Here

by Zolendz, Christine

  He moves up close behind me. “That is where you want to be?” he whispers into my hair.

  “It’s where I belong,” my words crack and tears well in my eyes. My family is there, it’s where I need to be.

  He grunts, then pulls a lever and presses a red flashing light.

  Sparks of adrenaline pinch and ignite over my skin. What is he doing? “What…what did you just do?” I whisper.

  Suddenly a bright white light blinds me and everything seems to move in slow motion. It starts in the middle of Earth, a dazzling flash that expands out and around, raining rocks and billowing fire through the dark matter. An endless explosion of color stretches out, churning my stomach and stopping my heart. It drops me to my knees. I scream and scream. I want the image to go away—to be a lie, a figment of my horrible imagination, but the clouds of gas and smoke swell and pulsate out where my planet used to be.

  “That corrects the situation, does it not? The destruction of your entire planet? Now, there’s nothing for you to do but stay here.”

  I slam the metal bindings into his legs and knees. Over and over. “Why? Why!” The room spins around me and my limbs begin to shake. “That’s not real,” I say, lips trembling. “It’s not real. It can’t be.”

  Pious’s hand grasps my chin and his body looms over me. “I assure you, my little female, it is real. And now, you belong here, with me.”

  Claire? Dad? Everyone? Everything?

  My world is gone?

  I feel lightheaded. Sick to my stomach.

  I feel empty and at the same time full of pain.

  This is beyond anything I’ve ever felt before.

  When Pious lets go of my chin, I tumble over, and the last thing I see is his metal-clad legs and the total annihilation of my home through the window behind him. My eyes cross. I can’t feel my shoulders or my legs. Everything around me spins faster and pulls me down.

  Then everything blinks out black.

  Pious’s chuckle echoes and fades until I hear nothing at all.

  51

  Kate

  I wake up with a jolt and fight to stay conscious. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. My head throbs as I stare at my pale reflection in the window, wishing for death. I can’t believe my world, everything and everyone I ever knew and loved, is gone. With one small press of a button Pious destroyed me.

  It feels as if a rope has tightened around my neck, and Pious kicked my legs out from under me. All the people that were left alive on Earth are gone. I’m the only human that remains breathing, outside one of Pious’s cryo-freezers.

  I close my eyes, but the nightmare plays in front of me in an anguishing loop of ruptured landscape and fiery carnage. My mind races frantically, trying to figure out how I’m supposed to keep on breathing, how to keep on fighting. There’s a volatile tremor just beneath my flesh waiting to erupt, waiting to rain down the hate and vengeance that he so desperately deserves.

  Out the window, it’s like the cosmos is set on pause, the explosion of gases and matter seem frozen in time, waiting to be put back together. But I know it never will be whole again.

  It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I say the words out loud, my voice cracking and brittle. It’s been quiet in the room for too long and the sound slices through the silence thickly. “Because I took your mask off?” I turn my head to face the monster. “You destroyed my whole planet just to punish me?”

  “The extinction of your planet and your people was imminent. You just made it happen sooner.” He crouches down beside me and slides a finger through the strands of my hair. “All you can do now is surrender to me.”

  I watch his lips as they move. I think, no, I know, if he tries to kiss me, I’ll bite him until I draw blood. How can he think I will surrender now? I have nothing left. He can have me when my body is good and dead, unusable to him. “Surrender to you?”

  “Of course. You have no planet to go back to, no family to worry over. Rune’s impending execution was set hours ago. You have nothing left, no choice, but me.” His fingers trail my jawline and slowly trace down my neck. And even though his touch is gentle, when he moves over the place he choked me before, a throbbing pain pulses over my skin.

  “I choose me. Not you,” I whisper, looking back out the window to my ruined home.

  His hand stills, right above my breast; his other hand pulls my face back in his direction and his gaze locks on mine. “What did you say?”

  “I choose me. I won’t surrender to you. You’ve taken everything away from me. There’s no negotiating now.” I push away from him and climb to my feet. “You can have my body when I’m dead. Until then, I will fight you until my last breath.”

  Pious bolts up and grabs me by the back of the neck, pulling me up against the front of his body tightly. My hands are still bound together by the wrists and I can’t shove him off me. His face smashes up into the side of my cheek and his tongue licks out and laps across my skin. “You still think you can win this war with me?” His breath smells putrid.

  He spins me around to face him, walking me backwards until my spine is flush against the cold metal wall. “You forgot about all the other women here, didn’t you? Why not negotiate for them?”

  “And where will they go? If you free them? Nowhere,” I say evenly. There’s no point in allowing him to think he’s getting under my skin. He’s already taken so much from me I won’t give him any more. “We all get to stay here in a tin can full of assholes.” I straighten my body, trying to make myself seem taller, stronger. “You may have won the war between our worlds, but not the fight between you and me. Get that straight in your brain.”

  Pious releases his grip on me and shifts away, fists clenching at his sides. “Mark me, female.” He points a finger at me. “You will serve my every need.”

  “I think we have a huge difference of opinion on what you need, Pious.”

  He punches a code into the door console, and it slides open, revealing two Caelum standing guard. For a split second I hold a small ray of hope one of them could be Jex and the other Tore, but the way they drag me out of the room tells me otherwise. It tells me there’s no hope at all.

  Pious storms ahead of the guards, shouting orders. “Transport her to the isolation ward. Put her in the holding cell next to the other prisoners.” He laughs as he gets to the end of the hallway. “Let’s see how quick she’ll be to change her mind, once there.”

  Then he’s gone, disappearing down another corridor, and the stomping of his footsteps getting lower until I hear him no more.

  The guards pull me in the opposite direction, and I stumble and drop my weight to the floor. I can’t make this easy for them. And I have to get myself out of these metal bindings. I look up to their metal faceplate with pleading eyes. “Can you please take off the restraints? I can’t walk with them on my ankles, and I certainly don’t need them on my wrists.” I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. “It’s not like I have any armor on to fight you with, I’m naked. If you haven’t noticed. What trouble could I possibly be to the both of you?”

  The guard on my right, taps out a code of some sort on the outside of my wrist while the guard on the left does the same to my ankles. That’s right, assholes. Let the weak little female go unrestrained. My heart begins to drum too fast. I try to calm my breathing and slow my pulse. I don’t want them alerted to my body signaling them I’m about to bolt. “Thank you,” I say loudly, placing a hand to my chest. My heart is racing from being with Pious.” I flutter my other hand in their direction. “Lead the way to the isolation ward. I’ll follow. You won’t get any trouble from me.”

  It works. The idiots lead the way. They walk two paces in front of me as I trail behind them. I’m shocked, but I don’t give myself time to think about it. I reach both my arms out as we make our way through the hallway until my fingers land on that familiar click and slide that tells me there’s a hidden panel.

  My heartrate doubles in speed, I can feel it pang in my chest as if it were tr
ying to burst free. I’m trembling with adrenaline and pure unadulterated panic. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and dive through the hidden opening, closing it immediately behind me. It happens so fast my pinky finger gets caught, and I bite my tongue not to yelp.

  They don’t realize I’m gone until it’s too late—not until I’m fleeing through the hidden walkways, away from them. I can hear their bewilderment echo through the walls. They think I disappeared, just vanished into thin air.

  Morons.

  This entire ship is full of idiots and I need to—

  I skid to a stop at a fork in the passageway. I need to get off this ship, but now there’s nowhere for me to go. There’s no one left for me to save. Suddenly all I hear is my own breaths, coming out in small hysterical spurts. Sweat breaks out over every inch of my skin. Even if I were to save the women on this ship, there is no place safe to take them, our planet is destroyed. Sweat drips down my forehead even though the air blowing through the tunnel is ice cold.

  I don’t know what I need to do. I don’t know what my next step should be—where do I run to?

  I push myself to move, to keep up the fast pace even when my legs ache and my sides stab with pain. I don’t stop until hands grab and steady me and Sarahh’s hushed voice asks, “Kate? Kate, are you well? What happened? Where are the others?”

  I can’t find my voice, can’t catch my breath. My throat scratches and burns and my vision spins and blurs.

  “Here, please. Sit.” Her hands are on my shoulders, the metallic tips of her gloves jolting chills down my spine. “We’ve been waiting quite a long time.”

  I wait and gather enough saliva in my mouth to try and swallow without gasping and choking, but it does no good. I cough and gag on the dryness. Oh God, what I would do right now for a bottle of water.

  “Pious took Jex and Rune,” I wheeze roughly. I lean back against a wall steadying my balance, rubbing a hand over my throat to ease its sting. “Pious set Rune’s execution for tomorrow. He had his guards try and bring me to the isolation ward. I think that’s where they are holding them.”

  Sarahh’s lips move to speak, but I hold my hands up to stop her. She nods and tilts her head to listen. Behind her, the other Caelum that were concealed in the tunnels with her, step forward to hear what I’m saying.

  “Pious…he…he destroyed Earth. He pressed a button and he…” A whimper escapes my lips and tears rain down my cheeks. “He blew it up. My sister and my father. They’re dead.”

  Sarahh doesn’t say anything for a moment, she just stares at me with huge unblinking eyes. My hands clench into tight fists. I want to slam them against the walls and scream at her. How could she not care? How dare she stand here and gawk at me like I shouldn’t be reacting like this. What the hell is wrong with her? “Do you even care? Do you?”

  Sarahh’s brows shoot up to her hairline. “But we haven’t moved.”

  I throw my hands up in the air. “What does that have to do with anything? He destroyed my planet! I watched it explode.”

  She reaches a hand out to me and touches her fingertips to my forearm. “Kate, that couldn’t have happened.”

  I yank my arm away from her hand and suck back a gulp of air. “What do you mean? I saw it happen!” Why doesn’t she believe me?

  “Kate, listen to me. If your planet exploded, a fiery rain of debris would be colliding into us, igniting everything in its path. The energy from an explosion that close to us? That enormous? We would be dead instantly. Everyone on the Caelum ship, we’d be wiped out, and the ship too.”

  I sniff back snot and tears. “Wait. What are you saying? What I just witnessed didn’t happen?” I rub my hands across my face. I need a tissue.

  “I’m positive you observed something that caused your frantic state, but it couldn’t have been real. We wouldn’t be standing here speaking with one another if it truly happened.”

  Could she be telling me the truth? I swipe at my nose again. “Sarahh, can you take me to a window? Can you show me right now?”

  “Yes, of course. Come this way. There’s a viewing nook right around this bend.” She walks toward a small dark alcove and I’m on her heels instantly. It’s only a few minutes before I’m standing in front of a small glass plate looking at my world, whole and perfect. I press my palms to the window and the weight on my heart and shoulders eases. The hollow sensation of grief dissipates and my body fills with purpose.

  “He lied to me. He did the same thing to me as he did to the Caelum when he told them Rune attacked his own men or that he had died so he could become the next general.”

  Pious needs to be stopped.

  I’m done with this. He showed me my worst fear, he manipulated my mind, ripped my heart from my chest—all to get what he wants. I won’t let him hurt anyone else. I can’t.

  And I’m the only one in the right position to stop him.

  “Sarahh?”

  “Yes, Kate?” she asks quietly.

  “I need some armor, and not just an armguard. I need an entire Caelum suit.”

  The corners of her lips curl up into a smile and she nods. “I think we could find you one. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to give Pious everything he deserves.”

  “Need any help with that plan?” she asks, smiling.

  52

  Kate

  My faceplate has a bright blue ticking countdown across the bottom of the viewfinder. Eight hours before the execution of Rune. Pious has made it mandatory that every Caelum bear witness to the event.

  Eight hours.

  That’s all the time I have if I want to save him.

  And I do.

  There’s no doubt in my mind, I can’t let him die. He sacrificed himself for me. “The first thing we have to do is get Rune out of the isolation ward,” I whisper to Sarahh as we gather the other women that hid with her. There’s no way I can stop Pious without Rune, that’s what I keep repeating in my head, but I know down deep inside me it’s more than that. But right now, I don’t have the time or luxury to sort through my feelings for him; I need to get him back and I need his help to end Pious’s reign.

  Sarahh’s shoulders slope forward. “I can take you to the passageway that leads to it, however the isolation ward is large with many smaller cells. And there would be so many Caelum guarding—”

  “Just take me there,” I breathe, digging my fingers deep into the metallic gloves that sink through my pores like a second skin.

  “We can’t emerge from the passageways right in front of the ward, can we, though? There will be too many guards there.”

  “True.”

  She pauses, shuffling on her feet. “Why are you choosing to help General Rune, when it’s Pious you need to stop?”

  I shake my head, debating whether she would understand, or if I could even put words to it. “I can’t leave him there, Sarahh. I…I need him.”

  “To get back to Earth?”

  “If I’m being honest with myself, I’m beginning to think it’s more than just needing to go back home. I just…right now…I just need him with me.”

  “Hmmm. I think I understand,” she says, fitting her faceplate on. “Come then, I can take you to where the prisoners are kept, but I’m not certain what we can accomplish when we get there.”

  I follow her without another word. How could I explain to her what emotions are running through my mind right now? I’m not sure I trust myself to speak the words out loud—I’m torn between absolute panic and the pure elation that one feels when they realize someone you like might have strong feelings for you.

  Not thinking about it.

  Nope.

  Right now, my family is still alive, the Earth still orbits around the sun, and Rune is somewhere here with me and I need to find him. The mere thought of seeing him again after what he did for me sends a hot rush of adrenaline through my body.

  I walk faster.

  The tunnels slope up and down and zig-zag like one of those line mazes I loved
to do when I was younger. I wonder why the ship was built this way with its hidden passageways and secret alcoves. The countdown in my helmet alerts me there’s now seven hours left until the execution. We’ve spiraled around the ship for an hour. Is Sarahh leading me to Rune or on some wild goose chase with no end in sight? The other women quietly trail behind us not giving anything away.

  “Sarahh?” I whisper.

  She shifts farther away from me and the countdown jumps to four hours remaining.

  Shit. What’s happening?

  She rounds a sharp corner a few feet ahead and stops so abruptly around its bend, I slam right into her.

  I do a horrible job of muffling a small cry, but it’s useless, it’s too loud. My eyes dart up and see the cause of Sarahh’s sudden standstill. My heart skids to a stop. We aren’t alone. No more than five yards away is a Caelum.

  There’s a small docking station next to him jutting out of the darkness of the tunnel. His hands are on the dashboard, but they raise instantly as he whirls around in surprise, facing us.

  That’s when I see his left shoulder and the crack in his armor, and the smear of darkened blood that stains its edges.

  “Tore?” I ask, raising my own hands in surrender. I rush ahead of Sarahh, bumping her out of the way. “Tore?”

  His faceplate is off and his head is shaking. “Kate? How? I thought you—”

  My arms are around him instantly. “Oh my God, I’m so happy it’s you.”

  “I found where General Rune and Jex are being held,” he says, pulling back and bringing up a digital display right in front of my eyes. A geometrical shape appears, floating between us. I step back, trying to see it in its entirety. Symbols and numbers flash around it.

  “I don’t understand anything it says,” I say, impatiently. “Where are they? How many guards are there?”

  “Right outside this panel is the hallway that leads to the isolation ward.” He moves toward the wall and points to a small discreet lever that will no doubt bring us closer to Rune or instant death. “The display says there are six guards in the outer hallway and three on the inside. Two more are standing in front of one particular door. I can only assume it would be General Rune’s. But it doesn’t have to be. He could be anywhere in there.”