CHAPTER ONE
Maria’s legs were burning as if she’d just run a marathon at a full sprint. Though the distance was less, it wasn’t too much of an exaggeration. Adding in the wilderness terrain, with multiple hills and even small mountain climbs, along with water crossings and all manner of hellish obstructions to navigate around, her entire body was a mass of sore muscles and bruised flesh. But she wasn’t about to stop. She was free. Free and following a man she didn’t know at all. But in this world where her life had been turned upside down, he was the best option of essentially no good choices. It was follow a stranger or become a slave.
The decision had been easy, given those parameters, but their escape from the vast alien city had been anything but.
Zepharos, the man called himself. A tall, pale-green-skinned specimen of impressive masculinity that she would have appreciated much more under better circumstances. As it was, he had unexpectedly come to her where she was being held in an underground complex, the lone prisoner in a room of empty cells.
Maria had been locked away on the first day of the HuskenGames. She and the male partner she’d been chained to had failed to meet the cutoff for the exhausting obstacle course that kicked off the games. And as a replacement participant purchased from captive stock, she was now to be locked away until the end of the games, at which point she would become an indentured servant for the elites. Or a slave, as she preferred to call it. No amount of wordplay would change what it really meant.
As it was so early in the games, she was the first of the replacement competitors to fail and subsequently be locked up, and as such, security was somewhat lax. No one visited her except to bring her food. That is until the handsome pale-green man with dazzling amber eyes crept into the holding area and approached her cage.
“Hey,” he said quietly as he eyed the human woman miserably curled up in her cage. “Hey.”
“Go away,” Maria groaned from her bunk, not even rolling over to see who had spoken.
Her reaction was that of a defeated woman. Someone who had faced already untold horrors on her way to this latest indignity, and she was sick of it.
He looked around cautiously, as if confirming there were no cameras watching, then he walked right up to her cell door.
“Look, I’m here to get you out of there.”
“Sure, buddy. Go on, pull the other one.”
“Ah, the leg joke. Yes, I’ve heard it. But, as your kind say, ‘I shit you not.’ I’m here to rescue you, but you’ll have to come with me right now. This is the best chance we’ve got.”
Maria actually reacted to that exchange. This wasdifferentfrom what she’d dealt with in the months since the ship that had abducted her from Earth had left her stranded on this alien planet. She rolled over and sat up, eyeing the pale-green-skinned man with a cautious look.
“What do you mean,my kind?”
“You are from a place called Earth. Taken by Raxxians and held as livestock aboard their transport ship before it crashed on this world. That would have been quite some time ago, of course, and it does make me wonder what sort of adventure landed you so far from that site.”
Maria’s eyes widened. That she was a human from Earth was common knowledge now, but she hadn’t spoken about her time with her disgusting Raxxian abductors. Yet, somehow, this man knew things. And he said he was there to help. And maybe he really was, but she still had doubts.
“You’re a stranger. Why should I trust you?” she finally asked, rising to her feet but not approaching the bars.
“Because I know others from your world. Earth women who arrived here much as you did, though they are quite free, unlike you. A problem I would rectify at once, if you will accept my assistance.”
He stopped, standing silently as he waited for her reply. No matter his sense of urgency, this was not the time to press. Maria would have to make the decision in her own time and of her own accord and there was simply no other way about it, though he did test his lock bypassing skills on the cell adjacent to hers, the door clicking and swinging open silently as he keyed in the command.
“Well, nice to see that works,” he commented to himself.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Just an observation,” he replied, then said nothing more.
Maria was a little discombobulated by his unexpected silence. “That’s it?”
“That’s what?”
“You’re not going to try to talk me into coming with you?”
“I see no point in it. And I do understand your hesitance. Youdo not know me, true, and you have clearly been through a lot. It is no easy decision to make, and ultimately it is precisely that.Yourdecision. Either you wish to take your chances with me and flee this place, knowing we will be pursued without a doubt. Or you remain here to serve out your best years as a glorified house slave. But while I will not pressure you, I would remind you that time is limited. If you are to join me, we will need to leave sooner than later. The festivities outside will provide a nice distraction, but it will only last for so long.”
Maria paced back and forth, eyeing the unsettlingly calm man standing outside her cell. He was proposing flight, becoming a fugitive, and yet he was unworried about the ramifications. It was odd. Odd, but for some strange reason, she felt she could trust him. Something in his bright amber eyes that showed a depth of character hidden beneath his casually smiling façade.
“Okay,” she finally said. “But they’ll notice I’m gone.”
“Already on it,” he replied, keying open her cell, then opening a storage cabinet and removing another few blankets and a pillow. He stepped into her cell and quickly began tucking them under her blanket into the rough shape of a sleeping person. It wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but unless they came in to check on her it could very well do the trick.
