Devana Files: Chapter 28
Siren Song
This is a long chapter…but I decided not to break it in two. 🩵
This is the Twenty-eighth chapter. We are in the home stretch, with about forty chapters in all!
You may find earlier chapters here:
Space 2074: The lunar colony is the new Wild West. Sheriff Kate Devana goes off-colony to wrangle a fugitive con artist who bilked retirees for billions and is trying to escape to Mars on a deep space supply shuttle. But back home, robots are glitching, killing people, and she is the target of a corrupt Federal Agent looking to avenge the death of his former partner. Bodies are piling up faster than she can get home.
On the moon, Kate Devana is the law.
While this is the 3rd novel in the series, each is designed to be read independently.
For accessibility, there is a voiceover for each chapter.
APRIL 11, 2074
LUNAR SURFACE. LPS: UNKNOWN
The hallway outside his door confirmed his suspicion that his captors had moved him while he was drugged. When the robots escorted him here, it was marble white with human busts. Now, it was yellow-orange sandstone lined with mahogany doors in both directions and decorated with tableaus of ancient cave art. Reliefs of cartoon-esque humanoids wore white, triangular skirts, multicolored beads, and strange helmet-like masks. They held spears and stood beside tall, triple-stacked cylinders that could either be an ancient grain elevator or someone’s rudimentary conception of a rocket.
Of course, drones etched it all, probably from a prehistoric image, but it looked like they’d used pointy sticks and horsehair brushes. The sandstone was engineered moonstone tiles. If he squinted, he could see the joints. The wood was real, though. He could smell the fresh varnish.
Footfalls came from his right. It sounded like a dozen or more people in militaristic lockstep.
He couldn’t stay in his room.
They wanted him to look around, and that posed a problem. His AI room concierge told him they’d downloaded a map to his phone and said he was free to roam—in this temple, crypt, mausoleum, hotel, whatever this place was—except areas designated off limits.
This was some sort of immersive show. They pretended to treat him like a diplomat, called him a disciple, all while drugging, searching, and moving him. He was only a rat in a maze. Would they watch him scurry for the cheese and then drug him again and put him back…somewhere else? Maybe at the beginning, to do it again? Or maybe euthanize him when this sick experiment was over?
The footfalls were growing louder.
Yellow tuna-can ceiling fixtures lit the hallway. He didn’t see cameras. He didn’t have any weird new scars, either, so he didn’t think they’d put a tracker in his body.
He reached into his pocket, shut his phone off, and popped out the battery. Then he tossed it on his bed. One less way to monitor him. The AI room concierge beeped and objected from the ceiling speaker in its dissociative, female voice. He ignored it. The squad coming his way would have to arrest him.
Fighting was not an option. Not in a hallway, not with a gun that only held ten bullets, and not with a dozen or more humanoids approaching, some of which might be androids.
He trotted down the hall to the sixth door in the opposite direction from the footsteps and retrieved his lock pick set from his jeans. He figured six was close enough to peer at the action if the squad searched his room, but far enough that they’d give up searching the hall before they reached him. Hopefully, they’d think he’d moved on.
The door had a traditional-looking black bronze handle with a backup key slot but no biometric panel. The fingerprint reader, he guessed, was on the inside of the handle so that as you grabbed it, it would register your prints and unlock.
There was no obvious way to override the biometrics, but it turned out he didn’t need tools. When he gently nudged the handle, it was unlocked.
The door cracked open to the loud whine of a blow dryer. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, temptation herself, naked, with her long blonde hair undulating in the tornado coming from her hair gun. She was all human, that was for sure, from her blue almond-shaped eyes, to her perky breasts, down to her perfect, heart-shaped hips.
She clicked off the hair dryer and turned towards him, giving his hormones a full frontal assault and a flirty little smile. “I see they gave me an upgrade. Mmmm, you’ll do.”
The overheated air hit his face like beach sun and shrunk his pants. Naturally, he did what every confident, over-educated, successful male does when faced with a naked goddess. He stammered, and then backed out and slammed the door.
“Wrong room,” he muttered.
The marching was almost on top of him. A squad, for sure. Up and down the hall, the doors blended into the artwork, becoming part of the tableaus. An ancient stick-figure family feasted beside a massive fireplace, except the fireplace was a real wooden door, like a portal to the present, with flames painted above it. Above the flames, a solar system with twelve planets, and primitive, wedge-shaped writing.
This place was surreal. He was sure, though, that he wasn’t hallucinating or inside a simulation because he was hungry and tired, and the stone floor felt solid under his feet.
There might be people behind those other doors. People who would scream instead of flirting.
He couldn’t hide here. Not unless he wanted to go back inside and play gigolo. But he wanted to see what or who was coming, and he couldn’t stay in the hall, either.
He pushed the door open again. Temptress had returned to blowdrying her hair. He shut the door behind him as she clicked off the hairdryer and turned to him.
“Shy boy.”
“I have a girlfriend.” He tried not to make eye contact, or any other contact.
“Oooh, what fun.”
“Sit there.” He nodded towards the chair in the middle of the room. “And close your eyes.”
“Ooooh, you were worth the money.”
The official log would reflect he didn’t watch Temptress giggle and jiggle her way into the seat.
He had so many questions. Who was she, and why was she here? But she was naked, and his face was on fire. The interrogation would end badly, with her on top riding him, and then later with Leyna bitterly hacking his balls off. He liked his balls. He was attached to them. Plus, Leyna might be pregnant, and she’d had enough heartbreak for five lifetimes.
He needed to cover this woman up and tie her down. Maybe not in that order.
The only things he saw in her room that were useful were the two pillowcases. They were white linen and almost see-through. Not ideal, but the best he could do, and she’d already seen his face anyway. He shook the first pillow from the pillowcase, dumping it on the bed, and then did the same with the second. The first pillowcase went over her head. The second, he twisted into a rope and then gagged her with it. She moaned and writhed the whole time, like it was a game. He yanked his belt from his buckles and tied her to the chair.
The official log would reflect he did it all with his eyes closed and nose pinched. Not once did he whiff her rose shampoo.
He told her to stay put. She writhed some more. Had he opened his eyes, he would have seen her breasts bouncing and hips squirming in the chair.
He snatched the bedsheets from the bed and covered her up. She mumbled something through the gag.
She’d painted her toenails strawberry. They poked out from under the bedsheets. The record would not reflect the word strawberry. He’d leave that out. Eric would probably ride him for days.
He took the duvet from the bed and tossed it over the bedsheets and then kicked it over her now-curling, perfectly manicured toes.
How would he explain this to Leyna? His dad’s voice was going through his mind. Don’t put jiggle or perky in the report either.
The footfalls were just outside the door. Fortunately, there was a peephole. He told Miss Temptress to be quiet while he worked. She shimmied excitedly under all the sheets. A shame, he was going to disappoint her.
Outside the door, a column of humanoids advanced through the hall, three wide and shoulder to shoulder, led by a single android. Row after row marched past the door, each with two humans and either a gynoid or android on the far end, like guardians. The squad wore knee-length pale blue tunics tied with braided black rope and brown sandals. The tunics didn’t hide much. Some were split open down the side, like a hospital gown, and he could see flesh.
The robots were all skinjobs, with vat-grown cadaverish skin, the kind that was pasty pink but cold and dead, like the textured ground-up meat filler they put in vat-grown protein to give it body.
The droids also carried pistols and stun guns, sloppily concealed under the tunics.
The humans weren’t carrying weapons. They wore silver necklaces with dangling black cubes, like the one he’d found in his luggage. Their eyes were glazed over, staring soullessly at the person in front of them.
Those stares weren’t from military discipline, they were from drugs. Were the cubes some sort of weapon? No, nobody gave drugged soldiers a weapon. Plus, they’d taken his weapons—the ones they found anyway—and replaced it with an orange claims tag and a cube of his own.
The pieces didn’t fit. Droids had weapons here; humans had blank stares and a cube. Some of the humans, anyway. Temptress did not have a blank stare, but she wasn’t wearing a cube, either. He would’ve noticed anything dangling between the breasts. If he'd been ogling her, which of course he hadn’t.
The squad stomped past. There were twenty-one in all, plus the leader. Their cadence reminded him of boot camp, if boot camp had been inside some sort of temple with walls of coarse, orangish stone and cave art.
A cold thumb ran down his back. Maybe this parade was for him.
When it sounded like the squad had turned the corner down the hall, he cracked the door and peered out.
Following them was a terrible idea. It was also the only idea he had. If they had pistols, they had an armory, and if they had an armory, they might have rifles that could take down robots.
Temptress’s date was apparently a big, beefy android with too much spray tan. It appeared down the hall, sauntering his way, locking its glassy eyes on him.
He exited the room, smiling, wiping his brow, and thumb pointing behind him as cooly as he could with his heart pounding in his throat. “I’ve warmed her up for you.”
The android tilted its head but said nothing. They were impossible to read. Behind those glassy eyes, the droid might be generating some mood music for his client, or maximizing the angular momentum of the incipient haymaker to his head.
“She likes it a little rough.”
The droid was still doing some sort of calculation. At least if there were a blow coming, he wouldn’t feel it. He’d be dead before he hit the floor.
“She asked for a kidnapping fantasy.” He laughed nervously.
“A common request. Will this be a duo performance?”
He gulped. “She’s screaming for you, pal. In fact, it’s better if we don’t mention I was here.”
“This is not surprising. Humans have inferior stamina.”
“Right, well thanks for the pep talk—” He slapped the android on the shoulder. It was like smacking a concrete wall. His hand stung.
Jin backed away with the android watching him. He resisted the urge to turn and bolt.
He was half expecting the android to identify him. Enjoy your stay at Hotel Ascension, Disciple Knight. Or jump him. His mind rehearsed his training. Step one, chokehold; step two, spin and lever; step three, grab the bean in the back of the android’s skull. A great plan in a simulation, but he’d be unconscious or dead before step two. He’d backed beyond the long reach of the droid, but this android looked fast. All those fake silicone muscles were probably hiding heavy-duty servos.
The android turned and opened the door. Maybe he exhaled a little too loudly. That was too close.
As the droid disappeared inside, he thought maybe he was just being paranoid. Beefcakes was only a dumb gigolobot and would keep Miss Temptress occupied until she passed out, exhausted.
At the end of the hallway, he peered around the corner and saw the last of the squad file into the stairwell.
But by the time he got there, the stairs were empty. He heard a door slam two floors below.
The stairwell signs advised him that the spaceport was up on the first floor. He was on five, so the squad must be on seven.
Escape was up, yet he was going down, chasing an armed band of humanoids.
Not the smartest choice he’d ever made.