Y
ou’d better be burning in hell, Max.” Addy hurled her half-empty glass against the wall where it shattered. Orange juice and glass sprayed the kitchen.
“Still in the anger stage, I see.” Tess had entered the room from Ferly Mor’s apartment.
“What?”
“You know, the stages of grief? You’ve been in the anger stage for three weeks now.”
The door began crackling, but before it solidified, a hand reached through the vapor stopping it. It vaporized again and Duncan emerged through the gas. He hung his cloak. “If ye ask me, it’s those wee heathen hormones.”
“It’s...it’s everything,” Addy shouted. “This planet. This baby. That lying bastard.” Searching for something else to throw, she reached for a miniature garden gnome that Duncan, for some reason, kept on the side table.
He scooped it up before she could swipe it.
Addy plopped onto the couch, her head in her hands. “After they shocked me, he said he wouldn’t hurt me. But he did. When I was unconscious, he...he—” She couldn’t say the word. She slumped to her side, dropped her head onto the armrest. “And I was too stupid to even know.”
The cushion compressed under Tess’s added weight. Her soft, rhythmic strokes caressed Addy’s shoulder blades. “I can’t say that I know how you feel. My experience in the breeding box had been different. But please understand you’re not alone. I’m here for you. So is Da and Ferly Mor.”
Addy shot upright. “He’s the damn cause of all this. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that...that...thing.” She stormed into the only room offering privacy on the damn planet, and guilt hit her like a blow to the gut. Tess hadn’t deserved her outbursts. She had been nothing but kind and friendly to Addy the entire month she’d been here. Addy had no right to yell at her.
Standing in front of the 3-D mirror, a worn-out, angry woman she barely recognized stared back. Dark circles hung low around tired eyes. Wild strands of strawberry-blonde hair had escaped the confines of her French braid.
Addy lifted her shirt and stroked her belly’s curvature. She couldn’t deny the pregnancy anymore. A baby was most definitely in there, growing, changing, and anchoring her to this Yard. This planet. This bizarre existence.
How had this happened? Disgusted, she pulled down her shirt and sat on the flowerpot lid. She closed her eyes, trying to recall the wildfire and the rapids and anything else she could from that night.
A gray fog rolled into her memory, clouding her thoughts. Why couldn’t she remember anything? Had she been in shock when she’d first seen the alien? Did Ferly Mor abduct her after she’d been knocked unconscious?
Still without answers, Addy exited the bathroom and apologized to Tess before she began cleaning her mess of glass and breakfast juice.
“You said your experience in the breeding box had been different. I’m glad to hear that.”
Tess knelt beside her with a dustpan and broom. “I turned sixteen the day before my first time. I remember being scared thinking about all the stories I’d heard. How some studs jump on top of you right away. Fortunately, the man they paired me with was charming and gentle. We spent the entire night and half the next day talking. On the second night, he reached for me and I didn’t back away. It was lovely.” She blushed pink all the way to her neck.
A twang of jealousy tugged Addy’s heart. Why couldn’t her first time have been...well...totally different? She rested a hand on her belly. “Have you ever resented your children?”
“I’ve never given birth.” Tess’s tone remained neutral. “I always miscarried at nine weeks.”
“I’m sorry.” An awkward silence filled the little space between them. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I know some women don’t want their babies, but I would’ve liked to have one. Even if it was only for a little while.” Tess touched Addy’s arm. Her eyes shone with tenderness. “When it comes,” she began with apparent caution. “If...if you want me to, I can care for the baby.”
Give up her child? Could she do that? Addy had vowed long ago never to make her children feel unwanted or unloved, like her mother had made her feel. She had been determined to protect them from that loneliness. She was not going to wind up like her mother...unmarried, pregnant, and resentful.
She was going to have children when she was ready. There was no way she would chance an “oops” happening. Yet here she was...unmarried, pregnant, and resentful.
Apparently an apple doesn’t fall far no matter where in the universe it lands.
Still, as angry as she was with Max and her situation, the baby was a part of her and she couldn’t just give it up. Not to Tess. And certainly not to Ferly Mor. She had to protect her baby from the alien.
But how?
Addy tossed the glass shards into the trash before sweeping the smaller pieces into the dustpan. She needed to change the subject before she went crazy thinking about her choices, or lack thereof.
“What happened when the aliens realized you couldn’t...” Addy didn’t need to finish the sentence.
Tess wiped the floor with a wet rag as she spoke. “Well, I had two more cycles with the same man and one with another. During my fourth miscarriage, I hemorrhaged so much I bled to death. After that, Ferly Mor never brought me to a breeding box.”
“You
died
?” Having worked with emergency medical personnel, she’d known a few cases where people have been revived with CPR or defibrillation. But they’d never talked so casually about their experience like Tess did.
“For nearly an hour. Any longer and Ferly Mor wouldn’t have been able to reawaken me.”
Reawaken.
That was the second time she’d heard that word. Max had used it in the breeding box. “You mean
resuscitated
?” Was it even possible to resuscitate someone after an hour?
Tess sat back on her heels, wet towel in hand. “Didn’t Da explain reawakening?”
“No. And I’m beginning to think it’s time someone did.”
Addy’s personal ringtone sounded from the Yard. She glanced out the observation wall to see Ferly Mor waiting with a leash in his hand. The music played again.
“You best go. I’ll explain later. And Addy? Think about what I said about the baby. Please?”
Addy nodded and left the house with head hung.
Although grateful that Ferly Mor didn’t use the leash—instead, he carried her to HuBReC—she couldn’t stop grinding her teeth. Once inside the office, she couldn’t tune out a woman’s labored breaths and grunting coming from an open doorway down the hall.
A newborn cry made her heart sink. Placing a hand on her belly, she sighed. Four weeks down. Sixteen to go.
Ferly Mor placed her on a cold examining table, leaving her with her prenatal doctor, Rosalita. Since Addy had been the first person in the Yard to encounter the new Hyborean at the Survival Race party, Duncan said Addy had the privilege of naming her. She figured if Ferly Mor was the Great Gray Man, his chestnut-red girlfriend should be Little Rose.
Addy was weighed, measured, and shot in the navel, yet again, with her same EpiPen. The device must have contained some kind of growth hormone because her hair had been growing about a half-inch every week. Once her exam was finished, she sat on the floor putting her shoes back on.
Ferly Mor charged into the room, nearly stepped on her as he guided in a hovering gurney. She jumped out of the way before she became one with the floor. He handed off the gurney to Rosalita, picked up Addy, and placed her on the counter.
By the look of the skuzzy, injured man they transferred to the examining table, an emergency had come up, which meant Ferly Mor wouldn’t take her home until he finished. Oh well, it wasn’t the first time she watched him at work.
As she’d seen him do before, he dipped his hands in a bowl of pink liquid that must have been some sort of antiseptic, then dried them before cutting the tattered clothes from the man’s body. Rosalita also cleaned her hands and arms before hooking the guy up to machines.
Ferly Mor stepped aside to throw the filthy shirt in the garbage shoot, and Addy gasped at the horror before her. Bloody whip marks, both fresh and scabbed, crisscrossed the man’s entire emaciated back. The flesh not torn apart was covered with welts and bruises. Each rib and bony vertebra were clearly visible beneath his skin.
How the hell could these animals beat and starve a man like that? The fetid smell of his filthy body and matted hair made her dry-heave. She pinched her nose to find relief from the stench.
Rosalita sponged him down, uncovering more bruises and whip marks beneath the blood and dirt. Ferly Mor cut and removed the man’s pants revealing a bloody leg bone protruding from his skin.
She winced and diverted her gaze from the gruesome wound, rubbed her own shin in sympathy, as if that could possibly help ease this poor man’s suffering.
After spraying something in his hair—most likely to kill lice or fleas or some weird Hyborean insect—Rosalita shaved his head. More dried blood and scabs. Around his neck were thin burn lines that must have come from his choker.
“My God,” she whispered. “What have they done to you?”
They rolled him onto his back and he turned his head in her direction. Vacant, green eyes stared into Addy’s. Her mouth dried the instant she recognized the man who haunted her sleep and dominated her every waking, irate thought.
It was Max.
How could he be alive? Regan had killed him during the survival race.
Though Max’s glassy eyes gazed in her direction, they didn’t appear to see anything. His shallow and labored breaths sounded as though he was standing at Death’s sublimated door.
Not taking her eyes off him, not even to blink, she waited for his last breath. Almost wishing for it. Perhaps, then, her rage and resentment of this past month would quell.
But did he really deserve to die? Hadn’t he suffered enough? Tears pricked her eyes. Did any man, even her enemy, deserve torture?
Damn. Why did he make it impossible for her to hate him?
The pain must have been sheer agony, but Max never moaned or grunted. Maybe he’d been given drugs, or maybe he was too damaged to make a sound.
The Hyboreans worked quickly, rubbing cream on his wounds, giving him injections of who knows what and monitoring his vital signs on some kind of chirping equipment. After another injection his breathing slowed to almost nonexistent. The chirping also slowed. His eyes shut and opened as if he fought heavy lids. It didn’t take long before they remained closed.
Her pulse quickened. She held her breath in order to listen for his. Had he been euthanized?
As Ferly Mor and Rosalita worked on Max’s leg, she watched his chest. Each time it rose, she prayed it would stop. Each time it fell, she prayed he’d inhale again.
Tears streamed down her hot face. She wiped them away and realized Ferly Mor was pointing to the leash next to her. Another Hyborean, the sandy-colored alien who had held her down after the breeding box incident, nodded and grabbed the leash. She scooted backward on the counter but couldn’t escape his big leathery hands. After attaching the leash to her collar, Sandy set her on the floor and walked her to the Yard.
She didn’t need a mirror to know her face turned beet red. That was what happened to a person when they held their breath in humiliation.
The door to the Yard sublimated. Sandy placed her outside, unclipped the leash, and gave her a pat on the head like a good little doggie.
Addy spun around to kick him in the ankle. The door solidified and her foot smashed into the camouflaged wall. Pain reverberated up her leg. She clenched her fists trying to keep the rage from exploding into a piercing scream. It didn’t work.
“I hate this place! I want to go home!”
I
t was another sleepless night as usual.
A gentle shower misted outside Tess’s transparent bedroom. Tired of watching tiny raindrops merge into large beads and roll down the observation wall, Addy got up from her pillow bed, pulled on her jean shorts and a sweatshirt, and crept to the kitchen in search of an apple.
The fruit bowl was empty except for an orange. In her constant state of hunger, she had eaten everything else. She held the orange, wishing it would change into a Granny Smith. Smooth. Green. Crunchy. Tart.
Swallowing saliva, she replaced the fruit. Only one thing satisfied her midnight cravings. She put on her shoes, grabbed a lightstick and one of Tess’s baskets, and slipped out into the rain.
The gentle mist from the sprinkler system cooled her face and roused her senses. The pungent damp earth comforted her, as it had all her life growing up in the wilderness areas of Klamath National Forest. Not one to shy from Mother Nature in any season, she always felt right at home in the great outdoors.
Of course, she wasn’t really outdoors now, was she?
Apple picking by the peaceful moonslight shining through silver clouds lifted her mood. Even as the full basket weighed heavy on her arm, her spirit grew lighter. And when her teeth sank into the fruit’s tangy flesh, she sighed in blissful satisfaction. The trip in the rain had been more than worth it.
Long, wet strands of hair hung over her eyes. Her clothes clung to her. Not wanting to return just yet, she strolled further along the orchard’s straight path with Lunas Major and Minor lighting the way.
She sucked the last bit of juice from the core of her third apple when the hair on her neck bristled. Sensing she wasn’t alone, she turned in all directions searching the shadows of the orchard.
Nothing.
Her pulse quickened. Someone was out there. There was no denying that creepy sensation of someone’s—or something’s—watchful eyes.
She dropped the core. Keeping her gaze focused among the apple trees, she felt for the lightstick amid the apples in her basket. She pulled it out, turned it on, and spun in a circle with the beam drawn in front of her.
Twenty feet away beneath a tree she had passed, he sat with his back against the trunk, watching her. He didn’t move when she shone the light in his face. He just stared with those vacant green eyes.