The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (12 page)

“Oh, no…” I said out loud. “You can’t pay your taxes.”

              He stopped, almost skidding. He looked at me over his shoulder. He was equal distance from me and Maxton, about five steps between each.

              “What did you say?” he asked, his voice shaking with the weight of responsibility, with the weight of a father or husband, with the weight of having to answer the question…
what would you do?

              “Why else would you be so adamant?” I looked at them all on the ground. “None of them can pay their taxes this time, can they?”

              His mouth set in an angry line as his brow turned down but he just stared at me, whether it was because he was surprised by my candor or by my understanding. I looked at Maxton over the man’s shoulder and realized it was really the first time that I had been able to do so since he’d gotten there. He was watching me. Our eyes clashed and I felt my lips part as I breathed a needed breath. He looked angry and ready for another fight. But something else, too. I didn’t know what it was exactly, but it reminded me of my mother’s face a little. It had been so long since I’d seen anything like that I couldn’t even remember what it looked like, but I could almost imagine that he might even be a smidge worried about me.

Frightened.

              I promptly closed my mouth and looked back to the other man so I’d stop seeing things that weren’t there. I mean come on, how could he be worried about someone he didn’t even know?

              The man was looking between us both, deciding what to do next. I decided for him and tried to slip behind him when he wasn’t looking. He was quicker than I thought. When I felt his hand bunch in the back of my shirt and yank me back, I tried not to cry out but couldn’t hold it in.

He let me fall unceremoniously to the side, my shirt rising as I fell, the tuck I’d carefully placed long gone. I heard his grunt as well as Maxton’s. I rushed to yank it back down, but they had seen. I twisted back around to see him looking down at me, Maxton making quick strides to him. It all seemed to happen in slow motion as his pity-filled eyed watched me.

              “You weren’t lying, were you? They did beat you.”

              Maxton grabbed his collar and held him there, but he continued to look down at me, not removing his eyes for a second.

I closed mine for a second, needing a second of space to myself, even if he didn’t. When I opened them, he was still right with me. “That’s what they do to slaves. They beat them.”

He flinched like he himself had been hit. “But…what did you do?”

              I shook my head. “I couldn’t pay—”

              “No. Why were you beaten?”

              Even Maxton looked over and waited for my answer.

              “You don’t want to know.”

              “Yes,” he hissed. “Yes, I do.”

              There was guilt in his eyes, either for me or for someone else. He needed to hear it, to know what was done, to keep punishing himself. This tortured man on the bottom of society…as were they all.

I gulped through my dry throat and flicked my gaze to Maxton, expecting him to look away, but he didn’t, so I did. I stood, brushing my hands on my pants, tucking my shirt in once more, looking up at the sky, up at the girl on the screens who looked up at her sky, too. Though her lips moved, you couldn’t hear what she said as she told the people on the roof of the horrors of her life. Her life—nothing but a silent film that until this day had always felt silent to her, too.

              “This time, I was beaten because the other slave lied and said I had done something I hadn’t. She dropped all her pieces and shavings of metal and silver on the floor, and then he was coming, there wasn’t enough time to pick them up. So she grabbed my basket and said I did it. I wasn’t having coitus with him so he believed her.”

“For that? You got beat for that?”

              “I’ve gotten beaten for a lot less,” I ground out and adjusted my bag back around on my back. I finally looked back up. They were both staring at me. Maxton was barely even holding his collar anymore. I ground my teeth and rolled my eyes. “What?” I said sharply.

That snapped them out of it and Maxton moved away from him. The man looked between us sadly before shaking his head and walking off.

              “How many children do you have?” I asked.

He stopped once more, not looking back at us. “Four,” he said hoarsely.

“That’s why you want to know why I got beat.” I gulped and was surprised by how hard it was to keep back the tears. “You want to know what’s going to happen to your…”

His chin fell forward to his chest. I stared at his back before I made my decision. I reached inside my shirt and pulled out my baggie, looking at it in my hands, knowing it was my absolute last chance to leave this place, but knowing that I couldn’t put others where I had been. Children, just like I had been when I became a slave. If this could save his family, and maybe more, then I had to do it.

A single tear pooled in the corner of my eye. I swiped at it.

I remembered my father reading from our book and it saying once how a tear had rolled down the girl’s cheek. I had always wondered what that would feel like. I could imagine it would feel like a sort of freedom, a sort of…rebellion. An escape.

When I lifted my head, Maxton was watching me, his always constant gaze unnerving. He seemed to be pondering something, too. When he saw my shavings in my hand, he shook his head, and then clenched his jaw as he made his way to the man, who was still standing in the place we’d left him.

They spoke and before I could understand what was happening, Maxton was putting his forearm over the man’s and money was being exchanged. I gasped, drawing Maxton’s gaze. He dared me to say something, anything, in that moment, but all I could do was stare back and hope he understood how grateful I was to him for that, how I understood the sacrifice. I knew that he needed the money for something, and it was amazing that he was doing this for them. I hoped I conveyed all those things to him.

But in the end, we just stared at each other, wasting oxygen with our rapid breaths, and making me feel like the girl in the sky, who looked out into the beyond, might have been looking for something, or
someone,
the whole time after all.

Chapter Six

ro·bot - a machine or mechanism guided by automatic controls that performs various complex acts of a human being whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized.

Maxton

             
I
gave him enough to pay taxes for all the guys on the roof. How could I not? Sophelia stood there, about to give away everything to her name after she had scrimped and saved for ten freaking years as a slave after one sob story from a guy in the stacks.

That’s terrible, I know, but see, here’s the thing—everyone on this planet has a sob story. If you talk to them for longer than a minute, you’ll hear it and want to save them. It just happens that way. You can’t play hero to everyone or you’ll have nothing to save your own family. It sucks big time. If you can help, great. But most people can’t. It just so happened that I could help this time, but that hardly ever happens on this planet and everyone knows it. That’s why it is the way it is. When you’re all on the bottom of the food chain, what do you expect from people?

He grabbed me up in a bear hug and promised he would give it to the others who had been there, who had all scrammed when they’d woken from their mist stupor. Then he apologized to Sophelia with a wave and was gone. I snatched Sophelia up real quick-like, not waiting for things to get awkward again, and tried to find a way away from screens and cameras. The Militia would be there any second. I was surprised they weren’t already.

As soon as we hopped down in between the buildings where it was dark for a second, I took off the halo around my neck and slipped it around hers. She tried to stop me, but I told her it was fine. “It scrambles technology,” I explained. “See, it looks like a necklace almost, but it’s not. So you’ll look like someone else. And here.” I took out the new clothes I’d gotten her and put on the jacket over her shirt, slipping on the hoodie.

              “You got all this for me?” she said in awe as she rubbed the sleeve of the jacket. “This is a female jacket.”

              I chuckled. “You’re a female.”

              “I’ve never had anything that wasn’t my proprietor’s old clothes before. Well, not since…”

I felt my grin slip, but held it tightly in place. “It’s brand new. And it’s yours. Go ahead.”

She looked down and shook her head, but I saw the small smile come through. “I haven’t gotten to put my name in my clothes since I was a little girl.” She reached up and pulled the tag from the collar down, letting her forearm swipe over it. She watched as her name was lasered into the tag and then the jacket took the measurements for her body from her arm chip to custom-fit her. She waited, letting it happen, and then stood looking down at herself. I tried not to do the same, but hell. With that jacket so tight on her like that, and her pants so tight on her to match, she looked…

“So weird having clothes that fit,” she murmured as I was still trying to remind myself that I was a gentleman.

              She looked up and started to speak, but stopped herself. I nodded. She hadn’t thought I was coming back. I got it. “Later,” I promised. “We need to move. Curfew’s coming.”

She nodded and we started for the back alleys, looking for a place to crash for the night.

**

              I would have thought Sophelia would be looking over the items in her bag, but other than peeking in at them, she kept her bag wrapped tightly in her fingers and didn’t look at them again. It was as if she was trying to keep it a secret. It made me pause, but whatever was in that bag was none of my business. It was important enough for her to go back for, so I would let it be.

When I fell asleep that night, our backs had been against the wall, our legs stretched out on the old-time fire escape. When I woke up the first time, to noises below us, her head was on my shoulder. I checked as slowly as I could, so as not to wake her, to find it was nothing but a bot making a delivery. When I woke up the second time, her head was on my leg and she was curled into a ball, facing away from me.

              When I woke up the third time, she was skittering away from me like I’d accosted her, slamming her back against the railing on the opposite side of the fire escape. She hissed when she hit, slamming so hard.

              “What are you doing?” she asked, eying me with accusation.

              “What do you mean?” I asked right back. “You fell asleep on me.”

              “I—” She calmed her breaths as she took in the situation, remembering where we were, maybe even remembering everything that had happened. “Sorry.”

              I nodded once. “Sure.”

              “No,” she said, and closed her eyes for a second. She did that a lot. “I’m sorry,” she said, the conviction in it so real I could almost taste it.

“It’s okay.” She opened her eyes. “I know you’ve had it rough. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to.” She looked down, checking into her bag again. “We need to get moving.”

Last night we talked about how I found her by seeing the screens and recognizing where she was. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have found her again. We would both have been on our own, and on this planet, that is a sucky place to be. I’m ninety-four percent sure that she gets it now—that I’m not going to ditch her or turn her in. Again. We need each other to survive on the outside and the smart thing to do would be to stick together.

We ate the dinner I brought of ham and cheese with crackers. I got to see Sophelia’s vulnerable side once again when she almost flipped out over the cheese.

“I haven’t seen cheese since I was so, so little. They stopped letting us have it and replaced most foods with those vitamins in the water.” She took it from me and took the biggest bite, making me laugh. “Oh, my gosh…” She smiled. “I would give anything if my mom could be here.”

Now, as I watched her move around and collect her things, I would give anything for that, too. She was so strong and such an independent person; she had held her own for ten years, but then, some moments, she was still that little girl who just wanted and needed her mother, who was deprived of her mother.

Too many of us know that slaves exist, but we turn and hope we never have to come face to face with the horrors of their life. And now there I was, bunking in for the night with one and all the details that made her up. I even had to stop her from cleaning up my trash from breakfast. It was just that ingrained in her to do it automatically.

“Hey,” I called softly, “I almost forgot.” I put my bag on the grate under my feet and dug around until I found the canister I was looking for. “I had to go to a few vendors until I found it, but…” I turned to face her.

She eyed it and right away I knew she knew what it was. “It exists.”

My eyebrows rose. “It will make you better in no time.”

“My proprietor always taunted me with it.” She clenched her jaw and her fists. “Said if I…screamed louder,” I couldn’t stop my cringe, “jerked against my restraints harder, gave them a good show, that he would give me the salve. But he never did.”

I took a second to make sure I was calm before stepping toward her. She was still staring down at the can in my hand so I lifted her face with my finger, fully expecting her to pull away or flinch at the very least, but she did neither. She looked up at me expectedly.

              “That part of your life is over. You left it all behind.” She nodded slowly. “Let me—” I began to ask her to turn around, but she stopped me.

“No, I’ve got it.”

“You can’t reach your own back. Let me do it.”

She shook her head, looking down. “No. I’ll figure it—”