“Did I look fresh when I got to the bottom floor?” Iona asked Gage once they were alone in their suite.

The room they had been given was immaculate.  Gorgeous beyond gorgeous.  It was a velvet affair with royal blue curtains everywhere and exposed white marble everywhere else.  The bed was a huge circle in the middle of the room that turned like a merry-go-round if you pushed on it.

“What is that for?” Iona wondered out loud.

“Orgies,” Gage replied.  Then seeing the stricken look on her face he amended, “Or for fun.  I could spin you on it if you’d like.”

“I’m good,” she said, settling herself into a chair sideways and putting out her white high heel so Gage would take it off for her.

“To answer your question, I was moved to the top floor, so I didn’t see you when you were on the bottom floor.  I saw you when you were on your way up though.  You should be proud.  There wasn’t a model there who was more alluring than you.”  Obediently, he slid her shoe off and reached for the other one.

“But I saw you on the bottom floor,” Iona countered.  “You had a red tint in your hair and you gave me the flirtiest smile ever.  Why are you denying being there?”

Gage dropped her shoe on the floor with a thud and backed away from her.  “You saw me on the bottom floor?  You’re sure?”

“Yeah, our eyes locked for an eternity and I did an extra little twirl for you.”

Gage turned away from her and thought hard.  If the guy had red hair, was it Leviticus or Invocation?  Maybe neither.  Gage had lost track of most of them over the decades.  Not only that but he had hoped to lose them coming all the way to the middle of nowhere.  Were the Jovian moons so popular now that he had to move further out?  He planned to retire to Lapetus, but maybe it was time to take a detail between the moons around Saturn.  The Neptune moons were so far out that the joint wasn’t yet civilized, but he’d take a job on Makemake beyond Pluto if that got him away from them.

“Iona,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual.  “Was there anything distinctive about the guy you saw, besides the fact that his hair was tinted red?  Was he wearing colored contact lenses or glasses?  Can you describe him for me?”

“He was wearing sunglasses.  Was that really not you?” she asked, perplexed.

“Nah.  It wasn’t me.  There are a few guys running around who look quite a bit like me.  I wonder which one it was.”  Gage stopped and considered.  Did he need to tell her more about what was happening in his life in order to make it through the next few weeks?  If he was thinking about threats, the biggest one wasn’t the guys who looked like him.  “Hey,” he said, changing the subject.  “If you get a bid from a woman named Olivine, please promise you won’t take it, no matter how much money is offered.”

“I’ve never had a woman bid on me who wasn’t bidding on behalf of a company.  It’s on my file that I’m straight and I don’t accept contracts from women.”

“All the same, please don’t take a contract from someone you don’t know on this round.  I met one of my previous owners at the show.  That’s the reason for this room and the deluxe food provisions I secured for us for the flight to Io.  Sleeping Beauty Inc. arranged for her to meet me even though she is the last person I would ever want to meet.  She told me she was going to bid on you.  Whatever is said in the contract will more than likely not be honored and what will happen to you in her care will not be something you’ll be able to shrug off.”

Iona brought her knees to her chest and hugged them.  “That sounds really scary.  I’ve never had a contract violated before.”

“Let’s keep it that way.  If there’s anything I could say that would stop you from taking a contract with Sherman, I’d say it.  I don’t trust that things will be kept above board with him.  He’s a baby who always gets his way.  That’s why Jessica is leaving.”

“Of course, bad stuff happens.  You think I haven’t had yicky experiences while working as a model?” Iona refuted.

“Yeah.  I imagine you haven’t had a great time, but people with that much money are different and they might ask you to do stuff you never thought of.  You didn’t think to ask for it to be excluded from the contract because you didn’t know people did that.  I’d prefer it if you didn’t learn about it.  Please take another corporate contract.”

She stuck her nose in the air.  “What did you think of Dante?  He came to the show.  Did you see him?”

“I saw him.  He wants to be a mini Sherman.  Forget him too.  Take another corporate contract.”

“What about Benediction?”

Gage was uncomfortable, but he hoped he could change her mind about going to see the third man altogether.  “Uh… I know him.”

“You know him?” she asked, gobsmacked.

“He won’t offer you a contract.  He would never offer you a contract.  If you went to him, he’d have your skin torched black, the pigment drained from your eyes, and chemicals inserted in your skull so that your hair turns forest green forever.  I don’t want to see you like that.  I don’t want you to end up like one of his followers.  Not only that, he’d drain your assets so that you didn’t have a penny to your name and then defile you with pointless purification rituals.”

“You know him?” she asked again, still horrified.

“He doesn’t need a model from Sleeping Beauty Inc.  He needs followers.  If you go there that’s all he’ll see you as—a potential follower.”

“Why are you only telling me this now?” she asked, suddenly standing up to face him.

“Once you see him in the flesh, I’m not going to be able to hide anymore.”

“Why?  What are you trying to hide?”

Gage’s face transformed into an angry snarl.  “My face, my body, the exact shape of my nose, my vocal cords, my kidneys, my liver, my heart!  You name it, I’m trying to hide it.”

“Why?”

He dropped his hands.  “Haven’t you noticed I’m a little too perfect?”

“Of course!” she agreed, warmth spreading on her face because they were finally talking about something she understood.

He put up a hand, deciding for the second time not to talk to her about the truth of his circumstances.  He needed to downplay it.  “He’s my brother,” Gage hedged, trying to make his breathing normal.  The truth was Benediction was not his brother, but their genetic code was identical, so it was like they were twins.  

Iona looked at him.  “All the more reason for us to go see him.  You can introduce me to him.”

“I’m not on good terms with him!” Gage spat.

“If Benediction is your brother, then who is the guy I saw on the bottom level of the stage?”

“Another brother,” Gage said, thinking he couldn’t have sounded less credible if he tried.   “So princess, you should understand that if you’re in love with me for my face, you have a number of other options.”

“How many brothers do you have?”

“Oh, enough that you could shop around.”

Gage wasn’t expecting it, but that was the moment when their dinner arrived.  There was a tap at the door.  Iona opened it, and the server arranged their food on the dining room table only a few feet from the bed.  

Gage smiled pleasantly at the server until the food was all out.  When they were finished, they left and shut the door firmly behind them.  

“Don’t touch this food, Iona,” he said coldly once they were alone. 

“Why not?”

“Because it’s laced in more drugs than you’d find under the floorboards at a crack house,” Gage replied icily.

“Why would they drug us?”

“It might not be Sleeping Beauty Inc. exactly who has done this, but they’re allowing it because they can’t offend Olivine Bouvant.  She’s a monster and if she owns enough shares in the company, they might not be able to do anything about this.”

“Who is she?” Iona asked, but Gage had already crossed the room and taken her hand in his.

“We can’t stay here.  Let’s get back to the ship.  We need to get into orbit.  Forget your shoes.  Just come barefoot.  We’ll take the stairs.  We’re going to need to run.”

Outside the suite, there was a security guard posted.  It was a woman leaning against the wall.  When their door opened, she got on her earpiece and Gage could hear her explaining to someone on the other end of the line that the target was on the move.  Gage glanced back at her.  She wasn’t going to try to stop them.  All that would have amounted to was a broken nose for her and where could he go?  This was Europa.

“Change of plan,” Gage said as he pushed Iona into the open elevator.  “Let’s take as many floors as we can this way.”

The doors closed.

“We can go all the way to the ship through this elevator,” Iona pointed out as she pressed a button to take them directly to the Cannonball III.  

Gage shook his head.  “We can press that button, but we won’t get all the way there before there’s someone to catch us.  I hope the other me isn’t in this tower.  He won’t like Olivine any more than I did.”

He leaped up and grabbed the light fixture that was hanging from the ceiling of the elevator and pulled himself up.  With one hand, he opened the emergency flap in the ceiling.  

“Won’t an alarm go off if you open that?” Iona asked in a sound that was almost a screech.  

“Probably.  But an alarm went off when we left the suite.  Another alarm will go off when we get to the ship and a whole whack load of alarms will go off once we blast off.”

“I can’t believe Madam Damsel would do this to us.”

“I told you, she’s not doing this.” He pulled himself through the emergency hatch.  “She’s powerless to stop this,” he shouted downward.  “But I’m not powerless and if there’s one fricking thing I’m not doing with my life, it’s spending one more minute with that elephant woman. Now jump, you little acrobat.  I’ll catch you.”

She tried a few times but was met with harsh disappointment.  She breathed hard and explained her problem.  “It’s hard to jump in an elevator.  The floor is moving up while I’m jumping,” she carped.

“I’ll slow it down for you,” he said, fiddling with a set of controls on the outside of the elevator as it sped upward.

True to his word, it slowed down and Iona leaped high enough to catch his fingers.  With an effort that made Gage’s face red, he pulled her up through the hatch.  Once she was out, he replaced the section of ceiling he’d removed and he kept the elevator going at the same slow pace.  

“I don’t know how many people will be chasing us, but they’ll have people at the top by our ship.”

“Do you have a plan for getting on board the Cannonball III if they’re going to be waiting for us?” she panted.

“Yup.  There are half a dozen ways to get on board without being noticed by security.”

"Such as?"