Strong enough to protect—or harm.
“Take your hands off him,” I say through gritted teeth, trying not to let him see my body tremble. He saved us, but I don’t dare hope he’ll do the same thing twice. There has to be an ulterior motive. There always is.
I want to close my eyes against the memories, but I don't dare look away. I'm afraid any moment he'll turn. That's what they do. They’re nice to you until they get what they want and then they stab you in the back. I don't think that's aliens alone.
Humans have the capacity for evil too.
Like Henry's father. Like my parents.
Even the thought of them summons an acrid taste to the back of my throat. Unbidden, the memory of the day my life was forever changed wells inside my mind, blotting out the present.
Everything on Earth II is a transaction. You pay in blood. You pay in food. You pay in slavery. You pay in sex.
If it can be used, it can be sold.
My parents got hip to the system real quick when they realized they were going to starve to death. Being that they didn’t want to work themselves to the bone, were dirt poor, and were weak-willed to boot, they offered up the only thing they had to the first group of soldiers that darkened our door.
Me.
I should have been surprised it took them all of a year to think of it once I came of age and left school and the stipends from the government dried up, but some stupid, naive part of me still held out hope that they’d love me. That hope died when they shoved me out the door and my pleading fell on deaf ears. Too shocked to cry, I could only stumble as I fell into the clammy hold of my new jailers. My ears rang and I tried to focus, but malnourishment and exhaustion dulled my senses. An alarm clanged inside me, but I was too weak to fight and the arms around me, though on the scrawny side, were vital with the energy of a regular diet.
“The food?” the man I’d called Father prompted.
“Hey!” said the guy with a vise-like grip on my arm. His breath washed over me in foul waves. Hygiene wasn’t high up on the list of priorities for men like him these days. “Give the guy his rations.” He glanced back down at me, then smirked. “Make it double. This pretty girl is going to fetch a mint.”
I thought I’d known enough of terror to understand all of its nuances. But the vision of my parents standing in the doorway as two soldiers gripped my arms and dragged me away was enough to teach me different. I’d grown up under the careful tutelage of monsters. I’d been beaten, starved, demeaned, and forgotten. It only served me right to be reminded that for every facet of evil I know, there are many more I’ve yet to see. After all, if I can’t trust my own parents, who can I trust?
The couple I was saddled with my entire life were no longer focused on me. Instead, they watched with greedy eyes as a third soldier hefted two boxes that clattered noisily as they threw them on our rickety porch. My mother fell to her knees and began sifting through the contents with barely restrained glee. My stomach growled loud enough for my captors to snigger as she pulled out jars of genetically modified food so realistic, you could forget it was grown in a lab. Containers of peas, green beans, and tomatoes. Packages of dried prunes and beef jerky. It would have been enough for me to stretch into weeks, but I doubted their bounty would last them through the night. It would serve them right if they got rid of me only to realize they’d gambled away their only salvation.
“Don’t worry, sweetness,” said the soldier with the bad breath. “There’ll be plenty enough to eat where you’re goin’.”
“If they don’t eat you first,” the other added.
They both shared a look and then sniggered to themselves. Hardy-fucking-har. Comedians, both of them. I knew where they were planning to take me.
To the prison.
Exilium.
It may as well be a death sentence.
We reached the end of the alleyway, but I’d stopped fighting them a couple minutes prior. I hadn’t eaten in what felt like eons and I needed to conserve my strength if I was going to survive. And I would, I resolved. If only to come back and spit on my parents’ corpses, I would survive.
I had to.
The two holding my arms hefted me up into the back seat of an old spacecar. I wedged myself between boxes and boxes of scavenged canned goods and non-perishables, too hungry to worry about what my fate may be. They chattered amongst themselves as they chained me to a metal loop and I learned the one with bad breath was named John and the other two Matt and Evan. I thought they may be related, but I wasn’t sure. They wore the same matching uniform, so it made telling them apart almost impossible.