Page 62 of Star-Crossed Captive
The days blurred together one after the other. She might have been surrounded by people in the med bay but had never felt so alone. She felt like she lived in a delicate glass ball, and the orb lay in the palm of Mace’s hand—he could crush it, and her, at any moment.
By the time she’d earned another day off, she felt like she was going mad.
“It’s six hours, same as before,” Elec said to her as she stepped off the lift on the ground level of the atrium.
Nodding, she walked parallel to the vendors’ shops, skirting all the activity at its center. She only wanted to spend time in the arboretum and didn’t check if Elec followed. Her pace slowed when she reached an empty clearing enclosed with sycamores, different than the spot where she’d spent her day off the first time. Her emotions had been too confusing over the past week for her to want to see the tree where Mace had sat and remember the things he’d shared about himself.
With an exhausted exhale, she flopped onto her back on the grass, spread her arms wide, and breathed her tension away. The moist air cleansed her, a healing balm. Some of the larger mines were visible through the bands of lights crossing the dome above. Birds tweeted around her. The stream babbled to her left. She could hear others roaming the space, voices speaking to one another. A laugh barked from a distance away.
She didn’t care if all six of her hours were spent in this exact position. Even if she’d been lonely, this type of alone was different. The rustling leaves soothed her. She could almost believe she was onJupiter Onewhere she was raised.
“Can I join you?”
Nia lifted her head at the feminine voice. Dee stood nearby, her black hair piled on top of her head, and her cream and black dress a swirling mass of pattern clinging to every curve.
“Depends if this is an accidental meeting or if someone sent you,” Nia said with her eyes narrowed.
A smile flashed across Dee’s face, outlined eyes crinkling. “You’re a smart one.” Without waiting for an invitation, the other woman sat beside her.
Nia let her head fall back on the grass. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“It wasn’t really a question, though, was it?”
Opening one eye, Nia turned her head to stare at the woman who had her face upturned to absorb the lights far above.
“Are you here to spy on me?”
Dee’s eyebrows lifted. “Spy? No. But someone might have thought you could use some company.”
Nia’s gaze swung to Elec where he stood on the other side of the clearing trying, and failing, to blend in amongst the tree trunks.
Dee snorted. “It definitely wasn’t him.”
Shaking her head, Nia resumed her previous position. She didn’t care if Mace was worried about her. He didn’t have a right to be after abandoning her for the past week. “I don’t need a pity visit.”
“I’m not here out of pity. Just concern.”
“Nothing to be concerned about,” Nia retorted, her words clipped.
“All right.” Dee shifted her position, her clothing rustling in the quiet. “Consider me unconcerned.”
Nia didn’t need to open her eyes again to know Dee had laid beside her. With an irritated huff of breath, she tried to ignore the woman and reclaim her earlier calm.
Irritation made it difficult, and she opened her eyes to glare above. One yellow leaf descended toward her, slowly flitting this way and that, until it landed on her stomach. Leaning on her elbow, Nia grabbed the stem and twirled it between her fingers. “Where do your dead go?” The image of those three tortured people rekindled in her mind.
“What?” Dee jolted up, her bangs flopping forward over her outlined eyes.
Nia stared at the leaf, pressing her finger to the pointiest tip. “On my station, everything is connected, and when someone dies, they go to reclamation to become part of the bio-matter on the station.”
“Oh.” Dee laid down again, brushing her bangs out of her face. “That’s how it works here too. Nothing wasted.”
“Nothing wasted,” Nia repeated, a mantra of the CORE too, everything used again and again. The reclamation chutes were only the beginning of the process.
Had those bodies in the theater been reclaimed yet? Were they being fed into this eco-system as nutrients for the plants in the arboretum? Or were they still hanging there, only bones now, as a message from the Commodore?
If I die here, I’ll become a sycamore. But if the tracker in her locket were discovered, they would make sure to torture her first.
Mace won’t allow it.
