Here

by Zolendz, Christine

  Too bad there isn’t any popcorn.

  Or maybe some Twizzlers.

  Oh, and fountain soda. Fountain soda is my favorite.

  Jesus, I miss Earth.

  On the screen in front of me, Rune watches me suspiciously with sidelong glances. His body feels coiled tight. He’s on constant guard, ready to defend himself from me.

  So, he was just as scared as I was? Interesting.

  He watches me through narrowed eyes. He tries to anticipate my every move. The first night we spend together in that furniture store, he listens for me through the door.

  When I fall asleep, he paces the rooms, sweating and breathing hard. The armor around me quakes and shivers, making it feel as if he suffered small seizures and tremors. I even watch him vomiting into dark corners then hiding all the evidence. He had no idea what was happening to his body.

  It looks like he was in withdrawal.

  He probably thought he was dying.

  But he didn’t.

  And everything he had ever been told about Earth, he learned was a lie.

  The more I think for myself inside this suit, the more I can separate Rune’s thoughts from mine. Why is Pious making me watch this crap? None of what I’m seeing would cause me to think Rune was a pathetic general. He was just a man, a man who was betrayed by his brother and anyone who was hooked up to this diabolical spacecraft.

  I don’t want to watch this anymore. My hair is a disaster, and honestly, I have barely eaten food in the last few months; why don’t I look thinner on this screen? Is this high definition? At least my skin looks clear.

  My face takes up the entire screen now.

  My pores look awesome, but I’m in desperate need of Chapstick.

  I’m sleeping somewhere.

  And I’m feeling a bit smug I don’t seem to snore.

  She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Her skin is beautifully pale, her hair wild, spun from darkness. My eyes devour her body whenever she looks away. I linger on her breasts too often for her not to notice, but I can’t stop following the curves of them, how they move when she breathes, or how they pebble to points when she’s cold.

  I want to run my fingers over her curves. Taste her skin.

  What in the actual fuck?

  If porn music starts playing, I think I might have a stroke right here.

  I need out of this thing.

  Every inch of my body screams for freedom.

  I don’t want to see this anymore. This is too personal. These are Rune’s private inner thoughts and I don’t want to hear or see or even acknowledge they exist.

  There’s a close-up of the skin just below my ear, and the curve of my neck.

  His arms around me as we hide in the cold darkness of the fitting room, protective, possessive, as desire courses uncontrollably through his veins.

  Rune kneeling over me, breathing in deeply as he hangs his face close to my hair. Inside my own stomach, fluttery waves roll. Then an overload of emotion pours over me in a tsunami, leaving me drowning and struggling for air. I fall to my knees with a flood of empathy and grief. How did he control himself? When his humanity burst in, feelings and memories that had been frozen, thawed and heightened to painful levels. Sensual. Skin touching skin. Flesh, heated and sweaty. His thoughts of our limbs tangled together, him imagining my hands on him, his hands on himself for the very first time. My body ached with the images. Pulsed and throbbed for a release.

  The screen blinks out and Pious is pressing buttons in a small panel along my collarbone. OVERRIDE blinks in bright neon red. Bells and whistles clang through my faceplate and it vibrates so violently, my skull screams out in pain. Inside, my muscles tremble with desire.

  “No, nononono!” I hear my voice shrieking. My fingertips turn cold and the icy feeling creeps quickly up my arms and crawls across my chest, numbing everything in its wake. Things slow. Sounds are diluted with an underwater effect. Mind-numbing pain. Searing of skin, bubbling of throat, my screams echo inside my skull. Please let me remember who I am, what I need to do. I need to keep control of my thoughts.

  My toes curl. Pins and needles climb up my legs. The metal fights to seep deeper into my skin, but it can’t.

  “Do you see what it is he wanted from you, parasite? Do you understand why stopping him was vital to our world?”

  I need to pretend I’m under his command. That’s the only way. I need to trick him. “Yes, General Pious,” I reply, standing and moving my left foot out a few inches from the right, resting my weight on the balls of my feet and clasping my hands behind my back. I grew up a soldier’s daughter, I can do this. Pious thinks if I’m wearing the faceplate I’ve been holding, he’s controlling my emotions, my thoughts, my actions.

  Thank God Jex pulled out that little thingy to override the control circuits when we first met. Now I get to see if any of my high school drama classes do anything for me. My guidance counselor promised me they would. I agreed just to get out of phys ed.

  In my head, I’m Princess Leia fighting the rebellion.

  In reality, I can barely see out of the viewfinder and walk into a wall.

  Twice.

  Pious starts stalking down the hallway and I’m stumbling behind him trying to keep up.

  “Do you have any notion what females on this vessel would do to my people? It was the cause of the breakdown of society on your Earth. Disease. Bacteria. All it takes is one flu-like virus. Up here my men are safe in a controlled environment. Healthy. The women need to be kept away, frozen. Used only for their eggs.”

  “Yes, General Pious. I understand.” You disgusting piece of shit, misogynistic slimeball.

  He stops short. “Although, I must admit as long as Rune is somewhere in this ship, he is a great threat to our controlled environment. Maybe keeping you close to me is a more suitable way to achieve his capture.” Pious whirls around and stands facing me. “Do you believe he will come to try and rescue you?”

  “Yes,” I say, because it’s the only thing I can say to keep me out of those cryo-containers. If I stay out, there’s a better chance I could save Claire and those women. If I’m frozen, I’m not saving anyone.

  “You could be bait, I believe,” he mumbles.

  “Yes, General Pious,” I agree. If my sister is in the cryo-preservation lab, I don’t know, but he’s ordered me to follow him so like a good little solider, I do.

  It breaks my heart as we stomp our way through the tin corridors. If she’s there, I have abandoned her, haven’t I?

  I clench my fists into steel balls, I can’t think like that. I can’t save her unless Pious is out of the room. I have to be smart about this, not an emotional wreck, just like Rune taught me before we stormed their camp back on Earth. It’s like a game of chess and I have to think about my moves five steps in advance.

  Maybe chess club would have been a better choice than drama in high school.

  “Female?” he asks, abruptly stopping and spinning to face me. “Last you saw Rune, was he alone?”

  “Yes, sir,” I lie.

  He does nothing but loom over me. Shit, does he know I’m lying? Can he tell? Rune had four people with him, and four rounds to zero, so I’m estimating, not lying. My armor gives nothing away and Pious’s metallic mouth slowly spreads into a grin. “Good, female. That’s very good, indeed.”

  40

  Kate

  I follow behind Pious until he stops at a large circular uploading station and taps on the small screen just to the right of it. A three-dimensional image flares up from the bottom, another Caelum with swirling green scrollwork etched into his face armor. “General Pious, sir. How may I be of service to you?”

  “The docking station to the preservation lab needs to be serviced,” Pious says, swiping at holographic lines and numbers that streak across the area in front of him in reds and yellows.

  “Yes, General,” the Caelum says, and with a slight hesitation continues with, “that will be put in queue. There has been a sudden influx
of repairs needed in loading docks across the ship, sir.”

  Pious’s hands still. “Repeat your words,” he demands.

  The floating head of the 3-D Caelum shows no emotion. “As of zero hundred hours, three hundred fifty-six stations have been infected with viruses, sir.”

  “Three hundred fifty-six stations? How could so many of them have a virus?” Pious slams his armored fist against the screen, splitting a hairline crack right down its middle. “Fix them immediately, for Solar sake!”

  “Sir, yes, sir. Maintenance believes it is from being in the Earth’s atmosphere for so long and their rudimentary technology not adapting to ours.”

  Pious punches through the hovering face and smashes his fist through the screen plate behind it, shattering glittery shards of glass everywhere. “Just fix it or you’ll all find yourselves unloadable, abandoned in that same toxic atmosphere!”

  Ooh. That’s harsh.

  Pious spins on me. “Do you know of this?” he roars.

  “Of what?” Of his ship falling apart? How in the world would I know anything about that?

  Pious clenches his fists, his deep back holes for eyes seeming to bore into mine. He steps forward, closing the small space between us, and grabs onto both my arms. “Does he think he could break my ship, one piece at a time, and not get caught?”

  “W-who?” I ask, holding up my hands and trying to move out of his grasp.

  His metallic fingers grip tighter. “Tell me what his plans are, female.”

  “I don’t know what his plans are—”

  “Liar,” he spits the words out through gritted gears. “Listen to me, Kate,” he says, emphasizing each word, “I am going to kill him once and for all. But before that, female? You will breed my heirs. I will punish him for all he’s done through you.”

  My feet lift off the ground and my back smashes into the uploading dock. A scream rips out of my mouth before I can stop it and he’s plugging me into the ship. “What are you going to do? What are you—"

  “I’m going to read your memories, and find out where my parasite-loving brother is.”

  “What? My memories. That’s…No…” I try to kick my leg out at him, but I’m instantly linked into the docking station.

  His hand is at my neck, his fingers pressing into the armor that coats my throat. “Stay still, or I’ll kill you right now and extract your eggs myself right here.”

  I stop struggling.

  On each side of me, lights and projected shapes dance across my viewfinder.

  Dammit. Can he really read my memories? I need to clear my head. I can’t think of Rune hiding on the ship somewhere. He’s my only ticket off this tin can. I need him to stay alive and help me.

  Codes zip across my vision. Numbers. Symbols. Pious’s age. Weight. He’s twenty-two, and he weighs one hundred and ninety pounds. His emotional status says he’s dangerously enraged.

  Good, I’m glad he is.

  Electricity surges under the metal covering my arms and legs. My own health stats say I’m updating and I’ll be optimal in less than two minutes. A small countdown clock blinks and ticks on the bottom of the screen.

  Static pulses in my ears and waves of light dance through my view. Every inch of my scalp heats, the metal searing deeper into my flesh, pouring what feels like fire right into my brain.

  “Soon, female.” Pious steps closer, leaning his masked face eye level with mine. “Soon, I’ll know all your secrets.”

  I’m screwed. All my secrets? What the hell does he mean by that?

  I open my mouth to talk, to protest, to shout, but Pious leans in closer. His voice crawls like maggots down my neck. “All your fears.”

  Suddenly my vision goes black and a small pinpoint of white light spreads from the very middle. The view blurs, then focuses, like I’m watching one of those ancient home videos my grandparents made when they were young. Two small girls, who can’t be more than five come stumbling down a long carpeted staircase, rubbing their eyes. They’re twins. You can tell, even though they look so different. One dark-haired and green-eyed, the other carries the same characteristics, but her eyes are set too far apart on her perfect little face, and the small cleft in her lip has yet to be fixed. It’s me and Claire. “Did Santa come? Did he?” five-year-old me asks while Claire clasps her plump little fists at the collar of her pajamas.

  “Come in and see, girls!” My mother’s voice is warm and happy. My father’s laughter rings out from somewhere behind her. I don’t remember this Christmas. I don’t remember any Christmas my father was home to celebrate with us.

  Claire stumbles ahead of me, squealing and tearing at all the presents.

  “Oh, Claire, sweetie, wait. You have to only unwrap the ones with your name on them…”

  But Claire’s too small to understand, and I stand back and watch as Claire opens two of every toy we asked for.

  “Come here, Katie-girl,” my father’s voice hums. “I’m sorry about that, Santa should have separated them a little better.”

  “It’s okay, Daddy. I’ll write that in my letter to him next year.” And even though I see my eyes shut tight as I snuggle onto my father’s lap, I can hear the tears in my voice.

  Pious grunts out a harsh command and the scene cuts out. “Too far, for Solar sake, I need more recent memories!”

  Suddenly, my forehead feels overheated and my mind races with disconcerting images. We’re in the waiting area of the psychiatric ward in a hospital. My mother is crying, holding my sister’s hand. “Katie,” she says, turning to me with bloodshot eyes, “you’re going to have to be a big girl for me now on, you’re going to have to help mommy take care of Claire and daddy now.” What a horrible day that was—what a shitty memory to replay. I hated that day.

  The screen pops and zaps to a snowy day in Central Park, and Claire and I are watching some older kids play, when a giant ball of packed ice collides into the bottom of my chin and throat. Ice and snow fall down into the collar of my coat, instantly sending chills down my spine. I hear the kids who threw the snowball at me laughing. The crazies, they called us. I bring my gloved hand up to my chin and try hard not to cry in front of them. They crowd around us and point and laugh and call us horrible things. When I pull my hand away from my chin to keep the boys away from Claire, it’s covered with blood.

  I needed stitches that night, but my mother was working the night shift and instead of going to the hospital, I needed to stay home and watch Claire and my father.

  I still have a scar.

  The scene cuts into the back seat of a car. Leather interior, blacked-out windows. Shit. This was a few months ago just before the world went bad—when I snuck out of the apartment to meet Jason Moorings.

  His lips were on mine, fast and desperate. “Babe, babe?” he says, breathlessly pulling his head back. “You sure your sister or your crazy-ass dad ain’t going to start banging on the windows?” His eyes dart to the window, and the fat drops of rain splattering against it. “Because the last few days of cockblocking us have given me a bad case of blue balls, you know?”

  I pop the button open on his jeans and smile. He had no idea I needed it more than he did. Claire followed me everywhere. Every party, every date. My father, disillusioned and afraid, could never be left alone. Jason and I were only alone a handful of times so far, and they were such good times, I needed more of that. I needed a break to just live a normal life and have a normal relationship. I was tired of being my sister’s keeper. Tired of being my father’s too.

  “I need inside you, Kate.”

  I lean in and kiss him, slow at first, until all we can hear is our breaths, heavy with want, filling the small space.

  “I need more,” he murmurs pulling up my shirt and pushing down the front of my bra to free my breasts. His words build an ache between my thighs. His mouth is on my nipple, sucking, teasing, tasting.

  It’s getting hotter in the car; our panting mixes with the heat of the night and the back of my neck begins to perspire
making it all the more arousing. Fat drops of rain splatter against the back windshield, not heavy, but enough to blur the outside world. Jason slides my pants down, fumbling with nervous hands. I face away, raising my bottom in the air.

  As he tries to free his erection from his pants, I watch over my shoulder as it presses against his jeans until his zipper is open and it bobs out, hard and long. His fingers tremble as he slides a condom on, his breathing gets faster, raspier. His hand grips around its sheathed girth, and I shift back, pushing myself right over him until he slides inside me with a low, soft moan. It’s so hot in the car it feels like we’re sliding and melting together.

  He’s so hard and throbbing I’m already so close to coming, it’s embarrassing. His fingers press into my hips and his thrusts shift steadily from long and slow to hard and fast. Until he’s slapping into me, grunting and gasping.

  He presses his chest to my back and bites softly at the skin on my shoulder. His arms wrap around in front of me and one hand finds its way between my legs to rub his fingers over me hard and fast. My knees instantly go weak and my orgasm is building and building until Claire starts banging frantically on the window.

  My entire body screams.

  I never wanted to tear this faceplate off me like I do right now. My chest burns with humiliation, my whole body feels lit on fire.

  Pious tilts his head at me. “Why would you want to save her? She was broken. So was your father. His mind was shattered.” I feel him step closer. “They were always your responsibility.”

  I don’t justify anything he says to me with an answer. It’s my cross to bear. He’s not seeing my entire life; he’s watching snippets caught out of context…it wasn’t always so—

  The viewfinder darkens again. Jesus, what the hell is next? I do not want to watch myself lose my virginity or—

  “Kate?” a voice softly whispers.

  My mouth falls open but I’m too speechless at the moment to make a sound.

  “Kate?” the voice whispers again.