Page 60 of Mutant Mine

I have no idea how to think about this thing we’re doing. ‘Boyfriend’ seems way too frivolous a word for what he is. No one would mistake Roth for a boy. ‘Lover’ makes me cringe…Hemight get away with saying it, but my internal monologue just cannot. ‘Partner’? Too domestic. We’re not about to buy a cottage and adopt a puppy together. Friend with benefits? Ugh, no. Situationship?!

Maybe when you’re a guard-turned-hostage on a prison ship overrun by murderous escapees, lost in the darkest depths of space, and falling for a man who can snap necks like he’s picking daisies… Maybe there’s no word for that. We’re justwhatever.

I feel so floaty. Kinda delirious. Rationally, I know that any kind of relationship between us beyond the confines of this room is impossible — and that there’s a million different ways this could all end with both of us dying, anyway. But I’m just too blissed out to let that fear really sink in.

When we met, I was so frightened of Roth. Even before then, I’d seen him on the news — and he was just this stranger, this terrifying stranger who’d mutilated himself and murdered people. Like the bogeyman. Someone so monstrous, you never expect to cross paths with them in real life, let alone…

But everything looks different now. The story I’d heard was this simple, flat, black-and-white thing — just a sheet of newspaper with print on it. Two nights ago, on the flight deck, Roth whipped that story up around him like a cape: filling it up, waltzing around in it, and turning it into a complex, three-dimensional, walking, talkinglife.

It’s not simple anymore. Not at all.

He wasn’t the bad guy at Watergap. Okay,he may have made some bad choices re: volunteering himself as a test subject in some terrorist laboratory and storming a government facility — but his intentions were good.

The only thing that scares me about Roth now is the way I can feel my center of gravity shifting as soon as he comes into the room, adjusting to the fact that I’m in his orbit. The way he can make me feel… not just with a touch, but with a word, or the weight of his eyes. I take another gulp of wine, shaking off a shiver.

I wonder how Tommy and Ellis and all the others are doing. When Roth gets back today, I’ll ask him to visit them again. He can make sure they have enough food, and that none of them are injured. I’m afraid that the prisoners will get bored one of these days, and pull them out of their cells just to have a little fun.

I wish I could go to see them myself, but I’ve learned the hard way that it isn’t safe for me out there. There’s no point in being foolhardy and putting myself in danger. Realistically, my options are Roth’s rooms, the cells, or death. Maybe I would have given a different answer a week ago, but now? Nocontest.

But… I feel the first cramp of real anxiety in my stomach. Whereisit safe for me, outside of these rooms? Where are we going to end up?

I try to put the feeling aside. I trust Roth. He’s clearly a competent pilot, somehow. He’s leading us to an inhabited solar system. It’s exactly the kind of system I’ve always dreamed of traveling to: discovered by real pioneers, only partially colonized, and far, far away from everything I know. He also seems to be able control the prisoners — at least for now.

Fear doesn’t benefit me. Fear won’t make me stronger or sharper. If I let it rise up and overtake me, it might just spoil this strange, miraculous thing between us, without helping me at all.

I try not to dwell on it, but I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember. I was a lonely child, who became a lonely adult. If you had told me that this journey was going to go wrong, and we might all die crash-landing on some planet or getting hunted through the corridors for sport, I would have thought, in the smallest, quietest, most secret corner of my heart:So I’m going to die alone, too?

This ‘whatever’ between us may have come at a weird, unexpected time, in a weird, unexpected form, but I’m not going to turn it away. I wasn’t sure it would ever come for me at all.

The water is getting cool. I get out of the bath and dry off, dressing in just a t-shirt and boxer shorts. I take my wine glass and empty dish of strawberries through to the kitchen to wash, then make myself a cup of tea and carry it to the table. I sit there, wrapped in a blanket from the couch, and sip my tea while I read a little moreFrankenstein.

After a while of reading, I look up from the page, towrack my brain over a particularly dense paragraph. My eyes wander out of the window, gazing at the ocean of stars. It’s so gorgeous. And there, in the far distance, I see the rising clouds of a nebula. It’s pink, haloed with purple.

Wait.

What?!

29

Roth

ONE MOREday remains. If my brothers do not return by nightfall tomorrow, then I will have to accept that it is time to begin our journey to Caster-391.

After patrolling the ship and sharing a meal with the men in the canteen, I have spent this morning on the flight deck, checking and re-checking the route that we will need to take. Navigating there is not difficult; I have already done the calculations. But I have been using the computer’s encyclopedic knowledge to research the solar system and all its habitable planets. If I am to build a future somewhere, I need to identify the best option.

I need a planet which is inhabited, but sparsely, with little law enforcement presence. Somewhere with challenging conditions, most likely, or limited resources. The sort of place where no one will think to look for me — and the locals will be too busy trying to stay alive to care.

Rory will have to be with me, at least at first. Perhaps later, I will be able to deliver her to a refueling station and offer her a choice. But the first priority will be to ensure her safety from my fellow prisoners — which means she must come with me. As long as she knows nothing important about Watergap, she will convincingly be my captive, and will not have to fear any legal repercussions if we are caught.

I hope that I do not have to use this plan. It is far fromoptimal, and there is a significant risk that we will both end up recaptured by the authorities. But it is looking more and more likely that we will have to try.

Why would my brothers sabotage the Hades, knowing that it would come to a halt in deep space, and then trail so far behind us? No matter how much I search my mind, I cannot make it make sense.

There is no point dwelling on my emotions. But I am… concerned. I do not believe that they have abandoned me — but it does raise the question: have they managed to survive at all? Even with their intelligence and strength, the odds were stacked against them. Stacked againstus.

The door from the bedroom slides open, and Rory enters the flight deck. She is dressed casually, with the arms of her jumpsuit tied around her waist, leaving just her white t-shirt on her top half. She smells of soap, and her hair is wet.

Last night was another that will live on in my memory forever. In the evening, after dinner, we lay on the couch together and Rory let me touch her. Hours later — after I had gone to the bathroom and relieved my own needs, my fingers still slick from her pleasure — I stripped naked again, and held her body against mine in the dark.

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