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He looked at me and laughed like I just got the joke. Only, it wasn’t a joke.
He practically swung me forward, stuffing my body into a room past the hallway. I managed to find some last bit of energy and lunged forward. He knocked my back with a crowbar, hard enough to lay me down flat.
He leaned over my body, closing the door. I could feel his hot breath waft across my neck. His palms were sweating, but he held me down, grinding his hips while his legs coiled around me like a snake. His hand cupped my mouth as I tried to scream and bite.
“You want to know what I’d do near the swamps?” he asked. “I’d catch gators for fun. Vicious predators.”
I could feel the metal latches scrape across my back as he forced open his belt buckle. Through hungered noises, he subdued me. All I could see was the door to the escape pods. Cade had made sure they were all gone.
It didn’t matter how hard I yelled and struck him. He kept hitting my face, all the same. The door was locked, and the inside was soundproof. I was done for.
When he was able to keep me still, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a boxcutter, laughing louder now. “Found this near the control center.”
He sliced into the bottom of my wrist, carefully making the incision. I screamed and cried with bubbling saliva running out of my mouth, but I couldn’t keep him off me. He managed to get two magnets into my wrists. He sewed me shut.
He pressed a button on a small tablet, and my hands locked to the floor, magnetized and bloody. He stood over me now, huffing loudly while taking off his belt. “My favorite part,” he said, “was skinning them alive. Just feeling that defense kick in, and them knowing there’s nothing they can do to get out of it was a joy to witness. It really was.”
“Talis will skin you alive,” I grunted and struggled to lift my head to see him.
Cade dropped his jeans and took my hips, lowering himself. Shrieking, he smacked me quiet. “Talis is long gone, honey-pie. It’s just you and me now.”
Through the large and rounded windows, I could see the other end of the shuttle. There was a breach. The airlock. Everything was falling out from the inside, falling from our once peaceful unit into the darkest phenomenon known to man.
Space was a receptacle for our waste. It recycled our sins. But what would happen when it began to reject us?
“Talis,” I cried. “He can’t be dead.”
Again, sharp pangs tore through my stomach. I couldn’t move, but I could feel my baby twisting inside of me. No, it felt like it was actually swimming inside me. More saliva and blood fell from my lips, and I was starting to feel weaker. A sense of extreme urgency was the only thing keeping my eyes open. My baby was killing me, and the only one who could help was Talis.
I started to weep, not for my own life, but because of the tragedy that mankind had gone through. Out of all of the stages of civilization that existed throughout history, this was how it was going to end.
“Please, don’t tell me he’s dead. Don’t tell me that—”
“He is floating with the stars in oblivion,” he said, kicking the air out of me. “Now, let’s get these legs spread, honey. I’m ready for my last supper.”
13
Talis
“Starship T1-95 Pandorum to Earth. Show me the strength to get me out of this one,” I murmured while pulling against the outside of the ship, holding my breath, feeling the cold start to fold into my skin. The fact that I had managed to hold on startled even me, but Juliana had taken to grabbing my feet. Miraculous, sure. But she was weighing me down.
The hand of space was unbearably strong. Here, there was no sense of direction. Outside the comfort of any space station, wherever it takes you, there is no way to know which direction you are tumbling.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, has an innate sense to stay away from the place above the sky. Far past the clouds and colorful backdrop—The illusions disappear. We start to realize how darkly complex our universe truly is. Even my people rarely took to leaving anymore.
In space, the body doesn’t explode. Your eyes won’t burst from their sockets. It takes about ten seconds to lose oxygen. You might get lucky if you find a breathing apparatus in time, but it won’t save you from your body swelling up with water.
We were seconds from dying, but the image of Mia and I, flying away in my ship gave me a new wave of energy. I came to this ship to survive, but she gave me something else. Purpose, and the finest cunt in the galaxy. I didn’t need anything but that.
With all my strength, I pulled myself back into the ship, swinging down on the ladder and balancing with my feet in the bars. “Juliana, pull yourself in,” I said.
Her eyes were wide with fear, but it was either dying in space or getting saved by an alien. She grabbed my hand, and I took her into my chest. Falling back, I closed the airlock and shut it tight. Quickly, the sound around us shifted. Gravity came back, and I could feel the cold sensation burn inside my veins. But we were alive.
We tumbled onto the floor. At this point in my relentless hunt to find my mate and go, I had been poisoned, whipped, beaten, and left to freeze in open space. Any extra pain that I felt was just another cherry on top.
“W-W-Who are you?” Juliana asked.
“Talis Critas. I am an outlaw from the Nyelan region in the—”
