“I look like a blimp.”
“Aw, honey. You’re carrying our baby. You’re carrying my baby. Do you know how that makes me feel, that your body is making my baby? I can’t… there aren’t words to describe it, I don’t think. I’m happy. I just want you and little Leya to be safe and well. Then I’ll have you, and Paul, and Leya. And life will be great.”
“We’re workin’ on it, I swear. I just want you to come home!”
“I know. I do, too. I’ll come home as fast as I can without getting myself or Rick killed, okay?”
“Okay.” They kissed, then Cally added, “Somebody else wants to talk to you, if that’s all right.”
“Is it Paul?”
“Yup.”
“Then it’s more than okay.”
Just then, little Paul popped into the virtual room. “DADDEEE!” he squealed, and ran to his father, who scooped up his avatar. Paul promptly gave him a slobbery kiss on the cheek; Nick tried not to grin, because he hadn’t known VR could do that.
“Hey there! How’s my little man?”
“I’m good, Daddy! Mommy’s sick, dough.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve just been talking to her about that.”
“She’s gonna gibs me a baybee sisser?”
“She sure is. A baby sister named Leya. Are you gonna love Leya?”
“Awready do. Mommy wets me wissen to Weya in her bewwy. Sometimes her pats my face when I do dat. Weya, not Mommy. Kinda feels wike a tap, oo knows?”
“Yes, I do. That’s good. Leya will be coming out to join us soon.”
“You gonna come home soon?”
“As soon as I can, son. Daddy has important work he’s trying to do, and he has to get that finished first.”
“Mommy says you’re twyin’ to ‘tect da Empewor?”
“That’s… pretty much it, yes. The Emperor and all of Sintar.”
“Dat’s big.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Dat’s im-imp-impawtent.” He forced out the big word.
“Yes, it’s very important.”
“Hokay. Do good, Daddy. Come home soon.”
He gave Nick a tight hug, then vanished from the VR channel.
The next morning, Callista Ames was carried by ambulance to the nearest hospital, in another hypertensive crisis. Her obstetrician met her there and she went into surgery almost immediately to perform a Caesarian section.
Leya Elaine Ashton was born at 10:32am in Imperial City. Even five weeks early, she weighed a whopping seven pounds, three ounces, and was twenty inches long. She was immediately placed in the NICU.
Mother Callista was closed up and placed in the obstetrics ICU, under strict bedrest orders, with around the clock cardiac monitoring, a stringent diet, and high doses of blood pressure medication.
Exposed!
“NO!” Callista Ames shouted at her husband in their private virtual room. “You should have been here! I need you here, Nick! I need you here now!”
“Cal, be reasonable,” Nick Ashton said, trying to calm her. “I’m on Carolina, in a situation that could get me killed. I can’t just pack up and leave.”
“You shouldn’t have gone in the first place! I told you not to go!”
“Cally,” he said, stern. “You know as well as I do that you did no such thing. You were unhappy about it, yes. But we both knew that the only other option would be disastrous for the Empire.”
“You could have sent someone else! You’ve got Richard Honda out there with you right now! I don’t have anybody!”
“And Rick didn’t become available until after I’d nearly arrived, and didn’t get here until after I’d been working at the consulate for two and a half weeks, and already met the consul,” Nick pointed out. “And you’re not alone. You have your parents, you have Lee and Maia, and you have The Team. I’ve been keeping up with things through Lee, Cal. I get that things haven’t gone well, and you’re scared, and you hurt from the surgery, and you feel bad, and your blood chemistry is fourteen and a half kinds of screwed up. But I’m only one man, Cal. And I only have Rick as a backup. Yes, the IPD is here, too, but I can’t talk to ‘em – I don’t dare. Cut me some slack. I’m doing the best I can with what I got to work with. I got ordered to do this, hon. You know it and I know it. I missed the birth of my baby girl, and I can never regain that. I’ll carry that regret to my grave. But don’t throw me out with the bath water because I’m stuck in a situation that I can’t do a whole lot about.”
“So leave now! Put Honda in there, and come home!”
“Cal, I can’t. I’m the one the consul knows and hopefully trusts. If I back out now, if I lose his trust, it may be him that comes after me next time. Let me show you something.”
“What?”
Nick pushed her an image file. VR rendered it as him pulling a photo from a pocket and handing it to her.
“Look at this.”
Cally looked at the image. It was the photo Rick Honda had taken of Nick the morning after Baron Beaudelaire had backhanded him with his fist. Nick was lying back in the recliner, his head cushioned with pillows, his neck stabilized with more pillows. Most of one side of his face was black, with blue, purple, and red around the periphery. His eye was swollen shut, his lips puffed out grotesquely on that side, his entire face and neck were swollen. There was an abrasion across his cheekbone where Beaudelaire’s ring had hit.
“Oh dear God,” she gasped. “Nick, what’s this? When did this…? Was this when you mailed me and told me you’d had some goons try to rough you up? That’s the decking you keep talking about?”
“Yes,” Nick confirmed. “Baron Beaudelaire, the consul for Garland, popped me with the back of his fist, right in the face. You
