Page 17 of Challenged

“So a contagion that cannot be caused by the hut and yet is also worse close to it,” Anghar says.

We all turn to look at the hut, considering the contradiction. When I turn back to Gregar, his expression is grim.

“The cause of it is less important to me than the ending of it. I trust I can leave the burn in your capable hands?”

I incline my head. “Of course.”

He nods at me. “Good. Use whatever resources can be spared. I will not have our younglings inherit a sick forest.”

The human females have given us cause to hope since they arrived some half a season ago. But hope can be a sharp edged thing when something is poised to take it away. Gregar’s words are forceful, passionate. But fear shapes them also. It is not just the blight - the presence of the Mercenia hut weighs on all of us. The knowledge that Mercenia was here before, that they might come again.

But I can do nothing about that. It is beyond my knowledge and skills to use themachinesthat might contain the answers. Blight is something I do know.

“We will stop the blight,” I say, my own passion as strong as Gregar’s. “I would not let you or our future younglings down.”

“I know you would not,” Gregar says.

CHAPTER SIX

Angie

When I find the stairs at the end of the corridor, I head up and keep going until there are none left to climb. I burst through the door, hoping to find offices. Hoping to find people working in those offices. But I emerge into a corridor identical to the one two floors down. The lighting is still dim, the shadows deep, the silence deafening. There isn’t even a background hum of electronics like in the pod room. The only thing I can hear up here is my panting breath, my pounding heart.

I try the first door I come to. It slides open easily, revealing a bedroom behind it. It’s a nice room, clearly for the brass, with a large double bed, a desk and chair, plus another door on the far wall that probably leads to an ensuite bathroom. Someone has been sleeping in it - there’s a pile of what looks like animal furs in the middle of the bed, clothes tossed over the back of the chair, bags stashed in one corner. The clothes look similar to thehandmade garments Liv and Lorna were wearing. Not a lab coat or an executive suit jacket in sight.

I try the next room and the next, finding much the same behind each of the doors. In the last room I try, the bed is made up with ordinary linen, the air cool and smelling of dust and disuse. I slip inside, pulling the door shut behind me. The lights overhead flicker into life, and I lean back against the closed door, sliding down it to the floor as the weight of my spinning thoughts becomes too heavy to bear.

Nineteen years. Cryostasis. Alien planet. Breeding program.

It’s ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. I try to remind myself of that, to not let the creeping doubt and fear get any louder. Not let the memory of those yellow eyes rise in my mind again.

Clothes. I need to get some decent clothes. The right clothes can be like armour, and the vest and panties combo I’ve got on right now is just not cutting it. I’d kill for a pencil skirt and crisp blouse, a pair of heels. Uncomfortable though they are, heels put power in my step.

The first drawers I try are empty, but for the dust gathering in them. The cupboards are mostly empty, too, but I do find a jumpsuit shoved in the back corner of one of them. It looks like the sort of thing industrial tier workers would wear and smells musty as all hell, but still, it’s an improvement on the vest and panties. I pull it on, and it’s surprisingly close to my size. Enough to make me wonder if I was supposed to find it. The initials ‘KD’ have been embroidered into the chest pocket. A cute little detail. Make it seem like the suit really did belong to someone else.

I glance at myself in the tarnished old mirror. My hair is a little tangled, but it’s not greasy or matted, so that’s a good start. I look pale, though how much of that is the unflattering strip lighting that’s ubiquitous in this place, I don’t know. There are dark bags under my eyes, though, and a nasty bruise on my neckthat is definitely nothing to do with the light. I touch my fingers to it, hissing at how tender it feels.

And blink back to Baxter yelling at me again.

You’ll pay for this, you little bitch. I will make you pay.

He was so out of control in that moment, but I wasn’t afraid. I thought I knew what payment he would extract, and I was willing to pay it for the satisfaction of seeing him so utterly undone. Pain is temporary, and I could cover up a black eye in my sleep. The memory of Baxter’s humiliation would satisfy me for years.

But he didn’t hit me. Even though his eyes flashed in the exact way I’d come to anticipate, the violence never followed. Not until later, anyway.

It comes back to me now, a rush of memory, so vivid it’s as if I’m living it all over again. Walking home from work, feeling light. Powerful. I humiliated Baxter, and he didn’t hit me for it. He’s too weak, too pathetic. A worm cosplaying as the big, strong man. I know his secret, and he knows that I know. He had the chance to put me in my place and he didn’t take it, which means my place is forever changed.

I have all the power now.

I’m thinking about how I might leverage that power when he steps out of the shadows of an alleyway, a look like murder in his eyes.

I don’t waste breath trying to appease him, to beg for my life. I just run. Run as fast as I can. But for all heels might put power in your step, they’re fucking useless for running in and Baxter is bigger, stronger, faster. He catches up to me in moments, an arm like a band of iron going round my body, pinning me to his chest.

“You asked for this,” he says, and for a heartbeat that seems to last an eternity, I’m sure he’s going to start ripping at my clothes.

Instead, he slams a syringe into my neck, jams the plunger all the way down. I feel the strange cold of the contents spreading out, making my body go limp, my head spin. My vision goes blurry, then tunnelled. The last thing I’m aware of is that arm around me, holding me tight to Baxter, as my consciousness floats away.

“Angie?” Liv’s voice snaps me back to the present. “Are you okay in there?”

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