Chapter 12
ADRYEL
Any other time, Adryel would find all of this so amusing. Or a vivid dream or something.
The big aliens.
Delicious free food.
The fancy apartment.
They'd taken them to have some food since initially there was supposed to be a banquet after the selection, but that was destroyed due to the ship exploding. After getting things sorted, as best they could, anyway, they did feed them.
She always liked to get fed when she didn't have to pay for it.
The apartment they gave her was quite the place. Far nicer than what she had on Kente, to be sure. She didn't have to share it with anyone either, so there was that.
No one said anything about her having to pay for it, either.
She found it strange and wondered who was paying the bill for all this stuff.
Was it the Kantenans?
She always wondered about credits. Something that those with them didn’t think about. But when one didn't have a credit to pay the bills, money was always on the mind.
She and Janae had that in common.
A place like this back on any of the planets or moons in the Trinity Alpha Prime system would cost a ridiculous amount.
Made Adryel wonder if she should even sit on the furniture, for fear she'd damage it.
With a minimalistic design, the place's biggest draw was not the apartment itself, but the view. A wall of windows showed everything outside this tower. The mountains and cliffs were covered with green, lush trees and land. The varying color of foliage was quite beautiful to look at, honestly.
But the windows were also pointed toward the landing pad where the Galactic Alliance ship had landed.
And it would have been a beautiful sight was it not marred with smoke and the haze of the fires that were still being contended with below.
Like black billowing smoke coming up and scorching the air everywhere the foreigners had been.
Even overnight, the smoke blurred the dark air.
Still, it didn't stop Adryel from looking out there, and wondering what happened to those who fell.
Had they survived? Or were they taken by the fall?
The jungle below? Mentally, she went through a dozen scenarios of what could have been happening below the landing pads, and among the smoke.
Little flashing lights indicated where the droids contended with the fire. The mindless drones flew around, squelching any hotspot their sensors spotted. They looked like bugs from this distance.
Khalzin had showed her how to change the windows so she didn't have to see out if she didn't want to when he brought her here.
Yet, even when she did make them opaque, she still felt the pull to see.
It was like staring at an accident, or watching litigation.
She couldn't look away, just in case she missed something important.
Yet nothing important seemed to be happening.
What it was she looked for, she didn't know.
Maybe someone being caught? A giant sign in the night that said “I did this. Come get me!”
It was better than letting her mind wander too far into the guilt of the situation. She poured herself some tea and crossed to a chair to stare out into the night. And maybe not think about what was keeping her awake.
The apartment was in the same building as Janae. Khalzin had wanted the two of them to be near one another, so Janae would have a friend, he said. Adryel might have found it amusing and sweet if she wasn't getting more and more nervous by the minute, with no answers to anything.
She didn't sleep much, even though the bed was probably the most comfortable she'd ever had. And so quiet, it seemed almost unreal, which meant any sound would wake her immediately. Even on the transport here, a constant hum of the engines added a low buzz of noise everywhere. She got to where she didn’t hear it.
There was background noise on the ship.
Here, there really wasn't any.
Nothing to distract her from the images behind her eyelids. As soon as she closed them, she was back in her apartment, and she saw her friend. What was her friend, anyway, on the floor of her apartment.
She could hear the Rhysgarrds somewhere nearby. Like their laughter or their voices or something. She could feel it.
Then the memories would start firing. Every memory she swore didn't exist came back to her. Some she would never forget--would never admit to knowing, but she couldn't forget. It was like once they started coming to her, then they all flooded her.
She’d worked for the Rhysgarrds for a couple of years. Doing simple work. Errands. Service work. Nothing illegal about it.
But she also heard things.
And saw them, and the things they were doing that were illegal.
They conducted their business right in front of her. She knew exactly when rivals were killed or when deals were going down. She didn't want to be so knowledgeable about their activities, but they didn't bother hiding anything.
They trusted her.
Until they couldn't anymore.
It was her own damn fault.
Now they wanted to kill her because of what she might tell the authorities. She’d tried to hide back in the Trinity Alpha Prime system. After all, planets and moons were not exactly small.
Didn’t seem to work, even though she’d tried.
She thought she would be safe, here in space, in this Galactic Alliance program. But with this explosion, she wondered if she really was. Ship bombs? The crime bosses had the means to do it. They’d done it before, anyway.
Could they have tracked her here?
She thought about the policing agent that came by looking for her. If he--even if he was on the level, though she wasn't sure--saw where she was because of the Galactic Alliance Science Society's checks, then anyone could have seen the same requests and data.
And anyone could have tracked her.
She rubbed her head. It was enough to make her crazy.
Her eyes got hot again, and filled with tears. The idea that this happened because of her.
It made her sick.
The odds were high it was her fault, but still possible.
“Okay, I have to let this go,” she muttered to herself. Even if they knew where she was, they wouldn't possibly be able to track her here. Hell, she didn't know for sure where she was going until a week ago.
If they knew where she was going, say at the same time she knew, then they'd have to have contact with someone here to start setting up.
There was only so fast a ship could travel to get long distances in the galaxy.
The wormhole tunnels cut travel length down, but it would still take time to get this far out, get a bomb set up, and then turn around and get back to the inner core systems.
It's a lot of space to cover.
And a lot to think about. Still, she couldn't get past the feeling that it all tied together. The bombs and the crime lords.
“Deliriousness always tied things together,” she muttered to herself. “And lack of sleep makes one delirious.”
She knew that.
And she should go take a nap.
But she wasn't doing it. She could barely sleep. She was too tense and too scared.
She expected another something to blow up. Whether it was the building, her apartment, or even her drink. Anything could be rigged to go off.
And she wanted to smack herself for this crazed thinking.
She was made of stronger stuff than this.
It was the lack of sleep.
It had to be.
She needed to get out of her apartment for a while.
Staring at the windows where the landing pad was didn't help.
Adryel put on her shoes and headed for the door. To get out.
Where she was going to wander, she wasn't sure, but she needed to get out of the apartment. Maybe there was a common room she could sit in for a different location.
One that didn't have windows facing the landing pad.
She opened the apartment door, and for a moment, expected to see someone standing outside guarding her door, but there wasn't. If anything, the hallway looked fairly empty.
More of the simple, minimalist design out in the hallway as well. She started walking around, looking at the different doors. Hers had a five-digit number on the front, near the door, and she made herself memorize it so she would be able to find it again.
As she wandered around, she wondered how many more Galactic Alliance females were there. How far were they from Janae and Khalzin? He’d said they were close, but wasn’t very specific.
She also wondered about his friend, Stron. The big grumpy guy she'd met before. Was he around?
The hallway was quiet. Of course, it had gotten dark, and it was local night. Did they have a popular nightlife here? Was it more about the daylight?
“Surely there some kind of nightlife here,” she whispered to herself as some vague thoughts came to mind about different elements of life here.
“There are many nighttime activities,” came a male Kantenan voice. One of the few she instantly recognized.
She spun around. “Oh, it's you.” She put her hand on her hip.
Stron's gaze ran over her. He wasn't dressed in his formal clothing from before, instead, he wore simple galactic casual fashion--tunic and matching pants. It was a cross between exercise clothing and pajamas.
Honestly, it looked comfortable, and she didn't blame him for wanting to be more relaxed after the day's events.
“Shall I leave you, then?”
“No,” she replied, probably a bit too quickly, but what good was it to argue the point now? “I'm bored. You could show me around.”
“You should be back in your apartment, where it is safe for you.”
“And there it is,” she muttered.
“There what is?”
“That whole bossy thing you have going on,” she replied.
“I am not bossy.”
“You just told me to go back to my apartment.”
“I wish for you and the rest of the Galactic Alliance members to be safe.”
“How much safer can I get? I'm here, locked up in this tower, unable to go anywhere.”
“You should be in your residence.”
She sighed and waved her hand. “Really. Turn around. Walk away big grumpy Kantenan.”