She didn’t seem to care.
“Letty, oh god. I never thought I’d see you again.” Dylan’s voice hitched, and a lone tear spilled down her cheek, clearing a path in the grime on her face. “When they took me, I was so scared. I saw that bug thing and thought you were dead.” She gripped Aletta’s hand tightly. “Are you real?”
“I’m real. And I’m here now,” she said. She smiled through her tears. Her worst fear hadn’t come to be; Dylan was still alive.
“How did you find me?” Dylan asked, eyes as wide as saucers.
Aletta looked over her shoulder at Gark and Arik, who were testing the lock on one of the other cages. “It’s a long story?—”
“Ten minutes.”
Her voice lowered. “We have to get everyone out of here, and fast. I need your help.”
Dylan nodded. “What do you need me to do?”
Aletta swallowed as she pulled back from the rusty bars and looked over the rest of the women in the hold. They were curled on the floor, some huddled together for warmth. A few were standing defiantly as they eyed the crew of The Lady suspiciously. To a woman, they were filthy. Some more so than others, but all hadn’t seen a shower in days or weeks. Some had makeshift bandages covering their injuries; none appeared to have received medical care.
Aletta frowned, forcing herself to look past the women's suffering and focus.
“Aletta?” Gark’s voice at her shoulder had her turning her head. “We’re running out of time.”
She nodded, turning back to Dylan. “How do these cages open?”
They needed to get them out. Now. Every second that passed was a second closer to their death. Everyone’s death. And Aletta was not going to let these women die. Not today. Not while she could prevent it.
Dylan shook her head, more tears falling. “They took the keys.”
“There’s no electric lock?”
“No.”
Another voice piped up, a woman with mid-brown skin and black hair, a chaos of glossy ringlets, moved to stand next to Dylan. “No. The fuckers are old school, and they taunted us with the keys when they left. Took them with them, the assholes.”
Aletta looked up at Gark with stricken eyes. “What do we do?”
Gark ran a hand over his face. Then he gripped one of the cage’s bars in his hands, muscles straining against his shirt as he tested its strength. It gave a little under his hands. Gark smiled.
“Arik?” He barked, calling the muscular mechanic over.
They each took a bar and pulled it apart, teeth gritting and tendons straining in their necks. The weld where the bar was attached to the floor gave way with a snap of rusted metal, Gark taking a step backward. He bent it out of the way and gestured for the women inside to come out.
“Jesus Christ! I’m glad he’s on our side.” The woman next to Dylan exclaimed.
“Wait, he is on our side, right?” Dylan asked as she slid sideways through the gap between the bars. She grimaced asthe metal scraped against her skin. “The others looked just like him.”
Aletta nodded. “Yeah, he’s on our side.” It was a foreign feeling, having someone other than Dylan at her back, but she pushed it away. No time to examine that, they needed to get these women free and get out of here.
Arik and Gark opened the remaining cages with brute force as Aletta calmed the women, helping them free themselves. She worked with Gark side by side, like they’d been a team forever.
“Six minutes.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
They were now down to the last cage. Gark and Arik pulled the bars open, and then the women rushed out, having watched the others escape.
Gark grabbed Aletta’s hand. “Let’s go!”
But something was niggling Aletta. She needed to make sure they had everyone. It had been a chaotic whirl of people being pulled free, and she needed to make sure nobody had been left behind.
