Page 6

I’ve never seen this man before, but I’ve seen the face of a rapist often enough to recognize the stranger as one. He’s got thick stubble over his fleshy jaw, beneath two beady eyes that are almost completely hidden beneath the folds of his pale flesh. A thick brow and a twice-broken nose complete his thuggish, simian look.

I freeze.

Panic overwhelms my hatred.

Suddenly, I can’t move.

It’s like being in a dream – one in which your limbs are paralyzed. I stand there, and Ijust can’t move…

As if sensing my weakness, the would-be rapist stares at me – predator to prey.

His lips curl upward in snarl – and suddenly, he abandons the woman he’d been assaulting and dashes forward toward me, instead.

I’m shocked at how fast the big man moves – clawing out at me with his grimy hands and leaving his first victim still lying on the deck.

He’s on me in a heartbeat – the man’s big body slamming into mine and shoving me hard against the wall. The breath is knocked from my lungs, and my hands twist beneath his weight.

His hands grab at my wrists – sinking into my skin with agonizing pressure. The sudden stink of the man’s breath fills my nostrils. He smells like hot, rotten meat as his tongue smears a glistening path across my cheek.

Then, just as suddenly, his breath catches.

The man gasps – his beady, black eyes suddenly widening in surprise even as they hover just an inch from my terrified face.

His grunt of lust turns to a gasp of pain – and then, the big man pushes himself off me.

He lurches backwards, stumbling off into the shadows. I crumple to the deck as he leaves – the rapist’s weight pressing me against the wall had been the only thing still keeping me upright.

The rapist is gone now, and with disgust I wipe his slimy saliva from my cheek. My hand trembles as I look at it – glistening against my skin.

Across from me, the woman who’d originally been assaulted struggles to clamber up.

I look at her, instantly logging the important details, just as I did back when I travelled with Ling. Even the tiniest detail can be important when you’re fighting for your life, or the lives of helpless victims of slavers and scum. Those days might be behind me now, but I don’t think I’ll ever lose the habit of constant vigilance.

I quickly ascertain that this woman is roughly my age – or maybe just a few years younger. I place her in her early-twenties, with light brown eyes that are still wide and panicked from being attacked just moments earlier.

The woman glances left and right, terrified and searching for her attacker. Her whole body seemed to uncoil when she realizes he’s gone.

Then, the woman’s eyes turn to me. They drop toward my wrist – the one I hadn’t even noticed I’d been clutching painfully. It had been twisted and hurt when that foul man had pressed himself against me.

I glance down.

Hot, red blood is dripping from the blade of my knife.

My adrenaline stopped me from feeling the wound. Did it hit an artery? Am I going to bleed out in the darkness?

For a second, I’m horrified to think it’s my own…

…then, I remember the gasp of pain, and the way that huge man had staggered away into the darkness. By luck alone, he’d been the one who’d landed on my blade; with the steel penetrating his soft flesh just like he’d intended to penetrateme.

It was blind luck – I can’t take credit. If that man hadn’t skewered himself on my blade, I know I’d have been too frozen with terror to resist him.

The scenario plays out in my head like an old horror movie on holo-vid. That beady-eyed brute would have taken us both captive – me and the woman I’d caught him assaulting.

If he knew about this section of the Elnor, he’d probably know about other empty parts of this enormous transport ship. Big hands curled around our wrists, he’d planned on dragging us both into the darkness – raping us in the bowels of this vessel, just a few meters away from the supposed safety of our ‘affordable, luxurious space-accommodation.’

Then what? Ten-thousand souls traveled on the Elnor, but we still had security and the rule of law. The only way to escape the consequences of his crime would have been for that man to follow his rape with murder. The only mystery would be where he’d stow our bodies. Would he be able to sneak them onto the garbage incinerator? Out of an airlock?

Or would the innards of this ancient transport ship have been my final resting place? Would my body be discovered months from now – years from now – wizened and frozen from exposure to the sterile, recycled air?