Under His Influence

“That’s right. Hunker down, Miranda. It’s going to be a long forty-eight hours.”

Anna had no appetite for the cornflakes, and not just because of morning sickness. Her head had been a raging, aching mess since that first twinge on Liam’s sofa the night before last, and now she could barely see straight to read the headlines in the paper.

“That’s a weird story, isn’t it?” Liam commented, reading over her shoulder as he set a glass of orange juice down on the table beside the cornflakes bowl. “Dead body found in a laundry hamper at the Park Lane Hotel. No sign of the man he was sharing the room with. False ID. Do you think it was a crime of passion and the lover has fled the country?”

“No idea,” said Anna weakly. “It says they had a visitor to their hotel room, who gave the name of Valent Draxxar. What sort of name is that? Albanian or something?”

Liam shrugged. “Love triangle, if you ask me. One of those groups that like to nail each other’s dicks to a plank or something. Sex game that got out of hand.”

But Anna wasn’t listening. Her face had taken on that stony cast Liam sometimes noticed, and her eyes were far away.

“Valent Draxxar,” she repeated.

“Yeah. What about him?”

“When I said that, something twinged. Inside. Valent Draxxar. It happened again.”

“Do you need a doctor?” Liam was nonplussed.

“No…I need…John.”

“What?”

“I need to be near him.” She turned around to Liam, her eyes huge with fear. “I don’t know why. I just have to go to him. It’s the baby—it’s making me…”

Liam’s heart sank. “Anna, he doesn’t want you.”

“I know, but he wants the baby. And the baby wants him…needs him.”

She pushed the chair back and stood, seeking her handbag.

“I don’t think you’re thinking straight—”

“I know I’m not,” Anna said, on the verge of tears. “It’s not rational. It’s just…I can’t fight it. I have to go to him. He’s in danger. We’re in danger.”

“What has he done to you?” whispered Liam, but he had already picked his jacket up off the back of the chair and was dialling work to call in sick.

“I think I’ve got it. I think.”

John’s breath was short now; unshaven and red of eye, he wrote lines of code in a frenzy while the room hummed and throbbed around him.

“I’ve made pancakes,” Mimi offered. “You should eat.”

“I don’t need to eat. I need to finish this. Give the pancakes to Mother. Shit, they’ve passed Mars.”

Luana and Mimi munched the pancakes in silence. Luana was suffering terribly, her whole body constricted and rigid with tension.

“They won’t find us.” Mimi softly reassured the other woman.

“How you know? You know nothing of the Rixxar. They will find. And we will wish for death. They won’t kill us. They will keep us alive and in torment. That is their way.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“She’s sure,” John snapped. “Before we escaped we were hooked up to brainwave suppressors. They intensify pain and inhibit any kind of comforting chemical process. They took great pleasure in telling us that they would keep us connected to this device for the rest of our lives, keeping the level just below that which would induce unconsciousness, drip-feeding us so that we couldn’t escape by way of death. This would continue until I agreed to design a weapon that would obliterate worlds. Something I’m capable of, but not particularly keen to do.”

“Christ. Alien sadists.”

“Indeed. So you see what we’re up against.”