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“I don’t give a fuck where you’re from. I asked you who you were,” she said, standing up despite the visible wounds she had.
“Those from Cade?” I asked.
She glanced down and tried to remain proud. It was a sign of some strange denial. She was tough; I could see that in her eyes, as well as in the way she held onto the cause of righteousness when all morality had turned to chaos. But, sometimes, being strong wasn’t enough. Just like everyone in this ship, she was fading.
She took deep breaths and collapsed against the floor. “You’re the... intruder?”
I nodded and stood up, finally able to acknowledge who I was. “Talis, destroyer of worlds,” I said. I owned my actions and lowered my head.
“Did you come here to kill us?” she asked.
I offered her my hand. “If you had asked me that hours ago, I might have answered by unhinging your jaw with my fist,” I said. Flashbacks to the bloody massacre in the cafeteria. “Humans are far more capable of going against their best interests than I thought. It’s Cade that you have to worry about,” I added.
“How do I know it wasn’t you who murdered my crew in the dining area?” she asked. She stared through the alarm systems and blinding lights that flashed across every area of the ship.
When I arrived, I was starving and injured. I was ready to kill everyone in sight, but then I found Mia. “Ask her yourself. We found it together.”
“What is your obsession with our fertility specialist?” she asked.
“She was ripe, and I needed a kin,” I said. “We are… in love.”
There was that human word again, but I felt it. Love, the unconditional reality that pulls two together.
Near the door was a black bag. Juliana reached inside and pulled two guns. “Sounds like you’re in over your head.”
“I hate to break it to you, but we are all in over our head,” I told her.
She tossed me one of the guns. I looked at it and chuckled. Assault rifle. The weapon was childish and took me about two seconds to figure out. I clicked off the safety and stepped near the automatic door. It opened.
She stumbled forward and gripped the poles on the sides of the octagonal walkways. Her blood was soaking through the fabric of her torn clothing. The wounds themselves were corroding and turning color. She needed Mia’s assistance.
As we walked through the long corridors, we passed the bunks of the individual prisoners. The map on the screen provided me with the initial context, but I was beginning to memorize the architecture of this place through experience. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
Most of the rooms were storage areas and spaces to perform certain tasks. There was the center of the ship, located on the third level. There was the eating room, and the nearby garden, now a growing mess of fungus and death. On the level above was the control center, no doubt where Juliana went about her work, but it was also the area where Mia gave thousands of transcriptions to the home she thought
was destroyed. It was a sad place, one I wished to steer away from for good.
We were in the top of the ship, near the cryo-chamber. I could already smell the misty atmosphere leaking into every orifice of the vessel, reminding me we weren’t safe yet.
Seeing Juliana limp pained me, so I tried picking her up to carry her to where I thought Cade was, the rooms to the escape pod, directly attached to the cargo hold. “Get your hands off me, boy,” she snapped.
“Boy?” I smirked and laid off her, slowly making my way down a new ladder.
“You know what I mean,” she said, barely able to stand on each step. “You. Cade. You’re all the same to me.”
“Men,” I grumbled and tried not to roll my eyes.
“Who else?” A smile graced her face. “All the wars, the issues with our climate, and then, this—do you really think the death of our planet happened because of a woman calling the shots?”
“You might honor the fact that I’m the only one interested in saving your life,” I said, ignoring the setup. “Mia thinks you’re dead.”
“I am dead. There’s nothing to save,” she muttered. “This program was bound to be derailed. I’ll honor the fact that you’re a bit of novelty before my death.”
“You aren’t dying,” I said.
I reached the floor, caught her, and eased her down. Clearing my throat, I tried to be a little... nicer. “Before we were enslaved, the women on my planet were the ones who made the tough decisions. Maybe that was why we lived longer.”
All of that changed when we were invaded, but she didn’t need to know about any of that. I was looking past that now. I was trying to remain hopeful about my future with Mia.
