Devoted - Merritt's Story 2 - Chapter 17

We're getting 2 chapters this month!  This one's a little shorter, but we'll get a big honker on February 27.

The Water Date bonus chapter has been taken down, but it'll soon be available from my shop as a standalone, with its own cover art and everything. :)

And here's the new chapter!  You can read it inline or download the attached PDF.

[Table of Contents]

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Book 2, Chapter 17

“Merritt, a word,” Mercury called at the end of September’s first board meeting. “I have an assignment for you.”

Merritt paused mid-step, then turned and stood at attention before Mercury. He took a quick glance at the door, where Mercury’s advisors were already filing out of the room. None of them appeared to care that their King had called Merritt for a private talk. Only Belmont stalled; he subtly met Merritt’s eyes before approaching a little too casually.

Mercury squinted up at Belmont, a hint of impatience in his eyes. Clearly, he wanted to speak to Merritt alone. But Belmont stood his ground. “Seeing as I’m Merritt’s boss,” he said, “I think I should be included in whatever assignment you’re giving him.”

Mercury’s eyes shifted just enough to suggest an eye roll. “If you insist. It’s a trivial matter, anyway.” He turned to Merritt. “Merritt, are you aware that the Underground Gala is scheduled for the last day of the month?”

“Yes, Damen.” How could he not be aware? The annual gala was the most extravagant party in all of the underground. It was for elites only, but the gossip that resulted from each year’s event spread through every rank and circulated for months. The gala took place in a different sphere each year, with all the most important citizens from every sphere in attendance. For one night only, borders disappeared and the guests partook in a magnificent night of debauchery.

The day after the gala was the biggest day of the year for fresh gossip. No cell phones or recording equipment were allowed inside the party rooms, but the lack of hard evidence only made the rumors spread faster and wilder. When the North had hosted last year, the big story to come out of the party was that Belmont had given Troy a lengthy lap dance, which Troy had done nothing to stop. Troy had later claimed that it was all in good fun, it was just what people did at the gala, and he was too wasted to care. Belmont, on the other hand, claimed that Troy absolutely cared, but just not in a way he wanted to admit.

Merritt didn’t know who to believe. He didn’t want to believe either of them. The mental image just… bugged him.

“This year’s gala will be hosted by the West Sphere,” Mercury said. “Because all of the most important people from our sphere will be there, we will need to lock down our security at home. No one has ever broken the rules of non-violence within the gala, but several spheres have used it as an opportunity to launch a sneak attack against an enemy while their leaders were away. As general, you’ll need to ensure that our territory is properly protected.”

“Understood, Damen.” He had no idea how he’d fit this new task into his already nightmarish schedule, but he held his poker face. He’d known the gala was coming at the end of September, and he’d expected that the extra work would fall on his shoulders.

“You will also need to arrange for all defensive measures to be deployed without your presence, because you will be attending the gala.”

Merritt’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, unable to think of anything more articulate. Attend the gala himself? He’d never even imagined receiving an invite.

“Having all top military personnel from every sphere at the gala is another way to decrease the chances of a sneak attack,” Mercury continued. “I was sometimes able to get Rhodes out of it, provided Pratt and Evans attended. But your presence was demanded by every one of our rival sphere leaders.” Mercury raised an eyebrow. “You’ve drawn a lot of attention to yourself, Merritt.”

Merritt’s cheeks reddened. He knew that was a criticism. North Sphere soldiers were not supposed to make their presence noticed. They were to be nameless, faceless servants of their sphere. But that was hardly a realistic expectation of a general. He noticed an unsubtle flash of indignation on Belmont’s face after Mercury’s statement, and he fought the urge to give him a warning nudge. Instead, he waited silently for Mercury to continue.

“You will need to start planning immediately. Coordinate your efforts with Pratt and Evans.” Mercury leaned back in his seat. “Are you clear on your orders?”

“Yes, Damen,” Merritt said with a respectful bow of the head.

“Good. You are dismissed.”

Once outside the boardroom and away from Mercury, Belmont’s annoyance dissipated. He wrapped an arm around Merritt’s shoulder and gave him an excited shake. “Your first gala! Ooh, we’ll have to show you a good time.”

“Hmm,” Merritt said, deep in thought. Over the past two months, he had Belmont had already managed to squeeze in a few good times between work—late-night walks through the rock gardens, a dinner date at the Sheridan, and even a water-tasting trip to sub-Forest glen. But he couldn’t tell Belmont what was on his mind now: he was petrified about the gala. How could he attend a party with all of the underground’s most powerful citizens, with the requirement that he be intoxicated in front of them?

Violence of any kind was banned during the gala, but anyone who looked to be too much on their best behavior was also booted, under the suspicion that they were plotting instead of partying. Everyone was required to maintain a minimum blood alcohol level or else take a party drug at the entrance. It was a wonder, with so many powerful citizens of the underground being wasted under one roof, that no one had ever been murdered or seriously injured. But the elite viewed the gala as their sanctuary, treating it with reverence and respect. It was supposedly the one place in the underground where peace could truly be achieved. Not even neutral territory could make that claim.

Belmont seemed to read his mind. “I can just imagine you sitting at the gala sipping Focus in mineral water and watching everyone else get down and dirty until the bouncers drag you out for being a big nerd.” 

Merritt laughed. “Yeah, that’s probably what’ll happen.”

“Listen, I get it. It’s pretty damn terrifying getting wasted in front of all your biggest enemies and knowing that your guard is down. But that’s the beauty of the gala—your enemies are all just as wasted as you are. In fact, they’re so wasted they don’t even remember you’re an enemy. No one stays sober. Even your best buddy Archer lets loose once she’s got a few drinks in her. The gala is the safest place in the underground.”

“I know that’s what they say, but I just can’t believe things could go as well in practice as in theory.”

“Didn’t you hear the story about the last West Sphere gala four years ago? We were in the middle of a massive war between every sphere. Then the gala rolled around, we put up our cease fires, and we went to the party. And the party turned into the biggest orgy in the history of the underground. Everyone was fucking everyone. It was fantastic. And then the gala ended, and we all went back to war the next day.”

“I wasn’t around for the orgy,” Merritt said. “I was only there for the fighting, and it was just as bad as any other war.”

“Ugh, you’re such a killjoy. You don’t think there’s any chance you can have fun at the gala?”

“It’s the West Sphere,” Merritt said. “I imagine there’ll be dogs everywhere. I don’t know how to relax around dogs.”

They boarded the elevator, and after the doors closed, Belmont leaned in and lowered his voice. “There’s always private rooms available. If it’s too much for you, just find me and pull me aside, and we’ll hide out together for a little while.”

“Isn’t the point of the gala to mingle with people from other spheres?”

“Yeah, but no one will notice if you sneak off for a half hour, or even an hour. Just make sure to stick around long enough for everyone to see you looking stoned or drunk or getting a blow job, and once you’ve left your mark, you can disappear as long as you want.” He rolled his eyes. “But why are we already making plans for you to get out of the gala? If all goes well, you won’t even want to sneak off.”

Merritt smiled for Belmont’s benefit. “I guess we’ll see.”

* * *

All Merritt needed was half an hour. Just half an hour on this frenzied Friday afternoon to hurry back to his quarters, swallow a quick lunch, and nap on the couch. Preparation for the gala was killing him, but he didn’t want to risk snoozing at Station 0. In the North, succumbing to sleep in a public space was a sign of weakness—even if that public space was equipped with a cot. But his afternoon was booked with meetings and more meetings, so this was his only chance to rush home and rest his head.

His eyelids drooped like a drunkard’s as he crossed the threshold and stumbled straight for the couch. “Night, Charles,” he said wearily to the plant on his coffee table before he cast himself face-down across the cushions.

Sleep came immediately… and left almost as quickly. A sudden CRASH quaked the entire room, dropping rubble from the ceiling. Merritt bolted to his feet, grabbing Charles on the way. Cradling the plant in a protective embrace, he stared in shock as the arm of a hydraulic excavator plowed through the ceiling of his living room and down the wall beside the sofa.

“HEY!” Merritt cried. He set the jade plant down and drew his pistol, aiming at the driver. “STOP!”

The vehicle shuddered to a reluctant halt, and Merritt finally caught a glimpse of the driver in the vehicle’s carriage on the other side of the hole in the wall. He looked just as stunned to see Merritt as Merritt was to see him. “General!” he gasped. “You aren’t supposed to be here, sir!”

Merritt opened and closed his mouth. He stared at the ragged hole. Crumbs of brick continued to dribble onto the floor. “What are you doing?” he demanded, his pistol trained on the driver.

“Construction, sir,” the man replied unhelpfully.

“There’s no construction scheduled for my quarters.”

“I’m hear on orders of the King’s right hand, sir.”

“What?”

Merritt spotted movement through the hole in the wall and, moments later, Belmont emerged. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he cried—not at the man who’d plowed through the wall, but at Merritt.

“Taking a nap!” Merritt yelled back, too stunned to temper his tone. He pointed at the machine’s poised arm, which loitered next to the sofa like an uninvited house guest. “Did you order this?”

Belmont stalked urgently across the room, taking long, swift steps. “You weren’t supposed to be here!” he cried. He grabbed Merritt’s shoulders and pushed him backward, trying to guide him out of his home.

Merritt planted his feet and shoved Belmont’s hands off him. He stared fiercely into Belmont’s eyes, still awaiting an explanation.

“Just come with me,” Belmont pleaded. Again, he steered Merritt toward the exit. “And put your gun away.”

Merritt resisted for a moment before shaking his head and giving in. “Fine,” he said, holstering his weapon. “But you have to tell me what’s going on.”

Belmont waited for Merritt to step into the entryway tunnel and close the door before he gave a showy shrug and said, “Sorry, I can’t tell you. It’s top secret.”

Merritt raised his hands, his fingers clawed as if ready to throttle Belmont. “You just… you just knocked a hole through my wall! You could have run me over.”

“You told me this morning that you were going to work through lunch at Station 0.”

“I couldn’t stay awake,” Merritt said. “But that still doesn’t explain why you knocked a hole—”

“Everything’s fine,” Belmont insisted. “It’s just a little pinprick. We’ll patch it right up.”

Merritt flexed his clawed fingers. It was taking all his effort not to reach out and shake Belmont. Fuck poker faces; he was too sleep deprived to control his emotions. “I’ve been in meetings twelve hours a day, every day for a week, just to get ready for the gala. And that’s on top of my usual work. I’ve taken all the sleep enhancers my body can handle. I can barely see straight. The last thing I need right now is a demolition vehicle rolling into my room while I sleep!”

“Just come on,” Belmont said smoothly, nudging Merritt down the tunnel. He seemed unfazed by Merritt’s unusual show of frustration. “If you need a place to crash before the one o’clock meeting, you can do it at my place.”

“There’s no time left.”

“I have high-grade Spark. Just come with me.”

There was no point arguing. Merritt’s energy was fading fast. But why couldn’t Belmont just tell him what was going on?

“You knocked a hole through my wall,” Merritt mumbled, following Belmont down the corridor.

“Let it go, Merritt.”

* * *

No matter how hard Merritt hounded Belmont, Belmont refused to say a word. With every new attempt Merritt made to pry for information, Belmont employed a more annoying diversion tactic—from the silent treatment to changing the subject to breaking out into song and dance in the middle of the headquarters hallway, complete with jazz hands and a slide down the banister of the grand staircase.

They parted ways after their one o’clock meeting together, but Belmont returned to collect him the moment his final meeting of the evening let out. Despite a top notch dinner together, which Merritt never could have afforded on his own, he was beginning to feel like a hostage. Why couldn’t he just go back to his quarters?

Technically, his quarters didn’t belong to him. They belonged to the military, and anyone from the board of advisors up to Mercury had the authority to do as they pleased with the space, whether or not Merritt approved. But by now, Merritt expected better from Belmont. If construction was scheduled, Belmont should have told him in advance.

Throughout Friday night and Saturday morning, he made calls from the sofa of Belmont’s living room, coordinating plans with his colonels and advisors. When Ellis sent him a clean uniform and two days’ worth of sleep enhancers through Belmont’s dumbwaiter, Merritt suddenly realized his aide knew about the construction. He called Ellis and demanded an explanation, but Ellis only stammered in response, “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know any details.” Merritt wasn’t sure if he believed him.

On Saturday night, he ran into Pratt at the elevators. “I’ve been seeing you at headquarters a lot lately,” Pratt said with a suspicious sneer. “Early mornings. Late nights. Seems strange for someone who lives in the military district.”

“It’s the gala preparations, sir,” Merritt replied smoothly. “I’m meeting with a lot of officials, and sometimes it’s easier to get things done face to face.”

Pratt raised his eyebrows as he turned away. “Of course,” he replied, sounding unconvinced.

Merritt tried to return to his quarters later that night, but Belmont stayed one step ahead of him, preventing his escape. “People are starting to get suspicious, seeing me here all day,” Merritt tried to explain. But Belmont was unmoved.

He didn’t make it back home until Monday. After work, Belmont intercepted Merritt in the headquarters driveway with a sly smile and asked him to hop onto the back of his motorcycle. Together they rode to the military district. Belmont remained tight-lipped.

When they arrived at Merritt’s quarters, Belmont stepped aside and gestured for Merritt to take the lead. Merritt eyed him with skepticism but didn’t protest. He opened the front door with his thumbprint and led the way inside.

The hole in the wall had been repaired so flawlessly that it looked like it had never been busted. Charles sat on the coffee table, his soil damp. Merritt squinted at Belmont. Belmont returned his scrutiny with a cocky half-smile.

Merritt approached the formerly damaged wall and ran his fingertips over the brick. Nothing looked amiss.

“See?” Belmont asked. “It’s as good as new.”

Merritt was about to take his word for it when a sudden thought filled him with dread. Based on the layout of his quarters, that excavator might have torn through his office on its way to the living room wall. His eyes widening with horror, he dashed around the corner, through his bedroom, and into the tiny side room.

It appeared untouched. Well, almost untouched. All his electronic equipment was intact, but some items sat just a bit askew. Like the living room, the office sported a flawless brick wall—but Merritt spotted a few bits of debris beside his desk, as if this wall had once faced the same fate as his living room wall.

“What did you do?” Merritt asked, baffled.

“You really don’t know?” Belmont asked. “You don’t even want to guess?”

“I don’t want to guess.”

“But you have to have some idea.”

Merritt was about to snap at Belmont and demand that he stop playing games—but then he realized he did have some idea. If an excavator had gotten to two of the walls in his subterranean quarters, then there must now be a hollowed-out space outside those walls.

Belmont ran his long fingers almost seductively down the brick wall. “I was starting to get nervous, knowing you lived here alone with such shitty security compared to headquarters. At Station 0, there are safe rooms. And I know there’s a tunnel that connects your quarters to Station 0, but it’s a long-ass commute to get there. So….” He gave one of the bricks a gentle push. To Merritt’s surprise, he heard a click, and the brick swung open, revealing itself to be only a façade. Behind it, a mounted thumbprint panel awaited them. “I built you your own safe room. You can get in through the living room too.”

Merritt opened his mouth, taking in a breath of realization. Of course, a safe room. That was a perfectly reasonable explanation. But something still didn’t make sense. “You could have just told me you were building a safe room.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Why? It’s just a safe room. I appreciate that you had it built—I really, really do—but it’s nothing unusual. Why did it have to be a secret?”

Belmont’s confidence didn’t waver. He gestured toward the thumbprint panel. “Just open it and take a look inside.”

Hesitantly, Merritt stepped forward. He pressed his thumb against the sensor, then heard the faint spring of a latch being released. A portion of the brick wall the size of a door swung inward to offer him entrance.

He was met with darkness. After he squinted for a moment, Belmont told him, “There’s a light switch along the wall.” Merritt reached into the shadows and slid his hand up until he found the switch. He flipped it on.

Yellow-orange light flooded the room—a kind of warm light that was rarely used in the North Sphere, which favored cool tones. The gentle glow illuminated a surprisingly spacious interior that looked more like a lounge than a safe room. But the plush sofa and armchair weren’t what caught Merritt’s eye.

The walls were lined with shelves, each stocked from floor to ceiling with books. Merritt was so overcome with shock that he gasped out loud. He raised a hand over his mouth, too stunned to speak.

“I figured, if you’re going to be stuck in a safe room during an invasion, might as well make it a fucking fabulous place to be stuck.” The slight smile on his face widened into a full grin. “Happy birthday.”

Merritt blinked a few times, confused. Then his eyes widened. “Oh. Damn. It is my birthday, isn’t it?” His twenty-third birthday. With all the preparation for the gala, he’d completely lost track of time. He turned to Belmont, dumbstruck. “You didn’t have to….”

Belmont gestured toward the shelves. “Check ‘em out.”

Merritt approached the nearest row of books and eyed the names on the spines. “These… are above-ground books.”

“Yep,” Belmont said flippantly.

“These are above-ground books,” Merritt whispered to himself again. The reality had yet to sink in.

“I got you some from every genre I could find. There are some that Mercury would never want anyone in his sphere to get their hands on. The beauty of printed books is that no one on the other side of a computer screen can track what you’re reading.”

“And these….” Merritt pulled a book off the shelf titled Catechism of the Catholic Church. “These are religious texts.”

“Yeah. You said you wanted them, didn’t you? Now you have all the instructions you need to run off to the surface and become a priest.”

Merritt ignored the taunt. “How did you even get these?”

“You doubt my power in the underground?” Belmont asked, puffing out his chest.

“I just don’t want to get ambushed by a South Sphere motorcycle gang looking to avenge their murdered librarian.”

“Don’t worry your little blond head. I didn’t kill anyone for these. Just traded a few favors.”

“Must have been some pretty big favors.”

“Eh, nothing I couldn’t afford.” Belmont shrugged. Then he leaned in close behind Merritt and lowered his voice. “I know things are hell right now,” he said gently. “I know you’re tired and busy. But in a few more days, you’ll be done prepping for the gala. And the next time you have a day off, or even half an hour off, these books will all be here waiting for you.”

At last, Merritt turned to face Belmont. He could barely contain the inexplicable moisture that welled in his eyes. Damn, he was volatile; he must have been more sleep deprived than he’d realized. Blinking furiously, he pulled Belmont into a tight embrace. He couldn’t find words. He couldn’t even give a coherent thank-you. All he could do was squeeze Belmont hard enough to make him wheeze.

Belmont didn’t demand any words from him. Instead, he planted his now-familiar kiss on the side of Merritt’s forehead and hugged him back.

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