The Remnant

The judge chewed the side of her face, looking nearly as nervous as I felt. It hit me that the sound of boots was as clear as glass, and I turned around.

They’d found me.

Four men at my six, with ten yards to spare. My heart thumped almost hard enough to make my hands shake with the mere force of its pressure, but I had years of practice with adrenaline like this. Experience won out, and my first swipe was good. The flimsy door sucked open. I swung Judge Hawthorne through by the arm and slammed my fist into the doorpad, then the keypad, in a single, frantic motion. There was a heavy wham as the lead guard hit the door an instant too late.

I touched the lightpad and tried to take stock of the bin, but my nerves were getting to me. I couldn’t afford to keep breathing so hard. It showed weakness, and I had to stay in control.

Breathe, Char, Breathe. Just not so hard.

This bin was a sight better than the last and might even prove useful. Smaller crates lined a series of built-ins, and irregular wooden boxes were strewn around the floor. I wasn’t beaten yet.

I turned to the judge, who was cradling her arm pointedly, an accusatory look on her face. From what I knew of her, she had nerves like boiled leather, and a brain to boot. If she were twenty years younger, I’d have had a problem on my hands. “Hide in the back,” I told her.

“Oh, hiding? In the back?” she said. “What an impressive plan.”

I smiled in spite of myself. Maybe I liked her a little.

“You can’t shoot them all,” she said, clambering past the crates.

“I’m not going to shoot any of them,” I muttered back. “And keep your voice down.”

“It’s over, honey. They’re just gathering the rest of the troops.”

“This card is monitored. Central Command will send a team now, too.”

“So you are one of them.”

I looked at her. The suggestion was absurd, but I couldn’t prove it now. It was probably better to bluff, anyway. So I raised an eyebrow and motioned for her to get down behind a crate. I didn’t know if the Remnant would try to blast their way in or something. She complied, but not before shooting me a look so disapproving it could churn butter.

The lock on the door clicked softly a few times, but the door didn’t open, a process I found unnerving. Why didn’t they try to break the lock? Or the door?

It didn’t even matter. It wasn’t like I could go anywhere.

“Okay, we got her,” the guard in the aisle said finally. “Call it in.” Then he raised his voice to a shout, so that it was unmistakable through the thin tin and plastic walls of the bin. “Hope you’re comfortable in there. Might be a while.”

A while until what?

“I got nothing but time,” I shouted back. I thought I heard a snicker, but the door stayed shut, and Hawthorne stayed mercifully quiet, having made her mind up about me before we’d even left the courtroom. I settled down in the bin to wait.

Five (#ulink_b00c2639-5491-5f74-a197-3c7a08cba03b)

Time flies when you’re spending your last moments of relative freedom locked in a stuffy cargo bin with an equally stuffy elderly judge who’s looking forward to your execution for high treason, but has mercifully decided to stop berating you over your questionable life choices in the meantime.

Before I knew it, there was a rustle in the aisle outside the bin, then another click on the lock.

I considered threatening to shoot the judge, but to be honest, I didn’t have much of an endgame in mind, and I was a little sick of having her as a hostage anyway. Maybe I’d just threaten the next person to enter the bin and call it even.

“Don’t shoot.” I knew the voice before he spoke the second word. It was low and confident and laced with some emotion I couldn’t place. “I’m coming in, Charlotte. I’m unarmed.” Wait. Was he smiling?

I lowered the gun. “I’m not going to shoot you, Isaiah.”

He stepped fully into the bin, taking care to hold the door ajar behind him. As was his habit these days, he didn’t carry his white-tipped cane. In the Remnant, I’d assumed he simply hadn’t needed it, since he’d memorized the layout of the rooms he frequented. But now, I thought there must have been some other reason to avoid it. To avoid letting me see it.

“That’s a start, then.” He turned to the judge, still holding the door open behind him. “You may go,” he said.

She did, sparing me a final, judgy glare on her way out.

I returned it with my brightest smile, in spite of the darkness in Isaiah’s tone. “I think it’s a little late to talk about beginnings,” I said.

He tilted his head slightly, as though considering me. “Once, you let me show you the way out. I told you then you’d only find a bigger cage.”

I glanced at the upper corners of the bin. They were close enough that, if I stood on two crates, I could dust them for cobwebs. “Yeah, well, we’ve said a lot of things to each other, Ise. I’m never sure which ones still count.”

His smile faded in the silence that followed. The last time we spoke, he begged me to return to the Remnant with him, to be protected by him, and he’d called me his enemy when I refused. To be fair, the conversation before that one hadn’t gone much better. We’d been dancing around the idea of each other for a while now, but we could never nail down exactly what we both wanted. He’d once told me that he loved me. I still believed that was true.

But I had absolutely no idea what it meant.

I gestured around the bin. “At least this cage is mine. And it beats the hole you’ve kept me in for the last six weeks.”

He unclenched his jaw and gave me something like a patient sigh. “I had to make you see reason, Charlotte. Had to get my ducks in a row, too. You’re not in there anymore. You’re not dead, yet. I don’t have much to apologize for.”

I had nothing to say to that.

He continued. “So what’s next? You like it out here? You want to stay?”

“I don’t have too many options.”

“You don’t have any options at all. You can’t stay in my jail. Not after that nonsense with the judge. You’ll never make it through the appeal. You don’t belong with my people.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Like you are right now? I found you in less than an hour. How long do you think it will take the Commander? How long until you starve?”

“I’ll manage. Just because I picked the wrong—”

“Let me be more to the point.” He gestured to the bin. “I have you surrounded.”

“Ah. The perils of lock-picking in an enclosed space. I could write a book.”

“Let’s write that book, then, Charlotte. Jail. Not for you, though.” He ticked the words off on long, outstretched fingers. “So you fight. You’re looking at a stab wound, maybe a gunshot. The fight won’t last long. Then you’ll come quietly. You’ll be thrown out an airlock. It’s a pretty short book.”

I looked away. “Where are you going with this?”

“May I sit?”

I looked at him incredulously. “By all means. Big box to your right.”

He settled himself gracefully on a heavy red crate. “I’ve always been a believer in second chances. And it’d be a shame to let your skills go to waste.”