BIRTHRIGHT Book One: The First Key

Chapter 5

A white-tiled and over-lit white room with hoses and scrub brushes on the walls looks more like a carwash than a shower. The grout between the tiles is a shade of white that, even squinting, hurts the eyes to look directly at. In the centre of the white upon white tiles Alex is tossed, nearly poured, from the military stretcher. His blood immediately begins seeping away from his body and down the nearby drain.

The red that spills so liberally is a welcome, though macabre, splash of colour in the sterile room.

The only other colour is from the series of six orange haz-mat suit-wearing medics. One carries the stretcher over to a grey button on the wall. With one push, a stainless steel oven-door opens up. Within it, the flames of a crematorium rage.

The stretcher is unceremoniously hurled in to the fire, melting and burning instantly. The other five medics have begun to strip Alex's scant remaining clothes off him, each taking a trip to the crematorium with a few shreds of fabric to incinerate.

Finally, Alex is naked except for the cumbersome metal braces still covering his hands and feet. But already, he looks better than he did in the airship. In fact, he looks better by the second. Wounds that were bleeding only a moment ago have staunched their own blood flow and bruises that seemed brutally fresh look days old now.

Alex regains consciousness.

His attention is drawn immediately to one wall of the room that isn't tile. It's frosted glass. through the translucent wall, a doorway opens. Alex opens a swollen eye at the sound and sees the figure of a woman being half escorted, half carried in.

He knows it's Tia. He can feel it.

Suddenly the sound of high pressure hoses drowns out the sound of Tia's footsteps. The group of haz-mat medics have begun to hose him down with high-pressure pink and aqua-marine chemicals.

It looks more like lathered toothpaste than water.

On the opposite side of the frosted glass panel, the decontamination chamber is a series of sterile and crisply clean showers, lined with white plastic shower curtains, each identical to the next.

The door hisses shut and Tia is beginning to awaken from her chemical slumber. With her foggy senses, she can tell she's in some kind of showering room, hoses are roaring in the next room, and there are two men gripping her tightly.

No.

One of the grips is different. One of them is a woman.

The medics help her step into a white tiled shower. Tia steadies herself inside the chamber as they pull the curtain. A medic's hand still pokes in through the curtain. The woman's hand. Luck of the draw? Or a courtesy extended to the daughter of the General? Tia is in no condition to ask.

The hand makes an impatient gesture, and it's finally clear to her drugged mind what they're expecting her to do next. Slowly, groggily, she begins to strip. First her torn and grass-stained top, then her jeans, now shredded at both knees.

Tia passes them off to the greedy hand, which snatches them away. The roar of open flame can be heard for a moment before the hand returns impatiently expecting more.

Of course. This is the decontamination room. They're going to want everything.

Hesitantly, Tia removes her black lacy underwear and frilly bra. Those were for Alex to see tonight. She had gotten them yesterday as a surprise for him; he was going to love them.

Alex. Oh god. Where is he by now?

She passes her underclothes to the greedy hand, and this time it doesn't return. I guess that's everything. Standing in the decontamination shower, afforded some some small privacy that she is allowed to be alone in her vulnerable nudity.

Nude except for one thing.

She looks down to her ring finger to see the engagement ring Alex gave her. A teardrop sapphire on a platinum ring. A single blue tear.

Leaning up against the tile in the shower, naked and alone, she finally lets the horror of the day's events wash over her.

Tia finally begins to sob.

The group in the white-on-white car wash next door shuts down the thunderous hoses. They've been on the entire time, Tia notices. But now the only sound in the chambers is Tia's heart-wrenching cry.

Alex perks up. He was right, it's Tia. And she needs him.

His eyes only now able to open fully, he tries to speak, but chokes on his still-swollen throat. The medics drag him by his arms out of the wet floor and out of the room, thrashing wordlessly in protest.

After agonizing seconds of hearing herself sob uncontrollably, the frothy water finally begins to flow from the shower-head above her, mercifully muffling the sounds that she can't. In moments, she is covered in a soapy, tingling lather.

Her mind travels back to another shower in a another place at another time.

She and Alex are alone and together. Not even clothing is in the way. She feels his smooth skin and strong physique against her body. The tingling she feels starts at her lips every time he kisses her. But she can feel it as the tingle travels to finger tips and toes. God, it even feels like her hair is tingling.

And then the water shuts off.

If any of it was even water to begin with. Tia is snapped back to the cold, stark reality of the moment as a towel is thrust into the shower, but this time on the opposite side of the shower. And by a different hand. Conceivably a 'clean' hand on the 'safe' side of the chamber, she knows.

Grabbing the towel from the strange hand, Tia's gaze falls back to the sapphire on her finger before she even bothers to dry herself.

Alex. I have to stay strong for Alex.

Tia, back in control of her faculties after a cathartic cry in what little privacy she can expect on a military compound of her father's, steps out of the shower with a towel around her.

Standing tall beside her and still damp is Isaac, wrapping a towel around his waist.

He heard everything.

She looks his well-muscled body up and down, sizing up what must be a spy or a mercenary in her father's employ. What a strange sight his arm is. Shiny but not wet. Chrome. A prosthetic arm? A glove?

With a second towel, he pats his unusual arm dry, his eyes make fleeting contact with hers. He smiles a gentle smile. After those heaving sobs, he's not about to mention what the work of his last two hours has been.

"You work for my father?" Tia asks.

She's willing to talk, though. But he has to think about that question for a moment. A Zek'hasa beholden to a human chain of military command. What a disgusting notion. But one must keep up appearances.

"I have," is the most true response he can muster without offending himself in the process. "From time to time."

Tia smiles at his response.

"Great," and the false grin falls to an expression of loathing. She slaps him firmly across the face "then I already know I hate you."

Tia turns her back on Isaac and snatches the women's military issue uniform from the hands of a nearby medic whose jaw is still agape from the seemingly unprovoked smack.

A grin skirts across Isaac's face as a red hand-print begins to appear where she slapped him. He savours the pain on his face as it overcomes the pain in his mind. while he watches Tia's sensual figure storm out of the decontamination chamber.

'I can see why you like this one, Protector.'