Tethered

Chapter 1 - Feels Like Forever

Feels Like Forever

I am going to fucking kill my ex.

Dominik has outdone himself this time. Anxiety whorls in my stomach but I try to pull myself together. I need a plan. Something. Anything.

If I believed in a higher being, I’d have started praying a long time ago.

Anything. Anyone.

Taking a deep breath, I drag my hands down my face.

I’m not athletic, particularly stealthy, or good at subterfuge.

But I have no other option but to be enough for this.

Most of the warehouse is visible from where I’ve been crouched for the past twenty minutes and I peer around a thick, steel column.

The hangar is crisscrossed with tiers of catwalks.

If I were to shout, my voice would be nothing but a whisper in this vast space.

It only makes the ship more of a spectacle, hunkered in the centre like a notched arrow, just about skimming the ceiling.

It’s called the Midas, and it is towering, obsidian, and stupidly beautiful.

Its sleek, elongated shape has a streamlined design that comes to a point at the bow.

The hull has a metallic sheen that reflects light in a prismatic spectrum, the base colour like oil on water.

Expansive windows stretch out along the length of the ship.

I can’t wait to get as far away from this thing as possible.

With trembling hands, I quickly wipe away the raindrops collecting on my eyelashes.

I’m reluctant to look away for even a second.

Two of the walls, on opposing sides, had slid seamlessly back into alcoves, opening the space up to the elements.

Both the floor and I are now exposed to biting winds and the slash of a miserable downpour.

Rain drips down the back of my neck. I shiver as it trails, icy, down my spine.

But it doesn’t matter. Not the ache in my jaw from the chattering of my teeth, not the deep burn in my thighs from squatting, nor the bloody indents in my palms from my banked nails.

I crept onto this godforsaken compound and passed through my pain threshold into numbness a while ago.

The ship is exactly the kind of ostentatious thing the father of my child would buy.

It’s excessive in size, flourish and luxury.

It’s also a private vessel with a frequent flier license.

That means minimal cargo, basic crew, and weaponry that can only be used against asteroids.

Technically. And that’s why my heart is in my stomach and my stomach is in my arse.

There are ways to skirt interplanetary law, if one has influence and money. However, if a ship wants to dock again in the future, it has to comply with local regulations. Even though Dominik is a privileged, stubborn arsehole, he isn’t the type to blatantly flout the rules.

I say that with all the irony I can muster.

As a society, we’re close to leaving this planet behind, but being blacklisted is not what anyone wants.

That means having an appropriately licensed ship with accurate manifests and a compliant crew.

Legally, the Orbital Enforcement Division can spot-check anyone.

Surely, Dominik wouldn’t take more risks with Vee stowed onboard.

I think about the call I received earlier, and it curdles my stomach all over again.

Vee wasn’t due back from his father’s custody until today, so I went out last night.

I spent today deep in data analytics, blearily staring at my company-issued NanoSlate and avoiding all incoming messages on my personal one—bar one.

I only answered Opal’s call because she’s Dominik’s PA.

She contacts me often because he’s so damn unreliable.

I just assumed he’d passed on the drop-off coordination. Again.

If only it had been that.

Trepidation stirs deep in my bones as I stare at the behemoth in front of me, taking stock.

What I know about this ship comes from the excited titbits that Vee shared with me.

Thanks to him, I know that preparation for launch takes hours.

It seems I’ve managed to catch the tail end of the process.

I, while crouching here, have watched a dozen workers tending to their tasks, coming and going through some sort of underground hatch.

Now, though, only a few androids move about the hanger.

At one of the ship’s hatches, an AstraBot X.V detaches a pair of pipes, each thicker than my torso.

A metallic cart rolls up, and the droid uses articulated arms to slot the pipes into specially made niches in the surface.

Another droid works away under the ship, which stands on four humongous landing legs.

A shudder racks my body at the image of crawling under a ship weighing several hundred thousand kilos.

Then it hits me that all the people have disappeared because their jobs are complete.

They’ve probably retreated to a safe distance for the launch.

My heart rate, already elevated, hammers away.

Those droids may be expensive, but they’re not invincible, which means they’ll also be finishing up and disappearing soon.

This is probably my best, and only, chance to sneak onto the Midas.

Just like that, I can’t summon a single drop of saliva.

My hiding spot is behind the aft of the ship. The lip of the cargo bay door sits flush against the ground, and I’ll have to creep up and around to get to the ramp.

My company uses an older, cheaper version of these same droids.

I’m an electrical engineer but I don’t personally interface with them, though I do know a little bit about them.

They’re carefully autonomous in that they’re configured for a specific task and only that task.

Fear of AI means droids have a short leash these days.

I go to shuffle a little closer, trying to remember whether these ones can be programmed for security.

Unfortunately, I forget just how numb my body is and nearly topple over as agony shoots through locked-up muscles.

Biting back a yelp, eyes watering, I tip over onto all fours.

Somehow, I manage to crawl forward on sparking limbs.

I don’t recall ever hearing that the droids doubled as watchdogs.

Hopefully.

The one at the hatch has a new cart and is now loading up, what I assume are, fuel cells.

The droid under the ship is invested in its task, and I spy a flash of colour in its quick hands.

There are two more droids; one of them making checks of the exterior hatches, and the other collecting detritus from the crew’s earlier machinations.

Whether they see me or not, I have to go now.

I would be ill-prepared for this on a good day, let alone after a night of heavy drinking.

It was the tension in Opal’s jaw that made me clamp my hands around my slate as if I could yank her into the room with me.

Immediately, I knew something had happened to Vee.

A mother’s instinct. I was out of my seat before I’d even asked.

His name pulsed through my head like an alarm: Vee, Vee, Vee.

Reaching for the door in a blind panic, I was prepared to run to him, wherever he was. And he was supposed to be at school.

Opal’s smooth voice managed to break through my panic. “He’s okay, Marlowe, he’s okay.”

I had to slam my back against the wall to stop myself from collapsing in relief.

Vee is ten and more than capable of spending a week away from me—I’m not a Velcro mum.

But the grim twist of Opal’s mouth, when her expressions are usually as blank as a metal sheet, spoke volumes.

My heart continued to pound in my throat.

Even if Vee wasn’t hurt, something clearly wasn’t right.

Opal has worked for Dominik nearly as long as Vee’s been alive—making her just as much a part of this dynamic, if not more, as Dominik—but we are not friends. We don’t just call each other.

Her face only bloomed further, the holo so defined I could count every crease of the frown etched into her skin.

She’d been given orders to collect Vee from school instead of sending an autonav like usual.

At first, she hadn’t thought much about it; Dominik had left for Mars the day before on a friend’s ship, claiming last-minute business needs.

But when he told Opal to bring Vee, along with all his belongings, to the Gryphon hangar on the outskirts of the city. .. Opal did some snooping.

“The Midas is scheduled to leave for Suryavana at six this evening,” Opal said. “Vee’s on the passenger manifest.”

Dominik has a sprawling compound on the Martian colony, Suryavana. On the occasions we’ve exchanged more than three words with each other, it’s never come up. If it doesn’t involve Vee, I don’t care what he does, and I’ve always made that clear to Dominik.

Suddenly he’d decreed, as though Vee was an afterthought, that our son would move out there.

Kidnapping is the technical term here. Now I’m crouched in the shadow of this huge fucking ship, hoping to find Vee before it launches him into space.

Great. Wonderful. Brilliant. I’m not sweating through my clothes or forcing back tears at all.

What worries me most is not getting on that ship; it’s being caught sneaking onto it.

Dominik is wealthy and connected. Getting caught slinking around on his property, mother of his child or not, opens me up to legal action.

He’s petty like that. He could take me to court again; this time winning full custody by painting the trespassing mother as irresponsible, unstable or unsafe.

I don’t want to give him any ammunition to use against me. I can’t.