The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1)

by Shelly Crane

  And now Sophelia knew that I never took other girls for strolls along the pier, from which she could conclude that I never did much of anything else with them either. I chanced a glance at her and she was looking at me from under her lashes, her smile was small and shy and…dare I say relieved?

  “We’ve got to go,” I said, but it sounded off. I tugged her further along, but she came willingly.

  “Bye, Max! You crazy kids have fun.”

  I looked back at him. “Bye, Pritchard,” I said and waved to him, knowing it would be the last time I ever saw him.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard beside me in a small voice. I looked at her and she looked sorry. “It’s my fault you’ll never see him again.”

  I sighed, squeezing her fingers gently. “No, it’s not,” I said, the words gruff and jagged. “It’s mine because I should never have—” I stopped. I didn’t want to go into this with her now. I shook my head. “Let’s go.”

  “Finish it,” she commanded softly, calling me on my earlier command of her to finish it.

  I took a deep breath and put my arm around her back to guide her as I went forward, leaning in just a little so only she could hear me. “If I had never taken in with this crowd, I wouldn’t have known him to begin with. He’s a good guy, but…he’s a thief. That’s what he does.”

  “That huge guy is a thief?”

  “He’s the muscle, to make sure the job goes smoothly. Everyone out here—at heart, they’re good people, but on the surface, they’re convicts. Someone asked the question what would you do to save your family, and they answered. Anything.”

  Her eyes held that same answer, but she had no one else to save as she looked away from me.

  I waved to another merchant who smiled at me as he watched me go by. I just shook my head and rolled my eyes.

  “So Havard?” she asked and looked up at me once again. Her face was close and she noticed it, too. She leaned back, putting her hand on my chest to push me back, muttering a sorry.

  “No, Havard doesn’t have any family. He’s in this business for himself. His father worked in the mines and Havard swore he was never going to live that life.”

  “So not everyone is a saint in convict’s clothing.” She smiled small.

  I tossed my head side to side. “Okay, no. Not everyone is out here saving their family. Some of them are just in it for the money.”

  As we turned the corner into Market Alley, away from the docks, I was surprised we’d gotten away so easily. And then Sophelia voiced my thoughts.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That was too easy. I thought for sure that someone would be on our tail—”

  “Just the opposite,” we heard to our right and turned to see a sentry waiting there for us. Just one. I was confused.

  “There you are,” I hissed. “Here.” I shoved Sophelia toward him. “Took you long enough.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me as he grasped her arm in his big hand and she gasped.

  “Ow,” she muttered up at him and fought his hold.

  It took a lot not to bust his teeth in right then for doing that.

  “I’ve heard about you, little one. Not taking any chances,” he said in her face.

  “What’s with the little one stuff? You guys have always called me that.” He stayed silent as he looked at her. She turned to look back at me. “And you.” I didn’t miss how her voice changed. It was soft, breathy. Hurt. “You did all that just so you could get out from under Havard?”

  “Sorry, Soph.”

  She flinched. “Don’t call me that.”

  “All right, enough,” the sentry barked and began to drag her away.

  “What about my payment?” I yelled as he turned.

  He grinned condescendingly. “Oh. Right.” He pulled out his handheld and waited for me to lift up my sleeve to show him my forearm. As soon as he put the handheld over the underside of my forearm, I saw all my information begin to flash up on the screen under my skin. And the last screen, the one I wanted to see most, held and began to show the number go up and up and up until it reached four hundred thousand. I stared at it, still not believing this was happening. I could save my mom with this money, get her out of the stacks and into a safe place.

  He pulled the handheld away and I swiped the screen away, pulling my sleeve down, looking around to make sure no one was around.

  “Thanks for bringing her in. I knew with a bounty that high, it wouldn’t take long to get her. Someone wants her real bad apparently.” He stuck his nose in her hair and she tried to squirm away, the look of disgust on her face hard to miss. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll take real good care of you.”

  He started to walk away again and I knew we had to act fast. “Now, Sophelia!”

  She looked back at me in confusion as I moved toward them. It hit me that she actually thought I was going to let her go with him. After I’d already saved her? Why didn’t she trust me? Then I remembered that I had turned her in. It was going to take some time for her to trust me, and that was my own fault. There was no way I was letting her go to processing when she had such a high bounty. Someone wanted her and it couldn’t be for anything good. And the guards…the things they did to them… I just couldn’t let them take her. I shook my head at myself and hoped I could earn her trust back at some point. I didn’t know where this was going. I knew she was going to the Providence, but I hoped I could earn her trust by then. I felt terrible for turning her in to Havard, knowing what he’d almost done. If he had succeeded—I’d never forgiven myself.

  I went to him just as he was pulling out his spray to incapacitate me and sprayed it. I held my breath and punched with an uppercut right under his chin. I heard his teeth crunch together and cringed. Ah, I hated that sound, but I needed him down for the count. Havard had taught me that move. I felt a smidge of sadness creep up, but then I remembered what he had been planning to do to Soph and it all drained away, leaving an aching hole.

  He howled and let Soph go to grab his face. I yanked her behind me and swiped my foot into the back of his legs, making him fly up and back down with a thud onto the hard granite walkway. He wheezed as he tried to catch his breath, grabbing at his throat. I scrambled to grab up his disarm spray that fell and rolled around and sprayed him with it, watching as his arms fell to the side and his head fell back. His eyes were still open and he watched me.

  Sophelia was watching him, too, her arms wrapped around herself. I took his handheld, slipped it into my pocket, and then looked around his other pockets for things we could use or might need. He had a couple pieces of silver, which I took.

  He had a pocketknife made completely of real silver. I couldn’t stop my strangled gasp.

  We could sell this. Or trade it. We could get a lot for this. I turned it over to see initials imprinted in the handle. A.M. I pushed away my guilt and started to stick it in my pocket, even though he was groaning on the ground, unable to speak, but obviously trying to.

  “Maxton,” Sophelia whispered. I looked up at her. She nodded her chin at him. He was begging me with his eyes. I knew exactly what he was asking me.

  I sighed. “That knife is worth a lot.” I looked back at her over my shoulder. “It’s pure silver.”

  She swallowed and her lips pressed tightly as she looked at me. “I know. But he’s just doing what he’s been told to. He’s not any freer than we are.” The guard looked up at her as best as he could and sighed, closing his eyes.

  I stood up and went to her, getting close to her, looking down in her face. “Do you have any idea what they do to females in confinement? What he himself has probably done to them, and I’m sure what he was all too willing to do to you as soon as he got you back to the Hill?”

  She flinched and I hated bringing it up, but she had to stop being so naïve. There were some people you couldn’t let get away because they would stab you in the back as soon as you did.

  “Those initials,” she murmured and looked down at him. “It’s important to him.”
/>   “I’m sure it is. But we need—”

  “Just leave it for him. Just the knife,” she rushed to say. “He didn’t care about anything you were taking except that knife. It means something. I know what it’s like to lose something that belonged to someone I love and wish I could get it back.” She looked down at him and he was looking up at her like she was a friggin’ angel. “Whose was it?”

  He struggled to get it out, but eventually was able to mutter, “Grandfather.”

  She looked at me pleadingly and all I could think was she was going to be a problem. She could get me to do things with just a look and I’d only known her one day. What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Fine,” I ground out and leaned down to tuck it back into his shirt pocket. I hit him with the disarm mist once more so he’d be out for a good long while and then took her arm in my grasp and tugged her to follow me. “Let’s go.”

  “Thank you,” she said after a little while. “At least you got your money.”

  “You really thought I was going to turn you in?”

  She didn’t answer at first. “You don’t know me, Maxton. And you’ve done it before.”

  “Sophelia—”

  “You don’t owe me anything.” She gripped my shirt sleeve to jerk me to a stop. “You saved me from your boss. Thank you. Now if you want to go—”

  “Sophelia, we’re not doing this right now. We need to get off the streets and find a place to hide when curfew hits.”

  She seemed torn. She looked down. “I can go on my own if you need to leave me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay with me. Out of guilt.”

  This girl…she played the martyr so well. “I’m not staying with you out of some deranged sense of obligation. We’ll do better together than apart, okay?” I told her softly.

  She looked at the ground for a long time, her hands fisted and clenched at her sides, and I let her before I finally could stand it no longer. I put my fingers under her chin and lifted her face to find her intense, sad gaze, latching on, and holding on to it tight.

  “Come on, Soph. We need each other right now. I’m not staying with you because I feel guilty. So come on. Come with me. Let’s get out of here, together.”

  I waited for her to speak.

  Her eyes searched my face, for what I didn’t know, but I let her and waited. And I found myself hoping she found what she was looking for. And then she licked her lips and took a breath through her parted lips, drawing my eyes to the movement of her mouth. When I looked back up to her eyes, they were softer, ready. I watched as my thumb swept across her chin with a mind of its own. She inhaled swiftly, her eyes widening. I pulled back, taking my hand with me, and waited for her to say something.

  “Okay,” she finally said, her eyes glued to mine. “We’ll do this together.”

  I smiled slightly and ticked my head to the left. “Let’s go, Fox.”

  Her lips quirked at the nickname as she squinted, but she said nothing. After we reached the end of the alley, I turned to her. “We have to be quick. They can’t take my money from me because of the establishment law that makes it so they’re not allowed to have access to our money, but they’ll be looking for me so I need to get our supplies and things before they alert everyone that I’m a convict.”

  Her face stayed stoic and she swallowed slowly. “I’m sorry.”

  I sighed. “Look, we can’t go over this every time we talk about it. My plan was always to leave the black market. You just sped things up a bit, that’s all. I was getting money together to—” I sighed through my nose and looked left and right. “It’s clear, let’s go.”

  She grabbed my shirt in her hands and stopped me. “You tell me to just trust you and not to worry, to stop talking about being sorry for what happened, but you won’t even tell me what’s going on with you. You’re hiding something,” she whispered that last sentence, and it made me feel like a villain.

  I pulled her hands away from my shirt and held them in mine. “We don’t have time to do this right now. We have to go. We can talk about this later, Sophelia.” I held her hand in mine so she’d come, but also so she’d hopefully feel a sense of trust to just do this with me for now.

  We shot across the street. The market was bustling. We were at the back end of it. This wasn’t like the dock market. This was the market. You could get anything and everything—food, clothes, batteries, electronics. In our history lessons, we had once heard about how on Earth they had indoor stores for all different things. There was a store all by itself just for groceries, and another store all by itself just for clothes, and then a huge store with just electronics in it. Seemed like such a waste…of everything, all the resources.

  I could feel the heat from the granite street beaming up at us from the hot sun that had been beating down on it all day. I lifted my shirt and wiped my brow with the hem of it. I caught Sophelia watching me and stared at her a little too long, calling her on it.

  She blushed a color that matched her hair and looked away, swiping said hair from her face where it still hung around her shoulders. I smiled where she couldn’t see me.

  “You’re going to be a problem. Everyone already knows what you look like because your face was plastered on the screens this afternoon. It’ll be dark in about two hours, but I’m not sure I want to wait.” I looked back at her. “Maybe I should go on by myself and get everything we need and you should stay here.”

  That stoic face, with flat lips and eyes straight forward, stayed perfectly still. I wondered if it was something she had perfected over the years with her proprietor. I shook my head internally, not wanting to think about it. She eventually nodded twice slowly. “Okay, sure. I’ll wait here.”

  I heard the tone. “I’ll be back to get you in an hour or so. No one will suspect me in the market. If they want to know why I’m getting supplies, I’ll say that Havard’s taking a trip.” I looked around the alley and behind the market’s booths. “Here.”

  I took her hand once more, noticing how she didn’t clench up as much this time when I touched her. I put her in the end of the alley we’d just come from behind an old charging dock. These were stationed all over the place, in intervals for people to charge their handhelds, electric scooters, and bots. Back before we used solar power. This one being in the alley like this, not out in the open, I didn’t think anyone would come near it. Most people used the public transportation system anyway, which was a hover rail system that covered the entire planet and sat high above all the buildings going six-hundred-sixty-seven miles per hour. That was deemed the safest and fastest top speed and got you around pretty quickly.

  “Just stay here. No one will bother you. I’ll be back soon and then we’ll find somewhere to stay for the night, okay?”

  She nodded again slowly with that look on her face that said she didn’t believe a word out of my mouth. “Okay.”

  “Soph, look—”

  “Don’t call me ‘Soph’,” she said, looking at something behind my head. “My mother called me that and…” She shook her head. “Just go. I’ll wait here.”

  I took a deep breath, knowing that I would normally regret it outside the buildings where they had their own oxygen provided, but right then I just didn’t care. This girl was making me manic. “I will be back.” I pushed her shoulder so she’d sit down on the granite street behind the charging station, hidden from the street and all that passed by it. “Look at me.” She did immediately, which surprised me. “I know you don’t know me. Yet,” I added on, though I didn’t really know why. “But when I say I’m going to do something, I do it. I will be back.”

  She said nothing, just looked at me, letting all her doubts be known. This girl who had been dumped into a system that showed no mercy and took no prisoners was just being what she was made to be—skeptical and untrusting.

  I turned to go, but stopped and took out the disarming spray from my bag that I had taken from the guard. They hardly ever used it anymore. It had been introduced a y
ears ago, but quickly died out when everyone learned to hold their breath and not breathe in the mist. I handed the can to Sophelia. “Use it if you have to.”

  She took it and held it against her chest. “Go,” was all she said.

  I had given her all the reassurance I could. I realized the best thing I could do for her was to come back and show her that I wasn’t ditching her. I would be quick. Being alone on the run on this planet was practically a death sentence. You needed a lookout, you needed someone to keep watch sometimes, you needed to use the wiles of one when the other’s wouldn’t work, you needed to have each other’s back.

  As I reached the first vendor, I began to show him the items I wanted as I put them in my bag. He punched the numbers in on the screen under the skin on his forearm as we went. I got food enough for four days. I needed room in my bag for other things, too. I had no idea what Sophelia liked, but she’d only ever eaten beans so I definitely didn’t get any of those. I wanted to kind of…give her an experience. I smiled as I showed him an airtight sealed package of pancakes and slipped it into my bag, then a couple more things before showing him my forearm. He swiped his forearm over mine to make the exchange of money from me to him before I moved on to the next vendor.

  Chapter Five

  fas·cism - a very harsh form of controlling and authoritative government. A way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator, political party, or group controls the lives of the people and in which they are not allowed to disagree with the government or control their own lives.

  Sophelia

  I watched Maxton walk away and knew he wasn’t coming back. He had saved me and done his part for me. He put me in a safe place, away from harm, given me something to defend myself, gotten his prize, and made sure I was okay. We both won. And though it stung, just a little—okay, maybe more than a little—I was okay with that. He had gone above and beyond for me already. He didn’t have to do any of that for some girl he didn’t know. I was grateful and would accept what I had been given as payment for services rendered. Or…grievances rendered, I should say. His debt to me was paid in full and I was out of here.