Profit & Peril

by Charissa Dufour

  “Surprise, surprise. Let’s get Vidor over and see his reaction.”

  They grabbed Gerrit under the arms and hoisted him up, dragging him out of the vacant unit. Though people stared at them and their purple friend, no one stopped them. Randal doubted anyone wanted to ask why they were dragging an unconscious, purple-faced man through the corridors. They reached the ship and dumped Gerrit into the conference room. Randal stayed behind to guard him while Jack contacted Vidor.

  Bit knew if Jack could communicate with her he would call her back to the ship, but she was determined to find the man from Mars and finish it, once and for all. She didn’t want him pursuing them once they left the space station, and if they could continue to protect the reactor it would only be another day or two before they left. Bit would protect her crew if it was the last thing she did.

  Wow, dramatic much? a voice in the back of her head wondered. Shut up! she told it.

  Bit continue weaving through the various corridors connecting the different compartments, assuming the man would avoid the main circle of the level. She tried her best to navigate back to where she had started chasing Gerrit, but the longer she searched the more lost she felt.

  She had no way of knowing where the man would be or where he would be heading. All she could do was wander and hope.

  Entering yet another compartment, passing through the airtight bulkhead, she found herself in what could only be an educational wing. Large windows dotted the long hallway, revealing the insides of classrooms. Most of them were empty in the late afternoon, but Bit saw a few classrooms still filled with older students. She walked down the hallway, feeling very conspicuous with her tangled dreadlocks, filthy face, and stained jacket, not to mention knowing a gun waited, tucked under her arm.

  “Looking for me?” a voice asked from behind her.

  Slowly, Bit turned to see the man from Mars waiting just within the bulkhead. She lifted her hand, making it clear that she was prepared to draw on him, even within the confines of the education wing.

  “Who are you and what do you want with me?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he replied with a smirk, taking a few steps toward her.

  Bit rolled her eyes dramatically, giving her a good view of the surrounding area. The classroom beside her was in use. On the other side she spotted a door that appeared to lead into an office.

  “That’s why I asked. Tell me, are you with the Grounders?”

  He laughed, taking another step forward. Bit fingered the gun, hesitant to draw it in the educational wing.

  “A Grounder? Please.” He took another step. “My organization is far more powerful than the Grounders.”

  “What organization?”

  He shook his head, his smile never leaving his lips though it failed to reach his eyes. A shiver of fear ran up her spine. Distracted by his expression, she failed to notice the next two steps he took. Bit grabbed for her gun, withdrawing it he slammed his arm down on her. She dropped the pistol and took a step to the side to steady herself, but the attempt failed and she stumbled against the wall of the narrow corridor.

  The man swung his fist at her head and she ducked, his knuckles whishing past her skull and landing in the metal panel of the wall. He grimaced, giving Bit a second to drive her knee up into his groin. As he doubled over in pain, she turned and fled, torn between running straight to the ship or just putting space between her and her opponent.

  Bit didn’t get the chance to decide. A hand grabbed her leg and she went flying forward, landing hard on the metal paneling. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a window filled with shocked teenage faces.

  “Get back,” she tried to yell, her voice coming out in a huff as the wind was knocked out of her lungs.

  She kicked back, hoping to nail him in the face with her hard boots. Her aim went wide and her foot grazed his ear. Barely aware of her attempt, he dragged her back by the leg. Bit squirmed, trying to release herself from his grip, but he was stronger than her and had no problem sliding her across the metal flooring.

  Bit scrambled for the gun, still sitting where she had dropped it. He knocked it away, and it bounced down the hallway, past the window filled with their growing audience.

  This is bad, she thought to herself as she kicked frantically at anything that moved.

  The strange man dragged her half under his own body as he grabbed at her arms and jerked them behind her back. Bit felt the muscles in her shoulders scream at the harsh treatment. Before she could squirm free, plastic zip ties slipped over her wrists and tightened until they bit into her flesh. The man jerked her to her feet by her arms, further straining the muscles in her shoulders.

  “It’s okay kids. I’m with security,” he said as he pulled a metal disk from his pocket and waved it in front of the window.

  SHIT! her mind screamed. Is this just a sham or was I really fighting with security?

  The man bent to pick up her gun. She considered kneeing him in the face and running for it again, but she would be too conspicuous—not to mention too slow—with her arms tied behind her back. The man guided her out of the education wing, a firm grip on her arm making her wince.

  They traveled down another long corridor. He moved as though he knew his way around the space station. As they walked, he clipped his badge to his belt. Bit suddenly realized he hadn’t been wearing the badge before when he had been chasing after her and Gerrit. It seemed strange for him to hide his status while running through the space station.

  Unless he’s not really with the security team, she thought to herself as he turned into a dim compartment.

  By the coat of dust marring the walls and floor, Bit guessed the compartment was in disuse. He shoved her through a door into a small, dark room. A clean chair sat in the center of the room, a single light hanging over the chair. Bit thought back to the movie she had watched with the crew during their long voyage to the space station. In the old film, a room like this had been used for an interrogation. Bit felt her stomach drop into her knees. The only other “interrogation” she knew about was when Reese had been tortured.

  The man shoved her into the single chair, and added another set of zip ties to her wrists, attaching them to the arms of the chair. A sickening smile played across his lips.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Now it’s my turn to ask the questions,” he said, the same disturbing smile on his features. “Where is your ship docked?”

  Bit frowned at him. If he was a security officer on the space station, wouldn't he have access to the station’s database?

  “I don’t remember,” she replied out loud as she tried to ease her hands out of her restraints; all she managed to do was tear a layer or two of flesh from her wrists.

  “Sure you do.”

  Bit raised one eyebrow, intent to keep anything she could from him. “Look it up on the station’s database.”

  “Fine. I will. What was it you transported here?”

  “We brought engineers to work on something along with a few parts,” she lied. “I don’t know what exactly.”

  “What’s your job on the ship?”

  Bit considered her options. She was under the guise of an engineer’s assistant, but she didn’t have a clue what it was they were supposed to be fixing or what parts they had brought. Besides, he had caught her with a gun, and if he searched her further he would find a myriad of knives.

  “Security.”

  “Security?”

  Bit nodded, offended by the doubt coloring his voice. She continued to work her wrists, still to no avail.

  “What does your ship need security for?”

  Bit leaned forward in her chair as far as the zip ties would allow. “If you haven’t noticed, the space station isn’t exactly safe.”

  “And what do you do when you’re flying?”

  “Train.”

  “For what?”

  “Pirates.”

  “Pirates?”

  “That’s what I said,” Bit sig
hed.

  “In space?”

  “You obviously don’t fly with valuables in your hold.”

  The man shook his head. “That’s true. Well, I hope the rest of your team is more impressive.”

  Bit glared up at him. “They are.”

  “Now, you’ll tell me the truth, won’t you? Your crew isn’t here to install an illegal nuclear reactor in the station, is it?”

  Bit felt her shock building in her gut. How does he know? Instead of showing it, she rolled her eyes. “I don’t think our engineers would even know how to install a nuclear reactor. They’re only good at some things.”

  “So Mr. Brett Morgan of Morgan Reactors didn’t hire you under a parent company Stellar Repair to install one of his reactors in the space station to prove that the stations can exist on nuclear power?”

  Bit didn’t respond right way; she paused to consider how to word her response. “Why do you think all this?”

  “Because I have a paper trail from-here-to-Earth showing what Morgan’s been up to.” He squatted down in front of her. “Now, you haven’t been exactly honest with me, so I’m going to give you another chance before I start getting physical.”

  “Then what do you need me for?”

  “I need you to tell me where the reactor is and how far along they are.”

  “There is no reactor.”

  He stared down at her for a long moment. Bit forced herself not to squirm. The both knew she was lying but she intended to stick with it. Slowly, he withdrew a large knife from a sheath tucked into the waistband of his pants. The double-sided knife had a serrated section. Bit could only guess how much a cut from that might hurt.

  She smiled up at him. “Are you threatening me with that?”

  “Little girl, do you really want me to start cutting up your pretty face?”

  Bit rolled her eyes again. Reese had said torture was more about psychological warfare than the actual pain. The pain was to prove that they were serious, that they would really do whatever they threatened.

  “Please. My looks don’t matter.”

  “You don’t want to catch a man?”

  “I already have a man. He owns my debt.”

  “What?”

  Bit looked up at him through her long lashes. “I’m an indentured servant.”

  The man glared down at her, disgust and pity written on his features.

  “I’ve been through more torment than anything you can manage. So bring it on.”

  “I’m gonna have to challenge that statement.”

  He knelt down in front of her again and cut her shirt open. Bit watched him as he took in the sight of her breasts. A blush crept into her cheeks, quickly dissipating as she thought of the pain that was coming. He could look his fill. He wasn’t the first man to forcefully shred her clothing. Her body hadn’t belonged to her in a long time.

  Finally, he lifted the knife, pressing the tip against her collarbone. “Last chance.”

  “There is no reactor,” she said, sticking to the story they had all memorized.

  The man let out a long sigh before drawing the knife down her chest towards her nipple in a shallow but painful cut. Bit continued to stare at him, doing her best to ignore the pain. Tears pricked her eyes despite her efforts.

  “Now you ready to talk?”

  “I don’t know what you’re going on about? I don’t know anything about a reactor.”

  He placed the knife against her skin, drawing it across her shoulder. Bit realized she was going to have to move soon or else he would chop her into little pieces.

  The man stood up and wiped his knife off on a strip of cloth pulled from his pocket. The slow, calculated swipes were designed to intimidate her, but Bit wasn’t having any of it. She drew to her mind all the times her owners had beaten her for a mistake and the times some of them had forced themselves on her. That was real pain. This was nothing.

  Then, she drew to mind Jack’s face. And Oden’s face. And even Blaine’s. The idea of her crew gave her the courage to do what needed to be done.

  Bit kept her eyes lowered, took a deep breath and moved. She stood, lifting the light-weight chair up behind her back—thankful for all the boring flexibility training Randal insisted on—and spun, swinging the chair leg into the man’s crotch. He doubled over, dropping his knife, and Bit jabbed her boot into the back of his knee, bringing him to the floor. She kicked him in the head. He whipped back, crashing his head against the metal paneling of the wall and crumpled, unconscious.

  A long, exhausted sigh escaped her lips as she slouched back into the chair to consider her options. He was out, but she didn’t know how long that would last. She had blades on her person, but she doubted she could reach them with her hands tied to the chair. Then there was his knife.

  Bit leaned to the side, tipping the chair over and landing on his legs. She skootched and twisted until she fingered the knife, accidentally cutting her palm as she groped for the handle. Slowly, she worked the knife into the confines of the zip ties, nicking her flesh a few more times. She gently worked the blade back and forth against the ties, and at long last Bit felt her hands release as the ties popped open.

  She scrambled from the chair and grabbed the man’s knife, ignoring the blood seeping from the various cuts on her hands. Bit placed the knife near the door, far from the man’s reach, and began searching through his pockets. She found his fake badge, a bundle of zip ties, her own gun—which she stowed in her holster—and an ancient-looking gun strapped to his ankle. Bit wasn’t even sure how the heavy thing worked, but she recognized the trigger for what it was. Good enough.

  Looking around, she realized the only thing to attach him to was the chair itself. The walls were devoid of any features. Bit pulled on his limp body, quickly becoming aware that she was in no state to lift him up into it. Instead, she positioned the chair against his body on the floor. She used the remainder of the zip ties to secure his arms to the back legs and his ankles to the front legs. Bit gave him one last search, just to confirm she had taken averything sharp.

  Before leaving the tiny room, Bit glanced down, suddenly realizing she wasn’t decent, and she was bleeding freely. Bit winced as she shrugged out of her crew jacket and cut shirt. She wadded up the fabric of her shirt and pressed it against the cut on her breast, which was deeper and oozed more blood than the one on her shoulder. Over the make-shift bandage, she pulled on her jacket and zipped it up. The pressure of the closed jacket kept the wad of fabric pressed against her breast.

  Bit glanced over the room one last time before opening the door, just as the man groaned. She turned back, closing the door again. Withdrawing her own knife, she squatted down in front of the man, just as he had done to her. She pressed the blade against his hip and cut into his flesh, barely keeping her own features neutral. A wound on his hip would make it difficult for him to chase after her when she left.

  The man bolted awake, a cry of surprise and pain escaping his lips. Bit reached up and clamped her hand over his mouth and nose. He quickly quieted as he realized he couldn’t breathe. He opened his eyes and glared at her.

  “Now it’s my turn to ask the questions. Let’s start with an easy one. What’s your name?”

  “Mriam.”

  Bit frowned. “That’s a horrible name. I hope you gave your parents shit for that one.”

  “I did.”

  “Glad to hear it. Who do you work for?” she asked, tapping her knife on his knee.

  He shook his head.

  “You know, you’re a handsome man, but even a handsome man needs all his… appendages… Now you want all those appendages, right?”

  Color drained from his face. “What are you implying?”

  Bit gave him a little grin despite her sagging energy and pointed the knife towards his crotch. “If you want to keep it, you’ll tell me who you work for.”

  “Ha! A little thing like you ain’t got the balls to do that.”

  One delicate eyebrow rose on her face. “Neither
will you in a moment,” she said as she covered his mouth and stabbed her knife into the flesh of thigh.

  She muffled his scream until it died away then, with her hands free, she reached for the zipper of his trousers.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, tears leaking from his eyes. “Mriam Bryant. I work for Orion Engineering.”

  “What are you after?”

  The man sucked on his teeth, his pain receding and his annoyance rising. Bit fingered the knife still buried in his knee. He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “Orion wants to be the one to put nukes in the stations,” he panted. “Morgan Reactors beat us to it.”

  “And what? You were told to disrupt the process?”

  He nodded, sweat pouring down his cheeks. “I was told to keep you from finishing.”

  “But you didn’t know where we were working.”

  Mriam shook his head as it started to droop. “All I had was you and that black haired man I’d seen at the Commissioner’s office. I didn’t know anything else about your team. Orion didn’t know who Morgan had hired. Or even which station he was starting with. From what we could tell, Morgan had hired multiple ships to secretly fly to the stations. Yours was the only one to have suspicious cargo.”

  Bit just stared at him, amazed at the wealth of information pouring out of him. She glanced down at the knife. She didn’t want to leave anything sharp with him, and yet if she removed it he would quickly bleed out. Taking a deep breath, she covered his mouth and jerked the knife from his knee. With the bloody blade, she cut a strip of fabric off his shirt and tied it around his leg as tightly as she could. Hopefully it would slow the bleeding until they could inform someone of his whereabouts. Cutting off another wad of cloth, she stuffed it into his mouth and tied a strip around his head, holding the wad into his open maw.

  She checked her soaked bandage one last time before slipping out and walking away.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Bit walked down the dusty corridor, trying her best not to limp. If she wasn’t mistaken, she had pulled a muscle in her fight with Mriam. A pulled muscle would heal easily. Her various cuts?