Zent

  Finhal 1, 1294:

  Another terrifying dream beset me last night . . . Mother had disappeared, and I followed a trail of blood through the house and out into the night. It was a moonlit night, yet the groping shadows seemed darker than usual. I was scared and sorely troubled, calling out, “Mother!” repeatedly, to no effect. I never found her before waking up.

  — From Lhinde’s Diary

  (From the Vault of Lyn of Nytaea, Mother Heiress

  Manidor 5, 2337)

  I don’t like prison.

  Having avoided prison all my life, I found this out when the Gaean League and their kind Emperor saw fit to throw me in jail for being a visitor from another planet. Shockingly, the feeling only grew with each passing day.

  I sighed, thumping my head back against the concrete wall of my containment cell. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ll go crazy.”

  What am I thinking, I already am crazy, I thought to myself with a shake of my head.

  “No, you’re not, Lyn.” I mean . . . I’m not.

  Another sigh passed my lips. What a mess. Why did it have to turn out like this? Rhidea was supposed to be here. She could solve everything. Kaen, Mydia, Oliver, they all should have been here. Well, Oliver still should have been back on his home island on Mani, but that was a different story altogether. The sky islands . . . man, that seemed an eternity ago. I was starting to forget the events that had happened to us a mere few months ago.

  No, you’re not. You know better, Lyn. You don’t forget—you just want peace when you dream.

  My hair was longer now, like it or not. I distinctly remember not having to tie it with three separate ties, nor being able to stretch my feet all the way out and play with my toes using my ponytail from a relaxed position. I didn’t have anything at my disposal to cut the silver mane with. It had been growing avidly ever since I came to Planet Gaea. It could be a tad annoying . . . and dirty, most of the time. They didn’t exactly give me many opportunities to wash myself. But oh well. I didn’t smell that bad anyway . . . or had I just gotten used to my own stench?

  Lyn . . . you’ve really got to stop having conversations with yourself in your head.

  I bit back a retort and resumed fiddling with my hair once more, tapping the end of it against the stone floor. Reinforced stone. I needed to get out, and deep inside I was desperate, but I tried to cover it up and not think about it. This place might look like any old cell, but the Hellebes knew well how to keep one of their own people—including half-breeds—contained. A little bit of steel mesh, little bit of cement, little bit of copper—which is supposed to weaken Hellebes—and some more cement overtop.

  All this to say, I wasn’t breaking out of here. I had already tried on three separate occasions, and each time they only put me in a stronger cell. A weak Hellebes half-breed like me couldn’t do much more than crack the concrete. Back on Mani, I recalled twisting cell bars apart to rescue Mandrie, but here in my cell, I was fenced in by two rows of waffle-pattern steel bars, each as thick as a human bone and spaced only a hand’s breadth apart. Escape was hopeless. Silver and steel are . . . not the same in strength, I’ve learned.

  As my mind wandered, I absently tapped the floor with my index finger, harder and harder. I really didn’t know why I was in such a bad mood today. Not hormones, not sickness, and every day in this cell was just like another. Once in a while, they used to take me out and run tests on me like a lab rat, but they seemed to have forgotten that their one and only female even existed at this point. It was hard to believe I was really the only woman on Gaea. If I was so important, then why did they ignore me while I rotted away in this insanity-inducing chamber?

  I had just decided to lie down on my luxurious cot for a siesta when I heard it: footsteps coming from outside in the hallway. From the left side. Not a guard—these steps were too quick, too purposeful.

  I lay my head down, rolling onto my side, and pretended to be resting while actually keeping one eye partially open. I was mildly curious to know who passed through and when, if only to keep my atrophying mind busy. Soon, I saw the figure approaching. Large and powerfully built like most Hellebes, his hair was cropped short and he wore a military uniform complete with a blaster at his belt and camera and microphone on his lapel. The chevrons on his shoulder marked him as an officer. But he looked . . . familiar.

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  The officer stopped in front of my cell and turned his face toward me, eyeing my prone form with a calculating look. A . . . soft look, though, for a Hellebes. Softer, anyway. He had prominent features and dark eyes.

  “Prisoner,” he began in a deep, gruff voice. A familiar voice. Why couldn’t I think of . . .

  My eyes grew wide in recognition and I opened my mouth to speak, but the man coughed and made a quick shhh signal over his mouth before withdrawing his hand, hiding it from the overhead cameras. They were positioned to point down at my cell, and his body cam would point outward.

  I leaned up, as though grumpy that I’d been disturbed from such a good nap.

  “I am Captain Zent,” he said, “From district twenty-two, sector five. Since it came to my attention that the Mother Heiress was transferred to this facility here in Haccolces, and considering that my sector directly borders this one, I thought it prudent to come and see for myself what kind of monster you are. To think that the next Mother would come from one of the moons, and in this sorry state. You’re not half as tall as your statues.”

  It took me a moment to translate the captain’s words in my head. The more he spoke, the more my mind grew reaccustomed to the Hellebes tongue. If I weren’t kept in captivity all the time, I would have been completely fluent by now. As it was, it took me but a few moments to catch on and shift mental gears. One of the moons . . . another thing that was hard to wrap my mind around. Not only had the world I’d grown up in turned out to be this planet’s moon, but Mani had a sister moon: Luna.

  I kept my face as neutral as I could, partly because he clearly did not want to make anything of his connection to me (for reasons I didn’t yet know), and partly because I wasn’t sure how much I could trust him. But there was no mistaking it—this was the same Captain Zent I had met three months back when I awoke on Gatewatch Isle. The same man who taken me in, however briefly, the only man on the planet who had shown me any level of respect. It’d been so long that I . . . well, hadn’t forgotten so much as just didn’t remember him.

  I need to keep better tabs on my memories when I dream. I stuck the note in my mental mailbox, hoping White received it. She could be quite absent-minded.

  Yes, that’s a joke. If you’ve read my previous journals, which I recorded in captivity, you’d get it.

  Glancing down at the floor, I mumbled, “I’m not a monster. You Hellebes are the real monsters.” I was only partly acting—that was how I felt toward my mother’s race as a whole—yet I felt a small tickle of guilt at aiming that resentment toward my one possible ally in the whole world.

  Speaking of, why was he here?

  “I can see why you might think that,” continued the captain. “But you know that it is for the good of the race that the Senate had you incarcerated. You are the last hope of the Hellebes, after all.”

  Zent locked eyes with me and mouthed the words, I haven’t forgotten.

  And it clicked. I recalled the last thing he had told me: “Lyn, I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I can’t do anything to get you out of this. I don’t have the authority or support to hide you from the Senate and keep them away. But I will return to free you.”

  “To think that after all this time, we found you again,” he continued, stepping closer to put two hands on the bars of my cell. “Well, I hope they’re not treating you too terribly in there. Oh, and here is a little something to keep you busy. A note on the test results so far. I’m not allowed to share much, of course.” He bent down and slid a folded piece of paper through the bars.

  I simply glanced down at it, making no move to retrieve it, biting back my curiosity. Was that really all the note was? They wouldn’t feel inclined to show me results of tests done ages ago. “Is that all you have to say, Captain?” I said in a bored but careful tone.

  “Yes. I may return soon. Until then.” Zent gave a meaningful wink for my eyes alone, turned, and left the way he had come.

  He would . . . return.

  Return. To free me.

  As soon as the captain was gone, I arose from my cot and swiftly retrieved the folded note. Careful to angle it away from any cameras, I unfolded it and looked at the writing inside—which was machine printed in fine print—with as little interest as I could feign. It read:

  Lynchazel,

  We, the Red Horizon, have been trying to get through the right officers and officials of the Gaean League to get you out of there. None of these attempts have yielded any results. However, our plan to break you out is finally coming to fruition, with the necessary support, money and suppliers to execute the plan. All that’s left is for you to wait until 22:00 tonight and wait for the sparks—we will overload the circuits of all nearby cells and hallways, nullifying the prison’s surveillance measures. We will send in a small team. Be ready, be watchful.

  —Zent

  The Red Horizon. I smiled faintly as I read it, and then crumpled up the paper and shredded it with my too-long fingernails, trying to look as though angrily tearing up a useless sheet of paper.

  22:00 tonight. Boy oh boy, would I be ready.

  I couldn’t believe I was actually getting out of here. I tried to calm my nerves and tell myself that there was a chance they would not come through. Or the whole thing could go wrong, and it would only end up with Zent’s companions killed or imprisoned like me—they wouldn’t kill a valuable specimen like myself, but who knew what they would do to those bold enough to break right into a top-secret military prison?

  The time ticked slowly by, from afternoon until nighttime. I was on edge, jumping at the slightest noise and looking anxiously at the clock on the opposite wall from my cell.

  Why was waiting always so hard?