Chapter 31

“Hey, you! No comms!” came the gruff voice through the cell bars.

Tinsley, hunched over her comm, looked up to see a huge Jorvlen guard pushing open the door and striding over to her.

He made it across the room in only two steps and wrapped his calloused hand around her wrist before she even had time to think.

“Ow! You’re hurting me!” she cried, wincing as the guard yanked at her comm with thick, clumsy fingers.

“This isn’t the half of it,” the guard replied with a cruel grin. “But you won’t be my problem for much longer. You’re in the next batch.”

The next batch?thought Tinsley as the guard finally released her wrist. What does that mean?

It became clear she was about to find out.

“Come on,” the guard told her.

When Tinsley didn’t move, he grabbed her by the wrist again and pulled her behind him, shoving her into one of the empty rooms that she and Dante had explored together. Only now it wasn’t entirely empty. A single hook on the wall held a plain white slip.

“Put that on,” the guard demanded before slamming the door.

Tinsley was shaken. She was beginning to fear that Dante might not make it back in time, and now that she’d lost her comm, she had no way of keeping in touch with him. She only hoped he’d locked on to her implant tracker, too.

Reluctantly she took off her clothes and put on the slip. It barely covered her ass and left little to the imagination when it came to her breasts. She didn’t like what was happening and got the feeling it was about to get worse.

When she emerged from the room, clutching her discarded clothes in front of her chest like a shield, the same guard was there waiting for her.

Wordlessly, he yanked the pile of clothes away from her and then pointed at her feet.

“Shoes, too,” he said, and Tinsley knew it would be pointless to argue.

She bent down awkwardly, trying her best not to give the guard a view up her dress as she unlaced her boots. Unsurprisingly, it was a relatively unsuccessful endeavor, and she could feel his unwavering eyes on her. Finally, she removed her shoes and socks and handed them over, too.

The guard looked her up and down, and with nothing but the thin slip covering her, Tinsley felt more exposed than she had ever felt, even in the nude before a lover. This was a different kind of exposure—the exposure of total vulnerability.

She knew as well as the Jorvlen did that any attempt to escape in such an outfit would be almost impossible. The searing red dirt outside would be torture to cross without footwear, and the heat of the sun would leave her burnt and dehydrated without any protection—not to mention the sub-zero temperatures at night.

“Good,” the Jorvlen finally growled after his eyes had lingered far too long on her barely covered body.

With a perfunctory jerk of his head, he indicated she should keep walking. As they passed the next door, Tinsley heard him open it behind her. One glance back told her all she needed to know—two soft thuds sounded out from within the room, and when the Jorvlen closed the door again, he was no longer carrying her shoes and clothes.

A shiver ran up Tinsley’s spine as she remembered the piles of women’s clothes, and she understood she was walking the path that hundreds of women had walked before her. She wondered vaguely if Maraliza’s clothes were in there somewhere, too, or perhaps in another room just like it on another planet.

She hoped she’d make it through this to find out, and once again, she sent up a silent prayer to Dante.

“Turn left,” the Jorvlen’s gruff voice told her, and she obeyed, turning down a hall and into a small alcove.

The alcove was actually an elevator. Once the guard stepped in beside her, they suddenly rose away from the basement and through several levels before stopping on the top floor.

The place was teeming with pirates, many of them bustling around an enormous ship that was being refueled. It wasn’t the ship she and Dante had followed but another. This one looked like the kind for transporting cargo.

“The last one’s here!” called the guard, shoving Tinsley forward.

She was immediately grabbed by two other pirates, each of them giving her salacious looks as she stumbled forward helplessly. Their rough hands took her by the arms and shoulders as they brought her to the ship. And soon she was being pushed through its inner corridors.

When they finally opened a door and shoved her inside, Tinsley found herself face to face with a few dozen other women, all wearing the same barely-there slip that Tinsley was dressed in. Many of them seemed groggy; others were too terrified to make eye contact. Others still were hugging their knees to their chests and sobbing. It was a horrifying sight.

Tinsley barely had time to take it in, though, when a Jorvlen voice rang out over the speakers.

“Prepare for launch!”

The familiar hum of a ship’s engine started up, and the ship suddenly jolted upward, causing Tinsley to stumble. She took her place on the cell floor, trying to make sense of what was happening to her—to all of them.

In the back of her mind, she probably knew, but her conscious mind wouldn’t allow her to touch the thought. Instead, she concentrated on trying to figure out where they might be going. Another facility maybe?

She hoped again that Dante was tracking her implant. If they went off-world—and in a ship this size, that was almost certainly where they were heading—Dante had to be able to track her. Her comm was long gone, so the implant was her only hope.

As her mind ran over these thoughts, though, she was suddenly distracted by something. The cell was dimly lit, but she thought she’d caught a glimpse of color through the crowd.

As the ship rocked and swayed, Tinsley slowly crawled toward the bright patch of color she thought she’d seen. Other women shifted around her as she moved forward, and for a moment, she lost sight of it.

Then, a Noxxan woman moved, and Tinsley almost laughed with relief. It was unmistakable now. At the other end of the cell, the bright violet skin of a Lorr woman almost shone in the dark.

It has to be her, Tinsley thought as she moved ever closer. It has to be.

When Tinsley finally approached the woman, she looked up, suddenly aware that a stranger was staring at her.

And at that moment, Tinsley was sure. She’d recognize those bright green eyes anywhere.

“Maraliza?” she asked, a smile crossing her face despite the circumstances they found themselves in.

The Lorr looked at her quizzically for a second. “Yes?”

Tinsley breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m Tinsley,” she said, trying to find the right words to explain all that had led to that moment. “I’m with your brother, Dante. We’ve been looking for you.”