Chapter 2
Maggie returned the next day for her shift after a thankfully unremarkable morning. She woke up to the sharp beep of an alarm and climbed out of her bunk, falling a good ten feet to the floor as usual.
The guards’ bunks were rectangular divots in a large wall all lined and stacked up into a massive panel of barracks with ladders to get down. The ladder up to Maggie’s bunk had broken a few Sovereign weeks ago, but she didn’t mind. There was usually an unsuspecting guard below to break her fall.
She ate in the canteen, if you could call it eating. Sovereign digestive systems are different than most species because they don’t have one. Birthing pods hadn’t included a stomach or intestines for years, for convenience. Instead, each guard got an injection of a nutrient-rich serum into their bloodstream that circulated for the day, keeping them awake and energized.
The few guards that weren’t sovereign weren’t offered any alternatives, and most of them just ate the prisoners’ meals. Starvation was common for inmates with non-Sovereign guards, but no one was going to do anything about it.
Maggie reloaded her gun and made sure the little control pad for the cell was working fine. She took her position in front of the cell with a melodramatic sigh and began clicking the magazine of her gun open and shut.
She was still jealous of this “Nebula” and her flowy name. It rolled off her tongue with incredible, horrible smoothness. At least Magazine’s magazine made a nice sound. A much better clicky sound than some stupid fugitive’s stupid name.
Speaking of the fugitive, she was still slumped over underneath that hideous cloak. She’d barely moved, if at all. Maggie looked at her and hated her.
It was a funny sensation, hate. She’d only ever hated a few people, all of whom had cut in front of her in the nutrition supplement line. She’d forgotten about them a few hours later. But this prisoner had completely uprooted her wonderful dull life and made it interesting. It made her sick.
Maggie quickly discovered that hating someone can be quite fun when there are no consequences for it. Plenty of guards hated the other prisoners, but Maggie liked them.
Sometimes they would talk to her about things like how her shriveled, stumpy arm was horrible to look at or that her voice made them want to pierce their ear canals with a syringe. To Maggie, no conversation was bad as long as two people exchanged words. It was probably a good thing that most words spoken in the dungeons were distasteful because Maggie was blissfully unaware of what an ‘insult’ was.
This inmate, however, did not speak. And without any other guards to occupy her mind, she was free to hate as she pleased.
She got bored of hating after a while–it was an extremely tiring emotion for her–and decided to check and see if this Nebula person was still alive. The cloak hadn’t moved an inch. It was as if the fugitive had stopped breathing. Maggie desperately hoped this was true.
Maggie typed a code onto the cell’s keypad and the intricate golden door melted away into the floor. This broke so many rules, which was a shame because Maggie liked rules. They kept things in order and erratic people in check.
This rule-breaking made her chest feel heavy and the hand on her good arm began to shake.
She tentatively crept into the cell, taking care not to move her hips too much. If she shifted her weight too sharply, they made a painful popping sound as the gnarled bones slid past each other. It was her least favorite noise.
With the tip of her boot, she nudged the slumped figure of the prisoner. The cloaked woman immediately sprung up into a kneeling position and grabbed Maggie’s undeveloped arm with a vice-like grip.
Maggie gasped in shock and pain. The woman seemed taller even as she was kneeling and her expression was murderous. Her other arm ended in a stump where her hand should have been. It crackled softly with an electric glow and she raised it to strike Maggie in the throat.
Thankfully, despite her apparent lack of common sense, Maggie had excellent reflexes. She blocked the jab with the butt of her gun and quickly shoved the barrel against the woman’s sleek head.
The pair stared at each other for a tense moment. The prisoner released Maggie’s arm with a frustrated grunt and Maggie took her gun away just as quickly. She kept it pointed right at the prisoner’s deep black eye and backed out of the cell, shutting and locking the door after she stepped out.
Well. Apparently, she wasn’t dead.
Maggie slumped back into her position as her heartbeat began to slow. That was the first time in a while she’d felt real fear and, well, it scared her.
The inmate had backed up slightly and propped herself up on her elbow. She looked around her cell with a calculated gaze that eventually landed on Magazine.
Maggie stared into her inky black eyes. Her cold glare wasn’t nearly as frightening with an indestructible transparent wall between the two of them. Maggie felt the eyelid of her bloody red eye sticking shut again and carefully pried it open so she could get a better look at her eloquently named prisoner.
“You have very black eyes.”
Nebula scoffed with the air of someone in a much more powerful position.
“Oh, piss off…”