I stood opposite Daron through the glass walls. The childish Daron, the friendly, unassuming Daron was gone. I had only ever seen him as a young man, outside of his depths at a campus made for the cream of the crop, surrounded by warriors and killers alike. I had always thought of him as being forced into it. I had been so wrong. No longer a child, but a small man whose presence made him seven feet tall and all-encompassing. This was a new man, who was self-assured, ruthless and intelligent. He had belonged with us all along.

As much as I wanted to pull his head free from his neck, I couldn’t help but feel some measure of respect for him. He played to his strengths like a perfect little spy.

“We won’t lose it so easily. Humanity is too persistent and tenacious. Even if you do manage to capture Earth, your clients will buy into a thousand years of war and terror.” I said.

Daron scoffed, “Do you think that’s the first time we have heard that? Why is it that everyone thinks their species is special? We all come from the same stock, we’re all the same. Your people will bend or break like everyone else.”

I nodded. Stepping back from the window and turning to look at Mia. She stared up at me. Her pupils shaking with fear but her brows and mouth set in understanding and acceptance. She gave me a small nod and a smile.

I squatted down in front of her, balancing on the balls of my feet with my hands bound behind my back, “Remind me, how long until we’re out of Induction?” I asked.

“Two or three days, we don’t have long to prepare. Thankfully, it will take them longer to get to earth.”

“Okay. Tell Jack to get comms out to a man named Jasper, he will be able to get eyes on the edge of the system. Are you ready?” I asked. Swaying in front of her.

Mia just nodded, “Erick?” she whispered.

“Yeah?” I looked into Mia’s eyes, there was no fear. A calm determination swam behind the deep brown. Along with something else I couldn’t place.

“I think I love you,” She muttered and I almost balked. I put it out of my head as I leaned forward, bringing my mouth to the side of her neck. To Daron, I would have looked like a moment of passion, a brief instance of affection, just a kiss on the neck. But when my face came away, blood dripped down my chin as it streamed from a hole in Mia’s carotid artery.

I wished I could have done it a different way, but there was nothing else I could think of that would be fast enough. If they stopped me, we would be separated and our only chance would disappear.

I felt a tiny amount of warm blood as it rolled down my tongue, the copper taste filling my mouth and I shuddered, vomiting violently. Mia may even love me, and I had just killed her in the worst way possible. Feeling sick to my stomach, and not just from taste, I left the blood on my chin as I stood and turned, wanting Daron to see what he had caused. I expected to see anger that he had lost a captive, fear that his plans would now be outed in just hours when Mia respawned. Maybe even disgust at what I had done. Instead, he still had a smile spread across his face.

“You think this will change anything?”

“She can spread the word.”

“She can try. It will take them weeks to organise a unified defence. Bureaucracy will slow everything down, as always, and then it will be too late. In a day and a half, we will be in your system's space.”

A Day and a half!? How was that possible. While Earth and its system were still in the induction period, there was no general access to the portal. To cross open space would take weeks.

I stood there stunned, as Daron laughed on the other side of the glass. “I know what you’re thinking, and you will have to wait and see. For now, why don’t you and your ‘missus’ just hang out a while,” he said. He chuckled again and walked back down the hallway, leaving me along with a dead Mia above a slowly growing pool of blood.

I dropped back down against the wall, away from Mia, and closed my eyes. Was this all our fault? Our ill confidence in Daron. Surely, we weren’t the only people to fall subject to information gathering. Without knowing for sure, I could only hang my head with the guilt. I didn’t know what it meant if Daron and his father took Earth, but my imagination ran wild while I sat alone in that cell.

Thoughts of a dystopian society. My friends and family among hordes of slaves, people stripped of the freedoms so ingrained into their lives. Or would the new owners strip Earth of its resources, leaving it a husk, devoid of natural life? This though brought on imagined images of ships ferrying off exotic species to sell at galactic auction houses, of giant machines extracting natural resources until there was nothing left. Not knowing was worse than knowing, it only left my imagination, and it was brutal.

With my arms still bound and unbreakable, alone and without my augments, all I could do was sit and think. I began to ferment with the odour of blood and my sweat until I couldn’t take my eyes off Mia’s body. She would have looked like she was asleep if it wasn’t for her skeletal white face and red-stained chest. “I should have said it before, but…I’m sorry.” I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I felt as though it needed to be said. For my own sanity. I only said one more thing to Mia’s body, then I closed my eyes and allowed myself to rest.

They left me there for hours. The ship felt motionless as it plunged further and further from my team on Nerion and closer to everyone else on Earth. The only sign I had of movement was a flowing buzz that swept through the room and the rest of the ship. We must have moved through Nerion’s nearest portal. There the process repeated, indicating we had passed through yet another. This time I was lost. This ship wouldn’t have had permission to use the portal to Earth’s system. I was still scratching my head as to where we had gone when Daron graced me with his presence a second time.

When he walked down that hallway and out into the open, his smile was still stretched across his face and he wasn’t alone. Four soldiers walked behind him. “Bring some friends to come and play?” I hissed. I had intended to play It cool. To act collected and restrained, but even I could hear the bitterness in my voice.

“To play with you? Sure,” Daron’s hand disappeared behind the wall where I couldn't see it and the glass door slid open. I scrambled on the floor as the men entered the room. I struggled as best I could, twisting my body as they grabbed on, but I was near powerless as they lifted me from the floor.

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“I want to show you what we’re doing, I really do. But I couldn’t help but notice that you haven’t gotten on the bed,” Daron said from the doorway as the men carried my writhing body across the room. “We’re going to need you to rest awhile. So we’ll pop you down and give you something to relax. I would hate for you to follow Mia out of here and ruin my fun.” The men slammed me down on the bed, wrenching at my legs as they threw straps across me, forcing my body into the mattress. “Because what’s the point in success if you can’t share it with a friend,” Daron said through his smile.

I strained against the bonds as a needle was plunged into the side of the neck, the drug concoction took effect immediately and I felt my heart rate begin to slow. This wasn’t so bad, I thought. It actually felt quite nice. The bed was so very soft, enveloping me in comfort. The men stepped back as my eyes rolled in my head. Was I floating? I have to get one of these at home, I thought as my muscles lost all tension and I felt a slight tingle run through me. Oh no… that’s not good, is it? I knew my respawn had just reset, and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted, but at the same time, I was so content and relaxed. How could anything be bad if I felt like this? I was really getting comfortable, just about to drift off when another needle was stabbed into my neck. This time I hardly felt it. What I did feel was a rapid spike in my heart rate, my eyes snapping open and my body tensing at once to push against the bonds.

“Fuck you!” I swore. It was like being awoken from a pleasant sleep. Fucking Fuck! Their drug had done its job and the four men stepped back from the bed as the bonds holding me down fell away. Except for the ones on my wrists. They were still firmly tied.

“Excellent, now if you play up I can have you killed. Try to play nice and you might learn a thing or two about how the world really works.” Daron said, clapping his hands together.

I sighed. I wasn’t going to get out of here by struggling. If I was going to get out of here at all. I had to remind myself that I was still only ranked eighty-two maybe eighty-three after that battle, and it was likely that many of Daron's men were stronger than I was. On a ship, in the middle of space with my respawn already reset, no weapons or comms.

Daron's outfit was far from the primitive slave lords of Scaratous. I doubted that even stealing a new scanner would restore my comms since Daron's nanites were still inside me. Would killing him rid me of the control? I thought. Maybe for a while but I wouldn’t be able to kill him while he was surrounded by well-paid men. I wouldn’t be able to do anything.

I pulled myself from the bed, “Mind if I wash my face?” I asked. Mia’s blood had long since dried on my chin and I could feel it cracking over my skin.

Daron waved to one of his men who turned on the tap behind a curtain at the edge of the room and wet a small cloth that hung beside it, “Careful, he bites,” Daron laughed. The man approached gingerly and wiped the blood from my face, his arm tensed to pull away should I attempt to bite or attack him. I allowed myself to be cleaned without complaint, actually grateful for the feeling.

“Alright, show me something,” I said to Daron when the man pulled away.

I was led out of the room and down the hall, two of the men dragged Mia’s body after us and along the ship in the other direction. “Where are they taking her?” I asked.

“They will vent her body. Don’t worry, we’re not barbarians. They will give her the respect she deserves. I quite like Mia, she was always very kind.” Daron said, not looking back at her. There was almost a hint of humanity in his tone, if you could call it that, considering he wasn’t human.

“I heard her telling you that she loves you. Do you also love her?” Daron asked as he walked through the ship.

“You heard that?” I asked. I hadn’t thought he would have been able to through the glass.

“I have the microphones on your scanners linked,” He said, tapping the side of his head.

“Then you heard what I said to her, when you left,” I responded.

“No actually, I thought I would give you a moment of privacy with her body,”

Daron had seemed pleased I had killed her, giddy even. He had taken some sick pleasure from watching me kill someone I cared about in such a grizzly fashion and yet he had then given me privacy? To what? Morne? To reflect on what I had done? I was confused. Was this just another act he was putting on? Was he trying to create some kind of new connection from the one he had torn to tatters?

I sighed, maybe I could play the same game. There might have still been a chance that he would regret what he was doing, or at the very least he would release me. I didn’t have any other options at this point. “Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it,” I said. I really hadn’t. With all the training and exercises, I hadn’t even had time to think about what to buy people for Christmas, let alone how strong my feelings were for Mia.

“You know, I’ve never loved anyone, not even sure what it is.”

“What about your mother?” I asked as we moved through a doorway into a busy cockpit. In fact, I wasn’t sure it could be called a cockpit in a ship this size. While it still only had two pilots stations, there were a number of comms, navigation, defence and weapons stations all enclosed by large glass windows that looked out into the blackness of space. This had to be considered a bridge rather than a cockpit. People milled around with their various tasks, only looking up as we entered.

“My biological mother was no more than a womb, paid by my father to produce children,” Daron said. He moved to the centre of the bridge, where a large table showed a holographic image of the ship and the surrounding space. I actually felt a little sorry for him. No wonder he acted like such a piece of shit.

“Explains a lot,” I muttered.

I hadn’t meant to be overheard by Daron but he still responded with a quiet, “Indeed.”

“Has a connection been made?” Daron barked across the bridge.

“Coming online now, we can be there in three minutes,” a voice responded from the workers.

“Three minutes, how can we cross that much space in three minutes?” I asked, I knew I was opening up too much, that to stay a silent observer would have worked in my favour, but I was terrified of the prospect that we would be there so soon.

“We’re not entering your system directly. The Protection on the system still stands and we can't just break the creator's rules. I’m assuming you’ve seen a portal?” Daron asked as he surveyed the holographic space. A few asteroids lingered in the ships peripherals, but aside from that, it was empty.

“Of course.”

“Well, We have our own.” Daron said, “Deploy when ready,” Daron ordered.

I looked up at the window as there was an almost imperceptible shake in the artificial gravity. Three small lights appeared out the front of the ship, moving away from us in a tight formation. As they grew further away, they began to separate, their lit thrusters turning to blinking red bulbs. Then there was a shift in the background, the darkness of space seemed to warp, it grew more defined until sharp lines appeared between the three objects. Then the space between them became liquid. No the pure black of the portals I had seen, but a dark grey that shifted and rolled.

“That doesn’t look safe,” I muttered.

“Only one in ten thousand formations are unstable. No luck for you, we’ll be fine.” Daron said with his increasingly familiar smirk. “Move through,” He barked to the room.

It might have been statistically safe, but every breath on the bridge was held as the nose of the ship dipped into the grey portal, lost from sight. They wouldn’t know if it was working until the bridge passed through, and as the liquid moved over the windows, a collective sigh went through the workers. Everyone except me.

My breath was still caught in my lungs as I stared wide-eyed out. We had moved, not into more empty space, but into the back of a floating armada. Almost a thousand ships all the same size as this one or larger were waiting in formation, all quietly drifting in space as they waited for our arrival. A thousand state of the art, heavily armed and armoured ships. This was the assault force for Earth and I couldn’t imagine it ending well for my people.