Ruthless

by Kate Rudolph

  “Come on,” she said. “I need you to wake up. We need to find a way out of here.” She looked around, unsure of what she would find. She’d never seen the inside of an incinerator before, especially not one located on a moon base. But the contents seemed no different than what she would find on Earth. It was hard to see, but her eyes were quickly adjusting, and she could make out the dark lines and shadows of the piled refuse within the kiln. If she were standing, most of the trash would only come up to her knees. The ceiling wasn’t high—Toran would have to stoop if he were standing—but the relative emptiness of the room gave her hope. Perhaps they had time and someone would discover them. Surely the base would want to fill the room up with more trash before wasting energy to destroy it.

  She forced herself to take a step back from Toran and look for something that might be useful. Maybe there was something she could use to pry the door open, or a disposed med kit that still had enough supplies to tend to any of Toran’s injuries. She worked her way through the nearest pile, navigating by touch and trying not to cringe any time her hand encountered something gross. In the first few minutes after waking she’d been too focused on the situation to notice the stench in the room. Rotten food and smoke, along with something acrid and chemical. It couldn’t be healthy to breathe it all in, but she would worry about that later. It would be even less healthy to be in the room when the fire started.

  Toran groaned as he stirred, and Iris gave up the search for anything useful and rushed back to him, kneeling by his side and holding herself back from hugging him to make sure that he was okay. His eyes snapped open, and in the darkness they glowed red. Iris had never seen a more beautiful sight. That ruby color of his impassioned eyes was quickly becoming her favorite.

  “I’m okay,” she said, somehow knowing that her well-being would be his primary concern. “What about you? Can you sit? Can you—” She cut herself off, afraid that she was rushing things and smothering him. If either one of them were equipped to handle this situation, it would be Toran. She’d lived a relatively cozy life back on Earth, and he was the interstellar space warrior who’d seen everything.

  Toran sat up slowly and reached for her hand, linking their fingers together. He didn’t seem to have any trouble seeing in the low light, and Iris wondered if Detyen night vision was better than human. “My head aches, but that is to be expected.” As he looked around their surroundings, his hand squeezed hers involuntarily and she could feel the exact moment he realized where they were. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Yes, I’ve been looking for something to pry the door open.”

  “Can it be pried?” he asked, glancing towards the window, their only source of light.

  “I was trying not to think of what would happen if it couldn’t be,” she admitted. Now that he was awake, she realized that she hadn’t even checked to see if there was some sort of handle on the door that they could use to open it. She’d figured that the guards wouldn’t have placed them somewhere that easy to escape.

  Unfortunately, she was right.

  Toran staggered to his feet and they both made their way over to the incinerator door, feeling around for any way to open it from the inside. But she couldn’t find the edges of where it sat in the wall. The plan to pry the door open was dead on arrival. Toran’s arms came around her and he held her close, one hand cradling the back of her head. She leaned into him and tried not to cry. A dark chasm of despair opened within her as she realized that this was the end. They couldn’t open the door and eventually the flames would eat them alive.

  Her mate was not ready to give up. “There might be another way out,” he said, but from his tone she could tell that he didn’t believe himself.

  “You think that...” Iris trailed off as her mind latched onto a thought, half formed and as difficult to clutch as water through her fingers. “Wait, be quiet.” Toran hadn’t said anything, but she needed to chase this down. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember a safety manual she’d been forced to read for work years and years ago. The old building that her office had been located in had an incinerator in the basement. She’d never needed to go near it, but company policy meant that everyone had to know the proper safety procedures relating to it. Including the safety release.

  She pulled out of Toran’s embrace and backed up towards the wall, turning around and running her fingers over the rough surface. “Look for a flap or a little door or something. It shouldn’t have a lock on it.” There was no guarantee of a kill switch inside this incinerator, but it was their best, their only, hope.

  Iris closed her eyes as she felt along the wall, the light too dim for her to make out the subtle differences with her eyes.

  “I found something!” said Toran. He flipped open a little flap in the wall and revealed a bright red button illuminated by a faint light. She couldn’t see a label. Toran’s hand hovered over the button, but he looked at her as if this was a decision they had to make together. “Is there a slight chance that this sets the whole thing off?” he asked.

  Iris didn’t want to consider that. “It’s our only shot.” She placed her hand on top of his and together they pressed down on the giant red button. For a moment, nothing happened, and a weird sense of disappointed relief washed over her. But then the door clicked open with a loud buzz and a strip of bright light practically blinded her. She and Toran didn’t hesitate, running for the opening and throwing themselves outside. Even if the guards were waiting for them in the hallway, they had a better chance out there than they did inside the incinerator.

  But the hallway was empty and as the door to the incinerator shut behind them, she and Toran were alone.

  She took a few steps, but her legs were wobbly, and she leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor, her hands shaking as she realized just how close she and Toran had come to the end. Toran sank down beside her and placed his arm over her shoulders. “You’re brilliant,” he told her.

  “Just lucky,” she said breathlessly, as if she’d just run a marathon. They sat together for a long time, neither willing to make the first move to get up and tackle what needed to be done. Minutes ticked by, and Iris lost track of them. But at some point, she shifted in her seat and Toran started to move beside her, standing up and offering his hand.

  “We need to get home before the ambassador realizes that we escaped,” he said. He was right, though Iris’s legs still didn’t want to cooperate. She forced herself up and took a minute to stand steadily.

  “Let’s go home.” Though, strangely, she realized that in the time since she’d met Toran, the meaning of home had changed, and as long as he was by her side it would never be far away.

  ANGER UNLIKE ANYTHING he’d ever known threatened to consume Toran for the injustice done to his mate. She could have died in that tiny room and no one would have known what happened to her. The fact that he would have died at her side didn’t matter. She was his to protect, and he had failed in that. But he kept a tight leash on the anger as he could sense that Iris was still fragile from the entire ordeal. She was keeping up a strong face, walking quickly and steadily beside him through these lower hallways of Gamma Station. Her face was set in a determined expression, and if it weren’t for her quick thinking they would still be stuck back in that incinerator or worse.

  But he could sense the cracks that she was trying to hide. As soon as they stopped she was going to shut down. It happened to the newer warriors sometimes, the ones getting their first taste of battle and carnage and death. And it was something that Iris should have never been forced to experience. He didn’t bother to ask her if she was okay; she was physically fine, but if she had to examine her emotional state too closely that strong façade she was putting up might give out.

  The hallways had seemed longer when Yormas’s guards were leading them. Toran had known they were being led to their death and time had constricted in a way that he had never experienced. Now it was speeding up to make up for the discrepancy. They came to the
platform that would lead them back to the main part of the station much sooner than he expected. He activated the sensor to call the platform to them and they were forced to wait, stopping for the first time since they’d stood.

  “What’s the plan?” Iris asked, her voice steady but a little too forceful. “They scanned our IDs. They could have us flagged in the system.”

  It was a possibility that he’d hoped Iris hadn’t realized, but he should have known better by now. His mate was quick to think of all of the possibilities, good or bad. “I have something back in our room,” he promised. “If we can get back there, it won’t be our IDs that the computer scans when we return home.” Sierra had given him an entire bag of tricks, and at the time he’d thought her collection of toys was excessive. Now he was trying to think of the proper thank you gift for her foresight.

  “And if Yormas and that Oscavian guy got there first?”

  “His name is Varrow. Nyden Varrow. There was nothing in his room when I checked, like he’d already left the place, even though that was obviously not true.” Though now that Toran knew he’d come with a bevy of armed guards, it was possible that Varrow was keeping his things with them. Especially if they were traveling under assumed identities.

  “That’s nice, but you didn’t answer my question.” Iris looked at him expectantly. “I’m thinking we don’t want them to get their hands on everything back in our room.” She crossed her arms in front of her and tapped her finger against her forearm in a nervous gesture.

  “Everything in the room is keyed to us. Even if they get their hands on it, they won’t be able to use it. It’s programmed to self-destruct.” That feature hadn’t seemed excessive, though Toran had hoped he’d never have to use it.

  “So even if we get back to Earth, nothing we found here is coming with us. We learned almost nothing.” She sounded defeated, and Toran wanted to take the time to reassure her that everything would turn out all right. They were alive, they were together, and they had both witnessed the fact that ambassador Yormas of Wreet was up to no good. But the platform finally arrived in front of them and Toran didn’t want to risk continuing talking about this. The platforms were highly monitored, and they might have been wired for sound, though he wasn’t sure. Even though the station was too big for them to get around by foot, he didn’t like riding the platform; it felt too exposed, too controlled by the station. But his unease got to him and they got off long before the closest stop to their room. Iris didn’t question his decision.

  There were enough aliens on the station that Toran didn’t feel like he stuck out too much. But he still wished that he had a cloak or a hat or something else to cover his head and obscure his skin and clan markings. It was no use to dwell on things like that and he pushed the thought aside rather than wallow.

  Iris walked quietly beside him, her shoulders held tight like she was a coil ready to spring. It was a big station, and they were just two people trying to disappear into it. Yormas would be on the lookout for them, even if he believed that they were dead and reduced to ash. He seemed too smart a man to breathe easy until he had confirmation that his orders had been carried out.

  As they entered one of the courtyards that featured several casual restaurants and shopping options, the skin at the base of Toran’s neck prickled. He slowed his pace and casually looked around the room, trying to see if anything was out of place. The tourists around them were acting like nothing was wrong, running and laughing and enjoying their time on the station. But Toran couldn’t shake the feeling in his instincts.

  “What is it?” Iris asked. Her eyes darted towards the far exit, the hallway that would lead them closer to their room, and then her gaze swung around to the security station nestled into one of the walls. Two human guards sat there along with an android, their poses relaxed. They mostly existed to break up fights and provide first aid when it was needed. These weren’t police, nor were they soldiers. They were employed by the station and answerable only to that authority.

  Standing as close to the doorway as they were, Toran knew he and Iris were lit up like a beacon. He stepped further into the room, Iris at his side. He found them a corner with slightly more cover, but they were still in view of the security station, and it was only a matter of time before one of the humans or the android spotted them. “I don’t know,” Toran told his mate. “It’s just a feeling.”

  “I trust your instincts,” she told him as she brushed her hand against his arm. They kept doing that, touching each other in small ways, as if confirming for themselves that the other was still alive, still safe.

  His instincts were screaming at him to turn around, but this was the closest way back to their rooms. Besides, if they took another path, they would need to travel closer to the central security hub of the station and he would much rather deal with two guards and an android than the centralized force that could be sent from the hub. “Let’s keep going,” he forced himself to say. The sooner they moved, the sooner they could get out of danger.

  In the end though, it wasn’t the security who tipped them off to trouble. They crossed paths with a human woman with long brown hair standing beside a young child. She froze in place, and her eyes widened as she caught sight of Toran. She tugged on the child’s arms, but that only brought his attention to what she didn’t want her kid to see.

  “Is that the bad man from the report, Mommy?” the child asked.

  Toran didn’t run—running only made it obvious. But he grabbed Iris’s hand and ducked behind an information stall near the edge of the room.

  “Bad man?” Iris asked.

  “It’s one way to detain us,” he replied. He brought up a generic information terminal and scrolled through the warnings and alerts that were available to all guests of the station. It didn’t take long to find his picture alongside Iris’s, and when he read their alleged list of crimes, he cursed. Theft, assault, stolen identity, and tampering with station life support. Nothing there would make them sympathetic to the guests of the station, especially not the last one. “We have to get out of sight,” he said. “They’ll have our room covered.” Maybe it had been stupid to try and get back there, but the equipment and the information contained was important. They’d had to try. And now it was time to try something else, to try anything that could get them home.

  No one else seemed to notice them as they ducked out of the area and back down one of the less populated halls. “There’s no way we get on the transport with that over our heads.” Iris didn’t phrase it as a question.

  She was right and Toran’s mind reeled as he tried to come up with an alternate way off the station. “We need to find a place to lay low.” They must have been caught on several of the security cameras by now, but it would take time for whatever algorithm was looking for them to analyze the footage. As soon as they were flagged, Yormas would know that they were alive and things would get even more complicated. “I swear on my life that we will return to Earth and you will be unharmed.”

  “I’m not just worried about myself, Toran,” Iris said as she grabbed his hand. “We’re both going to get back to Earth. And we’re going to take that bastard down.” They took off back down the hall, neither of them voicing the doubt that had to be racing through both of their minds. No matter the determination, returning to Earth had just gotten a lot more difficult.

  Chapter Thirteen

  FOR A LUXURY RESORT, Gamma Station’s security was lacking. With the clever use of the cleaning bot, Toran was able to sneak them into an unused room without anyone the wiser. It wasn’t as nice as their suite—nothing would have been—and all of their equipment was still lost, but at least in the room they didn’t have to worry about cameras or security guards. Not for a little while. Gamma Station took privacy seriously, probably more seriously than security, and there were no surveillance cameras or devices in any of the rooms.

  The door was the only way in and out, so if they were caught they would be trapped. Iris was trying not to dwell on that at
the moment, and with all her other worries she was almost succeeding. She had never been so close to death before as she’d been in the last two hours. Her hands still shook with the aftermath of what had almost happened, and she found herself reaching out to brush those shaking fingers against any part of Toran that she could reach, needing to convince herself that he was still there, still alive and safe.

  One thing had become clear. Toran was vital. Vital to her very existence. How she could go so quickly from not knowing that he’d existed to needing him to survive, she wasn’t sure. Maybe she hadn’t really been living before, just going through the motions until this life-changing cannonball of a man exploded in her path. She’d never understood before what it meant to need someone, not like this. It wasn’t about what he could do for her or anything like that, instead he was a pillar, holding her up when she feared that she would collapse.

  But right now her pillar looked ready to slump over as they both came down from the excitement and stress of their escape. He sank down onto the only bed in the room and kicked off his shoes almost defiantly. Iris stumbled across the room and lay down next to him, curling into his side and wrapping an arm around his waist.

  “We can’t stay here long, can we?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure of the answer. Gamma Station was no longer a safe place for them.

  “No, we can’t.” His finger idly stroked her hair, wrapping a strand around in circles.

  “Any ideas for what to do next?” Iris might’ve been the one to remember the failsafe in the incinerator, but her brain was turning to mush and she had no idea how they were going to get out of Gamma Station and off the moon. Each of the four moon bases had daily shuttle service, but those services were highly monitored. Even if they could get off Gamma and sneak into one of the other stations, they might just as easily be detained by security there.

  “I’m working on it, but this mission is a little complicated.” He turned his head towards her and smiled. Iris’s heart leapt. Things were bad, and she didn’t want to think about how they could get worse, but when Toran looked at her like that she could pretend that everything was all right, that it was just the two of them on this lunar paradise.