by Sophie Stern
567 wasn’t very many on a cruiser of 10,000 passengers, but Willow had to have hope that Ashley was okay.
“My friend,” she coughed. “I had a friend. Is she okay? Do you know? Ashley. She was from Mars, too.”
Luke turned and waved over a nurse, then whispered something to her. The nurse pulled out a small tablet from her pocket and began touching it. After a moment, she turned to Willow.
“Ashley is fine. She’s recovering two tents over. Her family has already been notified.”
Ashley was okay.
Thank dragons.
Willow could survive on her own after this. She knew that much. She was stronger than she’d given herself credit for. She was bold. She could move forward and go on to lead a good life, but she didn’t know if she could handle knowing Ashley had died in the crash she had survived.
Ashley, who had so much to live for, had made it. She was going to get another chance at life, of being who she wanted to be. Willow hated knowing her friend was going back to Mars and would have to face not only the stigma of being a victim, but of being a criminal’s sister. She hated knowing her friend was going back to a place that had so much evil lurking beneath the surface.
But she was also glad her friend was alive.
Talk about mixed emotions.
“What happened?”
“Fuel line jammed, then emptied.”
“Meaning?”
“First the ship couldn’t access the fuel it had, but then the fuel emptied mid-air.”
“At least he managed to land on the planet, eh?” Ashley said. “Just think. We could have ended up floating aimlessly through space forever.”
“Only until your food supply ran out.”
Willow shot a glance up at him, but he didn’t smile. Was he making a joke? Was he teasing her or being serious? Was this big, friendly giant being playful? She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell anything anymore because her head hurt too damn much.
Her feet hurt, too.
And her breasts were…
“Oh!” She quickly covered them with her hands. “I’m naked!” Even her pants were gone. There was no blanket on her. She was just lying there, on a cot, completely exposed.
Luke chuckled.
“No need to be modest now, Willow. I’ve already seen it all.”
“But, I…”
“They needed to determine the extent of your injuries,” he said softly.
“Oh. And am I…were there…”
“You’re fine. Your feet are fucked up. You stepped on a shit-ton of glass.”
She remembered.
“And your hands are going to be scarred, but there are worse things.”
She had tried to fight her way through the door of her room. She had tried to escape on her own. Willow hadn’t thought help was coming, hadn’t thought she stood a chance of being rescued. Not on Dreagle. Not with a war going on.
“Sir,” a messenger appeared and murmured something to Luke that Willow couldn’t hear. He turned back to her.
“I need to go speak with someone, but I’ll be back.”
She was a little reluctant for him to leave. Why was that? She’d only just met him, yet somehow, Willow thought Luke seemed trustworthy. Good. He seemed good. He seemed like the kind of man who would take care of her for always.
She didn’t want him to leave her.
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll be back.”
She nodded, glad he made the promise. He didn’t owe her anything. He wasn’t her boyfriend, her lover, her husband. He was just some soldier who had rescued her, but to Willow, it was the best thing in the world. She tried unsuccessfully not to stare at his broad back as he left the medical tent. Her eyes never left his until the brown canvas flap covered the door once more.
“You’ve got it bad,” a friendly voice commented.
Willow turned to see a smiling blonde woman looking down at her. Willow was sure the woman, who was obviously a nurse, was probably very kind, but she still tried to cover her body up.
“None of that,” the nurse held Willow’s hands to her sides. “Time to check you, honey. This won’t hurt a bit.” She motioned for the doctor, who was now on Willow’s other side, to begin.
“Sorry to interrupt your rest,” the doctor commented. “It’s all part of the healing process.”
The doctor, a dark-haired woman with glowing yellow eyes, looked over Willow and began touching her body gently. Willow held still as the doctor ran her hands over Willow’s skin. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was somewhere else, anywhere else.
The only problem was that there was nowhere Willow actually wanted to be. Mars was no longer home for her. What was she supposed to do? Live in the wilderness on Dreagle? The realization that her future had essentially crashed with the ship washed over her and Willow took a few deep breaths, hoping the doctor wouldn’t notice she was struggling to breathe.
“Am I going to be okay?” Willow asked quietly.
“Fine, fine.”
“My head still hurts.”
“It will for awhile.”
The doctor continued to touch Willow from head to toe, checking over her body, murmuring quietly to the nurse from time-to-time. After awhile, the doctor left, and the nurse patted Willow’s head softly before leaving, too.
Willow allowed herself to relax. The physician hadn’t really offered any real information on her situation, but Willow knew there were more pressing patients to deal with.
Where had they found a doctor on such short notice, anyway?
Oh yeah: war.
Willow wasn’t so far gone from her pain and stress that she had forgotten the reason their ship hadn’t just landed on Dreagle in the first place. War. Dreagle was fighting, or it had been, not very long ago.
Willow closed her eyes once more and listened to the sounds around her. There were other people in the tent with her, she realized. Many of them were talking quietly. No one was crying, which surprised her. They’d been through a traumatic event. Maybe the doctor had given them medication that soothed them. She wasn’t sure.
“How are we going to get back to Mars?” One person asked.
“I hope the company gives us a refund,” another said.
Over and over the voices continued until Willow stopped hearing them. Instead, she began to think about her friend. Was Ashley okay? Really okay? How was she dealing with all of this?
She knew that when Luke returned, he would know about the status of the other passengers. She knew he was important to the rescue operation. It was obvious. Willow wasn’t sure exactly how he fit into everything or how he himself worked with the others, but she knew that without him, she would have died on Ship 449302.
Luke was going to come back and look at her, and he was going to tell her the truth about what he knew because that was the kind of man he was. He was an honest man. He wouldn’t try to bullshit her or give her some false sense of hope. No, Luke was the kind of man who would give you the worst news of your life and hold you up while you crumbled.
He was the kind of man who believed the truth was better than a lie, no matter how difficult that truth might be to hear.
If Ashley was going to die, if most of the other passengers were, he would tell her. He wouldn’t try to trick her.
And that was why Willow, after only knowing him a matter of hours, was starting to fall just a little bit for the big ol’ alien. It had been a long time since anyone had been honest with her. She remembered Ashley’s words about Eric, about the slavery on Dreagle, about the way Eric was being persecuted on Mars for his crimes off-planet.
How many other secrets were there?
A shadow fell over Willow’s face and she opened her eyes.
“Doctor?” She asked, eyeing the red medical scrubs she recognized from earlier. The doctor and nurse had both been wearing red clothing, almost dark burgundy. The color was almost gothic enough for Willow to think it was a good fashion choice, but she knew the
y hadn’t picked it because they enjoyed dark fabrics.
They’d chosen it to hide the blood of their patients.
They’d chosen red so other people, non-medical people, didn’t completely freak out and lose their shit and wonder if they were next to die.
Only the doctor didn’t answer, and when Willow’s eyes wander further up, she could see why.
“Hello, darling,” a voice sneered.
Rand.
Rand was here.
Willow hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly why she didn’t like him until she’d seen Hannah Mores hanging around with him one night. That had been the last night anyone had seen Hannah. Her parents had been looking all over the ship for her, but no one knew where she’d run off to.
Even with cameras throughout the ship, there were simply too many people to be able to track Hannah’s whereabouts on the night she disappeared.
Willow thought Rand knew something, that he had done something to Hannah. He made Willow uncomfortable. He was always creeping around, but there was more. Rand always seemed a little…off. He was like a new t-shirt your mother had washed in warm water instead of cold and shrunk just a little. The fit wasn’t completely wrong, but it sort of was. You could tell it wasn’t quite the way it was supposed to be.
When the personnel of Ship 449302 finally decided to take Hannah’s disappearance seriously, they turned on the tracking device on her bracelet. Each bracelet functioned as more than just a key or ID card, Willow learned. You could be completely tracked: your every action catalogued.
And while the tracking device did show Hannah had been down Willow’s hallway and it even showed she had been in Rand’s room, the tracker didn’t stop there. It went around the ship several times, stopping in various places, until it finally turned up in a cupboard in one of the storage rooms that was supposed to be restricted access.
Only it wasn’t just the bracelet – which required a key to remove – that was found.
The bracelet was still attached to Hannah’s wrist.
The crew had found her arm, removed at the elbow.
And now Rand was here, in the medical tent, and he was standing over Willow.
Willow opened her mouth to scream, but Rand clamped his hand over her lips, silencing her. Willow tried not to taste his skin, but it was impossible. The salty sweat from his palm got in her mouth, on her tongue, and she felt nauseous.
She hoped she didn’t throw up. She would choke. She just knew it. Rand would be happy if she choked on her own vomit and died. It would be one less loose end he’d have to worry about.
There was no doubt in Willow’s mind that Rand had killed Hannah, but there was something worse in her mind. She knew that Rand knew she knew.
They had both survived the crash.
Rand wasn’t about to walk away from Dreagle and hope Willow didn’t say something about what she suspected. Even if she didn’t have proof, they both knew she was of high social standing on Mars. She could tarnish his reputation to the point where no one would work with him or for him, and that was almost as bad as prison.
He pressed his hand tighter on her mouth and Willow looked up into his dead eyes.
She wanted to ask why he’d done it.
She wanted to ask what Hannah had ever done to him.
She wanted to ask a million questions, but most of all, she wanted to scream about the injustice of her situation, about the unfairness of her life. She had escaped one tragedy only to be cast into another.
“Pity,” Rand said, looking at her eyes. “You have such a lovely face. If only we had more time to play together.”
He was going to kill her now. She knew even before she felt the blade at her neck. Even before he pressed the steel to her throat, she knew.
Rand was going to take care of the only witness to his crime.
Willow closed her eyes. She thought it would be braver to look the fucker in the eyes when he slit her throat, but she didn’t want the last thing she thought of before dying to be his eyes, his face.
She wanted to spend her last seconds thinking of Wilma, of her life before her parents excommunicated her. She wanted to remember her childhood on Earth. She wanted to remember life before Dreagle.
She wanted to remember life before Ship 449302.
Willow squeezed her eyes shut and she waited to die.
Chapter 8
Luke finished dealing with the soldiers who had questions about where they were going to put the officials from Mars. When they arrived to claim the survivors of the crash, the Martians and humans would need housing and it was up to Luke and his men to figure out how that was going to work. Luke was tired by the time they finished. He didn’t want to be a leader and he didn’t want to have to deal with these ridiculous questions. He wanted to get back on his ship, wanted to get on with his life.
Fucking Dane, though, always had to be assigning random tasks to Luke. It was as if Dane was afraid Luke would get bored. It was as if he felt like he needed to give him busywork, and Luke didn’t know why. He wasn’t an “I’m bored” type of guy. He didn’t need something to do every second of every day in order to feel productive.
He passed a doctor as he made his way from one of the tents to another. He needed to get some food to bring to Willow. She’d been out for hours and would be hungry, but something was bothering him.
There was something strange about the doctor he’d just passed, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then he realized it was the silver bracelet dangling on his wrist.
Why would a doctor be wearing one of the ID bracelets the tourists were wearing? Dane was busy trying to figure out a way to safely remove them from the victims of the crash. Apparently you had to have some sort of key. Why, then, was the doctor wearing one?
“Not a fucking doctor,” Luke growled, and turned back around. He followed the man with the yellow hair, who he now realized was that asshole, Rand, from the ship. Willow hadn’t liked him. She had been afraid of him. Luke didn’t know if the man had hurt her or if she just had a bad feeling about him, but Luke trusted Willow and he trusted his own gut.
Something was wrong with Rand.
He was jittery, as if something wasn’t quite right, as if he was nervous about something. Luke had been a soldier long enough to know how to fade into the background of his surroundings and he carefully avoided Rand’s gaze when the man stopped to look around.
Then he followed him.
Rand seemed to know exactly where he was going and how to avoid the nurses who would periodically pass by. The site was short on doctors, which meant anyone dressed like one would frequently be asked to help with different patients. Still, it was a clever disguise for Rand. The scrubs had likely been easy to come by and he could easily blow off any requests by saying he was on his way to help a patient in need.
Where the fuck was he going?
Luke knew something bad was about to happen. He did not like this guy. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t because of the way Rand treated Willow, but that simply wasn’t true. Luke liked Willow. She was a badass, and he didn’t often meet females like that. The idea of Rand being mean or disrespectful to her didn’t sit well with him, and when Rand turned the corner and ducked into the tent where Willow was staying, Luke knew his intuition was right.
“Trouble in 4C,” he said into his communications unit. Dane had insisted they wear them during the extraction and now, Luke was thankful he’d left his turned on. “Heading in. Send backup.”
He ducked into the tent just in time to see Rand lifting a knife to Willow’s throat and pressing it against her soft, pale skin.
Luke pulled out his knife made of Orchid steel and threw it. He was a perfect shot because he threw with confidence and he never hesitated. The blade hit its target and blood began pouring out of Rand’s neck. Rand’s own knife dropped, hitting the floor where he stood. Rand reached for his neck, then collapsed in a pile of his own blood.
Luke ignored him and went to Willow. She was s
ilently crying and when he got to her side, she reached for him. Luke swept her into his arms and carried her from the tent just as Dane was coming in with his men.
“Trouble?” Dane asked. Luke jerked his head toward Rand’s body.
“Fucker was about to slit her throat, so I slit his. Deal with the body,” Luke said to the grunts standing next to Dane. The men quickly began to move, but Dane eyed Willow.
“And the girl?” Dane asked.
“She’s coming with me. She’s mine.”
***
What was he doing? “She’s mine”? Really? What was he, a caveman? Luke was grateful Dane didn’t press the matter. He wouldn’t have cared if he did, but it was nice not to have to justify himself. He took the thin blanket Dane silently handed him and he tucked it around Willow. It would do until he could get her some proper clothes, though he wasn’t such a gentleman that he hadn’t noticed her sweet figure. She was perfect and cute and if it were up to Lukanterao, he would keep Willow naked all the time.
Luke left the campsite and pocketed his Tanayemm communications device. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He had two kilometers to walk back to his ship where Lesmentarao was standing guard over their ride.
He switched to the device he used to talk privately with Les. The earpiece was a small, red piece of goo that fit perfectly in his ear. It was wet and always hard to get used to at first, but it worked perfectly. The two of them had found the device – which they just called Talk Goo, for lack of a better name – on an unknown planet they’d stumbled across in their travels.
“Where are you taking me?” Willow asked, her voice sounded strained, but not terrified.
Good.
Luke didn’t want her terrified.
He wanted to save her.
The Martian government knew about the crash and were already sending people to Dreagle to retrieve the survivors and handle the wreckage. Martians were nothing if not efficient. Luke didn’t want to send Willow back with them, though, with people who didn’t even know or care what she’d been through.