“I know. I just…”
I was scared, terrified, thinking we’d end up the same as our parents, another body dead on an asteroid, never knowing what sun or rain felt like. No one would care. Nothing would change. Our bodies would be incinerated, and nothing would remain, as if we had never existed.
“Me too,” she whispered. “I’ll go first. Stay close to me, okay?”
I nodded, then we crawled and crawled, making our hands black with soot and run off. Every movement made the tunnel groan. Rust fell from the ceiling. Three times we stopped, waiting for the tunnel to give out and send us falling to our deaths. It was far above the ground, left to decay because it didn’t matter if it fell into the slums. No one there mattered.
But we made it out and above the transports, where Maddy shoved the covering off. We crawled over and behind piping, careful not to attract the dockworkers’ attention. Down and down we went, feet hitting the dock behind boxes full of minerals that would fly throughout the galaxy. Dozens upon dozens of ships lined the port, each of them off to a place better than here.
“We should board one of the big ships, Katlan or Luxi. They’re mostly manned by AI with only two pilots. It would be easier for us to stow away.” Maddy’s eyes darted about the docks, her mind conjuring a thousand plans. “If they’re like our AI ships, they dock themselves. Droids will unload the materials, and they’re notprogrammed to care about stowaways, so we’ll just have to worry about pilots and dockworkers.”
Which there were plenty of. No matter what plan she divulged, it didn’t matter if we couldn’t get over the docks to the ships. The docks never had a quiet hour, never a moment of rest, eyes always watching.
“See those boxes? They’re going to the Katlan.” Maddy pointed at the nearby shipment. “We can crawl under them. They’re slow, so we should be able to keep up.”
“Maddy…”
“I know.” She gave me a stern look, the same way she gave after our parents died and she promised we’d do just fine. “We've got each other’s backs, right?”
I swallowed hard. “Right.”
Watching the dockworkers, she lingered a moment longer, then we took our chance. We made it ten paces before Maddy screamed.
Her hand fell from mine. I turned and there she was, lying broken, the bone of her right leg shattered and barely clinging to her. Blood pooled around her, fragments of bone sprinkled into the crimson mix.
“You aren’t going anywhere, brats!” One of Syrox’s goons — no, thirteen of them — came from everywhere. Three behind her. Three on our left. Four on the right. Three at the back.
The dockworkers wouldn’t intervene. They saw situations such as ours at thousands of docks. They made way for Syrox’s thugs, ignored the blasters, and kept themselves scarce to avoid injury or death. It was me, Maddy, and a group of murderous thugs.
“Lucky,” she whimpered, hand up, tears in her eyes and blood all over. “H-Help, I can’t… my leg…”
In that moment, I saw our future: two corpses wrapped in tarps tossed intothe incinerator with all the others. We’d be ash shot into space, utterly forgotten. No one would notice our absence. None would mourn. If I went to her, they’d shoot, and we’d be done. Even if I somehow grabbed her, then what? There was no stowing away, no way she would survive, no way we would survive together.
But I could.
“What are you doing…” Her eyes, wide, terrified, crying. She reached for me. “Ethin!”
I ran. Her screams followed.
“Ethin!”
Their lasers chased. I grabbed a droid, using its body as a shield. The blast burned a hole into the droid’s sternum. One shot scraped my arm. The adrenaline made it so I didn’t feel a thing, even as I smelled my burning skin.
Behind me, materials moved back and forth, blocking my escape from their sight. Syrox’s goons took chase, hooting and hollering, having fun. I rolled under a cart, avoiding their blaster fire, and broke into a run for the Katlan.
Past the dockworkers, around the packages, I ran and ran. Katlan’s cargo bay doors were closing. I threw myself across the dock, narrowly squeezing in before the doors closed and fell into the back, alone. And I hid alone, waited alone in the cargo bay, replaying that moment over again and again.
Maddy was gone. I left her there. She was dead. If I could leave my sister to die, I could do that to anyone…
And I would, so long as it meant I wouldn’t be next.
019
Present
Iwokeupstrugglingto breathe, crawling out of a bed that was too small. The cold floor did nothing to cool the memories burning through my skin. Maddy’s voice ran over in my mind, the phantom coming alive, yet continuing to haunt me.
The commlink blinked at 0100. Resting my head against the edge of the bed, the sheets were damp from sweat. I didn’t have the energy to remove them, to do more than lay there and breathe. But the dark played tricks. Maddy manifested in the umbra, her head cocked to the side, eyes lifeless and directed at me. The apparition instilled a pointless fear when I knew I could walk across the habitat and find her sleeping perfectly well.
