by Keary Taylor
I see it in his eyes that he hates the idea. He hates every syllable of it.
But I’ve said the name Dominion now.
The game has changed.
“Well, well,” an annoying voice croons from just a few feet away. “Look who is sitting together, fighting as usual.”
I look over to see Zina walking toward us, a huge glass of calypso in her hand. “To most of the world, it would look like we’ve gone back in time, but I know this,” she says, wagging her finger between Zayne and I, “ended lunars ago. How do you stand it, Nova? Spending time with him like he didn’t end things?”
“Stay out of it, Zina,” Zayne growls.
“There’s nothing else happening on this planet,” she says with a drunk smile. “Might as well stir some slag up.”
“Try not to fall off the skywalk on your way home,” I say through my teeth.
She gives a little laugh and a sigh. “How do you feel about it?” she asks, looking at me with eyes that are beginning to get that glossy, starry look to them.
“About what?” I ask, using every ounce of patience I have.
“About the fact that Zayne so wants to get back with you?” she says, her voice suddenly very clear and filled with ill intent. “About how he watches you constantly. About how he reserves every single one of his weekends for you, the girl he let go for reasons unbeknownst to everyone at work.”
“It’s called private business because it’s private,” I say. I’m trying really, really hard not to overthink what she’s said. I know all those facts. But not everyone knows what they think they know.
It might seem like Zayne broke it off from our fights over the last lunar of our relationship. But it was me who finally called it off.
“It’s just kind of pathetic, you know,” she says as she leans in, her face just a foot away from both of ours. “You two just keep stringing each other along. Move on. Get one last bang out of your systems if it helps end things.”
I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t.
But it was just suddenly done and over.
I slap her.
Hard.
Across the face.
Her drink spills, slopping over the table and on Zayne’s right arm. She stands there frozen for a solid five seconds with her mouth open in a little O, the mark of a red handprint rapidly appearing on her face.
Slag.
“Zina, I-”
But I don’t get a chance to actually apologize, even if she really deserved it, because she launches herself at me, hands around my throat, taking the both of us to the ground.
Everyone had to be bored. It’s the only explanation, because within thirty seconds, everyone is fighting.
Zayne was trying to pull Zina off me. I was trying to kill Zina. She was yelling for her friends. They were on top of us. And then it was everyone throwing punches at everyone and blood and screaming and swearing.
And then there were three other women on top of me. One had their hands around my throat. One was actually pulling my hair, and ripping some of it out, and the other was kicking me in the ribs.
I’m reckless. It’s been the bane of my father’s existence. Because under pressure, I tend to explode. I don’t think. Things just happen and then I’m left with the consequences that follow.
The bar ignites in brilliant blue, and the arc of my staff is crackling one inch from Zina’s face. Her girlfriend instantly backs away, a lock of her hair falling to the floor in a smoking mess as the Neron cuts through it.
The entire bar instantly freezes and every eye turns to me.
Oh, slag.
All three girls scramble away from me and the entire bar steps back as far away from me as they can. Except for Zayne, who is looking at me where I’m still laying on the floor, with horror in his eyes.
Now my mouth is frozen in that stupid looking O. I press the power and the Neron arc instantly dies, and I’m just holding a seemingly harmless looking handle.
Neron weapons aren’t unheard of on Korpillion, but they are exceptionally rare. Rare enough ninety-eight percent of the population has never seen one. I’m the only one on the planet that I know of that makes them, but that doesn’t mean others don’t have them illegally imported from other parts of the galaxy.
Showing off a Neron weapon in a public way might have just put a life sentence on my head.
“Come on,” Zayne says, extending a hand to me and pulling me to my feet. I keep my head down, letting my hair fall in front of my face. No one was paying attention to me when we entered the bar, I don’t need to let them have a few seconds more to memorize my face so they can report it.
We dart out of the building, and instantly slip into the crowd.
“Seriously?” Zayne hisses through his teeth. “Were you really going to kill her, or were you just feeling the need to show off?”
“Of course I wasn’t really going to kill her!” I say, my voice frantic. “I don’t know what happened. First there was the slap, and then I grabbed the staff. It was all just…fast.”
“Well, what are you going to do now, Nova?” he says. He’s panicking and I should be panicking, but my brain hasn’t quite caught up yet. “Because most of those people in that bar might not be able to identify you, but Zina and her crew sure will. If she turns you in, you’re going straight to jail.”
She will turn me in. No doubt about it. She’s wanted Zayne for a solar now and she’s tried every tactic she could think of to break us up when we were still together. It’s been weekly meltdowns from her when we stayed so close after the break up.
“I…” I stutter. My brain is tripping over itself, trying to come up with a solution. “She doesn’t know where I live. As long as I don’t go back to our regular spots, it’s not like we’re likely to see each other ever again.”
“Except at work,” Zayne points out like I’m an idiot.
My eyes slide over to him. “That was the part I hadn’t told you yet.”
His look darkens. He knows he’s not going to like what comes out of my mouth next.
“I make twenty times more credits making…what I make, than what I earn at work,” I say, keeping my tone down. We’re just walking down a random skywalk, because if anyone follows us, me, I don’t want to lead them straight to my home. I’ve got to disappear. “With how many hours I’m working right now, I can only get one weapon made a week, at best. If I just quit the day job and work for myself full time…”
He swears again, dragging his fingers through his hair. “This is insane, Nova. You’ve always been reckless, as we just saw back at the bar. But this takes it to an entire new level. You’re…you could end up getting caught. You could go to jail at any point. You’ll be working with the lowlifes of the planet. You could get killed!”
“And what other choice do I have, Zayne?” I yell. I round on him, dragging him to the side of the skywalk. The crowd immediately shifts around us, flowing past. “Do you want to be here when Dominion comes? When they take over everything? When they bring their army as guards and their mining crew that forces the locals into endless work?”
The look in his eyes tells me he doesn’t. But he’s not going to admit it.
“There is no other option,” I say, sounding desperate. “You’re never going to make enough in time. Dad is never going to make enough in his entire lifetime. But I can do this.”
My throat feels tight.
I might not love Zayne the way I once did.
But he’s family.
I don’t have anyone in this world beside him and my dad.
I don’t like people. Maybe that makes me a bad person. But, generally I don’t. People lie. People are out for their own gain. We all are.
So I keep my circle small. And hold on to those few for dear life.
“Stars, Nova,” Zayne finally says. He grabs me and pulls me into his arms, tucking my head under his chin, and holds me tight. “Why do you have to be so slam epic all the time?”
I laugh, even thoug
h there are tears pricking in my eyes. I’m overwhelmed. I’m tired. I’m stressed.
But I’m too stubborn to give up.
“What can I do to help?” Zayne finally says. And I feel it. This is him giving in. This is him accepting that we have to do what we have to do.
Because we’re a pair of those survivors in this galaxy.
Catching criminals on Korpillion is nearly impossible. There are just too many people and too many places to hide and lay low.
Zina might have turned me in, I’m sure she did. But will anyone believe her, that the grease monkey at Horne Energy, has a Neron weapon? Finding me will be nearly impossible. Company records are a mess at best. I wish them good luck in tracking me down.
But I immediately quit my job.
The night I exposed myself with my Neron staff, Zayne and I spent all night preparing.
I immediately rented a small warehouse in a low level—a shady deal done in the middle of the night. We went back to Horne Energy, and being very careful not to be seen, we moved all of my equipment out. It took us six trips, with both of us carrying armload after armload.
To my dad, nothing has changed. I still leave at the same time. I come home around the same time.
But I’m working on weapons full time, now. With Zayne’s help. He hasn’t forgiven me that he had to quit his job, too, in order to protect me, so no one could find him either and ask him questions.
In two weeks, I have five new clients and two more potential ones. I can build a weapon in about three days instead of the week or more it was taking me before.
In two weeks, I make an additional eighty thousand credits.
This is going to work. I’m going to make it happen.
I’m going to get us off this planet.
We’re just wrapping things up one evening when I suddenly feel his presence.
“Can I talk to you in a little bit?” I think back. Because Zayne is standing just beside me, working on his holotab, where there is a design for a new fire-cannon displayed.
“Of course,” he answers back.
“Hey,” I say out loud. “I need to get these joints figured out. It could take me a while. Why don’t you head home and call it a night?”
He looks up at me, a slight question of why in his eyes. But it doesn’t linger long. It’s been a longer than normal day already. He’s tired. He’s done.
“You’re not meeting with a client tonight, are you?” he asks, giving me a side look.
“Not tonight,” I say, my tone condescending and exasperated. “But Crag will be stopping by to hold onto Mr. X’s order until he can meet for delivery in four days.”
Satisfied that I’m not going out to do a delivery by myself tonight, he nods and shuts off the holotab. “Don’t stay all night,” he says as he walks toward the huge metal door. “Torin will start worrying in about an hour.”
“Stop worrying about me, you old woman!” I call after him. He flips me a vulgar gesture as he walks out.
I smile, shaking my head.
It seemed ridiculously impossible that we could stay friends like this after breaking up when we were together for such a long time. But, somehow, we have.
The truth was, I started getting bored with life in the last few lunars we were together. I could see exactly how the rest of my life was going to play out. Zayne had dropped talk about getting married here and there, and I knew that before too long he would propose and I would eventually marry him, and we would eventually have a child and raise it on this over-crowded planet.
I hated it.
I hated the entire vision and future of it.
Zayne was great. He was stable. I knew he loved me. I knew he would give me a good life.
But I just couldn’t stand the thought of nothing really changing. Ever.
So, one night, I stayed late at work. I made this incredibly simple thing: a double-ended handle.
And I stole a small shard of Neron from work.
It took me two weeks to fine-tune it to work. But eventually it did. I made my Neron staff.
And I felt a little more alive.
Then there was the time my Dad broke his arm, and we went into negative credits for the surgery it required. So I made a firing pistol with a Neron core, and I found a buyer.
Immediately, I had plenty of extra credits.
I felt even more alive.
And that was when Reena approached me. Told me about her business, how she could supply the Neron, so I wouldn’t get caught by my work. She had a client who had been trying to obtain a Neron weapon from off-planet, but the shipments kept getting intercepted.
I made my second commission then. And I’ve made dozens more since.
Zayne caught me after a lunar of illegal transactions. To say he was livid was an understatement. He felt…betrayed. Like he didn’t know me.
I told him I wasn’t going to stop.
When he asked why, I shut down for two solid weeks.
He’d given me space. But again, he asked me why I was doing this. Why I’d gone so far beyond reckless and had stepped into illegal.
I finally broke down and I told him. That I was bored. That I didn’t want my life to play out exactly like I could see it happening.
The look in his eyes…I’ll never forget it.
He’d begged me to see reason. He made promises, lots of them, to find ways to make life more exciting. We could move to a different part of Korpillion, the other side of the planet. He didn’t need to have a child one day—though that was never the problem for me. He would do anything, if I would just stop.
If I would go back to being boring and normal.
I couldn’t do it.
So, after weeks of fights, sometimes public ones that were witnessed by half our work, we ended things.
I ended things.
I thought it was going to be the end of my world, because I didn’t stop loving Zayne just because I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with him. He was my world, and had been for a solar and a half.
After a tense and awkward and very lonely lunar, he approached me in the locker room at work. He finally met my eyes and I looked into his.
And I saw someone I missed.
Someone I’d been dying to talk to.
“Do you want to go laugh at all the stupid drunks at the bar tonight?” he’d hesitantly asked.
Tears filled my eyes as I nodded my head.
We had a talk that night after we laughed at the stupid drunks, about how things weren’t going back to what they were. But we both confessed how much we’d missed each other over the past lunar.
And somehow we’d become friends.
They say you can’t go back. And maybe someday this will stop working, because I know that Zayne still wants us to be us. To have a future of us. But for now, I still have my best friend. And it’s a good thing too, because otherwise all I would have is my dad.
I’m not good at…people. I don’t like them. I don’t let them in. Forming relationships isn’t my forte.
I grab the parts on the table, and stick one end in the other. It slides in like a glove.
“Sorry,” I say down the mental connection. “I was working earlier. I didn’t really feel like looking like a mooned-out psycho in front of my colleague.”
“I understand,” he immediately responds. “I’ve had more than a few times where I had to duck into an empty room so I didn’t look like I was having…”
“A very serious internal debate with yourself?” I fill in.
I hear him laugh. And I love his laugh. It’s simple, and deep. Like it comes from the bottom of his soul, but he keeps it tight and close. He doesn’t show it to the world.
“Something like that,” he responds.
I slide a rod into the chamber and attach the spring. “Are you anywhere very interesting?”
“I’m actually in a ship somewhere in the T7 sector,” he says. My eyebrows raise. He’s close. Just a few leagues away from my own sector. “My boss hasn�
�t told me yet where we’re heading.”
“You’re a very adaptable person,” I say as I screw on the plate that covers the interworkings.
“Either that or a mindless dog,” he says with a little too serious of an undertone.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “You’re snappy and quick and I really can’t see you just taking orders from anyone.”
“I have my moments of bite when I need to, I suppose.”
I press harder on the plate when it refuses to slide into place, which, of course it does, and pinches my finger in the process, drawing blood.
I swear, immediately pressing the injury to my mouth.
“What’s wrong?” he demands, concern heavy in his voice.
“Nothing,” I groan as I head to the cabinet against the back wall and pull out the first-aid kit Zayne insisted we keep here. It’s kind of ridiculous. We work with solid Neron, which could easily obliterate us. Bandages and disinfecting spray aren’t going to do much for us here.
But I’m grateful at the moment for them. Not that I’m going to tell Zayne that.
“So, I’ve been thinking about names that don’t start with A or Z,” I say, changing the subject.
“And what have you come up with?”
I tape the bandage around my bleeding finger. It’s going hurt just as bad tomorrow, I can tell.
“Well, there’s Barron,” I begin.
“You’re kidding, right?” he says with a scoff.
I smile. “There’s Vernon.”
“Even worse,” he says, sounding offended.
“Harrod.”
“No.”
“Kain?”
“Try again.”
I sigh. Really, I have no idea. “Damian.”
“I’m only giving you one more guess, and then this game is over,” he says. And he actually sounds like he means it.
I shake my head as I return to the worktable, picking up the damaging piece again. “Price.”
“No,” he immediately says.
“So, game over?” I ask as I finally screw the piece into place.
“Game over,” he confirms.
And I smile, because even though it feels like I lost, I’m just glad for the company. The company of someone I can be honest with. Who I can admit all my faults to. Because it’s easy when I’m never, ever going to meet the man in my head in real life.