CHAPTER1
Anya
I feel my way along the damp stone walls by my fingertips. I repeat to myself, silently, that I have seen these walls in the light, and there is nothing here to fear: there are two hundred paces between me and the heavy door, made of metal. The door leads to another corridor. The walls there will be damp as well, but it’s only water: sulfuric-scented, but delicately so.
I’m not in hell, I repeat to myself.It’s too cold to be hell.
My fingers are beginning to feel numb from the cold. If there were a single proton of light in this corridor, I would see my breath. It isn’t freezing; it’s the sort of wet cold that I remember from my last—hopefully not final—trip to the United Bretons on Earth, in northern winter.
I’m counting carefully, walking as stealthily as I can. I have counted these steps what seems like a thousand times, planned for this moment for what seems like years, and now that I’m here, the darkness has swallowed my thoughts. I want to run and scream. I can hear my heart in my ears, and it is so loud that I fear someone will hear it.
A step in a cold puddle startles me. The icy liquid spreads across my toes. I gasp, but cut myself off immediately. Fear seizes me for only a moment, but I’ve become used to fear.One ninety-two, three, four… it’s just water… this is not hell… ninety-nine, two hundred.
As I move my hands around in the dark, at first they don’t find the shapes or the material I’m looking for. Panic rises up in my throat again. I realize that my numb fingers have found the door, and the curiously old-fashioned lock. I turn it, and it sticks, making more panic rise up in my throat. For a moment, the darkness seems to grow and swallow me completely.
The lock turns. I pull hard on the door, and a rush of slightly warmer, but still damp air rushes in to meet me.
I put a hand to my right and strain to imagine this final corridor the way I have seen it when it is lit. There is nothing here but the stone and dirt floor, both black as night. The sand-like consistency of the corridor crunches beneath my feet and I walk steadily forward, one hand on the wall. I’m blind as a bat and every nerve is screaming panic to my brain, but I manage to stay calm.
The moon we are on is sun-side, so the glaring blue of Zastraga will be visible soon, its methane vapor lit by the sun. Just a little further. My heart is pounding.
When the first dim light of the planet reaches my eyes, showing me the shape of the tunnel exit, a throb of emotion swells in my chest. But it’s unexpected: not the relief I would have anticipated, not the jittery elation of having something you planned for just within your reach, not the fear that so often comes to me of having something snatched away when it is just within my grasp.
I actually stop and turn my face around, back to the darkness. Just enough light filters into the tunnel that I can see a sliver of gray-blue light caught on the door, which I left open. A strange thought flutters through my head, driven by the feelings of conflict in my heart. For some reason, there is something that almost, almost pulls me back. I still have time: I could return, the way I came, slip into my bed, and remain.
I turn sharply back toward the light, shaking my head as though I could shake the thought from it.This is Stockholm syndrome,I tell myself. And I’m stronger than that. That’s what I’ve been telling myself since I was brought here, and this moment is the moment I have been planning for, deep inside my heart, all along.
The Kirigok clan are powerful monsters, and I’m a pawn to them, nothing more.
Deep in my abdomen, something stirs. It’s a cold feeling, one that I almost enjoy: a feeling of attraction, arousal—pleasurable and wild. It’s an amplification of the kind of flutter that would erupt in my adolescence in the presence of an older classmate, an attractive skasball player, a musician.
Nothing more, I tell myself, than adolescent stupidity. And Stockholm syndrome.
I walk. I can hear my breath; it’s shaky. I don’t know what will happen to me if I’m caught, and I put my chances of being caught at about fifty percent. I also think this is an underestimation, but one I must cling to. If I didn’t try…
The blue light is getting stronger, beckoning me. My memories pull at me, trying to tell me to go back, but theirs is a grip of emotions I don’t understand. I’m a rational person. I must keep walking.
It isn’t Zethki. The hard contours of his face, his yellow-green eyes with their frightening reptilian pupils, the heat of his body, all flash before my eyes, breathe a ghostly memory on my skin.
I won’t miss Zethki—his nickname, to my English-speaking ears, a disingenuous diminutive that belies his brutality, his dominance, his cruelty. In my mind, I think of him as Zeth—though if I used that name he would punish me. ‘Ki’ in his language is an indication of his status, one with no translation. The best I can think of is ‘badass.’
It isn’t him, I know, that pulls at me, leaving me with a faint, uncomfortable pang of regret as I step into the planet-lit night and survey the view. My path to freedom is before me: a succession of trees among the others in the forest, their bark silver and faintly lit by what I’m told is a harmless biological component. If I follow them, they will lead me to the water, and if I follow the shore in the direction of the dawn, for many days, I will run into the small city of Zastra. I have only a knife and a piece of what seems to be flint, but I’m confident that I can make fire and stab fish. The rest of the plan is not finished; it will depend on what I find. But if Trasmea is to be believed, there are many in Zastra who will trade what I have for passage to Mrekevya, and there I will turn myself in to the System Authority and hope for the best.
My stomach turns. The ‘something’ I have is my body, and even though Zeth has claimed me in every way that seems possible, there is something repulsive about selling myself for passage.
I’m gripped, again, by the desire to turn back. I pause in the arched entranceway and survey the forest. From here, high on a hill, I can see over the steep slope, the enormous, glittering trees, and the sudden craggy bursts of black rock to the shimmering sea. The methane blue-green of the planet we orbit sparkles on its surface. An enormous bloom of red, iridescent algae glows like spilled paint further out, miles and miles of the plant.
I pause, give my decisions a final reflection. I could stay: the parts of me that betray me the most insist and claw inside of me, trying to make me turn around. But I resist them. I have stayed strong for this long, and I’m stubborn. I’m going.
I pull the Kerz cape I have stolen from Zeth over my head. It’s gray and black and blue, and looks to my human eyes as if it would camouflage nothing. But here, it is like the shadows of the forest. If I move slowly through the small clearing to the forest—no more than twenty paces—the guards will not see me. My heat is better cloaked than the heat of the Kerz; the cape is designed to block out their warmer bodies. The camouflage will hide my form. The only other thing that could give me away is rapid movement.
I step in micro-steps, each one no longer than half the length of my foot. It’s excruciating, as I thought it would be; I have to summon all of my strength not to walk faster. I’m so close.
I reach the forest, and begin to move more quickly. The dense foliage blocks the light, and the ground is treacherous. Slow and steady, I repeat, and the mantra takes on a meditative hum that guides me forward.
There is a patch of blackness ahead. Rocks? I put a hand out to feel in front of me, and feel only cool air. I’m almost blind in this dark, but I can see, in the distance, what looks like the faint silver glow of a guiding tree. I move carefully, touching the ground before me with one foot before stepping.
My foot comes into contact with something on the tenth step into the darkness. I have just enough time to reassure myself that it is the root of a tree, and start to feel around it. My hands are before me; there is nothing in the blackness.
