22.
CASSIE
Cassie and Vikram were met by Miranda in the lobby. She stood with her binders, shifting her feet and not doing a very good job of hiding her worry.
She brightened when she saw them, but Cassie wasn’t sure the smile was entirely real.
“How did it go?”
Cassie shifted her weight, looking across the lobby for when the prince would make his entrance. “I’m not sure. I mean, he said he was going to change his stance, but it wasn’t very convincing. I’m not sure what’s going to happen in there.”
“We’re still going in?”
“I’m not going to wait to hear it from someone else if he’s done what he said he was going to.”
Miranda nodded, and then fell quiet as the elevator doors opened on the other side of the lobby. Prince Qugrom stepped out, flanked by two bodyguards, looking completely unaffected by their meeting this morning. Cassie hated that it was taking all her concentration not to fidget.
“I hope they haven’t cleared our seats away,” she muttered, ignoring Qugrom, not wanting to know if he sent a look in their direction at all. “We only missed one day.”
She wanted to keep talking to Vikram, to ask him to watch Qugrom and read his body language, but he was in professional mode. He wasn’t standing too close, and he had an eagle eye watching everyone. She knew he wouldn’t want to be distracted.
So she just had to wait. She wanted to squirm and find some way of fast-forwarding time to just see what Qugrom did and then she could either relax or go back into planning mode.
Their pod of chairs was still set up when they entered the conference room, and she got more than a few looks from delegates who clearly hadn’t expected her to be making a reappearance. She knew it was suspicious, really, that she took a day off and the next time she showed her face the most influential delegation at the conference changed his tune, but she couldn’t not be there.
She sat back and had no intention of making a move to speak today. She was just going to observe.
That didn’t mean that as the debating started and she, once again, listened to people talk around the actual issue of universal rights and suffering, her hand wasn’t hovering over the button begging her to put some of them in her place.
She’d tried that, though, and it hadn’t worked out well.
Today she was going to be sensible.
It wasn’t until after they’d broken for lunch and she’d been forced to endure sympathies and being talked down to from people who claimed to know what she was going through that Qugrom actually took the microphone. He was going to be the last to speak before the day was set to close, and she laced her fingers in her lap, curious to know how he was going to address it. He’d given himself all day to plan a speech—had four aides swarming around him rapidly scribbling things down throughout the conference.
It should have been a great speech, about how this was an issue that just couldn’t be overlooked by the IU, and this was the time that they had to make a stand against rights abuses like this.
It wasn’t, though. It was exactly the same as every other speech he’d given since the conference had started: about how the IU wasn’t an organization in a place to make this kind of legislation, and it needed to be up to individual planets to create laws against torture. The IU was about economics and trade only.
She gripped the arms of her chair so hard her knuckles turned white, and she wanted to stand up and get the video out right then and there, show it to the room and show them that he was a lying hypocrite.
She stayed sitting, though, just barely. Vikram and Miranda were fixing her with sharp looks as her lip curled in disgust.
She’d completely fallen apart at every stage this conference.
In the hot seat, she hadn’t been able to be a professional at all.
She was the first person out the door when Qugrom sat down and the conference was over for the day—she stormed out of there without looking back, assuming that Vikram would be following her.
It wasn’t the elevator back to her room that she headed for. She needed to walk it off. What she really wanted was some fresh air. She wanted to be back on Archie’s home planet, surrounded by that green space, but she didn’t think she could cope with the flight there, locked in the metal tin for hours.
So she’d have to find somewhere else. She was walking through corridors that led to smaller meeting rooms and offices right now, according to the sign. People were in there, working, but they paid her no mind. She was dressed like an office drone, and she wasn’t well known like some of the delegates.
“Where are you going?” Vikram asked, easily keeping pace with his long legs.
“I don’t know. I just want to be outside.”
“I don’t think outside is this way.”
“I don’t think outside is anywhere on this stupid fucking place.”
“We could go for a drive if you want,” he offered. “My ship is just in the hangar.”
“I can’t deal with being in a ship for longer than about ten minutes. I just want to hit something, to be honest.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she resisted the urge to use him as her punching bag. He was just trying to help. “Cassie,” he said, “I know how to get outside. You’re going the wrong way.”
She blinked back sudden tears. She’d just wanted it to work. She’d just wanted it to be over. “I can’t believe he didn’t change his mind. What does he think is going to happen?”
Vikram’s hand moved from her shoulder to her cheek, and his thumb wiped away the single tear that had fallen. He brought his hand back swiftly, though, and stuffed them in his pockets. “He’s testing you. He wants to see what you’ll do now.”
“What am I supposed do now? I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Yes you do. What would Archie have done?”
“I don’t know. I was just his aide. I wasn’t him. I’m not the same as him. I can’t do this like he could.”
“You don’t want to be him. You just want to do this one thing.”
“I want you to help me,” she pleaded. “What would you do?”
“I’d do nothing. I wouldn’t go and see him and let him know how much it’s getting to you. Just send him a memo and tell him nothing has changed. If he doesn’t change his stance tomorrow, you just have to release the material. It was always a possibility he wouldn’t give in to your demands.”
“No it wasn’t. Archie had been so certain.”
“He wasn’t perfect, and he didn’t know everything,” Vikram said softly, hand coming out of his pocket and almost going back to her shoulder. “He was good at his job, but he wasn’t a god.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she looked around the metal corridor with empty meeting rooms on either side. “What am I doing here?” she muttered, shaking herself off. “You’re right. You always seem to be. I’m not going to stress about it. In fact, I’m going to spend the rest of the day watching movies and not feeling bad about it.”
There was nothing more that she could do today. They stopped by reception on their way to their room and sent a memo to Qugrom. “You’ve had a lot of calls from a Jensen at the Universal Rights Foundation,” the receptionist said after sending the message. “He says it’s very important that you call him back.”
He’d been blowing up her phone, too, but she hadn’t answered any of the calls. It wasn’t worth trying to defend herself, and like he’d said, no one could get to the space station in time to stop her.
“I’ll give him a call, thanks.” She smiled at the receptionist and turned her phone off completely after sending a quick text to Miranda to apologize for running off.
They took the elevator up to her floor and walked side-by-side to her room. There, she finally did the thing she’d been meaning to the past couple of nights. She pushed her single bed against Vikram’s so it made a double, then climbed into it, grabbing the TV remote. “What kind of movie do you feel like?” she asked, patting the spot beside her.
He didn’t hesitate like she’d expected, and patted the spot in between his legs for her to sit between. “Action. Of course. The only genre worth watching.”
She rolled her eyes, but passed him the remote, cradling his free hand in hers and lacing their fingers together.
She could get used to this.
To coming home and having him wipe all her stress away, just like that.