Hunger gnawed at Jàden’s stomach. She curled into a ball and shivered. Her clothing had mostly dried, though she didn’t feel warm. She sucked on a chilly part of her sleeve in the hope that a spare drop of water might find her tongue.

Darkness wrapped her like a cocoon. Sometimes she dozed, but nearly every ticking second of her internal clock she searched for a weakness in her cage. Everyone wanted her dead, so why was she still alive? And what was Frank’s connection to Bradshaw?

They’d both been part of the core teams, but the two men had never been friendly with one another. Frank issued orders. Bradshaw ignored those orders and did whatever he wanted.

The Flame’s absence left a hollow void in her senses, yet it was nothing compared to the one in her heart. Kale should have saved her by now.

“Please hurry,” she whispered, her fingers digging at a shallow divot along the floor. She convinced herself going to Ironstar had been a bad idea. They could have stayed in the submersible or tried to hijack one of the Raith fighters. “We should have stayed in the hangar.”

She didn’t know the right path anymore, only that she ached for Kale and to be somewhere safe with him.

Bright light flooded the room. She squinted against the glare, heavy footfalls trudging across the floor.

“Have a nice nap, Darlin’?” A familiar voice spoke beyond the cage.

“Frank.” She glared at the round-faced man. Raw pain scratched her dry throat. “Where’s Kale?”

Frank lit a cigarette, grunting as he inhaled the pale blue smoke. “That boy has always been a pain in my ass.”

The corded muscles along his arms pulled tight beneath his slate uniform, the emblem of Hàlon’s Guild Commanders on his shoulder, an infinite circle centered around a darker secondary orb with six arrows pointed toward the outer rim of the patch.

She wanted to scream that a pretentious prick like Frank was a horrible choice of a person to command the ship and its citizens. Both he and the Iron Lady ought to be in prison or spaced. Jàden crawled to the barrier and pressed her hands against it. “He’ll find me. Kale will never stop looking.”

Frank pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, tendrils of smoke twisting through the air. A devious grin spread across his features. “I told that boy you were no good for him. Truth is, you’re much more valuable than he’ll ever be.”

She slammed her fists against the glass. “You don’t deserve him as a son.”

The two men were always at odds. Kale once told her he’d thought about taking his mother’s surname, anything to shed his legacy as Frank’s son. But no one called him Jason—his friends knew him as Kale—and in the end he’d kept the surname to remind himself every day how much he didn’t want to become like his father.

When Kale brought up their future, she shuddered at the thought of taking the name Jàden Kale. A bond that would tie her to Frank as family. Yet another reason that escape from Hàlon and Sandaris to another world became so enticing. She and Kale could sever all ties with their past and look toward a brighter future.

Frank’s blue eyes fixed on her, a blackness in their depths reflecting the necrosis in his soul. “Once Doc Bradshaw’s done, you’re going to wish you’d never been born.”

“Why am I here?” She wanted to grab him by the throat and shake the answers out. “You signed my death warrant.”

“Ah, Darlin’. Did you really think I’d let that bitch kill my most valuable asset?” A sinister grin curled his lip as he put a finger over his mouth to shush her. “We’re gonna open that gate inside the core, you and—”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“General Kale,” a woman’s voice said from the overhead speaker.

Jàden glanced around the bright room until her gaze landed on the blast shield screens. They’d become transparent again, like a computer monitor. She knew that voice, and it made her shudder right down to the core of her essence.

A tall woman sat behind a metal desk in a charcoal gray uniform, salt and pepper hair pinned into a neat bun.

“Command General Blàke.” All animosity fled from Frank’s voice. His shoulders tensed as the lines of his jaw hardened.

The Iron Lady locked her steely golden eyes on Jàden. Her high collar lay flat against tanned skin to hide a series of wretched scars along her neck. “You should have followed my orders and killed the Flame-wielder.”

Jàden shuddered under the woman’s scrutinizing stare.

“All you had to do was make this little darlin’ open the gate in the moon’s core, and all of this would be over.” Frank took a long drag on his cigarette, his eyes like steel.

“Never! No one knows where that gate leads, not even you,” Jàden shouted. Enforcers would have slapped her around for speaking to a Guild Command General with such disrespect, but most of them didn’t know the truth about Hàlon’s gate technology. It wasn’t something new and exciting but modeled after alien energy tech. Guild Command found a way to power the moon’s inner gate but couldn’t open it. They couldn’t even figure out what point in space it connected to, and Jàden wouldn’t risk landing them all in a swarm of those squid-like creatures.

Both generals glared at her.

Frank rapped twice on her cage. “We’re opening that gate, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop us.”

“Bastard,” Jàden muttered. The knot in her gut refused to unwind.

“We’ll see about that.” General Blàke narrowed her eyes at Jàden, then shifted her gaze to Frank. “I’ve already got my scouts searching for the other one.”

“Wait, what other one? There’s another Flame-wielder?” Jàden pushed herself to her feet and glanced around the bright room as if another abductee might appear beside her.

She finally glared at Frank, then at General Blàke.

“You’ll never have my power.” She extended two fingers and showed them the back of her hand, a gesture to display she hoped they’d get spaced up the ass while blasted out of an airlock.

Frank stepped toward the console and tapped a few keys. “Oh, I think we will, Darlin’.”

Pain dug into her skin, thousands of invisible white-hot needles pushing through her pores.

A scream ripped from Jàden’s throat.

The unseen pricks burrowed deeper into her eyes and ears, wedging into her arms and legs, fingers and toes. Jàden toppled backward, unable to move in the blinding agony.

“You were wrong, Madam General. The wielder is easy to control. So stay the fuck out of my way.”

“No—” Jàden tried to say more, but the sizzle intensified. Please stop!

Frank slammed something on his console and the screen went dark.

“Stupid bitch.” Frank spat at the ground. He pressed several buttons.

The pain eased, and Jàden collapsed against the ground. Echoes of pain whispered through her skin and finally ceased.

“Please,” she whispered, sobbing against the floor. “Don’t do this. We don’t know what’s out there.”

“Oh, Darlin’, you will open that gate soon enough.” A sinister grin tugged at Frank’s mouth. He held up a ration bar. “Until then, this is all you’ll eat.”

He crouched so they were level, a devious spark in his eyes. “No one’s coming to save you, Sweetheart. In a few years, no one will even remember you exist.”

Years . . .

She glared at him. “I hope Kale kills you.”

Frank pressed a button on the headset over his ear. “She’s ready.”

He tossed the ration bar across the floor where she’d never be able to reach it on his side of the glass barrier. What an asshole.

“I’ll find a way out of here, Frank! You watch. I’ll escape my cage and put a hole in your head.” Her voice a high-pitched screech, Jàden pounded on the glass until her arms hurt.

Frank shoved his hands in his pockets, whistling a merry tune as he sauntered out of the room. The door slid closed behind him, then dissolved into the wall.

Blast shields turned white across the walls and floor, Adina Blàke no longer visible in her office. Everything seemed to disappear under bright fluorescents as the entire room turned a snowy white.

Her throat raw from her screams, she slid to the ground.

“You traitor,” she muttered. Someone had to warn the Enforcers about what Frank was doing. If that alien gate was opened, there was no telling what would happen. They could be invaded by those creatures, or transported light-years from the nearest stars.

Jàden pressed her hands to her eyes and fought down the panic. Who could she tell? How could she stop this from happening?

By leaving, of course, but Sandaris wouldn’t let her. Jàden rubbed her chest where the invisible tether had pulled her back through the gate and still gripped her heart. She just wanted to be with Kale and leave this horror behind her.

“I know you’re still out there, Kale,” she whispered. “Please hurry.”