“No,” he responded. “I want to hold your hand. I want to hold you.”
She wasn’t sure how to reply, so she just did her best to hide her smile. She wanted to hold him, too.
Three years back her feelings for him had started to change – to morph into something more. Cara had told her again and again that Cameron’s feelings for her had changed around that point too, but Olivia couldn’t believe it. A man as powerful and brilliant as Cameron couldn’t possibly feel anything more than friendship for her – for a pod-reject.
Doctor Hoyt Cameron watched through the surveillance cameras as Olivia stroked the lid of the pod containing his body. He could see the edges of her smile and knew she was pleased. He wanted more than anything to be free from the stasis sleep and to wrap his arms around her.
Her long brown hair fell forward, cascading over a section of his pod. He wished his body was alert enough that he could reach up and push her hair from her face, so he could see her blue eyes. They were the same color as the waters on Vanesier. When he looked into her eyes he thought of home – of the planet he could never return to but had loved deeply. Sickness and war had ravaged his homeland before his own people had turned on themselves and their planet. When they’d come across the human race, a race so closely resembling them physically, but far inferior in terms of intelligence and technology, the surviving Vanesier had latched onto them, wanting desperately to aid them in finding a suitable home world.
Livia ran her hand over the pod lid slowly. Absentmindedly, she scanned the consul screen affixed to the side of his pod. It gave a continuous readout of his vitals. Each pod had one. “I’d like it if you held me.”
His state of awareness slipped quickly before returning, and he knew then that the wakening was moving ahead as planned. Soon he’d lose his sync with the ship’s computer interface. His consciousness would return to his body, and he’d then fight through the chills, the shaking and the nausea that accompanied most awakenings. None of it mattered. All that mattered was getting to actually touch Olivia.
He’d wanted to come out of stasis the very second he’d realized her pod, like so many of the others, had been sabotaged. He’d wanted to help but he hadn’t been able to. He was the one crew-member who had to remain under at all costs, because he was the one mentally linked to the computer systems of the ship. For ten years he’d been forced to watch the girls learn to survive on their own. They’d had to deal with Quincy’s men systematically waking early from stasis sleep, and they’d been forced to take action accordingly. Their childhoods had been stolen from them. Granted, they’d all grown into fine young women, but they’d deserved so much more.
Cameron zoomed in on Oliver’s pod. As Olivia’s brother, and head of security on Rhea, Oli would not take kindly to the knowledge that there were traitors among them. Cameron had considered waking Oli years back, but Oli’s kidneys had been damaged in the wars of Eleven, and he’d needed to remain hooked into the pod’s regenerative healing matrix.
Cameron paused, his mind wandering to Oli. They’d been close friends since Ten, and had been through much together. Cameron had been there when Oli’s mother had succumbed to the Omethus virus strain that had swept through Ten, taking most of the females. He’d been there when the wars of Eleven had taken Oli’s father, leaving Oli as Olivia’s guardian. Now, he would have to be there to tell him that an attempt had been made on his sister’s life, that she was no longer the thirteen-year-old girl he remembered placing in the pod – but rather, a beautiful young woman now. And last, but not least, that Cameron was totally and completely in love with Olivia.
She looked up at the camera, her blue gaze moist and her dreamy, pale skin flawless. “How much longer?”
“At least thirty minutes or so,” he lied. He’d held her up longer than he should. Her presence dulled the burn of loneliness he felt. “Go activate a medical droid.”
She nodded and stood. As she walked away Cameron felt his consciousness slipping. It was time for him to wake. He just didn’t want her witnessing it first-hand.
Three
Olivia activated one of the medical droids, and smiled as he nodded his head. From all outward appearances he looked human. Very big, but very human. It was the case with all the androids. They’d been made with synthetic genetic material, and some had even been spliced with actual human DNA. The ones on Rhea had some human DNA in them, making them even more lifelike than others. They had designated call numbers, but Olivia and the other pod-rejects had given them names. Granted, the names were ones thought up by a bunch of young girls nearly ten years ago, but they were names all the same.
“Hi, Rainbow,” she said, using the full version of the name they’d given him, even though they’d taken to calling him Rain for short.
“Miss Olivia,” he responded, very polished with his pronunciation. He was about as far from a rainbow as one could get, with his tawny skin, oversized muscular body and closely clipped hair. He looked more like the bouncers she remembered working at the drinking holes on Ten than a medical man, but that was what he was programmed to be. “Have you need of me?”
“Doctor Cameron’s wakening has started.”
Rain cocked his head to one side and his left eye went totally black. It was a sign he was accessing the computer interface. “Correction. His wakening is complete.”
“What?” she asked, her breath squeezing out of her lungs in a fast swoosh.
“His pod emergency-exit cord was pulled.” Rain continued to look out of one green and one fully black eye. “My scanners are unable to determine if the cord was pulled externally or internally.”
“Quincy!” she yelled and turned, running back in the direction of the pod row that Cameron was in.
She slammed into the bay doors. They were set to open automatically when they sensed a presence.
She’d never tested them at a full run before today. Clearly, they could stand to be tweaked. When they opened, she visually scanned the row of pods, her gaze locking onto Cameron’s.
It was empty.
Wires hung loosely from the pod’s lid. The white bed portion looked untouched save for the smallest of fading depressions. The privacy visor was drawn back. That was something that happened automatically once the wakening sequence was nearly complete. Cameron had told her he had thirty minutes yet.
Spinning, Olivia stared around the pod bay. Machines beeped, scanners blipped and everything seemed normal, except for the fact that Cameron was missing. Her mind continued to reel. In her head, Quincy and his faction of followers had sabotaged Cameron’s pod, or had even abducted him upon waking. Reason said Quincy was safely locked away in the brig with the thirteen followers they’d identified to date. No one else had come out of stasis in nearly nine months. Still, she worried.
Olivia scanned the room. “Cameron?”
She found his naked form huddled on the floor on the other side of his pod. He shouldn’t have tried to stand already. He wasn’t scheduled for a full wakening for another hour. She rushed to his side and knelt.
Rain pushed in alongside her. “Doctor Cameron?”
Cameron grunted. “I’m fine, 17390.”
Rain’s expression said otherwise. “‘Fine’ would not leave one on the floor, Doctor.”
Cameron pushed onto his elbows and glared at Rain. “You’re going to make me lie here because I used your call number, not your name, aren’t you?”
“I will admit I am considering it,” Rain replied, with deadpan delivery.