Page 2 of Rok’s Captive (Barbarians of the Dust #1)

THIS WAS NOT IN THE JOB DESCRIPTION

JUSTINE

I t’s cold. That’s the first thing I notice as soon as I come to. That means I’m not in my apartment and certainly nowhere in the city.

“What…” I groan as I lift my head, still a bit groggy. “What happened?”

Still on the bus, I’m slumped forward in my seat. Maybe it’s what wakes me up. Pushes me to sit up too quickly. My head pounds and I sway, my shoulder hitting the side of the bus that’s now so cold it feels like ice. “Jacqui?”

I turn to see my sister still in her seat beside me, her head thrown back against the headrest and her mouth open.

Panic surges in my veins as I reach for her. “Jacqui?! Jacqui, wake up! Jaqs?!” I touch her face and she winces slightly. But the relief I feel that she’s still alive is quickly overpowered by rising fear.

There is groaning as more of the people regain consciousness and as my vision clears some more, I notice that so is the air, like a thick fog is lifting from around us.

The bus driver. The gas. My gaze shoots to where he’s supposed to be, only to find the driver’s seat empty.

“EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ENGAGED. WAKING ALL SUBJECTS FROM CRYOSLEEP.”

Emergency protocol? Cryosleep? What? Jacqui groans again and my head pounds as I try to look around. Am I dreaming? The bus windows are all blocked out with gray metal. I can’t see outside, not even through the windscreen, and the bus driver, whatever he is, is gone.

“PAYLOAD COMPROMISED.”

Payload? What payload? My mind races as I try to piece everything together. It suddenly feels like nothing’s making sense. I swallow hard, saliva soothing a very dry throat.

“What…what happened?” Jacqui groans, her brows furrowing as she presses her hands to her temples. “Where are we?”

More of the other women are waking up and asking the same questions. Some stumble from their seats. One woman, who is obviously more awake than everyone else, begins screaming. Her piercing cry seems to bounce off the metal walls around us.

“ENGINE FAILING. RELEASING CARGO TO REDUCE LOAD.”

That…doesn’t make sense. The Xyma bot isn’t making sense.

It’s all the thought I get to have before the whole bus jerks. Our limp bodies jostle in our seats before the movement suddenly stops. At first, it’s not immediately obvious. Not until I see Jacqui’s body rising right in front of me, held back only by the seatbelts still around her torso. It’s only then that I realize I’m floating too, lifting off the seat without effort on my part.

Someone screams. “Ayy, dios mio!” Someone else is calling for help. I turn my head to see a few women who’d no doubt released their seatbelts floating up to the bus roof, their arms and legs flailing even though it’s obvious they’re still disoriented. They hit the metal top of the bus, wincing from the cold and the impact. But I’m starting to think this isn’t a bus anymore, is it.

Gripping Jacqui’s hand, I swallow hard. It’s like moving saliva over cracked earth. My mouth feels slack and dry, like I haven’t used it in a long, long time. “Don’t unstrap yourself.”

She’s more awake now and her wide eyes find mine. “Jus, what the hell’s happening?”

I wish I could answer. I don’t like not having an answer.

“Gravity,” the woman behind us suddenly says. Her head sways as we lock gazes. “This is zero gravity.”

It feels like the floor opens up beneath me, but my feet are not even on the floor. I’m still floating slightly in my seat, only the seatbelts holding me stationary. Still, I try to dispel the fear clawing at my bones. “What could cause that?” I refuse to face the most obvious answer. “We were just on our way to Arizona. We can’t be… How would we be in space?”

The woman’s jaw tightens and I can tell she doesn’t want to say it either.

“We’re in fucking space?!” Jacqui exclaims and in the next second, there’s a hum of voices raised in panic and distress like an echoing wave through the bus.

“I know I shouldn’t have trusted that job ad. I knew it was too easy,” the same woman behind us mutters.

I gulp. There must be a way out of this. We can find a way out. “Hey, what’s your name?”

The woman doesn’t answer immediately. Almost as if she’s swallowing down a bout of the same fear swelling in my gut.

“Mikaela,” she says after a few moments and I nod, swallowing hard to get rid of a wave of nausea that rises within me.

“And you?” I direct my gaze to the woman beside Mikaela.

“Erika.”

“Okay. I’m Justine. This is my sister, Jacqui.” I glance at Jaqs only to see her clenching her fists so hard her hands have gone white.

“I’m Hannah,” the woman in the aisle seat across from Jacqui says, the fear in her eyes clear as she looks over at us. I nod, gaze shifting to the woman beside her. Her head’s bowed, breaths coming heavy as she looks over at me sideways through her glasses, her eyes darting away the moment our gazes lock.

“Tina,” she says. “I’m Tina.”

The commotion in the bus increases even though outside is eerily quiet. There’s no more Xyma bot, the driver has disappeared into thin air, and I don’t hear anything except the panic echoing inside my chest.

“Alright. Erika, Mikaela, Tina, and Hannah, any of you know what the hell’s going on?”

Unsurprisingly, they all shake their heads.

“No idea,” Hannah gulps. “This was just supposed to be a side hustle.”

“Same,” Erika murmurs. “But it’s clear this is something else now.”

“My head feels funny,” Jacqui groans.

“Mine too,” I force back another wave of nausea. “But we can figure this out.” We have to figure this out.

“Where’s the driver?!” Someone from the back shouts. “Why’s he left us here and what happened to the bus?”

The bus shudders again, and our bodies sway in their restraints.

“Don’t take your seatbelts off!” Erika shouts, looking over her shoulder. There are three women still just floating in the air, hindered only by the roof of the bus. At Erika’s warning, other gazes shoot in our direction and the fear in their eyes is pronounced. “What now?” Erika turns her attention back to me.

She has an authoritative tone to her voice, as if she was a manager or something, and I get the sense she should be taking the leadership role here. Not me. Erika doesn’t seem to be freaking out like the others and all I feel is pure panic in my blood. But when I glance at Jacqui and Hannah, they’re looking at me with a flood of hope in their eyes, waiting for my answer.

And Jacqui. Poor Jacqui. If this goes to shit, I’m the one who took her along with me. I’m the one that put her in danger. The thought makes my heart wring underneath my ribs. I swallow hard. I have to find a way out of this. But I don’t get the chance. The bus tilts. It’s slow, like being on a fairground ride that’s just starting up. It tilts till we’re all upside down, held in place only by the seatbelts digging into our hips. More women scream and Jaqs and I both grip the seats themselves, hearts in our throats.

“What’s happening? Why is it moving like this?” a woman cries out from the back.

“We’re rotating,” Tina says quietly, then pushes her glasses up with one finger as they start to float away from her face. “In space, without artificial gravity, objects tend to tumble unless stabilized. It’s like…like when you toss a book in the air. It doesn’t just go straight up and down—it spins.” She pauses, then adds even more softly, “Though I have to say, my expertise was mainly in the Dewey Decimal System, n-not orbital mechanics.”

Well. Fuck.

“Everyone just stay calm and keep your belts on!” I raise my voice, trying to project confidence, but there’s a betraying tremor underneath my tone.

I’m fucking terrified.

“Jus? I’m scared,” Jacqui whispers. Her brows dive in a worried frown as if she’s using willpower and thought to turn this all around.

I nod, pushing back my own fear. “I know, I know. Just breathe.” Maybe I’m saying it more for myself than for my sister, because my lungs are burning as if I’m forgetting to fill them up. “We’ll get through this.”

Jacqui nods. “Remember that time we got stuck on the Ferris wheel at the county fair?” she says, her voice trembling only slightly. “We were what, eight and nine?”

A pang swells in my chest at the memory, but I nod, grateful for the distraction from the worried cries of the others. “Yeah…yeah I remember. The ride had gotten stuck at the top, and we were dangling up there for over an hour.”

A shaky laugh escapes Jacqui’s lips. “You were so scared. Crying and clutching that stupid teddy bear you’d won like it was a life raft.”

I swallow hard, a chuckle that sounds more like a sob coming from my lips. “Mr Sparkles was supporting me while you were busy making jokes about how we’d have to eat each other to survive.”

“I was a morbid little shit, wasn’t I?” Jacqui says with a watery grin.

“The toughest little shit.”

She grins at me, water falling from her eyes as she sniffles.

But the bus is still moving. Still rotating. Soon we’re sideways. The only thing alleviating the strain on our bodies is the fact that gravity seems to be absent.

“What are we going to do?” I hear Tina whisper, and Hannah grabs her hand, squeezing it tight. At least, for now, no one else has released their seatbelts and one of the women who had floated up from her seat seems to be making her way back, grabbing on to other seats to push herself forward. Another of the floating women is watching and starting to make her way back, too.

I gulp hard, my hands shaking as I reach for my handbag. But it’s not in my lap anymore. Must have floated up and away. I spot it floating near what would’ve been the windscreen, but is now just a wall of metal. My heart falls. I wanted to check my phone. See if there’s a signal. I don’t know. Call 911 from space? Stranger things have happened.

“It can’t have been that long,” I say out loud, pulling on the well of hope that has kept me surviving this long. “Maybe this is some kind of training thing? Some kind of hidden camera thing?” I’m grasping at straws. “This is an adaptation program, after all.”

“A hidden camera thing?” Jacqui asks hopefully, and a murmur goes through the bus even as the speed of the rotation picks up. “Please make this a hidden camera thing. This is a survival test after all, right. That’s what we signed up for. What if it started the moment we got into this bus?”

Yeah, that sounds plausible. Maybe this is a part of orientation. See? Nothing to freak out about, Justine.

“Wait wait wait. You could be right. We’re still here. Still alive although the bus is…” The woman at the back who was beaming when the trip started forces a smile on her face again. She seems to blink away the dark cloud of fear that was encroaching on her brow. “Maybe we should all introduce ourselves and try to stay calm. Get to know each other if we’re going to be working together.” She grins, but even I can tell it’s forced. “I’m Pam!”

Somebody curses at the back. “Who the fuck wants to know your name when we’re all about to die !”

A commotion immediately rises and I feel my chest tighten. Pam might be overly positive, but she’s right.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey!” I raise my voice like a schoolteacher, but it seems to work. Everyone’s looking my way as the bus continues to rotate, putting us right-side up. “Pam’s right.” Pam beams at me and I push past her sunshiny face. “We have to keep calm. Otherwise, it will simply be chaos and if this isn’t a hidden camera thing, then…”

“Then we’re really fucked in the ass,” Jacqui murmurs. “Zero lube.”

“Well, anal sex isn’t bad if you do the right preparations.” Tina doesn’t seem so shy anymore as her head pops up, eyes meeting Jacqui’s. The moment the words leave her mouth, she turns red. “I—I mean?—”

Mikaela rolls her eyes. “God help us.” She presses her head back against the seat as the woman beside her—what was her name again? Erika!—stifles a giggle.

“Not exactly where I was heading with this, Tina…” I murmur. Tina blushes harder. “But it’s better than us screaming and freaking out.” I watch as the two women who were making it back to their seats manage to do so. The other woman still floating seems to be trying to find a weak spot in the roof.

“This is a waste of time!” Someone shouts and the murmurs start again before one woman raises her hand.

“I’m Alex. I’m a nurse. I saw the job and thought, why not? It seemed like a not-so-stressful way to earn a few more bucks.”

Some more murmurs, ones of agreement this time. We’re on our sides again as the bus tilts and I try not to think about us going upside down once more. “Ok,” I say loudly so everyone can hear. “That’s good. Any other nurses here?”

A timid voice speaks up. “N-not a nurse but I’m in medical school.” I don’t know who spoke and my belly threatens to expel everything as we go upside down. “Name’s Mira.”

“Okay!” I say, closing my eyes as the tilting happens again. It seems to be going faster as the minutes tick by. “That’s good. Now, did anyone hear about an orientation for this job?”

If this is orientation then safe to say, I’m failing.

There are murmurs but the consensus is no. So this isn’t an orientation of some sort. Probably not a secret camera thing. Even as the bus rotates, I can’t pick up a camera anywhere on the metal walls. But I couldn’t pick up the speaker either and we’d all clearly heard the Xyma bot before the zero-gravity kicked in.

The bus continues shifting, rotating almost lazily now. That feeling of being sick rises as my sense of up and down is completely thrown off. The cold metal presses against me as the side of the bus becomes the wall, then the ceiling.

“What are they doing to us?” someone sobs. “I just wanted to pay off a loan I have…”

As we turn again, Erika leans forward. “I get what you’re doing,” she whispers. “But you do know this isn’t some test, right? Did you hear the recording when we just woke? Something about cryosleep? Payload? You know what that means, right?”

My gaze slides to hers and I see her lips tighten when they read what must be a myriad of emotions in my eyes.

“We’re in space.” Mikaela leans forward, too. “And we’re fucked. In the ass, like your sister so eloquently said.”

On the other side of the aisle, the woman sitting beside Tina—Hannah—is shaking her head in a nervous sort of way, her vision unfocused as she stares at the metal before us, and it’s clear she’s reaching the end of her tether. “Why would they put us in space without our permission? We’re just normal people trying to make ends meet. We’re not astronauts. At least, I’m not. How did we end up here?”

By her side, Tina shifts, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she takes out her flyer from a bag that’s still strapped to her side. She brings it close to her face and it’s obvious she’s reading through it.

“You know what? Fuck this!” A woman who hasn’t introduced herself yet unbuckles herself. She floats away immediately, sneakers connecting with someone’s face before she hits the wall. “Ow! Watch where you’re going!” The woman flails her arms like she’s swimming and somewhat gets the gist before she heads straight to the back, pounding on the metal with her fists.

The dull echoes seem to amplify the more she does it, hurting our ears. But despite that, others start to do the same in their seats. Fists pound the walls and soon it’s like being inside a steel drum.

Pressing my hands over my ears, I want to tell them to stop, but a part of me wants to pound on the walls too. I’m about to say fuck it and try to find a way out of this when a violent shudder rocks the bus. Screams echo through the metal chamber. The lights flicker and I only now notice the fluorescent strips lining the top of what is essentially just a metal rectangle. The woman who was floating loses her grip, her body flying through the air as the not-bus spins slightly faster. There’s a sickening crack as her skull meets the floor. She lets out a cry of pain.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Pam calls out, panic edging into her voice.

The woman just groans, blinking dazedly as a trickle of blood runs down her forehead. Someone else cries out at the sight of it and there are audible prayers and pleas for mercy. The pounding on the walls increases, and I risk a glance at the front of the bus. Still sealed. No signs of an exit.

Not that we’d want to exit right here in the middle of space. But I guess a part of me is still hoping we’re in a simulator.

“It’s like we’re trapped in a metal coffin,” Jacqui murmurs.

Her words make my throat constrict with panic. Suddenly, I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Meanwhile, the other women are losing it—screaming, crying, praying. Jacqui is pale and shaking like a leaf.

Just as I feel I’m about to completely lose my grip on reality, the shuddering increases. So much, it feels like even the atoms in our bodies begin to vibrate.

The bus suddenly tilts, going vertical, our backs floating towards our seats.

“Jus?” Jacqui whimpers.

I grip her hand. I don’t know how I can tell. Maybe some part of my body feels it before the rest of me does, but we’re moving. Going down.

“Hold on!” I shout, just as the sensation of movement increases. Our backs are suddenly pressed into the seats and I hear piercing screams as gravity suddenly kicks in. Looking over my shoulder, I see the two women who were unstrapped suddenly fall to the front of the bus. There’s another sickening thud as they land in a tangle of arms and limbs. One of them is screaming so loudly I know she must have broken something while the other with the head wound isn’t moving at all.

“We’re falling.” Erika says from the seat behind me. “They brought us into space and now we’re falling.”

“Of. Course.” Mikaela grunts. “Fucking Xyma.” But despite her cynicism, I see the terror in her eyes.

Squeezing Jaqs’ hand, I pull in a shaky breath.

“What now?!” Jacqui shouts over a deafening roar that sounds outside the shuddering metal cube. The movement increases so much, it would be an effort to rise from the force of the pull.

“Now…now we wait.”

Jacqui nods, her chin meeting her chest a thousand times. “And we stick together.” She squeezes my hand. “No matter what, Justine.”

“No matter what.”