Page 333 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

I discovered that his name was Jakar. I hadn’t been able to stop myself from asking about him that first morning after I woke up in my room, safe, and somehow without having had any dreams. A young Asian woman had come to my door and introduced herself as Hina.

I hadn’t seen her before, but since she wore a white lab coat and a pair of purple moccasins, I had to assume she was one of the ship’s crew.

So far, all the women had worn purple shoes of some kind, and I was starting to wonder what the heck was up with that.

Hina had come down to invite me personally to the mess hall and give me a tour of the ship.

Rested, I felt a lot more rational and a lot less scared, so I’d accepted the invitation.

By now, I had concluded that maybe I really had been so lucky as to blunder straight into a rescue mission by these kind folks.

We were slowly wandering through the ship on our way back from breakfast. She’d stuck to my side the entire ten minutes I’d managed to sit in the crowded room.

“Yeah, Jakar is a Pretorian,” she explained.

“They’re expert climbers—you know, because they have four arms.” I tried to imagine him up in a tree.

He wouldn’t blend very well, since he was red, but maybe the trees on his planet weren’t green.

Or maybe his species was like birds, the males colorful to attract a mate, while the females blended in.

I didn’t want to ask more questions in case she got the wrong idea, so I deflected by asking about the crew on the ship.

There were apparently ten of them—males—and seven of them had a mate.

Then she nudged my side with her elbow, a smile on her face.

“But I bet that when Eoin and Tori meet up with us again on Rakex, they’re finally official.

” I didn’t know who they were, and while I used to love the office gossip, right now I couldn’t seem to make myself care.

“So, the only ones single, let me guess,” I heard myself say.

I didn’t care—I really didn’t—but still, my mouth got away from me.

“Jakar and Akri? Am I right?” I held my breath as I waited for the answer, even though I had absolutely no vested interest in the answer.

Jakar might have been kind enough to bring me dinner last night; he was still a sleazy creep.

We’d just been rescued from a horrible place.

The last thing he should be doing was flirting and ogling the women.

“Yup,” Hina responded. We’d reached the door to my room, and I stopped walking, ready to retreat again.

I felt the urge to just nap some more, to distance myself from the here and now.

“No, let me show you the hydroponic room.” She took me by the arm and guided me to a door one over.

It opened immediately, and a blast of warm, moist air hit me in the face.

I could already feel my hair start to get frizzy.

I peeked through the door and was awed by how green and beautiful it was inside.

One wall was entirely covered in plants, and most of the others were at least partially covered, too.

From many different metal pods, plants sprouted in various stages of growth.

Before I knew it, I’d stepped inside, gazing at a pod with something that looked much like purple carrots.

Those looked almost big enough to be ready for harvesting.

“Jakar takes care of this place the most, but it’s kind of our joint project.

I take care of the science; he takes care of the rest,” Hina said, a hint of pride in the tone of her voice.

No wonder, it was gorgeous and awe-inspiring.

I hadn’t expected so much greenery to be right next door.

It surprised me that Jakar was responsible for this.

In my experience, the flirty, playful type of male didn’t have the attention span required for this kind of thing.

Now that I knew this room was right next door, and that it was one Jakar frequented, I felt even more confused. Did this make me feel more or less secure about my safe space? Did I want to spend more time in here, or did I want to run away so I wouldn’t risk running into him?

Last night, about an hour after I’d eaten my dinner from the tray he brought, I thought I’d heard his voice. I couldn’t understand what he said, but I could recognize the sound of that pleasant tenor. I’d heard the sounds of that awkward shuffle Akri had, as well, as they slowly passed by my door.

“Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Hina said quietly.

She’d been standing calmly at my side while I’d been lost in thought, skimming my hands gently along the leaves of the nearest plant.

She waited until I was meeting her eyes before she continued, explaining the translator tech they used—an implant that the Doc could painlessly and quickly install so that I could understand most of the alien languages spoken in this quadrant.

I didn’t like the idea of having something permanently stuck in my head, but honestly, it beat not having a clue what was being said, especially by the aliens that were so much bigger than me.

I wanted to know what was going on around me, and I couldn’t count on anyone speaking English. I nodded. “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Whoa, just like that?” Hina said, surprise making her almond-shaped eyes go wide.

She touched a hand to the back of her own ear with a grin when I just shrugged and nodded.

As she was leading me from the beautiful green room, she explained more: “Unlike you and most of the humans on the ship, I already had my implants before I got here. I think you missed the talk about what happened to you, didn’t you? We had it in the mess hall last night.”

Oh boy, that didn’t sound good. What kind of talk? Was this where she was going to explain to me what I’d already suspected, that there was no way home? I had already deduced that. They would have said so if they could. It would have been the ultimate assurance.

We were almost back at the med bay area when she was done giving me the rundown, but the highlights were enough to make me sad and angry.

So I hadn’t just gotten abducted and sold in a place so far from home I couldn’t get back.

I’d been stuck in stasis for so long that the Earth I knew was no more.

Now, it was a part of the UAR: space-faring and, according to Hina, a total dictatorship.

Fine, that didn’t change anything, did it?

Not really. It just meant I couldn’t comfort myself with the thought that my family was still on Earth, living their lives alongside mine.

A pang of sharp, painful grief struck me, anyway.

I’d clashed heads with my mother and wished my brothers would grow the hell up more, but I’d loved all of them.

Knowing they were nothing but dust now was more final—more confronting—than just thinking I couldn’t see them anymore.

Hina didn’t say anything, just let me process what she’d told me during the last part of our walk.

When we entered the med bay, it was just the anthracite-colored doctor sitting at a desk, poring over reading materials spread out around him.

If not for the fact that he had several tablets spread out over his desk, not actual paper—it would have looked just like my brother’s desk when he was planning a difficult surgery and I dared to visit.

Pausing just inside the med bay, I could see the place in a different light this time.

It was a white space, clean and streamlined.

Screens hung from the walls near the cots, and I could see one robotic arm tucked away next to a bed behind a glass panel.

Despite the strong hospital-meets-science-fiction appearance, there were personal touches too: a colorful art piece on one wall, and a pot with a plant blooming pink and red on the Doctor’s desk.

He looked up, our eyes meeting, and for the first time, I got a good look at them.

They were completely black, no eye white, no iris, nothing, just a big black void, mirroring my own reflection back at me.

It was creepy, even weirder than Akri’s eyes, if I were being honest. There was just something gentle and kind about the Doc, something that made me feel comfortable, which was very different from all the other aliens I’d met so far.

That was a good thing, because he needed that kind of calming presence with eyes as freaky as his.

“We’re here to get Meena a translator implant, Luka,” Hina explained, and with a hand at the small of my back, she guided me farther into the med bay.

My feet dragged just a little. My brother was a surgeon, and I regularly dropped by the hospital to grab lunch with him.

Hospitals still made me feel uncomfortable, and I had just agreed to a medical procedure I knew nothing about.

The Doc didn’t answer in words, but he nodded, long, sleek black hair sliding forward over his shoulder as he did so.

Everything became a bit of a blur after that.

I tried to stay vigilant as he worked—first on the left, then on the right side—with my fingers clutched around the knife, in case he made any move I didn’t like.

The Doc was quick and efficient, dabbing something behind each ear once I’d lain down.

I didn’t think the entire procedure lasted more than two minutes, but I walked away from the med bay with a nasty headache.

“Take two of these,” the doctor offered, right before Hina and I crossed the threshold, “for the headache. It should subside in a few hours. If it doesn’t, please see me again.

” I could understand each word he said; it sounded like he spoke English, though if I focused, I could tell he actually wasn’t.

It impressed me. It had worked, and that was worth a little pain.

“Okay, thanks,” I said, accepting the small bottle of pills he held out to me.

There was writing on a label on the outside, but it was foreign and alien.

My new translator implant was no help with it.

When I turned back to leave, I saw a flash of red ducking around a corner, and I had this sneaking suspicion that Jakar had been spying on me.

What was it with this dude? Why was I constantly running into him? He needed to leave me the hell alone.

I said as much on the way back to my little safe haven, my private room.

I already knew I was getting special treatment, the only one who had been given a room all to herself.

I didn’t give a shit if that was the case; I was just glad I had my own room.

Hina was kind as she listened to me complain about what had to be one of her friends; she’d spoken fondly of him, after all, when we were in the green room before.

“There’s something you should know about Jakar,” Hina said, a complacent smile on her face.

She didn’t seem bothered at all that I’d basically told her I thought her friend was a big old creep.

“Jakar is a very caring person, and he is desperately looking for his mate. It’s been his dream to find that special someone throughout his years as a gladiator slave. ”

“Mate,” she said. So, not just looking to get into anyone’s pants, he was looking for something permanent.

Just as long as he understood I was off the list. I wasn’t going to commit myself to some random alien only days after I’d woken up from stasis.

Then I contemplated the last words she’d used: slave, gladiator…

I had sudden, vivid images of what that could mean, none of them good.

Damn it, now I was feeling sympathy for the guy.

I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay mad at him, at all these alien men.

What I’d gone through before I’d managed to escape…

No one should have to go through that, and I could be angry about it as long as I wanted.

So I made this noncommittal noise, and Hina continued talking, pointing at the bridge of her nose as she did so.

“Remember those cute, boyish freckles he’s got all over the bridge of his nose?

” I remembered them, though I wouldn’t use cute or boyish to describe them.

The streak of colorful dots had something more primal, more tribal-like in the way they clustered as they slashed across his handsome face.

“Yeah, so those are like a mood ring. The color of the spot tells us what he’s feeling,” she explained, and at my surprised look, she grinned. “I figured I’d give you the rundown on what things mean. That way, you can better understand what’s going on in that weird head of his.”

I didn’t want to be curious about him, but I leaned in, nodding eagerly.

Then I used my brain to memorize every color and mood combination she had for me.

A zing of excitement coursed through my veins the entire time.

Maybe I had to admit to myself—secretly—that Jakar had roused my interest, and I was soaking up anything anyone had to say about him.