Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) by McCullough Crawford Page A

dismantled, the officer seemingly in charge approaches the huddled mass of academics. He chooses to address them without artificial amplification, but his voice can still be heard clearly by all in the deathly quiet room.
    “You are all to surrender your identification and remain here until instructed otherwise. You are not to talk.”
    He charges a junior officer with ensuring these tasks are executed before disappearing into the rest of the hotel with the majority of his soldiers.
    Jon can barely think, his mind churning in circles but only managing to process the obvious. Their stuffy conference is being held by the government for something, there are guns pointed at him and Lilianne. His mind loops, blinded by the strangeness of the situation, and he moves a little nearer to her, drawing comfort from her closeness.
    Docilely, he hands his identification to the soldier who comes for it, and then leans back against the wall.
    “Jon Denhart, I see. And…” the soldier says, taking and scanning first Jon’s identification and then his advisor’s, “Ms. Lilianne Esmali. You will be notified if charges are brought against you. In the meantime, remain here.”
    The soldier moves on to the next knot of huddled academics and repeats the process. Time passes, the artificial light overhead does not change, but he knows it is clearly well into the afternoon before their identifications are returned, because his stomach is growling with hunger. No food or water arrives, and no one is brave enough to ask for it. More time passes, seemingly an equally long eternity as the duration during which their IDs were gone, and then this period is ended by a change in the soldiers who are guarding them. Eventually, after what must be close to twelve hours since the conference was interrupted, exhaustion, hunger, and dehydration begin to take their toll on the huddled academics. Slowly, one by one, Jon watches his distinguished colleagues fall asleep where they lie, on the carpet or propped against the wall. He manages to last another couple of hours before he too falls asleep, his head resting atop his advisor’s dark curls as her head rests on his shoulder. The shackles on their wrists and the shackles separating them socially forgotten in their shared state of human exhaustion.

Chapter 13
    Western Mountains
    Abandoned Military Base
     
    Deep underground, where it is damp and confining, and the walls seem to inch closer when you look away, Gavitte feels like there is one thing exploding with enough energy that it should bring down the whole mountain. He is sitting in a sterile and sequestered conference room, its walls painted off-white, the display boards smudged with partially removed tape and poorly erased drawings. The florescent lights glare unremittingly down upon the table, but Gavitte does not care. He is focused directly across the table at Angelina. He had started the meeting only stealing momentary glances in her direction, but as the hours wore by, he slowly lost focus, and now his mind has followed its own path away from the discussion in the room.
    He feels that every minute they spend in the same room, the air between them becomes more and more heated. His heart races and palms grow sweaty. Insisting that he is not deluding himself, he concludes that he can’t just be making this all up in his head. Sure she has been aloof most of the time they have been in the base. But there was that moment in the truck on the way up from the train station, the note in the book she gave him for the trip out here, and, of course, there was the mysterious note he received before he had even met her. He can’t be imagining it all, she must be feeling something too. How could she not? The way she kissed him in the janitor’s closet at the train station was real, not just a ploy to keep him playing along, right? His entire world has been thrown upside down because of her, and not just because he has lost his job and taken up with the