Her pulse pounded. She kept waiting for him to come out, but he never did. The ramp retracted, and she leaned aside, peering into the cargo bay to see if he planned to jump through the hatch at the last moment. That didn’t happen, either. The hatch sealed, and the Origin fired up its thrusters.
She shut the passenger door as gusts of dust and pebbles sandblasted the hull. The Origin lifted off, and she did the same, careful to stay in its blind spot. There had to be a reason for Kane to go inside. Maybe his inhaler was empty and he needed another. Or maybe Fleece had used threats to lure him on board. If Kane hadn’t muted his com-link, she could ask him, but regardless, he would escape through the waste port as soon as he could, and she’d be there to catch him.
She kept pace until they reached the first orbiting moon. Then the ship opened up its thrusters and zoomed beyond the atmosphere. She punched the accelerator, but even at full power, the shuttle was no match for a ship of that size. With each minute, the distance between them seemed to double.
She used the telescopic panel to watch the Origin’s waste port, ready and waiting for Kane to appear. A quiet voice inside her head warned it wouldn’t work, but she told the voice to shut up. Kane knew what he was doing.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Where are you?”
As the miles stretched on, the Origin’s lead grew wider. Panic set in when the telescopic panel flashed an error message: TARGET NOT IN RANGE. The ship was so far away that if Kane expelled himself now, he would die before she reached him—assuming that had been his plan in the first place. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
Her throat swelled and pressure built behind her eyes, but she refused to quit. She followed the ship until it was a pinpoint in the distance and, eventually, until she could no longer see its fuel trail. Even then, she cut the throttle and floated in black space, staring through the windshield for a full five minutes in case the ship reappeared.
Only when she couldn’t avoid it any longer did she stop lying to herself.
He was gone.
She slouched in her seat as the dashboard lights bled into a wet blur of color. Numbly, she felt along the control panel until she found the radio switch.
“Captain,” she said, and cleared the thickness from her throat. “I’m in the shuttle, and I don’t know where I am. Can you run a track and intercept? I’m in trouble. I lost—” Kane. She broke down before she could say it. “Renny, I’m lost,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Please come and get me.”
During the voyage, Kane learned to see Necktie Fleece in a new light.
The hangman became a deliverer, the tormentor a guardian of comfort. Kane both loved and hated the man because Fleece could administer pain with the crack of his knuckles and then take it away with a sweet breath of rapture.
From an expansive caged-in community room in the cargo bay, Kane and the others passed their days curled up on blanket pallets, listening for the cadence of Fleece’s boots overhead. His steps were heavy and slightly uneven, a telltale click-clomp-click-clomp that warned when he was about to descend the stairs. Then, like dogs conditioned to salivate at the ringing of a bell, the men would turn their eyes to the ceiling with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Fleece was their savior, their patron saint of bliss, and they worshipped at the shrine of air tanks he kept mounted on the wall beyond their reach.
Fleece seemed to enjoy playing their pagan god. Each day, he punished and exalted them according to his will, bringing the flock to their knees with nothing but a lifted hand toward the release switch that would fill the bay with sugared air.
But he wasn’t always merciful.
Sometimes he teased them simply because he could, reaching for the switch only to pull back his hand and walk away while they cried out and shook the wire cage in anguish. These power plays were rare, but sporadic enough to keep their heads low in humility when Fleece or his crew visited the miniature pit of hell they’d created.
Kane shivered and pulled both knees to his chest. He didn’t remember how long it’d been since his last breath of relief, but his hands trembled and nausea twisted his stomach. As he rocked back and forth on the floor, his mind punctuated the pain by flashing images of people he’d left behind. Mostly he saw Cassia’s face, though in vague, lightning glimpses that left him struggling to recall the exact shade of her eyes. He knew he should miss her—the others, too—but his emotions were fuzzy and distant. It wasn’t that he’d stopped caring. He just didn’t have the capacity to worry about them right now.
Click-clomp-click-clomp.