“Three rooms,” he said. “Basic facilities, but functional. There’s water, food supplies, and a secure communications terminal if we need it.”
“Who maintains this place?” Wei-Lin asked, suspicion clear in her voice.
“Someone who owes me a debt and asks no questions.” His tone made it clear that further explanation would not be forthcoming. “Rest here. All of you. I need to make contact with the freighter captain, and that’s best done in person. He doesn’t trust electronic communications.”
“You’re leaving?” She heard the note of alarm in her own voice and hated herself for it. She wasn’t some helpless damsel. She’d survived weeks of captivity, experimentation, terror. She could handle a few hours alone.
But his hand found hers immediately.
“Only for a little while. Two hours at most.” His eyes searched her face, and the tenderness in them made her breath catch. “I’ll be back before nightfall. I promise.”
“And if you’re not?”
“Then Wei-Lin knows the location of my contact’s ship.” He glanced at the other woman. “The southern docks, berth seventeen. Tell him Becsul sent you, and show him this.”
He pressed something into Wei-Lin’s hand—a small metal disc, engraved with symbols Melissa didn’t recognize. Wei-Lin studied it for a moment, then nodded and tucked it into her pocket.
“I don’t plan on needing this.”
“Neither do I.” Becsul turned back to her. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone except me, and if something happens—if you hear alarms, or voices, or anything that sounds like a search—there’s an emergency exit in the third room. It leads to the old maintenance tunnels.”
“More tunnels.”
“This planet was built on tunnels.” A hint of a smile touched his lips. “You’ll get used to them.”
He kissed her—quick and fierce, a promise more than a farewell—and then he was gone, the door closing behind him with a soft click.
She stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed door, her fingers pressed to her lips where the warmth of his mouth still lingered.
Two hours,she told herself.He’ll be back in two hours.
Behind her, she heard Sarah settling Katie onto one of the beds, murmuring something about rest and safety and how brave she’d been. She heard Wei-Lin checking the emergency exit, testing the locks, and doing all the practical things that needed to be done.
And she stood there, holding her sleeping son, and realized that for the first time she felt as if they might actually make it.
It was terrifying.
The hours passed in a strange, suspended way, like time itself had forgotten how to move properly.
She explored the rooms with the methodical thoroughness that had served her well in her medical career. She catalogued the supplies—dried food packets, water containers, basic medical supplies, a change of clothes that wouldn’t fit any of them but might be useful for trade—and mapped the emergency exits in her mind. She fed Robbie, changed him, sang to him softly until he fell asleep again.
And all the while, her thoughts circled back to Becsul.
What if he doesn’t come back?
The question wouldn’t leave her alone. She tried to push it away and focus on practical matters, but it kept returning, a dark undertow beneath her surface calm.
What if Naran’s people find him? What if the freighter captain betrays him? What if he gets hurt, and there’s no one to help him, and I just sit here in this tiny room waiting for someone who’s never coming back?
She’d been alone before. Had chosen it, even—artificial insemination, single motherhood, the deliberate construction of a family that depended on no one but herself. She’d told herself it was strength, self-sufficiency, the ultimate expression of female independence.
Now she wondered if it had been fear.
Fear of depending on someone. Fear of trusting someone. Fear of loving someone who might leave, might die, might simply decide one day that she wasn’t worth the trouble.
But he came back, she reminded herself.Every time. He came back to the cell, he came back after Robbie’s fever, he came back when that guard had me cornered. He keeps coming back.
She didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know how to reconcile her carefully constructed self-reliance with this unfamiliar feeling of… what? Need? Desire? Something deeper, something scarier?
