Faultless

by Kate Rudolph

  But whatever Varrow wanted from her, he was content with the pledge of friendship. He rose from his seat and left with an abrupt farewell. Laurel was ready to throw the covers off her bed and rush out of her room to go find Dru and find a way off of the ship for good. But just as she got up one of Varrow’s attendants entered the room and waved her forward, telling her that it was time for another round of tests.

  Laurel wanted to scream. She’d been tested every way she could imagine, poked and prodded until she bled. But every time she protested they reminded her that this was all for her own good and she couldn’t find the right argument that would see her released. So she followed the attendant and promised herself that she would find Dru soon.

  Chapter Four

  DRU BARELY MADE IT out the door before the guards were on him and dragging him back into his cell. He’d thought it was the perfect opportunity. His torturer had her back turned and had foolishly left him unrestrained. The door wasn’t far, only a few paces, and they’d yet to start in on the pain. Everything lined up and he had to take his moment. Except his moment was a lie.

  He’d barely taken a step before the alarms started to blare, and though he made it past the threshold, his body collapsed under the fire of more than one blaster. They weren’t normally fatal, but they could cause enough damage to stop a man in his tracks. Once he was down, brutal hands grasped him and dragged him back and secured him to the bed. His muscles protested, tight from the limited movements he’d been able to make over the past several days. Dru was a man of action, one who trained with enough intensity to impress a general, not an easy feat in the Detyen Legion.

  But all that training was for naught faced with this crew and their blasters. Under most circumstances Dru was the most dangerous person in the room, but that danger could be overcome by vigilance and numbers, as he now saw. He kept his expression neutral when the scientist approached him with a syringe full of a surely noxious fluid. She didn’t explain what it would do and he didn’t ask. He refused to speak with these Oscavians. The only satisfaction they could have from him were his screams. Those he didn’t have the strength to hold back.

  He hoped that Laurel was okay. She clearly had some level of freedom, some leave to move around the ship. He didn’t like to dwell on the fact that it might have been revoked because of him, that her curiosity and his noise had put her in harm’s way.

  Fire lit up his veins and Dru sank into his thoughts, wrapping his mind in the memory of his human angel. It had become his one saving grace over the last several days. When the pain became too much he thought of her. She didn’t make it go away, but she gave him a focus, something outside of himself to care about. Why it was her he fixated on and not one of the many people from back home he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was because she gave him water when he was thirsty, that she cared for him when all he knew was pain, or maybe she was just convenient. Whatever she was, he clung to it and didn’t let himself ponder that she might be another finely crafted torture, a woman who said she was one thing to lull him into security only to turn out to be someone else.

  She said she was human, but since he’d been blind at the time, he had no way to confirm it. Since then his vision had come back, but his angel hadn’t.

  The doubts crept up, but Dru did his best to beat them back. He would not let them take this one thing, the only thing, keeping him sane away from him. Laurel had no part in his torture, she was a prisoner, a victim like him, and unless he had some sort of proof to tell him otherwise he refused to give into that quiver of doubt.

  Whatever they were doing to him didn’t take long. The scientist took her recordings and left after less than an hour. With her went the guards, and Dru was left alone, tied to the bed and writhing against his bonds as heat and cold warred for dominance in his veins. He didn’t know what they’d given him or why, and though it put his body in turmoil, his mind was as sharp as ever.

  As were his claws. When they tied him down this time they hadn’t been as careful as they’d been before. The bindings were just within reach of the tip of his longest claw. Dru’s wrist cramped as he held it at an awkward angle, scratching at the material that circled his wrist. Every minute that ticked by he was certain that one of the scientists would return, either to perform more experiments or to make sure he was where they had left him. But as time ticked on he remained alone. A half hour went by, and then an hour, and he’d never been more grateful for the clock on the wall. It grounded him, let him know exactly how long things were taking, and he didn’t have to obsess about whether his perception of reality was true or false. The pain from whatever drug he’d been injected with began to fade, replaced with the cramping agony climbing up his arm. But he didn’t give up, he couldn’t, not when he was this close.

  He had to clench his jaw to keep from crying out as he made a final swipe at the cuffs around his right wrist. As the material gave way, he sagged against his bed and breathed deep, huffing out breaths as if he’d just run twenty kilometers. But this was no time to rest. The second cuff came off quickly since Dru didn’t have to worry about weird angles or cramping arms any more. He was able to unbuckle his feet once he could sit up fully, and when he swung his legs over the side of the bed he couldn’t believe his luck. He was free, and no one had come running.

  Dru didn’t waste any time, making his way out of the room, his mind boggling at the fact that they hadn’t locked the door. Were they that sure of the wrist bindings? Or was this one big trick? An experiment to see what he would do if given half the chance. Even if that was the case, he couldn’t pass this up. This might be his only opportunity to escape. And he didn’t know how much more torture he could take.

  Once he was in the hallway Dru felt too exposed and tried to shrink back into a shadow, but he knew that would only make him look more suspicious. At a glance he might be mistaken for an Oscavian. They were of similar height and coloring. As long as no one got a close view of his clan markings he might pass inspection at a distance.

  He followed his instincts, turning right when given a choice in the hallway. It led to a door which opened by some motion sensor he didn’t notice. He would have marveled at the overconfidence of these Oscavians if he wasn’t busy trying to figure out where he should go next. He needed to find a way off the ship, an escape shuttle or something like that, and he needed to find Laurel. He couldn’t leave without her, not when he’d promised himself that she was coming with him.

  His entire escape almost went up in smoke when he saw an Oscavian crewmember step out of a room and walk down the hallway towards him. But the person didn’t seem to notice him, too busy reading information on the tablet in front of them. Dru was pretty sure that the crew member was one of the scientists who had worked on him and he wondered what was in the room that had been so fascinating that the crew member paid no attention to where they were walking.

  There was one way to find out.

  His mother had always told him he was too curious, that it would be the end of him one day, and Dru feared that she might be right. But nothing could stop him from testing the door and seeing what was behind it.

  He almost sagged in relief and thanked fate when he saw Laurel lying on the bed. He knew it was her even though he’d been blind in their only other encounter. And just a moment after his eyes landed on her recognition ripped through him.

  Denya.

  The knowledge anchored itself in his soul. Reality shifted on its axis until she became the center of his universe, the point around which everything else pivoted. Rumors had been circulating the Legion for a year or more, stories about Detyens finding mates among humans. He’d seen it with his own eyes when the formerly soulless warrior, Raze, claimed a human named Sierra for himself. At the time Dru hadn’t understood it, hadn’t thought it possible, but feeling the power of this connection now he didn’t know how anyone could ignore it. Of course something like this could overcome the emptiness and agony of soullessness. What couldn’t it overcome?

&nb
sp; His mate was a small woman; if she stood she would only come up to his shoulder. Her form was slight, skinny from a lack of nutrition, and pale from a lack of light. Blonde hair hung down one side of her face, the other side shorn short and covered in a large white bandage. Bright blue eyes arrested him and he felt himself sinking into their depths. He could stare at her all day, but besides the desire to look at her, to touch her, to claim her, the need to care for her beat in his heart. The abuse and neglect she’d suffered were almost too much to bear, and he would fight any battle to see that she no longer endured any hardship.

  His universe changed in an instant, but as he began to come back to himself, he realized that he was the only one changed. Laurel recognized him, knew him as the man she’d found in one of Brakley Varrow’s torture chambers, but she didn’t know what she was to him. How could she? Most humans had never heard of the denya bond. She had no way of knowing she was his salvation.

  Laurel pushed herself off the bed and slowly rose to her feet, shock laying heavily on her face. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a harsh whisper, as if trying to not be heard by someone on the other side of the room. But if anyone else was in the room, they were invisible.

  Dru was temporarily robbed of speech, too fixated on the fact that his denya was standing before him. His mate. She was his. He’d had trouble before believing in fate, knowing the cruelties of the universe that waited for him, but how else could his mate be here on this ship? How else could he explain their meeting?

  “I saw my opportunity and I took it,” he finally said. His voice came out gravelly, low, and he was satisfied to see a slight shiver shake Laurel’s shoulders.

  “Were you why the alarms went off earlier?”

  He nodded.

  Laurel’s jaw clenched and she studied him, her gaze raking him from head to toe until she finally met his eyes, seemingly satisfied with her perusal. “We don’t have any time to waste. I think I know how to get us out of here.”

  LAUREL DIDN’T KNOW why Dru’s eyes were red and she didn’t know if she liked it. He could see, that much was obvious from the way he was looking at her, like she was a magnet and he was made of metal. Did she really look that bad? That damaged? No, Dru wasn’t looking at her that way. He looked at her like he wanted to eat her whole. It should have been terrifying given everything that had happened to Laurel recently. Instead, a tiny part of her was exhilarated. She didn’t know the last time she’d had the full attention of a man like Dru. Brakley Varrow didn’t count, not when he was doing experiments on innocent people and holding her captive.

  Besides, Varrow had nothing on Dru. Not in looks, not intensity, nothing.

  And Laurel was pretty sure she could stay in there looking at the towering warrior all day, but all that would do was get them caught, and she shuddered to think what new tortures they would devise to hurt her companion. She didn’t worry for herself, even if that was foolish. She’d already heard Dru scream and she was in no hurry to hear that again.

  She took a step towards the door and had to pause as the room tilted. The testing the last assistant had done hadn’t seemed too intense. All Laurel had to do was look at flashing lights and listen to loud noises and tell her observer how she felt. The whole thing gave her a headache, well, a worse headache than she normally had. But now that she was trying to move on her own she felt a bit unsteady, a bit foggier than usual. After a few seconds it passed, and Dru didn’t even seem to notice. Thankfully. Laurel didn’t want to waste time explaining what was wrong with her, not when they could be on their way to freedom.

  “Come on,” she said. She led him out the door and down the hall towards the evacuation chamber Brakley had showed her earlier. The ship was huge, and the crew was small, and they ran into no one. But Laurel didn’t breathe easy until the door to the evacuation chamber slid shut behind them and they were alone in semi privacy. “These are the escape shuttles. They’re long range. I don’t know where we are, but they’ll take us to safety.”

  Dru was studying the whole of the shuttle. “Can you pilot this thing?” he asked.

  Laurel stared at him, eyes wide. She could drive any of the equipment back home on the farm, but until she’d been kidnapped, she was pretty sure she’d never left the planet. “Um... me?” It came out a squeak.

  A smile cracked Dru’s face as he made it clear he was teasing. “I’m not much of a pilot,” he admitted. “But I’m sure these things are designed so that just about anyone can fly them.”

  That made sense; they were escape pods, not top-secret military spacecraft.

  Laurel showed him how to open the hatch and they both boarded the ship. She ignored the temporary fog that swamped her and by the time they made it to the cockpit everything seemed fine. “Alright, get us out of here.” She took a seat beside Dru, hope bubbling in her veins. They were almost there, almost free. Once Dru figured out how to start up the ship this nightmare would be over. She didn’t care what happened to Brakley Varrow and his crew, she just wanted to go home, or fly beside Dru into the depths of space. Either one would work.

  She was no expert, but it seemed like something should’ve happened after Dru spent several minutes flipping switches and pressing buttons. He growled out a sound of frustration that rumbled deep within her and did strange things to her insides.

  “What’s wrong?” They were so close to freedom that she could taste it. She wouldn’t accept defeat right now.

  “It’s not starting up.” He flipped up a switch cover and pointed to a slot in the center of the console. “It looks like it needs some sort of key. Something to override whatever programming it’s running right now.”

  And that quickly, hope turned to despair. “An override key?” Varrow hadn’t said anything about that, but then again why would he? It wasn’t like he expected her to pilot one of these things, and he certainly didn’t want her to leave without permission.

  Laurel closed her eyes and took a deep breath, thinking through the tour of the ship that she took earlier that day. Had she seen anyone with something that might work to get them away? She didn’t remember a key hook conveniently labeled “escape” and that was a shame. But hadn’t there been a metal box in the hallway outside the bridge? She squeezed her eyelids until phantom shapes danced in front of her eyes and she was almost certain the label on the box had said “emergency use only.” That was the kind of place that might hold an override key.

  “I have an idea.” Laurel pushed herself out of the chair, but when she tried to step she stumbled, and the words of reassurance she tried to speak were so jumbled and slurred that her translator failed her and Dru stared at her with naked concern on his face.

  He reached for her, his hands hovering above her shoulders for a moment before he gently shepherded her back down into her seat. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  Laurel wanted to point out that of the two of them, he was the one who had been tortured, but she didn’t quite have the linguistic acumen to get the sentences out. She opened her mouth to explain, but the words just weren’t there. Instead, she managed to gesture vaguely at the bandage on her head. “Control chip. Gone now. Damaged.”

  “You were under the influence of the control chip?” Dru’s voice went ice cold and if she had been the subject of his ire, she would have shrunk back into herself and shriveled up.

  “Brakley—” no, she didn’t want to call him by his familiar name. “Varrow,” she corrected herself, “he says he’s fixing me.” Her sentences were coming back, a little slurred but coherent. “He said the chip did some damage, but nothing that should be permanent.”

  Laurel wanted to ask Dru why his eyes went red like that, why they shifted between red and black, but now didn’t seem to be the time. His jaw might have been made of granite from how hard it was set, and she was pretty sure that Dru really wanted to hit something, to lash out. From anyone else she would have been afraid, she should have been afraid of him. But the anger he was keeping tightly leashed showe
d his control, showed that he wasn’t a slave to his baser urges, and she knew with unearned certainty that he didn’t want to hurt her. It was the situation, the people that had put the chip in her head, and those who had taken it out that he wanted to yell at, to hurt.

  “Do you believe him? Do you think he’s really helping?” The words came out flat, like Dru had to force them out.

  Nodding was a mistake; everything slushed around in her head, and Laurel feared her brain was about to start leaking out of her ears. She held her head still and spoke slowly. “I think so. I don’t know. They’ve done a lot of tests, but nothing like what’s going on with you.”

  Dru gripped the edge of the console so hard that Laurel heard something crack. Whether it was the reminder of the tortures he’d undergone, or the suggestion that the same thing could happen to her that put him on edge, she wasn’t sure.

  “I think I know where they might have stashed an override key,” Laurel managed to say, her brain still full of fuzz and pain, but it was subsiding. Over the past couple of weeks the episodes seemed to shrink in magnitude. She still hurt, she still couldn’t speak or focus as well as she wanted to, but she was almost willing to believe that she was getting better.

  “No,” Dru surprised her by saying. “We can’t leave when you’re still in this condition. It’s no use to escape if running away kills you.”

  Laurel wanted to argue, as a cascade of words crashed through her, each sentence warring to be the first out of her mouth. But the jumble was too much to focus on and she just sat there mute as Dru settled in to his decision. By the time she was able to say anything, she could tell that his mind wouldn’t be changed. “I can’t ask you to turn around right now. They’re going to torture you. If you won’t take me with you, at least let me tell you where the key is. Save yourself.”