by V. K. Ludwig
Panties clung to Katie’s ankle, shredded. Red and angry, scratches whipped across her thighs in straight and concave lines, those which crossed forming distorted diamonds. I didn’t dare lift her dress higher. Didn’t dare wonder if…
Guilt strangled my throat.
Shit. This was all my fault.
Blood slowly seeped from the bathroom, expanding from tile to carpet, one fiber after another soaking red. Whatever had happened here took place in the only room without surveillance. Without footage, chances to claim self-defense dwindled.
Katie was down to one match, me, the thought flooding my system with joy and agony alike. All that would be worth shit if I didn’t get her off-planet, away from the arm of prosecution.
Her body turned heavy in my arms, and yet it held no measure to the way my heart dragged us both to the ground. The room stilled, the rushing of my pulse through my overcharged brain cells the only sound remaining. How was I supposed to get us out of this mess?
I stroked Katie’s light brown strands from her sweaty forehead, staring into the face of the female I had let down. Once when I’d hit my first line of souldust, caking my nostrils with the blue powder. Twice when I’d called out Kidan’s concern, subsequently causing him to attack her. Perhaps even rape her.
I was a sgu’dal. A fuck up.
But inadequate, I was not, and I would not let her down a third time.
I hoisted us up and carried her over to her bed, making the situation appear less suspicious to whoever checked the surveillance system. A shove with my boot against Kidan’s stiffening arm, and I closed the bathroom door for good measure.
Grace. I approached the only door left in this apartment, my heart slamming against my ribcage.
The gap to her room grew wider, accelerating my pulse.
I poked my head in.
I glanced around.
The girl lay with her tummy on a pile of laundry, cables dangling from her ears, her feet moving and wiggling to the beat of whatever she listened to. She had no clue what went down here. Good. One trauma patient was enough for now.
I lifted my hands in an appeasing manner, pushing myself around her desk in slow-motion. When my next step invaded her vision, she pushed herself up to sit and ripped the plugs from her ears.
“Whoa’dh’ell er ye?”
“You have to come with me,” I said and waved her to me, making myself smaller, ducking a little. “I get you have no clue what I’m saying, but I need you to come with me. Now.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Dood, ei doan un’rstand a w’rd of what’er seyin. Mooaam?”
This was bad.
Really fucking bad.
I took a deep breath and left her room, draping Katie’s body over my arms so I could show her. The what’r’ell happnd coming from behind me made it clear Grace had followed. She held a hand clasped to her neck, the other tugging on the fabric of her shirt.
“What s’wroang weth mey moam?” she asked and walked up to us, tugging on Katie’s arm, shoving her shoulder.
For a moment, I considered knocking Grace out as well, then thought better of it. One unconscious female I could justify, being a healer and all, but not two.
I tapped my fingers against my sternum. “Melek.”
Tears glistened behind her eyes, pushing this situation to the edge of disaster. “Ei doan giv’er shet about’yer naem. What happnd toa mey moam?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m going to help your mom.” I clenched my eyes shut for a moment, focusing on the remnants of that language of hers I’d used for lunar cycles now. “Um… Melek, help Katie? Help moam?”
“Yer goan’na help mey moam?”
“That’s right, yeah.” I tapped my sternum again. “Melek help moam. Melek help Grace.”
Fingers once more dug into her shirt, fiddling, her lips pursing until wrinkles formed all around. She didn’t trust me but wasn’t in a position to doubt me either.
“Okay,” she whimpered, the nod of her head never-ending as if she had to keep convincing herself at each step.
I forced a smile onto my face. “Okay. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Numb feet stepped out into the hallway but turned heated when I found it empty aside from cleaning droids minding their own business. I jutted my head toward the cargo dock, the only place not too crowded around this time of day and set out toward it.
Grace had trouble keeping up, stumbling along the hallway beside me while she kept glancing over to her mother. She placed her hand onto Katie’s arm, mumbling, whispering, her voice tight with fear.
I cut through one of the laundry facilities. Machines hissed and whistled in the background, the humidity soon settling as beads of sweat on our foreheads. The droids went about their sorting, folding, and packaging while I stared into the rafters, following the blue vent pipe toward the dock.
All the while, I hoped Katie wouldn’t wake, the effects of the jarring unpredictable at best. She’d wake with a massive headache, perhaps even a concussion, and yet it would have nothing on the pain in her bruising knee or the agonizing memory of Kidan.
Reaching a stargazer I could fly was way too easy. I flung Katie over my shoulder, freeing one hand to steer Grace around crates of cargo. Workers moved around incoming goods from Cultum and other planets, while engineers dangled in harnesses underneath the ships, maintaining fusion panels.
We weaved our way toward the stargazer at the end of the bay, the cargo allowing us to do so unnoticed. A swipe over the exterior panel and the ramp opened with a hiss. That was when Grace lost her nerve.
She stumbled backward, her eyes darting between the entrance to the ship and her mother, her face going ashen. “What er ye doen? Ei’m not stppn’in that theng.”
My stomach clenched. First Vetusians stared our way, shifting their weight while cocked heads tried to make sense of that panicked voice echoing through Cargo Bay.
As much as I wanted to explain things, I had no other choice but to grab her shoulder a bit tighter. I pushed her up the ramp and into the vessel, her screams shattering louder from the metal interior, the smaller the gap to the outside grew.
I lowered Katie onto the ground, ignoring the way Grace slammed her fists against my back. That girl screamed, kicked, scratched, and shoved me away from her mother.
“Melek help Katie,” I said once more, but those tears rolling down her cheeks made it clear my words didn’t promote a sense of safety.
I activated the control panel, programming two negative matter jumps during our course to the only place I knew promised refuge. Fusion panels powered up with a hum. The hologram followed me around while I rummaged through overhead compartments, searching for healer packs, weapons, and that language chip implant gun we desperately needed.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
I startled at the noise, the vibration of it still rattling through my soles. Grace leaned over Katie, her mumbles drowning underneath sobs and wails.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The metal floor shook once more, sending a paralyzing fear down my spine. Had they found the body already? If they shut down the airlock, we’d be done. After all, I was a healer, not an engineer trained to manually squeeze through it.
Shouts hollered from somewhere underneath us.
I walked up to the center hatch in the floor, the metal handle vibrating with each additional bam.
I grabbed the handle, turned it, opened the hatch.
“What the fuck is going on here?” The engineer shouted, red blotches covering his sweaty face. “Who issued permission to take this stargazer out? I wasn’t done with mainte… what are you doing?”
His eyes darted to my hand where I held his harness with one hand, bracing with my legs against his weight. With the other, I fumbled on the clasp that attached him to the vessel.
“What are you doing?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder and three levels down before his eyes came back to me. “If you drop me, I’ll break a million bones.�
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“Don’t worry, you only have a little over two-hundred.”
“No… no… don’t do this. Don’t do this!”
At that, I clinked off his hook. What were a few broken bones compared to Katie and Grace safe? Unless…
“Hey, you got a language chip?”
He shook his head. “What?”
“Alright, no chip then —”
“Whoa, wait, yeah, I got one. English and Spanish.”
I placed my second hand onto his harness and wrapped my fingers around the stiff material. My thighs strained and burned as I pulled him up and into the vessel, the hatch falling shut right after.
Fumbling him out of his harness, I immediately used the same thing to tie his hands behind his back.
“What are you doing?” he shouted, groaning each time he wiggled.
I grabbed the gun I’d found in one of the overhead compartments, not charged, but that wasn’t something he knew, and he flinched the moment I pressed it against the back of his head.
“You will translate for me,” I said, grinding the barrel against the few wisps of hair he had left. “Word for word.”
“Okay, okay, no problem.”
“Your mother killed Kidan.”
He turned around, and he would probably have given me a what-the-fuck kind of look if I hadn’t poked him with the barrel. “ranslate.”
His head bounced into a nod his words obscure to me though I had no other choice but to trust in his translation. “Anything else?”
“I’m taking them to Odheim where her mother can’t be prosecuted,” I said, letting my eyes search for Grace’s. “Tell her that I’m here to help them, not hurt them in any way. My language chip is broken, but I’ll try to fix it as soon as possible and explain everything. Until then, I need her to trust me, no matter how hard that might be.”
I waited until the guy stopped mumbling.
Grace flinched and stared up at me, time stretching to eternity between us before she gulped down a hard swallow. Then she nodded, lowering her head onto Katie’s chest right after. She remained there, crying silent tears into the dress of her unconscious mother.
“What about me?” the engineer asked. “I want nothing to do with this.”
“Working on it,” I said and rummaged through the healer pack, retrieving a sedative from it.
I rammed the pin into the side of his neck, catching his shoulders just as he collapsed to the side. Propped against the wall, he would be out until we reached the amnesty planet. As much as I needed him to translate, I didn’t need a snitch.
The vessel shook all around us when the autopilot went through the airlock. Dozens of yellow overhead handles tossed and swayed. Overwhelmed and exhausted, I sunk to the floor by the row of seats lining the wall. I reeked of sweat, vomit, and whatever food I had dropped onto my uniform in the past three suns.
I activated my com and called the only person I knew would keep us safe, no questions asked.
“Melek,” Adora’s voice came through the com, still holding the same warmth it did all those sun cycles ago, back when she took me in. “What happened that you call me this late? This is the busiest time of all.”
“I’m in trouble.”
A chuckle went through the line. “You wouldn’t be Melek if you weren’t. Trouble follows you around.”
“You noticed that too, huh?” I let the silence grow for a moment before I continued. “Can you meet me at the abandoned dock? I’ll put a tracker on the vessel so you can see what time we’ll get there.”
“We?”
“I’m coming with my anam ghail and her daughter —”
“Oh!” she breathed, and I pictured her fanning at herself. “I had no idea you found your fated one. We’re so happy for you.”
I sighed. “She killed her Vetusian mate, and I need a place for us to stay where she can be safe.”
“But you just said —”
“It’s complicated. I’ll explain everything once we get there.”
This time, Adora let the silence expand, the way she pursed her lips and smacked them audible. “Melek, I just got rid of someone wanted for murder.”
“I get that, and I’m not looking for handouts. Put me to work. I have no problem earning our keep. You need a healer, don’t you?” When she said nothing, I added, “They could deactivate my com at any moment. Can I count on you or not?”
She let out a deep sigh. “Alright. Put the tracker on the ship, and we’ll meet you at the old dock.”
“Hey, you have humanoid pleasure droids, correct? Do you know if they come standard with all Earth languages installed?”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic, bring one of them with you.”
My com turned dark just as the vessel calmed, the window of the cockpit showing nothing but vast blackness with the occasional star passing.
I got up and walked over to Katie, gesturing Grace to stay calm as I removed the remnants of those panties from her ankle. Grace stared after the piece of fabric as I tossed it behind me, her blue eyes so full of pain when they found mine.
She was almost mature herself, the way she sucked in a breath and held it, making it clear she hadn’t noticed that thing dangling there before. And all I could do was shrug, embracing that sense of guilt swamping every fiber of my body.
If I wouldn’t have pushed Kidan, perhaps this wouldn’t have escalated. Actually, if I wouldn’t have snorted that hit, none of this would have happened.
Maybe I was inadequate because Katie carried the proof of it scratched across those thighs I pushed together to contain whatever decency Kidan hadn’t ripped from her. It was written all over her knee in purple and blue bruises. Etched onto her sleeping features as raw fear and deep-rooted betrayal of her trust.
I grabbed another sedative pin from the healer pack and took Katie’s hand into mine, warming her fingers. Her mind needed rest, her body medical help I didn’t have the tools for. Neither did I find language chips. Grace watched me warily but didn’t interfere when I pricked her mother.
Yesterday I was a sgu’dal once tried for medical malpractice.
Now I was all that plus a criminal, helping two Earth females escape to a place that held the dirt of my existence. Everything I never wanted Katie to know about me, she would now become part of.
* * *
You can read Matched here.
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