Kate
Iwake up with a jolt and fight to stay conscious. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. My head throbs as I stare at my pale reflection in the window, wishing for death. I can’t believe my world, everything and everyone I ever knew and loved, is gone. With one small press of a button Pious destroyed me.
It feels as if a rope has tightened around my neck, and Pious kicked my legs out from under me. All the people that were left alive on Earth are gone. I’m the only human that remains breathing, outside one of Pious’s cryo-freezers.
I close my eyes, but the nightmare plays in front of me in an anguishing loop of ruptured landscape and fiery carnage. My mind races frantically, trying to figure out how I’m supposed to keep on breathing, how to keep on fighting. There’s a volatile tremor just beneath my flesh waiting to erupt, waiting to rain down the hate and vengeance that he so desperately deserves.
Out the window, it’s like the cosmos is set on pause, the explosion of gases and matter seem frozen in time, waiting to be put back together. But I know it never will be whole again.
It’s all my fault, isn’t it?I say the words out loud, my voice cracking and brittle. It’s been quiet in the room for too long and the sound slices through the silence thickly. “Because I took your mask off?” I turn my head to face the monster. “You destroyed my whole planet just to punish me?”
“The extinction of your planet and your people was imminent. You just made it happen sooner.” He crouches down beside me and slides a finger through the strands of my hair. “All you can do now is surrender to me.”
I watch his lips as they move. I think,no, I know, if he tries to kiss me, I’ll bite him until I draw blood. How can he think I will surrender now? I have nothing left. He can have me when my body is good and dead, unusable to him. “Surrender to you?”
“Of course. You have no planet to go back to, no family to worry over. Rune’s impending execution was set hours ago. You have nothing left, no choice, but me.” His fingers trail my jawline and slowly trace down my neck. And even though his touch is gentle, when he moves over the place he choked me before, a throbbing pain pulses over my skin.
“I choose me. Not you,” I whisper, looking back out the window to my ruined home.
His hand stills, right above my breast; his other hand pulls my face back in his direction and his gaze locks on mine. “What did you say?”
“I choose me. I won’t surrender to you. You’ve taken everything away from me. There’s no negotiating now.” I push away from him and climb to my feet. “You can have my body when I’m dead. Until then, I will fight you until my last breath.”
Pious bolts up and grabs me by the back of the neck, pulling me up against the front of his body tightly. My hands are still bound together by the wrists and I can’t shove him off me. His face smashes up into the side of my cheek and his tongue licks out and laps across my skin. “You still think you can win this war with me?” His breath smells putrid.
He spins me around to face him, walking me backwards until my spine is flush against the cold metal wall. “You forgot about all the other women here, didn’t you? Why not negotiate for them?”
“And where will they go? If you free them? Nowhere,” I say evenly. There’s no point in allowing him to think he’s getting under my skin. He’s already taken so much from me I won’t give him any more. “We all get to stay here in a tin can full of assholes.” I straighten my body, trying to make myself seem taller, stronger. “You may have won the war between our worlds, but not the fight between you and me. Get that straight in your brain.”
Pious releases his grip on me and shifts away, fists clenching at his sides. “Mark me, female.” He points a finger at me. “You will serve my every need.”
“I think we have a huge difference of opinion on what you need, Pious.”
He punches a code into the door console, and it slides open, revealing two Caelum standing guard. For a split second I hold a small ray of hope one of them could be Jex and the other Tore, but the way they drag me out of the room tells me otherwise. It tells me there’s no hope at all.
Pious storms ahead of the guards, shouting orders. “Transport her to the isolation ward. Put her in the holding cell next to the other prisoners.” He laughs as he gets to the end of the hallway. “Let’s see how quick she’ll be to change her mind, once there.”
Then he’s gone, disappearing down another corridor, and the stomping of his footsteps getting lower until I hear him no more.
The guards pull me in the opposite direction, and I stumble and drop my weight to the floor. I can’t make this easy for them. And I have to get myself out of these metal bindings. I look up to their metal faceplate with pleading eyes. “Can youpleasetake off the restraints? I can’t walk with them on my ankles, and I certainly don’t need them on my wrists.” I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. “It’s not like I have any armor on to fight you with, I’m naked. If you haven’t noticed. What trouble could I possibly be to the both of you?”
The guard on my right, taps out a code of some sort on the outside of my wrist while the guard on the left does the same to my ankles.That’s right, assholes. Let the weak little female go unrestrained. My heart begins to drum too fast. I try to calm my breathing and slow my pulse. I don’t want them alerted to my body signaling them I’m about to bolt. “Thank you,” I say loudly, placing a hand to my chest. My heart is racing from being with Pious.” I flutter my other hand in their direction. “Lead the way to the isolation ward. I’ll follow. You won’t get any trouble from me.”
It works. The idiots lead the way. They walk two paces in front of me as I trail behind them. I’m shocked, but I don’t give myself time to think about it. I reach both my arms out as we make our way through the hallway until my fingers land on that familiar click and slide that tells me there’s a hidden panel.
My heartrate doubles in speed, I can feel it pang in my chest as if it were trying to burst free. I’m trembling with adrenaline and pure unadulterated panic. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and dive through the hidden opening, closing it immediately behind me. It happens so fast my pinky finger gets caught, and I bite my tongue not to yelp.
They don’t realize I’m gone until it’s too late—not until I’m fleeing through the hidden walkways, away from them. I can hear their bewilderment echo through the walls. They think I disappeared, just vanished into thin air.
Morons.
This entire ship is full of idiots and I need to—
I skid to a stop at a fork in the passageway. I need to get off this ship, but now there’s nowhere for me to go. There’s no one left for me to save. Suddenly all I hear is my own breaths, coming out in small hysterical spurts. Sweat breaks out over every inch of my skin. Even if I were to save the women on this ship, there is no place safe to take them, our planet is destroyed. Sweat drips down my forehead even though the air blowing through the tunnel is ice cold.
I don’t know what I need to do. I don’t know what my next step should be—where do I run to?
I push myself to move, to keep up the fast pace even when my legs ache and my sides stab with pain. I don’t stop until hands grab and steady me and Sarahh’s hushed voice asks, “Kate? Kate, are you well? What happened? Where are the others?”
