Jupiter

PROLOGUE: ORBITAL STATION GOLD

It took six of them to drown him.

Reluctantly, grudgingly, Grant Archer had stripped himself naked, as they had ordered him to do. But once they pushed him to the edge of the big tank, he knew he would not go into it without a fight.

The augmented gorilla grabbed Grant’s right arm; she was careful not to snap his bones, but her powerful grip was painful all the same. Two of the human guards held his left arm while a third wrapped him around the middle and still another lifted his bare feet off the deck so he couldn’t get any leverage for his wild-eyed struggles.

All this in nearly total silence. Grant didn’t scream or roar at them, he didn’t plead or curse. The only sounds were the scuffing of the guards’ boots on the cold metal deck plates, the hard gasps of their labored breathing, and Grant’s own panicked, desperate panting.

The guard captain grimly, efficiently grasped Grant’s depilated head in both big meaty hands and pushed his face into the tank of thick, oily liquid.

Grant squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath until his chest felt as if it would burst. He was burning inside, suffocating, drowning. The pain was unbearable. He couldn’t breathe. He dared not breathe. No matter what they had told him, he knew down at the deepest level of his being that this was going to kill him.

No air! Can’t breathe!

Reflex overpowered his mind. Despite himself, despite his terror, he sucked in a breath. And gagged. He tried to scream, to cry out, to beg for help or mercy. His lungs filled with the icy liquid. His whole body spasmed, shuddered with the last hope of life as they pushed his naked body all the way into the tank with a final pitiless shove and he sank down, deeper and deeper.

He opened his eyes. There were lights down there. He was breathing! Coughing, choking, his body racked with uncontrollable spasms. But he was breathing. The liquid filled his lungs and he could breathe it. Just like regular air, they had told him. A lie, a vicious lie. It was cold and thick, utterly foreign, alien, slimy and horrible.

But he could breathe.

He sank toward the lights. Blinking, squinting in their glare, he saw that there were other naked hairless bodies down there waiting for him.

“Welcome to the team,” a sarcastic voice boomed in his ears, deep, slow, reverberating.

Another voice, not as loud but even more basso profundo, said, “Okay, let’s get him prepped for the surgery.”