Lost Star

by Rebecca Royce

  “I’m not going to say no.” He grabbed his shirt and put it on. “Thank you. I grew up in a nursery with one hundred other boys. But I haven’t had a roommate of any kind since we decided to defect, so to speak.”

  He rose from the bed and lay down on the floor. It took me a moment to realize his intent. “Oh, don’t sleep on the floor.” That had to be particularly uncomfortable with the burns. “This bed is huge.” I hadn’t even thought about how big it was, but the truth was it was gigantic. Why was it so big? I shook my head. Everything was just different here. “We can share.”

  Corbin sat up straight. “Really?”

  “Really. I’ve never shared a bed, but look how big this is. We can both sleep in it.”

  He finally got to his feet and walked over. “I’m sure we can.”

  I walked to the wall where he’d labeled the switch for the lights before I remembered there was also one by the bed. Eventually, I’d get the hang of this. I hoped. “Do you want light or dark?”

  “Whatever you’d like.” He smiled at me, the same one he’d given me earlier before he winked at me. This time, he didn’t follow up with the wink, but it warmed me like he had. I flipped off the light. The ship rumbled beneath my feet. I was never going to get used to it, and I couldn’t say as I cared for the feeling.

  There wasn’t much to bump into, and I managed to climb into the bed without too much fuss. Corbin did the same, rolling just slightly until he adjusted on the other side of the bed. I turned on my side, the natural way that I slept, meaning I wouldn’t be facing him, which was probably best. It had to be weird to have someone sort of looking at you while they fell asleep.

  I’d never given it any thought before. It was a day of that. “Are all the beds this big?”

  “They are.” He moved just slightly. “The rooms are all the same. Huge right? And that’s me saying that. Super Soldiers are all huge. It’s a requirement of our genes, I think. If we were scrawny, we’d probably have been put down.”

  I turned slightly so that I could reach out to touch his side. I was a toucher. It was part of how I connected in the temple. And I couldn’t be overthinking these things all the time. If he didn’t like it, he could tell me not to and I’d respect that.

  “You’re not an animal. Where I’m from, we put down animals who are sick and in pain.” I’d been particularly heartsick over a horse I’d once loved. But I wasn’t going to think about that just now. “You’re humans, whatever your start was. It’s not putting you down. It’s murdering you.”

  He scooted closer, still leaving plenty of distance between us, but making it easier for me to keep my hand on his arm where it was. “Sometimes, I don’t feel human.”

  It was truth time. “Sometimes, I always feel human, but I also always feel so…other. Hard to explain. Like I don’t quite fit, and now, being hunted and sick? Even more so.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you, Sienna.” His voice was low. “We’ve taken care of you all of these long months, and we will continue to do so.”

  I almost reminded him that Blaze was turning me over to be someone else’s responsibility just as soon as he could, but thought better of it. They were also unwilling to take me home. I needed to see my people, to remember what happened. Surely there had to be a way to do that safely, without risking anyone’s lives. If Blaze and this crew weren’t the people to do that, and I believed them that they thought they weren’t, then maybe it was the next group who would help me. Eventually, I needed to be able to take care of myself. That might be the key. Figure out how to get a job, earn some credits, hide from Evander, and take myself home.

  I didn’t expect to go to sleep. But that must have been what I did, plowing forward on a ship I couldn’t have anticipated, taking me who knew where. And a Super Soldier with sad eyes lying in the bed next to me.

  “There’s someone here to see you.” My caretaker, Otto, the only man ever around for any length of time, spoke to me with his eyes averted. He’d never looked at me straight once in my whole life, and lately, it had been grating on my nerves.

  I set down my pencil where I’d been calculating exactly how much we could give to the needy and have enough to not be starving all winter. It wasn’t an easy decision. Left to my own devices, I didn’t care how much I ate. I’d do with less. But it wasn’t just me I had to feed. If only the pirates weren’t stealing so much of our grain before it ever made it through space. If I ever had the chance to speak my mind to one of those space faring thieves…

  I got to my feet. I wasn’t even technically in charge yet. If they wanted me to do this, they should go ahead and appoint me as such. Do the ceremony. Let me live my life inside this box where I would forever be everyone’s mother and no one’s just the same.

  Okay. I had to get out of my own head. “It’s not visiting hours for me. Can whoever this is please go see one of the other trainees?”

  They didn’t have my natural abilities and never would, but they were good women and excellent counsel, traits that would serve them well when they got to have husbands and families. Things I was going to be denied without my consent, since no one had ever asked me if I wanted to do this to begin with.

  Okay…not helpful.

  Otto shook his head. “They are here specifically to see you. I should have turned them away. But they frightened me.”

  They scared him? Well, I didn’t like that at all. Otto was a kind-hearted, simple person, who had devoted his life to the idea of the temple and the notion that what we did here mattered. From the time I was a child, he’d acted as though I had some eternal abilities granted to me because I was special, instead of just one of many who could do things a lot of women on this planet could do. I wasn’t special. But he’d never believe that.

  Sometime around my fifteenth birthday, I’d started taking care of him instead of the other way around. The last time my father visited, he’d wanted to have Otto changed out for someone more capable, had offered to go to the elder council and see that happen. I’d declined the offer. When my parents tried to actually parent, it went badly.

  They’d given up that right when they’d turned me over.

  I touched Otto’s arm, his fear hitting me hard. All right. These visitors demanding to see me legitimately intimidated him. Who were they? He wasn’t even going to be able to get the words out.

  Putting up my emotional shields to tune out some of the anxiety, I stepped around him to head to the greeting area.

  “Sienna.” A whisper caught my attention, and I whirled around to see Joy coming quietly through the hall. We didn’t talk in regular voices unless we were in our private rooms. It was just an unspoken rule. She wore all black, the same as me. It was perpetually depressing to never have the option of putting on colors when so many of the people who walked through the temples were always in brighter patterns. I steeled my shoulders. Always whining. That was why they never promoted me to the top position. Somehow, the elders knew my inner thoughts were constantly negative.

  “Joy?” She’d said my name but nothing else. “What’s going on?”

  “The men here to see you?” They were men? I almost never saw men. “I heard they came from space.”

  Now she had my full attention. “There are off-worlders? Here?”

  We didn’t get a lot of those, and they certainly didn’t come to the women’s temple to see us. Distantly located, pretty much as far away from Earth’s empires as we could get, we had almost nothing to tempt others to come here. Our psychic abilities were guarded like rare jewels lest someone want to use us, so much so that people didn’t even dare mention that they existed. Otherwise, we were a farming planet that didn’t even farm that well.

  I swallowed. “Why are they here?”

  “I don’t know, but they’ve come in with your Uncle Courage.” She bit her lip. “Good luck handling them.”

  Joy scurried away, and I wished for a second that she was more the kind of person who would have offered to come with me rathe
r than go hide in her room. I ran a hand over my face. Okay. There were off-worlders here. Fine. Whatever service I could provide, I would attempt to do so. My father hated my Uncle Courage. It was a pretty funny name for a man who had tried every which way to scam the world and never do a hard day’s work in his life, but it was what it was. He was family, and I had tried to hold onto the idea of mine, even though I lived separate from them.

  I made my way to the main room where my Uncle Courage waited. He looked so much like my father, only a slightly more put together version. My father spent his days sewing, hunched over a machine that barely worked. My uncle stood up straight. Maybe it had been wishful thinking when my grandparents named him Courage. He’d never shown any that I could tell.

  But then again, I wasn’t privy to all of the details of his life. His emotions were rather run of the mill, even if they bordered pretty standardly on jealousy.

  A lot of people were like that. It was hard to live in a world where so few ever had even the chance to experience love.

  He was with three other men. Two of them were what I would call regular-sized, about the same height as Courage. They wore suits and shoes that looked like they’d never had dirt on them. I stared, fixated at the way the light hit them and bounced off. How did they manage that? We were all pretty dirty all the time in between showers.

  The third man was huge. Practically half the size of one of the pillars. I stared up at him, my mouth falling open. How did someone get that big?

  “Ah good, gentlemen. As promised, my niece, Sienna.”

  I forced my attention where it belonged—on my uncle. “Sir?” I stepped forward. “How can I help all of you today?”

  There were four men in the temple. That wasn’t illegal—who would enforce laws, even if we had any—but it just wasn’t done. Men came with their wives and maybe a daughter. Not alone, not to see me. Other than my father.

  He smiled at me. “Sienna, these men are from Evander Corporation.”

  Courage waited as though I was supposed to know what that was. He waited so long, it officially became awkward. I had to say something. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with what that is.”

  The taller of the two men with the unscuffed shoes stepped forward. “That’s okay. We wouldn’t expect people to know us out here.”

  I hated the implication that we were ignorant, unaware people. Even when it was true. “How can I help you?”

  “Your uncle has been filling us in about some of the amazing things you can do, Sienna, and we are here to offer you the opportunity to take your talents and use them for the benefit of the universe by coming with us.”

  I managed not to gasp, which I considered a feat because that was pretty much what I wanted to do right then. My uncle had told outsiders about me?

  That would be dealt with at another time. For now, I needed to handle what was happening. “Thank you for your kind offer, but I’m not looking to leave.” At least not with them. I lowered my shield enough to feel them, and their emotions were dark and hate-filled, except for the big guy, who offered nothing at all.

  “Sienna,” my uncle scolded me like I was a toddler. It was everything I could do not to cut out his eyes with my fingernails. Yep, I had a temper, and it wasn’t pretty. Still, I managed to control myself. Barely. “These men have traveled a long way to see you. I think you should hear them out.”

  I shook my head. “Not interested.”

  With that being said, I turned to leave. I was going to send a messenger to my father immediately. He could handle his betraying younger brother and…

  “Devil,” Evander’s man who’d spoken to me said quickly. “Stop her.”

  Quicker than I could have imagined, the tall, tall man stood in front of me. He sent me nothing. There wasn’t a noticeable emotion anywhere in him. Just cold, dead eyes as he stared at me. He shot out his hand, I could hardly follow it, and grabbed my arm. “You don’t move until the executives tell you that you can move.”

  I tried to pull my arm back, mostly on instinct, as I wasn’t an idiot and I knew I wasn’t wrenching myself out of this man’s hold. Not by conventional means in any case.

  He wasn’t going to manhandle me and keep me here if I wanted to go. They knew about my abilities? Fine…

  I zapped the heck out of him. He let go of my arm, falling to his knees as everyone in the room, including my uncle, startled. Yes…they’d feel the residual pain.

  “All of you get out. If you come near me again, you’ll know my anger.” That sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth, but I hoped they got the gist.

  “Sienna,” the man in charge shouted. “Make this easier on yourself. We have ways to get you, whether you want to come or not.”

  Fear threatened to overtake me, but I didn’t turn back around and cower. No, they didn’t. He was bluffing. He had to be.

  I jolted awake. The memories of what happened that day flooded my mind. That had just been the beginning. I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d been terrified then, and the fear hit me all over again as though I experienced it now, too. Oh, yes. They’d had ways of making me comply, as evidenced by my arm and the virus indicator I now had to live with.

  But that hadn’t been the first thing they’d done to me.

  Strong hands pulled me against Corbin’s chest. “You’re okay. Just a dream.”

  I’d never been so glad to have someone to sleep with me as I was right then. It was stupid to depend on others, but he’d said nothing would harm me, and I believed he might actually be able to stand in front of the man who I’d zapped that day and taken to the ground. He’d come back for me. I could sort of remember…

  “Not dreams. Memories.”

  “Ah.” He stroked my back with a gentle hand. “I hope how I’m holding you is okay. It was instinct. I can let go.”

  I would have laughed if I were capable of that at the moment. “It’s new for me, too, but please don’t let go.”

  He tightened his hug. “Okay. I won’t.”

  Corbin didn’t say another word, which I appreciated more than I’d ever be able to say. Yes, Evander wanted me. I’d played right into their hands by showing them what I could do. My uncle had turned me over like I was something he could barter with.

  That thought was what brought on the tears.

  5 Scavengers and Secrets

  Corbin ran a strong hand through my hair, which was challenging, considering my hair had grown in the cryogenic sleep until it was past my rear end. I’d always had long blonde hair, but it had never been quite this long. I was going to have to cut it or something. But at this moment, I loved the feel of it. No one had ever done this before.

  I’d described my memory, and he hadn’t commented much. Maybe there wasn’t anything to say.

  “They didn’t expect much resistance. That’s why they only brought one.” He continued his stroke. “Am I doing this correctly?”

  I lifted my head. “Is there a correct way? I’m afraid, in this case, I’m not any more experienced than you.”

  He tilted his head. “Do you remember the man’s name? The soldier who you zapped and got away from.” With his other hand, he squeezed my arm. “They may not have used it. We tended to be numbers or just hand motions. But out of curiosity, did they use a name?”

  Actually they had. “Devil. They called him Devil.”

  His body jerked, and his arms tightened around me, dropping from my hair. “Sienna…”

  The door flung open, illuminating the light from the hall for a long second. Enough time for me to see Blaze standing there. “She just said Devil, right?”

  He closed the door as he stepped inside. Apparently, he didn’t beep to enter. He just walked in. Corbin put his cheek on top of my head. “She did. You were listening.”

  “Only since she cried out. I’m not interested in your private words. Can’t say the same for the others, I have no idea if they’re listening. But when someone screams like that on my ship, I pay attention to make sure no one i
s dying or needs the doctor.” He stepped in again. “Although, I was relieved to see you were still here.” Blaze paused. “What are you still doing here?”

  Corbin went back to stroking my hair. “I’m sleeping in here. She’s fine. You listened to her story?”

  “I did.” Blaze walked toward the bed and sat down. “Is he the one who injected you with the sickness?”

  My memory hadn’t gone that far. “I don’t remember yet.”

  “We need to know if you do.” Blaze’s presence had altered the energy in the room. Not necessarily in a negative way, but he’d certainly changed the way the air moved, like he would always take up a lot of the space in any area he entered regardless of how large a room it was. “We should ask Wade if this is a trauma thing, an illness thing, or a cryogenic sleep thing.”

  Corbin shifted slightly. “We’ve never had memory loss, and we’ve been under more times than I can count.”

  “Yes, but we are as we are, and I can honestly say I have no idea what it does to ordinary people.” He rose. “I’m going to go ask Wade.”

  Exhausted Wade? “It’s the middle of the night, right?” It could be mid-afternoon for all I could tell right now.

  Blaze sighed. “Yes, it’s about three.”

  “Then I would say let the doctor sleep. He looked pretty tired today.” Maybe it was a bad idea to give Blaze orders. I was so used to being listened to as though I knew what I was talking about, even when I didn’t. “Sorry, I tend to…tell people what to do.”

  After a second, he sat back down. “You zapped Devil.” I didn’t expect his laugh and wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Scary motherfucker.”

  Corbin shoved him in the shoulder. “We’re not supposed to curse in front of her. That’s what they mean when they say language.”

  “Sorry.” Blaze sat back next to me, kicking off his shoes and stretching until his head was on the board behind us. I was officially in between them, and there was still room for me. I hadn’t been wrong about my statement that the bed was huge. “That is going to take some getting used to.”