Page 7 of Devin (Warriors of Etlon #5)

Val

F orty-two days. Forty-two breakfasts where the potatoes were indistinguishable from the scrambled eggs.

Forty-two days of crappy network vids and the same five films that some guard had rummaged from a sale and played on an old cassette machine that had already been old in Val's mother's time.

Forty-two lunches and forty-two dinners.

Val had learned just to watch the poker games.

All the Blues cheated and they played for serious pocket credits.

She'd only written twenty-seven letters, however.

They were honest-to-goodness, paper-and-pen, hand-scrawled creations (they weren't allowed any connected access).

All of them to lawyers and politicians and organizations that ought to give a crap that she'd been railroaded through the justice system in less than two hours.

For a while, she thought the guards were simply taking the letters and tossing them in the can, but then she got back a response.

It was a canned response, citing no time or ability to look into the merits of her case.

She got two more canned responses before a human actually answered.

It wasn't a positive one. In fact, it was the exact opposite.

"Unfortunately, you were caught red handed impersonating Esmeralda Blake, daughter of His Right Honorable Judge Ignatious Blake.

" That was all Val needed to read to know that she was screwed.

A judge would never let any of the blame fall on his daughter, and as the poor patsy that they had chosen, Val was a loose end.

Even if she did try to fight it, and found someone to listen to her, getting out and making a stink would be even more dangerous for her health.

Yes. It was best to just keep scanning her arm and getting one after the next entry into the lottery.

She'd have to find safety at the far reaches of space with an alien husband.

Knowing her luck, she'd end up in a warship that got blasted out of space just as she was about to die delivering her alien baby. Yeah.

The women mostly left her alone. Her credits still hadn't come through, so she earned some here and there for doing favors for the Blues.

Anything she could get with scans, that they had to buy with credits, was fair game.

Notebook paper, pens, decks of cards, she traded them for bits of candy and other bits to make life more pleasant.

She was used to working. Val was used to having her time spent with activity, but here, there was little to do and a lot of time to do it in.

The garden helped. She wasn't a great outdoor person, but Spike, surprisingly enough, was an avid gardener. Maryland hung around too, scooping up whatever free food she could manage. It wasn't until Day Forty-two that Val had any real problems.

"Bitch," she heard someone call. It wasn’t Spike or Maryland.

Val popped her head up from the row of zucchini she had been pruning. She saw an Orange that was evidently addressing her. Val had never seen this woman before, but she was clearly speaking to Val.

“Pardon?” It probably wasn’t the cleverest thing to say, but Val just wanted to make sure she’d heard right. This woman was a solid mass of muscle and tattoos and it was probably best not to piss a gal like that off.

“Bitch. A literate bitch.”

Did she mean literal bitch? Val was down on all fours gardening, but for some tatted up tank to just try and pick a fight with her was hard to conceive. Val kept her head down and mostly to herself.

“I hear someone’s been writing letters.”

Oh. That.

“I’m not really all that literate. I didn’t go to college and honestly-”

The woman picked Val up by the front of her shirt and got all up in her grill.

Val was hauled up onto her tiptoes like a rag doll.

It was intimidating as fuck. Apparently, this woman hadn’t heard about her ball biting background, or she just didn’t give a flying fuck because her balls were not swinging where a knee could easily access.

“We only saying this once. Stop it with the letters,” the woman ordered.

“We?” Val asked.

The woman didn’t take kindly to being questioned. Val got no warning except the slight drop as the woman let go of her shirt and pulled her arm back for a punch. There was no time to duck or fight back. The next second, her face was on fire from the force of the punch.

Val must have blacked out for a slight moment, because suddenly Spike was dragging her to her feet and loud klaxons were blaring around them.

“Lock down. We got about 60 seconds to get to our holes. Run!”

Val’s feet moved of their own accord, following the blue mass in front of her until it cut off to the other wing.

Some orange blob gave her a shove and somehow through the haze, she found her bunk just as the doors swung shut.

Val sunk down on the thin mattress and begged the pain in her head to stop and for the world to settle down from its spinning.

“Spicy!” a voice shouted from a cell down the row. It was Maryland.

“What?” Val managed to mutter. The sound of her own voice ached in her head.

“Thanks a lot. You’ve probably managed to kill me!” Maryland replied. Val wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not.

Val could hear the sound of Maryland weeping.

Spike had mentioned something about lockdowns.

They were rare, but they lasted for three days.

Which meant that if Maryland wanted to eat, she’d have to scan her own code for Scooby Snacks.

That meant a potential date with an alien monster missile, Maryland’s greatest nightmare.

None of this was Val’s fault. The woman had sucker punched her.

Three days in lockdown wasn’t all that bad.

It would give her time to come up with a solution to Ms. Tat Punch Face.

On the flip side, it also meant that her letters had been making trouble for people outside who wanted their patsy nice and quiet.

She’d already decided to stop writing letters a week ago, but apparently that hadn’t been soon enough to stop them from sending someone in.

If the woman had just been interested in a civil conversation, Val could have mentioned that.

Was Ms. Tat Punch Face done with her? Or did she have more sinister orders?

Val didn’t have much more time to ponder.

She stuck her wrist under the food dispenser, hoping some food in her stomach would quell the queasy feeling that just wouldn’t go away.

She probably had a concussion. The light glowed blue like normal, but then instead of green, it changed to purple.

There were no alarm bells or other warnings, but her Scooby Snack was not released.

Great. Now she had to wonder if she was stuck in a cell for three days with a malfunctioning food dispenser.

She’d be the one starving instead of Maryland.

“My, my, my, that’s a pretty mangled face you got there,” Val heard.

Val sat up and regretted it. The world swirled around her as the bars of her cell slid open and the elderly matron stepped in. For all her bravery, she had a shock stick in her hand.

“Ironic, this,” the guard said. “You’ve got someone waiting for you. Now we doin’ this the hard way, or...?”

“The easy way. My vote is the easy way,” Val groaned, barely processing what the guard had just told her. ‘Someone’ could be one of Ms. Tat Punch Face’s friends or it could be an alien husband. She prayed it was the latter.

“Good. C’mon.”

Val managed to get to her feet, but the swirling in her head made her nearly puke her guts out. Once again, she found herself following a hazy blob down the corridor. The guard seemed to think the shortest route involved a stroll through the Blue wing.

“Spicy!” Val heard Spike’s voice called. “I know we didn’t turn you, but you give those alien balls hell!” The Blues let out a cheer that did nothing to help Val’s headache. She raised her hands triumphantly anyway. If she wasn’t mistaken, Val heard the guard chuckle.

They stopped in a small room where the guard eyed her up and then punched in a code. It ordered up a box. She opened it and threw some clothes at Val.

“Yours are evidence, but these should fit, more or less. Besides, your uni’s got blood on it. Can’t have the greenies thinking we’re savages now, can we?”

Val felt her way through the clothes. She was thankful she had her own underwear and bra on because these were slightly too big.

There was a large gray sweater that hung low off the shoulder and a pair of stretchy jeans that Val would need to hoist regularly to keep in place.

It was painful to get them on, but she was relieved she wouldn’t meet her new husband in a prison outfit.

“That’s good enough,” the guard said with a shrug. “ “Hop up.”

There was a large white circle mounted a few inches above the floor. Val stood in the center and before she could ask the guard about her other belongings, the universe swirled around her and she felt pulled in several directions at once.

Val fell down to her hands and knees. When she could breathe again, the humidity hit her like a wall. Wherever she was, it was a sticky, Floridian mess. She wouldn't last long in this sweater.

It was just a mass of green foliage that she saw. Val crawled forward and puked her guts out until she dry-heaved. Then, she managed to roll away from the platform until she passed out.