Annie’s awareness faded in and out in a series of impressions. A transport moving. Familiar corridors that hadn’t changed in eight years. Cell walls she’d hoped never to see again.
She wept. She begged her captors to let her go.
She woke with her cheek pressed to a cold metal floor. The other side of her face ached and felt tight. Her leg throbbed. Her head split with agony when she tried to move.
Bright lights hurt her eyes. She squinted and tried to turn away from them. Her stomach rolled and she held her breath, willing it to stop.
She focused on staying awake, on gathering her reserves. She’d escaped this place once, she could do it again.
It wasn’t enough. Blackness swelled up and she spiraled into sleep again.
“There she is.” Relief filled Dante’s voice.
Wind carrying the smell of salt blew the hair back from Annie’s face. Warmth beneath her feet had her looking down. Golden sand beneath her toes. Not that she’d seen sand before, but she knew what it looked like. She’d seen holos.
She looked up, and an expanse of glittering blue stretched before her. Water capped with white foam rolled toward her, then fell back on itself.
A bird called overhead, and she looked up into a clear blue sky.
Another dream. Even whatever drugs they’d pumped into her couldn’t stop them.
She turned, and found Dante, Arcus, and Payne beside her. Arcus smiled and waved. Payne looked worried. Dante reached out and touched her face gently.
The moment his fingers made contact, pain faded from her awareness.
“What did you do?” she asked him, covering his hand with hers.
“We’re in a telepathic landscape. Mine. I just separated your physical self a little further from your consciousness.” He must have seen her alarm because a faint smile ghosted across his lips. “Don’t worry, it’s safe. I know what I’m doing.” His hand dropped away and he stepped back.
“Is this…the beach?” she asked them all.
“It is,” said Dante.
“Do you like it?” Arcus asked.
Annie turned around, taking it all in again. The sun was warm on her skin, but for once not uncomfortably so. It was so beautiful, she felt like she could stay here for days.
“Very much,” she said. “But why are we here? A telepathic landscape? Is that like a dream?”
“Sort of,” Arcus said.
“No.” Payne glared at Arcus. “It’s not the same at all.”
“Oh. But I’ve dreamt of you all before.”
“You have?” Dante looked surprised.
Annie nodded. “Many times. Like…a different time and place. All of us together, on Niobe.”
The men exchanged glances.
“Precog?” Arcus said.
“Probably,” Payne agreed. “It can manifest as prophetic dreams sometimes.”
Dante looked at her thoughtfully. “So, a baseline telepathic gift with likely mechanical affinity, strong telekinesis, and a precog. Interesting combination.”
“Have you ever dreamt anything else that came true?” Arcus asked her.
Annie shook her head. “No. Just the three of you.”
Another shared look between them.
“Do we have a strong emotional bond in these dreams?” Payne asked.
Annie was embarrassed. “Um…yes. But that doesn’t mean it happens, right?”
Arcus grinned at her. “Annie, you’re someone who sees the future. That’s what it means to be a precog.”
She bit her lip. “But I don’t know you.”
To her surprise, it was Payne who stepped forward and gave Arcus a look that said, “shut up, idiot.”
“Precog visions can change,” he said. “They don’t always come true.” He tilted his head. “But often, they do. It doesn’t mean anything you saw is happening anytime soon, just that it might, at some distant point. And really, what you should be focusing on right now is what else your visions tell us.”
When she gave him a quizzical look, he rolled his eyes. “That you survive this, and live to be free. We’re getting you out of there.”
Her heart jumped. Annie would like nothing better than for his words to be true. But…she backed away, putting some distance between them. She relaxed more with a little space, breathing easier.
“But how will you do that?” she asked. “Laripim security is no joke.”
Dante pointed to himself. “Trust us, Annie. We’re pirates. Stealing things — or people, if need be — is nothing we haven’t done before. I made this place so we could talk to you. Luckily, your captors haven’t put a control collar on you, or slapped you with an inhibitor yet.” He pointed to Arcus. “He’s got basic telepathy but strong telekinesis with a projection component.”
He moved his finger to Payne, who knocked it aside with an irritated look.
“I can speak for myself. Annie and I have already talked. She knows I’m an empath. I also have both telepathy and telekinesis at moderate strength.”
“Do people usually have multiple Talents?” she asked.
“It’s pretty normal,” Dante said. “Most people have at least a baseline telepathic, telekinetic gift, or both. We don’t leave our own behind, and we have no intention of leaving you here. We knew you were Talented as soon as we met you. Your shields are much stronger than a null’s.”
“Null?”
“A regular person. Someone not Talented.”
“Not to mention, the way you worked on Niobe was more intuitive than any mechanic I’ve ever seen,” Arcus added.
Niobe! “You can’t take off until the ship is fixed and back together,” she said. “I was fabricating the nanograph, but—”
“Your friend Salla showed up with it last night,” Dante said. “And she told us what happened. You were an escaped slave?”
Annie twisted her fingers together. She was so unused to talking openly about her past. She sat down in the sand, hugging her knees to her.
Payne sat next to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Annie. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, I—I mean yes. I was a slave.” Annie took a deep breath of sea air. She felt like just being in this place cleansed her, strengthening her. “I grew up working in the shipyards. Using my mechanical affinity, I guess? My telekinesis didn’t develop until I was older. I was considered a low power, low risk asset. They worked us sixteen, sometimes twenty hour shifts. We were too exhausted to think about escape.”
She picked up a handful of sand and let it run through her fingers. “When I was seventeen, the dreams started. They showed me another life. A free life. I wanted that. So, a few months later, I walked off the production floor, stole a landslip, and left. By then no one thought I was even capable of escape. I’d been with Laripim for years, so I had more freedom than others. In lower Ferrous City, most people don’t ask too many questions. I sold the slip to the first black market vendor I found, and used the credits to feed, clothe, and hide myself. Then the money ran out. Within a week, I’d signed on with Marlon as a junker.”
“Brave girl,” Arcus said.
She smiled at him. “Just determined.”
“Listen,” Dante said. “Salla is putting Niobe back together. She said she could do it.”
Annie nodded. “Salla knows her stuff. Marlon liked to give me the complicated jobs, but Salla has a lot of experience.”
“All right, so as soon as Salla is done, we’re coming for you.”
She straightened, alarm shooting through her. “You can’t. You’re Talented, too. If Laripim get their hands on you—”
“They won’t even know I’m there,” Arcus sneered. “I’ll go in and get you out. Dante will take care of the guards. Payne will be ready and waiting with Niobe to back us up. Then we’re getting off this planet and never looking back.”
“But what about—what about the crystal?” How could they leave behind the one thing they’d come here to get?
Dante gave her a level, serious look. “The crystal was a payday. Did we want it? Sure. But it became secondary the moment we knew what you were. Believe me, your life is far more important to us than that crystal.”
She stared at them all, struck dumb and mute.
Payne cocked his head. “Hasn’t anyone ever cared enough to put you first?” he asked.
She shook her head, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.
Arcus gave a careless shrug. “The crystal doesn’t matter. We can always steal something else. But there’s only one Andromeda Jones.”
Tears in her eyes, she said, “I told you, it’s Annie.”
“Yeah, well.” He gave her a wry smile. “I’ll remember for the next time.”
“It sounds like Salla needs a few more hours,” Dante said. “Whatever happens, you need to hold on until we get to you. Try to be meek and compliant. If they put a control collar on you, it’ll complicate things.”
“All right.”
Meek. She could do that. She hoped.
Annie came awake sputtering and coughing. Someone had thrown water on her. She sat up, her hair dripping. A woman was seated on the hard bench across from where Annie lay. She had long dark hair pulled back and secured with a pearl clasp, and wore a stunning silver dress that followed the curves of her body. Her face was perfect, her demeanor cold and haughty.
The guard holding an empty bucket stepped back. Annie shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Good, you’re awake. I wanted to have a little chat before I leave for the shareholder meeting this afternoon.” The woman leaned forward, her dark eyes piercing. “You know you left us with a lot of work still on your contract. By my calculations, you cost the company close to nine million credits in labor over the past eight years. That’s an offense that could see you thrown into a cell for the rest of your life.”
Annie laughed, which turned into another cough. “I never had any contract,” she said. “Not with you.”
“Of course you did,” the woman said. “All of our employees sign contracts. The special ones, like you, sign for an extended length. In return for all of life’s little luxuries, you work for us for as long as the arrangement is satisfactory, to the hours we specify.”
Luxuries? Like food and clothing? “I never signed anything.”
“Oh, but you did. You were maybe seven at the time, but we do have your signature, on a contract, filed safely away should we need it. We saved you from a dreary existence of starvation and crippling poverty.”
“Is that the fiction you sell people?” Annie shook her head. “You’re a piece of work.”
“And you’re an ungrateful brat.” The woman nodded to the guard, and he stepped forward and hit Annie with a pain baton. Agony screamed through her nerve endings. She lost all control of her body. All she could do was ride it out, tears streaming down her face as her arms and legs spasmed.
Memories rushed Annie. Other places, other times when this had happened. Once, when she’d attacked a guard for hitting a young boy. Another time, she’d wired a control panel wrong when she was working the production line. She’d been ten years old.
Pain batons left no overt signs of abuse, but the pain they caused was something you never forgot.
When the woman finally signaled the guard to step back, Annie lay on the floor and struggled to get her breath back. Her body trembled with the after effects. Her legs didn’t want to work. Nothing wanted to work. She had no idea how long she lay there before her limbs responded to her demands and she was able to sit up again.
Meek, Annie. You’re supposed to be meek. She’d forgotten.
“I—I’m sorry,” she made herself say to the woman.
“Yes, I’m sure you are.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t.” For a long moment, the woman studied Annie. “Our security team told me about you. How you tried to kill the man who turned you in. How you had our irreplaceable prototype and intended to steal it.”
Annie froze. There was something in the woman’s voice. Something cold and ugly. A terrible feeling moved through her, an awareness of something to come. Was this her Talent telling her, or just instinct? She didn’t know.
“I contemplated what to do with you, before I came here,” the woman said. “You’re a low-level, high-risk asset. You left once. You could again. And you stole something far more valuable than you will ever be from the company. What if you had sold it to our competitors? You have no loyalty.”
Loyalty was earned. But Annie bit the words back. She had a feeling she was past the point where acting meek could help her, but she didn’t see the point in antagonizing the woman, either.
“I have a choice. I could slap a control collar on you, make sure you never leave again. Or, I can write you off as a bad investment.”
Annie’s heart pounded. Neither option was good, but she could guess what it meant to be written off. She had to survive long enough for the others to come for her. Bile in her throat, she bowed her head in the most subservient posture possible.
“Please, please. I promise I won’t leave again. I never meant to steal from anyone. I found that crystal in the scrapyard just this morning. It was just lying there. I was going to turn it in for the reward, I was—”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“N—no.”
“Clearly, you do. You were going to turn it in? To us? The company you betrayed?” She tsked. “I think not.” The woman rose to her feet, her elegant shoes with tall silver heels clicking on the metal floor. “You are not worth the trouble and expense of a control collar. We’re writing you off as of this afternoon.” She gave the guard a brisk nod, and clicked her way out of the room.
Annie watched those shoes go, keeping her head down. The guard followed the woman out, the door slamming shut behind him.
They were going to kill her. That woman had just ordered her execution. How much time did she have?
Annie closed her eyes. She had to tell them. Could she use her Talent? She’d never tried to use telepathy before. She thought about what the others had told her. What it had felt like to talk mentally to Dante.
Dante was probably her best bet. It had seemed like he was the strongest telepath. She concentrated on him, on the feel of his mind.
Dante. Can you hear me?
Annie waited, but only silence answered her. Don’t panic, she told herself. This was just like the scrap summit yesterday morning. She’d remained calm, and her telekinesis had worked. This was no different. She spent some time breathing, calming her mind, and then tried again.
Dante. Please, it’s Annie. I need you to answer me. I—I’m in trouble. I think they’re going to kill me. No, I know they are. Please. We can’t wait for Salla to finish. I have to escape now.
No answer. A tear of frustration slipped down her face. Scrap, why wouldn’t this work?
Fine. It was fine. She’d escaped without help once before. She would just have to do it again. Somehow.
Annie looked around the room. There was nothing in here she could use. She’d have to do something when the guards came for her. That would be her opening. Until then, all she could was reserve her strength…and wait.