Chapter 94 Bitter news calls for bitter drinks

Chapter 94 Bitter news calls for bitter drinks
The living room screen activated when the call came through, the mansion's system defaulting to the largest display in the house the way Aldric had apparently programmed it to handle incoming transmissions.

Sera's face filled it.

I accepted the call from the couch where I'd been sitting with Tasha going through the weapons inventory from the third floor, both of us stopping what we were doing at the same moment.

Sera looked at the screen on her end, her eyes moving across whatever she could see behind me. The high ceiling. The warm paneling. The furniture that had been waiting under dust sheets for decades and now looked exactly as it had been designed to look, arranged and inhabited and real.

Her expression shifted by a fraction.

"I see you upgraded your accommodations," she said. "Are you on Earth?"
"None of your business," I said.

She accepted that without pushing it, her attention moving from the room back to me.

"Matt has been running operations across three districts," she said. "In case you were wondering. He's been professional. Focused. He hasn't mentioned you once which means he's thinking about you constantly."
"Is that why you called," I said. "To update me on Matt?"
"No." She looked at me steadily. "The reason I called is because you have approximately five minutes before your parents are killed."

The room went very still.

Tasha put down what she was holding.

"If you come back," Sera said, "willingly, today, the order gets cancelled. If you don't, it gets carried out. That's the entirety of the conversation."
"Sera—"
"It's not my order," she said. "It came directly from Men of Moon leadership. Above me. I'm the one delivering it because I'm the one with your contact details."
"Don't you dare," I said. "Don't you dare touch them."
"Five minutes, Da Vinci."
"They're old. They're in their seventies. They have nothing to do with any of—"
"Four minutes."
"Sera!"
"Show him," she said to someone off screen.

The footage appeared in the corner of the display, a secondary feed, a room I recognized. Their living room. Earth. 

My parents sat in their chairs.

My mother's hair had gone fully white since the last time I'd seen her. My father had a blanket across his lap despite the room's apparent warmth, his hands resting on top of it, the hands of a man in his seventies who had spent a lifetime doing ordinary things and deserved to keep doing them. 

I never spoke with them after coming to the Moon. They had told me not to bother if I leave for the Moon. But how else would I pay for their medication on a planet that jobs had become automated for the most part. And the competition was so high I couldn’t even dream of getting the lowest paying jobs.

Two figures stood behind their chairs.

"Mom," I said, before I could stop myself. The word came out of me like something that had been held under pressure. "Dad."

My mother looked straight ahead. My father's jaw was set in the particular way it always had been when he was afraid and refusing to show it.

"Don't you fucking dare, Sera," I said.
"Three minutes."
Tasha's hand found my arm.

I looked at the footage. At my father's hands on the blanket. My mother sitting straight in her chair.

The single tear that ran down my cheek surprised me. I didn't try to stop it or hide it. It just went.

"I will come," I said.
Sera looked at me.
"Where are you," she said.

I looked out the window. At the dome outside. 

"Aquilas," I said. "Outer residential. There's a housing complex on the eastern edge that Grandisfield uses as a secondary base. High ceilings. Good windows. We've been here three days."

She wrote something down. "Come down unarmed if you want to see your parents alive."
"Fine."
The call ended.
Tasha turned to me immediately. "Da Vinci—"
"I know," I said.
"That's a trap. The moment she has a location she doesn't need to keep the offer."
"I know, Tasha."
"Your parents—"
"I fucking know!"

I sat there for a moment, looking at the blank screen where my parents had been, my father's hands on the blanket, my mother's straight back.

Ten minutes passed.

The screen activated again. Sera.

"We're almost at your location," she said. "Stay down. Don't move from where you are."
"Understood," I said.

A pause on her end.

"Also," she said. "Your parents have been dead for a week. We showed you recorded footage."

I stared at the walls.

"Da Vinci—"

I ended the call.

Tasha crossed the room toward me, her hand reaching for my shoulder, and I gently moved past her without stopping, her fingers brushing my sleeve as I walked toward the kitchen.

The kitchen ran its quiet automated cycle around me, the warm light, the Earth-standard everything, the provisions Aldric had stocked and maintained for a grandson he never got to meet properly.

I opened the cabinet above the counter.

I took down a glass. Poured. Watched the liquid settle, the color of it in the kitchen light, something between amber and dark gold, neither pale nor opaque.

I carried it to the living room. 

I needed the one thing that in this situation would calm me down.

Tasha watched me from across the room, saying nothing.

I stood at the tall window, looking out over Aquilas, the dome's afternoon light coming through the glass at the angle that made the room feel warmest, the street below carrying its ordinary traffic of people. 

I raised the glass.

The smell reached me before the taste did. Slightly bitter. And hot on my tongue even though it was room temperature.

The color was wrong for tea. The weight of it in the glass was wrong for tea.

I took a long sip despite the burning.

The bitterness hit harder, spreading across my chest. I lowered the glass and looked at it.

"Ah," I said quietly, to the window, to the city outside, to nobody in particular.
"Whiskey."
A pause.
"It's been a long time since I've had you."