Lisbet swallowed a mouthful of disgust. “Isn’t that when they block off the mine and pretend it’s not in use anymore when people are actually trapped down there?”

“Exactly. They’ve turned the passages into a palace fit for a king, taken a bunch of servants down with them, and blocked off the entrance. They use their old railway systems to send in supplies and then they do whatever they want to their servants for as long as they want. It’s inhumane and psychotic. Do you know how often these pleasure palaces get uncovered?”

“Almost never,” Lisbet answered, thinking of the thing she wanted to think about the least.

“Yes. Almost never. It’s difficult to scan the planet, to get proper information about what underground canals or tunnels run where. The mining companies keep the government in the dark about where their tunnels go and how deep they run. And… What do you think is the worst thing about their activities?”

Lisbet swallowed. “I don’t know.”

He answered his question for her. “It interferes with our terraforming efforts. Let me explain how terraforming works. The fastest way to gain an atmosphere for a planet or a moon is to set off a series of very lethal bombs. The byproduct of the explosions will gift the planet gasses that can be worked with to create breathable air. That is how Ganymede, Callisto, and Io got their atmospheres so quickly and why Mars has none. When the terraforming teams arrived at the Jovian moons, no one was living there. They didn’t have to worry about destroying infrastructure or upsetting people’s lives with their bombs. They could just build their towers to generate their artificial magnetic poles, set off their bombs, and their moons were inhabitable in a frightening amount of time. Why do you think that hasn’t happened for Mars?”

“The mining companies are stopping it because they don’t want their mines destroyed and worse than that, they don’t want their pleasure palaces to collapse. They’re holding up permissions and dragging their bums in the sand so fiercely that no one can meet any of their terraforming goals,” Lisbet answered.

“Very good. That is exactly why terraforming Mars is so difficult. Now,” he said, standing up and moving toward her. “What do you think will happen if I merely order everyone to evacuate the planet while I bomb it? Remember, there are people trapped underground.”

“The miners will leave their slaves underground and only evacuate themselves?” she said, feeling grim.

“Worse. Everyone is refusing to leave. They’re holding people hostage underground. We’re having trouble finding them, but even worse still, if we do find them, what do we do with them?”

“Just tell me,” she said crossly.

“The Mammoth ships Sleeping Beauty Inc. sent us were all filled to the brim with empty cryochambers—hundreds of thousands of them. Yours was the only one inhabited. We need to get people out of the ground, get them in orbit, and put them to sleep. It was a big secret what we were transporting when I ordered you from Sleeping Beauty Inc. We hoped everyone would think all that kerfuffle was for you alone. I hoped everyone would believe that I had three Mammoth ships to transport my wife from Sleeping Beauty Inc. Sadly, the information leaked and we had to fight a battle in space.”

“How did that work?” Lisbet wondered, thinking of everything she knew about explosions and how they needed air to accomplish combustion.

“With harpoons mostly. That way we could get our ammunition back. They weren’t expecting us to be ready and we killed a lot of miners.”

“You couldn’t save them?”

“We tore holes in their ships and let the air out. We still don’t know the exact death count. It has only been a few days since everything happened. There are so many empty ships and dead bodies floating around, orbiting Mars. It’s completely possible that some of them will fall from the sky.”

Lisbet put a hand to her throat. That was horrific.

“Naturally, the ships will fall first. We’ll see where they land. Now, listen Lisbet,” he said, getting so close to her that she could almost see the pixels that made up his face. “You’ve already done an incredible amount of work for our cause just being aboard that ship, just being our excuse—unwittingly, I know. The situation has changed since you signed the papers back on Earth. First, I need to remind you that doing public relations for me is essentially taking up a military position in the middle of a war. I asked for you because you were the most serious person up for sale through Sleeping Beauty Inc. I believe you can be my mouthpiece and say what I need you to say. Secondly, you need to remember all the people we’re trying to save. We would not have fought the miners or killed them in space if they hadn’t tried desperately to take down the ships carrying the cryochambers that will save hundreds of thousands of slaves. Don’t forget, our fighting the miners protected you. Please, join our cause to save the slaves underground and change Mars so that when someone wants to run, they have air to breathe so they can run.”

The charisma was so thick Lisbet was almost choking on it. She was almost crying. She was almost going to faint. “I’m…” she struggled to speak.

“You don’t have to worry about anything today,” he said, backing off and giving her digital room to breathe. “I said I’ve given you two weeks to honeymoon with me. There will be plenty of time for you to process all that I’ve told you. I will also provide you with information packs for you to read, so you can learn even more when we’re not talking.”

Lisbet was overwhelmed. She had never been asked to do anything important in her whole life. “I… uh…” she fumbled, hearing how vague she sounded when she spoke out loud.

His brown stag eyes didn’t show any emotion she could understand. He just looked at her with an expression as dead as the glass eyes of a taxidermied deer head mounted on the wall. “Don’t worry about a thing. You’re the new Helen of Troy, the new Cleopatra, and the new Joan of Arc whether you do anything or not.” 

The only thing that happened in Lisbet’s mind at the moment was that she was going to be one hell of a disappointment the moment the photographer pointed his lens at her. She was not beautiful. What Vantz was saying was nonsense. He bought her for her mind, for her father’s reputation and crumbling riches, for courage he was swearing she had, but everyone else was going to look for a beautiful woman and they were going to be crushed when they didn’t get it. She wasn’t even allowed to wear makeup!

Vantz turned away from her and brought up a large floating screen rimmed in red. “Let me ease your scientific mind by taking you through the required phases of terraforming a planet. Since Ganymede is three-fourths the size of Mars, we’ll use Ganymede as an example. I will also be sending you papers to read on the subject. You were a physics student. You should eat it up.”

“Wait,” she said, interrupting him. “What do I look like to you? In the VR world, I see nothing when I look down.”

“You look like a crash test dummy.”

“Literally?”

“Yes. What were you expecting? We haven’t had time to configure a different look for you.”

“Your Helen of Troy looks like a crash test dummy?” Lisbet said slowly and deliberately. 

He did not reply.

“How was your appearance generated?” Lisbet demanded.

Vantz sighed and then answered. “I scrolled through a list of possible body types, then I chose the body that was called The Classic Gentleman. Then I went through a list of possible heads, discarded all of them, and chose this one from a hunting game. I mashed them together and got something similar to this. But I did all that years ago. A gentleman with a stag head has been my avatar for the last seven years. What you are seeing now is a fresh skin one of my friends cooked up as a wedding present. You should know that the way I look now has nothing to do with my actual appearance.”

“Well, obviously you are not a deer man,” Lisbet huffed, completely unaware that it sounded like she said he was not a dear man. 

Vantz smirked.

“I suppose what I look like in VR doesn’t matter to you,” she retorted.

“It doesn’t,” he said simply and turned his head to a floating red-rimmed screen he’d made appear in the air beside his head. He was looking at the agenda he’d made. “You can choose an avatar with Charcoal later. Do you have any other questions for me?”

“When are you coming back to the castle?” she asked.

He made the red screen disappear with a flick of his wrist and turned back to Lisbet. “You should know that you should never expect an in-person meeting with me. I thought Charcoal and Beck made it very clear that I have a ton of work to do and I need you to make it ‘seem’ like I’m in the castle with you when I am elsewhere working. That is the most important part of your position. Is that clear?”

He didn’t want to be with her?

A man like him did not want to be with her?

Suddenly, Lisbet felt the weight of the Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet around her wrist more heavily than before. It was a thin thing. It was supposed to be almost undetectable, but the VR controls strapped to her wrist made the bracelet cut into her skin. It was heavy and it was biting her.

Vantz had bought her. Even if she was his wife, she was still his slave. It was in the contract that if she didn’t obey, he could electrocute her. She needed to obey. 

She nodded compliantly.

“You don’t need to look so concerned,” Vantz said kindly. 

“I wasn’t aware that this machine could translate any of my facial expressions,” she responded.

“It can’t, but I’ve been talking to people through virtual reality for a long time and I know how you’re feeling from other markers. I’m not expecting you to obey me blindly. That’s why I’ve blocked off so much of my time to teach you what I’m doing, and by extension, what you’ll be doing.”

“And you did not bring me here so that I would be your wife?” she asked, stunned. She thought all Sleeping Beauty Inc. models did tours of their master’s bedroom.

“In name only,” he answered dryly. “Considering the work I’m doing, buying a woman and forcing her to go to bed with me is the last thing I’d ever want to do.”

He kept talking, but Lisbet was too overwhelmed to keep listening.