Radon (Inmate Space Mates Book 1)

by Ava Castle

  “So, what? You got a boyfriend now? We crash land on this planet in the middle of the desert surrounding this village, and you find a boyfriend? I should have known something was going on between the two of you.”

  “Lecia!” I barked her name and raised my eyebrows, trying to let her know to keep it to herself for a change. Call it a hunch, but I didn’t think the guards needed to know about the kiss.

  “Sorry about her. Please, show me where to go.”

  “Right this way, ma’am.”

  I glanced back at Alecia, sitting on the edge of her bed with the guard towering over her, as I followed my guard out to the hallway. We walked down in the other direction, away from the examination room. I never wanted to go back there again.

  They had literally poked and prodded us, just as Alecia had predicted when she was protesting. They had cut away our clothes, leaving us naked, our bare skin touching the cold hard metal that never seemed to warm up from our body heat. They had run tubes into our arms.

  “This is to test nutrition. The solution we are pumping into your bodies right now can be adjusted to simulate different foods available for your consumption here on Valmore.”

  “It’s a great way to see what your bodies can and cannot tolerate. This will help us put together a dietary plan to help you adjust to Valmorian foods.”

  “It can also be updated as your bodies become accustomed to what you eat here. We can continue to monitor your progress… Uh-oh, it looks like we found something already.”

  The second doctor had quickly unstrapped Alecia so that she could throw up over the side of the table. Whatever solution they were pumping into us at the time hadn’t bothered my system. In fact, nothing they pumped into us had made me sick, unlike Alecia, who threw up at least every other simulated fluid.

  The doctors had explained every procedure in their same sing-song, back-and-forth way as they examined us. They tested us for nutrition. They took samples of our skin, hair, blood, stool, and urine. They had even taken “reproductive samples” (their words) for fertility testing. That last part seemed odd, but if we were going to be blending in with Valmorian society, I assumed they needed to cover every possibility.

  Alecia had fought with them the whole way, which made every test worse for her. It surprised me that there had been any fight left in her when the guard came in to get me for visitation.

  We rounded the corner, and the visitation room was nothing like the little miniature phone booths I had used back in prison on Earth. It was more like a waiting room with couches and comfortable chairs. There were electronic tablets on a table in the middle of the room, each with a screen presenting a different image that looked like a magazine cover. But, most importantly, there was Radon, standing in the opposite doorway, waiting for me.

  “I might have lied. It’s not visitation. You are free to go whenever you are ready. Radon will escort you.”

  “Free to go? What about Alecia?”

  “I cannot say, ma’am. Have a good day, and welcome to Valmore. Thank you for your service to our people.”

  With that, the door leading back to the hallway slid closed between us, locking me in the visitation room, but also locking him out. I turned around and saw Radon waiting with open arms. He looked a little less confused than I felt.

  “So, are you ready to go home?”

  “Home? That’s a laugh. Can you really fly me all the way back to Earth?”

  I stopped myself, stunned by my sudden snarky tone. Radon looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet.

  “I’m really sorry. I meant my home.”

  “No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. This isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I just wish I knew why I was here, you know?”

  “I do. Come on, I might be able to answer some of your questions, but not here.” He put an arm across my shoulders and guided me with him as we walked to the door leading outside the building.

  As we approached the glass door, I realized I was about to see the Valmorian sky for the first time during the day. My heart swelled and my stomach knotted up. Radon noticed the change.

  “You haven’t seen our suns, have you?”

  “Suns? You mean you have more than one?”

  “We have two. How many do you have?”

  “We only have one.”

  He pushed through the door and guided me through with a gentle hand on my back. The first thing I noticed was the warm, tropical air. That explained the colorful plants and birds everywhere, and the linen clothes the doctors had given us after our examinations. It felt like we were in a tropical paradise, the kind of place we would have paid entirely too much money to visit on Earth. I looked up, and sure enough, there were two suns in the bright orange sky. One was red, and the other was yellow, like ours at home. It was everything I could do to make myself walk along with Radon as I surveyed the village in the daylight.

  “Keep walking. You’re drawing attention to us.”

  All eyes were on me. There were people like Radon standing on the roads of the village, staring as we walked along. I remembered the words of the first doctor, when he told me it had been fifty years since the last time any of them had seen another human. I wasn’t a good judge of age among Valmorians. I only knew a few, and I had no idea how old they were, but I felt pretty confident that many of the eyes looking at me had never seen another human.

  “Hey, is that the girl from the wreck?”

  “Yes, that’s Shaley. Keep going. We don’t want to give her a reason to come by and try to talk to us.”

  He pushed me along as Shaley stared at us–at me, specifically.

  “Man, if looks could kill.”

  “Yeah, that’s Shaley,” he laughed. “All day long. I think she would like it better if she could do it that way. That’s pretty good, though, ‘if looks could kill.’ I’m going to have to remember that.”

  “Do you all walk everywhere you go?”

  “Inside the village. We do have cruisers designed to help us get to destinations outside the village or to escort prisoners, but the village itself is small enough that we don’t have to use them inside the borders. Why do you ask?”

  We continued to talk about the differences between our worlds as we made our way back to his hut. There was the issue of the two suns versus our one, the color of the sky, the climate, the laid-back pace of their village versus the fast-paced rush of human cities back on Earth.

  “So you don’t have seasons? The weather is pretty much the same year ‘round?”

  “Right. It’s always warm during the day with slight fluctuations based on the weather of course, and it’s always cool at night, like you discovered last night. What are seasons?”

  “You really don’t know?” I explained to him the four seasons on Earth. “And due to the tilt of the planet, some places will spend months at a time without the sun coming up, or months at a time where it doesn’t fully set.”

  “I don’t think there’s anywhere on Valmore that has that problem. That’s wild. No, our weather is pretty consistent. Our plants grow all year. They go through their own wilting cycles, where they grow so much and then shed off the old growth so they can continue, but you don’t get whole periods of the year where nothing is growing.”

  He opened the door to the hut as we continued to blow each other’s minds with differences between our worlds.

  “I noticed the different colors of your people. Do they mean anything?”

  “Yes, and no. The different colors represent different aptitudes. Grays and Silvers usually end up in military or political roles. Blues end up in sciences, medicine, or education.”

  “So it’s like a caste system on Earth, where each group is pretty much destined to have a particular type of job.”

  “Right, except it is determined by your scale color, not because of your scales if that makes sense. Each different group shows a natural talent for their areas.”

  We continued this conversation once we
were inside, even as he closed the door and started looking through all of his windows, making sure they were closed and locked as well. He walked through his home from room to room looking around, checking everywhere.

  “What are you doing?” I finally asked.

  “I’m making sure Shaley didn’t follow us, or anyone else really. I have some information that you may want about what’s going on. I feel like you need to know before this goes any further. You need to know why you’re here.”

  “I do? I mean, I do. Thank you. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No, just stay there. Have a seat on my couch. I’ll be right there.”

  He disappeared through the bedroom door, and I sat down on what resembled a futon more than a couch. It was firm and supportive, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. While I waited for him to come back in, I looked around his hut. I could see almost his entire layout from where I was seated. The hut was very modest and very sparsely decorated. Such a bachelor, and a comfortable one at that. His home showed no signs that he was even interested in dating. I wondered why. He was certainly attractive, and I had gathered that he wasn’t unattractive by Valmorian standards. Shaley obviously had some kind of history with him, and other males seemed to revere him. Back on Earth, the women would have been crawling all over him.

  “Okay, we’re secure. There’s no way anyone is watching or listening. I guess we need to talk.”

  “Yes, please. If you know anything, I need to know. Please, have a seat next to me. You don’t have to stand in your own home. I promise, I don’t bite.”

  “That’s disappointing.” His scales rippled, giving away his thoughts about my comment. Was that their version of blushing? It didn’t seem like red cheeks would have been an option for Valmorians.

  “So, why are we here? And why am I with you while Alecia and the third girl are back at the facilities where we were being held? And please don’t say we’re here to save you. I know that much. I just need to know why and how.”

  “You are here to save us. They did a fertility test when they took you back to the exam room, right?”

  “Right, but how did you know that?”

  “It makes sense, given the reason for your visit here.”

  “Wait, what are you trying to tell me?” Valmorians talked in riddles the way humans did. Dammit, the time for dropping hints was over; I wanted to know what we were doing on their planet in the first place.

  “Our women cannot have children. We are dying out. We brought you and the other women on your ship here so that we could resume breeding to save our kind. The reason you are here…”

  “Wait, let me stop you. You’re going to try to preserve your kind by breeding with us?”

  “The reason you are here with me,” he continued, ignoring my interruption, talking slowly, as if he were explaining it to a child, “is because you and I are supposed to couple.”

  “To couple? You mean, like, date, get married, right?”

  “I don’t know those human concepts, but we are supposed to live together and stay faithful to one another. If you were from Valmore, you would be allowed to keep your own place, but since you are not, you’ve been released into my care.”

  “Your care? This is too much. Why am I the only one being ‘coupled’ out of the three of us?”

  I slid over to the arm of his couch, pressing myself as far away from him as I could. The whole reason we had been launched to a world lightyears away from our own was to be handed over as sex slaves to these men whose women couldn’t give them children? It was unreal.

  “Please, let me explain, Becca.” He placed a calming hand on my shoulder. “You’re in my care because as part of the program the doctors are going to need to perform regular checkups on you to make sure you are adapting well to your new environment. Our world isn’t very different from yours, from they say, but it’s different enough that we will need to keep an eye on your progress.”

  “What about the other two? Are they being handed over to men like you?”

  “Not yet. From the conversations I’ve had with the guards and Morigon, the third is not even as far along as your friend Alecia in her preparation to enter the program. As for Alecia, she still has a long way to go before she can enter. Her body is still rejecting our nutrients and other environmental factors. I’m sure that will change once they calm her down.” Here, Radon offered an amused little smile.

  “You’re probably right about that. I’m sure it’s more that she is rejecting your world than her body is. But why me? Why you?”

  “You and I already have a connection, Becca. I’m sure you’ve sensed that.”

  “You mean since you were the first male I met?”

  “Not just that, but you know, the kiss. The actual physical connection.”

  “I’m sorry, Radon, but I kissed a lot of men before I ever met you. You don’t see me paired off with any of them now, do you?” I had to bite my tongue, because I almost admitted to killing the last man I had kissed before him.

  “I’m not saying the kiss itself meant anything more than just a moment’s impulse, for both of us, but there’s something to be said about the fact that it happened at all, correct? Morigon paired us up, I believe, because we are already familiar with each other.”

  His musical tone had calmed me down. I had to remember to try to keep a cool head. I was the mouse, not the feisty, mouthy one. If the three of us were going to survive, we were all going to have to remember our roles as part of our team. Alecia was going to have to keep fighting for answers and justice. I was going to have to keep a cool head and listen to everyone around me. And for the time being, our third was going to have to survive until the three of us could be reunited.

  Besides, the idea of mating with a man that exotic wasn’t the worst prospect I’d entertained. He couldn’t have been as bad as my ex. What else was I going to do now that I was in a new world? It was at least a very amusing thought.

  “I don’t know, Radon. That’s a lot to take in.”

  “It is, I know, but at least I’m talking to you and not your friend, Alecia,” he said with a laugh. “She wouldn’t have taken it as well you did.”

  “That’s true. She would have lost it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Radon

  “How is she doing?”

  “Same as she was yesterday.” Petering had asked the same question every day since Becca came to stay with me.

  “Has she come out of her room?” he asked me with a devilish grin on his face.

  “Her room? That’s my room she’s in. She’s just taken it over. And no, she hasn’t been out in days except to eat.”

  “Do you two at least talk? How is this supposed to work?”

  “I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t it,” I answered him. We were sitting outside, enjoying the last few rays of sunlight as the second sun set in the sky. It was a shame that Becca was missing it, unless she was watching from the window in my room.

  “Give her some time. I’m sure she’ll come around. Can you imagine what it would be like if you woke up on her planet one day? A place with only one sun, under a blue sky. What if you landed during winter and it was colder in the daytime than it is here at night?” His eyes were wide with excitement. He enjoyed the prospect of the seasons Becca had told me about. Maybe a little too much.

  “I don’t want to think about it, but I get it,” I sighed. “I just wish there was something I could do to help her get more accustomed to everything.”

  “You gotta get her out of the house. Do something with her. Take her somewhere.”

  “Where is there to take her, Petering? Our village is bordered by a desert.” Since the humans visited us previously, there were a lot of strange ideas floating around in people’s heads. Their presence had impacted our culture, and while we still didn’t have everything they had told us about, the concepts were there, like “going out.”

  We had a few gathering places w
here Valmorians would sometimes go to cook and sit around together telling stories or sharing food, but there weren’t any clubs or movie theaters, or anything like that. We enjoyed simple pleasures. For the most part, we didn’t want the hustle and bustle of Earth life. Things might have been different if we weren’t going extinct. We might have pushed to have more exciting lives if there was going to be a future, a tomorrow.

  “Take her into the desert at night. Get romantic with it. You’re stuck with her, right? Make it worth your time. Win her over.”

  “You’re right,” I said. His words hit me like a revelation. I could take her to the desert late at night and sit under the stars with her. She was human. Human women loved looking at the stars. Valmorian women did, too, but there was no future with Valmorian women. There was no reason to get romantic with them.

  “I know I’m right. You should have been listening to me about women this whole time, Radon.” Petering puffed out his chest with pride.

  “Not just about taking her out to get her attention. No, you’re right about being romantic. That’s exactly what I should do. It’s not pointless anymore to try to be romantic with someone. Don’t you see?”

  “Whoa, hang on a moment,” he said, holding his hands up as it to stop me or push me back. “Who are you and what did you do with Radon?”

  “I know, I know, I’m not making any sense right now.”

  “No, you’re making sense, just not Radon-sense, you follow? You’re supposed to be the monster, remember? The womanizer.” There was a sense of awe in the way he described me, as if part of him admired me for my conquests.

  “I know. That’s what I’m saying. Coupling has never made a whole lot of sense to me, but that’s only because there’s no real point in it if we can’t have children. There’s no point in trying to plan for forever, if we aren’t given forever. But don’t you see, Petering, now we have an opportunity to try.”

  What I didn’t explain to him was that I had been thinking about it for days. While I hadn’t supported the idea of trying to fight of our inevitable doom initially, everything changed when I met the Earth women. Suddenly, the possibility was real. The fact that it was real enough for the Masters and the scientists to believe in it, and the fact that the vessels of that promise were here, on Valmore, meant that I had nothing to lose by giving into that chance.