III

Lyra

The pain in her ankle persisted, but she didn’t stop. She needed to get home, and there was only one way that she was going to be able to do so – escape.

Le’on and Karron – the two Ammarok warriors who had briefly been her salvation – hadn’t harmed her. She could at the very least say that. They hadn’t laid a hand on her the four days that she had remained in their home. That being said, those four days had taught her enough information about their people to know that perhaps she had bitten off more than she could chew when it came to being curious about the Out Zones.

We found you. You’re ours. That was quite literal to them, their people. The Ammarok weren’t male-dominated in the traditional sense. Most of their people tended to be male, and therefore most of their warriors, their leaders, were male. Their female population was drastically low, so much so that… well…

She had learned they often shared their females, and if they found a woman, as they had found her, wondering about, that appealed to them, they would take her as their own. It was as common as eating, and it was accepted among them – by the men and women alike.

Le’on and Karron were two of the Ammarok’s prized warriors, and had their pick of any females that they wanted among their kind or the neighboring groups of natives on Earth Two (which was called Ma’terra, to those who had lived there before the colonization of the Compounds.) They had been best friends since childhood, had shared their lives, battles, and women all their lives. It was their time to take a permanent mate however, but the only females available in their village were the elderly Mothers of All, as they were called, or young girls far too fresh in their youth to be bred off to warrior men.

She supposed that she could be grateful that the Ammarok were not fond of rape and child marriage. That being said, both Le’on and Karron had made it clear they had no intention of returning her to the Compound. They had said there was something about her… something that they hadn’t seen in others that they had considered. She had no idea what that was supposed to be; it wasn’t like she was like them, but her curiosity had quite quickly drained the moment that they told her that they intended to keep her. As a mate.

She wasn’t a brood mare, after all. She didn’t think so.

Lyra had snuck out the first night that she thought her ankle was well enough to move out and about on her own. They had gone into the village for a communal celebration, leaving her behind as she wasn’t mobile. Well, she was mobile enough to escape, and she was going to damn well do it!

The problem came when she got to the outskirts of the village, after having darted around in the shadows like she had when she’d slipped out of the wall around the Compound. She hadn’t realized quite how steep the hill she’d fallen down was – but it was damn steep. It wasn’t impossible to scale, no, but it was hard to do so with her ankle in the shape that it was. By the time she’d gotten to the top, she was sweaty, in more pain than she had been when she’d started, and breathing heavily.

Still, she persisted.

In the back of her mind, she kept thinking about Le’on and Karron. They had been kind to her – but how was she supposed to accept that she belonged to them? It wasn’t something that she had prepared for when she had gone exploring. She wished… maybe if they hadn’t come on with that in mind… it would have been nice to learn about the people beyond the Compound’s walls…

As she neared those very walls, she heard a crick of twig behind her. She whirled around, wondering if one of them had followed her. She saw nothing, and breathed a sigh of relief before she turned back around. The good thing was, she had managed to navigate her way back to the broken part of the wall –

Wait… except… No.

In a small bit of a panic, she limped up and down the section of wall that she had come to, looking for the breach in the wall. She could find nothing, though, and while she could see inside the holographic separation between the Compound’s insides, and where she was outside, she knew no one walking by would be able to.

That damn section had gone how long without being discovered? Fixed? It would figure the first and only time that she managed to get out, she would be locked out. There was no way to signal for help… no way to get someone to notice… The people in control on the inside ignored anything short of catastrophe going on outside their precious compound walls.

She kicked one of the pillars in irritation, regretting it instantaneously when a worse, sharper pain tore up her leg. She turned around, pressing her back to the pillar before she slid down. They, on the inside, would never think to look outside for her. everyone knew that she went on runs at night; they would assume she had gotten lost, or taken, or something equally sinister had happened to her. No one would speak up to think that maybe they should look outside the Compound for her, why would they? No one had ever left – you couldn’t.

The reality of her situation sinking further and further into her head, she put her face into her hands and attempted to stay the tears from falling. What had started as a desire to sate a curiosity had quickly turned into an abrupt, scary twist of fate. There was no way that she could go back, not at this stage in the game. But at this rate, she was more likely to die of starvation outside the Compound’s walls than she was having someone from the inside realize that there was someone outside, someone that wanted desperately to return to their home, their warm bed, all the things that were familiar to them despite the fact they’re brought this horrid situation on themselves.

What was she going to do?