Still, I clear my throat and give it my best shot. “Dr. Veragelen.”
This time, the look she gives me is less thoughtful and more annoyed, but I’m determined now.
“Can you at least tell us what experiments you’re conducting in each of these labs?”
We stare at each other for several long seconds, and I can see the moment she finally remembers who I am. She blows a long, slow breath out through her nose, and her tight mouth unpinches just a little.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” she tells me, though she sounds anything but sorry. “I’m afraid it’s for your own good. These areas are off-limits because of the chemicals we use in them. They’re hazardous to anyone not wearing the appropriate protective clothing.”
She gives me another forced smile—and this one looks like a full-on grimace. Probably because she’s managed to speak and “smile” and still hasn’t relaxed her mouth at all. “I’d hate to send you back to your mother…damaged in any way.”
That sounds more like a threat than actual concern, but I’ve spent all nineteen years of my life living under the Empress’s special brand of passive-aggressiveness. The doctor is going to have to work much harder if she wants to send me running away with my tail between my legs.
“That may be true of the Authorized Personnel doors, but what experiments are you running behind the Classified doors?” I counter. “And why are they even classified on a vessel that’s meant to be working to solve problems that aren’t classified? Problems that affect us all.”
Her bodyguard turns to stare at me, and when we make eye contact, it causes little shivers to skate down my spine. Somehow, he manages to look both impressed and bored by my questions, but I’ll take it.
My attention is brought back to Dr. Veragelen when she glances at the nearest locked door, then sighs and rubs a hand over her forehead like I’m causing her a great amount of trouble. Good. It’s fair to say that my childhood crush on Dr. Veragelen is dying a rapid death.
She must catch on to the fact that I’m not backing down until I get some answers, because she cuts the act and says, “I promise you, Princess, if you rein in your…impatience a little while longer, you will be more than satisfied.” Then she deliberately moves away before I can ask her anything else.
We finally stop in front of a set of wide double doors. Like the others we’ve passed, they have a Classified sign right across the middle of them. But unlike the others, it looks like we might actually have a snowflake’s chance on Serai of getting through them.
Dr. Veragelen claps her hands like a schoolteacher trying to get the attention of her recalcitrant pupils. Brilliant or not, the woman obviously has pretty major control issues—something else I recognize after spending the last two decades with my mom.
“Now, I’m about to show you our most important laboratory”—she glances directly at me, one eyebrow raised—“which has the added benefit of being unclassified for your visit today.”
She says the last with a definite bite in her tone. My mother would call her on it—in fact, she would probably eviscerate her for it—but I choose to let it go, at least for now, because maybe I’m going to see something interesting at last.
I only hope that whatever she’s got here is as good as she thinks it is. Because all of our lives depend on it.
The small crowd behind me starts to shift restlessly.
Dr. Veragelen must feel it, too, because suddenly she cuts to the chase of what I get the impression was supposed to be a pretty lengthy speech. “What I have in here,” she says, gesturing to the doors behind her, “is far beyond any technology currently in use in the Empire of the Senestris System. What I have in here will awe you. It will inspire you. And it will prove to you, once and for all, that I am capable of doing more than averting disaster. I am capable—we are capable—of nothing short of absolute salvation.
“Salvation for your families. Salvation for your planets. Salvation”—her voice drops to a whisper that echoes throughout the now silent corridor—“for the entire system.”
Well, this sounds more like what we’ve been waiting for. My heart is beating fast and hard as she presses a palm to the biometric scanner.
This is it. This is it. Please let this be it.
“Ambassadors.” Dr. Veragelen looks at each of us in turn. “I give you what I am certain is the answer to all of your questions. And your prayers.”
Then she throws open the doors to the laboratory with a flourish.
My mouth drops open.
Hot steaming drokaray droppings.
Chapter 5
Kali
For a moment, nobody moves. Or says a word.
I stand in the hallway, staring through the wide-open doors with my mouth agape as I try to figure out exactly what I’m looking at. The room beyond is huge—even bigger than the docking bay. It must take up the entire height of the center of the ship. And filling most of the space is a black sphere hovering without any visible means of support about three feet above the floor.
I swallow hard.
For her part, Dr. Veragelen looks like the bamiling that ate the varmak. Then again, she more than deserves the self-satisfaction. When else has an entire group of politicians actually been struck speechless?
“Can we go in?” Rain asks, and there’s an eagerness in her voice that’s unmistakable. She’s the closest delegate to me, separated by Arik, who makes sure no one gets too near, but that doesn’t stop her from peering around him, looking more like an excitable young girl than the High Priestess of the Sisterhood.
It makes me like her more than I expected to—and probably more than I should.
“Of course. Of course,” Dr. Veragelen says as she strides through the open door. “After all, this is what I invited you all here to see.”
I don’t miss her subtle emphasis on the word “this” or the fulminating glare she shoots in my direction when she thinks I’m not looking.
Rain bounces forward, but her escort touches her arm before she can take more than one step. She glances up at him questioningly, and he nods subtly toward me. As soon as he does, she gasps in horror, ducks her head again, and mutters something under her breath.
I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter—that I don’t care who goes in first. But my mother lives for pomp and circumstance, and as long as I’m here, representing her, I need to as well—or I’ll never be allowed off-planet again.
And there are a whole lot of places I want to see. And maybe, just maybe, if Dr. Veragelen can do what she thinks she can, I’ll finally have time to do them.
But this second gaffe—or is it the third?—of Rain’s does beg the question: Why would Serati send an ambassador with absolutely no formal training in royal protocols to an important event like this? It makes no sense for any planet to do that, let alone one whose code of law is so elaborate and extensive it makes the Empress look like an anarchist. I try to remember what I’ve heard about the high priestess. Not much—the Sisterhood are a secretive lot—but I do know that high priestesses don’t usually take an active role in politics.
Still, their mistake isn’t her fault, so I give Rain an encouraging nod as I walk into the room, then fix my attention on the black sphere. What is it? A memory niggles at my brain—I know I’ve seen something similar before. But in a dream.