Chapter 3 #2
They were big—not as big as some aliens I'd seen on the station, but big enough—and they moved with casual violence that told me they were used to taking what they wanted.
Two looked vaguely humanoid, despite their deep red skin.
Their features twisted by genetic modifications or radiation or just the wrongness of this place.
The third was something else entirely—scaled, with eyes that reflected light like an alligator.
"Well, well," one of them said, his voice rough and amused. "Fresh meat."
I took a step back, my fingers tightening on the water bottle like it could protect me. "I'm looking for Fange City."
"Lucky you," the scaled one said, showing teeth that were too sharp, too many. "We're headed that way. Persico likes to know when new arrivals show up. Especially pretty ones."
The way he said "pretty" made my skin crawl. Made me want to scrub myself clean, run, fight, do anything except stand there while they looked at me like I was something they could consume.
Persico. I knew from the Prime's intel that he was a crime boss who'd carved out territory in this hellscape and ruled it with brutality that made even the other warlords nervous.
A nasty sort, the Prime had said, her voice flat and clinical. As if "nasty" could encompass the kind of monster who thrived in a place like this.
But I had no choice. The wasteland stretched for miles in every direction, and I had one bottle of water and no idea how to survive out here. Fange City was my only option.
"Fine," I said, keeping my voice level. "Take me to Persico."
They laughed—a sound that hadn't a thing to do with humor. One grabbed my arm, his grip bruising, and hauled me toward the transport.
The journey into Fange City was a descent into hell.
The transport rattled and groaned, its engine making sounds that suggested it was held together by spite and desperation. I sat wedged between the two red-skinned males, their bodies pressing against mine in a way that made my skin crawl.
They didn't talk to me—just to each other in a language my translator didn't recognize, voices carrying an edge of cruelty that needed no translation. Sometimes they laughed, and when they did, they looked at me, and I could only imagine what they found amusing.
The one on my left shifted, spreading his legs wider, and his thigh pressed harder against mine.
Deliberate. The heat of him seeped through the climate-adjusting fabric of my uniform, and I felt my stomach turn over.
I tried to lean away, to create even a centimeter of space, but the one on my right was a solid wall of muscle and unwashed flesh. There was nowhere to go.
The air in the transport was thick with their smell—sweat and something acrid, chemical, mixed with the stale reek of alcohol on their breath. Every inhalation felt like coating my lungs with filth.
The scaled one—the driver—glanced back through the grimy partition, and his reflective eyes caught mine.
He said something in that guttural language, and the males on either side of me laughed again.
The sound vibrated through their chests, through the points where their bodies touched mine, and I had to swallow hard against the bile rising in my throat.
Don't react. Don't show fear. Don't give them anything.
The one on my right shifted, and his hand—thick-fingered, calloused—dropped to rest on his own thigh. Except his thigh was pressed against mine, and his knuckles grazed the outside of my leg. Light. Almost casual.
My muscles locked, every nerve screaming at me to jerk away, to shove his hand off, to do something. But I forced myself to stay still, to keep my breathing even, to stare straight ahead at the grimy window like I hadn't noticed.
He said something—low, amused—and his knuckles pressed harder, dragging slightly against the fabric of my uniform. A test. Seeing what I'd do. Seeing if I'd freak.
I counted my breaths. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. A meditation technique I'd learned years ago, back when panic attacks were a regular occurrence after discovering who Hewes really was. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
His hand moved away, but the damage was done.
Now I was hyperaware of every point of contact—the press of shoulders, the heat of thighs, the way the transport's rattling made their bodies shift against mine in a rhythm that felt obscene.
I felt their eyes on me even when I wasn't looking, sensed the assessment happening, the calculations being made about what I was worth, what they could take.
This was just the beginning. I knew that with sick certainty.
The predatory interest I'd seen when they first found me—that wasn't going away.
It was going to get worse. And I was going to have to endure it, swallow it, accept it, because the alternative was dying alone in the wasteland before I ever got an attempt at Hewes.
My jaw ached from clenching. My hands were fists in my lap, nails digging into my palms hard enough to leave marks. But my face stayed neutral. My breathing stayed steady.
Fange City grew larger as we approached, and with every meter, my horror deepened.
It wasn't a city. It was a monument to desperation, a tumor grown from the wreckage of a thousand crashed ships.
Structures jutted at impossible angles, their foundations nothing but twisted metal and luck.
Bridges made from salvaged plating connected buildings that had no business being connected, swaying under the weight of foot traffic.
Smoke rose from dozens of points, black and oily, adding to the miasma that hung over everything.
The streets—if you could call them that—were narrow canyons between walls of scrap metal, crowded with beings of every species I'd ever seen and dozens I hadn't.
They moved with the wary tension of people who knew violence could erupt at any moment, that survival here was measured in heartbeats and the ability to be more dangerous than whoever was looking at you was the only way to stay alive.
We passed what looked like a market—stalls cobbled together from debris, selling things I couldn't identify and didn't want to.
Bodies lay in the shadows between structures, and I couldn't tell if they were sleeping, dead, or something in between.
The smell intensified—rot and chemicals and burning plastic and waste and despair.
The transport stopped in front of a building that dominated the center of Fange City—a massive structure that had once been a luxury space liner, its sweeping curves and reinforced hull plating still visible beneath layers of grime and modification.
Guards stood at the entrance, armed with weapons that could vaporize a person.
"Out," one of my captors said, hauling me from the transport with enough force that I stumbled.
They marched me through the entrance, past guards who looked at me with predatory interest, into a building that was somehow worse than the city outside.
The interior was a maze of corridors and chambers, all of it cobbled together from salvaged parts, all of it reeking of violence and fear and power that came from being willing to do anything to maintain control.
The red-skinned males drug me through a dark corridor, down a steep incline, further into darkness until we emerged into a chamber that took my breath away.
It was huge, the ceiling soaring overhead, supported by structural beams that groaned under the weight.
The walls were decorated with trophies—weapons mostly, but also what looked like pieces of armor, and things I didn't want to examine too closely.
At the far end, on a platform raised above the floor, sat a throne.
It was meshed together from scrap metal and salvaged ship parts, welded into something that was part chair, part statement, part warning. And sitting on it was the biggest creature I'd ever seen.
Persico.
He was Kerzak—I knew from the briefings, the crime lord who ran Fange City with an iron fist and complete disregard for mercy. But knowing and seeing were two different things.
He was massive, easily eight feet tall even sitting down, his body covered in thick fur that was matted and dark.
His face was ursine—bear-like—with a broad muzzle and eyes that gleamed with intelligence and cruelty in equal measure.
When he smiled, showing fangs as long as my fingers, I recalled uneasily that many whispered the Kerzak had a taste for human flesh.
But what struck me more than his size was his stillness.
Hewes moved with violent energy barely contained—always on the verge of explosion.
Persico didn't move at all, as if he'd learned long ago that true power didn't require constant motion.
He simply was, and that presence alone was enough to make everyone around him smaller.
"Well," he said, his voice a rumble I felt in my chest. "What do we have here?"
One of my captors shoved me forward, and I stumbled, barely catching myself. "Found her in the wasteland, boss. Fresh off an Alliance ship. Thought you'd want her."
Persico leaned forward, his dark eyes tracking over me with the kind of assessment that made me feel like meat on a hook. "Human female," he said, and something in his tone—interest, calculation, hunger—made my stomach turn. "Rare commodity on Palaydium. What's your name, little human?"
I opened my mouth to answer, to say something that might buy me time, might give me leverage in this nightmare—
And then I heard footsteps behind me.
Slow. Deliberate. The sound of someone who knew they had all the power in the room.
I turned, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to crack bone, and watched Declan Hewes emerge from the shadows.
For one second—one perfect, impossible second—hope flared in my chest.
This was it.
The plan could work. I could get close. I could—
Then I saw his face.