Ten Years Ago

“We’re leaving.” Madlyn yanked me off the mattress.

“Leaving where?” I fell into her back when she stopped to shove as many ration packs as she could into our worn packs.

“Clothes, blankets, water, anything you can carry, put it in here.” She shoved the pack into my arms. “Fast. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“Why? Maddy, what’s going on?” I did as she asked because Maddy wouldn’t be packing if it wasn’t worth panicking over.

We didn’t have much. Apartments in the Colony were simple. A single room large enough for our mattress on the floor to be shoved against the wall. A table, full of games and garbage, sat between it and our holo screen on the wall that decided when and if it wanted to work. I dug out a holo frame from upperring trash, the frame slightly broken so our family picture flickered on and off, but it was all we had of our parents. Unless one wanted to count their work shots sent to us upon their demise.

In the bathroom, Maddy ripped the hidden compartment out of the wall to dump all the synthetics she could into the pack.

“Those are Benno’s. Maddy, what the fuck are you doing?!” I stood in the threshold of the bathroom, bewildered by her frantic movements and idiotic decisions. If Benno discovered we messed up his shit, he’d have us beaten half to death, if my name held out.

“Benno is gone, Lucky, got it? Left us all to rot, the bastard! The least he can do is help us out now that he fucked us all over. We’re selling this shit at the first port we can and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have enough to hide ourselves in the middle of fucking nowhere.” Maddy slung the full pack over her shoulder and went for the door. “Let’s go. We need to take the first transport out of here.”

“We aren’t allowed to leave. We don’t have passports or the credits. Maddy, Maddy!” I ran after her, out of our dingy apartment and into the even worse slums of the Colony.

The Slums were a part of every Colony on every asteroid. The place where the workers slept in their tiny cells and wandered their dirty streets. Any run off from the mining equipment dripped from the rusting pipes to leave the streets perpetually damp. Smoke filtered over the rooftops and through the streets, a smog that would poison the lungs of everyone eventually.

Maddy knew the streets better than anyone. She swerved in and around the subsets, keeping us out of the flickering lights. She had us pawn off our commlinks for cheap. A total ripoff, regardless of how busted and old they were, that I told her about but she didn’t care.

“Don’t you get it yet? Benno is gone. Syrox is taking over.” She slammed a hand against my chest to press us against the nearest wall. On the next street, a group passed snickering, and armed. Syrox’ men. They weren’t meant to be on this side of the Colony.

“Plenty of these fuckers have come and gone. They always absorb the last ones that were here,” I countered. She took my hand, gripping tight, and had us run across the street to the other side.

“Typically, yeah, but Syrox isn’t typical.” She flinched as a series of screams ripped through the slums. They weren’t unusual. Death in the Colony was more real than the recycled air we breathed. She shouldn’t have been bothered, shouldn’t have grown so pale, but then she whispered, “He’s killing everyone who ever worked for Benno. We get out of here or we’re dead, simple as that.”

It wasn’t like we hadn’t been threatened before. Working for the biggest crime syndicate in the Colony wasn’t exactly a safe job. However, Maddy and I made do running the synthetics. It was the simplest of the work. We went to the warehouses, got the stash, snuck around to drop them off to the dealers and went on our way. Most left us alone. The big issues came when someone couldn’t afford their fix, when they thought going after us was the last resort. That’s why Maddy and I always worked together, one on the run and one on look out.

“Won’t he have people watching transports for this situation exactly?” I asked when we took the path leading to the old tunnels.

They were used for mineral transport from a ruined section of the mine, closed off after one of many collapses. No different from the one that took our parents. None of the old tunnels were safe, which meant they were perfect for sneaking.

“Would you rather we wait around for him to find us?” She tugged off the covering of the old tunnel and looked back at me, face smudged by the grime.

She wasn’t wrong. I understood that but couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop glancing over my shoulder, wanting to return home to crawl into bed and pretend none of this was happening.

Maddy took my hand, more firm and strong than I could ever be. “We’ll take the Yellow Tunnel. It goes over the transports. There has to be one we can sneak onto.”

“People have tried before. They’re either caught at this port or the next and are sent right back,” I argued.

“Then you better hope we get caught at the next port and we fight our way out. I just can’t sit around, Lucky. Syrox and his goons know this place as well as we do. There isn’t anywhere to hide. I wouldn’t be surprised if his goons search these tunnels at some point.”

“I know. I just…” I was scared, terrified, thinking we’d end up the same as our parents, another body dead on an asteroid, never knowing what sun or rain felt like. No one would care. Nothing would change. Our bodies would be incinerated and nothing would remain, as if we never existed.

“Me too,” she whispered and we crawled and crawled, making our hands black by soot and run off.

The Yellow Tunnel wasn’t stable. Every movement had the tunnel groaning. Rust fell from the ceiling. Three times we stopped, frozen, waiting for the tunnel to give out and send us falling to our deaths. It was far above the ground, left to decay because it didn’t matter if it fell into the slums. No one there mattered.

But we made it out and above the transports where Maddy shoved the covering off and we crawled over and behind piping, careful not to attract the dock workers. Down and down we went, feet hitting the docking floor, behind boxes full of minerals that would be flown throughout the galaxy. Dozens upon dozens of ships lined the port, each of them off to a place better than here.

“We should get on one of the big ones, Katlan or Luxi. They’re mostly manned by AI with only two pilots. It would be easier for us to stow away,” Maddy whispered, her eyes moving to and fro, her mind conjuring a thousand plans. “If they’re like our AI ships, they port themselves. Droids will unload the materials and they’re not programmed to care about stowaways, so we’ll just have to worry about dockworkers.”

Which there were plenty of. No matter what plan she divulged, it didn’t matter if we couldn’t get over the docks to the ships. There were too many people walking back and forth, never a moment when eyes weren’t watching.

“See those boxes? They’re going to Katlan.” Maddy pointed at the boxes nearby. “We can crawl under them. They’re slow so we should be able to keep up.”

“Maddy…”

“I know.” She took my hand and gave me a stern look, the same way she gave after our parents died and she promised we’d do just fine. “We got each other’s backs, right?”

I swallowed hard. “Right.”

Watching the dock workers, she lingered a moment longer, then we took our chance.

We made it ten paces before Maddy screamed. Her hand fell from mine. I turned and there she was, laying broken, the bone of her right leg shattered and barely clinging to her. Blood pooled around her. She looked back, screaming louder, from pain or fear or the realization of what it meant.

“You aren’t going anywhere, brats!” someone shouted, one of Syrox’s goons, no, thirteen of them coming from everywhere. Three behind her. Three on our left. Four on the right. Three at the back.

The dock workers wouldn’t intervene. They saw situations such as ours at a thousand docks. They made way for Syrox’ goons, ignored the blasters, and kept themselves scarce to avoid the blasterfire. It was me, Maddy, and them.

“Lucky,” she whimpered, hand up, tears in her eyes and blood all over. “H-Help, I can’t… my leg…”

In that moment, I saw our future; two corpses wrapped in tarps tossed into the incinerator with all the others. We’d be ash for shot into space, utterly forgotten. No one would notice our absence. None would mourn. If I went to her, they’d shoot and we’d be done. Even if I somehow grabbed her, then what? I’d drag her to a ship where she would bleed out. There was no stowing away, no way she would survive, no way we would.

But I could.

“What are you doing…” Her eyes, wide, terrified, crying. She reached for me. “Ethin!”

I ran. Her screams followed.

“Ethin!”

Their lasers chased. I grabbed a droid, using its body as a shield. The blasts ripped the droid apart. One hit me, scraping my right arm. Behind me, materials moved back and forth, blocking me from their sights. Syrox’s goons took chase, hooting and hollering, having fun. I rolled under a cart, avoiding their blasterfire, and broke into a run for the Katlan. They crew was nearly boarded and they wouldn’t miss their loading times, not for Syrox.

Past the dock workers, around the packages, I ran and ran. Katlan’s cargo bay doors were closing. I threw myself across the dock, narrowly squeezing in before the doors closed and fell into the back, alone. And I hid alone, waited alone in the dock replaying that moment over again and again.

Maddy was gone. I left her there. She was dead. If I could leave my sister to die, I could do that to anyone…

And I would, so long as it meant I wouldn’t be next.