The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (6 page)

I gulped. “Why is she worth so much?”

“Why does it matter? I bet if we stayed a night longer, was a little late on our shipments, we could find her. I’ll split the finder’s fee with you.”

That silver…would change my life, would change so much for me. Could I really let one conversation with this girl take away everything I’ve worked my whole life for?

I steeled my back and face, thought about that girl who
did
mean something to me back home. This girl on this ship meant nothing to me, but that girl back home was my life. I barely knew her anymore because I’d been gone so long, but she was everything and I needed this money to save her. I remembered that as I uttered my next words and condemned the girl in my room to hell.

“Funny this should pop up on your screen, Havard.” I grinned my best evil grin for his benefit, so he wouldn’t think anything was fishy. “I was just coming to find you.”

He grinned back, not knowing why, but knowing he was about to make some silver. “Why was that?”

“The girl?” I nodded toward the picture. “She stowed away on the ship.” I leaned in with my knuckles on his desk. “She’s in my room, right now.”

“You’re joking,” he barked.

“About silver? Never.”             

He leaned back and smiled before jumping up from his seat. “Let’s go, crook.”

              I hated when he called me that. He thought it was funny, but it wasn’t.

When I opened the door to my room, she knew as soon as she turned over and saw Havard that I had betrayed her. I expected her to be angry, but it was like the fight was gone right out of her. She looked me dead in the eye as Havard took her arm.

“I should have known that the last decent man on this planet was my father. And he died a long time ago.” Havard jerked her harder and she looked over her shoulder once more. “You should have just taken me to processing yourself, kept all that silver instead of splitting it with him.”

“Shut up, you,” Havard growled and took her away.

              Her father had died, no doubt that was why she was a slave—she couldn’t pay her family’s taxes. When my father died, I took up a life of crime on the black market to pay my family’s. She wasn’t so lucky.

I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever felt so sick to my stomach, so disgusted with myself. My mother would be ashamed.

Chapter Three

mag·net·ism - a physical phenomenon produced by the motion of electric charge, resulting in attractive and repulsive forces between objects.

Sophelia

T
he second the man took me to his quarters, I knew I wasn’t going to processing. Not directly, anyway. I probably had a timeline for when I had to be returned for the silver to be paid and he was going to make good use of that, I was sure.

“Now, that’s better, isn’t it?”

I looked at him, inching to the wall, knowing that this day would change my life. Could I really blame Maxton for what he’d done? I was sure there was a bounty on my head and he didn’t know me at all. But the way he had acted with me, treated me so…humanely. I thought for once in my life that I might actually have met someone who had a soul in their chest. But I was wrong again.

This really was a soulless planet.

“What’s your name, girl?” he asked, his eyes running over me.

“Grub,” I growled at him and balled up my fists, ready to fight if it came to it.

“Ooooh,” he said excitedly and moved to the side a bit, tilting his head and grinning like I would imagine Hook would have grinned in story of Peter Pan my mother used to read to me. I thought about that story almost every night. It was the only thing that kept me sane as I slept on that metal floor with nothing but a blanket. “You’re going to be a feisty one, poppet.”

Bile rose in my mouth, and I thought I might actually throw up the pancakes that Maxton had fed me not long ago if this guy didn’t stop.

“If you want to try, then go ahead. I’m already a convict. I’m going to confinement anyway. Assault won’t get me anymore punishment.”

He laughed, rubbing the side of his head. “Delightful little grub you are.” I gritted my teeth. “Though I like this game, we don’t have all day to play.” His smile of perfect teeth was unnerving enough to make me begin to sweat. My fists readied for war as he stepped closer and put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be gentle whereas the sentries won’t. See, I’m doing you a favor. Breaking you in before you go there and—”

“What?” I breathed. It couldn’t be true. That couldn’t be what they were doing to them there. A life in confinement and…

He gave me a placid but solid look, his lips pursed in sympathy, his brow raised slightly. “Don’t be so naïve, poppet. You’ll never survive this planet.” His hand curved up and went to my neck. “But I can help you with that.”

Wow, he was shoveling the zelephant dung so fast I couldn’t keep up. “Get off me.”

“Now, now—”

“Off. Me.”

His other hand moved to my forearm and he squeezed gently. “I want to help you. You help me and I’ll help you.”

“Then let me go and don’t turn me in to processing.”
              He sucked air through his teeth as his fingers slid under my shirt collar that was already two sizes too big for me, making the fabric slide down my shoulder, changing his course to catch a button or two with his fingers. “That I just can’t do, poppet.”

I punched his gut with everything I had in me. He doubled over and made the usual awful sounds someone made when their insides have been pulverized by a bony fist. I turned to run, but he managed to grip my arm.

“You really are naïve if you thought it was going to be that easy.” He stood slowly, but as he did his hand swung up and let me have it across my cheek, right on the cheekbone. “I was trying to be nice about it, but this isn’t a negotiation. You are a slave and I am a licensed business owner who has caught you, a stowaway on my ship, and you will pay me some restitution. By your willingness or by force.”

His grip on my arm tightened and he started to drag me further into the room, but someone came in, the double doors opening with a hiss as they separated and revealed someone I hadn’t seen before. He took in the scene and stopped abruptly.

“Um…Havard, sir,” he swallowed, his eyes jumping from me to Havard, to Havard’s hand wrapped around my arm, “there was a problem with the docking schedule. They said you needed to resubmit your request to change the docking time.”

Havard huffed. “Have Maxton do it. I’m…busy.”

The guy’s eyes got wide. “They said it had to be you. You know the protocol.”

“Yes, yes, I know protocol,” Havard grumbled. He dragged me roughly over to the desk by his bed, to where there was already a pair of gold manacles there.

Like he’d been ready for someone. Me.

“No! No way,” I yelled.

He wrestled my kicking and screaming body to the ground wordlessly while the guy who had interrupted us watched with his mouth wide open. When the first manacle went around my wrist, it burned, but not as badly as I thought it would. Not at first anyway. It felt like when you first get cut, when you don’t really realize it yet, but then the burn comes and it starts to blaze hot across your skin.

We had so much gold on this planet. It was useless because it was so soft. But then we found out that for some reason, the oxidation of the gold had changed somehow for us in space, or maybe it was us who changed. It was toxic when we touched it. So naturally, the only use for gold was for torture devices.

“You’re such a…” Bastard? Piece of crap left behind by a horsopotomus? Pissant? All of those would get me fined money I didn’t have.

“That’s right,” he taunted. “Go ahead and call me whatever you want. The sensors would pick up on it and you wouldn’t need me to take you to processing, little girl.”

“That would be better than staying here with you, wouldn’t it?” I thought about it. What was this man Havard going to do to me here, and why would I stay and endure it if he was only going to send me to processing anyway?

I opened my mouth to finish my sentence, call him the first bad string of things that spouted from my lips, but Havard wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He was on me before I could utter the words. His balled up hand connected with the side of my head, and when the darkness overtook me all I wanted to do was talk to my mom and ask her what I should do.

**

When I woke, I was alone, but both of my hands were in the gold manacles behind my back and I had a handkerchief or something in my mouth, tied around my head tightly. Before I could even begin to start planning my escape someone came in the door.

It was the same guy from before, the same one who had told Havard that he had a “meeting”. He took one look at me, clearly not what he was looking for, and he turned and ran the other way.

I yelled as best I could, but it just sounded like muffled gibberish. He was gone and I was once again left with the seediness of the situation and the fact that I was utterly screwed.

              “Help!” I yelled, but it sounded like, “Hhhmmmmpd.”              Useless. While I had slept—correction—while I was unconscious, the gold had seared through my skin like a disease and it hurt so badly to move. But I had to move. I had to get out of this.

I rolled over enough to push my face against the floor and work the handkerchief out of my mouth. As soon as I could have screamed, the door opened once again. It was him once more, but Maxton was with him.

              He looked epically angry and I found myself speechless as I looked up at him from my awkward position on the floor.

              “See, I told you,” the guy hissed to Maxton.

Maxton did not look any happier by that statement. In fact, he looked even angrier, his hands opening and closing into fists. He turned a red-hot glare on him and barked, “I can see exactly what you said is true.” He turned back to me and kept right on glaring. “Leave us, Badger.”

              “Maxton,” he tried.

              “Leave,” he yelled and then lowered his voice as he leaned in, as if that would somehow make up for his mistake. “You can’t be here. You can’t have anything to do with this.”

Badger reared back as if Maxton had said an offensive word and the sensors were about to go off. “You…you’re going to do it, aren’t you? You can’t! You’ll be a—”

              “Convict,” Maxton finished and looked at me again. “That’s for me to worry about. She’s my responsibility. I found her and…” He gulped and I actually felt bad for him.

Wait…

Convict?

I gasped. He was going to take me off the ship? Defy Havard? Not turn me in? He couldn’t do that. Even though I was angry at him for what he did, he couldn’t risk his life for me, even if I was confused about why he would do it in the first place. His guilt for what he had done to me wasn’t a reason to ruin his entire life and become a convict. My life had already been ruined.

              Even in my state, I managed to say, “No.”

But it came out a whisper. They both looked startled that I had said anything. The other guy looked me over and then looked away with a strangled sigh.

Maxton came closer and leaned down on his haunches. I tried to sit up as best as I could, but I was sure it just looked like I was squirming around, so I stopped. He reached for me and I could do nothing but lie there. When his hand touched my upper arm, I jerked out of instinct. I wasn’t used to being touched unless I was being manhandled. He held one hand out as if to say
It’s okay
and then the other one dragged the collar of the shirt back up my arm before deftly redoing the very top button.

My lips parted on a small gasp. I’d almost forgotten that Havard had done that.

“It’s okay,” Maxton murmured and then turned his head to the side to speak to the man. “You’re still here.”

The guy huffed. “I know where the keys are. I saw him—”

“I can’t use them. He’ll know you gave them to me.” He stood and started to move about the room. “You need to go.”

“Maxton,” he sighed, “this feels wrong.”

“Then you shouldn’t have told me. I couldn’t just leave her—”

“No, no.” He stepped closer. “Letting you do this. Alone.”

Maxton looked at him. “You’ve got mouths to feed, too. More than I do.” He went to him and they hugged, patting each other’s backs hard. “Tell Sherlyn that I will miss her moon pies more than anything else on this planet.”

The guy cracked a smile. “Moon pie.” He pushed his shoulder. “You’re hilarious, man.”

They hooked arms, cuffing each other’s shoulders with their palms. “It’s been real,” Maxton said.

“And it’s been fun,” the guy said back, his voice cracking the tiniest bit.

“But it hasn’t been real fun,” they said together but there was a sadness there. “Goodbye, brother,” they said at the same time before the guy slowly walked out the door. It seemed unspoken that they weren’t real brothers. This was obviously some
thing
that they did. Who knew, maybe it was some black market ritual or something.

Maxton’s hands on my arms from behind made me jump again and he sighed an apology. I couldn’t stop myself. “Why are you helping me?”

“Because I would hope that if it had been my sister in your situation, someone would have helped her.”

That surprised me. And shocked me.

“Aren’t you the one who turned me in?” I said softly.

He flinched and stopped what he was doing for a few seconds. I didn't feel bad about my words, they were true, but he obviously did. He didn’t say anything else as he started to work on the manacles once more and neither did I.

And then it crashed down on me.
Because I would hope that if it had been my sister in your situation, someone would have helped her.
Would have. Past tense.

“What happened to her? Your sister?” I ventured, and was met with a dark chuckle.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” He leaned forward a bit, his breath moving the hair at the back of my neck. “Just because I’m helping you doesn’t mean you get a free pass at me.”