The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (5 page)

Rivers would pay for keeping his old ways and not upgrading to a better system. Most of the windows and doors on buildings now were holographic projections and way more protective than an actual door would have been. But Rivers insisted that it was money wasted. And it was just another way for Congress to have a hold on you and keep tabs on you. True, Rivers, true. This once, though, your paranoia paid off for me. I wiggled the bars until each one let loose and gave way. I had been loosening them at my every visit to the
dungeon
, so they were already primed, it was just that last one. I spun it and shook it back and forth. Then I picked up one of the other bars and began to scrape away the concrete at the base of it. When the final bar came loose, I could have yelled to the stars. I grabbed the ledge of the high window and with shear will pulled myself up and into the window frame that I barely fit into.

I fell onto the street below it and gasped at the pain in my shoulder blade and back, but made myself get up and run to the end of the street. There was a ship in the dock there. I didn’t know whose it was, but I could see the sign saying where it was going. And I was going to be on it.

I snuck on, tucked myself in a closet tightly, and prayed to my mother’s God that no one would find me.

Chapter Two

ox·y·gen - a colorless, odorless reactive gas, the chemical element of atomic number eight and the life-supporting component of the air.

Maxton

“
R
eally?” he said smugly and looked at me with an air only an Elitist could pull off. “You really think I’m falling for that?”

I smirked my signature smirk and prayed to whoever was listening that this worked. “How can you not? Look at it.” I held the silver ring in front of his face and painted the picture for him, just like I always did. “Picture it. You, her, out on Symphony Hill—”

“I’m taking her to Melody Ridge—”

“You’re missing the point!” I yelled excitedly. “The point is that it doesn’t matter where you give it to her, my man. The point is that it’s her day of birth and you want her to remember this forever.” I handed him some oxygen tabs. “You take these tabs.”

He started to protest. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Is she worth it?”

“Of course!”

“Then you take the tabs!” I smiled, knowing I had him. “You can take the longer trip and not have to come back so soon. Rations, smations.” I waggled an eye brow. “You get what I’m saying, my man? You take her out on the ridge, and you tell your grandkids one day that good ol’ Maxton set it all up for you.”

He let a breath go and smiled. Checkmate. “Wow. You’re really doing me a solid, man.”

“Nah,” I assured him, “Because you’re going to do me a solid in return, right?”

He gave me a sly grin. “Whatcha need?”

“Well, my boss told me I have to sell all these oxygen and gravity tabs by the end of the week. Think you can help me out? Know anybody?”
              “Oh, yeah! I got you covered, man! I got buddies from school who never finished who are looking for tablets all the time.” His look turned somber. Jackpot. “I mean, they’re stand-up guys, they just hit a run of bad luck. You’re all right helping my buddies, right?”

“Well,” I muttered and shuffled my feet for good measure, “I don’t know. I know it’s illegal to sell to people without a diploma.” I mean, not like what we’re doing right now or anything…

“Man, I wouldn’t ask, but you said you needed to get rid of it. We’ll both be helping each other out.” I hissed through my teeth. He watched. “Come on, man.”

“All right. You got a deal. But I need all the money for the tablets up front.”

“I’ll get it all worked out. Thanks, man. Any way you’re looking for a constant buyer? I’m sure they would be more than willing to be set up for something like that.”

Bingo.

I smiled. “I think we can work something out.”

He pulled out his handheld and worked out the deal right in front of me, just the way I liked it. I sold him the ring, met his buddies, gave them the goods, worked out the next shipment, and was back at the ship within an hour. I pulled my bed out of the wall and crashed onto it. I was as beat as I could remember being.

My boss, Havard, was working me like I imagined proprietors worked the slaves. But I wasn’t a slave. He needed to back off. I earned my keep.

I laid my forehead against the pillow and sighed just as a bang resounded in the closet outside my room. This was a small ship, compared to other ships. If someone was going to hide, there weren’t too many places to. I sighed, pissed and ticked off that my opportunity for sleep had been interrupted. Havard used to provide sleep induction for us, but once the Elites caught on—like they do everything—it became so expensive that he said we had to catch zzz’s the old-fashioned way. But it made for a long night and frankly wasted time when, with sleep induction, I could get the sleep needed in half the time, no tossing and turning, no waiting to fall out, just conk—you’re gone.

I scurried quietly over, yanking the double doors open to reveal…a girl.

No—a slave.

I could tell she was a slave because she was so thin. And she’d been beaten; I could tell from the blood on the back of her shirt. All my protective instincts rushed to the surface all at once, though I didn’t know why. She was a slave, she obviously belonged to someone, but she was so…freaking striking. All that red hair, gray eyes, white skin and—

Maxton, stop.

“What are you doing here?” was the only thing my mouth could produce, gruffly.

“I…” she tried. She’d been crying. “I thought the ship was leaving in the morning. I didn’t think I’d see anyone until it was already—”

“The ship does leave in the morning.”

She gulped. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but please, just don’t say anything until we’re already out to space at least.” Her eyes begged. “Please.”

“You’re running away from your proprietor.” Her eyes said ‘yes’, but she stayed silent. “That’s a felony. You’ll go to confinement for that.”

“Hence the not telling anyone until we’re out to space.” She shook her head, her eyes going cold and hard. “Ten years is long enough. I think my debt is paid.”

I almost gasped. Almost. Ten years. This girl was seventeen, eighteen maybe, nineteen at the most. She’d spent the majority of her life as a slave. I couldn’t imagine it. I kept my face passive. “Come back to my room before someone sees you. You can stay there until we dock in Zone 8 tomorrow. Then you can be on your way.”

I’d never seen someone look at me with such gratitude before, but I did work on the black market. I didn’t have much time or opportunity for girls. This one had red hair that was long and a little curly, a little wild maybe, a thin body that indicated she didn’t get to indulge on this planet, her head came to my nose, her gray eyes were wide and searching me, her skin was pale and gulp-inducing to look at it. So I tried not to look.

“Thank you.”

I nodded. I told her to stay and knew she would. I went and got some dinner for us both, which was interesting. I told the cook I was really hungry because Havard had worked me too hard that day and I had skipped lunch. He must have bought it.

When I brought the food back and laid it out on my bed, the girl acted like it was foreign to her, like she’d never seen it before.

I chuckled. “Have you never seen a piece of bacon?”

“No,” she whispered. “What is it?”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

I looked at her as she looked at the meat. “Try it.” Her eyes ticked up to mine. “Go on.” She picked up the bacon first and took a bite so tentative it was pathetic. But she moaned and that moan caused me to gulp as it rippled through my body. She looked at the other food on the plate and then up at me.

“What’s this?”

“You’ve never had pancakes before either?”
              “All I’ve ever had was bread and vegetables. Green beans mostly.”

I grimaced. She was from the stacks. “Really?” She didn’t answer. Must have known it was rhetorical. “It’s the most delicious thing on that plate. Eat up. I can’t wait to watch you take a bite.” I grinned.

But she wasn’t worried about me a lick. She ate that whole plate like it was her last meal, or her first, depending on how you looked at it, softly moaning and groaning the entire time. She licked the syrup off her thumb when she was done and I wondered for a second if she was a spy. Had Havard sent her here to see if I’d let a stowaway stay?

I watched her and knew that wasn’t true when she turned with the plate, looking for a proper place to set it…like a
good little slave
. The blood on the back of her shirt was a reminder to me that this wasn’t some game, and she wasn’t just some girl.

She was a convict now, no matter how much I wanted to deny it.

But could I really turn her in, knowing that I’d be sending her to confinement?

“So I’ll just stay here until we dock and then sneak out. You don’t have to worry about me. That was enough food to feed me for days,” she said softly and shrugged both her shoulders. “Thank you.”

“We should do something about that.” I jutted my chin toward her back, making her flush. I knew she would, but there was no delicate way to bring it up. “There’s a Med Kit in the hall—”

“No. You’ve done enough. I’ll worry about it later. I’m sure you have things you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Here then,” I insisted and pulled one of my black shirts from the bag I always took with me on trips. “At least put this on. You’ll be less conspicuous.”

Her eyes stayed on mine for a few long seconds before she took it. I turned without her having to ask me to. I heard the rustling of her clothes and was embarrassed to say my nineteen-year-old neck was turning red under my collar thinking about what she might look like under my shirt. I was a busy guy, never had much time for girls. But even if I did have time for them, I couldn’t have done much with one anyway because, without a license, you weren’t allowed to engage in relations that were…physical in nature. Unless you got wedded and no, sir, no thank you. Most business men got a license the first chunk of silver they got once they turned seventeen, but I thought with more than my pants.

Our society thought that cutting our foul language, drugs, physical relations—unless you paid a fee to the government of course—and pretty much everything else unless you paid your taxes with the threat of confinement or the mines over your head at all times—that this would somehow make our society better, more civilized, more organized, less disease-ridden. Better than the Earth that
we’d
destroyed.

All it had done was make the black market sky rocket, the rich Elitists who could afford their taxes got richer, and the rest of us slummed by, by the skin of our perfectly manicured teeth, with government-issued toothpaste, of course.

You were either an Elite or you were poor. There was no “official” middle class. The middle class were the business-men, like Havard, and even they only got by because they broke the law and were always on the cusp of getting caught. So really, who wanted to be them?

The tap on my shoulder made me turn slowly. My shirt was way too big on her, but she was tucking it into her tight black pants. They were men’s pants, probably her proprietor’s discards, but wow if she didn’t make them look good right then.

“This’ll work. Thank you, Maxton.”

My eyebrows lifted. “You got some mind powers I don’t know about?”

She gave me a funny look, but added a small smile. That smile… Holy. Wow. “You gave me your shirt. Unless you’re also a slave, you have your own clothes.”

I absentmindedly reached back to rub the tag with my name in my shirt. “That’s right. Sorry. And what’s your name?”

“You want to know my name?” she barely whispered.

I grinned. “It’s only fair.”

She took a breath, looking at my mouth for a moment. I wondered when was the last time anyone had smiled at her.

“Sophelia.” She laughed once, but it was more of sadness than anything funny. “I haven’t said my name in years.”

That rocked me to my core. “What did your proprietor call you?” And I immediately regretted that question.

She smiled, but again it was the opposite of her actual emotion. “You don’t want to know.”

I gulped, knowing I needed to get away from her.

Right now.

“Hey, I’m sure you’re tired. Why don’t you take a nap or something while I go get my work done? When you wake up, we’ll be there.”
              She must have noticed the off change in my tone, but just looked at me before going to my bed. “Okay.” She lay down, facing the wall, and sighed so deeply. “A bed,” I heard her mutter. “Wow, I’d forgotten.”

I left without another word.

I leaned against the wall outside my room, the back of my head to the wall, and stayed there for a minute. A couple of Havard’s regulars walked by, but I said nothing to them. He always had workers here and there, but I was his right hand and everybody knew it.

I went up to the top floor, pressed my thumb to the scanner, and went inside. Havard used the older technology. He said it was cheap and gave the illusion of safety. If someone was dumb enough to crack through his security, then they’d meet their maker sooner rather than later for being than dumb.

“Havard!” I called.

“Get in here, boy. Maybe we want to postpone our shipment for a day.”

“What?” I said, the shock evident in my voice. There was no reason I could think of that Havard would make his shipments late. None. Except silver.

“A slave escaped.”

I schooled my face. I was good at that. I crossed my arms. “So? Slaves escape sometimes. Who cares?”

“Someone apparently. This slave is worth a pretty silver.” He flipped the screen hanging over his desk around so I could see it. There she was. The redheaded beauty. Next to her face was her name, Sophelia A3, and then a number I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.