Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The streets were eerily quiet as they left the landing pad behind.
Melissa walked close to Becsul, Robbie secured in an improvised sling against her chest, trying not to stare at the ruins around them.
The buildings here had been elegant once—she could see it in the decorative stonework, the graceful arches, and the remnants of what might have been gardens now choked with strange, dark-leaved plants.
People lived here, she thought. Families. Children. And then the plague came, and they all just… left.
Or they didn’t leave. Couldn’t leave. They died in their homes, in their beds, while the disease burned through them like fire.
She shivered despite the warmth of the air.
“It’s not much farther.” Becsul’s voice was low, pitched to carry only to her. His tail brushed lightly against her leg in a reassuring gesture. “There’s a residential complex at the end of this street. One of my… contacts keeps a few rooms maintained for situations like this.”
“Situations like fleeing arrest warrants for treason?”
“Situations requiring discretion.”
“That’s a diplomatic way to put it.”
Behind them, Sarah and Katie walked hand in hand, the mother’s pace carefully matched to her daughter’s shorter stride.
Katie still hadn’t spoken, but her eyes moved constantly, taking in the abandoned buildings, the overgrown streets, and the alien sky above them.
Melissa thought that was probably a good sign.
Awareness was better than the blank stare she’d worn on the shuttle.
Wei-Lin brought up the rear, her posture alert, and her gaze constantly scanning for threats. She’d found a length of pipe somewhere and carried it with the easy familiarity of someone who knew how to use improvised weapons.
We make quite a group, she thought. A scientist, a soldier, a botanist, a woman and her daughter, and a baby. The universe’s strangest escape party.
The residential complex loomed ahead—a squat, blocky structure that had clearly been designed for function over form. Unlike the more ornate buildings around it, this one seemed almost aggressively plain, its walls unadorned and its windows narrow and reinforced.
“Worker housing,” Becsul explained as they approached. “Built during the industrial expansion, before the plague. The walls are thick, the rooms are small, and there’s only one entrance.”
“Easy to defend,” Wei-Lin observed.
“That was the idea.”
He led them around to a side door, partially hidden by overgrown vegetation. A quick manipulation of the lock and the door swung open.
Inside, the air was stale but breathable.
Emergency lights flickered on as they entered, casting everything in a dim amber glow that made her think of sunset.
The corridor was narrow, the walls close, and the ceiling low enough that Becsul had to duck slightly.
Doors lined both sides, most of them sealed, their surfaces dusty and undisturbed.
But at the end of the corridor, one door stood slightly ajar, and light—real light, not the emergency glow—spilled through the gap.
Becsul pushed it open.
The room beyond was small, as promised, but surprisingly comfortable.
Simple furnishings—a bed, a table, several chairs—had been arranged with care, and someone had recently cleaned the floors and walls.
A connected doorway led to what looked like a second, similar room, and beyond that, Melissa could glimpse a third.
“Three rooms,” he said. “Basic facilities, but functional. There’s water, food supplies, and a secure communications terminal if we need it.”
“Who maintains this place?” Wei-Lin asked, suspicion clear in her voice.
“Someone who owes me a debt and asks no questions.” His tone made it clear that further explanation would not be forthcoming. “Rest here. All of you. I need to make contact with the freighter captain, and that’s best done in person. He doesn’t trust electronic communications.”
“You’re leaving?” She heard the note of alarm in her own voice and hated herself for it. She wasn’t some helpless damsel. She’d survived weeks of captivity, experimentation, terror. She could handle a few hours alone.
But his hand found hers immediately.
“Only for a little while. Two hours at most.” His eyes searched her face, and the tenderness in them made her breath catch. “I’ll be back before nightfall. I promise.”
“And if you’re not?”
“Then Wei-Lin knows the location of my contact’s ship.” He glanced at the other woman. “The southern docks, berth seventeen. Tell him Becsul sent you, and show him this.”
He pressed something into Wei-Lin’s hand—a small metal disc, engraved with symbols Melissa didn’t recognize. Wei-Lin studied it for a moment, then nodded and tucked it into her pocket.
“I don’t plan on needing this.”
“Neither do I.” Becsul turned back to her. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone except me, and if something happens—if you hear alarms, or voices, or anything that sounds like a search—there’s an emergency exit in the third room. It leads to the old maintenance tunnels.”
“More tunnels.”
“This planet was built on tunnels.” A hint of a smile touched his lips. “You’ll get used to them.”
He kissed her—quick and fierce, a promise more than a farewell—and then he was gone, the door closing behind him with a soft click.
She stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed door, her fingers pressed to her lips where the warmth of his mouth still lingered.
Two hours, she told herself. He’ll be back in two hours.
Behind her, she heard Sarah settling Katie onto one of the beds, murmuring something about rest and safety and how brave she’d been. She heard Wei-Lin checking the emergency exit, testing the locks, and doing all the practical things that needed to be done.
And she stood there, holding her sleeping son, and realized that for the first time she felt as if they might actually make it.
It was terrifying.
The hours passed in a strange, suspended way, like time itself had forgotten how to move properly.
She explored the rooms with the methodical thoroughness that had served her well in her medical career.
She catalogued the supplies—dried food packets, water containers, basic medical supplies, a change of clothes that wouldn’t fit any of them but might be useful for trade—and mapped the emergency exits in her mind.
She fed Robbie, changed him, sang to him softly until he fell asleep again.
And all the while, her thoughts circled back to Becsul.
What if he doesn’t come back?
The question wouldn’t leave her alone. She tried to push it away and focus on practical matters, but it kept returning, a dark undertow beneath her surface calm.
What if Naran’s people find him? What if the freighter captain betrays him? What if he gets hurt, and there’s no one to help him, and I just sit here in this tiny room waiting for someone who’s never coming back?
She’d been alone before. Had chosen it, even—artificial insemination, single motherhood, the deliberate construction of a family that depended on no one but herself. She’d told herself it was strength, self-sufficiency, the ultimate expression of female independence.
Now she wondered if it had been fear.
Fear of depending on someone. Fear of trusting someone. Fear of loving someone who might leave, might die, might simply decide one day that she wasn’t worth the trouble.
But he came back, she reminded herself. Every time. He came back to the cell, he came back after Robbie’s fever, he came back when that guard had me cornered. He keeps coming back.
She didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know how to reconcile her carefully constructed self-reliance with this unfamiliar feeling of… what? Need? Desire? Something deeper, something scarier?
Love, her mind supplied, and she flinched away from the word like it had burned her.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
She turned. Wei-Lin stood in the doorway between the rooms, arms crossed, her expression unreadable.
“Sorry?”
“Your face.” Wei-Lin moved into the room, settling into one of the chairs with the easy grace of someone who was comfortable in her own body.
“It’s doing that thing where your eyebrows get all frowny and your mouth does this—” She demonstrated, pursing her lips and furrowing her brow in an exaggerated expression of worry. “—and it’s making me nervous.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re worrying about him.” It wasn’t a question. “The captain. Whether he’ll come back.”
Melissa was silent for a moment, then sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to anyone with eyes.” Wei-Lin’s tone softened slightly. “For what it’s worth, I think he will. Come back, I mean. That male is devoted to you in a way that’s almost embarrassing to watch.”
“We’ve only known each other for a few weeks.”
“Time doesn’t mean much when it comes to connection.” Wei-Lin shrugged. “I knew my husband for six years before I admitted I loved him. A waste of six years, if you ask me. I should have just kissed him the first time I wanted to and saved us both the trouble.”
“Your husband—” She hesitated. “Is he…?”
“He’s dead.” Wei-Lin’s jaw tightened. “We were supposed to be on our honeymoon. A research cruise through the Galapagos. We were three days out when the Vedeckians came. They took me and killed him when he tried to stop them.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I plan to make them pay.” She said it with the matter-of-fact certainty of someone who had decided, absolutely and irrevocably, that failure was not an option. “They picked the wrong woman to kidnap.”
“They picked the wrong women,” she corrected.
“Point taken.”
They sat in companionable silence for a few moments.
Through the open doorway, she could still hear Sarah’s voice—low and soothing, reading something aloud to Katie.
The girl had finally started talking, just a little, in the last hour.
Asking for water. Asking when they could sleep.
Small things, but signs of life returning.
“The other one—Sarah—she seems to be holding up better than I expected,” Wei-Lin said eventually. “Considering what they used her daughter for.”
“She’s stronger than she looks.” Melissa thought about the pale woman’s quiet determination, and the way she’d held herself together even when facing armed guards and chaos. “We all are, I think. When we have to be.”
“Mmm.” Wei-Lin studied her. “And you? How are you holding up? Really?”
It was the kind of question she would have deflected a few weeks ago. She would have smiled and said fine and changed the subject. But something about this place, this moment, the strange intimacy of shared danger, made her want to answer honestly.
“I’m terrified,” she admitted. “I’m exhausted.
I’m angry in a way that I’ve never been angry before, and I don’t know what to do with it.
” She looked down at Robbie, sleeping peacefully in the crook of her arm.
“But I’m also… hopeful? Which is scarier, honestly. Hope means there’s something to lose.”
“Hope is what keeps us fighting,” Wei-Lin said quietly. “Fear is useful, but it’ll only carry you so far. Hope is what gets you the rest of the way.”
“That’s surprisingly optimistic for someone who threatened to sue the entire Patrol.”
“Optimism and vengeance aren’t mutually exclusive.” Wei-Lin stood, stretching. “Get some rest, if you can. Something tells me we’re going to need it.”
She disappeared back into the other room, leaving Melissa alone with her thoughts and her sleeping son.
He’ll come back, she told herself again, settling onto the narrow bed, Robbie tucked warm and safe against her side. He always comes back.
And if he didn’t—if the worst happened—she would find a way to survive. For Robbie. For the other women. For herself.
But gods, she hoped he came back.
The door opened two hours and seventeen minutes after Becsul left.
She was on her feet before she was fully awake, her body responding to the sound before her mind caught up. Wei-Lin appeared in the doorway behind her, the pipe raised and ready.
But it was Becsul who stepped through, and the relief that flooded through her was so intense it made her knees weak.
“You came back.”
“I told you I would.” He crossed to her in two strides, his arms wrapping around her—careful of Robbie, always careful of Robbie—and for a long moment she just stood there, breathing him in, feeling the solid warmth of his body against hers.
“The captain?” Wei-Lin asked, lowering her pipe.
“Contacted. He’s willing to help.” Becsul pulled back slightly, his eyes meeting hers. “We leave at nightfall. Four hours from now. He’ll smuggle us aboard as cargo, get us past the orbital checkpoints, and drop us at a neutral station in the Outer Colonies.”
“And then?”
“And then we figure out the next step.” His tail wound around her waist, holding her close. “But we’ll figure it out together. All of us.”
Together. The word settled into Melissa’s chest and made itself at home.
She looked at this alien male, this unexpected gift, and thought about all the ways her life had gone wrong in the past few months. The abduction. The captivity. The terror and the humiliation and the moments when she’d been certain she was going to die.
And she thought about all the ways it had somehow, impossibly, gone right. Finding Becsul. Finding these women. Finding hope in the darkest place she’d ever been.
Four hours, she thought. Four hours until they’re airborne. Four hours until they begin the next part of their journey, whatever that looks like.
Four hours.
She looked at Sarah, reading to Katie in the corner. At Wei-Lin, already checking supplies and planning logistics. At Becsul, watching her with those deep black eyes that somehow saw everything she tried to hide.
Four hours was a long time.
A lot could happen in four hours.