Like he’d been ready for someone. Me.
“No! No way,” I yelled.
He wrestled my kicking and screaming body to the ground wordlessly while the guy who had interrupted us watched with his mouth wide open. When the first manacle went around my wrist, it burned, but not as badly as I thought it would. Not at first anyway. It felt like when you first get cut, when you don’t really realize it yet, but then the burn comes and it starts to blaze hot across your skin.
We had so much gold on this planet. It was useless because it was so soft. But then we found out that for some reason, the oxidation of the gold had changed somehow for us in space, or maybe it was us who changed. It was toxic when we touched it. So naturally, the only use for gold was for torture devices.
“You’re such a…” Bastard? Piece of crap left behind by a horsopotomus? Pissant? All of those would get me fined money I didn’t have.
“That’s right,” he taunted. “Go ahead and call me whatever you want. The sensors would pick up on it and you wouldn’t need me to take you to processing, little girl.”
“That would be better than staying here with you, wouldn’t it?” I thought about it. What was this man Havard going to do to me here, and why would I stay and endure it if he was only going to send me to processing anyway?
I opened my mouth to finish my sentence, call him the first bad string of things that spouted from my lips, but Havard wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He was on me before I could utter the words. His balled up hand connected with the side of my head, and when the darkness overtook me all I wanted to do was talk to my mom and ask her what I should do.
**
When I woke, I was alone, but both of my hands were in the gold manacles behind my back and I had a handkerchief or something in my mouth, tied around my head tightly. Before I could even begin to start planning my escape someone came in the door.
It was the same guy from before, the same one who had told Havard that he had a “meeting”. He took one look at me, clearly not what he was looking for, and he turned and ran the other way.
I yelled as best I could, but it just sounded like muffled gibberish. He was gone and I was once again left with the seediness of the situation and the fact that I was utterly screwed.
“Help!” I yelled, but it sounded like, “Hhhmmmmpd.” Useless. While I had slept—correction—while I was unconscious, the gold had seared through my skin like a disease and it hurt so badly to move. But I had to move. I had to get out of this.
I rolled over enough to push my face against the floor and work the handkerchief out of my mouth. As soon as I could have screamed, the door opened once again. It was him once more, but Maxton was with him.
He looked epically angry and I found myself speechless as I looked up at him from my awkward position on the floor.
“See, I told you,” the guy hissed to Maxton.
Maxton did not look any happier by that statement. In fact, he looked even angrier, his hands opening and closing into fists. He turned a red-hot glare on him and barked, “I can see exactly what you said is true.” He turned back to me and kept right on glaring. “Leave us, Badger.”
“Maxton,” he tried.
“Leave,” he yelled and then lowered his voice as he leaned in, as if that would somehow make up for his mistake. “You can’t be here. You can’t have anything to do with this.”
Badger reared back as if Maxton had said an offensive word and the sensors were about to go off. “You…you’re going to do it, aren’t you? You can’t! You’ll be a—”
“Convict,” Maxton finished and looked at me again. “That’s for me to worry about. She’s my responsibility. I found her and…” He gulped and I actually felt bad for him.
Wait…
Convict?
I gasped. He was going to take me off the ship? Defy Havard? Not turn me in? He couldn’t do that. Even though I was angry at him for what he did, he couldn’t risk his life for me, even if I was confused about why he would do it in the first place. His guilt for what he had done to me wasn’t a reason to ruin his entire life and become a convict. My life had already been ruined.
Even in my state, I managed to say, “No.”
But it came out a whisper. They both looked startled that I had said anything. The other guy looked me over and then looked away with a strangled sigh.
Maxton came closer and leaned down on his haunches. I tried to sit up as best as I could, but I was sure it just looked like I was squirming around, so I stopped. He reached for me and I could do nothing but lie there. When his hand touched my upper arm, I jerked out of instinct. I wasn’t used to being touched unless I was being manhandled. He held one hand out as if to say It’s okay and then the other one dragged the collar of the shirt back up my arm before deftly redoing the very top button.
My lips parted on a small gasp. I’d almost forgotten that Havard had done that.
“It’s okay,” Maxton murmured and then turned his head to the side to speak to the man. “You’re still here.”
The guy huffed. “I know where the keys are. I saw him—”
“I can’t use them. He’ll know you gave them to me.” He stood and started to move about the room. “You need to go.”
“Maxton,” he sighed, “this feels wrong.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told me. I couldn’t just leave her—”
“No, no.” He stepped closer. “Letting you do this. Alone.”
Maxton looked at him. “You’ve got mouths to feed, too. More than I do.” He went to him and they hugged, patting each other’s backs hard. “Tell Sherlyn that I will miss her moon pies more than anything else on this planet.”
The guy cracked a smile. “Moon pie.” He pushed his shoulder. “You’re hilarious, man.”
They hooked arms, cuffing each other’s shoulders with their palms. “It’s been real,” Maxton said.
“And it’s been fun,” the guy said back, his voice cracking the tiniest bit.
“But it hasn’t been real fun,” they said together but there was a sadness there. “Goodbye, brother,” they said at the same time before the guy slowly walked out the door. It seemed unspoken that they weren’t real brothers. This was obviously some thing that they did. Who knew, maybe it was some black market ritual or something.
Maxton’s hands on my arms from behind made me jump again and he sighed an apology. I couldn’t stop myself. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because I would hope that if it had been my sister in your situation, someone would have helped her.”
That surprised me. And shocked me.
“Aren’t you the one who turned me in?” I said softly.
He flinched and stopped what he was doing for a few seconds. I didn't feel bad about my words, they were true, but he obviously did. He didn’t say anything else as he started to work on the manacles once more and neither did I.
And then it crashed down on me. Because I would hope that if it had been my sister in your situation, someone would have helped her. Would have. Past tense.
“What happened to her? Your sister?” I ventured, and was met with a dark chuckle.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” He leaned forward a bit, his breath moving the hair at the back of my neck. “Just because I’m helping you doesn’t mean you get a free pass at me.”
I scoffed and wiggled my wrists as much as I could in their confines. “This hardly counts as free, pal.”
I could have sworn I heard a teeny actual laugh escape him, but it had been so long since I heard one I wouldn’t even know what one sounded like.
The snick of metal and a small pinch made me hiss before he eased the manacles away from one wrist and then a few minutes later did the same to the other. He untied the handkerchief from around my neck and tore it down the middle with such ease as I turned to face him. He took each of my raw wrists and tied a piece of the handkerchief around them.
“For now,” he told me, “until we can get to a proper Med Kit away from the sh
ip.” I nodded. He grimaced as he stood and tugged me by my arm to stand with him. “Now comes the fun part.” He answered the rhetorical question, as I knew exactly what he meant. “We have to get off this ship—preferably, not in pieces or with holes.”
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I spouted back, avoiding his eyes, but watching him enough to see him.
He eyed me for a few long seconds. “You’re tough.” He nodded. “Good. You’ll need to be.” He pressed his lips together once. “And I’m not going to apologize for what I did. I did what I had to do for me and my own. But Havard wasn’t…following the system, the rules, and I couldn’t leave you here to…” He huffed, moving over to the desk, searching for something.
“You’re angry about having to save me,” I realized.
“Yeah, I am,” he admitted, but had the graciousness to look sorry about that at least. “This job has taken care of me for a long time. I needed it. I need it,” he corrected. “Now I don’t know what I’ll do, but I have to do something, and fast.”
“Taxes,” I muttered. It was something I hadn’t had to worry about in a long time. Proprietors paid taxes on their slaves, but it was only half price. Rivers threw that fact in my face at every opportunity—the fact that I was literally worth half of what the rest of the people were worth.
“Where did you go?”
“What?” I whispered painfully, hating that I had been chucked back into my past so quickly, so easily, so dangerously.
He moved toward me a little, a small object in his hands. “You’re not going to be one of those people who’s constantly spacing out, are you?” His eyes focused so fully on me, it was unnerving.
“You’re not going to be one of those people who says blunt, rude things even when people have just been attacked, betrayed, and their plans completely spoiled…are you?”
His grin caught me off guard, causing my gut to buckle and twist.
“Sorry.” He chuckled low, seeming to truly enjoy himself. He rubbed his knuckles along his scruffy chin. “I’m, uh—in my line of work, I don’t run across very many…”
“Slaves,” I bit out.
“Females,” he corrected with a delicious brogue that had me swinging my gaze to his. But his look told me his answer was a serious one even if he did have a smile tacked on.
“Where are you from? That’s an interesting accent.”
He smirked and went to the door, getting to the side and putting his back to the wall. “I speak Old World English just like everyone else.”
“You know what I mean.” I got on the other side of the door and parroted his stance.
“You mean am I from the stacks.”
“You’re not?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. Most people were, but a few people managed to live on the other side of the planet. I didn’t know what that side was like really, but was always told it was the same as ours. Every now and then, you’d come across people whose accents sounded a little different than yours, a little more pronounced or a little slower on their vowels. Like this guy. But I’d never really been able to talk to anyone who hadn’t lived in the stacks before. Most of the planet did.
“Stay behind me,” he expertly changed the subject and started to fidget with the gadget it his hand that he had taken from Havard’s desk. But I was more interested in the tattoo on his arm, right below his elbow. It was a bird—a black bird. Even when his arm was still, the wings moved as if it were flying across his skin, the head lurched up and down from the momentum. It was beautiful. I was jealous. I’d always wanted a tattoo, and this one was exactly what I would have picked for myself. To be a bird, to fly away. My mom had always told me to “Fly, Sophelia.” This beautiful bird felt like my soul on his skin as it tried to fly away, but remained in the same place, never to be to set free.
It was then I noticed what the item in his hand was. I gasped. “You have a metal detector!”
A lot of our city was built out of graphite and granite because everything else was just too precious. There were no wooden structures. There were no trees.
“I’m taking Havard’s metal detector. We won’t make it a day out there with them looking for us if we don’t get some supplies on the way.”
Before I could speak, he flicked on the metal detector and it lit up immediately, sparking and beeping once before he rushed to silence it, but that damning light kept right on signaling, pointing at me, right at my chest. He hovered it over me and then let his eyes flick up to mine, questions in them.
I sighed and reached up to unbutton my shirt. His eyes widened the tiniest bit, but he stood stock-still, watching my eyes only, letting me reveal my secret, whatever that was. I reached in and pulled the baggie of metal shavings from my makeshift binding-bra and grimaced with relief of having it gone from digging into my skin. I showed it to him and saw his eyes calculating how much that bag could be worth before he realized the only way I could have gotten it.
A moment’s worth of regret passed over his face, that maybe he shouldn’t have risked his life for someone who was obviously hiding something.
“I’ve been collecting these metal shavings from my proprietor for the last six years, preparing to leave. I knew he wouldn’t miss them, I knew he wouldn’t notice them, I knew they were so small that they’d get sucked into the trash bins. But if I collected them, over time, they’d equal something. This is all I have in the whole world—”
“You seriously just collected these over the past six years? From just working for him?”
I smirked. “To work for him would imply some type of payment. Just call it what it is.” He didn’t smile. “Yes. I collected them. I had nothing else to do.”
“Where did you keep them so he didn’t find them?”
I tried not to twitch when I said, “In here.” I pointed to my chest.
“He didn’t ever—” He cleared his throat. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“No.” I looked away. “He never touched me, well—he never touched me that way. My proprietor received me when I was ten.” He gulped. “I guess he always looked at me as that ten-year-old, which was fine by me.”
He moved to take the baggy, but I snatched it back. He raised his hands. “Fine, you keep it. Put it back in your safe place.” He smiled condescendingly. “Believe me, it’ll be safe in there.” I didn’t have time to truly process his remark before he was moving on. “You’ve got about two and a half pounds of metal there. So…almost two thousand quid.”
“Really?” I whispered.
He eyed me. “What did you think you would have? You had to know it would be worth something.”
“I did, but I don’t know the price of metal per pound or ounce or whatever.” His eyes stayed on me, never leaving mine as he watched me. I understood he needed to see if I was telling the truth or not, but it was beginning to get unnerving. I huffed. “Why would he keep shavings, for one, and for two, why only the ones that aren’t silver?” I tilted my head at him. “I used a magnet to pick them all up from the floor and baskets. You can’t pick up silver with a magnet—”
“I know that,” he said, irritated.
“Good. Then it’s clear that I picked up everything but the silver, leaving him to it, and took the shavings of everything else, everything he was obviously going to throw away. So can we get off the whole I’m a thief kick and move on to something else. And fast. Don’t we need to get going?”
He stepped forward into my space once more. “Look,” he said. Barked was probably a more apt description. “I didn’t have to come back and save your gorgeous behind.”
He seemed surprised by his words and his outburst. I sure was. I skipped right over that, not dwelling at all. Okay, I would be totally dwelling…later.
“Then why did you,” I hissed.
He went over to the wall, opening some cabinets that were hidden there. They released with a click. He grabbed a few bottles of things and a bag from the desk, throwing it all inside the bag and then the bag ov
er his shoulder. It was a black bag with a small circle on the bottom with slash through it. I’d noticed them before on the men walking around the streets and knew they were some type of messenger or carrier. But now I knew. They were black market. He turned back to the door and got ready for something. “Like I told you, you could have been my sister. You’re not my sister, but,” he grumbled, “you know what I mean.”
“It’s actually very sweet,” I managed to say. He looked back at me. Before he could say anything I rushed on. “Whatever happened to her, wherever she is, I’m sure she’s proud of you.” He actually leaned back on the wall like he could do nothing else in that moment, like he’d been physically hit with some knowledge. “I don’t know what happened, and I don’t expect you to tell me, but it’s a shame that she doesn’t get to—”
I stopped. I needed to stop.
Looking down at the floor was safe, but he got up and walked to me, taking one finger and raised my face up. It wasn’t some sweet, sexy gesture—trust me.
He looked haunted. “Tell me. Finish it.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“Finish it,” he ground out, and if I wasn’t a slave and hadn’t been yelled at by men my entire life, it would have scared me. I’m sure it would have scared a normal girl. But I wasn’t normal.
I took a breath, knowing what that breath cost in oxygen, and continued, “It’s a shame that she doesn’t get to see the man you’ve become, the man who saves girls in her place because she can’t be here.”
He gulped, his face tightening.
“Why are you doing this?” he said softly.
“What—”
“You know what.”
I looked at him, at his dark hair that was short on the sides but long on top and a little spiked and wild, like he’d run his fingers through it. His skin was tan, his lips full and…sigh-worthy. His neck—you could see how strong it was and his Adam’s apple was prominent. You could tell, even through his shirt, how strong he was, that he worked for what he had. That bird tattoo on his arm that looked out at me as it flew. I finally looked up into his blue eyes. They were so sad, but hopeful at the same time. He was jaded, yes, this life had changed him, sure, but there was still a spark in him that wanted to believe that life could offer him something, a challenge, an adventure, something worth living for.