Chapter 17
Sofia
The smell of Vexis’s dirty clothes was beginning to give Sofia a headache, and she recoiled from the stench, her lips tilting down into a grimace. It smelled like a mixture of sour alien sweat, old sneakers, and something else—that same burning rubber and strawberry smell from the club.
She didn’t want to think about what that might be. Instead, she stretched her legs out and braced against the wall. It was about time she got up off the laundry room floor, she decided. And besides, she needed to keep moving.
Just before her comm had died, it had blinked the time as 4:03 a.m. Despite the panic that had kept her awake until now, Sofia was beginning to feel the adrenaline wearing off and her body catching up to itself.
Her bones felt heavy, her muscles weak, and her wrist and arm where Vexis had grabbed her were beginning to bruise. Pushing herself off the wall, Sofia managed to stand. Her thoughts, of course, were fixed on Zaraq.
Even though she’d told him in no uncertain terms to stay away, if she was honest with herself, she knew he wouldn’t. She wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her bruised arm and missing his touch. What they had was real, that much was undeniable. And even if he was a criminal in his past life, he wasn’t that person anymore. He wasn’t a coldhearted and ruthless individual. He was kind, he was caring, and most of all, he loved her.
Those words flitted around her mind like butterflies, and Sofia smiled, despite herself. He hadn’t said it, but she was sure. He loved her the same way she loved him.
A swell in her heart told her Zaraq would never leave her there at Vexis’s mercy, no matter what she’d told him about taking the weapon and getting away from all this. The thought made her more determined than ever to get out of there, though.
“If I can escape before he gets here…” she muttered to herself, letting her arms drop to her sides again. Although the chances seemed remote, she wasn’t giving up hope. “But how the hell am I gonna get out of here?”
She paced as she pondered, her bare feet sticking and unsticking on the tiled floor. They brought her to a stop in front of the door—the only way in or out of the laundry room.
Sofia had paid attention when Vexis had dragged her kicking and screaming from the pod, through the house, and into the room. She knew that breaking through that door would bring her straight out into the long hallway that led to the foyer. But that meant she’d likely pass Vexis or one of his guards on the way to her freedom.
On the other hand, it was her only chance at escape.
It’s worth a shot , she figured, stepping toward the door and laying her ear against it. The white-painted wood felt cool against her ear, cheek, and hands, and she closed her eyes to attune her hearing.
Outside she heard voices—at least two, maybe three men talking. But they were so far away that she couldn’t make out any words.
Good , she thought. If they were talking, she figured they might not hear her trying to break out. It also meant they were nowhere near the laundry room door. Drawing her head away, she instead trained her eye on the lock.
Unlike the high-security panel on the front door, this internal lock was much simpler. It consisted of little more than a square silver panel set into the doorjamb that Sofia recognized as a basic key fob reader. That gave her hope, and she glanced around the laundry room for something that might help in her search for freedom.
“Come on, come on,” she whispered as her eyes scanned what was probably once a gleaming white room but was now grimy and dirty. She vaguely wondered how much blood had been washed out of Vexis’s clothes in the black washer and dryer that took up one wall.
She suddenly shuddered at the thought that she may have been sitting in clothes soiled with the same sordid substance the entire time she’d been there. Her wide eyes flickered to the pile, squashed and indented with the shape of her body.
Just as quickly, they flickered away. She decided she didn’t want to know.
Instead, she set her sights on the rest of the room, sure that she’d be able to find something to bypass the lock.
On the wall opposite the machines, an open set of shelves overflowed with detergents and powders. Sofia crossed the room quickly, rummaging through its contents. She rifled past a packet of dryer sheets, tipped over a box of whitening powder, and got her hands sticky with some kind of heavy-duty blue stain remover, but nothing looked useful.
Finally, she turned to the washer and dryer set, which were half-obscured by yet another pile of dirty clothes. Out of desperation, she flung open the door to each, but they were empty, save for a single sock forgotten in the depths of the dryer’s barrel.
“Come on, there has to be something.” She said this last part a little too loudly and clapped her hand over her mouth in panic.
For a second, Sofia stood stock-still, her heart pounding in her chest. The last thing she needed was Vexis barging back into the room and harassing her some more. Or worse, figuring out her plan and binding her hands and feet for good measure. As the seconds ticked by, though, nothing happened.
Just to be sure, she crept toward the door again. When she pressed her ear there, she heard the men’s voices still echoing down the hall from the other side of the house. A deep exhale escaped her lips, and she turned back to the room once more, determined not to give up.
Apart from the washer, the dryer, that shelf, and way too many dirty clothes, though, there was nothing else in the room. Sofia paced anyway, hoping something would come to her, but every time her bare feet connected with the cold tile floor, she grew more and more frustrated.
Zaraq’s kind face flashed before her eyes, and she could almost feel his lips again. Worse, she could almost see him arriving at the house, could almost hear Vexis’s cruel laugh, and could almost see the hope drain from Zaraq’s eyes when he realized he’d given up his last chance at redemption.
Sofia shook her head. She couldn’t let that happen, but she didn’t know how to stop it, either. A surge of hopelessness rose in her, and in a sudden burst of pure frustration, she kicked at the clothes piled up in front of the washer, sending them skidding across the floor.
“Oh my god,” she gasped, her hands coming up to her mouth.
Her green eyes, which had been scrunched almost closed in her frustration, were now wide open and staring. With more than a little trepidation, she stepped forward, crouching in front of the drawer beneath the washer that had been obscured until now.
When she’d kicked the pile of clothes, the drawer had been pulled partly open, and her heart pounded as she caught a glimpse of something shiny inside.
The fragile hope that the sight of the drawer had fostered only grew in her as she pulled it open, and it burst into full bloom when her gaze landed on a collection of mismatched and rusty tools.
“Oh my god, yes, yes, yes,” she whispered to herself. It felt like her whole body was alive again. All the despondency she’d felt just moments before was now cast aside in the light of what she decided was ostensibly a miracle.
As she inspected the tools at her disposal, she chuckled quietly. It was obvious Vexis had severely underestimated her. To him, she was not a whole, complex, intelligent individual. Instead, she was just a woman, a bimbo, a piece of ass to be used and then discarded.
And what’s more, she was an Earthling.
Zaraq had told her, the day she’d gone to the casino, that she should be aware of the way her kind was viewed on Rikuus. The general consensus, according to Zaraq, was that Earthlings were something of a lesser species—harmless but generally uneducated, especially when it came to space travel.
Quietly pulling a pair of pliers from the drawer, Sofia had to agree with that last part at least. Compared to the things she’d learned since meeting Arccoo, landing on the moon and sending a couple of rovers to Mars seemed like child’s play. And that was more or less how the citizens of Rikuus treated them—like well-meaning but ignorant children.
Sofia shook her head, smirking. She might not come from a planet with an advanced space program nor a leg-up in galactic trade or high-tech weapons, but at the very least, they did have pliers. That and chisels, which she also extracted from the drawer with care.
With a grin still plastered on her face, she went to get up, only to turn again as something caught her eye. There, right beside the drawer and half-covered in a crusty sock, was something that looked an awful lot like a clothespin.
Sofia swapped the tools to her left hand and with her right, picked it up and inspected it.
Yep, definitely a clothespin. She grinned even wider. The small metal coil that held the thing together might be the missing piece to her plan.
With tools and the pin in hand, Sofia scurried over to the door. Her heart was pounding again, and one last time, she held her ear to the cool white wood. Only this time, she heard something that made her blood run cold.
She still couldn’t make out the words, but the voices were louder now. And not because they were closer. She heard yelling as two or three men shouted at each other, and she was certain—more than certain—that one of them was Zaraq. She’d know that voice anywhere. Even from behind the door of a laundry room in the house of the man who had ruined Zaraq’s life and seemed intent on twisting the knife.
Now more than ever, she knew she had to get out of there. But even though she wanted to hurry, it was clear that the only way to do this was to do it right. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her ear reluctantly away from the door and instead concentrated on the security panel.
She wished Elena could be there with her, but at the very least, some of her sister’s engineering know-how had rubbed off on her. With as much patience as she could muster, Sofia slipped the chisel under the cover of the panel and twisted. It took a few tries, but finally, the metal lid popped off.
For a second, it flipped through the air, away from the doorjamb, and Sofia’s heart jumped into her throat. She managed to catch it just before it clattered onto the floor, and the room remained in perfect silence. Except for the thundering in Sofia’s chest.
She promised herself to be more careful, setting down the cover and the chisel with infinite care. Inside the panel, a series of wires connected to a small white card.
It looked almost exactly like the circuit boards she’d seen back in high school when her science teacher had taught a whole class on electronics. Nothing from that class had stuck in her mind, and for a second, she panicked, wondering if she was fooling herself.
But then, Elena’s enthusiasm came flooding back to her, along with the memories of the rainy afternoon her sister had shown her a circuit she’d been working on. Though she was lightyears away from Sofia on the topic, Elena had managed to explain things in a way that really did make it sound interesting, and Sofia picked up the pliers, hoping she’d absorbed enough of those lessons over the years.
The circuit board had a series of glyphs labeling different connections, but they were all in Rikuan and without her comm to translate, she was flying blindly. As her eyes scanned the characters, though, they stopped on something that looked familiar.
A series of three round symbols stuck out to her, and she realized she’d seen them before. In fact, she’d seen that exact combination of glyphs in that exact order every single day since she’d been on Rikuus. It was the word that appeared every time she’d swiped open her hotel room door.
Opposite that was another symbol and she was sure she’d seen that one, too. It was the word that appeared on her hotel card reader once the door closed again.
An enormous grin spread over Sofia’s face as she marveled at her own luck.
Setting down the pliers again, and leaving the circuit board to hang loose at the wall, Sofia picked up the peg. She extracted the metal coil, bending the wire into a two-pronged shape. As she brought the wire up to the circuit board, willing her hand not to shake, she held her breath.
As carefully as she could, she held one prong to what she guessed was the power supply and the other to the glyphs for “open.”
The small click that rang through the laundry room almost made Sofia cry with relief. Instead, she let out the deep breath she’d been holding and made a mental note to give Elena an enormous hug when she got out of here.
As quickly as she could, she turned off the laundry room light and edged open the door. Outside, the hallway was dark, but she could hear the voices much clearer now.
“Do whatever you want to me, but I swear to the gods if you lay a finger on Sofia, it will be the end of you!”
Sofia’s breath hitched in her throat as Zaraq’s voice came echoing up the hall. Slowly, she peeked around the corner, her hand closing around the chisel as she did so. The only light was coming from the living room, spilling its warmth into the foyer and showing the silhouettes of four men. She could make out Vexis’s profile closest to her, his bald head round and stark against the light.
Her heart pounded as she gripped the chisel tighter, and she steeled herself. She had to take him down. She knew that. She wondered if the chisel was sharp enough to do any real damage, though. And what about the others?
Keeping her eyes trained on Vexis, she ran her finger across the tool’s edge. It was old and dull, scratchy with rust. She knew it would never work.
But she also knew she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try. With a deep breath, she stepped into the hallway, her bare feet still silent on the tiled floor.
That’s when she saw it.
On a small table in the hallway, a tasteful stone figure stared back at her. Some sort of angel, or at least the Rikuan equivalent. Its eyes seemed to gaze straight at her, but that was not what Sofia was looking at.
At the statue’s feet was a handbag. Even in the dark of the night, Sofia could see what color it was. Bright pink.