Merely a Madness Read Online Free PDF Page B

the one to tell them.
    Hannah shifts against the wall, puts her head back on his shoulder, and mumbles something in her sleep.
    Mullen freezes, and he just can't ignore it any more. He wants to. God, does he want to. He wants to sink back into the soft, marshmellowiness of his mind, into the part of him that's fascinated by damp stains and smoke spirals.
    He can't. There's too much behind that door marked Do Not Ever Fucking Open . It comes spilling out whether he wants it to or not.
    His security key, his passwords and codes. It's not low-level stuff. The Earthlings will be able to use it to unlock almost anything they want in the mines. Almost every security level Harbin-Beck has on Earth can now be bypassed. What a fortunate coincidence that the Earthlings had Mullen on Earth now . How fortunate for them that they somehow knew his identity. How fortunate that they knew he had his security key. How very fortunate.
    Arnou had put his hand out in the tunnel without saying a word, and Hannah had known immediately what the Earthling had wanted from him. Maybe she'd just guessed, but Mullen knows Hannah. He knows the way her mind works. She should have been the one who thought Arnou wanted to shake hands.
    All the politicking and campaigning – mine protests, saving the Valadez elevator (good luck with that), Earthling rights – he'd always known she wanted autonomy for the Earth. They'd had enough arguments about it, but he'd never thought she would be so stupid .
    There's a tightness in his stomach. It's tied into a knot that may never come undone. His vision is blurry, and his chest hurts. He's shivering with something that feels like fever, but can’t be. He's not sure what he feels. Some of it is anger, some is sorrow. Mostly, it just hurts.
    Mullen shifts away from her again, and this time Hannah wakes up. She twists towards him, and begins to smile. It washes away when she sees the look on his face.
    “Sweetheart …” she says.
    “Am I?”
    “ Yes . God, yes.”
    He can't look at her, doesn't want to, but she cups his jaw in her slim fingers and turns his face to look at her. And it's Hannah , the same Hannah he's always loved, with her ridiculously green eyes, and the freckles he likes to kiss. The one who …
    He can't help it. He has to ask. “Was it just about the codes?”
    And then he sees the shock and hurt on her face, and he'd give the Earth, or even Mars, to take the question back. Then he remembers, and the part of him that is angry rises up without asking. “You lied to me. To me. ”
    “I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you,” she says, as if there's a difference. “Arnou said you can stay. Everyone else will get ransomed and sent home, but you'll be allowed to stay.”
    “I don't want to stay! Are you insane? Why would we want to stay? This place is wrong . The people are wrong . Nobody sane would want to stay!”
    “ I want to stay,” she says softly. “I'm going to stay.”
    He feels like he's been punched in the gut. It had never occurred to him that, whatever happened, they might not do it together. She might not want to do it together.
    The rage washes out of him. “Hannah, be serious. This place … the dirt, and the filth. By God, the people . You won't have any sort of life here among these creatures.”
    When she answers, her voice is so soft that he strains to hear. “You don't see them as people.”
    They've had so many arguments over the years. He can't believe this is the one it's coming down to. He gestures out of the window. There are still a few of the brutes twirling about and shouting, but now most of them have just passed out in the mud. He doesn't know if it's from exhaustion or whatever local moonshine they've got round here, but these are animals that will drink or dance until they sink into filth. They're not people. Not really.
    “Look at them,” he says. “It's kind of hard.”
    “No. No, it's not,” she says. “It's not their fault they're like that. It's