Prologue–Sentence
(Sena)
Dr. Beal sat in his plush wingback chair and fussed with his com screen, his small frame swallowed by the massive piece of furniture. It was the kind of chair any stereotypical psychologist would drool over, its lush brown leather whispering of success and money earned. In reality, that piece of furniture only meant that one man’s ego was much bigger than the small body he inhabited.
Everything about the man in front of me was a cliché, down to his collared shirt, tweed sweater vest worn on top, and scrunched, constipated features. He was middle-aged with deep furrow lines on his forehead and purple-tinted skin that hinted at otherworldly descent. His skin tone was the only thing that set him apart from the ideal prudish human male. I hated him, more than should’ve been possible—since it was only my second visit with the psychiatrist. Other than these sessions, I’d enjoyed a cell since my arrest by New City Police two weeks previously.
“Senana…” Dr. Beal said with his clipped tone that grated on my nerves. It also didn’t help that I hate my full name—which Dr. Beal knew from our first session—and each time he addressed me, he kept using it. It wasn’t a common name for a male human, but my mother was from Oltrian, a planet with humanoid beings in the next galaxy over, and my father was from Earth. They’d met when she’d visited Earth on a cultural experience and fallen in love. Two years later, they made me and given me a name that was common on her planet. That’s where I got my name, Senana Sa’z Rays. Sena, to those I was close to.
Taking a deep breath, I managed to ignore his passive aggressiveness. “I’ve told you to stop fucking calling me that,” I said irritably. Beal didn’t look perturbed by my irritation. Instead, he peered calmly back at me, while slightly adjusting his glasses on his bulbous nose.
“Senana, may I remind you that you are here for a physiological evaluation? You are here to establish whether you are a threat to others, especially in the situations that you find unsavory. This will be your second known offense: publicly brutalizing another citizen. It’s within your best interest to cooperate with me. Calling you by your first name is a common practice on Earth, and should not cause such an extreme reaction.” His lips curled up in a derogatory smile and he looked down at his com pad, writing something down with a few annoying taps of his stylus. “As you very well know.”
A silent boil began in my gut. Beal ignored my silent brooding and proceeded. “Senana, you were put into this situation after you attacked another citizen, as you also know.” He paused, looking down his narrow nose with violet eyes. “Can you tell me the reason for your attacking him?”
I ground my teeth and clenched my fists until my knuckles cracked painfully. The slight chair I sat in groaned under my weight as I shifted in agitation. There was no fucking way I would tell anyone why I had really beaten Sean Payne almost to death. If I hadn’t let my emotions run wild, I would have gotten my revenge and killed the bastard, but when I’d caught sight of him walking down 5th Street in New City, I couldn’t hold back the rage that had blinded me. At least I’d know he’d never get the chance to hurt Rhy again, not after what I did to him.
A feral grin spread across my face as I replayed each moment Payne screamed, begging me to leave him intact. The memory cooled my anger, letting me settle my large frame into the chair and release a little of the tension from my body. “Guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“That being so, Senana, do you really believe that the citizen deserved the…excessive force you used?” Beal asked mildly, marking something down on his com screen again, before looking back up at me.
“I guess that’s between me and Payne, isn’t it?” I narrowed my eyes. “I have no intention of talking to you about any of this. You might as well write whatever bullshit you’re going to write and let me leave.” I stood up, ready to alert the guards to return me to my cell.
“If I may ask? Your anger against Mr. Payne didn’t have anything to do with his violent attack against Mr. Sekik, did it?” Beal’s violet eyes stared at me, a red flush to his face.
I sank back down into the flimsy chair. My heart raced and for a second, I almost felt lightheaded. How did Beal know about Rhyan’s encounter with Payne? There was no way Payne would admit to a crime like that, and it would put him in direct involvement with an affiliate gang member, which went against the leader of his own gang. He wouldn’t turn on Dingo, not if he wanted to live a long life.
“I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about,” I growled. I would never let it get out what Payne and his men did to Rhyan. Knowledge like that would ruin his reputation in Old City; I couldn’t let that happen. I would always protect him, even when it would jeopardize myself.
“Sources have informed me that Mr. Sekik was beaten and tortured over a few days.” Beal made a motion on his tablet. “It says here he had to have more than three hundred stitches from the lacerations covering his body. He also suffered from a fractured tibia, multiple broken fingers, as well as a concussion.” He looked up from his device, beady eyes staring right through me. “It must have been infuriating to see your friend suffer through so much violence.”
I felt the tickle of bile as it climbed up the back of my throat. The gory reminder of my lover’s pain brought back the memory of the day I’d found him six months ago.
Like horrible flashing reels on an endless film, I would never be able to escape that one moment. Each time it was mentioned, I would be thrusted into that day again, feeling cold as the rain soaked me to the bone.
It was the rain that made me shake and not the fear and horror I felt swallowing me as I looked down at the heap on the sidewalk outside of the Tower, the massive sky-rise hotel blocking out what little light remained in the day. The shadows left me guessing the identity of the naked form huddled on the pavement, broken and most likely dead. It wasn’t him, I told myself even as I approached the mangled, bare mess lying still in the downpour. There was no green hair, I debated, so it couldn’t be my Rhyan. Still, my body shook as I kneeled down and gently turned him over to reveal what I already knew. My lover’s battered face was hardly recognizable, his skull shaved bare. Tattered, broken skin covered in black and blue with large swelling. A wretched noise escaped me as I pulled the barely breathing man to my chest. Fear and anger tore me into practically two people. Nothing mattered in that moment but Rhyan. Nothing should matter but him. Over and over, I kept thinking of nothing but keeping him safe. Yet as I screamed for someone, trying to lift his dead weight into my arms, I knew I was lying to myself. Revenge also mattered. A lot.
The ugly pitch in my stomach caused my teeth to clench, my cheek filling my mouth with blood as I bit down on the soft inner flesh. The images made it hard to breathe, made it impossible to think past the roaring emotions, swamping my mind at times so thickly that I couldn’t trudge past the pain and hopelessness that swallowed me completely. I had to remind myself that he was alive and whole, that I hadn’t lost him. I reached up to rub my right pectoral where the R was tattooed on my skin, giving myself an anchor through the torrid memories.
The doctor watched me, his violet gaze tracking over my movements with a calculation in each motion. He leaned back deeply into his ridiculous chair, immersing himself in the rich brown leather as he began his next round. “Senana, did Mr. Sekik tell you that they didn’t just beat him?” The doctor set his com pad down on his lap, right hand reaching up to adjust his glasses, pushing them farther up his nose. “They raped him over and over again, while he begged for you the whole time.” Beal leaned back, a sick grin forming on his nasty flushed face. “Or so my sources say.” The doctor drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair rhythmically. “Does that make you angry, Senana?”
The chair cracked under the force of my weight as I lunged across the space toward the doctor. Somehow, this man was part of it, part of all of it, from the moment Rhyan had been tortured to me ending up in this room with him. I wanted to feel his blood slide down my arms, smell it clog the air as he begged for me to stop. I wanted him to wish he’d never been a part of touching my lover. I couldn’t think past the belly full of violence that consumed me like the monster it was. If Dr. Beal thought what I’d done to Payne was bloody, I would show him something far worse.
I wrapped my hand around the doctor’s frail throat, constricting the slim flesh with enough pressure to cut off his air. His com pad slid to the tiles, clapping to the ground with an ominous noise in the otherwise silent room. Beal gagged, clawing at my large hand locked around his throat, his glasses hanging off his face as his violet eyes bulged. His Adam’s apple dug into the soft part of my palm as it tried to work frantically to get free. The doctor’s face turned from his normal purple to a pale grey as I continued to squeeze. I leaned in close so our faces were only inches apart. “I wonder…” I said, slowly releasing my hand just enough so that some air could seep into his aching lungs, “who you’d scream for.” I tightened my grasp, watching the process start again.
How much was he involved? Why was he involved? As I watched him claw into my arm, I couldn’t feel the sting of his nails, only the rapid pounding in my head, the tempo a constant drum, its rhythm tuned to vengeance and rage. I bared my teeth in an animalistic sneer, spittle surely foaming at the edges of my mouth as my teeth ground in aching passes against each other. That bastard raped my lover. Held him in a basement for two days and tortured him! I released my hold slightly on his neck only to dig the thumb of my left hand into his eye, letting the soft orb give under my digit. Beal’s gurgled screams were barely audible enough to break the silence. “What is your part in all this?”
I pulled back my thumb and released my other hand from his throat, the dark red impression already leaving a mark. Beal gasped, his breaths going in and out in painful wheezes. Coughing, he clutched at the arms of his damn chair, holding his slight body from falling to the floor. I grabbed his hair, slamming his head back into the leather. “Who are you working for?” I pulled harder, feeling the slight strands give under my iron grip. “Who?”
Beal looked at me with his remaining eye, blood trickling down his cheek from the brutalized socket. His glasses had been lost in the struggle, leaving his face free of any obscurities. Only his single violet eye stared up at me.
He began to laugh. His whole body shook with the force of his mirth. “You’ve made this too easy!”
The room’s shield dropped behind me, followed by the stomping of boots and loud shouts to put my hands up. Stepping back, I watched as the NCP officers that had escorted me here entered the room with arc rifles aimed at my chest. It was all in slow motion as the large bodies circled around me; they grabbed my arms and yanked me to the floor, onto my belly. My cheek was pushed roughly into the title as my hands were pulled back by the magnetic cuffs, linking my wrists together the moment they were powered on.
A twin pair of refined men’s dress shoes appeared in my vision and I looked up at Beal. He was still slightly pale, his eye still closed and bleeding, but his glasses were back on his nose and his tweed vest smoothed out. A satisfied smirk fell over his features. “The Judge can’t help you now, Senana,” Beal said without hiding his satisfaction.
I growled, baring my teeth. I wanted to rip his head off and watch his blood paint the floor. There was a pinch to the left side of my arm, then the fast burn of drugs as they worked through my system. I stopped fidgeting when my muscles became heavy, the combined effects of drugs and men holding me down more than I could fight. In my last lucid moments, I had to agree with Beal: there was no way my father could help me now.
They threw me in solitary confinement. The electric bars locked my five-by-five foot prison cell, sizzling with energy that promised a painful rebuke if I got too close. Sitting on my hard cot, I leaned against the wall, wondering how everything had come to this moment. It wasn’t like prison was a new concept for me. In the past decade of my life, I’d become familiar with jail cells. As a child my father—the Judge, as everyone referred to the man—would show me around the holding cells and tell me that each man was due his fair trial for the chance to prove his innocence. I could still remember the stars in my eyes when I gazed up at the older man as he showed me the ins and outs of the Alignments laws. I had loved him and hero-worshipped his every move, but I had killed his expectations for me years ago.
The Judge’s lack of approval had a lot to do with my other relationship with jail cells. Ever since I was fourteen, I’d seemed to find myself in them a lot, although I hadn’t always been so horrible. There had been a time when my life—my family—was whole and happy. I guess if I had to pin a moment when everything changed, it was the day my mother died. She was a beautiful woman; although not human, she was very human in her appearance. Oltrians didn’t have the same color schemes to their hair, eyes, and skin; they tended to be pale pinks and purples with white or dark purple hair. My mother, Siva, was a very pale pink with long white hair and pale pink eyes that radiated her love for everything in her life. Nothing compared to what I had with my mother. Of course my father loved me, but my mother had been the soothing balm to my soul. She washed away all the darkness with her light, letting only brightness shine when the black tried to invade. Her luminescence shone bright until the day her radiance went out, leaving me shrouded in shadows of misery.
It was small at first; yelling at the Judge, failing at school, hitting other classmates when they teased me about my name. Everything that my mother would soothe with her gentle love would remind me she was gone, she wasn’t there to hush my anger and pain, she’d left me. A year of rage eating away at the cage I’d formed inside myself finally came to a breaking point when I saw the boy in the alley behind my school.
Jahcomb Rouge was fifteen years old, a year older than I had been at the time, but our sizes were dramatically reversed. I had stopped when I’d recognized the boy from my school behind the school building where the dumpsters were housed. The smell of decomposing trash and iron still lingers in my memory a decade later, the bitterness causing my mouth to water with the urge to retch. I’d called out to him when I’d heard the muted gargles and saw the squirming beneath him. The two rancid scents mingled to become stronger as I’d approached, the noises of pain becoming louder. It wasn’t until I stood over his crouched, rail-thin body, unable to hide the red-soaked knife as he cut into the poor animal beneath him. Its eyes were the first thing I’d noticed, the empty holes where they should be gaping up at me as if begging for an end. He’d cut off its ears and tail, working over its body while keeping the poor thing alive. He’d deformed it so badly I couldn’t even tell what it was anymore.
I don’t remember everything that happened in that alley. There are moments I remember the rage eating at my gut like acid breaking each molecule down ‘til there was nothing left but that all-consuming emotion. The injustice that a monster like Jahcomb Rouge could live but my loving mother had been taken fueled my hysteria. I wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt that poor creature, to break his bones and claw his eyes from his skull.
I don’t remember being pulled off of him, or the damage I’d done to him. My father had told me I’d had to be sedated to completely calm me down. I didn’t have to remember to know that I’d hurt Jahcomb. Nothing would wipe away the smell of his blood as I sat in the police station afterward, drenching my clothes to dye its white fibers red. The scent of his blood didn’t make me gag; I dragged the scent in, knowing it was the smell of justice.
At fourteen—only six months after killing Jahcomb—I was given a two-year sentence in a juvenile detention center. My trial had been a sad attempt to portray me as having a moment of insanity. Problem was, I couldn’t admit it was wrong, or that I was sorry for what I’d done. His darkness had poisoned the world. The moment I’d gone on the stand, I’d told them he’d gotten what he’d deserved and that justice had been served. What the Judge never told me was justice is blind.
Juvie wasn’t what I’d thought it would be. Since I was young, my father portrayed all types of prisons as being a place where the unwanted of society went. Except I found that the world isn’t so black and white and the things are rarely so clean cut. There were kids hardened by poverty and circumstances, and broken evil ones like Jahcomb Rouge, but there were others—they were just desperate and had nowhere else to go. It was the desperate ones that stole just to get caught so they could have a government meal and a warm bed, since juvie was better than living on the streets of Old City. It was those kids that made me question everything the Judge had ever taught me. What would I do if I were so desperate? It was six months into my sentence when I met one boy who had been that hopeless. He had been assigned to my cell, my previous bunk mate having been released only the day before. The guard had pushed the green-haired boy in without a word, leaving us looking at each other with wary stares.
He had obviously been interspecies with his odd hair that grew jet black at the root and out into lime green strands. His eyes had been black, the sclera not ordinary white like a human’s, his pupil dilated into green slits giving him an odd snake-like appearance. With his tall coltish body, he had been an example of exotic youth. Even then, in my fifteen-year-old mind, there had been nothing more beautiful than the boy who stood in front of me.
Rhyan wouldn’t talk to me in full sentences or even give me his name for another two months. Earning his trust had been comparable to teaching a feral dog you weren’t going to betray them the moment you touched them. I would put conversations out like small tidbits of food for the starving dog that lived inside of the alien boy. Everything changed the day he was ambushed during our outdoor recreation time. It was one month since Rhyan had started sharing a cell with me. I had watched from the other side of the yard as four boys from ages sixteen to eighteen began to circle around him, baring their teeth with vicious intent. They had been out for blood, their eyes glossy with anticipation as they taunted the green-haired boy.
“What did your dad fuck? A barrel of radioactive waste!” one had chortled. “I bet he’s a science experiment and broke out from the lab!” another had snickered, reaching out to flick the side of Rhyan’s head. Rhyan hadn’t moved from his cornered position, backed into the courtyard wall, black eyes watching them converge with not a hint of fear lurking in their inky depths. In that moment, I didn’t see the victim I’d thought he was. He wasn’t the waifish street mutt looking for scraps, no; he was a wolf, surviving everything that attempted to tear him down.
Fists flew and loud shouts from the guards had been followed by wild jeers from the other juvies, creating a chaotic uproar. Many broke out into fights, taking their chance while the distraction was available. A fist had slammed into the side of my head, jarring me before I was drawn into my own scuffle. I tackled my assailant to the ground, throwing my punches with wild abandon.
It was only a few moments before the always-present mag-cuffs around my wrists and ankles had been turned on and coupled together with a force nobody could’ve resisted. From the ground, I saw all the other juvies on the courtyard locked together by their magnetic cuff rings. Through the mob of bodies, a flash of green had caught my eye, drawing me in like a beacon. I found his black eyes staring back at me. Rhyan’s grin showed me his serrated teeth, the sharp edges rustic with blood. I’d never mistake him for weak again.
After that day, our relationship changed. It was no longer a quest to heal him but instead to show him I was worthy. I spoke to him about everything, not expecting a conversation in return, but I knew he had been listening. I would see his black and green eyes stare at me as I spoke about my mother and the cultural differences among her people, or about her light outshining anyone who came near her. It was like that for a few months, his one-word responses and easy attitude a stark contrast to my brash and loud personality. It was the day I started talking about the Judge that he finally spoke to me. I had been sitting beside him in our cell, leaning against the wall behind our bed. Our shoulders had touched as we settled against one another in a comfortable acceptance. I had told him about how much I’d disappointed my father and how I wished I could somehow make things right with my remaining parent. There was no subject as sore as my failure with my father. To say that the Judge had dealt with my mother’s death poorly would be an understatement… Sometimes, I wonder if all the late hours at work after she’d passed were the only way he knew how to cope and forget he had a grieving son. Through my emotional outburst, I hadn’t felt the soft caress against my jaw or noticed Rhyan’s naturally black fingertips drag down to my chin where he had forced me to look him in the eyes. Although still lanky and waifish, there had been a strength to Rhyan’s grasp that pointed to his alien descent. I was bigger and yet I knew who was physically stronger between the two of us. I’d stared into his strange eyes, confused and unsure of what he was doing.
“It’s not your fault.” That was all he had said before he kissed me gently on the lips. The firm press had been the first time I’d ever experienced kissing. There had been a slightly sweet taste that ignited a hum of excitement in my belly. It was over before I could enjoy it and yet it had been branded into my memory as one of the most important moments of my life. Not because it had been my first kiss. The four words he’d given me relieved some of my pain. It wasn’t my fault—and coming from him, I believed it.
That kiss changed everything between us. He spoke more, his responses becoming more with me every day that we spent together. We fed off each other’s strength, learning to look to each other for the emotional support we hadn’t had anywhere else. He soothed my damaged heart and I brightened his dark past. We didn’t speak about what had happened to him and a part of me didn’t want to know the demons that haunted him. It was those demons that made me get out of my bunk one night and lay in his, pulling his body against mine as a nightmare tried to tear his mind apart, the scarred, painful noises so unlike the strong boy I knew he was. The next morning, when I woke up in his arms, he had been watching me with those amazing eyes. We lay there gazing at each other for a while before he finally broke the silence.
“Don’t fucking leave.” It had been the most emotion I had ever felt from him. The words were drenched with so much anxiety, fear, and sorrow, I had been afraid we’d drown in the intensity. I leaned forward, our foreheads pressed together, our breath mingling with one another.
“Never.”
That had been our promise to each other.
“Rays, visitor,” the guard called out from his post.
Looking up, I wasn’t surprised to find my father walk up to the front of my cell, wearing the same hard expression he always wore when he was disappointed with me. I got up from the cot, thankful that I was in solitary—it would make this exchange between us that much easier.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Sena.” His brown eyes squinted as he looked over my orange prison uniform, the color a stark reminder of my current situation. “I’ve come to say goodbye.” He said it with cool intent, but there was a solitary twitch to his jaw.
“I’ve talked to Robert, and he told me your sentencing.” The Judge took a deep breath, pulling his large frame up taller. “You’ll have to serve four years on the harvesting planet Indiku.” There had never been a time I’d seen my father present himself as weak. Even when my mother had died, he’d only kissed her cold cheek before leaving her bedside. There were no tears, no break in the facade he used when he was passing down verdicts, just his cool, stoic face.
“You know, Sena, that no matter what, I’ll protect you.” He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, his eyes squinting, mouth tensing into an even harder line. “Even when you think I’m not.” The Judge gazed away, either unable or unwilling to look at me. “I won’t be there during your sentencing… I can’t make it.” His nostrils flared. “I will see you when you come home.” The Judge’s large hand ran over the front of his suit, soothing the pristine material and its imaginary wrinkles. The barrier between us was even more apparent in that moment, and I wished I could give him something for all that I’d done to upset him. We’d never been close, even before my mother had died. After her passing, we could have lived in separate universes and still been closer. I hadn’t depended on my father since I was fourteen, and I hadn’t given him a passing thought in the last ten years.
“I don’t need your help.” I hadn’t needed it when my mom died and I wouldn’t need it now.
My father nodded, his face set in its usual hard expression. “I will see you in four years.” Without another word, he turned on his heels and walked out.
Four years would be too soon.
“Senana Sa’z Rays, you have been found guilty of assault in the first degree. Therefore, you will be sentenced to enslavement in the Dianic system, on planet Indiku. You will work an estimate of four Earth years, or three inner solar rotations. Your release year will be 3204.” The court judge paused, his monotone voice leaving a devastating void in the otherwise quiet courtroom. “This is your last chance, Rays. This sentence combined with your past offenses has marked you for possible enslavement. This means if you do not comply with your sentence, you will be sold to the highest off-world bidder and banned from Earth for life. Do you understand?”
I nodded mutely at the man seated in the front of the grand courtroom. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my sentencing judge for long, not with his disapproving stare burning into me. His face was one I knew well, with a strong jaw and bushy eyebrows. I’d seen it many times since I was a child, although it used to be a face with kind, joyful eyes and an open smile whenever he came over to visit my father. Robert Danfer was someone I had never wanted to see with such a blank expression.
Two large officers approached me, their faces stoic. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the green head of hair standing out in the back row. Rhyan sat with his arms crossed over his broad chest, no longer the skinny fifteen-year-old boy. Only slightly smaller than myself, he was intimidating with his bruised face. His expression was pinched, his jaw clenching and unclenching with every second. Watching my lover and knowing that I wouldn’t see him for four years almost broke me. We hadn’t been apart for more than a few weeks since we were fifteen and in juvie.
Before the guards could restrain my hands, I brought it up to my right pectoral and laid it over the tattoo under my shirt for his benefit. I knew he would understand the gesture. With a shake of his head, he got up and left the courtroom, the doors swinging shut with a loud finality.
Rhyan was gone.
The guards jerked at my wrists and cuffed them behind my back. Somehow, I had lost my best friend, my lover, and my home. I peered up at Robert, and he was looking at me with blatant anguish. The guards pulled at me and I growled, resisting their pull. Almost to the door, I heard his question:
“Sena, be safe?” Robert’s face was taut. I couldn’t help feel a flicker of guilt; I could only imagine what this was doing to him. I knew he loved me as much as a father should, and yet there he was, left with the horrible job of sending me to enslavement when my real father wasn’t even here to witness it.
“See you in four years,” I said as I was taken out of the courtroom.