by Tracy Lauren
“Greedy males are never satisfied.”
“Fair enough.”
“We do not know yet how many of his crew he will bring to the brothel with him. But you must separate him from them. The Oscillion has provided your silks at this location, perhaps that will aid you in some way.”
“What happens if I can’t separate him from his crew?”
“They are mercenaries, loyal to his money, not his person. They should not give you any grievance if you play them right.”
“And if I play them wrong? Are you going to be there to back me up this time?”
“You do not need backup anymore. You have a TASE.”
“Where will you be?”
“Somewhere else.”
“And if these guys try to rape me?”
“You won’t let them,” he answers. Narron looks off into the distance. Maybe he’s looking at the setting sun. Maybe he’s looking at the airfield wishing I would run away. It’s hard to tell.
“It will all happen fast,” he says suddenly. “Think about what you want to say to your male. Time will be limited and there is no way to know when or if The Oscillion will ever offer you a deal like this again.”
I grunt my acknowledgment, already planning what I’m going to say to Dax. I might never get the chance to speak with him again. If this is my only shot I know what I have to do. I have to be honest and really try to get him to understand who I am. Maybe one day The Oscillion will let me negotiate Dax’s release, and if he does I don’t want Dax trying to be the hero, coming after me and risking himself. I can’t be the hero, I wish I could, but it just isn’t me. The only thing I can do is sacrifice what’s left of me to protect him. And for Dax, I’d sacrifice myself a hundred times over.
Chapter 45
V
Narron was right. Morning came quickly. It seemed I had only just laid my head down and now there’s a pounding at my door ripping me from my slumber. I fumble around the guest room The Oscillion put me in, trying to make my way to the door. I got lots of sneers from the other guards, though none were brave enough to call me out to my face.
I get it. I’m the only member of the guard to get such a fancy room. The others, like Narron once told me, all bunk together in a long dormitory. There’s nothing special for them. Not like what The Oscillion set me up in.
“It’s time—” Narron is practically shouting as I swing the door open. He cuts his words short and looks down at me with a frown.
“You slept in that thing?” he asks, indicating the gas mask. I shrug. This is me now.
Something about Narron looks pained. It’s like each passing day he grows more and more disturbed by me. It almost seems like he cares.
“It is time to speak to your male,” he tells me with a puffed-up chest.
“Yeah, okay.” I rub at my eyes and notice my hands trembling.
“I thought you would be happier,” Narron says plainly.
“No, I am. I’m happy. It’s just…do I get to see him too? Or what I mean to ask is: will he see me?”
“You will speak through the door only. You will not see one another.”
I nod.
“Have you thought about what you will say?” Narron asks. I turn from the doorway and start changing my clothes. In the corner of my eye I see Narron stiffen and look away. It seems silly, really. I’m not much to look at and he’s already seen it all anyway.
“Yeah, I have,” I tell him. Silence falls between us, but it’s expectant. It’s like he’s waiting for me to run it all by him. “What would you say? If you were in my shoes?” I ask, only half interested as I run my hands over my shaved head. I choose a backless top with a drapey and loose neckline that I can pull up over my head like a hood.
“If I were you, I would tell him goodbye. There’s nothing you could say that would make him happier than those words.”
I scoff. “Happy?” I zip my tall boots all the way up to my thighs. “Are you happy?” I ask. Narron’s back goes stiff. I take one last look in the mirror; the person staring back at me is a stranger.
“That’s what I thought,” I say, turning to face him. “There’s no such thing as happy in a life like this.”
“Happiness is a choice, perhaps not always the easiest choice, but a choice nonetheless.”
“I’m ready,” I say, facing him, but ignoring his words.
“Follow me.”
Narron leads me down a labyrinth of halls, past dozens of nameless guards standing stoically at their posts. We get to a massive door and Narron slides the heavy thing to one side, revealing what appears to be an elevator. We step inside. Narron punches a lengthy code into a control panel and I can feel the metal box around us making its descent.
When the door opens, a long dark hall lies before us. At the end is a staircase spiraling downwards. The air here feels cooler and I assume we are fairly deep underground at this point. The bottom of the staircase is marked by a locked gate and again Narron punches something into a control panel, causing the gate to swing open. We walk farther and I see a guard watching numerous monitors. Each monitor shows a lone person in a dark and empty cell. We pass by too quickly for me to be able to see which one might be my Dax. The guard waves us past and we turn down a final corridor lined with cells. Two muscular and uniformed men stand in front of one of the cells. This is where Narron leads me. He nods at the guards and they immediately take their leave.
“Go ahead,” Narron tells me, nodding toward the door. “Say what you have to say.” He slides a small window open. It’s too tall for me to see through, I could probably reach it with my fingertips if I stood on my toes. Inside the window I hear the rattle of chains. They go silent very suddenly, like the person inside is trying to hear what is going on outside.
I look back at Narron one last time, but he is already leaving. I see his broad shoulders vanish around the corridor we came from.
I look back and forth down the deserted hall. This place really is a fortress. I’d never be able to break Dax out. Not alone at least. I slowly make my way closer to the door, reaching up toward the opening. I lean my head against the cold metal door. The first sob hits me, sounding foreign muffled beneath my faux breathing apparatus.
“V?” Dax questions. I sob louder, pulling the mask from my face. “V! My V!” He yells, and I hear his chains rattle and then snap tight. Looking up at the window, I see his hand, reaching for me. I reach up and our fingertips graze one another.
“Dax.” It’s all I can think to say and for a long time we just lean against either side of that cell door, unable to hold one another.
Chapter 46
Dax
“Are you alright?” I ask. “Has he hurt you?”
“I’m alive,” she responds. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“V, you have to get out of here. I want you to find a way back to the ship and escape. Do not wait for me.”
“No. Dax, don’t. Please don’t even try. You can’t possibly understand. You haven’t seen this place, it’s a fortress. There’s no way for you to escape.”
“We will escape, V.”
“No. We won’t.”
“V—” I begin.
“You don’t understand! We won’t escape, Dax. We can’t.”
“Do not talk like that. We must—”
“Dax, please. I came here to talk to you. I have to say some things, I have to get it all off my chest. I don’t know if I’ll have another chance.”
“Then speak, I have missed the sound of your voice. Let me hear you talk, my mate,” I tell her, keeping a tight hold on her fingertips, savoring the feel of her skin against mine. I hear V let out a long sigh. She sounds so tired.
“I need you to understand what’s happening here, what you can expect. I…I won’t be able to rescue you, Dax. It’s impossible.”
“I will save you!” I declare.
“No, Dax. This is it. This is all there is, all there will ever be,” she sighs. “The Oscillion thought I would aba
ndon you. That I’d leave you here to rot, alone in this cell. I don’t claim to be a good person, Dax, lord knows I’m not. But I want you to know, I’ll never leave you.
“I never got to tell you how much you’ve meant to me,” she says. I hold my mate’s fingertips, listening, allowing her to release all the things that were clouding her mind but she never dared to speak aloud.
“You are such a good man, Dax. I don’t know why you decided to take care of me, but I’m so grateful for it. For a while there it was inspiring being with you. For a while I started to feel safe and strong and competent. For a while I thought that maybe one day I could even be like you. It was nice in those days, Dax, and I won’t forget it. But it isn’t reality. It isn’t who I am. Maybe in some ways The Oscillion is right about me. He saw the person I was supposed to be.”
“He does not know you like I know you, V. The Oscillion is poison.”
“He’s a monster, sure. But that’s why he can see what I am.”
“And what are you?” I ask, disbelieving.
“A monster, just like him. I’m flawed, Dax. Maybe I’ve always known this. It probably runs in my genes. One way or another, I suppose I would have turned out this way no matter what planet I ended up on.”
“That is absurd, V! You have to know this!”
“But it isn’t, Dax. The only thing I don’t know is why you can’t see it. You keep acting like I have all this good inside me, but there’s nothing there.”
“You’ve had a hard time, V. When I get out, when I get you away from here, you’ll start to see it. Your judgment is clouded—”
“Did you notice I never asked about the others? Not once. Did you ever notice that?” she asks.
I did notice this. As a matter of fact, I’ve spent sleepless nights wondering why she came along with me so easily at all, never asking any questions.
“Are they all dead?” she asks finally.
“Are they what?” I am taken aback.
“What did it? The UPC? Did they follow us? Was it a wild animal? Did…did they suffer?”
“V, everyone is fine. I stole you. I stole you because you were wasting away back there, with the others. I wanted to…” I bang my forehead against the door, feeling like a fool. “I wanted to take you on an adventure, to show you how wonderful the galaxy can be. I am so sorry I did not speak with you about it. I had no idea that all this time you thought something terrible happened.”
V is quiet on the other side of the door. “It doesn’t change anything. I’m still a creep. I thought they were hurt or dead and I just left them.”
“You were frightened! You cannot blame yourself for feeling!” I try to reason with her.
“Do you really think that’s the only evidence I have for being a monster? When we were leaving that primitive planet…do you remember what I wanted to do to ensure we escaped?” she asks, waiting for my response. I remember this as well. I remember she wanted to use the ship’s artillery to gun down the natives of the planet.
“The things we do in fear—” I begin.
“If I’m always afraid, does that give me an excuse to be evil?”
“Fear and malice are two different things.”
“Not if fear drives you to commit acts of great evil. You know what fear would have had me do, Dax?”
“Stop, V. Do not think down this line any longer. Think of getting out of here, of joining the others. When we get back to Elysia we will start a life together. You will be safe and never have to worry over these things. This is only the beginning.”
“When that little boy walked out in front of that ship,” she says without regard to my words, needing to vocalize all this pain within her. “I tried to hold you back, Dax. I would have let that poor little boy get swept up under the ship. He would have been killed and all I was thinking about was you.”
“Do you think every person on Quar other than you would have jumped in front of a moving ship to save a small boy?”
“No. Just the brave ones.”
“You are brave, V, braver than you know.”
“No, Dax. I’m not. I’m a coward. It’s all I know how to be and it’s all that’s keeping me alive right now. It’s all that’s keeping you alive right now. It lets me do things I couldn’t normally do. Like pilot ships and kill bad men…”
“Kill? V, what are you talking about? What has The Oscillion asked you to do?”
“He wants me to kill for him, Dax. To assassinate someone. A man named Vigere. I’m supposed to meet him in a brothel later.”
“A brothel? V, you can’t do this. You have to run, you have to get out of here.”
“I won’t leave you, Dax. If I did, he’d retaliate. He’d kill you.”
“I will worry about me, you worry about getting to safety.”
“You’re not listening. I’m the only thing that can keep you safe. I’m staying.”
“Please hear me, V! This has been hard for you. I know it has been, but soon it will all be over—”
“I’m sorry I took you to see The Oscillion that night.”
“Do not say that. We had no way of knowing what his plans would be. He would have come for us regardless.”
“Yeah, but we could at least have spent the night making love.” I hear her tearful chuckle.
“Ah,” I laugh. “My only regret.” I press as close to the door as I can, trying to feel her through it. “You can’t do this, V. If Vigere doesn’t kill you himself, then your guilt will do the job for him.”
“Guilt? Dax, I don’t feel any guilt. Vigere is a bad man and I…well, I’m a bad woman. You have to understand, I’ll do whatever it takes to survive. To make sure we both survive.”
There’s a sound in the hall and a tall and broad shadow blocks out some of the dim light leaking into my cell. V grows silent.
“You’re out of time,” a gruff voice tells her.
“Can I just say goodbye?” she asks, her voice cracking.
The dark silhouette is silent, but I hear footsteps receding.
“Dax,” she begins, but is cut short by a heavy sob. “Dax, I love you. I love you so much. You’re all I’ve ever wanted in life. You lifted me up and made me a better person, even if it was only for a short time. Please, don’t worry. Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of you now, Dax, it’s my turn to be the strong one.”
“V! Wait! We are not done here. You have to promise me you won’t go through with this!”
“Goodbye, Dax,” she says, pulling her fingers from mine with a sob. I try to reach for her, but she is beyond my grasp.
“V! V, wait!” I bellow after her, but she is gone. I pound on the cell door. I pound so hard it melts with the sound of drumming within me. Those drums… They’ve been slow, sad, and mournful. Now, they rage again.
Chapter 47
Allison
I’m on edge the entire journey, not knowing what we’ll find once we land. The stories that brought Da’vi and me out here were far-fetched to say the least, but they’re the only lead we’ve had for months. Still, I had to practically beg Rennek and Kate to even let us come. I get it, the stories were bullshit, but enough people are telling them that I know one thing for certain: something is happening on Quar.
Whether or not this “V” person is our Vivian remains to be seen. I mean, the rumors surrounding her were pretty wild. They say she’s a maverick in the pilot’s seat, performs lascivious exhibitions in front of packed bars, that she is a skilled assassin, and a shapeshifter. Obviously, that sounds nothing like the Vivian I know. What struck me was the name. A goddess called V. Could this be our lost human? It’s possible.
That’s why I was so upset when everyone seemed to want to delay this mission. Even if it isn’t Vivian out there, it could still be a human who needs our help. But if it does turn out to be Vivian, it might already be too late. A girl like her wouldn’t last long in a place like Quar.
It’s a dusty little planet. Hot and crowded. Da’vi and I push our way through the thr
ongs of aliens leaving the airfield. During our flight I complained one too many times about his choice of travel, a rusty old jalopy of a spaceship, and now he’s even more snippy than usual. I have to hurry after him to match his angry pace, slowing only to exit the main gates. Stalled there, packed arm to arm with aliens, another traveler strides up next to us. He smiles down at me and starts trying to make small talk as we bottleneck at the gates.
“Busiest year yet,” he says. “First time at the Rally?”