CHAPTER SIX

MARA

Waking in her new bed the first morning, she had been a suffering mass of knots and kinks. Gymari had taken one look at Mara’s sunken face and dead eyes, and sent her to get a meal before assigning her to the laundry room. Mara’s task had been to sort a mountain of clothing by item and size.

All morning, Mara had tried to figure out the purpose of each random scrap of fabric. The bipedal pants and shirts were easy. Even some of the quadruped items were obvious. But the clothing that appeared to be tangled fishing net? The tube-like cowl that she couldn’t fold into a neat bundle? The hat shaped like a tree’s roots? She had no clue, but she did her best to place items into logical piles.

She spent her lunch break studying the creatures around her, trying to figure out how their clothing fit together, so when she returned to the pile, she made more educated guesses.

The next day, Gymari set her to scrubbing clothes with a cleansing dust. Mara moved the dirty piles into giant barrels, dumped scoops of powdery chemicals over the clothes, and hand-cranked the barrels until the dust absorbed bacteria and odors. Then she cranked the barrels some more until the dust sifted out to be reused on the next load.

That night, the skin on Mara’s hands peeled off in strips. Luall took pity on her, treated her hands with a salve and wrapped them with bandages before bed.

“Don’t handle the dust, okay?” Luall pulled a pair of old aviator gloves out from her stash and offered them to Mara.

“Thanks,” Mara muttered, wondering what the salve, bandages, and gloves would cost her. I just keep racking up debts.

The first week in Haven was a haze of aching muscles, hurried meals, and back-breaking work. Mara kept her head down and her eyes up, studying the world around her through her lashes. She watched, she learned, and, bit by bit, she settled into her new routine.

To her disappointment, Luall flitted in and out of the communal sleeping room as she wished, coming to play with the other ladies at night, but not staying in her own bed. Fortunately, Clez also had other sleeping arrangements, and Mara rarely saw her either.

Some nights, she lay in her bed, listening to the aliens chat while they played the token game called Casters. Unlike her first night in her bed, her eyes stayed dry and she fell almost immediately asleep.

When she rolled out of bed the next morning, she paused for a moment. Instead of the usual chatter and good-natured jibing, the workers were sullen, dressing in silence.

Gymari found her at breakfast. “We’re moving to sanitation today.”

Mara choked down her mouthful of bread. “Pardon? What happened to laundry?”

“Done all we can. We’ll have to make do with what we’ve washed.” Gymari cursed. “Let’s pray we didn’t miss any mites.”

Her skin crawled. “Is that what we were doing? Killing bed bugs?”

“Precautionary. Infestations on Haven get serious quickly, whether bugs or illness.” Gymari jerked her head to the side. “Finish up. Go to sanitation. Gotta scrub out the sewer pipes and flush the system before the shut down.”

“What shut down?”

Gymari waved her hand. “Just report down to the Left Hall. Told them I’m sending my best worker.”

Best worker? Mara breathed in deeply and sat up. Gymari noticed!

“Don’t be late,” Gymari said, turning away.

“Wait! Who do I ask for?” But Gymari was already gone.

Mara stared at the plate of food in front of her. Sewer pipes. She didn’t think anything could be worse than the laundry dust, but the thought of mucking out alien sewage systems made her breakfast lurch in her stomach.

Her belly still roiled when she left the galley. She took a moment to orient herself. The Left Hall. She bit her lip. Even after a week, she didn’t know half the areas of Haven. Clearly the Left Hall should be on the left. She spotted a slouchy alien turning to the left of her. If anyone has a hang-dog expression about cleaning up sewage, it’s that guy.

Without a word, Mara followed the alien down a side tunnel. As they walked, Mara began to sweat. She rolled up her sleeves, and undid the top clasp of her overalls. Certain areas of Haven were always warmer than others. In fact, last night, she had tossed aside her blanket.

Foot traffic petered out the further they went, and soon, only she and the stranger walked down the hallway. The walls began to close in, and the lights grew dimmer. Mara rubbed her damp palms against her thighs, aware of how quiet it had become. To her horror, the alien began shooting glances over his shoulder at her. In a panic, Mara dove down the nearest corridor and walked briskly to the far end.

She strained her ears to hear if the alien followed her. When she peeked over her shoulder to check if the slouchy alien had followed her, she tripped over a pair of feet sticking out of the wall.

“By the moon,” snapped the owner of the feet, his head encased in the pipes at the side of the corridor. “Watch yourself!”

“Sorry,” Mara stammered out. “I-” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes widened. It can’t be.

“It’s about time you showed up. Hand me the wrench.”

Mara bit her lip. It is. Heaven help me.

“Wrench,” he repeated. “Hand it to me.”

It’s him. It’s Syrek.

As if hearing his name in her mind, he stuck his head out of the hatch and stared up at her. For a moment, their eyes were locked, her brown ones lost inside his jewel-like ones. Her breathing seemed unnaturally loud in the silence of the tunnel. Even on his hands and knees, covered in grease, he made her heart jump. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or something else that made her want to turn and run.

He slowly sat back, resting on his heels. He looked her up and down, and she felt herself straightening under his gaze. The top half of his work overalls was unzipped and tied around his waist, leaving his skin bare. The swirls of gray continued down his neck and across his broad chest. Even from this distance, she could tell his skin wasn’t smooth, but slightly textured. Her fingertips itched to run along his muscles and feel for herself.

“I need it,” he said. “Are you going to give it to me?”

His suggestive tone snaked around her like ropes, locking her in place. “P-pardon?”

“The wrench,” he said. “It’s over there.”

An open toolbox sat on the far side of the corridor, beside a plastic bottle of water. “Oh!”

Mara dove for it and began scrambling through the tools. She tried to remember what a wrench looked like, but nothing in the box resembled the vague notions she had of a TV mechanic’s tools. While her hands moved through the objects inside, she felt Syrek’s eyes boring into her back.

Time stretched out uncomfortably. Finally, she dropped her head and rested her hands on the sides of the case. “I-I don’t know what it looks like,” she whispered.

“It has blue stripes along the side,” he said. She expected him to mock her, but his voice was flat, like he had tested her and found her wanting.

Bitterness bit at her as she returned to her searching.

“This?” She held up a cylindrical tube with a gear system on one end.

“Yes.”

It took all her strength to hand it to him, but he took it with a single hand, and tossed it casually before sliding back into the hatch.

Mara took a moment to appreciate the curve of his backside and the way the stitching on the seams of his pants strained. She averted her eyes, focusing instead on the wall in front of her. She tugged her overalls into place, and clenched her hands in front of her. Her ears burned, and her chin wobbled.

Should I go? It’s clear that I can’t help him.

Yet Gymari had said she was sending her best worker to help Syrek. She couldn’t let Gymari down.

More than that, she couldn’t let Dannica down. Working her way up in the ranks was all she could do to work toward freedom.

Mara took a deep breath.

I can use him.

“What else do you need?” she asked, trying to keep her words steady.

Syrek froze in the pipes for a moment, before resuming his efforts. “I’ll need a pan. Gonna have some drips once I get this infernal pipe loose.”

The toolbox didn’t contain a pan, but it did contain a lid. She crouched down beside him and slid it under his arm. “There.”

“Good.” His fingers brushed hers when he took it, and a jolt traveled up her arm and shimmied down her spine.

She scurried back to her position beside the toolbox. Her hand burned where he had touched it, not just from the surprising physical contact, but from the heat radiating off his skin.

He’s on fire.

She studied his sturdy back, watching the muscles work as he struggled with the pipes inside the hatch. Thin strips of lighter bands crisscrossed his back. At first she thought they were part of his markings, but then the truth dawned.

Scars.

“You’re staring.”

“I’m not.” The words slipped out before she meant to speak.

“My father,” he replied, as if he were remarking on the weather. It took her a moment to make the connection.

Her childhood hadn’t been perfect. Her father had divorced both Mara’s mother and his next wife before Mara had turned six. Benevolent neglect, yes, but beatings? That level of violence was foreign to her. Suddenly, she was grateful that her father traveled on business trips for most of the year.

Lost in her thoughts, Mara jumped when Syrek cursed. “What’s wrong?”

Syrek backed out of the hatch and threw the wrench down the hall. It clanged and bounced before settling on the floor. Syrek sat on the floor cross-legged and wiped his face on a dangling sleeve. “I can’t reach the valves.”

Mara wrapped her arms around her legs. There didn’t seem to be a proper response to that.

Syrek leaned against the wall. The grease had mixed with his sweat, streaking his skin in darker smears of black. Although she hadn’t seen him in a week, he looked different. Worn.

He’s pushing himself hard.

Her father had pushed her to work harder through his sharp tongue. Had Syrek’s father used a lash of a different kind to motivate his son?

Which one cuts deeper, I wonder?

She handed him the water bottle.

“My gratitude,” he muttered, before he drank deeply. With a sigh, he recapped the bottle. “I shall have to order Hatcher to send one of her children to finish the job.”

Children? Mara straightened. “You want to send kids in there?”

“They are used to this kind of work.”

Mara shook her head. “No. I can do it. What needs to be done?”

He raised his eyes to her. “It will be no bother to them.”

“They’re children,” she said. “I can do it. I’m small.”

Again his eyes flicked over her body, and her cheeks warmed. “You are not that small.”

“Smaller than you,” she said, raising her chin. He brushed his thumb along his lip, watching her face. She met his gaze, and even though her knees wanted to knock together, she kept her head up. “Let me try. I can do it.”

He rolled to his feet in a fluid motion and bowed, extending his hand to the hatch. “Go right ahead, my lady.”

Mara rubbed her hands against her thighs. She crawled forward and peered into the darkness of the hatch. “What do I do?”

Syrek crouched beside her and began describing the mechanisms inside. She needed to find a valve and turn it.

“To the right. Not the left, the right.” He handed her a pair of vice-grips. “Got it?”

“Simple enough,” Mara said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.

Syrek handed her a flashlight and she crawled into the hatch. It was a tight fit, but she inched her way forward. The heat was stifling inside. She blinked sweat from her eyes until she spotted the valve. She tried to close it by hand first, but hissed when the heat of the valve scorched her fingertips. It took all her strength and weight leaning onto the vice-grips, but she closed it.

She emerged from the hatch, her face flushed from heat and triumph. Her braid had come undone, and her hair flopped into her eyes, sticking to her skin.

Syrek leaned against the far wall, studying the toolbox. A flash of guilt on his face made her wonder if maybe he had been studying her ass as she crawled back out. But no, that couldn’t be. When he looked at her, his eyes were cool and calculated.

With a gleam in her eye, she placed a hand on her cocked hip and brandished her tool. “Done!”

“Excellent,” he replied, stepping closer.

The intensity in his gaze made her fumble the vice-grips. A smile curved his lips with a sensuality that made her knees tremble. He came close enough for his breath to brush the stray strands of her hair.

“There is one other task you must perform for me.”