Page 11 of Taken to Kor
“You open that latch, you could die.”
“Hmm,” I say in forced imitation of his usual flippant tenor. “Well, if you don’t want me to die, I suggest you tell me how to figure out if there’s breathable air.”
Silence. “Centare.”
“Naturally.” I reach up and feel around on the portal. Its gritty surface flakes off on my fingertips, staining them a sickly green.Rot. The color’s called rot.It’s not wet, but it’s so cold it feels wet. It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever touched. Like a bunch of wet sand got freeze-dried and melted. It stings.
“Deena,” he barks. “What’s natural is a desire to live. Don’t you have one?”
“Ontte. A big one.” I snort at the joke, but he doesn’t get it. “But to do that, I’ve got to take a risk and right now the choices are you and your brothers’ thirty cocks or the nice people on this satellite who are going to welcome me with open arms and breathable oxygen.”
“You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t be so stupid to enter a ship without even checking the oxygen levels.”
“Bluffing rhymes with nothing.” Aha! Take that!
“Deena! I’m not playing one of your rhyming games! Check the shroving control panel.”
I hesitate. “The one on the chair?”
“There is only the one.”
I amble back down and check the armrest on the control chair. There is a purple light blinking and, when I press on it, a panel in the floor opens up between the two chairs across from me. I go to it and see a strange contraption.
“Take the yellow hook and loop it around your ear.” His voice is sober. Deadly.Sad.
I do what he says and am surprised when itmoves. Given the status of the token, I guess I shouldn’t bethatsurprised when it suddenly swells and elongates, the yellow end hooking around my ear while the other end slides over my cheek, across my upper lip and then hooking over my other ear. A soft breathing sound echoes louder than it should and I jump again and glance over my left shoulder. It sounds like Rhork is here, standing over me.
“Oxygen will flow freely, no matter the atmosphere in the satellite, but it will not flow indefinitely. You have twelve solars. Possibly more depending on how calm you manage to remain. Less, if you panic.”
“Thanks, Rhorky bear,” I tease, hoping to elicit some kind of reaction from him. I don’t like this voice, this tone. I’ve never heard it before. It sounds like…I don’t know what it sounds like. Like he just watched his childhood pet beaten to death in front of him.
“Take a weapon with you. You do not know what you will find. The humans may be just as hospitable as those on the home world you came from.”
I frown at that, anger making my shoulder jerk. “There are good ones!” Wow. That sounds lame, even to me.Good. It should rhyme with blood, but it doesn’t.
I open up the weapons’ cache and take out one of the more human-sized daggers. The length of my calf, it doesn’t look too fancy —or likely to kill me— so I shove it into my belt loop, sheathed. While I’m rooting around, I also steal another pack of brown goop — just in case — and a glowing ball with a hand hold that looks like a lantern. I shove it into my back pocket, too. Then I climb back up the ladder.
It takes me a long while to figure out the mechanism to open the latch on the other ship. It’s so…ancient. No scanners or vein readers or weird syrupy black stuff. Just an old fashioned hand grip that I have to twist, twist, twist, then push in.
I’m sweating a little with the effort it takes to lift the mechanism up, but eventually, its gritty surface gives and it unlocks. How old-fashioned.Hissssss. The doors peel apart in the center and cold,coldair gusts down onto me, sliding through all my clothes. Darkness finds me next and I find immediate use for the light in my back pocket. I strap it to my wrist, now.
Shining my light all around, I’m greeted by normal looking walls and a ceiling up above. White and a little green, but overall, sleek and well-preserved. I notice that it gets a little harder to breathe — especially when I take in air through my mouth — so I concentrate on taking easy breaths through my nose, thankful for the contraption.
Why did he help me?
“Thanks Rhork. This oxygen thing is coming in handy already.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Rhork?”
I hear shuffling and a sigh that immediately soothes my panic. “Goodbye, Deena. I hope that these humans give you everything you deserve.”
There’s an emptiness after he speaks that makes me wonder if he’s still there. I’m too afraid to ask, though, because I don’t want him to be gone. I don’t want him to leave me. Not again. Not like that one time he left me behind when I wanted to be kidnapped by him. When I wanted that more than anything.
Maybe that’s why I’m not as mad as I should be that he listened in to everything that ever happened to me over this past half a rotation.
I’m terrified to be alone.
