Last Call (Stranded in the Stars Book 1) (16 page)

He heard an embarrassed moan escape her as she buried her face into her hands, the light from the flashlight bouncing around.

“See? Smelling you saves you from embarrassment.” Teasing her was becoming one of his new favorite pastimes. He briefly looked at her stomach again before pushing the uncomfortable thoughts away.

“I do want you again.” She confessed, peeking out from her hands to stare at the bulge between his legs.

“Once I finish up here. I’ll give myself to you first thing.” He winked at her, “You can have your wicked way with me.” He watched as she dropped her hands and revealed her face. “It’s a new deal. I’ll be your sexual slave.” She laughed softly.

“Deal.” She whispered as a pulsing light flashed out from the reactor behind him.

“Watch my back Allie.” He reminded her as he turned back to the job at hand, opening up the holographic keylock, hacking the dated system with ease.

His last conscious sound was of her turning away to watch the darkness as he became a robot, dropping his humanoid half away.

Chapter Twelve:

---

A
llie was shivering with desire again. The promise of his body was enough to replace years of pent up loneliness and frustration; evaporating her old fantasies. She knew she needed him more than she wanted to admit. Attachment was a dangerous thing.

She hadn’t known it was possible that she could procreate with Jack and that made her wary. He alluded that Cyborgs could control it and she hoped that he had.

Her emotions had been thrown around like a sandstorm. All of them had jumbled together until she couldn’t tell them apart. It made her emotionally and mentally drained and during times like these; where her fear was palpable and her desire fierce she found herself confused on which feeling belonged to which emotion.

Allie felt her mind snap under the stress.

Jack’s laughter had banished the darkness for a moment but it creeped its way back in around her now that he was gone. And ever since they had left the grave pit, she could feel something following her. The smell lingered– clung to her– and it only got worse with every second.

She squeezed the handle of her dagger to reassure herself of its presence.

She waved the flashlight around the exterior of the room, checking every shadow in every corner.

The machine behind her pulsed bright light intermittently. It built up a tempo as the power source grew stronger. She assumed Jack was coaxing it. The noise of the metal clanging around the room was welcome in her mind. It was the spaces beyond and the pathways after that remained dark, silent, and scary.

From where she stood, there was only one direction to get to Jack but the ship’s corridors spider webbed off after the core room; and it was those directions she watched with intensity, moving the beam of light between.

A loud clamor blasted out from behind her, coming from the reactor. Soon after a bright light source that ran along the hallway walls flickered on, bathing the space in a wash of deep red before they flickered back off.

Allie stiffened in place. She could have sworn she saw a being illuminated when the red light was casted. Frantically, she waved the flashlight around to locate the anomaly but it only lightened up a single section at a time. The shadows flooded in whenever her light moved away.

Her heart beat fast, the breath in her lungs held tight, her throat closed up. Fear stopped her from doing anything but maneuvering the light and she was losing the will to do even that. The light was her defense but it was also the fastest ticket to losing her mind. She desperately did not want to see her fears take a physical form.

Allie’s fear made her focus and that focus was suffocating her. She had walked into the bowels of her worst nightmare and she had done it willingly; and for what? Closure? Jack? What had she been thinking?

She never considered herself to be brave; before her arrival here she was a simple, oppressed girl who followed the rules and dictations of the commune. She never stuck out, never brought attention to herself. How did she end up here?

Allie was about to give in to her cowardness when she was stopped, hearing her name whispered in the dark.

“Allieee,” a strained wisp came from the gloom beside her. She turned toward the sound and lifted her light.

Nothing was there but a darkened pathway that led into nothingness.

“Aaalliee,” her name came again, slithering across the air. She stared down the path, contemplating her next move when the darkness spoke again.

“I need you.” It was fainter now as if it was moving away from her.

“Who are you?” The breath she held for the past minute being released. She waited for an answer that never came. “Hello?” She moved the light around the room again.

Ghosts.

Just then the red neon glow of the ship flickered back on and the machine behind her shook. When it stayed on, not immediately flickering off, she was able to look around and upon first glance, everything was as it should be.

Metal flakes from the deteriorated wall was pooled under her feet, the machinery laid in ruins around her. Allie looked up at the pathway where her name had come from and froze.

The low red dim stretched far out before her to the end of the corridor and at the end of the tubular metal hallway was a black ghostly figure, suspended in air. It was far away and it made the details blurred but she knew that it was stagnant and staring in her direction. That the figure had long flowing black hair that stuck to the shadows like sludge.

“Allie.” A breathy, dull whisper washed over her again. It filled her nostrils with rot.

“Who are you?” She whispered back as if she was next to the wraith.

“You left me here…” the sound hung in the air between them.

“Ophelia?” Allie felt her heart break open, she knew, tears forming in her eyes. It was her, her friend Ophelia, a young female like herself. Ophelia was chosen to be the mate to the usurper Warlord's closest General.

When Allie had first met her soon after arriving at the female commune, she had been a simpering, naive girl who had been excited to pair with a Trentian male. Nobody liked being near her, shadows followed her around and she was often caught talking to herself and sleep-walking at night.

Nobody liked me either.

"My male is out there right now, fighting for the right to my body, for the future children we will create together." She remembered Ophelia sighing longingly.

The day after the brutal examination that had taken place at my commune. I was taken aside to be prepared for the joining. A ritual where I would be claimed in front of the Warlord’s closest Generals. On display for all to see as my status went from a maiden to mate.

Other women of her community were petulant and jealous that she had been chosen to be the consort for the Warlord and that she would hold more status than any other female in the colony. But all Allie had been concerned with at the time was the pain that her new master would cause her. Ophelia, on the other hand, had been claimed the previous day while still in line with the other maidens.

She also cried but unlike me, her virgin blood was dripping down her legs. I couldn’t save her.

Ophelia told her afterward that the Warlord's best General went straight for her and licked off her tears. He had told her she was pretty when she cried and that she was special to lose her innocence to the Warlord's hand; that he would finish the job during the ceremony the following day in support of his Warlord's celebration.

The man I was suppose to mate with brutalized my best friend.

Each girl that day had similar, horrifying stories, and it was then that they decided as a group to escape before the claimings. Ophelia said she had a plan and that she had made a deal to ensure that they would escape successfully to the port and that a pilot would smuggle them off of the planet.

Allie never got the chance to ask her friend how she managed that feat... but her friend got their group into space and for a short time they were free.

She stared at the phantom, her friend, as it stared right back at her. The only break between them, the noise of the reactor powering up the ship. The red light in the hallway flickered as the dark figure turned away and moved into a room and out of her sight.

She knew this was why she had come back, why she has ended up back here. It was her unfinished business with her friend. The girl who had picked her up and dragged her out of the commune. The girl who had saved her life only to end it here; on this rotten planet.

The two of them had been inseparable for years, ever since Ophelia was delivered to the commune after her testing. They had bonded instantly. Allie, the Earthian bastard and Ophelia, the crazy half-breed girl who talked to herself. They had both been different, both struggling, and they had found each other.

Tears fell down her cheeks. She couldn’t let her go, Allie knew she needed to see this to the end or she would only be a husk of the person she truly could be.

Ophelia has been here all this time.

She looked back at where Jack was working, saying a silent goodbye and a sad, desperate
thank you
in case she was unable to return. Her gaze lingered in his direction, her heart screaming at her to stay with him, to go to his side but her guilt urged her to move away.

Her choice was solidified when the ship jerked around her, the ground shaking abruptly then stopping as if to nudge her on. The lights around her quivering.

Without needing another sign, she started down the passage where her friend had just been, making her way carefully over the sharp edges of debris scattered over the ground. She kept her light facing forward to keep her path in sight. The thought of the drifting ghost appearing in front of her scared her out of her mind.

But the thought that the ghost was her friend kept her moving onward and that it was her turn to come through for her.

It didn’t take long to reach the end of the passageway where she had seen the wraith. Allie didn’t know what to expect but standing where it had been minutes before made her spine tingle with fear. She was dealing with forces that she couldn’t understand.

Moving the light to the room to her side where it had disappeared, she illuminated the space, searching for the entity. The red lights only extended to the passageways, leaving the rooms split off still dark. The space was large; it looked like it had been a meeting place at one point. At one end, she observed, what looked like a table shattered against the wall.

It must have slammed into the wall on impact.
The only other entrance to the space was in the opposite corner from her.

“Hello?” She whispered to the ship again, receiving only silence in return, she walked into the room.

Allie steadily moved deeper into the ship. Nothing else called out to her and the only sounds that accompanied her were the groans of the ship. The way forward was unusually clear and straightforward. There was only one way to move forward as the other pathways were blocked by rubble.

She knew that the entity would keep her on the right path, Allie had a sinking, bottomless feeling in her gut.

The ship violently shook around her, the floor lifting up and then crashing back down. She lost her footing from the heave and dropped to her knees. Something sharp sliced into them.

She yelped as she tried to stand up, reaching down with a wince, finding small glass shards lodged into her skin. She pulled out several of the pieces, her fingers coming away with blood. It seeped down her bare legs and smeared over her hands.

The ship shook again soon after but she was prepared for it, balancing her feet apart. She could hear large crashes behind her as if the interior was falling apart. Scared, she turned around to investigate and discovered that the way back partially blocked, the ceiling caved in. Large pipes had dropped down to block her exit.

Allie felt trapped and for a moment wanted to dig her way out and back to Jack.

Did I make the right choice?
She reached out to manhandle the metal cylinders out of the way.

“Please help,” a sad moan punctuated the space. She turned away from the make-shift jail bars that severed her path to Jack.

“Ophelia?” She flashed the light around, the sound had been right behind her. Hardening herself upon seeing nothing, she moved further into the ship, leaving the pipes behind.

The temperature was dropping with each step she took further into the ship. The sounds of the reactor now a faint, faraway whisper. She shivered, holding her arms around her frame. Allie could see her breath frosted in the air and she was grateful for the cloak draped around her. The blood on her knees cracked with her every movement, already chilled and dried to her skin.

She was as cold on the outside as she was numb with fear on the inside, fighting herself with every step to not turn back and run to Jack; but every time her doubts began to win over, her friend’s voice filled her mind, beckoning her on.

Allie was on a part of the ship that she had never been before. She periodically came across human remains the deeper she traveled, bones of the bodies she could not get too long ago.

The spaces around her looked less like operating rooms and more like storage units, small odd closets and rooms dotted along the exteriors of the large rooms she moved through. In one room, she peeked in, and saw a dilapidated bed and rusty bedspring.

Maybe this was where the crew was housed.

She felt a breeze brush past her arm, she jerked it away and stumbled back in trepidation, searching the area for her friend.

She backed up against the wall and trembled, faint from adrenaline and confusion. She stayed like that for a short time before she found the willpower to scan the area with her light again, her hand shaking from the effort. “Ophelia,” she breathed. “Where are you?” All she could see around her were the series of doors that led into the smaller living spaces.

Her call was answered.

Her heart stopped.

Straight across from her, the wraith descended down from the shadows above. It’s hair falling forward as if dripping with black ooze and shade, the face distorted behind it.