Chapter Eight
The free fall makes my stomach float somewhere in space, and then water—warm water envelops my body, stinging my eyes and filling my nose. My body switches into survival mode, kicking me to the surface. My face breaks through the water, my lungs inflating with fresh air. Shouts greet my ears, but I don’t look back, I can’t look back, because looking back will ensure my recapture.
So I swim toward the horizon, where the sun sinks below the edge of the planet, surprised that I haven’t been shot yet. I’m an easy target, bobbing in this massive body of water. So I keep swimming. I swim until my arms ache. I swim until I’m gasping for air and feel like I might sink, but I push, push, push because my only alternative is slavery.
But then two guards appear in my line of vision. They’re flying. No. They’re standing on boards that hover above the water. And my determination is no match for their speed. One reaches down, wraps his hand around my upper arm, and with little effort, yanks me out of the water, and hoists me over his shoulder. Then we’re flying, I mean hovering, back toward the Port.
It’s strange and terrifying, hovering above the water like this, at this speed. I would think it was thrilling if I wasn’t being sentenced to a life of slavery. Johnson told me about how slaves are treated like dirt. Worse than dirt. We’re an inconvenience to the Tavdorians, and they only allow us to live for the free labor we provide. They enjoy taking their anger out on us, Johnson said. They find sick release in our suffering.
I ignore the pounding in my head brought on from being hoisted upside down. The guards hover up a ramp into the Port, and a gate closes behind us.
Captivity. I never thought I would have to taste its sour flavor.
The guard slings me off his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. My body hits the ground with a thud.
“A runaway,” the guard, Denray, says. “You’re lucky Kalen told us not to shockband you while you were in the water, or you would be fried.”
The guard hands me off to some workers, and I’m led toward the building. Cool air hits me like a cold blast in winter when we walk through the doors of the Port. We step into a massive foyer, and I can’t keep myself from staring in awe at…everything. A fountain pours water into a crystal pool, the peaceful sound disguising what this place truly is. A banister wraps around the second floor, overlooking the foyer. The ceiling is a skylight dome. Everything is silver and crystal and beautiful. I’m led through more hallways until we reach a shower room. A Tavdorian employee strips off my clothes and tosses them into a trash bin, then ushers me into a stall where cold water sprays from the ceiling. My body tenses with shock at the cold, but the employee doesn’t waste any time as she scrubs every inch of my body.
When she’s finished, another worker hands me new clothes. I pull the off-white, light-weight tunic over my head. I’ve never worn anything so finely sewn and…soft. It’s different from the scratchy fabric I’m used to wearing. Short sleeves cover my shoulders, and the tunic reaches down to my knees. Two square pockets don the front. Plain and straight, the uniform hangs on my body like a sack. I slip the leather sandals on, but after walking around barefoot most of my life, the sandals feel confining and tight. Just another reminder that I’m now a slave.
The next room has a strange chair. Next to the chair is a metal table holding a set of needles and other instruments unfamiliar to me.
One of the Tavdorian workers jerks his chin toward a metal chair. “Sit.”
My heart’s beating too fast for comfort, but I do as I’m told. He straps my wrists to the chair, then runs his cold fingers across my arm, making me flinch.
“Where are your markings?” he asks.
“What markings?”
“Your previous tattoos?”
“I-I don’t have any.”
His mouth hardens. What I said only seemed to anger him. He picks up the contraption and sets to work on my arm. I grit my teeth against the pain.
I look down at the mark when he’s close to finishing. A cluster of five diamond-shaped stars. The same stars that were on the ship that brought me here. How ironic. How utterly and humorlessly ironic. Because stars are a sign of hope, and right now, I feel no hope. Only an aching despair that slowly consumes my spirit.
He finishes, places binding over the tattoo, and unstraps my wrists. And just like that, I’ve become the official property of Tavdora.
When we step outside, dry heat hits me like it’s radiating from a furnace. The sky has darkened to a bluish gray. Ahead, matching brown domes line the lot like giant boulders, all facing each other in a circle. All girded by a tall, green-wired fence. The worker unlocks the gate, then leads me to the dome farthest across the lot.
He places a marble-sized ball along a groove, and the door slides open. The only light comes from a circular opening in the highest part of the ceiling. Barred stalls filled with slaves from the other planets line the walls. How many planets have the parasites enslaved?
I’m shoved into the last stall with the other Humans, and the gate slides shut. The guard walks out, and I’m alone and scared, and despite the heat, I’m cold. The only sound is the occasional moaning that fills the air, the sound of hopeless souls mourning their loss. Leaning back against the wall, I sink down and pull my knees to my chest. Think of home. Think of life before I was captured. Think of how Josiah is nothing more than a son of a stray dog and how I blindly walked in to his stupid trap.
I would do anything for him.
I meant it when I thought it before. And that decision cost me my freedom. That decision cost Rika her life.
Dusk approaches, bringing with it the loneliness of night. The air quickly cools and goose bumps flare across my skin. I tighten into a ball, close my eyes, try to escape this horrible reality that is now my life, when voices echo outside. The door slides open. A group of about five Tavdorians march in, their features shadowed in the darkness. But when one speaks, I immediately know who it is.
Zimri.
“We have to set an example,” he’s saying, his voice clipped and cold as steel. He approaches my cell and slides the gate open. He searches the cell with a small but piercingly bright light until its beam lands on me. I curl into a tighter ball.
“You. Come out.” Before I can move he grabs my arm in a painful grip and swings me out of the cell. I stumble onto the pavement in the center of the dome. All eyes are on me, slave and Tavdorian alike.
“You obey orders when they’re given, understand?” Zimri snaps.
“Y-yes,” I breathe.
“Get the bucket,” he orders one of the guards. “Consider this your training, interns,” he tells the others with him. “When a fresh group of slaves arrive, you take the slowest one—or, in this case, the most rebellious one—and use them to set an example to the others.”
My stomach spins. I’m going to throw up. The guard sets a large metal bucket full of water in front of me, and Zimri kicks the backs of my legs in so my knees crack onto the hard pavement. He grabs a chunk of my hair and my heart is pounding. I’m not sure exactly what he’s planning on doing, but I’m starting to get an idea.
“We don’t beat the slaves,” Zimri says. “Because nobody wants to buy a bruised unit. What they do want is a tamed submissive. And that’s what this exercise is about.”
I don’t hear what he says next because his grip tightens around my hair until my scalp stings, and my head is shoved into the freezing water.