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“No. Well. We wanted that to be real. Landing you on the surface would have alerted the enemy to our attempt. You needed to appear vulnerable and weak.”
“There was a better than average chance of me ending up dead,” I reply.
Rex smirks. “Not you, Tarni. You’re a survivor.”
He’s got that right.
“We will let you get cleaned up,” he says, repeating his earlier suggestion that is now clearly more of an order. “When you are properly attired, please join us in my quarters. We would like to celebrate your achievements.”
“Of course,” I say, bowing my head.
They leave me alone again, but not for long.
Once again, I do not bother to clean or change. I do not want to wash Kail off me. The filth he and I share might be the very last remnants of him I ever experience.
* * *
Ido not go to my celebratory dinner. Not at first, anyway. At first, I go to the cell block. There are guards, but they do not think to stop me. After all, I am the agent who brought the prisoner to justice.
Kail is caged in an enclosure too small for him. They are keeping him like an animal, without food or water or a place to toilet because they do not care about his needs. He is being kept worse than an animal. He is being kept like a thing.
The cage is locked not by key, but by pass. Only a high-ranking colonial officer can open his door. It is fortunate that I am a high-ranking officer.
Kail does not look at me as I approach, but his head lifts when he hears the door open.
I push a knife into his hand, and a gun. I don’t think he needs the gun, but it feels fair to give him a sporting chance.
“Go,” I tell him. “I’ll cover for you.”
Kail is too much of a natural survivor to ask questions in this moment. He nods and is gone, moving through the halls like a big green giant.
I hear the screams of the guards as he moves past them and off into the night.
“Good luck, Kail,” I murmur to myself.
* * *
Idon’t leave the prison. I stay there, putting myself in the cage I just let him out of. I know how this will end for me. Kail left me alive, but the Colony does not show mercy to anybody, and certainly not to traitors.
It takes an hour for anybody to come to me. Kail did not go on a complete spree of obliteration, I gather. He did, however, lead them on a merry chase and murder quite a few soldiers. Serves them right. Serves us all right.
Eventually, Commander Rex comes to me, flanked with soldiers. He looks as unspeakably angry as one might imagine he would be. I have deprived him of his native prey, and also delivered another shameful humiliation of personnel loss.
The look he gives me is one of pure loathing.
“You were seen releasing the prisoner on camera,” he says as an opening gambit.
I knew he would and that is part of the reason I am not trying to escape. I want to take the wrath they intend to unleash on Kail on myself instead.
There was no way to avoid the cameras. I knew that when I let Kail go. It was a him or me moment, and I chose him. After everything we have put him through, he deserves a chance at freedom.
I still don’t understand why he brought me here and made a full confession to the hidden ears and eyes of my commanding officers. I kept handing him rope, and he kept taking it.
Did he plan to kill me when we arrived? I think so, at first. But something changed over the course of our journey to Colony Alpha. It changed for me. And it must have changed for him too.
I hope he is far, far away from here now. I hope he melts into the wilds, finds some remnants of his people, and is never seen or heard from again. I worry that he has too much of the spirit of a warrior to do that. But there’s nothing left for him here. Nothing but a woman who betrayed him, and an occupying force who want him dead.
Officer Rex is saying something to me. I’m not listening. I don’t care for their words anymore or their corruption. I know what we are. We are invaders, colonizers, we are the fucking bad guys. It doesn’t matter to me what their opinions are. The Colony is dead to me, and soon I am sure I will be just as dead to them.
