***

ELODIE’S EYES DRIFTED open to find the cell she faced empty and yawning and the rest cycle lights still down in a dreary dim. She remained unmoving as her senses came back one by one, starting with the worst; hunger, pain, her emotional state.

He’s gone.

At least he’s not dead. At least I didn’t see him die. Her heart thumped.

Her eyes stared through the empty space and double row of bars to land on the man on the other side of her dad’s cell. He was facing away from her, his back to the bars. He was a gristly sort of fellow, and neither she nor her dad ever liked conversing with him. Elodie couldn’t recall his name. She pretended that he was her dad, just for a few minutes, as she mustered the courage to rise.

She rose slowly, quietly, feeling her body’s need to expel the tiny bit of waste it’d created since her last meal. It was her most hated part of the day, and as she perused the nearby cells and the prisoners within, her luck bolstered her nerve.

They’re all sleeping...

It was the biggest pro on her internal pro and con chart about hunger. It made everyone else around her just as weak as she was. The weak slept.

Every joint in her body ached as she made her way over to the drainage vent in the middle of her cell, where, twitching and shivering with unease, she lowered her pants, shifted her boxers, and squatted. Her business was done in seconds and she made her way back to the wall.

Another pro of hunger... fewer bathroom breaks. Dressing like a man had its perks too. Several weeks ago she’d ripped a larger hole in her boxers so she never had to drop them. Kallan had questioned her antics once when he watched her without her knowledge, and she hadn’t realized until it was too late.

“You got a problem with your cock?”

Elodie jerked and tugged up her pants. “No.”

“What the fuck kind of man squats to pee? You got pussy under there?” he taunted and leered. “You do, don’t you? A dirty little cunt.”

She stopped herself from scrambling to the wall and giving herself away. Instead, she fought to calm her nerves so she could move slowly back into position. Elodie reached down to adjust herself. “You think I’d still be in here if I did? If I had a cunt, I'd've bargained my way out of this hell before they had a chance to close my cell door,” she ground out a laugh.

“Then prove it, boy,” Kallan pressed up against the bars and grinned. “Let’s see what’s between your legs.”

Several prisoners around her grunted, snickered, and taunted. Her dad remained silent, and she was thankful for that. Things only got worse when he got involved.

“You that desperate, old man? I show for cunts, not for cocks. You show me yours first and then we’ll talk,” Elodie sneered and let her head rest on the wall, closing her eyes. She heard Kallan spit in her direction, heard it land, but didn’t look. She focused on remaining calm...looking unaffected. The issue dropped.

That was weeks ago, and now her body had been trained to hold everything in until the last possible moment.

She knew Kallan had his suspicions. There wasn’t much else to do but watch the other prisoners, but she did her best to keep his curiosity tempered. Elodie glanced in his direction, thankful that his eyes were closed.

Her back hit the wall right when the lights brightened to signify day. The groans of others followed shortly after, and soon Jacob’s sniffling sobs rose to greet the morning.

She tuned him out and focused on the shut double door of the brig, hopeful and fearful for it to open. She was starving and her mind went back to that moment with Kallan about trading her pussy for freedom.

Don’t! Elodie yelled at herself, even when her nose caught the first scent of decay from the corpse. Don’t!

She pushed her fingers through her hair and wished she had scissors to cut off its length. She rubbed the back of her hands over her cheeks and jaw knowing she was one of the only men who didn’t have hair growth there. At least the only one in her immediate vicinity. Her disguise had its limits but it wasn’t all about how she looked, it was mostly about how she acted, and growing up around men, and only men, had helped her immensely.

Keeping her hair short was easy, and though lowering her voice had been difficult at first, over the years, it had become second nature. Elodie had been lucky enough to inherit her dad’s height—she was nearly six feet tall—and her metabolism and with the constant strain of labor had kept her frame from filling out. She even trimmed her eyelashes, having been born with unusually thick ones, and she wore oversized clothes to hide what little of her frame that curved.

But despite trying to come off as a ‘man,’ she could only pull off a boyish look. Men bought that look, but it still brought her unwanted attention. The kind that screamed easily dominated, an easy swing for an interested man. There were always shadowed advances from men who had their own secrets to keep, or blatant overbearing harassment from those who didn’t care.

Lying about STDs was a great way to end shit before it even started.

The doors zipped open. Her hands stilled in her hair.

One guard came in, a different one from last night, followed by a boxy android. They passed her cell and went straight for Jacob and the corpse.

Within minutes, both were pulled out of the brig. She was able to catch the haunted look in Jacob’s eyes as he went by her cell.

You shouldn’t have spoken up. Elodie felt worse for the corpse. He died because of you. Then she hated them both and that hatred briefly extended to her dad.

The panels shut. No food or water...

The door reopened, and a new ember of hope alighted. Two guards came in with a new set of androids, but her anticipation for food wavered as something was dragged—lugged—in behind them.

The noises from the other prisoners sounded throughout as everyone came forward to watch the new entertainment.

She immediately recognized the thing being hauled was a body, a man, and a big one at that. Elodie gripped the bars she usually rested against, suddenly wary. The squad approached her dad’s cell and opened it. She jerked away, moving into Kallan’s territory.

It was the first prisoner to arrive since she and her dad and the remaining crew of their last job had been locked inside.

The androids, obviously strained, heaved the man into the cell beside her, dropping him with a thunk.

“Heavy motherfucker,” one of the guards commented.

“Fucking shit has metal in his head. Cybernetic enhancements the scanner told us... Doesn’t account for his fucking weight.”

The androids left the cell and the mechanism locked behind them. The electrical panel pinged like a final fatal gong. Her palms dampened and she rubbed them on her pants, gaze trained on the new addition, her thoughts going a mile a minute.

“Rich fucker though, heard his ship was a treasure trove. Must be one of those blacklisted dealers, hiding out in deep space. We’ll find out when he wakes.”

“If he ever does. Not even the jumpers and rods got his eyes to open! Does it even matter?”

The other guard shrugged. “Boss wants to know his ship’s codes. Ballsy’s having trouble hacking into some parts. If I were him,” he motioned to the unmoving body, “I wouldn’t wake up. He ain’t going to like it when he does.” They both laughed and Elodie looked away. She couldn’t even muster a shiver of unease anymore. But her eyes, unwillingly, found the man’s unconscious face again and spied the black-lined tattoo of a gun on his cheek.

Don’t wake up.

She knew he couldn’t hear her thoughts but it didn’t matter.

One of the guards crouched and peered at him. “What kind of man has a class-A ship and leaves it unprotected for a salvage? And tattoos of guns on his cheeks?”

“Not a smart one,” the other snarked.

“Hmm...”

Eventually, the guard straightened and looked around at her and the other prisoners before turning to the androids. “Feed ‘em.”

He walked out with the other guard, and just as quickly, her mind went from the entertainment to the prospect of food. A palpable wave of anticipation coursed through the brig.

Unsealed protein rations were dropped into each cell, along with three water gels. Elodie moaned around her food and savored every bite, but her attention stayed on the newcomer, and remained on him long after the androids left.

“You think he’s dead?” Kallan said behind her.

Elodie didn’t answer him. The gristly man on the other side was reaching into the cell and tugging at the new prisoner’s jacket. But her eyes kept going to the stranger’s face, and to the gun that pointed straight toward his mouth. The type of men who got tattoos like that were the type she avoided like the plague.

“This piece of shit is heavy,” the gristly man spat, pulling his arm back, giving up after his fifth try of moving the stranger.

The general curiosity from the others waned after that.

Hers didn’t.

No matter how this turn of events played out in her head, it wouldn’t end well. Her safe spot against the bars was no longer safe, and now, as her eyes roved over the large frame of the newcomer, she had to choose between the known evil and the unknown evil. Either way, she was fucked.

Don’t wake up.

This time, she thought it for an entirely selfish reason.

***

GUNNER ACKNOWLEDGED his piss-poor judgment.

I should’ve never stopped to help the Blessed.

He knew he was in a brig and that he wasn’t alone. He also knew that he had lost a fair amount of valuable time.

They have my fucking ship.

Nickel hadn’t been brought onboard with him, and he wasn’t sure if the kid was dead or alive. Gunner tried to sniff him out but was unable to find a trail, not even a faint one.

Over and over again he tried to seed into his ship’s systems and connect with APOLLO but was unable to do so. It was out of range.

His fingers twitched against the floor, digging into the metal under his jacket. When his nails punctured the surface, it only fueled his anger. But since he feigned unconsciousness, no one would know. He could feign death but he didn’t want his body shot out into space, not when he had no leads.

The pirates neutralized his ship and invaded the Blessed while he’d been rebooting. He vaguely recalled several men trying to lift him, unsuccessfully, and later the zap of energy when multiple androids gripped his skin.

He’d been kicked, beaten, and shocked, all of it having no effect on him except to wake him up further. Men had torn through his pockets, taken what they could find off his body, stolen his guns, and tried to wake him again. By that point he was fully aware—and fully aware that his ship was no longer in reach.

Gunner dug his nails a little harder into the floor, breathing in the smells of the unwashed masses.

Pirates had him. A chance attack from a passing fleet had knocked him out cold. They had taken his ship, his property, and had made the fucking mistake of taking him as well.

His nostrils flared, pressed hard into the metal, and he was aware of others eating low-grade space rations. He took another deep breath as something else hit him, something intriguing, buried under weeks of brig filth.

His lips twitched into a brief smirk when he realized that what he smelled were his joints. The pirates missed his fucking joints. Gunner could almost forgive the transgressions against him based on their stupidity alone.

Almost.

There was another smell, also alluring, but he couldn’t place it and let it fall back into the prevailing stench that surrounded him. His attention returned to the ship he was on.

The prisoner he faced shuffled and sighed, the noises soft, and Gunner had the urge to open his eyes to get a visual.

Someone tugged on his jacket.

“You think he’s dead?”

“This piece of shit is heavy.”

The death count rose in his head. Everyone who touched him earned a place on his list.

His nose twitched again and that same interesting smell coaxed him to investigate it. But the hand on his jacket let go and so did his curiosity as he pressed back into cyberspace.

The security barriers he came across were high-end but not unbreachable and he began the process of breaking down their encryptions.

The ship he was on was privatized, the systems it held were not governmental. To him, it felt militarized and upgraded, probably built and bought in the lurid trade markets on Elyria. The tech was Earthian-based and although he couldn’t discern any Trentians onboard, that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

His cyberself codes slithered across the parts of it he couldn’t easily access, gnawing away at it like flesh-eating bacteria. He could break in, but that would set off alarms, and he didn’t want his puppets to know he was there. Not yet.

Gunner scanned the immediate perimeter, counting twenty-six other humans in the brig with him, with at least eight guards in the nearby hallways. He expanded his search until he had a figurative blueprint, bolstered by what he had learned being dragged through the ship on his way in.

Eighty-three occupants, including the prisoners, myself, and forty androids, currently powered on. No other life force aboard, no animals or creatures. The pirates took him but not the EPED acquisitions he’d collected.

His thoughts shifted to Stryker and how he couldn’t wait to beat the Cyborg’s fucked-up face into a bloody pulp. If he lost his acquisitions, someone else was going to pay the price.

“Ely! Boy-o,” said a voice, breaking his concentration and grounding him back into his body. “Check the fucker already. Staring at a corpse isn’t gonna make it move.”

Gunner knew they were talking about him.

Yes, Ely, check my corpse.

But whoever Ely was didn’t make a move to do so.

“Fucking hell, just feel his pulse. He’s closer to you than him,” the same man hollered.

Gunner assumed the him was the shit who tried stealing his jacket. He waited to feel hands on him, but nothing happened. Stay smart, Ely.

“I’ll make you a goddamned bargain,” the man persisted. “You check his pulse, and if he’s dead, get his jacket for me, and I’ll give you half my water rations for the next week.”

Don’t do it, Ely. He heard movement before the man spoke, the subtle sway in position that the proposed bargain had on this middle-man.

“Like I’d ever trust you.”

Gunner stiffened.

The sound of Ely’s voice clashed in his head. It was deliberately adjusted, deepened with a rasp brought on by saliva caught in the back of the throat. It wasn’t straight from the vocal cords or damaged from breathing in too much smoke. It was altered on purpose.

His fingers twitched. Feminine undertones...

Ely’s a girl?

Suddenly, a new puzzle presented itself and he took the bait readily.

The likelihood of encountering a woman in the middle of nowhere space-wise was so minuscule, even the calculations running through his head still calculated...

It doesn’t make sense.

Even given the odds of being on a ship, in a pirate fleet, where there was sure to be at least one ship whore aboard, it was improbable. Sex-bots like his Browning typically filled that role—if one could afford something like Browning.

It’d been years since he was last in the presence of a woman, years since the possibility of subduing one occurred to him. He was banned by the government from entering any main Earthian spaceways, commercial or otherwise, and although he still entered them, he never stayed long enough to get caught.

“It ain’t like you got much left to lose! Chesnik ain’t coming back.” The man broke into gleeful, misplaced laughter. “I’ll sweeten the deal. You check the fucker’s pulse and I’ll leave you alone. For three cycles.”

Who’s Chesnik?

Gunner waited, forgetting the codes, and focused on the events taking place. He remained still, curious, intrigued. All of his attention was on the prisoner between him and the heckler.

There’s no fucking way a girl’s locked in the brig.

The absurdity of it, among so many men, was hard for him to grasp. No fucking way. He ran the odds again, and the odds were against it.

Ely moved closer to him.

He sensed every sound and vibration, each heartbeat and couldn’t tell who or what Ely was. No way in hell.

“That’s it. Just gotta check his pulse. Do that and I won’t try and hurt ya for three cycles. This daddy’ll keep his hands off his son.”

It took everything in him to keep still because if Ely really was a woman, he was going to find out.

Do it, Ely. Check my pulse.

***

ELODIE INCHED CLOSER to the unmoving man but she couldn’t bring herself to reach through the bars and touch him. Kallan’s voice filled the weak space in her mind, egging her on, and it was difficult to shut him out. Even though her hunger had waned, her mental capacity still teetered on the brink. The brink of what, she didn’t know.

One part of her wanted to close her eyes and zone out, find her hazy space and settle in for a nice reprieve into oblivion. But the other part of her, the one that dissected every horrible scenario that could possibly happen, the part that had a tighter grip on her survival instincts, pushed her to check the man’s pulse.

Right now, Kallan was inciting that part of her brain, and it came with incentives.

Her attention remained on the man’s closed eyes. Please wake up. Don’t wake up. And the more she stared at them, the more she convinced herself he was dead.

“He’s dead,” she said, loud enough for Kallan to hear. Maybe if she said it aloud, it’d be true.

“You ain’t checked, boy-o. I want his jacket!”

That was what this was all about, not about the man himself, but what he wore and how frigid the brig really was. It wasn’t even about her.

Gristly-guy spoke up. “I want it too but I don’t have the strength to pull him closer, and if I don’t have it, you really think he’s going to be able to?” The grunts and murmurs of other prisoners responded in agreement and Elodie caught his eye over the unconscious prisoner, feeling grim.

I also want his jacket. She eyed it for the umpteenth time. It was big, big enough to cover her—most of her—and keep her warm for however long she had it. It was also clean. Clean.

All of it is clean. Though it was stained, it still had a clean look to it. A month ago, she would’ve considered it dirty, but now she knew what dirty really was. She was contemplating stealing it now, like the others, and it made her feel a little uneasy.

She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm. A sad laugh died in her throat.

“We all want his fucking clothes! Find out if he’s dead already!” someone else joined in and more murmurs ensued, growing louder.

Now I’m the entertainment.

Her heart thundered. Kallan hollered at her back. She jerked closer to the bars she faced. Elodie gripped them and studied the possibly-dead man closer. He’s not breathing. His eyelids aren’t twitching. She had nothing on her person to reflect light over his face. The sweat on her hands had them slipping down the metal.

“For fuck’s sake!”

“Check him already!”

She dipped her hand through the bars and pressed two fingers over his pulse.

He’s alive! His skin is...hot. Elodie licked her chapped lips and pressed further, finding it, also knowing that being really hot didn’t mean being ripe. One could die hot.

“Well?” A hush settled throughout.

“He’s alive,” she whispered, glancing up from his neck to look at the gun tattoo on his cheek, his tousled hair, and taking it all in. His eyelids opened.

I’m dead.

Everything came to a stop. They stared at each other and her life literally flashed before her, neon red and angry. Thick, arched eyebrows creased to frame wild hooded eyes that were directed at her.

Dread kept her in place. Even when the prisoner didn’t twist to grab hold of her arm, she couldn’t move. It was a standoff. Elodie had a feeling that if she tried to jerk back, it would be the end of her. Her throat closed up, unable to swallow.

The noise of the prisoners drowned out, her heart beating in her ears, and she was vaguely aware that no one could see that he was awake except for her. Neither one of them blinked, and even when her eyes stung, fear kept her mesmerized and still.

Slowly, she lifted her fingers off his hot skin, leaving a dirty print behind, and closed them into a fist beside his neck. Elodie pulled away just as slowly, and he rose as if she pulled the strings that moved his body. It was only the two of them for the entire daunting process, and when she had her hand safely back within the confines of her cell, she knew she’d miraculously escaped dismemberment. Death.

She felt...grateful... He hadn’t killed her on the spot, or broken her arm.

Her back hit the wall and she slipped to the center, shaking and high on adrenaline, and when she finally managed to unlock her gaze from his, she closed them tight and leaned her chin into her chest. The spacious haze remained out of reach, though, and it wasn’t Kallan’s amused taunts in her ear that kept her from finding some peace... it was the newcomer’s gaze.

They had burned with a diabolical glow before receding into a milky, ghoulish stare, and she had watched the entire process in an instinctual slow-motion high.

His eyes changed color.

She’d never seen anything like it before. The bright, bloody red of them had shocked her with color, but when the red faded, he appeared blind. Curiosity and confusion, possibly a little bit of intrigue, made her want to study them. Made her question whether or not he could see. The guards had mentioned he was ‘heavy’ with cybernetic implants and she wondered which ones he had. If her new cell neighbor had a problem with his eyes, maybe she hadn’t entirely lost her safe spot.

And yet, she could feel his eyes on her like a creeping burn all over her skin, raising goosebumps on her arms and legs, stripping her clothes away, and baring her to the world.

“What’s going through your head? Your pulse is strumming,” his voice, new among the familiar, ended in a deep whisper that seemed projected right next to her ear. Elodie suppressed a shiver as the hair on her neck rose. She pretended she hadn’t heard him. She needed to pretend because his voice did something to her, deep inside, it purred and vibrated and made her want to hear more of it.

Her skin prickled further and she was thankful no one could see what she felt. Nervous.

“Ain’t gonna work,” Kallan said to her other side. “He’s not a talker.”

Someone told Kallan to shut up.

“Fuck off,” he screeched, coughed, then laughed, eliciting the usual amount of death threats. “You want to make a deal?” Elodie should’ve been used to this, Kallan talking over her, but the thought of him making a deal with the newcomer frightened her.

I’m already stuck in the middle.

“Deal, you say?” The new prisoner’s voice vibrated low, slicing straight through her and somehow, she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to Kallan.

“Hrmm, yeah, the guards want you awake, and you’re awake thanks to Ely here, but that also means you’re the walking dead. And you got some nice, warm-looking clothes, particularly that jacket of yours. It’s caused quite a stir among us, ‘cause creature comforts are few and far between, and seeing as you’ll be dead by rest cycle—”

Will he? Elodie wasn’t so sure about that. He was bigger than Kallan and looked immensely stronger, even harder than him. She’d caught a glimpse of sinewy muscle at the edges of his clothes, the popping of a tendon at his neck.

Kallan, on the other hand, was her dad’s age, maybe a bit younger. He sported scars, old facial wounds of a laced booster user, and his pallor was sickly and wet. His hair was long and stringy, a dark brown that easily showed off his dandruff. She shivered again at the thought, thankful, always thankful, that there were thick metal bars between her and everyone else.

“—so there’s no reason for a dead man to keep all the goods. But I’ve been here the longest and I may be able to keep you alive long enough to make the fuckers outside stop giving a damn.” Kallan preened.

“For my jacket?”

“Bright! You’re bright,” Kallan tittered mockingly and she felt his spittle land on her. Elodie wiped it off with disgust. “Hey guys, we got a genius in our midst!”

“I’ll think about it,” the new prisoner said, unamused.

“Don’t think long. Those guards could be back at any time, and from what I’ve gathered, they’re out for your blood.”

“Hmm...” The sound slithered right into her ear again.

Elodie’s heart skipped a much-needed beat and her eyes snapped open. Maybe he is an idiot. She looked at the tops of her knees but really focused on him in her periphery. He needs to pretend he’s still out cold. That’s what I would do.

The stranger was feet away, pressed up against the bars they shared. Her bars. My safe place. No one cared about getting within her reach and a sudden anger sparked within her, hot and fast.

The men around her argued and Kallan’s laughter grew louder. Her periphery blurred. The stranger hovered at her side, large like a wave poised to crash at any moment, casting her in his shadow even though the light came from directly overhead.

“What’re we going to do about...him?” he said. Ely closed her eyes again.

They’re talking about me.

“Ely here?” Kallan asked. “Nothing. Boy-o knows what’s best for him.”

She heard the rustle of clothes and the shift of the stranger’s body moving beside her.

“Ely? Do you know what’s best for you?” he asked, low enough for only her to hear. She sucked on her tongue and kept quiet.

“Don’t you want my jacket, Ely?” His voice lowered still, sounding deeper, softer, and the noisy sounds of the other inmates faded into the background.

I do.

“You do, don’t you?”

She leaned her head back against the wall and rolled it to the side, feigning irritation as she looked at him. As soon as she did, she wished she’d hadn’t.

Elodie searched his face, tracing each harsh contour, but she kept coming back to those glazed eyes that seemed to look straight through her. Her understanding of anatomy screamed at her that the man was blind, except she knew he wasn’t.

He just appeared blind.

His head mirrored her own against the wall and she knew exactly what the man was doing. He’s trying to gain my trust.

Her eyes narrowed as his mouth twitching into a sideways smirk. One of the guns ballooned at his cheek while the other straightened. His smile widened. Elodie drew back before she could stop herself.

“Hello, Ely,” he said.

Elodie wanted to turn back time. I’ve made too many mistakes today.

“My name’s Gunner. I think we’re going to be fast friends.”