Page 45 of Marked
Designed by a man,that much was obvious.
“Not yet, Tanika. We’re going to get out into space before you do that,” Alaric instructed.
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” she replied, rather arrogantly for a hologram. I raised an eyebrow in surprise. This was going to be an interesting dynamic between the two of them.
“Engage the engines and roll us out of this hangar. Then employ every system needed in order to get us off this rocky hellhole of a planet,” Alaric said. He wiped a dirty palm across his face and sighed, looking over the blinking indicators across the oversized command center.
“Got it. The system logs will show that I said differently though, prior to takeoff. Remember that,” she said haughtily. I swear I heard Alaric choke in response to her words.
Well, that was unexpected. I turned back toward Tanika and swallowed a laugh as she mimicked Alaric’s motions of wiping his face with his hand.
I grinned. Funny thing about a hologram was that Alaric couldn’t spank her like he could do with me. I stifled a laugh at the thought, biting my lip to keep it from slipping out, but the moment I glanced up, I found him glaring at me as if he had read my mind. I quickly turned away, my shoulders shakingwith barely contained amusement, and focused instead on the glowing screen that had just materialized before us.
The holographic display stretched wide, filled with rapidly scrolling lines of alien code that flickered in unreadable symbols before translating into something recognizable. Beneath our feet, the engines hummed to life, a deep vibration that resonated through the floor like a beast stirring from sleep. The ship shuddered, then rolled forward, smoothly at first, then faster, gaining momentum as it raced down the runway. Within seconds, the scenery outside the large viewing window blurred past us, the lifeless expanse of Ghengra streaking by in pale flashes of white and gray.
“Engaging anti-gravity systems,” Tanika droned, sounding completely unimpressed by the sheer miracle of space travel.
I sank into a seat as the ship lifted, a gentle but undeniable force pressing me back as we left the ground. The engines roared beneath us, not loudly, but powerfully—something Ifeltmore than heard, like a surge of raw energy pushing us forward and up. Through the viewing window, I watched with wide-eyed wonder as the world beneath us shrank away. Ghengra was an inhospitable place up close, but from above, it looked even emptier.
The surface was a barren wasteland of cracked white rock, stretching endlessly in all directions. Jagged formations jutted up from the landscape like skeletal remains of some long-dead civilization, their edges worn smooth by constant, whipping winds. Shadows stretched long across the terrain, cast by the planet’s eerie, twin suns—one a cold, pale blue, the other a sickly, muted yellow, both barely enough to give the surface any warmth. There was no water. No trees. No signs of anythingresembling life, aside from the scattered clusters of buildings that clung to the planet’s surface like parasites.
Most of the structures were concentrated in isolated hubs, stark white domes and angular towers breaking the monotony of the endless desert. From above, they looked sterile, lifeless, a collection of forgotten outposts rather than a thriving civilization. Even the largest of them—the place I had been held captive—looked insignificant against the vast emptiness beyond. There were no sprawling cities, no lush landscapes. Just endless rock and dust, occasionally interrupted by the movement of somethinghuge—the Uruk-Zuk, the only native creatures large enough to be seen from this high up. Their massive black fur covered bodies lumbered across the wasteland, leaving deep, winding trails in the dust, their sheer size making even the buildings look like toys in comparison.
The further we climbed, the more Ghengra started to look like a moon—barren, colorless, and utterlydesolate. It wasn’t completely abandoned, but it wasn’t a world anyone would willingly choose to live on, either.
And now, I was leaving it behind. Goodbye Ghengra, and good riddance.
The thought sent a shiver down my spine. Ghengra had been my prison, my nightmare, but it was also the first place I had ever seen Alaric for what he truly was.What we both truly are.
I kept my eyes on the planet as it shrank beneath us, and I felt something strange settle in my chest.
Relief. And maybe, just maybe, a sliver of something else.
Something that felt an awful lot likedestiny.
The ship rattled.
“Told you to run diagnostics,” Tanika said while she crossed her arms over her chest. She appeared rather haughty as she stared back at Alaric. If anyone had mastered resting bitch face, it was this lady, and my respect for the definitely-not-real-hologram girl grew tenfold.
“What’s going on?” Alaric said, pushing forward in his chair and looking over the screen in front of him. His forehead furrowed with concern as he studied the lines of code. The longer I watched, the more his brow crinkled with distress until Tanika finally decided to answer.
“I don’t know. Would have if I’d run the diagnostics,” she retorted.
“Please run them now,” Alaric commanded, although now there was a certain edge to his voice that I’d heard many times before. I licked my lips and sat back as the ship rattled again, watching the show. I wished that I had popcorn right now so that I could fully enjoy it.
“As you wish,” Tanika said with a certain fake cheeriness, and her eyes rolled back eerily in her head. Her eyelashes fluttered and about thirty seconds later she opened them once again.
“The anti-gravity compressor has an air leak,” she replied. “All other systems are in working order though.”
“Can it be fixed? Do we need extra parts?” Alaric asked.
“It’s more complicated since we’re in the air now. I can send a drone down below to fix it. It should take a minute. It would have only taken about ten seconds if you’d just let me run thediagnostics when we were on the ground,” Tanika muttered, and her eyes fluttered eerily once again.
The ship rattled once more, harder this time, a violent tremor that sent a jolt of panic straight through my chest. A second later, it dropped, a stomach-lurching freefall that made my breath catch in my throat. My fingers dug into the armrests, knuckles turning bone white as I clung to the seat like it was the only thing keeping me from being ripped out into the black void beyond.
Another violent shudder rocked the ship, metal groaning as if it were protesting the force tearing at it. My stomach lurched, the unmistakable weightlessness of freefall hitting me for a brief, horrifying moment before the ship stabilized—only to lurch again, worse than before. It felt like turbulence, butwrong. This wasn’t an airplane gliding through a storm; this was something else entirely.
My breath came fast and shallow, my pulse hammering as the ship continued its rapid ascent. Every second felt stretched, every violent shake of the hull another reminder of just how small we were, how fragile. I swallowed hard, squeezing my eyes shut as the ship rattled once more, metal shrieking around me.
