Out of Orbit- The Complete Series Boxset

by Chele Cooke

  From what she could tell, it had been someone wanting to speak to her. The only person she could imagine turning up at Edtroka’s door was Maarqyn. She already knew that it had been Keiran who organised for Edtroka to purchase her, but Maarqyn had made his annoyance quite clear. He wanted access to her to find out about Alec and Nyah. If Alec had been involved in whatever was going on with the pillars, then perhaps the commander was more eager than ever to discover what she knew. However, no matter the terms of the arrangement, no matter why someone would believe she had information—if it had been Maarqyn at the door, why had they been speaking in Veuric?

  Edtroka didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day. He went out, he came back and did some work at the big table next to the door. Georgianna hovered and contemplated asking him about the mysterious visit, but each time she opened her mouth she thought better of it and went back to her thoughts. He didn’t thank her when she made dinner for him. He disappeared into his room early, leaving Georgianna to toss and turn on the sofa all night long.

  Georgianna had been awake for hours when his bedroom door finally opened. Edtroka was dressed in Tsevstakre uniform, the black plating emphasising every muscle. She curled her body into a tighter ball on the sofa, but Edtroka paid her little mind as he opened cabinets, looking for something.

  “Get up. Make yourself presentable.”

  Pushing the blanket back, she got to her feet, careful not to make any sudden movements that might accidentally anger him. From the tight line of his lips and the knit of his brow, he already looked like he was in a foul mood.

  By the time she was ready, Edtroka was waiting by the front door, the bronze key in his fingers. He turned it over and over, a habit of his that she had noted, and waved her out of the door.

  “You are not to leave my side, am I understood?”

  “Where are…” Georgianna paused at the flash of anger in his gaze. “Yes.”

  “I have not put a collar on you, but if you even look like you are going to run, I will restrain you by other means.”

  He looked back at her. She hurried down the stairs after him.

  “You will not like those means. Do not make me use them.”

  “I won’t.”

  The streets were busy when they reached the centre of the city. Edtroka took hold of her arm, weaving them through the crowds. There seemed to be a large number of people heading in the same direction, yet she saw a couple of Veniche slipping through in the other direction, fear emanating from them.

  “Where are we going?”

  Edtroka didn’t answer her except to tighten his grasp on her arm.

  The street opened up, the crowd filtering out into the large square. Georgianna bit her bottom lip. The crowd were gathering at the other end of the open space. None of the stalls had been set up. Over the heads of the crowd, two posts rose from the execution podium, waiting. Green lightning crackled around the hoop on top of each post.

  She tried to pull back, but Edtroka stared down at her with such ferocity that she shrank under his glare. She allowed herself meekly to be pulled along by him, more closely as others bustled past. In the centre of the growing crowd, Edtroka came to a halt, ensuring that she was standing a step in front of him so that he could see her at all times.

  Two Adveni climbed the steps to the podium, approaching the posts. Each wore dark, heavy gloves, carrying the same blue binding that Edtroka had used around her wrists. They attached a length of binding to each post, laying the binding across the podium floor, where it flickered and twitched with electricity like an injured snake.

  “Edtroka,”

  His cheek brushed against her hair as he bent over her, lips next to her ear.

  “You think that they don’t know who was responsible for what happened to those pillars?” he asked quietly. “They know. Maarqyn knows that Cartwright stole the information.”

  Georgianna froze, unable to move and unable to tear her gaze from the commotion on the other side of the podium. Five Adveni surrounded a struggling man. Edtroka didn’t back away. She could feel his breath washing over her cheek, much more relaxed than her own panicked gasps. Had they caught Alec? Was he the man struggling amongst the Adveni? She spotted a flash of dark hair and cried out.

  “Maarqyn is determined to send a message to his drysta,” Edtroka murmured. “By any means necessary.”

  Georgianna had seen that phrase before. It had been on the message about the pillars. Capture orders. It had just been letters—A.M.N—but now she understood what they meant.

  The Adveni were stepping back, opening up their ranks around the man. He wasn’t struggling anymore. A collar was clamped securely around his neck. He was begging the stern and sour-faced Adveni next to him, who didn’t bother to look at him.

  Landon Cartwright ascended the steps.

  “But… but he didn’t… he’s…”

  “Maarqyn doesn’t care if he’s guilty. He is a message and the way to make sure that a message is heard properly is to make it personal.”

  The two Adveni in heavy gloves lifted the binding. Landon was positioned in the centre of the podium, between the posts. Only then did she notice that this was not a normal cinystalq collar. There were two hoops coming off it, allowing the bindings to be connected. One at a time, the gloved Adveni connected the bindings to each side of the collar around Landon’s neck. Landon trembled and Georgianna thought that she could see tears creeping down his cheeks.

  “They can’t do this,” she whispered.

  She longed to run to Landon, to gather him up in her arms and protect him. She remembered him as a baby, had held him and entertained him. He was Alec’s little brother.

  He was only twenty-one years old.

  Edtroka twisted his grip on her arm, reminding her with a painful spasm that she would not be going anywhere. He hadn’t brought her here to intervene.

  “Do you know how a collaring works?”

  She moaned in protest. Edtroka stepped closer, his chest pressed against her back as his grasp found her other arm, holding her against him.

  “The cinystalq creates a barrier, much like the Mykahnol. Nothing can pass it,” he murmured into her ear.

  Georgianna couldn’t take her gaze from Landon. She wanted nothing more than to turn away but it wasn’t Edtroka’s grasp that held her in place. The young man was about to be killed and she didn’t want him to be alone. She wanted someone to be there for him, even if he never saw her. She couldn’t turn away as he was murdered. She would be just as bad as the Adveni who revelled in his death.

  “Then, it begins sending out an electrical current, down into the body. The brain is protected by the barrier and so the wearer stays aware of the pain longer, is kept alive longer.”

  She was aware of her breath rattling through her clenched teeth. Tracks of warm tears slid down her cheeks. One of the Adveni on the podium was talking, but Georgianna could only hear Edtroka’s voice in her ear.

  “The organs are burned out, they begin to fail, and yet the person does not black out.”

  “Stop, please stop.”

  “No,” Edtroka insisted. “You are the medic. You know how beneficial it is for a person to lose consciousness when their injuries are that severe.”

  Her hands were trembling. Landon’s first cry was more of a splutter, trying to resist the screams that wanted to get out. Georgianna remembered that pain, the way it shuddered and flashed into every nerve. Yet she knew the strength of the shocks that Maarqyn had administered to her were nothing compared to those currently coursing through Landon Cartwright. His body was trembling, yet he stayed on his feet.

  Even Edtroka’s words in her ear couldn’t drown out Landon’s first scream as it echoed across the square. All around her Adveni were cheering the execution on, some taking bets on how long it would take for the boy to die. Georgianna choked on her own breath. She lurched forwards, but Edtroka dragged her back up, forcing her to look at the boy she once knew.

  Landon slipped to h
is knees, his hair damp with sweat. A dark streak appeared and spread down his trouser leg. His hands braced him against the podium.

  All the time he kept on screaming.

  She had been weak. She’d avoided the square when someone was being collared. Even when it had been Nequiel, her brother’s partner, she had stayed away. Now she could feel her brother’s pain while watching it. She could imagine the way he had screamed and begged for it to stop. She could feel his burning anger as others cheered the torture on. Landon’s body appeared little more than a trembling wreck. His screams had abated to a series of moaning, spluttering coughs. He spat blood onto the floor before him, the remnants dribbling down his chin.

  All Georgianna could hope for was that Alec was not here to see this. She prayed that Beck had been smart enough to stop him from coming, whatever obscenities she was sure Alec would have spewed, the punches he would have thrown. She hoped that Alec never had to know how much his brother had suffered in his place.

  Landon’s trembling faded into a series of sudden jerks. Between each jerk, he lay still as stone. His mouth hung open, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. One of the Adveni moved forwards, and with his hand still gloved, he pressed a device to the side of Landon’s neck.

  “The sentence has been carried out.”

  All around them Adveni cheered as Georgianna finally found her voice and let out a desolate cry. It was mirrored by one last scream of pain, only this came from the back of the crowd.

  “Why?” she pleaded. “Why would you force me to watch this?”

  Edtroka’s grasp on her arms loosened and he turned her around to face him.

  “This is what will happen to you if you are involved in the rebellion, Georgianna,” he murmured, lifting her chin so that her gaze met his. Tears dripped steadily from her eyelashes and she did nothing to stop them. Despite everything, there was no cruelty in Edtroka’s face. “And I will be able to do nothing to stop it. If you know something, you should save yourself. You should tell me now.”

  Georgianna wrenched herself from his grasp, looking for something, anything that she could focus on besides Edtroka’s dark eyes. Through the crowd, her gaze was caught by a struggling group off to the side. Alec was being pulled, kicking and cursing from the back of the crowd. A heavy hood masked his features, but she knew his face too well. Wrench tugged on his arm and, as Alec continued to fight, another man joined them to drag him away.

  She looked fearfully around the crowd. She expected to see uniformed Adveni storming towards the commotion, but the sound must have been drowned out by the glee of the onlookers. Maarqyn, it seemed, had missed his chance.

  She couldn’t let this happen to Alec. She would rather never see anyone she loved ever again than watch them go through this.

  “No,” she said, finally looking up at Edtroka. “There’s nothing.”

  Edtroka retreated to his bedroom the moment they returned. He didn’t ask her to make dinner, nor did he offer her any when he made his own. She didn’t think she would have been able to eat anyway. Her stomach had tightened in grief and pain. They went to sleep in a steely silence. She didn’t sleep, not much anyway. Each time she tried, Landon’s screams pierced her dreams and Alec struggled against her to reach him. Maarqyn followed them through the shadows. She woke multiple times, tangled in blankets and dripping with sweat. After a while she stopped trying and spent the last few hours staring at the door to the locked room.

  The next morning, when Edtroka left for work, Georgianna only knew he had gone because he had to pass the sofa where she was sleeping to leave the apartment. He didn’t so much as say goodbye.

  When she looked in the mirror, she saw that where Edtroka had struck her, a large dark bruise matched the yellowing one that Maarqyn had left. She didn’t know what was so important about the sphere he had caught her holding, but she didn’t want to incur his anger again by asking about it. Up until finding her with the heavy sphere he’d been nice to her and promised not to hurt her unless she deserved it. He’d even treated the wound she received from Maarqyn. Catching her going through his things had obviously made something snap within him, and Georgianna was determined not to let it happen again. Her only comfort was that he knew she’d not been involved with the disconnection of the pillars. She’d been with him when the attack report came in, and he seemed to have accepted that she didn’t know the information Alec had escaped with.

  In an effort to make sure that the next time she saw him he might be less angry, she’d done everything she could think of to make the apartment nice for him. The shift Edtroka was on would last until sunrise and so, with the bronze key in hand, the apartment clean behind her, Georgianna set out into the city. He had told her to collect her tsentyl and she was determined not to give him any other reason for deserving his anger.

  It felt odd, walking alone. It was only as she turned the corner away from the building that she realised she had not been out unaccompanied since leaving the compound. Everywhere she’d gone, she’d been with someone, whether with Edtroka or someone she knew.

  Her feet made a steady drumming against the pavement, pulling her into her thoughts. She turned to look over her shoulder a few times, certain that she could feel a gaze on the back of her head. However, there was never anybody there. She had to admit that she almost hoped Keiran would be close, keeping a safe distance but watching over her. No, she couldn’t think that way. She couldn’t rely on him whilst she didn’t know why his name had been on that list.

  The fear that kept running through her mind was that the price Keiran had paid for her release was not in money but information. If so, what had he handed over for the deal he had spoken about? As much as she hated to admit it, especially while Landon’s screams still echoed in her ears, she knew that Edtroka was smart. Even if Keiran had offered Edtroka information in exchange for her freedom, the Adveni had no reason to trust the word of a Belsa.

  The longer she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that it had to have been Keiran who handed over the information on the escape. He’d made sure everyone was gone before the Adveni arrived, but the collars were left, giving credit to his information. It wasn’t his fault the Adveni were too slow. She even remembered Alec telling her that Keiran had left the building early to make sure that no Adveni were coming.

  Now, he’d handed over something else, more information perhaps. Was it only a matter of time before Alec was captured? Would the Adveni be suspiciously aware of where he could be captured?

  Sunlight streamed down, but Georgianna folded her hands into her armpits. It was wrong for it to be this hot while she felt so cold, so numb. Landon’s body had been taken off the podium before the majority of the crowd had dispersed. Georgianna could picture the grave it would have been thrown into, left to rot without the proper service and ceremony. He would not be marked for his family to remember. His body would not give back to the earth the way the Veniche were supposed to.

  She heard the sound of them before she saw them, boots against concrete. They were following her from a distance. Georgianna considered not looking around. She didn’t want to appear guilty and looking over her shoulder would only make her seem worried, but as the boots came closer, she glanced back.

  Maarqyn was closing in, a wry smile already on his lips. The woman, Ehnisque, was close behind, keeping a few steps behind her commander. As Georgianna glanced down the streets turning off the road she was on, she realised that two other soldiers were holding a comfortable distance to each side. They were trying to look nonchalant but failing miserably, their gaze flickering to her every few seconds. Whatever Maarqyn wanted, he had come prepared. There was only one street where she couldn’t see any Adveni watching and waiting, but though Georgianna’s legs itched to run, her feet seemed stuck to the floor. So she stood, numbly waiting as Maarqyn came within a few feet of her.

  “Medic,” he greeted. His nod to her could almost be classed as respectful, but Georgianna didn’t imagine that it wa
s anything of the sort.

  She clenched her hands in front of her, remembering that Edtroka wanted her to be polite at all times. Somehow, she didn’t think that calling her owner’s superior a vicious bastard would qualify.

  “Good afternoon, Volsonne,” she said instead.

  The Adveni surrounded her. They kept their positions, far enough away not to overhear, but close enough to react if necessary. Maarqyn had called her ‘little bird’ once and now he had her well and truly caged.

  “I see that your owner has, for all his faults, at least taught you manners.”

  The smile she tried to force didn’t quite form the way she had wanted it to.

  “Can I help you, Commander?”

  Maarqyn’s fingers twitched against a pocket in his jacket and, fearing what was kept inside, Georgianna stepped back.

  “I was surprised that it took you so long to move, Medic,” he answered casually. “When I saw Grystch leaving so early in the day, I figured that it would be mere minutes before Belsa slithered out of the woodwork, ready to collect you the way they did my Nyah.”

  Georgianna didn’t dare answer him for fear of giving something away. She looked at the ground.

  “Instead, you wait hours,” he continued, the grin growing broader. “And you have no collar. It seems that your owner is not sufficiently prepared.”

  “My owner trusts that I will return.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he does. Perhaps I am better trained in not trusting a Veniche simply because she has a pretty face.”

  Georgianna took another step back. Maarqyn waited a moment, then took a step forwards, closing the gap again.

  “With no collar, how would Grystch track you should you go missing, I wonder? Would you care to test out such a theory?”