Kidnapped (4 page)

Patricia felt a knot of sympathy in her stomach. It would probably be wise to let the subject rest, but she ignored common sense and let compassion paired with curiosity get the better of her. "Does it hurt?"

*****

Travis wanted to put the glove back on and go back to the bridge, or at least lean back in the chair, but forced himself to sit still with his back straight, just like he had been trained to do a long time ago. He looked thoughtfully at the woman in front of him, thinking she had no reason to care for him. No one else did, so why would the prisoner? It gave him a strange feeling he couldn't quite put his finger on; it was warm and peculiar, and he couldn't remember experiencing it before. He was no less surprised to find himself answer her question honestly, "Constantly. I think they did that on purpose. But I've gotten used to it."

Patricia reached out to put her hands on top of his, on both the warm human and the cold artificial. "I'm so sorry."

He looked at her hands, unable to figure out what she was doing and why it felt so strange, not just in his hand but deep inside of him, and asked, puzzled, "Why? It's not your fault."

She made a little face, "You're not used to people being nice to you, are you? I'm sorry because it's a terrible experience, something no one should have to go through. I'm sorry you're in pain. I'm sorry it happened to you."

Travis mumbled, "Hmh," thinking it had been a most unusual day. She wasn't letting go of his hands and inside his head his commander's voice insisted, "You should have killed her."

The voice was just a memory, but enough to get him to his feet. "Go to your room."

*****

When evening came, Patricia was exhausted and fell asleep almost as soon as her body touched the hard bunk. She didn't sleep well though, and she woke up in the middle of the night with a little yelp as her nightmares became too vivid and too real. She saw herself almost hit a man standing in the middle of the road, saw her car go off and flip around several times, but this time it caught fire, and the man who had rescued her in reality, turned into fire too. He became a creature of red hot flames that wanted to consume her.

She was disoriented at first, in the darkness in the claustrophobic room with the unusual sounds of the ship all around her, and her heart was beating hard. The door slid open and let in some light from the corridor, and Travis stood there, newly awake with his hair all tousled, but clearly ready to deal with any danger. She felt embarrassed, silly even, and confessed, "It's okay. I was just having a bad dream."

He said, "The computer told me you were screaming," and turned around to leave. The prospect of being alone made her heart sink, and she called after him, "Would you stay, just for a minute?" Even the company of her kidnapper seemed better than no company at all.

Shrugging, he entered the room, pulling his fingers through his hair in a futile attempt to straighten it out. He took a seat on the edge of her bunk, the bad part of his face hidden in shadows, and asked, "Why?" She didn't know what to say. "Nothing. I don't know. Lonely I guess."

Travis said, "Oh," and she got a peculiar feeling that he was wondering what "lonely" meant, but he didn't leave.

Pulling the papery sheet up higher, she wished she'd had something thicker, something that felt more real, and she wished for her own bed. She'd probably never see it again, and she would never rest her head on her own pillows again. He had ripped her away from her home, her family, her friends, from her very planet. They were in space somewhere, farther away than anyone or anything from her world had ever been. She supposed she should hate him, but she couldn't. He was sitting quietly on the edge of the bunk, keeping his prisoner company in the middle of the night, even though he didn't have a clue as to why.

No, she couldn't hate him. She didn't even fear him any longer. He was trying to be nice to her, and she was surprised to find she liked him. Maybe she suffered from Stockholm syndrome; identifying with her kidnapper.

This was the first time she had really dared to think about the world that lay behind them, and even though she vowed to herself not to give up on getting back there one day, it was late, and she was tired, and the thoughts of home made tears well up in her eyes.

Travis was staring into the wall, but he must have been paying more attention than she realized because he asked immediately, "What's wrong?"

She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand and mumbled, "Nothing, I'm just homesick."

He looked at her blankly, as if trying to figure out what the word meant, and she knew she would have to change the subject before she started to bawl like a baby. She said the first thing that came to mind, "Where do
you
live, anyway?"

Now he stared at her as if she'd asked if he'd ever met a unicorn, and she elaborated, "Home, where is your home?"

Travis shook his head, "I don't know. Here I guess."

The answer was so strange to her she forgot her own misery. Everything she had seen of the ship had been an efficient way to transport people between planet A and planet B. All walls were bare, there were no decorations, hardly any colors, and it didn't resemble a place to live at all. Maybe he had a hidden room somewhere that contained personal things, but she doubted it. She tried again, "Well, where do you come from?"

"I should have kept you in the cell, or let you scream alone."

He sounded irritated, and she winced. Seeing him sigh soothed her fear a little, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet. "I have no idea."

For the moment, all her own problems were forgotten, and she nudged herself a little closer. "Are you serious? You don't know what planet you're from?"

He shook his head, and sounded like he was explaining a simple concept to a child. "Random children are selected for the corps every year. They're taken at young ages and conditioned for duty, and during this process you forget everything about your old life."

Patricia opened her mouth and closed it again. It sounded nightmarish to her, and she could easily imagine the parents' despair at losing their children, the long days and nights of wondering if the baby was alright, and what might be happening to him or her. She exclaimed with wide eyes, without thinking, "Conditioned? That sounds scary."

Travis's mouth twitched into a wry smile, and he answered flatly, "It is."

She wanted to ask more, but she was afraid to as well; it didn't seem like a subject she wanted to know all that much about. Besides, he probably didn't want to talk about it. Instead, her mouth asked, automatically, "What's going to happen to me?"

*****

Travis looked at his prisoner thoughtfully, wondering why she had to ask so many questions, and what he should answer. It should have been an easy question; he knew what happened to prisoners. He had questioned a lot of them himself, and he had never before thought it seemed gruesome. Their voices did come back to him from time to time, but he had ignored them successfully for decades. Still, the thought of someone torturing and using mind-altering drugs on this girl from a planet that still thought ground-level transportation was a great invention, disturbed him. It shouldn't have. He was conditioned not to care about things like these, and the fact that it
did
bother him sent a twinge of very physical pain down his spine.

Sighing, he wondered how he'd gotten himself into all this. Normally, the criminals on his ship already knew everything about it. Everyone did. "I don't know."

As soon as he said it, he wondered why. She would eventually end up dead or in a labor colony somewhere, and that was inevitable, wasn't it? It wasn't like he could turn around and take her back, not even if he wanted to.

At least she had stopped crying, and that was something to be grateful for. Her tears made him feel he was supposed to do something, and he had no idea of what this something would be.

He rose up and said, "You should try to get some sleep."

When he headed for the door, he heard her voice behind him, confessing, "Travis, I'm afraid."

He paused and surprised himself with turning around and giving her a little smile, answering honestly, "I am too."

During the next few days, he avoided her. It seemed to him every time they met, she tried to talk his ears off him, more often than not crying as she rambled on about her world and her friends and her vehicle.

He tried to ignore her, but provided for her basic needs as he debated tossing her back into a cell, or maybe contacting Central to request a pick-up of the prisoner, just to get rid of her. In the end, he did none of these things. He spent the days pretending everything was the way it always had been.

Chapter Four

When Patricia had been on the ship for a little over a week, she was less afraid than she was bored. There was nothing whatsoever to do, and even though Travis had warmed up to her, she knew he tried to avoid her. She had been following him around for a couple of days, trying to make friends, hoping he'd take her home if he grew to know and like her, but most of the time he just ignored her. It made her feel like a buzzing, irritating mosquito that might go away if he didn't acknowledge its existence.

She wished desperately for something to read or something to write on and with, a game, a computer terminal that actually worked, or anything to occupy her besides her own thoughts. She was homesick and she still had nightmares, but if her captor knew, he let her suffer through them alone. There had been no more night time chats.

Sitting by the table, resting her arms against its cold surface, Patricia mumbled, "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this."

She didn't even look up when the door opened, not until she heard Travis's voice declare, "There's been a change of plans."

He was leaning his back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at her with an indecipherable expression. His words evoked more hope than she would like to admit. No matter how dull life might be on this little ship, it was surely better than this Central of his, and a change of plans might at least postpone going there.

"The Redeemer is on its way to a planet close to our course. We're going to intercept it."

She looked at him blankly. Once again, she could understand each individual word, but they made no sense when put together. To her, it all sounded mystical and somewhat threatening, and she asked carefully, "What's a redeemer?"

Her imagination painted out a picture of something big and black that burned planets whole in its fiery insides. Travis might have seen some of the vision on her face, and sounded patient when he explained, "The Redeemer is William's ship. It was impounded, and he stole it and renamed it."

She hadn't forgotten about the rebel, or whatever it was he claimed to be hunting, but she had assumed the man had gotten away, and that he would be on the other side of the galaxy or something by now. She had a very dim concept about the size of space, but she was sure it was big.

She could feel his calm eyes on her, but at first his words didn't make sense, "Now, my problem is what to do with you."

He took a couple of steps across the room and sat down next to her, and Patricia got the feeling he had spent a lot of time debating with himself. "I'm willing to gamble you're as innocent and incompetent as you seem."

Hearing the word incompetent made her want to yell that saying things like that was rude. It didn't matter that it was true; she still didn't want to
hear
it. She clenched her jaw and forced herself to sit quietly, telling herself being incompetent might work in her favour. Travis was watching her closely, looking a little amused, and she nodded. He sounded amused too, "So, I guess that's settled. Now, I could toss you into the cells down below and lock you up, but I don't want to do that. You won't try to run away or make trouble for me if I take you with me, will you?"

Going with him could mean grave danger and certain death, but it still seemed better than the alternative, so she nodded, trying not to look too surprised. When he didn't say anything, she ventured, "You do realize I would agree whether I intend to run away or not?"

"Of course." A smile, making him look years younger and kinder, flashed over his face, and she averted her eyes, wondering why she wanted to blush all of a sudden.

Travis rose, but paused just inside the door. "We're re-entering normal space soon. Want to come with me and see it?"

*****

Patricia squeezed the armrests of the co-pilot's chair on the bridge, feeling a bit seasick from the way small rocks zipped by the window. The floor caught her attention when it started to turn from solid metal to something resembling a window. "Wow, I didn't just imagine that."

 She glanced at Travis and decided it didn't matter if she behaved childishly, so she reached down to touch it. It felt exactly like metal, but definitely showed objects swishing by them and a planet growing rapidly larger underneath their feet. He glanced away from his controls, and his mouth twitched into a smile when he looked at her. "The image is projected from long range cameras on the outside of the ship. We'll be going in for landing in a few minutes, and you'll want to strap yourself in."