Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

39. The Haunting Past

Bo couldn 't sleep. The sun had gone down an hour ago and the entire camp was silent. Early to bed, early to rise she supposed. She knew, somewhere, Aston would probably be conspiring with his posse of equally restless young men, and planning who would go on the militia missions when the time came. She hoped he'd be one of the chosen. At least then she'd have a little bit of time away from him-- time to not think of what he'd said and why he'd said it.

In fact, she didn't want to even think of it now.

She rolled over in her bed, running her hands over her eyes even though all she could see was darkness. All she wanted was to sleep, yet she couldn't quiet her mind enough to shut it down. Because once she stopped thinking about Aston, she just started thinking about the Beast and how she should have been back at his mansion right now.

It wasn't, exactly, that she felt bad. She was just worried. Worried about nothing and everything. She told herself it was mostly that she didn't know what he'd do. He could attack them or bring his mansion right up to their gates or even spy on her with his stealth robot. It was unsettling, and she couldn't rest when she thought of that armory filled with every weapon under the sun. Aston might have new militia guns, but even he couldn't hold off power-canons and grenades.

Another hour slowly ticked by, each minute like an unending eon. Bo flipped back and forth on her cot, trying to find a comfortable position but always failing. She even sat up and fetched a bit of water from the canteens, but nothing eased her whirring mind.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. She drew the hanging sheet closer around her bed, making sure to hide the rest of the tent in case Felicia or her dad woke up. Then she leaned over and fumbled around under the cot until her hand landed on the satchel she stuffed with her belongings. She lay it on her lap and pulled out her books, her radio, and finally what she had pulled it out for. The display screen the Beast had given her before she'd left.

It lay heavy and cold in her hands as she pressed the power button and brought it to life. A harsh blue light played across her face and she blinked furiously to adjust. The screen flashed alien text at her and then went to the main screen where she took a moment to stumble her way through trying to remember how the Beast had shown her to activate the program to inhabit one of the Service-Matons. As she finally got the right button combination and the screen faded to black while it loaded, she told herself that she was only doing this to make sure that the Beast wasn't lurking anywhere nearby, waiting to attack.

The screen came back to show a marble pillar, of all things. Bo raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out what was going on. The pillar stared back, too close to see anything around it. Bo ran her hand over the screen, trying to see if she could steer away from the pillar, but with no luck. A moment later and the view changed just slightly. Now she saw one of the robot arms come into view, holding one of those stupid rags that they used to dust the house with. She groaned. Of course she'd be in control of a cleaning robot in one of the hallways. Not that she was controlling it very well... or at all.

"Oh, come on," she muttered. "I don't want to look at this stupid pillar. Can't you move or something?"

She was about to toss the display screen into her pile of dirty clothes, disgusted, but then the view shifted suddenly, blurring as the robot turned away from the pillar and faced out into the hallway. Bo froze, one hand holding the display screen over the edge of her cot and the other halfway through her hair.

"Is this... voice activated?" She pulled the screen back to her lap, about to feel really foolish if it wasn't. "All right, um, forward."

The robot glided forward, passing doors that Bo vaguely recognized as from the upstairs hallways.