Beyond the Rim

“How can he be working for them?” I said.

“He’s a liaison between Ranior and the buyers. He helps transport slaves from one location to another.”

“He can’t be. I mean, he has to be trapped into it somehow. Or maybe he’s been brainwashed.” They’d probably used drugs to mold him however they wanted.

I had to rescue him. Even more so now.

“You won’t be able to get him out,” said Dagan. “If Zodiak or Navarre don’t kill you, Ranior will recapture you, and you’ll be right back where you started. Even if that doesn’t happen, how will you make Rock leave if he doesn’t want to?”

“I have to try. He risked his life for me. I have to do the same.”

“I admire your tenacity. But I just don’t see how you can do it.”

“What about you? You seem to have a lot of resources.”

He turned away. “I wish I could, but it’s not within my mission parameters.”

“What are you, a spy?”

“I suppose I can tell you because you are off the grid, like I am. Some people call us ‘ghosts’ because we are officially dead—in fact, some of us never existed in the system, so we can move freely wherever we want. I have been working for Navarre ‘officially’ but who I really work for is buried so deeply in my psyche no one could discover it if they interrogated me.”

“So is Dagan your real name?”

“It is at the moment. My real name was erased when I died. I can barely even remember it, and I don’t really identify with it anymore.”

“Don’t you kind of lose track of your identity?”

“I am who I work for.”

“Who do you work for?”

He shook a finger. “Now, that is something I can’t tell anyone, not even you.”

Dagan made supper on a real old-fashioned stove, not from an alcove. It was very good: steak, potatoes, burgundy wine. He told me he had grown up in relative privilege, and everyone had thought he was headed for success, especially with his unusual intelligence. But then he had developed a rare psychological condition when he was fifteen, and so he had been barred from the best schools, and was marginalized in many other ways. It built up to the point that he tried to commit suicide, which got him committed to an institution.

It was there that a government agency had contacted him, told him they were impressed with his unorthodox intelligence, and asked him to work for them. They had treated him in ways that the institution had been unwilling to consider, and he had recovered for the most part, though he needed to take occasional meds.

“I’ve gone a lot of dark places in my time. I haven’t been enslaved, but… in a way, this life is a form of slavery. If I leave, I die. Not that I don’t enjoy it now and then.” He raised his glass, the red wine shimmering in the light of the full moon that had just emerged from the clouds.

When Dagan went to bed, I stayed up for a while, watching an old holo he’d switched on for me. It was from way back during the Sol System days, an underground film that had been a veiled protest against the rulers’ genocide. Its holotech was sketchy, but it got engaging toward the middle. Masses of people pulled down statues, bombing the President’s house and storming it. When it slipped back into the rather inane love story, I dozed off.

Later, I shot bolt upright and jumped out of bed, the dark struggle of my dream still clinging to me. Where was I? Where was Rock? I slammed into the window, knocking me back to my senses.

A slow chuckle. I looked beside the kitchen alcove. It was Dagan, green eyes glowing in the shadows.

“Oh, hi,” I said.

“Hi, Devlin.”

“Your eyes—“

He nodded. “I can see in the dark. One of the many special genhancements that my employers gave me.”

We had a quick breakfast, then he asked me if we could have another session. I didn’t mind; the dreamcatcher didn’t feel invasive, and I had begun to trust Dagan.

He delved deeper into my time with Zodiak, and emerged with a lot more information I hadn’t even known I’d learned. Then we had lunch and talked about my options. He wouldn’t be able to help me rescue Rock directly, but he might know someone who could.

He contacted a man called Aron, who worked with the radicals in the Senate who were trying to abolish slavery. Aron was ecstatic; he thought that if we could break the Blue M Ring, it would be a big step in the right direction.

Aron told me that if I agreed to testify against them, he could protect me. With proof that Zodiak and Navarre had participated in slavery, they wouldn’t be able to lay a hand on me. Radicals were in the minority, but they were not without their resources. And with some new leverage they’d gathered, they might be able to gain an upper hand in the Senate. If they could prove that Zodiak and Navarre had had slaves, they might be able to push those two off their pedestals.

Aron agreed to meet us at a “neutral location” tomorrow. They’d take care of me after that. I asked if I’d be able to contact my sister, and he said that would be fine, as long as it was over a secure channel.

“Well,” said Dagan, after he shut the holo off, “this is a secure channel. Do you want to talk to her?”

“Really?”

“It’s against my better judgment, but now that you may not be going to a Rimworld, you might want your sister to know you aren’t dead.”

“I really want to see her.”

“Okay.” He ended up having to leave a message on her comlink, since she was still at work. I waited, pacing, for two endless hours.

Finally, she answered, and her image appeared on Dagan’s desk in miniature form. Dagan left the room, but he left the door open.

“Is that really you, Devlin?”

“It’s me.” My throat tightened seeing my sister for the first time in months.

“They told me that your pod crashed and there was nothing left. Dev, I–can’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” A tear slipped down her cheek; she wiped it away. “Devlin, how did they treat you and Rock? Are you okay?”

“The slave traders were pretty rough on us. Then I got sold to this one girl—”

“Girl?”

“Like sixteen years old.”

“They start at that age!”

“It’s not what you think. She didn’t make me…do anything. She just wanted companionship. I think she was lonely, stuck on that planet.”

“So you didn’t—She didn’t—”

“No.”

“And they treated you well otherwise?”

“For the most part.”

“How did you escape?”

“Well, Rock and I tried to escape once, then on Zodiak’s planet I tried to escape again, but they caught me and leased me to this woman here on Center, Senator Navarre.”

“The one who is always speaking out against slavery?”

I’d had no idea about that, but I nodded.

“Was she good to you?”

“I’d… rather not go into it. But then Dagan found me there. He was going to to put me in a safehouse on the Rim, but now the radicals are going to protect me. The rest you know.”

“I want to see you in person. The sooner the better.”

I felt like I was in a dream, and I wanted to gather Vega in my arms and never let go.

But we were millions of light years apart, she on her world, me on Center.

“How?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll take off work, take the next pod I can get out of here, and then meet you on Center. Sound like a plan?”

“Sure. I love you, Vega.”

She looked at me for a second, her eyes threatening to tear up again. “I love you too, Dev.” She cut transmission.

In the morning, we headed off toward the meeting place with Aron. Dagan was a little uneasy, because ferrying me from place to place wasn’t exactly in his job description. “Leasing” me and then shuttling me off to a Rimworld was one thing. This was Center, he said, where dangerous games were played daily, and often collided like supernovas. Aron said that they would protect me, yes. I had a reasonable chance of surviving. But I was still taking a big risk.

“It’s my decision,” I said.

“And one that I understand completely. But I also understand the danger much more than you do. You can trust Aron, I’m pretty sure. But beyond that, don’t trust anyone.”

“I’ll remember that.”

He glanced at me. “I wish I were going with you. But I’ve done all I can.”

The car slanted down at the outskirts of Eastern City, toward a suburb called Madison that was mostly made up of low residential buildings instead of skyscrapers. The car landed on the flat top of a building and we climbed out into a breezy, cloudy day.

Two people were standing there beside a green car. One I recognized as Aron; the other was a tall purple-haired man.

“Hello,” said Aron. He was short with a graying beard and smiling eyes. “This is Comet. He goes undercover sometimes and tries to rescue slaves. He’ll be your bodyguard, until we can find a permanent solution.”

Comet nodded, gave a faint smile.

“Okay,” said Dagan. “We’d better either leave, or get off the roof.”

“Let’s get going, then,” said Aron.

I turned to Dagan. “Thanks for all you’ve done.”

He waved his hand. “It was nothing. Nothing beyond the call of duty—for the most part.” He smiled warmly, grasped my hand. “It was good knowing you, Devlin.”

“And you. I hope we meet again sometime.”

“You’d better not hope that. I tend to show up when trouble’s brewing.” He smiled wryly, then slid into his car. In a moment, the car lifted off into the sky.

“All right,” said Aron, putting his hand on my shoulder and guiding me toward his car. “Let’s get you to our safe house. It’s not far from here. We’ve got other slaves there, but none as high profile as you.”

“The high profile ones tend to die,” said Comet. He reached into his shirt with his left hand, and slipped out a gun. He aimed it at Aron.

“What are you doing?” said Aron, shock written on his face.

Comet shoved the gun into Aron’s chest. “Sorry, but you’re not paying me for bringing him in, and she is.”

“She?”

“Navarre. That’s all you need to know. Go tell them the slave didn’t arrive, I don’t care. I’m not paid to take you in or kill you, so you might as well get out of here.”

Aron looked at me, sorrow in his eyes. Then he turned and headed toward the elevator, its doors swallowing him as soon as he entered.

“Now,” said Comet, “Let’s get you back where you belong.”

He shoved the gun against my back and pushed me into the car. Inside, it immediately trapped me in a force field. Then, the car took off, my heart sinking the higher it rose.