Lyra followed him down the passageway to the cargo hold. There was a curiosity in her eyes and more than a little concern. Dariux put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile.

"Everything's going to be okay," he said. "Promise."

"If the Syndicate – "

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I'll take care of it."

"Of course I'm going to worry, Dariux," she said. "How can – "

He cut her off with a long, slow, passionate kiss. He tried to put everything he felt for her behind it, tried to make her understand feelings he didn't quite grasp just yet. Somehow, the two of them were connected. Being with Lyra, even as little time as they'd been together, had been a revelation for him. It had clarified thinking in his head that had been muddy and murky for longer than he could remember.

Somehow though, she'd found a way to cut through all of the noise in his head. Found a way to reach him on levels nobody had been able to do before. Somehow, she'd been able to touch something inside of him he never knew existed.

He couldn't explain it any other way than to say that being with her felt like a piece of the puzzle he didn't know he was missing snapped into place. With her, he felt whole. Complete in ways he never realized he was incomplete before.

And once he realized that, once he felt like the picture was complete inside of him, he knew there was no way he could give her up. No way he could turn her over to the Syndicate and sentence her to the fighting pits. Sentence her to what would probably be a sure, swift death.

No way possible.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

Lyra nodded. "I don't know why, but yes. I do."

He gave her a grin and there was a mischievous light twinkling in his golden-colored eyes.

"I don't know why either," he said. "I don't know what it is about you and I can't quite put it into words, but something about you has made a whole lot of things make sense for me."

"As crazy as it seems, I feel the same way, Dariux."

His smile was so wide, he thought it might split his face in two. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled so much or felt so – settled. It was a feeling he knew he could get used to. A feeling he wanted to get used to.

Dariux leaned down and gave her another quick kiss before turning and opening the hatch to the cargo bay. The door slid open with a hydraulic hiss and he led her through it. They stood before the seven unopened boxes, their contents still in stasis when a thought occurred to him.

"Why did your stasis pod fail?" he asked. "I never thought to question it before, but you should still be as asleep as these guys."

Lyra shook her head. "I really don't know," she said. "All I know is I woke up, started screaming, and there you were."

An unsettling thought washed over him and he felt the knots in his stomach tighten. Everything had happened so fast that he didn't even stop to question it. Not until now. He pushed it aside, hoping against all hope, he was just being paranoid. But then, he wasn't sure he could actually be paranoid when it came to dealing with the Syndicate.

"What is it?" Lyra asked.

He shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe I'm just being paranoid."

"What, Dariux?"

"It just seems strange to me that your pod is the only one that failed," he said. "It's like I was being tested or something."

"Tested?"

"To see if I'm loyal, maybe," he said. "I don't know. It just seems – odd. I suddenly just have a bad feeling."

Lyra looked around as if she expected to see Syndicate assassins jumping out of the shadows to kill them or something. Dariux knew though, that he needed to keep a cool head. Needed to think and not give into rampant fear and paranoia. If he was being tested, he failed. And he had to prepare for whatever the Syndicate had planned for him.

Lyra took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Whatever it is, we'll deal with it together."

Dariux nodded, his lips compressed into a tight line. She was a strong woman who was not going to give into her fears and was going to stand and fight. And he respected that. A lot.

"We will," he said, giving her hand another squeeze. "We'll deal with whatever comes our way together."

Dariux grabbed a cable from the wall and plugged one end of it into a socket and walked it over to the first of the stasis pods, plugging the other end into the socket in the keypad.

"Computer," he said.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Unlock all stasis pods," he said.

"Are you sure that's wise, Captain?"

"No," he admitted. "But, do it anyway."

"Confirmed."

He shared a look with Lyra as they waited. A few moments later, a series of soft chimes and beeps sounded and all of the lids on the remaining stasis pods slid back. Dariux put himself between Lyra and the pods, a nervous flutter in his stomach. He rested his hand on the butt of his sidearm, hoping he didn't need to use it but prepared to if necessary.

Slowly, the other seven in the pods – six men and one woman, all of them hard and rough looking – woke up from their long slumber. They stood on shaky legs, looking around, all of them looking dazed, confused, and entirely out of sorts.

"Listen," Dariux called.

All heads swiveled to him, eyes narrowed, jaws clenched, fight or flight mode kicking in on all of them. He swallowed the lump of fear in his throat and held his hands up to show he wasn't a threat.

"My name is Dariux. You're aboard my ship, the Helios," he said. "I know you all must be confused right now – "

"Where the fuck are we?" snapped a large human man with a shaved head and dark colored eyes.

"Right now, we're on our way to Torv," Dariux explained. "You were all kidnapped by the Gladius Syndicate and I was paid to transport you to the fighting pits."

All seven of them climbed out of their boxes, their faces were masks of anger and outrage. The group took several steps toward him, their faces dark with rage, their postures clearly threatening. Not knowing what else to do, Dariux pulled his sidearm and pointed it at them. It was enough to stop them – at least, for the moment.

"I'm not taking you to the pits," he said. "I changed my mind."

"Then where are you taking us?"

It was the woman this time – a thin woman with pale green, scaled skin and a long, reptilian tail. Her yellow eyes burned with anger, but also with cunning and intelligence. Looking through the group of people assembled, most all from different worlds, she was the one Dariux most feared. While the six men were huge, hulking brutes he had no doubt could rip him in two if he gave them the chance, there was something that seemed infinitely more dangerous and sinister about the woman.

"I'm going to put down on Torv," he said. "Once we get there, you'll get off my ship and you'll be free to go anywhere you please."

"We ain't goin' far if the Syndicate's after us."

Dariux didn't know who'd said it, but he understood the sentiment. In fact, he was in the same boat.

"What's to stop us from killin' you and takin' this ship for ourselves," said the big, bald man.

Dariux shrugged. "Nothing," he said. "But, just so you know, this little stunt I'm pulling – setting you all free and not taking you to the pits – is going to cost me my own freedom as well. I'm going to be on the run from the Syndicate, just like the rest of you."

"Then why are you doin' it?" the woman asked. "Why risk so much to free us? I highly doubt you're that altruistic."

Dariux clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. "That's my business. My concern," he said. "Not yours."

The woman's eyes probed him, and he felt like she was looking deep into his soul to discern the truth. He saw the light of comprehension in her eyes when they fell upon Lyra, who was still mostly obscured behind him. A reptilian smile spread across her face and she nodded.

"Of course," she said. "It all makes sense now. Not so altruistic after all, just as I suspected."

"Hey, I could've airlocked you all," Dariux snapped. "I could have left you in those fucking stasis pods and shot you out in the dark, cold reaches of space. But, I didn't. I decided to give you a chance at life."

The six men glared at him, but the woman stood to the side, looking amused. Somehow, she'd become the de facto leader of this motley little group, he noticed. They all seemed to be taking their cues from her. There was just something about the woman that exuded calm authority. Cool leadership. Dariux knew that men gravitated toward that sort of energy and fell in line behind those types of people – often without even realizing they were doing it.

Dariux raised his weapon again and gave them his most menacing and withering expression.

"Say the word, and I'll put you down right now and be done with it," he said.

"What do you want from us?" the woman asked.

"Nothing," Dariux said simply.

"Nothing?" she laughed. "Nothing in this universe or any other is ever free. What's your angle?"

"No angle," Dariux said and shook his head. "All I want is for the seven of you to wait here in the cargo bay and don't cause me any problems until I put down on Torv. Once that back ramp opens, I want you all to walk out, lose yourselves in the crowd, and live your life however you see fit."

"That's it?" the woman asked.

"That's it," he replied. "That's all I want."

The men all looked at her and she cast a long, wary gaze at him and then nodded.

"You have a deal," she said.

"Great," he replied. "I don't have much, but I'll have coffee and whatever snacks I have sent back to you. We'll be on Torv in just a few hours."

Dariux ushered Lyra to the hatch and pushed her through when the woman's voice stopped him. He turned around and found her standing just feet behind him, a sly and amused expression on her face.

"She worth it?" the woman asked. "Worth getting on the wrong side of the Syndicate for?"

Dariux glanced over his shoulder. Lyra stood there waiting for him and just the sight of her almost took his breath away. She had such a light about her. A sweetness and innocence that not even the hard life on the streets she'd lived could take away. Nothing about her life had dimmed that light in her and like the proverbial moth to the flame, he was drawn to it.

"A thousand times over," he said, finally turning back to the woman.

"Then hold on to that," she said with the authority of a woman who'd lost somebody dear to her. "Don't let go of that. Those types of things don't come around often."

Dariux nodded. "I hear that."

"One more thing," she said.

"What's that?"

The woman looked at him for a long moment and then extended her hand. "Thank you," she said. "For giving me – us – a chance. You were right, you could've airlocked us and you didn't. It's been a while since I've found myself feeling grateful to anybody. So, thank you."

Dariux shook her hand and gave her a small nod. "Just be good out there."

"Yeah, don't push your luck," she said and smiled. "Some of us are only good at being bad."

Dariux laughed and walked back through the hatch, closing and sealing it behind him. Though he felt good about his decision to not shoot them all into space, there was some small part of him that wondered – given that those six goons now had an intelligent and organized leader – what sort of havoc he'd just unleashed on the universe.

He decided he couldn't worry about it though. He had his own pressing problems to deal with.