Realization

Court relaxed against the side of the truck. He was a bit tired of all the female attention that wasn't Lucy. The Amazons seemed to think that Lucy was bullying him in some fashion he just wasn't aware of.

Court snorted. He was totally aware of why they thought so. He wasn't getting bulled. If anything, Lucy was probably the one being bullied. She never protested any of the more over the top things he did to get her affection.

Then again, there wasn't much he could actually do. Until recently, they were living hundreds of miles apart with only furtive conversations through their communicators keeping them in touch.

Court paused at that thought. He looked at his bare wrist and concentrated. Surfacing from his skin, his communicator turned dark blue for ease of use. Court spared a second to wonder about that. Despite all his and Jebediah's attempts, they'd never been able to crack the communicators' source code. The communicators, however, had no qualms about falling under his spell in a limited fashion.

It was times like those that he could understand just why the overlords wanted to know how he did it. If Court was being truthful with himself, he would admit that any power, no matter how minor, would also like to know and duplicate it if possible.

Court rubbed his suddenly aching head. It felt as if a thousand new voices had decided to shout all at once. Then his head shot up as he stared towards the house.

Aarti had said that the door could open anywhere without any notice. He'd experienced it himself during his last escape from custody.

He glanced down at his communicator. He could feel the slightest twinge from it, like it wanted to whisper something to someone. He clamped down on it, smothering it. Court's breath rasped in his lungs as he snatched up his laptop and scrambled under the truck, tucking himself behind the tires.

With a fierce thought, he located the others' communicators and carefully tweaked them off from the newfound communication net that had formed. He winced as he was bombarded by more communicators. Through the pain, he slowly counted.

There had to be more than fifty new communicator signals appearing. Court swallowed hard. The Amazons would probably have no problem with that many invaders, but the last he'd seen of them, they'd been setting up a perimeter around the massive property Simone's grandfather owned.

Court reached out, tentatively searching for any open lines of communications. He wasn't that shocked to find that other than the communicators, everything else seemed to be blocked and nonexistent to his senses. They must have set up a jammer when they came through that blasted door.

Court spared a moment to snarl at Aarti. If she hadn't been fighting over whatever it was, perhaps the overlords wouldn't have that stupid, nonsensical hat. He drew in a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

As far as he was aware, Aarti was inside with everyone else who mattered. Lucy was in there but hopefully aware of the situation and hiding. Hiding wouldn't last for long from what he was sensing from the communicators. The overlords must have suspected that he could silence the location beacons. He could almost feel the diagnostics running nonstop in the new communicators. No matter how fast he was, he couldn't keep silencing them without taking some form of damage.

Plus, doing so would be distracting. It would be all too easy for someone to sneak up on him and that would be it. Jebediah was also inside, so if both of them were out of commission, anything that Lucy had planned would be thoroughly kaput.

Court rested his hand over the communicator on his wrist. Taking a deep breath, he pushed as hard as he could towards it, mentally searching for a hint.

"Artevis rul mokeart vris," snarled into his brain.

Court's eyes popped open. He knew that language, that phrase.

"Resistance will be punished," he mouthed. He couldn't figure out who that was directed at.

"Mreat kul saavea. Take five and go that way," the voice continued. "The transports outside are numerous. Do not attract the attention of the ones who came."

"My liege, most of the children are this way," a female voice sounded.

Court pulled his attention away from the communicator. He cautiously opened his laptop, using his shirt to dampen the glow from the screen. He regretted not wearing a jacket. He was sure that Lucy hadn't known he would need it when she was teasing him about it earlier, but now he wished that he hadn't been trying to show off his nascent muscles to her and had worn it.

A few quick swipes and he was into the surveillance system of the mansion and its grounds. The laptop screen was immediately split into sixteen mini-screens. The ones showing outside had Amazons in them while the interior was filled with men and aliens in all-too-familiar uniforms.

Court gulped as Overlord Pleja stalked into view, walking down a hallway. A petite woman dressed as a maid was next to him, smiling happily.

"How is Pleja here? Didn't he die," Court muttered to himself. Then he glanced around nervously. With his luck, someone would notice the kid under the truck. "What's it going to take for him to kick the bucket," Court continued, his voice more vicious than before.

Pleja had loved tormenting them all. He was the one who came up with the worst tortures—well, experiments—for the children. He was also the one who had final say over who was a failed product.

All the creche children hated and feared him in the same measure, especially the ones from Lucy's creche. Her creche had the highest number of failed products among the creches. Court had checked before the Liberation; not all of the failed products were actual failures. Some had produced interesting result that Pleja was interested in seeing if he could reproduce.

The one thing that had come from his experiments was that some genetic aberrances couldn't be replicated. They had to be inherited to be passed along. The children in those cases were one-offs, genetic sports to be kinder.

It had been Pleja's notes about Lucy that had finally turned Court against his parents and their obsessive adulation of the overlords.

To this day, Court thanked his parents for inflicting him with those diseases to see if having the flu and chicken pox would affect his nascent abilities. It was him being bored that led to him reading the research notes of the labs closest to his parents' quarters.

Court pulled his mind away from the past. He checked the other surveillance images. The one of a boardroom caught his attention. It looked like the people there weren't aware of the incursion yet. His eyes landed on what looked like a computer projector.

Simone's grandfather really had gone all out in his furnishings. Court had seen corporate boardrooms that weren't as well equipped.

He flexed his fingers. He could, at least, warn someone.