Mutual Trust

by Lea Linnett

  Warden Garross was a Calideez martian, and like all other members of his species, he suffered from lime green skin that continuously secreted some kind of lubricant. It left his skin glossy and wet at all times, and his favorite pastime was trying to get as much of it on Lena as possible. The fact that he had four arms instead of the more standard two only increased her chances of getting slimed on.

  “HF-23,” he said, a satisfied smirk on his face.

  “W-warden,” Lena peeped, instinctively taking a step back. “I’m just fixing the machines here. I’m not idle.”

  Garross stepped back into her orbit. He reached a slimy hand up to touch her elbow, and she quickly pulled it away as the wetness began to seep through the fabric of her jumpsuit.

  “Warden Garross—”

  “You seem to be alone down here, HF-23. You know that looks suspicious, right?” He grinned at her, showing off yellow teeth, and leaned in close. “I knew you’d come around. It’s good of you to find a little empty corner for us, Lena.” He said her name softly, only just loud enough to hear over the grating of the washing machine. Using her first name would have earned him a demerit had anyone who actually cared about their job been present.

  She backed up another step as his face inched closer and closer. She wished she could get Libby or her alien bedmate’s attention, but the washing machine was still churning behind her, locked in a loud and broken spin cycle.

  “Warden, sir, I didn’t actually mean for that—I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea, sir.”

  Garross’ expression faltered slightly, but soon recovered. He advanced further, until Lena’s back hit the groaning machine. She jumped away from it, the vibrations too strong, but that put her within grabbing distance again, and she felt multiple hands on her.

  “S-sir!”

  She couldn’t take it any longer. She pushed him away, feeling the awful slip-slide of his limbs beneath her fingers but no longer caring as long as it got him away. The movement pushed her back into the machine again, making it rattle to a stop with a grunt and a whine.

  Garross glared at her, his eyes dark. Lena had enough time for the color to drain from her face before a new voice made them both freeze.

  “Shit.”

  Lena’s eyes flew to the dryers, where Libby and the cicarian were standing with rumpled jumpsuits and wide eyes. Libby was looking between her and the warden, already edging towards the door.

  “Get out of here!” Garross bellowed, and the two inmates fled. Lena’s heart sank, half-expecting Libby to somehow save her from the overgrown green slug.

  “Sir, I’m really sorry—”

  “I don’t want your apologies,” he snapped, prowling closer. He pointed to the spot where Libby and her cicarian had stood. “That’s a misdemeanor, you know? Fraternization.”

  “For them—”

  “Uh-uh-uh. For you.” Garross edged closer, his breath hot and moist on Lena’s skin. “You knew they were there. You were covering for them. Most of the wardens in here wouldn’t let that slide.” His mouth turned up at the corner. “But you know me, Lena. I’ve been known to help girls out. Turn a blind eye? All you have to do is provide a little payment up front. Can you do that?”

  No I fucking can’t, she wanted to say, the words balancing precariously on her tongue. But she couldn’t afford a misdemeanor. She was pressed up against the now-still machine, wishing she had a few more inches to get away from the creep of Garross’ fingers, but there was nowhere to go. He was reaching for her again, making bile rise in her throat.

  She didn’t fully register what she was doing until it was too late. She ducked out of his grip, her arm pulled back, and then her clenched fist slammed into Warden Garross’ cheek. It happened in slow motion for Lena, the sight of his gooey skin parting wetly beneath her knuckles burning itself into her memory.

  She backed up, fists raised protectively in front of her, before her brain caught up to her and she froze. The warden just stood there for a moment, his jaw hanging open in shock. Eventually, he turned to face her fully, his feet leaving tracks of slime on the laundry floor. His dark eyes blazed—all three of them—the murky green sclera forming small brown veins as they grew bloodshot with fury.

  He grit his yellow teeth. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.

  Lena’s own teeth chattered. Her hands shook. “I—I—"

  “You just fueled your own crematorium fire, Lena. But if you come to me now, I’ll think about letting it go.”

  He reached for her again, and she stepped back, her fists raising automatically. Garross’ face flushed ugly and dark, his murky eyes wide and incensed. “Fuck you,” he spat, before pulling the two-way radio from his belt. “Menna, I’ve got an inmate—HF-23—down here who just assaulted me. Laundry.”

  The radio crackled and he put it away, and then all of his hands shot out, restraining Lena with frightening speed. She tried to escape him, but despite his slippery skin, his grip was now firm. He pulled her arms behind her back, cuffing them together with a zip-tie pulled deftly from a slot on his belt.

  “W-wait!” she yelped, fighting to pull her wrists apart. “Please!”

  “Oh, no, HF-23. You’re going into fucking Iso.”

  “What?!” Lena’s heart thumped in her chest. Iso was for the real criminals. It was the last line of punishment before transfer. “Please, sir, no.”

  “Oh, so now you’re all sweet? Fuck you.” He yanked on her arms, jerking them up painfully and marching her toward the door. She grunted, her muscles protesting. “You’ve assaulted a warden now, Duster. If I get my way, you’re gonna be stuck in there long enough that you forget what the sun even looks like.”

  Lena’s stomach rolled. “No, please! I’ve only got three more months!”

  She could hear the grin in his voice as he marched her out in front of him. “Should’ve thought of that, huh?”

  Lena grit her teeth and growled, still trying to pull her arms from Garross’ grip. But he held firm, and she was unceremoniously pushed down the hallway towards Iso.

  - - -

  Lena sat on the small cot in her isolation cell and tried to ignore the bedsprings digging into her ass. She couldn’t sleep, the bright fluorescents burning through her eyelids even when she closed them. The Iso Ward was quiet—Lena must have been the only one stupid enough to piss off a warden today.

  She’d never been to Iso before. And she’d be happy if she never visited again. Despite its lack of windows, the room they’d locked her in was blindingly bright, the walls painted white to reflect the fluorescent lights as much as possible. The room itself was tiny, featuring only a cot and a toilet, and the bleached walls pressed further in around Lena the longer she sat there.

  Without sleep, all she had for company were her own thoughts. Images of home danced over the walls, giving her comfort even as they mocked her. It had to be night by now—she’d been in here for what felt like hours. She imagined Augusta, her guardian, darning last-minute orders by lamplight in the rundown clothier’s they lived in. She pictured her sister, Ellie, sleeping and dreaming of dress patterns and rolls of fabric.

  Lena sighed. Garross had whispered to her as he threw her into the cell. He was going to write her up for assault, and for trying to barter sexual favors to get out of punishment. The dark brown bruise blooming across his cheek would be proof enough. That would easily add a year to Lena’s sentence, and from what she’d seen in her time at Kharon, these decisions didn’t undergo much review. She’d seen plenty of pretty girls and angry boys get screwed over by wardens with a grudge in the three months she’d been here. She wouldn’t be going back to Rockford anytime soon.

  Her head hit the wall behind her with a soft thunk. She was nearly out! She’d been practically counting down the days to when she could step off a prison transport and into her sister’s arms. Ellie would cry and Lena would probably cry too and then she could get back to what she was good at—caring for her sister. Things would be n
ormal again. Better than normal. She might actually find a job with transports this time, rather than the monotonous stints at a conveyor belt that had been her life up until now.

  But now that dream was slipping through her fingers.

  She’d never get out at this rate. Especially with Garross gunning for her and punishing her every time she refused him. She snorted. For years, she’d been wishing that she could just be noticed—appreciated for her talents. Too bad it had been Garross that had finally taken up the cause. And that he’d been more interested in her body than her skill with a wrench.

  She sank down onto the bed, wincing as the tiny bits of metal scraped at her back. She was just about to close her eyes and try to will away the bright glare of the light bulb above her, when the entire room went dark. There was a metallic groan, the sound of something sliding, and a click.

  Lena shot up, looking around wildly. The room was pitch black for a few moments as her eyes tried to adjust, and it was a whole new kind of claustrophobia that hit her as she reached out, unable to see her hand a few inches from her face.

  But then a mechanism whined in the corridor, and a dull light swept under her cell’s door, illuminating the room just enough for her to regain her bearings.

  Her gaze fell on the door, and the shaft of light. She thought she’d heard the mechanical lock slide back, but there was no shadow, no set of legs betraying a guard’s presence. She frowned. Had it slid back automatically? Lena’s mind raced. They’d only recently renovated this wing of the prison, and she remembered the memos going around, crowing about the new high-tech security measures that had been placed on each individual cell in the Iso Ward. If they were all remotely lockable, she supposed a power failure might trip them. If they were terribly made, that is. And judging by the lack of light in here and the backup lighting in the corridor, a power failure was what had happened.

  But she hadn’t heard the lock slide back into place with the backup power, and while her heart soared at the idea, it hardly seemed believable.

  Curious, she rose gingerly from the cot, her legs stiff. There was only silence now—no footsteps, no voices. She inspected the door, running her hands along the metal and finding no handle on her side. She worried her lip, running through the pros and cons of just opening the door. Could it be a trick? Would she be accused of trying to escape if she opened it, adding even more time to her sentence? But what if it was an emergency? They couldn’t fault her for trying to get somewhere safer.

  Although, if it was an emergency, the lack of any sirens in the vicinity was odd.

  She hesitated for one second, and one second more, before fitting her fingers into the tiny gap between door and wall and wrenching it back. The huge door was heavy, but blissfully silent, swinging open with barely a groan. Her muscles protested even so, still sore from Garross’ harsh treatment earlier.

  She peeked around the small gap she’d made in the doorway. The backup lights were only a slight relief from the soupy blackness of her cell, and they didn’t illuminate much, instead casting the entire corridor in a flat, colorless light. The corridor was empty, save for Lena. There were no other open doors and no faces peering out into the light. She was about to creep out of her cell when a noise made her shrink back.

  The deafening screech of metal at the end of the corridor filled her ears, and her eyes fell on a door that had evidently been left in much worse repair than her own judging by the sound it made. The door was wrested open slowly, and Lena’s stomach dropped like a stone at the sight of the creature that then lumbered from the cell.

  He was huge, easily seven feet tall and almost half that across the shoulder, and he had to duck as he exited the cell. His prison jumpsuit was open at the collar, revealing a thick column of a neck, and the dark blue fabric stood out vividly against the sandy yellow of his skin. He walked on two legs towards the service door at the very end of the hallway, his legs bent inhumanly at the heel—more like a cicarian or a dog’s hind legs. Even in the dim light, his skin gave off a slight sheen, and Lena realized that those were scales covering his entire body.

  Levekk.

  The word flitted across her mind unbidden, every nightmarish story she’d heard about the species flooding her thoughts. Augusta’s voice came trickling back to her as if through a screen, telling her of the strange, reptilian aliens that had invaded Earth—or CL-32, as they were supposed to call it—over two hundred years ago and enslaved her people, folding them into the larger empire that the levekk called their ‘Constellation.’ The levekk had shaped the society that Lena lived in now, and here one was, standing right before her.

  She gaped, her fingers turning white around the door frame, and before she could stop it a terrified whimper squeezed itself from her lips.

  The alien froze as the sound cut through the silence. He turned slowly, his huge frame seeming to fill the entire breadth of the hallway as he scanned it. Lena sat, still half in her cell, and noted dully that she must have fallen to her knees in shock. Her eyes were glued to the alien standing before her, and it didn’t take long for his strange, cat-like eyes to find hers. She noticed an angry scar, white and puckered, clawing up his left cheek.

  He stalked towards her, pushing her cell door open with one hand as if it weighed practically nothing. Exposed fully in the light of the corridor, Lena backed away, landing on her ass in her cell and peering up at the alien with wide eyes. His head was silhouetted by the dim fluorescents now, his eyes hidden in shadow, and Lena nonsensically noticed the strange shape of his skull—ear-less, but with a domed plate covering the top half of it, almost like a bike helmet or an ancient knight’s helm from the storybooks.

  Lena shook like a leaf as one massive hand came down and wrapped itself around her upper arm, hauling her out into the light. The grip was strong—stronger than Garross’ slimy palms by a mile—and the texture was strange, seeming half-smooth and half-hard all at once. Although she didn’t have time to ponder that for long as he dumped her unceremoniously in the center of the corridor.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  About the Author

  Lea grew up in regional Australia, and has many fond memories of looking up at the stars without the city lights blocking them from view. Although she has since traded the country for the city, she never stopped wondering just what—or who—might be up there. Unfortunately, space travel isn’t in her wheelhouse, but if she can’t go to the aliens, she’ll just have to bring them to Earth. Or to her books, at least.

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