the room’s center, the two new ones stood on the right, and the two old costumed ones on the left. The robed ones all wore different-colored robes.

  My heart was doing its crazy pounding, and I shot a glance at Tan’s profile as I licked my lips fast. Inside the room, I now expected to find—I didn’t know what. It still wasn’t light enough to see everything very clearly. But I was tense about this whole fucking thing for more reasons than just the kidnapped-into-the-dark bit.

  A yellowy light came on from the front of the room, and now I saw that Tan’s superstill face looked as if it was just…waiting. I couldn’t read anything else there. He just looked numb.

  I turned back to the others, saw the middle robed person’s reddish hair poking out of the robe’s gray hood. Hu. Someone shut the door behind her now.

  “We need more light,” she said to the room. And then another light—a white one—came on from behind me and Tan, the light revealing that the man Chuck from that cave stood on the right.

  “Good enough,” said Hu at the room. Her pale hands lowered her robe’s hood. Then she said, “Thank you, Senda, for meeting me.”

  “Thank you!?!” I shot out, spittle covering my chin and
my body twisting so my tied hands were visible to Hu for an instant. “This wasn’t supposed to be the meeting place and this is no meeting! You bound and forced us here, took our guns—”

  “What?” she asked sharply, her head turning to The Joker.

  He was no longer wearing a mask; his agitated eyes looked back at her. “They wouldn’t come—”

  “No matter,” she said, ice behind her words. “Give me all the guns you have—both of you.” She held out her hand, and just as she did so, I saw Chuck whip out an even bigger gun than The Joker had. The Joker’s face now looked like a billboard advertisement for nervousness.

  Hu said to him, with a bit less ice, “I’m not going to kill you.”

  His eyes were still jumping around as his hands slipped under his belt, but he finally handed over two guns to her. So did The Pirate. And then she handed them all to Chuck—fast, as if she couldn’t bear holding them.

  Chuck secured the guns in both of his arms, which at first seemed quite strange because he’d only had one arm the last time I’d seen him. Apparently, at some point since, he’d been fitted with a prosthetic arm.

  My eyes fell on Hu as she did a sharp sidelong nod at me and Tan, but said to the woman beside her, “Shayla, undo their wires now.”

  “They’re both new,” Hu said to me as Shayla worked behind me and Tan. “They’ll learn that when I tell someone to do something specific, I mean do that only. No revising of my words, no improvising. I told them no guns. We’re not supposed to be adversaries here, you and I. I wanted you to come here with trust. If you were too antsy to come the first time, they were supposed to back off and tell you to set up a new meeting with me when you were more comfortable.”

  When both my arms and Tan’s were finally free, I rubbed my wrists, then I yanked off my damn mask. It was sopping wet, so was my neck. Tan didn’t look much drier than I must have looked. But he didn’t pull off his mask. He just still-as-a-lamppost stood there.

  To Chuck now, Hu said, “Slide her guns over to Senda.”

  I watched as Chuck bent forward and, with mostly his good arm, did as Hu had said.

  At first, I remained completely still, both shocked at their actions and afraid this was some kind of trick.

  Then, oddly, Tan moved before I did. His eyes on Hu and Chuck, he picked up my gun first and handed it to me. Then he took his, shoving it into his green belt.

  I sighed and said in a dry voice, “Everyone’s being so chummy tonight.”

  Tan knew Hu a lot better than I did; if he felt she was telling the truth about not wanting to hurt us, she probably wasn’t lying there.

  Reluctantly, I slid my gun back into my ankle holster.

  “Good,” Hu said then. “Now we can get down to business. You two,” she turned to the two young guys, “get out.” Chuck brought his big gun over toward them, and all three of them disappeared through the doorway behind Hu.

  Was Hu for real? Two times I’d run into her and both times I’d been bound by her henchpeople. And then she later claimed that the restraining shouldn’t have happened. Fool me once, okay, what a fool. But fool me twice? That would make me a complete fucking moron.

  Maybe this was just Hu’s modus operandi? Like to gain the trust of her captives by playing good-captor, bad-captor? Either that or she was really fucking incompetent when handling her goons. I didn’t know what the hell to think….

  Chuck strode back in. He nodded at Hu.

  And then she said, “First thing’s first, Senda—who’s this?” Another one of her sidelong nods, only in Tan’s direction now.

  “The boyfriend,” said Chuck, his voice deep and firm.

  “I can speak for myself, thanks,” spat Tan.

  Hu just looked at him now, her eyes narrowing, tension in the air between them, a tension I did not at all like.

  “Yeah, first thing’s first, Hu,” I cut in snidely. “Stop fucking calling me, Senda.”

  “Then you stop calling me Hu. It’s Arlene or Princess.”

  I laughed, a big laugh. “Princess! Where the hell did that—”

  “Maybe I’ll tell you sometime how that happened. But now, I remember. Tan Onyx, correct? Chuck did tell me. I know of all your friends, Pia,” Hu said, and my stomach lurched a bit at her cryptic statement. At least it sounded cryptic as it echoed in my head. Nell, Derek, Roberto, Mike, Darla—I really didn’t want Hu to know any of them.

  “Leave my friends alone,” I snapped now.

  But she sighed a big sigh. “You still don’t understand me, do you?”

  “What’s there to understand?” Tan spat again.

  Her eyes shot over to him a second time. “Why do you sound familiar to me? Remove your mask. I won’t talk to masked eyes.”

  Tan was doing his lamppost impression again, but he finally sighed and took off his mask.

  Hu’s eyes turned into tight little slits now. “Wait a minute…” she said slowly.

  “Recognize me, huh?” said Tan.

  And now a “What’s going on?” came from an exasperated-sounding Chuck.

  Hu’s eye-slits widened back to normal-sized eyes, and she nodded slowly, still watching Tan, her mouth a slightly lopsided smile now. “Yes, um—Tan. Yes. Oh yes. Tan Meyer Ming though, when we knew each other. I don’t remember any Onyx.”

  Now my eyes shot over to Tan, only mine felt huge in my head. “Meyer Ming?” I demanded, but he wouldn’t look at me at first.

  Then he sighed again when he finally turned my way, his eyes looking hugely orb-like now. “My real full name is Tan Meyer Ming Onyx. But I stopped using the Meyer Ming.”

  Wonder of all wonders, it seemed Hu and I were in the same situation: apparently, he’d never told her about the Onyx, and he’d never told me about the Ming. Or the Meyer.

  We’d been sleeping together for over nine months, and he’d never thought to reveal his whole real name to me. Very nice.

  My furious face stared at him. I was about to say something when I spotted the look on Chuck’s face, the murderous look on Chuck’s face, the murderous look fixed on Tan.

  Uh-oh. Fucking wonderful.

  I looked back and forth between Chuck and Hu, and now I noticed something more between them that I hadn’t noticed the first time in that cave.

  What a mess this “meeting” had turned out to be. I had been pushed around, bound, insulted, and now humiliated because of my boyfriend, and right in front of his fucking ex to boot.

  Was there a tension-free corner in the room I could turn to…?

  My eyes fell on the purple-robed woman Shayla…and now I recognized her too: the woman with the bright blue eyes. She’d been one of my cave-captors. Had Hu brought the same people from that time so she could intimidate me, or make me feel better at seeing familiar faces? Or were both Shayla and Chuck just upper-level thugs in Hu’s menagerie of madness? If there was indeed something important to discuss, something “dangerous to Diamond,” maybe only certain of her people should hear it. Yet she’d trusted those other two bozos when they supposedly were new.

  “What’s going on here?” I demanded now, fed up with everything and everyone at that moment. “You wanted a meet-up, so here I am!” I spread my arms in a dramatically obnoxious flourish. “If someone doesn’t start talking in two seconds about why I’m goddamn here, I’m taking a flying leap off this transport, especially because it feels like we’re anchored somewhere.”

  “We are,” said Hu, nodding. “I would have shown up in that hotel, but then I learned someone I’d known too well was staying there. I couldn’t take the chance. The best-laid plans sometimes don’t turn out to be the best-laid plans. This started off wrong tonight. But no matter: we must move on.” She turned her head from me and said to the air, “We need the chairs in here now.”

  Almost immediately, the two bozos from earlier shuffled in. They moved around the room fast while they set up folding chairs; their eyes hung low to the floor. I didn’t see any bruises on their faces or arms, but they appeared totall
y beaten down in spirit compared to earlier. They also wouldn’t look either me or Tan in the eyes. I doubted they were afraid of us. They must have been afraid of Hu.

  When they’d finished setting up the chairs in a circle, Hu said to them, “Pull the shutters across now.”

  The two men walked to near the doorway and closed the door; then they pushed some buttons on the left sidewall, which slid a huge room-length panel across the doorway’s wall. Then I felt a shearing motion under our feet—apparently from outside the transport.

  “Good,” said Hu. “Now this room’s as soundproof as possible. Sit down.” Her hand motioned carelessly at the chairs as she moved to the left a bit.

  Tan sat first before anyone else, his face sagging in relief as his ass hit the chair. I certainly wasn’t going to let Hu sit near him, so I had no choice but to sit beside him on his left, even though, right now, I kind of wanted to sock him in the nose. Chuck then sat to my left, Shayla sat to Tan’s right, Hu sat between Chuck and Shayla, and the two young standing guys hovered in the background.

  This close, I could see Hu’s heart-shaped face looked thinner and paler than I’d remembered, and I could have sworn it looked more tired too. Inhaling sharply, she clasped her hands together as she straightened in her chair.

  “Diamond is a unique place,” she began. “Hera and the moons here have their uniqueness too, but they don’t give so much strength to matter like Diamond does. Amy Castano told me she found the reason for that Diamond strength.”

  The room fell so silent, I thought I’d gone deaf. I couldn’t even hear my own breathing…not surprising: I’d been holding my fucking breath.

  Tan spoke next, and I saw a spark of something in his left eye. “What reason?”

  Hu glanced at him fast then glanced away just as fast; her pale brown eyes fell on me. “That, I don’t know. That’s where Pia comes in. And Julianne. Amy would only tell me so much and then the information stopped. I’ve got part of the map. But I have no specific locations on whatever the map means. I’m assuming it holds the cause of the high matter density here.”