by Zara Starr
“I know you, don’t I?” he asked in a loud voice.
Mal shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“No, I never forget a face. And you have a very memorable face. Who are you?”
Mal shook his head again. He didn’t want to draw any attention to himself. He was sure that his clothes were already suspicious, especially seeing that he was bleeding out. Why wasn’t the wound healing enough? It could at least seal up the skin – if nothing else – so that the bleeding would stop. But it wouldn’t happen.
“Yes! That’s it! You are a gladiator. One of the gladiators that made it to the final in this season’s tournament! I tell you, I never forget a face! Mal, isn’t it?”
Mal shook his head over and over again. This person was drawing way too much attention to him. Mal couldn’t afford someone trying to capture him and take him back to the gladiator dome. Not now that he was so close to Tanya.
He still had two stops to go before he reached the stop that would spit him out right by Aratech, but he couldn’t afford to stay on the transit pod a moment longer. At the next stop, the moment the pod came to a halt, Mal hopped off to escape the passenger and his loud proclamations that he had hoped Mal would win.
Mal looked around. He wanted to find some kind of disguise, something that would hide his features so that others didn’t also recognize who he was. But then, right in front of him like a beacon, he saw the glowing logo of Aratech on a nearby skyscraper. When he had ended up in the wrong part of town, he had really been very close.
Now, he was closer.
The dark, glistening building was so tall, he could barely make out the top of it between the clouds. But it was unmistakably the right building. Mal walked closer to it, holding his side, ignoring the blood that wouldn’t stop flowing. At least it had slowed.
When Mal got into the lobby of the building, he tried to walk casually toward the small transport pod that took off and rose through the building in the center every few seconds. If he could sneak in like that without making much of a fuss, it would be better. He didn’t want to draw any more attention. He knew that he would have to fight if he did, and Mal didn’t have a lot of energy left. How much blood had he lost?
He glanced down at his wound, lifting his hand to gauge how fast the blood was flowing.
Despite having the bullet lodged inside his flesh, the blood had slowed considerably, the skin trying to knit itself together. His healing process had kicked in, it was just taking a lot longer since the bullet was causing problems.
But Mal couldn’t stop now. He had to finish this. He would worry about his wound later. After all, with how fast he healed, his body wouldn’t let him down – it would try to heal around the bullet as much as it could, continuously, and it wouldn’t let Mal bleed out. Besides, he was fortunate and he didn’t feel pain.
At least, that was something.
Mal almost made it to one of the pods when the guard noticed him.
“You!” the guard shouted.
Mal grunted. Why did they always shout like that? Why could they not, for once, treat him like a person who mattered?
But that wasn’t going to be his point of concern right now. The guard was running toward him and Mal had to do what he had been doing until now – he had to fight.
The bullet wound in his side bothered him. It didn’t hurt, but it stung – an indication that something was definitely wrong. He could feel the bullet moving inside him. Which meant the wound wasn’t going to heal right, or right away.
And that was what irritated him. The wound was a weakness. Right now, he wanted to be strong. Stronger than he had ever been. Because he wasn’t going to go back to captivity. Not ever again.
When the guard ran toward him, Mal crouched into his fighting stance. The guard faltered. Did he recognize Mal too? Did he know who he was, what he was capable of?
“I need backup!” the guard shouted.
Well, that was a resounding yes. The guard was a coward, Mal thought. He was too pathetic to fight his own battles.
Mal didn’t wait for the guard’s backup to arrive. He attacked first, getting right in there. The guards were trained to protect Slinin’s building, and this one knew what he was doing. He worked systematically, calculated.
That never worked in a fight. Mal had seen this approach before. In a fight, you couldn’t work with equations. That only worked on dummies in gyms, as if everything was rehearsed. When everyone had a role to play it was easy to do what needed to be done.
In the real world, with people who had all kinds of techniques, being calculated wasn’t going to work.
Mal had learned a long time ago to fight with his gut. He studied his opponent’s moves. He anticipated the next move. And he waited for that moment where everything felt just right before he finished it off.
This was exactly the same. The guard got in the first few hits because Mal was checking him out. He studied his movements, the way he stepped first before a punched and pulled back his shoulder when he turned, dropping it at the last minute so his body would follow.
Weaknesses, all of them. On top of anticipating the opponent’s next move, you had to make sure that you were unpredictable. Mal had worked for years to perfect an erratic fighting routine, one that couldn’t be predicted. Because he never planned ahead, he relied on his body and his skills to guide him in the moment.
This time was no different. Mal ducked after he had taken a few punches, nudging the guard to throw him off his balance when he missed the punch, and the guard fell to the ground with a cry. Mal wanted to let the guard get up – he was a good warrior and his clinical technique was just a lack of training.
After all, he must have trained to be a guard for just a short while before going on duty. And Mal had been a fighter all his life. To the guard, fighting was his job. To Mal, it was like breathing.
Mal admired the guard for committing. He was already pushing up. But the rest of them were coming around the corner, streaming into the lobby in a group of six guards. The guard on the floor just had to stay there.
Mal kicked him in the head, so hard that the Saithin guard collapsed, his head lolling to the side, unconscious.
The six guards didn’t wait to attack one by one the way the guards had at the arena when Mal had fought them there. They attacked together. There was always strength in numbers.
But Mal had taken on more than one opponent at a time too. At least three.
This was double that, but he was fighting for something very different this time. He was fighting for himself. And there was no competing with that, no hanging back.
The guards were quickly narrowed down to three anyway. It had been easy enough to take them out. They just didn’t have the right kind of experience. Mal thought it was strange that Slinin had guards that could be beaten so easily.
Maybe he had only prepared for what could come to him. No one ever worried about the slaves escaping. Because they usually didn’t.
Usually.
Mal made quick work of the last three guards. Suddenly, there were two. And then one.
He kicked the last guard in the gut so that he doubled over. Mal kicked him in the head and the body fell to the ground, deadweight.
They would only come to much later. And they would have awful headaches when they did wake up. Mal knew that the others felt pain differently than he did.
These were Saithin guards. They felt pain. And a lot of it.
Deep down, Mal felt a certain amount of glee that the Saithin guards were experiencing pain. Because they were captors and he had no respect for the species that thought it was acceptable to enslave anyone.
Mal looked around. The coast was clear. He glanced down at his wound. His shirt was stained deep red with his blood. He barely bled anymore but he felt the bullet in his side as he moved.
The good thing was that there was so much blood soaked into his shirt now, it was difficult to know where exactly it came from. Pain and injury were only weaknesses when othe
rs knew about it.
Mal headed toward the transport pod he had been aiming for when the guard had spotted him and climbed in. The door slid shut with a hiss and moved upward. This wasn’t the pod that Slinin himself would use. It was far too small, not nearly luxurious enough, and it moved along the back of the building. This was a servant pod.
Good. Mal didn’t want to be spotted. Traveling in a servant pod meant that he would be able to slip by unnoticed. After all, no one cared about the servants.
It was a damn shame, Mal thought. It was ridiculous that there were creatures who were worth less just because someone, somewhere, had decided it to be so. But being a servant was still not being a slave, and that was the worst of all. As long as they had their freedom, their lives would be okay.
The dark building was very tall, the pod taking its time to get to the top floor. But Mal knew that was where his old Master would be. At the very top of the highest tower in the city. He liked to make a statement.
When the pod finally came to a halt and the doors slid open, Mal realized that he had been spat out in the kitchen. A couple of Saithin stood at gleaming silver tables, chopping or mixing, each of them working feverishly at their little job.
When the pod door slid open, they all looked up at Mal and froze, stopping what they were doing.
“At ease,” Mal mumbled. But he knew that they were going to either do something or alert someone.
Mal moved through the kitchen, and when no one came after him, he abandoned his readiness to fight and ran through the room instead, eager to get to his destination. He went up a flight of stairs – if he was going to find Tanya anywhere, it was going to be in one of the entertainment rooms and not the servants’ quarters.
At the top of the stairs, Mal spotted a guard. It was an alien he had only seen one or two times during his entire life. The creature was large, with menacing features. As Mal came up the stairs, the creature turned toward him, hands spread out, knees bent – battle stance.
This was a different level of fighting. The guards downstairs hadn’t known what they were doing, not really. But this guy knew exactly what he needed to do.
Before he engaged, Mal looked over the guard’s shoulder, into what seemed like a very extravagant dining room. At one end, Slinin sat on a chair that looked like it was a throne. He held a plate in his hands, busy dishing food out of a large dish on the table.
Good, Mal was in the right place.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tanya
Tanya sat down opposite Slinin, relieved to be so far away from him. The length of the table was between them. Tanya didn’t know exactly why he hadn’t asked her to sit next to him, but she was perfectly fine with that. The monster creeped her out.
He looked almost exactly like the other Saithin she had encountered during her stay at the gladiator dome. Except for his coloring, of course. Where all the others had been a murky brown, he was red with bluish spots.
But something about him was so much creepier than the rest had been.
Maybe it was because she knew what he wanted from her. It wasn’t just the way he had looked at her when the contestants had come to choose the grand prize – a prize that he should not have gotten in the first place. After all, Mal had lost. It was also the fact that Slinin had decided it didn’t matter what the outcome of the fight had been, he would get what he wanted anyway.
He had purchased her as a slave, a sex slave.
That just made him disgusting to her.
When she thought about Mal, her heart sank. She felt the sorrow of losing him. She didn’t know whether he was alive or not, she sincerely hoped he was, but she knew that she would never see him again. Whether he lived or died, it boiled down to the same thing. To her, it was as if he hadn’t made it.
She didn’t want to ask what had happened to him. She didn’t want to share anything with this heartless monster. Because that was what the creature opposite her was. Heartless. Selfish. Disgusting. She couldn’t even look at him.
“You should eat,” he said, lifting his plate in a little gesture, trying to encourage her to dish food for herself the way he was.
Tanya didn’t have an appetite. She knew that if she ate, dinner would eventually come to an end. Next, this monster would strip her naked and use her.
She couldn’t bear the thought of it. Anxiety bubbled at the pit of her stomach and her skin erupted in goosebumps. The more she thought about it, the more terrified she became.
“You’re scared,” Slinin said after studying her for a moment. The way he said it suggested that it was strange to him, a surprise, almost. What did he expect?
“I don’t want to be here,” Tanya blurted out.
“Ah, yes, that is a normal sentiment for slaves who are not used to being owned. Soon, the feeling will pass and you will find it quite comfortable here. I will give you everything you need, and more. You are lucky that you are owned by someone like me. Someone else would not be nearly as gracious as I am.”
So, he wasn’t only a disgusting creep who was selfish and serious about getting what he wanted. He was also very full of himself. What a surprise. Not.
Tanya shook her head and turned it toward the window. Earlier, she had heard shooting down below. What kind of world was out there? If she tried to escape, what did she have to prepare for? Whatever it was, Tanya knew that it couldn’t be nearly as bad as being a sex slave to an alien monster like Slinin. At least, if she was free, she could take her chances.
Nothing down there could be worse.
There was a noise in the kitchen. Nothing that made Tanya look up, but Slinin froze, the dish he was using to get food still in the air. Slowly, eerily, he turned his insect head toward the dining room door where Morga was standing watch. He saw something. Tanya didn’t know how she knew – it wasn’t like the insects had expressions. But something about his features changed.
She craned her neck to see. What was Slinin looking at? Why did he look so angry?
Again, Tanya didn’t know why she knew that was the emotion that her Master felt. Certainly, it didn’t show on his features as anger in a way that Tanya had learned to recognize on faces that showed expression. Like human faces. Like a lot of other alien faces that weren’t Saithin.
“Let him pass,” Slinin said in a measured voice.
Morga did as he was told, he didn’t question his authority. He stepped aside and someone stepped into the room.
Not just anyone.
Mal.
Tanya’s heart beat faster and she flattened her hands on the table. He was alive? Oh, my God. She couldn’t believe it! And he had come here. All this way. Was it for her?
Tanya couldn’t imagine why else he would be there. He had mentioned that he didn’t leave the gladiator dome, no matter who he belonged to. Yet, here he was, on the other side of the city.
Tanya frowned, looking at Mal’s face. Something was wrong. Something about his expression…
She realized that the shirt he was wearing wasn’t supposed to be dark red. She didn’t know what color it was – probably an ugly Brown like all the other clothes the slaves had worn at the dome. He was bleeding. Badly. So much that most of the shirt had already been soaked.
His face wasn’t twisted in pain. She knew that he experienced it differently. But he was breathing heavily. His eyes were a little wider than usual. His lips were parted and his breathing was slightly labored. She knew what he looked like when he’d just breathed heavily from a fight. His heaving and panting were different.
Mal pressed his hand to his side.
He had been hurt, somehow. Recently, or else he would have healed.
God, what would it have taken for him to come here? What had he done to reach her?
“So, you have come to reclaim what was never yours,” Slinin said smoothly. There was something about the way he spoke – his tone cold and measured. Tanya wasn’t quite sure what he had in mind.
“I’ve come for Tanya,” Mal said.
Slinin laughed. “Tanya? Is that what you have decided to name her? As if she is already yours?”
“It’s her name,” Mal said.
Slinin shook his head. “Her name is whatever I decide. Or nothing at all, if that is what I choose. She belongs to me. You came here in vain.”
“I came here for what is rightfully mine,” Mal said.
“Rightfully yours?” Slinin asked, amused. “What are you talking about? You are nothing more than a slave. If you won – which you didn’t – she wouldn’t have belonged to you anyway. And I bought her. The transaction was legal.”
Mal shook his head. “She is not meant to be a slave. I am here to set her free.”
Slinin let out a creepy laugh, the same kind of laugh she had heard from him once before and again she wished that he would stop doing it, that he would never do it again. The sound was wrong from his insect mouth. Joy and happiness didn’t seem like it belonged on his features.
“I must say, I admire your tenacity,” he finally said after his laughing had faded away. “It is one of the reasons I bought you, initially. I saw a fighter in you that was like no other. I just couldn’t foresee that you would be my greatest disappointment.”
If the words hurt Mal, he didn’t show it. He looked at his previous Master with an expression that couldn’t be read. Tanya admired his strength.
“Morga,” Slinin commanded. “You can take him out now.”
Mal spun around the moment Slinin gave the order, sinking into a fighting position. Despite the obvious pain in his side, he was ready to fight. And he was so good at it, Tanya thought. A born warrior.
This time though, he was fighting for her.
But his opponent was bigger and stronger than anyone Mal had fought in the arena before. And unlike in the arena, where there was a semblance of rules, that wasn’t the case here. Either way, Mal knew what it was like to fight to the death. Tanya just hoped that whatever injury he had wouldn’t affect his ability to fight. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle Mal losing a second time, getting hurt. Possibly dying.