by Kate Rudolph
What did Brakley want with Dru? What did Dru mean when he said he was a rare specimen? Laurel could have spent hours with him trying to figure out what everything meant, what was going on, but every minute she spent in the chamber put her nerves on edge, and as she’d run back to her room she realized she’d been jumping at shadows. There was no sound to send her away from Dru, there was only the terror living in her head that she would get caught and be tied down just like he was. They wouldn’t even need to torture her. Being bound like that would be enough to break her, she knew it deep within her soul.
Laurel didn’t know if she would be able to hide her knowledge of Dru from Brakley, and she was thankful when one of the assistants silently delivered her breakfast and didn’t stay to chat. But her reprieve was short lived. Not long after she finished eating, the doors to her room slid open and Brakley stood there in his light gray outfit, blue eyes gleaming. He didn’t look like the kind of person who would tie up a man and torture him, but Laurel knew that not every monster looked monstrous.
“How are you doing this morning?” he asked, as if he wasn’t hiding a huge secret from her. Maybe to him it wasn’t a big deal.
Her vision went blurry for a moment and her head pounded with the headache that never quite went away. It grounded her and kept her from doing anything stupid like demanding an explanation. “I’m okay,” she managed, and she even managed to sound normal when she said it.
“Any issues with your head?” How did he manage to sound so concerned? Was he really? Or was this all an elaborate ploy? How could he torture one person while caring for another? Or did he only seem to care for her because she hadn’t fought back?
Laurel explained about the headaches and her wonky vision, even as part of her thought that she should hide her weaknesses from him. But that wouldn’t do her any good. He seemed to truly care about her physical well-being.
Brakley nodded as if everything she told him made sense. “Would you like something for the pain?” he asked.
“No.” She might have said it too quickly, too vehemently, but Laurel didn’t want anything that would dull her senses. Not now that she knew she had to be on high alert.
“Then how about something to take your mind off of it? You’ve been stuck in your room since you woke up, would you like a tour of the ship?” He offered her his arm with a smile that raised Laurel’s hackles.
Was this some sort of trap? Did he know that she’d ventured out last night? Or did he really just want to give her a tour? Laurel hated this confusion. She almost wished that she hadn’t heard Dru screaming, almost wished that she had not discovered him. But even though the discovery had plunged her newfound safety into turmoil, she couldn’t regret it. She would much rather have the hard truth than the easy lie.
Her first instinct was to turn down Brakley’s invitation. Every moment spent with him was another chance to slip up, to let him discover what she had learned. But if she was going to get off the ship safely, if she was going to try and get Dru off this ship, she needed to know where the hell she was going. So she slapped on her best smile and slid her fingers into the crook of Brakley’s arm. “Lead the way,” she said.
He did as instructed, walking her down the hall and past the door where she knew Dru was being kept. Brakley didn’t spare it a glance, and Laurel forced her eyes forward. She couldn’t let him know that she’d been down that hall, couldn’t let him know what she had seen.
He made small talk, telling her how he’d come into possession of the ship, of the projects he was working on with his brother, and offered her a few funny stories of his years at university. She’d expected the discussion to be difficult to maintain without giving herself away, but Brakley made it easy by speaking only of himself and giving her the opportunity to be awed by his supposed greatness.
“Now this is something special,” he said when they got to a door labeled emergency exit. “Most ships don’t spring for this.”
“For what?” She was a little worried as he placed his hand on the sensor beside the door, but assured herself that he wasn’t about to open a hatch into the black of space when neither of them was wearing protective gear.
And she was right. The exit led them into a small hanger, little more than a garage, where two shuttles were firmly secured. Laurel felt dwarfed by them; they towered over her at nearly three times her height. But when it came to spaceships, that was tiny. That two craft like that could fit in the ship told her that Brakley’s vessel was nothing to sneeze at.
“I didn’t want some simple escape pod when I was having this built,” he told her as he approached one of the shuttles and placed his hand on the hull. “Each of them has a range of fifty light years and a mini FTL drive. It’s nothing you’d want to use to explore the galaxy, but no matter where something goes wrong, we can be assured that we’ll get to safety.”
Laurel made some kind of noise that she hoped sounded appropriately awestruck. Brakley’s pride was evident and she didn’t want him to think that she didn’t respect the steps he’d taken to ensure that his scientific vessel rivaled a luxury liner in amenities.
“Can we go inside?” Laurel hadn’t ever paid much attention to space ships before, but at this moment she was going to gather as much information as she could. All knowledge was power.
Brakley’s eyes lit up until they were almost an electric blue and he clapped his hands together, a smile splitting his face. He seemed so genuine that she almost felt guilty, but then Dru’s tortured form flashed in her mind and she clamped down on the sympathy. Brakley might have layers, might truly be interested in showing off his ship, but he was also a sadist and he could turn on her at any minute.
He waved her forward and showed her the little panel that allowed him to open the door. A ramp descended and a hatch slid open to allow them entrance. As they crossed the threshold, lights turned on, illuminating the cockpit, which held half a dozen seats and more buttons than Laurel could count. Brakley slid into the pilot’s seat and indicated that she should take her place beside him. She did and automatically reached for the safety harness before she remembered they weren’t about to go anywhere.
“If I hadn’t been a scientist, I think I would have become a pilot,” Varrow said, running his hand over the controls in front of them, his tone reverent.
“I don’t think I’d ever left Earth before... well, you know.” She had vague recollections of rolling wheat fields and flat plains, sky as blue as Brakley’s eyes and cloudless as far as the eye could see. Had her family worked the land? She didn’t realize all the memories she’d lost until she tried to grasp for them. Pain spiked and her vision went fuzzy for a second before it all retreated. But not before she clutched the arms of her seat and clenched her jaw.
“Are you alright?” He hovered beside her, suddenly there, and Laurel just barely stopped herself from rearing back.
“That stuff comes and goes,” she said, “if your docs don’t think it’s anything to worry about, I’m trying to stay positive.”
He nodded and held out a hand to pull her up. Laurel didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want to give him even that little piece of herself, but things like that hadn’t bothered her before she saw Dru, and sudden changes might tip Brakley off. Or make him think her brain was broken worse than it was. Neither of those would do. She placed her hand in his and let him tug her out of her seat, but as soon as it was possible she dropped his hand and put a little distance between them. Luckily Brakley didn’t seem to notice.
He took her deeper into the ship, showing her the minimal sleeping quarters, storage, bathroom, and galley. It would be cramped to fit the thirty people that the shuttle could allegedly take, but when a person was worried about survival, they’d put up with a lot.
They stayed on the ship for a few more minutes, Brakley showing off every little thing he could think of before he led her out of the evacuation room and further down the hall. “If you thought that was interesting, wait until you see the bridge of this sh
ip.” He greeted his crew, all of them Oscavian, but he didn’t introduce anyone to Laurel. It hadn’t seemed weird before. She’d only interacted with Brakley’s assistants when they brought her meals or asked her questions about her health, and only Brakley seemed interested in getting to know her. She hadn’t thought anything of that, but now that she knew he was keeping Dru locked away, she couldn’t help but suspect that there was something sinister going on.
Was she as much a prisoner as Dru? Or did Brakley really plan to keep his word to her? It didn’t matter—she was getting Dru and getting off of this ship as fast as she could.
“Are there any people besides me and the crew on the ship?” she asked as Brakley took her to the viewing deck where they could see the stars stretched out and painting the sky with light.
He shook his head. “There aren’t any passengers on the ship, we only take them on when it’s convenient.”
She’d never been more happy that a man lied. Without meaning to, she yawned, her jaw cracking as the sound echoed around them. She shot Brakley a sheepish look and he smiled.
“I think it’s time to get you back to your quarters. I wouldn’t want to set back your recovery.”
Laurel nodded. They walked back in silence, her mind racing to figure out if she could manage to go see Dru again. She wanted to reassure herself that he was alright, or as alright as he could be, and to remind herself that everything she was seeing right now was the pleasant veneer over a pulsating heart of darkness. No matter how nice Brakley was to her, he was lying about holding Dru captive, and he was torturing an innocent man in the name of science. That wasn’t okay, not one single bit.
They stopped in front of her door and Laurel offered him a tired smile that she didn’t have to fake. “Thank you for the tour.”
Brakley studied her for a moment, blue eyes practically glowing in the dim light of the hall. He slowly reached out and tucked a tuft of her remaining hair behind her ear, his fingers gliding over the shell and caressing the lobe. Laurel held completely still and tried to keep her face neutral. She couldn’t remember everything that had been done to her, but it wasn’t difficult to guess, and she thought she could read the expression on Varrow’s face loud and clear.
But he let his hand drop and she was able to breathe again. “Sleep well,” he ordered.
Laurel offered a silent nod and retreated into her room, wishing now that she had a lock.
OVER THE NEXT WEEK Laurel had never been so happy to be ignored. She only saw Brakley once and he was too preoccupied to speak to her for very long. Of course, that blessing came with a cost, and every day she didn’t see her savior/captor she spent plenty of quality time in the lab with his assistants. The tests became more grueling, clocking her endurance both physically and emotionally, and if she didn’t end up in tears, she was sure to have a pounding headache that practically blinded her. One time it didn’t end until blood poured out of her nose and began to pool on the table she was sitting at.
Ever the professionals, the lab attendants didn’t panic, but Laurel had begged for the day off, pleading with them to give her time to recover. Things felt less and less like they were monitoring her to see her progress in healing, and more like she was some kind of test subject, a lab rat.
Outside of the lab the headaches were getting worse. She’d mentioned it at every opportunity she had, but no one seemed concerned. Laurel wished that she had access to outside information, some way to look up her symptoms and see if they matched with what Brakley had told her. But the entertainment tablet she’d been provided had no network access and she hadn’t been able to find an unsecured computer in any of the parts of the ship she’d managed to wander through.
She’d taken advantage of Brakley’s invitation for her to move freely outside of her room. When the headaches weren’t too much, and she wasn’t undergoing testing, she was walking through the corridors and mentally mapping out every hallway she could find. Somehow she still managed to get lost half the time when her mind went foggy and she lost the ability to focus. She wanted to scream. She didn’t think that she’d ever been the smartest girl in her class, but she was sure that she’d been able to hold a thought in her head for more than a minute. She wanted to find those slavers who had done this to her and root around in their brains until everything was mixed up and they couldn’t go five minutes without a headache.
Over the week of increased testing and decreased visits from Brakley, Laurel hadn’t managed to sneak off to see Dru. Every time she approached the door she knew he was hidden behind she hesitated, and the one time she got up the courage to open it, she ran into one of the assistants, who shooed her back to her room, warning her that she’d almost stepped into a restricted area. Laurel had played dumb, waving at her head and saying that she’d thought she was going to her room. She apologized profusely and the assistant seemed to buy it. As far as Laurel could tell she wasn’t subjected to any more surveillance than normal after that incident, and no one had mentioned it to her.
How stupid did they think she was? How damaged?
Laurel stayed away from the door for the next two days, but on the third, when she tried to make a go at it again, sirens blared and lights flashed in all the hallways. She had no idea what the problem was, but an Oscavian she’d never seen before, one dressed in all black with a blaster hooked on one hip, found her and led her back to her room, instructing her to stay there until the all clear was sounded.
Before he could leave, Laurel placed her hand on his arm and opened her mouth to speak, but the bright flashing lights disoriented her and the fog that seemed to take up permanent residence in her brain swallowed her whole.
She didn’t know how long it was that she was out, but when she came to, Brakley Varrow sat in the chair beside her bed, his hands steepled together in front of him. If he wasn’t a lying torturer she might have said he looked worried. And if she had any room to trust him inside her jaded heart she might have been willing to believe that he really did want her to recover.
“What happened?” For once Laurel didn’t have a headache and the only fog she experienced was the drowsiness that came from waking up.
Brakley held out a hand towards her but stopped himself from grabbing her at the last moment, laying his hand on the sheets beside her. He took a deep breath and hesitated before he spoke. “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t realize how the alarm would affect you. We had an issue in one of our labs. A specimen tried to escape.”
Laurel’s heart froze and she knew, was certain in a way she couldn’t explain, that the specimen Brakley was talking about was Druath. “A specimen?” she asked a little too sharply.
“This is a scientific vessel, and some of our specimens are more dangerous than others. Some don’t know their place. They think they deserve... But when you find something so rare, so valuable...” Even if Laurel hadn’t been brain-damaged, Brakley wouldn’t be making any sense.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Detyen.” His eyes glittered with maniacal wonder.
“Detyen?” Something about that word sounded familiar, but Laurel wasn’t sure why. Was that Dru’s race?
“There aren’t many of them left,” Brakley explained. “That’s what happens when a species’ planet is destroyed. You have to take the opportunities as they come. And when one falls into your lap... Well...”
Something fell into place in Laurel’s battered brain. She remembered a ship filled with women, all of them human, and a handful of giant warriors who’d come to rescue them. No, that wasn’t right. They’d come with other human women to rescue them, and promised to take them back to Earth.
So what had gone wrong?
Something went wrong with the ship. Laurel saw a flash of the room filled with electronic equipment, gauges and switches and more monitoring equipment than she’d ever seen in her entire life. And engine control room, she was almost certain. But why did she remember that? No matter what happened, she couldn’t imagine why she wo
uld be in a place like that.
Brakley was still talking when the memory released her; he hadn’t noticed her zoning out, which was probably a good thing. “I have friends at their base, where I should only have enemies.”
Their? The Detyens? They had a base? And why were they the enemies of Brakley Varrow? Well, torturing one of them in the name of science probably did little to endear him to them. “It’s good to have friends,” Laurel said weakly.
Brakley seem to grow in his chair, suddenly taller, broader. “I’m so glad you understand,” he said, as if she had just lifted a giant weight off of his shoulders. “When the time comes I’ll have access to as many Detyens as I need.”
“Are you going to hurt them?”
“Don’t make it sound so sordid,” he scoffed. “I’m a man of science, things must be done to better our understanding of the world, of the universe. Does that make sense?” He was leaning in close, almost close enough to touch her, and it took a great deal of restraint from Laurel not to rear back.
She managed a nod.
“Knowledge is power, don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. I’m so glad you understand what we’re doing here. You can be an asset, a friend. And I find I like having them.” He was a different person from the man she’d met a little more than a week ago. She’d thought that man was gentle, sweet, altruistic. This one bore no resemblance to him. She almost wondered if she was speaking to Brakley Varrow’s evil twin. She wanted to believe that, but she knew that some people hid their evil until they were comfortable, until they were sure that a person was firmly in their grasp, just like she was.
“Of course I’m your friend.” It didn’t sound like a lie, and her voice didn’t quaver. But Laurel wanted Varrow out of her room as quickly as possible. She’d say anything to make that happen, make any false promise he demanded.
