Archive of Our Own ^beta

It wasn't the first time Raelle had woken up handcuffed to a bedpost, but it was almost certainly the first time she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there in the first place. Her irrational initial thought was, whoever her playful damsel was, the least she could have done was ask.

She struggled awake, climbing upwards through drowsiness like raking hands through soft, dark velvet. She fought through the effects of some sedative to clear her mind. Metal scraped against wrist bones as she yanked angrily against the restraints.

"Piss..." She couldn't yet summon the strength to curse. With supreme effort she twisted her thin, lithe body to get as much leverage as she could. Heavy, was all she could think. So heavy. Steel bit into skin and she bled.

After five minutes of pointless struggling, she lay still. She could hear nothing but the blood rushing in her ears, the panicked rhythm of her own heartbeat. A rebellion rose inside like a snake uncoiling in her belly. Helplessness was not part of her DNA. If you can't fight, then think!

In the military the first thing they teach you in survival training is to list your assets and obstacles.

Focus. Evaluate. Act.

In her favour? She still had clothes on. Not all of them mind you—she was down to a white tank top and black leather pants. Whoever was holding her had taken her knee-high flight boots and her well-worn, beloved leather jacket.

Whatever she might do, however she might get out of this, she needed to be able to breathe. She focused on that. In and out. In and out. Something so simple turned out to be more difficult than she expected.

Losing control of her body. That was a big cross in the negative column.

Despite the betrayal of her flesh, memories of the night before began to bleed back. Or was it last night? She had no way of knowing. She'd heard about a job on Maldova, a security job, and had booked her shuttle on a Maldovan freighter ride-along for the long-haul trip. It was supposed to be her way out, a new beginning away from the rules and restrictions of soldiering.

Her small shuttle that she had painstakingly scraped together the gold to buy was barely suited for hopping in and out of the atmosphere to neighbouring moons. The only way she could make the trip was to hitch her craft to one of the larger ships like a parasite. So, they'd struck a deal.

She'd handed him too much money—he could tell she was desperate—and drank to seal the bargain as was the custom on Maldova. It hadn't been her first drink of the night, but it was the last thing she remembered.

A velvet blanket brushed soothingly against the bare skin of her shoulders and upper arms. It was so soft, and it would have cost a year's army pay. She longed to give into the luxury of that blanket, settle in and let sleep overcome her once again. She fingered the beautiful cloth. A fog threatened her again. Hell, if my host hadn't been quite so presumptuous, I might have been tempted into this bed willingly.

Focus. Evaluate. Act. FOCUS!

She yanked at the restraints again. The result was agony and a spasm that ran down both arms and legs.

"That's not going to help."

A soft voice trembled along her skin. A woman's voice, tender and alluring. The drug messing with her senses again no doubt. Not even the sweetest, angel-like vision of beauty on any planet had a voice like that.

"Well, that explains the velvet," Raelle sneered. “Nothing beats a woman’s touch.”

"You may as well get comfortable, Raelle. You're going to be my guest for a while." The silky voice tickled her senses, like having her mind caressed by an invisible hand.

Raelle felt violated. "Don’t say my name."

"Of course." The voice was still soft, but crisper.

Raelle screamed suddenly as softness became sharp. A biopsy needle. Knowing what was happening didn’t ease her fear. She was being entered against her will. A part of her was being stolen.

She was sucked down into oblivion again.

***

She woke brutally, shocked awake.

“Are you feeling all right?” The voice asked.

Raelle’s hands were still caught up in those damn cuffs, but there was something different. No pain. She moved her hands and discovered softness there. The wounds on her wrists were healed, and the cuffs were now fur-lined leather instead of steel.

“I usually get paid for this kind of fun,” she said, childishly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the voice insisted, a bit harder now. “Why are you fighting?”

Raelle mentally checked herself all over. There was something in that calm, echoing voice. Her skin crawled even though she wasn’t being physically touched.  She writhed again and the cuffs unexpectedly fell open. Momentum threw her from the bed, she fell to the floor, and her shoulder crushed on the harsh stone. She grunted in pain.

"What now?" The voice asked.

Raelle pushed herself slowly up. Her elbows shook with the load, but she pulled her legs underneath to get herself upright. "You tell me."

"I don't want to hurt you. I need you." The voice sought sympathy.

That was a new one. Raelle laughed into the air. "You’ve got a funny way of showing it." She ran a hand through short blonde hair and scrubbed the shaved patch at the back of her head. Despite her better instincts, the clenching in her gut eased.

For the first time she looked properly around the room. It was perfectly round, the walls smooth and grey like the flagstone floor. The bedframe was chromium steel. The sheets were cold white. Her own clothes were black and white. The monotony played with her head. There was her pink flesh with the blood pumping just below the surface. She focused on that to orient herself.

There was no obvious door, no windows, no handholds in the walls. No visible cameras or two-way mirrors. Everything felt clinical, even her own body, she belatedly realised. Before meeting that freighter captain, she hadn’t showered in two days. Now she was sterile. She held up her arm, sniffed, and detected the odour of disinfectant.

Suspicion grew. Gingerly, she checked fleshy parts of her body for needle tracks or wounds. Some small, red marks were there, not yet healed, stains against otherwise unmarred skin.

Furiously, she held up her arm. "What have you done to me? How long have I been here?"

There was a mechanical sound to her right, loud against the stillness of the room. A crack of light appeared in the wall, then grew and became a doorway. She rushed towards it but got only as far as the other side of the bed before she hit the electrical buzz of a force field.

It glowed red and opaque. She put open palms against the barrier and pushed. Energy crackled around her fingertips but there was no pain. Frustrated, she yanked her hands away.

Then a woman appeared in the doorway, oddly devoid of expression. She pushed a cart groaning with food into the room. Baser instincts took over and Raelle drooled. She looked from the tray up into the woman's face.

The girl was petite, early twenties at most, with brown hair so dark it was almost black. It was tucked in chunks back behind her ears, revealing a long, graceful neck. After so much monotony, her azure-steeped eyes were a shock to the senses.

"Hey! Hey you!” Raelle demanded. “Let me out of here!"

Despite the force field between them, the woman took an instinctive, defensive step back.

Her bland expression slipped. She met Raelle’s eyes and lingered as long as she dared, then hurried back through the door. Raelle’s heart sank as the portal slid shut. The force field buzzed off.

"Please. Eat." The voice instructed, politely but firmly.

"And if I don't?"

No answer came.

Raelle paced the round room, a caged tiger prowling its confines. Her muscles bunched and cramped from the forced vigilance so soon after so much inactivity.

Time passed. Regularly the voice returned, probing her mind with that needle-like precision. She always screamed, and was ashamed at her reaction.

Still, Raelle refused the food. The blue-eyed woman didn’t come back. It was just her and that voice that could scorn and burn and soothe and caress, wielded with the skill of a surgeon.

***

She wasn’t sure when her resistance fell away, but she woke one morning feeling calmer. She smelled her clothes, her skin. She hadn’t bathed and hadn’t changed her clothes, but she smelled as clean and toasty as a fresh-scrubbed child.

The same long, dull day was ahead. She sighed loudly. "I’d like to eat," she said to the empty air, just for something to damn well do.

"I’m happy to hear it," the voice responded.

"Not this food,” she scorned. “I want bacon. Eggs, scrambled. With toast, and coffee."

"Gladly." The voice sounded happy. Raelle refused to care about it. Just the anticipation of eating was enough to ease her mood, just for a while.

It was the same blue-eyed woman who brought the food on the same cart and tray as before. She gave Raelle that same long, lingering stare, then retreated.

Raelle didn’t pay her much attention either; she was too fixated on the delicious smells. The force field fell, and animal instincts took over.

"Enjoy," the voice said. "We have no wish to deprive you. This could have been an enjoyable experience for you."

"Get bent!" Raelle replied to the air, with a mouth full of egg. "I’m hungry, I’m bored shitless, and I want to go home."

"You will be released unharmed once the procedure is complete."

Raelle froze, the coffee cup halfway to her mouth. "What procedure?"

The voice did not respond.

Raelle put down her cup, anger rising once more. "What procedure?"

"Enjoy your breakfast," the voice said.

Raelle slammed down her fork. "If you’re not going to tell me anything you can just piss off and let me eat in peace!"

The voice did not respond.

***

Artificial light assaulted her eyes as they squinted open, and she drew in a deep breath of air tinged with the sticky sweetness of jet fuel.

Her body tingled. "I’m free," she whispered, as if afraid that the air itself would betray her. was on a steel platform, hidden behind some steel fuel cells, and she wasn’t alone.

Someone shook her and hissed, “Wake up!”

Raelle turned so quickly she wrenched her shoulder in its socket.

"You!" Raelle accused.

The blue-eyed woman steadied her. She motioned to her to keep both her body and her voice down. "We don’t have much time. They don’t know I’m here."

"Who’s they?" Raelle pushed her away and tried to sit up. "And why should I care?"

"Don’t you want to leave?" The woman pressed, anxiously. “I was meant to take you to the clinic, but I brought you here.”

"Of course, but..." Raelle twisted around. "Where am I?"

The woman’s eyes went wide. Such eyes. No eyes were that blue. "You really don’t know where you are?"

"Do you see any reason why I should mess about?" Raelle snapped.

The woman crouched beside her. "You’re on AX-117."

"The cloning planet?" Raelle yelped in panic.

The woman desperately motioned for her to keep her voice down. "You must have caught somebody’s eye.”

Raelle felt suddenly, violently ill, and put a hand to her stomach. "Someone paid to have me cloned?" Her brain spun into multiple possibilities, each one as nauseating as the last. "Some rich old geezer likes me, so they stick samples in test tubes and a whole bunch of little brats that look exactly like me come out?"

"They don’t just look like you, they are you."

"And you’re one of...those. A clone."

The woman stiffened, gravely insulted despite her twitchy, panicked state. "I’m an alpha."

"An alpha what?"

"It’s difficult to explain." The woman pulled on Raelle’s arm. “We have to go!”

"We’re not leaving this shithole until I get exactly whatever parts I’ve left behind."

"You’re not serious?" Those unnatural eyes narrowed.

Raelle just stared back. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

"We’d need to somehow back into the lab, find your records and samples. There’s thousands—"

"Thousands drugged and plucked out of space like pieces of meat?"

"Why do you care?” The woman said, exasperated. “You’ll never meet one of your own clones. I’ve never met my source."

"Source?" Raelle felt disgust rising again. "Oh my God. I’m a source."

"Look, I got you this far, now you need to help me. Please. I can’t go back."

Raelle made no move to leave. "Alpha. Is that some kind of rank?"

The woman’s voice grew desperate. Words fell out in a rush. "It’s an order. There’s a source like you and they birth an alpha batch—eight control subjects to test the voracity of the clone. Sometimes we come out all right, you know, nice docile, obedient. And sometimes...we don’t."

Raelle pulled a face. "How do you know if you’ve come out wrong?"

The woman yanked out a pistol she had tucked in her belt behind her back and aimed it at Raelle’s head. Raelle dropped to the floor. The woman pulled the trigger and the bullet sailed past, hitting a target behind her Raelle couldn’t yet see.

She whirled in place to see another clone drop to her knees and then thud lifelessly to the deck. She looked shockingly similar to the woman with her.

The woman quirked an eyebrow. "That’s a pretty good indicator."

Raelle stared at the dead body. "You killed her!"

She shrugged. "There’s six more just like her."

Raelle struggled for words. "So, do they know you came out…different?"

"They didn’t before." An alarm blared above them so loud Raelle thought her ears might bleed. "But they do now."

Raelle’s army instincts kicked in. She looked around for some kind of shelter, or weapon. "You’re only doing something now? What in hell have you been waiting for?"

The woman looked at Raelle as if she were stupid. "You."

"Well, that’s gratifying and all, but I’m still not leaving without my…stuff. I'm going back, with or without you."

“But you have a shuttle right here!” She threw a yearning look out to the shuttle bay. "You’re serious?"

"Deadly," Raelle replied.

Her shoulders slumped. "Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you." She hefted her pistol and indicated to a doorway. "We have to go through there."

The door creaked loudly as it opened. Raelle panicked. "We couldn’t maybe announce our presence any louder, like with bull horns?"

The girl just ran, assuming Raelle would follow. After a few minutes, Raelle staggered from the stitch in her side and a cramp in her right calf. So, she wasn’t as fit as she used to be. "Which way is the lab?"

The clone veered left at the next corridor. The hall was blocked by two sentries who were just beefier, heavily armoured versions of the same woman.

Raelle ground to a halt, eyes wide with shock, but the woman never broke stride, putting a bullet between the eyes of each guard as she went. They crumpled with surprised faces.

“Are you insane?” Raelle yelled. She dodged her way around bodies that were dead before they hit the floor.

At the end of the corridor the woman turned back. "Keep up! This was your idea."

Raelle pointed at the bodies. "But these…?"

The woman turned back, chest heaving with effort. She regarded Raelle like an overly-patient parent. "There's more—"

"—where they came from. Yeah, yeah, I know."

The woman cocked her head. "So why do you keep asking?"

" Aren’t they, like, your siblings or something?" Raelle asked.

The woman looked horrified. "Why would you think that?"

"Because you look exactly alike!" Raelle held out her hands as if to say, what the hell?

The woman’s gaze went cold. "What, them? They look nothing like me." She pulled up a sleeve and revealed a grey and gold tattoo. The intricate, swirling patterns twisted halfway up her forearm. "See?" She leaned over the nearest body and wrestled the woman's sleeve up. The plain, square mark was faded but had originally been a deep green.

"Whoop-dee-doo," Raelle said, sourly. "So, if the tattoo is on your wrist, how do you know which ones to shoot?"

The woman laughed; a bitter, twisted sound. "We’re trying to break into a lab, steal your clone matter, and get back out again alive. Right now, I shoot all of them."

"Look..."

The woman’s hand shot out to cover Raelle's mouth. The sound of running footsteps echoed in the distance. "We don't have time for this."

Now, Raelle was in perfect agreement. "Can you stop randomly shooting people?"

"It's them or us," The woman replied. She handed Raelle her pistol and grabbed a rifle from one of the fallen. She reloaded the weapon like a professional soldier, in quick, measured movements. "You pick."

Raelle just checked the pistol and pointed to the corridor ahead. "Lead the way."

The woman nodded and began to jog. "Besides—" she flung back over her shoulder, "—there really are plenty more of them!”          

They moved quickly through the compound until the woman signalled for them to stop. She crouched and indicated for Raelle to do likewise. "This is it," she indicated around the corner. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Tense and alert, she gripped the weapon with both hands.

Raelle had to admit her new friend was pretty handy with that thing. "Saddle up, honey."

"What’s a saddle?" She whispered back. "Is it something I’m meant to do?"

"When we get out of here, I’m going to have fun un-sheltering you," Raelle grimaced. "OK, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded."

The woman blushed a little and flicked the safety off her gun. "Well, if we’re going to commit suicide, let’s get it over with."

"An optimist. That’s hot." Raelle threw one vicious kick and wood splintered with a crack as the door exploded inwards. "Down on the floor! All of you! Now!" Eight pairs of identical, startled brown eyes looked up from test tubes. Finally! Someone who looks different. "Are you deaf? I said down on the floor!"

Raelle was momentarily taken aback by their lack of fear. Standing at gunpoint, the white-coated workers calmly downed tools and slowly, painfully, sank to their knees. Raelle turned to her companion. "Does death not mean anything to you people?"

"Would life mean anything to you if you lived like this?" The woman spat back. "Look, get what you want and let’s get out of here. I promise the next people through that door won’t be so cooperative."

"You’re using the term people loosely I suppose." Raelle muttered, as she swung in front of the nearest computer terminal.

The woman picked her way through the prone scientists who took up most of the available floor space. "Do you practice being obnoxious, or is it just a gift?"

"Are you going to help me with this or not?" Raelle barked back. She looked down helplessly at the computer.

"Fine.” She shoved Raelle aside. "We need some kind of identifying search criteria."

"They wouldn’t just have used my name?"

The woman shook her head. "No, some kind of characteristic. They chose you for a reason. They’ll have filed your DNA under that." She looked Raelle up and down and said, "I’m assuming it isn’t filed under charming personality."

Raelle snorted. She had to appreciate a woman with sass. "What do I have that they want?"

The woman scanned Raelle clinically. "Blonde hair is good. Blue eyes even better..." she muttered. "But that’s not usually enough. There are plenty of perfect blue-eyed, blonde-haired specimens in the Universe. It’d be easier if I could see you naked."

"Hey!" Raelle spluttered.

"It wasn’t a request." The woman’s fingers flew over the keyboard. "Look here." She pointed to the display. "There were five sources brought in the day you were." She typed again and brought up a list of customer requirements. "I don’t suppose you happen to be a chess champion?"

Raelle laughed. "You’re kidding me, right?"

The woman kept going, scanning the data. "Won any tournaments? Games? Caught the eye of any rich mercenaries looking to build an army?"

Raelle shook her head, then stopped. "Wait...back up. What did you say?"

"Games?"

"Rich mercenaries."

The woman grunted. "Sounds like you mix with interesting people."

"Do you have a freighter captain named Garros in your customer list?"

"I can find out. Wait—damn. There’s level two security around the customer list."

Raelle scanned the room. She called out loud, "Who’s the senior in here?"

A woman by the door looked up. "I am."

Again, Raelle mused at the general lack of resistance. She presumed it had been bred out of them, like taking the bark from dogs. Or maybe the woman was right, keeping people sedate and enslaved wasn’t the best way to breed heroes. "I need your login and password. Now!"

The senior moved like an automaton, one careful foot after the other. Once she’d entered the details, she stepped back.

"Is that a high enough clearance?" Raelle peered over the woman’s shoulder as she hunched in front of the monitor.

"Not to permanently erase your record, but there’s some stuff I can do." Then she scowled. "You were right. Garros ordered a bunch of your clones for an unspecified purpose, only he didn’t want weapons training in their growth routine."

"What does that mean?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Customers come in two types when they’re asking for women to be cloned. They want to make an army, or a harem. Since he doesn’t want them to use guns...?"

Raelle shook with rage. "Son of a bitch!" She brought her fist down onto the counter, making test tubes jump and scatter. "Has anything been done with my samples yet?"

"No, it’s too soon. We were still collecting. And in a few moments the numbers will be mysteriously jumbled with a sample of albino rhino from the Bolarian sector."

"Rhino?" Despite the danger they were in, Raelle grinned.

The woman sounded matter of fact. "They clone animals here too. Endangered species."

"How on earth are you so good at this?"

"I’ve had a lot of free time.” The woman made the final changes to the system and stepped back, satisfied. “Look, we can’t physically find what they took from you, but since they’ll never able to identify it, it’ll get tossed like all other unidentified samples. It’s too dangerous otherwise."

"Thank God. This whole place and everything in it should be burned to the ground!" The woman’s face registered sadness, and Raelle winced. "I didn’t mean you."

"It’s fine. I’m not even a first-class citizen here, so what would that make me to people like you out there?"

"Well,” Raelle hesitated, then made up her mind. “We’re going to find out, aren’t we?" She watched as a gorgeous smile spread across the woman’s face. Hope transformed her. "You know what? I don’t even know your name."

"I don’t have one. Just a number. Names don’t mean anything around here."

Two male guards burst through the entrance. Raelle stepped forward and efficiently put a bullet into each of them. Funny how much easier they were to shoot when they didn’t have those same damn, gorgeous eyes. They bucked dramatically and fell to the ground. "Come on, whoever you are, and give some thought to your damn name!"

***

The hangar was guarded by two clone types, women who looked like the woman standing beside her, and some of the male soldiers Raelle had shot in the lab. They were all armed to the teeth, waiting for the two fugitives to appear.

"I hope you have a spectacularly good plan B. Your ship will be crawling with guards by now," the woman hissed near Raelle’s shoulder. "That little detour cost us our only chance to get out of here cleanly."

"That little detour made certain I’m the only one of me that’ll ever get out of here," Raelle threw back.

"At this moment that definitely seems worth risking my life for."

Raelle pointedly ignored the sarcasm. "We just need any shuttle, not necessarily mine. How do you feel about starting that plane over there?" She pointed to the two-man hopper at the front of the hangar.

The woman’s jaw dropped. “You’re serious?”

“You look exactly like that bunch over there." Raelle pointed to a group of women milling about. "You’re even wearing the same uniform. You could just walk out there, couldn’t you?"

"And fly a plane?" The woman asked, nervously.

"Look, I didn’t say it was a good plan," Raelle admitted. “But it’s a plan.”

"I’m questioning the sanity of that guy who bought your clone harem," she said, checking her weapon to ease her nerves. "I’m dealing with one. How much chaos could a whole group of you cause?"

"Right this second, a group of me would come in handy." Raelle checked her own pistol for ammunition. It was running low. She cursed under her breath. "Wait, look at your group over there."

"My group?" The woman replied indignantly.

Raelle stamped her foot impatiently. “You know what I mean. Just look."

"One of them is leaving the others," the woman said.

Raelle nodded. "Exactly. Poor lost wandering lamb. We can disable her, and you get in her armour, and nobody will be the wiser."

"Why don’t I like this plan at all?"

Raelle grunted. "Because it’s almost the same as the first plan?"

"Yeah, that’d be it." The woman frowned.

"This version is more refined," Raelle said. "You’ll see. She's heading towards that control panel in the wall. Take her out."

Raelle was met with a reluctant stare. "Me? You should take her out, to make the transition look seamless."

"This is ridiculous," Raelle whispered harshly. "If I go, they'll see us both."

"Not if you take her out!" The woman reasoned. "Look, this was your idea. You do the dirty work."

"Now you suddenly have a conscience?" Raelle aimed her pistol. "Don't say I never do anything for you."

The woman blinked rapidly. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response."

They moved along the outer wall as fast as they could without drawing attention. There was just enough space behind one of the control booths to hide. The guard was halfway across the hangar, wary of possible ambush.

When the guard reached them, Raelle rose up and punched her. She reeled back, but didn't fall down. Raelle instantly had her gun in her face. "Don't move," she ordered. Then she spoke back to her companion. "Strip her armour off."

The woman crawled tentatively out and looked up into the cold eyes of the guard. Recognition flashed between them. "You?"

The captured guard was oddly unsurprised. "All this mess. It was you."

"You wouldn’t understand," the woman said. The guard opened her mouth, but the woman interrupted her. "And I don't have time to explain it to you."

"You may as well shoot me. You know what they’ll do to me for letting the asset escape." Her voice was free of inflection.

Raelle laughed. “Let me?”

But the woman looked scared. “I won’t do that.”

There was something odd going on between them. The guard’s eyes were hard. "Are you too much of a coward?"

The woman’s face was frozen. "I've killed a lot of people today. What’s one more?"

"Yes, you have," the guard answered. "But they were not me.”

Raelle stepped between them. "I don't mean to interrupt your little reunion here, but we have to run. You, get on your knees!" She poked her captive with the pistol for emphasis.

The guard ignored her, just looked at the other clone expectantly.

"Get down," The woman implored. "Please. Don't make this any harder."

Raelle lost what little patience she had. “Is this woman your lover or something?" The two identical women kept staring at each other. "I'm sorry, this is just too weird for me. You two are practically related."

When the woman moved it was so swift it took Raelle by surprise. She reached up with two hands, held either side of the guard’s head as if she were about to embrace her, and gave it a savage twist. There was a sickening crack, and the guard dropped to the floor. Her body lay on the steel floor twisted and lifeless, her accusing eyes peering up into the air.

Raelle gasped in shock. "Why did you do that?"

"If I didn't, I would have been what she accused me of. A coward." She turned and looked up into Raelle's horrified face. "She was right, they would have killed her anyway as punishment. And I…think I loved her once."

Raelle swallowed, hard. "I will never understand this place." She couldn’t think of anything reassuring to say. "We haven't escaped yet. You need to get into that armour, quickly."

The woman removed the armour at speed as carefully as she could. She closed the guard’s eyes with shaking hands. "It's just a shell now," she murmured to herself. "And we don't know if betas have a soul. She might have gone somewhere better."

Raelle looked over at her. "She was a beta? Like one step removed from you?"

"One step more perfect than me," the woman replied.

"That's a hell of a party line to swallow," Raelle said, her voice hoarse.

Rushing now, piece by piece the woman wrapped the armour around her own body. It was, of course, a perfect fit.

Despite their identical faces, Raelle thought could see a difference between the woman in front of her and the dead woman at her feet. She was unique after all.

Once dressed, the woman set her face to a well-practiced, cold, blank look. Now, Raelle thought, they really did look identical. A wave of pity hit her.

She watched the woman walk out into the open space of the hangar. Not a single flicker of emotion betrayed her.

But there wasn't time for contemplation. Raelle wasn't sure if her new partner really had the nerve to do this, despite her little cold-blooded display just now.

That instant of brutality made Raelle shiver. Pictures of past lovers flashed before her eyes. If she needed to survive, could she do what this woman had just done? Could she kill someone she had cared for to save them from something worse?

She mentally kicked herself. Now was not the time for existential dilemmas. If this doesn't work, I might not have a chance to figure anything out. She sent a wistful thought in the general direction of the woman. Well, nameless beauty. If we get ourselves killed, it was interesting knowing you.

The woman walked towards the nearest hopper. Raelle sensed her trying not to look around, to keep her posture stiff and straight. Checking if anyone was watching would be a sure sign of guilt.

The vastness of the hangar worked in their favour. Despite the number of soldiers guarding the space there was too much for them to see everything at once. They certainly didn’t pay one of their own any special attention.

Before she’d set off, Raelle had attempted to offer her some basic piloting instructions, but she wasn’t sure how much she had taken in. But all she needed to know was how to turn on the engine, and how to make the guns go.

Raelle had barely finished that thought when the world rocked. She was picked up by a blast and thrown against the wall. She slumped to the ground, unable to move at first.

Smoke poured from the hopper’s cannons and there was a huge hole in the far wall. Fire alarms peeled throughout the hangar. Flames licked at the walls where the cannon blast had ripped through. Raelle attempted to pick herself up. Her arm hung limp, dislocated.

She threw back her head and winced, sucking back tears, working through the pain. There was no way she could force the arm back into its socket alone, she had to make it to the hopper like it was.

Running was difficult. Each time she caught sight of her arm dangling out front the pain returned full force. Black smoke billowed back through the hangar. All the soldiers were coughing and wheezing and desperately trying to cover their mouths. Some spotted her and cried out warnings, but visibility was low.

The hopper’s engines whirred as it turned. Raelle tried not to think about how the shoulder would affect her ability to fly. Just getting out of the hangar would be easy—the vertical jets could lift them directly through the open roof.

Then she looked up. "Fuck!" The roof was closed.

The hopper turned again, its guns now intercepting soldiers running into Raelle’s path. Even though the spray of bullets had no chance of hitting her, the sound of machine guns made Raelle duck instinctively. Some soldiers fell, others scattered, throwing themselves to the ground.

The hopper moved in a large arc, spraying bullets haphazardly. Raelle hoped the woman would have the sense to stop firing long enough for her to clamber aboard.

The bullets stopped and finally she had a window. The craft turned suddenly, with the gun turrets pointed in her direction. She waved her good arm frantically to catch the woman’s attention.

With a painful effort that made her head swim she hurled herself up on the wing, the first step to getting up towards the cockpit. Her dislocated arm still dangled uselessly. Tears of pain streamed down her soot-stained face.

Huge black gasps of dust heaved from the hole in the wall. Raelle assumed the woman had destroyed one of the air reclamation systems. The stench was growing worse by the second. There was another smell too, more acrid and bitter than the first. She was a soldier, so she knew that smell all too well. It was the smell of burning flesh.

She rapped on the glass and the cockpit opened. Raelle gritted her teeth against the effort it took to climb inside.

"I’d give that a two and half for form," the woman joked, then she spotted Raelle’s pale face under all the dirt. Her hand shot out to steady her. "What happened? Have you been shot?"

"My arm’s dislocated. The backlash from your little diversion slammed me against the wall."

With extreme effort the woman controlled her panic. "How about flying?"

"I guess we’ll see, won’t we?" Raelle said. "But that’s the least of our problems. This baby is designed to go up through the roof." She looked doubtfully up through the cockpit glass at the barrier above. "Literally, I mean."

The woman lifted a black remote from the console. "I’m pretty sure that’s what this does." She flipped it over and examined the buttons.

"What more harm could it possibly do?" Raelle asked out loud.

The woman gave her a wry smile, those blue eyes twinkling. "It could be an ejector seat."

"What a lovely thought." Raelle took the remote and her thumb hovered over the button. She shrugged. "Hold onto your seat?"

The woman blinked. "That was so bad. I’m going to make you pay for that."

"Here’s hoping you get the chance." Raelle checked for symbols or instructions, anything to give away what it did. There didn’t seem to be anything for it but to press it and hope for the best. "Ready?"

“No.” The woman clutched the side of her chair as a reflex. "But do it, anyway."

“You are my kind of woman.” Raelle pressed the button.

Blinding natural light flooded the hangar. They held their hands up to shield their eyes as the great, steel roof slid slowly back to reveal a glorious, cloudless sky.

Raelle revelled for just a second in the warmth before she punched the launch controls. The hopper’s jets ignited, and they lifted off, at first hovering precariously in the air, then launching steadily upwards.

She could only hope she had enough adrenaline left to counteract the pain. She pulled the controls back with a raucous yell and then they were flying through the opening and manoeuvring out into the open sky. With only one hand on the stick, she half-wrestled, half-steered the craft away.

When everything seemed under control, she coughed up some of the smoke from her lungs. "How’re you doing there?" Raelle looked over and winced at the effort.

The woman was mesmerised. She stared down at AX-117 as it disappeared beneath them, the tiny figures of everything she knew fading into the distance. All her cockiness was gone. "I’m not sure."

Raelle chuckled, then coughed up more soot. "That sounds just fine."

They flew on in silence, until Raelle broke into the woman’s thoughts. "You thought of a name yet? I can’t keep calling you nothing."

The woman hesitated for a moment. "It’s going to sound dumb."

"Spit it out, girl."

“I read a book once that I loved." She sighed wistfully. “There was once a water nymph named Scylla, who was transformed into a hideous beast who had twelve arms, six dog heads, and three rows of teeth.”

“Okaaaaay,” Raelle said, dubiously. “Why the hell would you be interested in that?”

“Well, at least she was original,” Scylla said.

Raelle barked out a laugh. "Yes. That she is."

The sky enveloping them turned from blue to black as they left the atmosphere and contemplated the empty, endless space spreading out before them.

After a while, Raelle stretched her legs as far as they would go in the confines of the cabin and moved her head cautiously from side to side. It was claustrophobic in that small space. That feeling of being violated and stuck came back to her with full force. That helplessness. For her it had only been days, maybe weeks. She wondered, after a lifetime of that slavery, what she might be willing to do to be free.

Scylla stared out the window, with her abnormally blue eyes reflected in the glass.

Raelle saw a face full of naïve, girlish hope, even after being locked inside herself for so long. She thought, maybe knowing there’s no one out there quite like you is the most important freedom of all.