A Minor Lunar Standstill

A Minor Lunar Standstill

As war rages on the moon, everyone just wants to get off.

TW: Mild suicidal ideation, references to past unhealthy relationships, threats of violence, explosions, burn wounds, references to long hospitalizations, war, mildly dubious consent, sex work, mildly degrading language toward sex workers, homelessness, joblessness, drug side effects, body image issues, passing out

Chapter 1

"Ok, folks! Listen up! Got an update for you."

Each prospective passenger in the waiting area perked up. Amina held her breath. The woman making the announcement need not have paused to make sure everyone was listening; They were. After what felt like minutes, she finally said, "It's gonna be another couple hours, at least."

A groan rolled over the crowd, punctuated by exclamations like, "Unbelievable," and, "Seriously?" and at least one person on the other side of the room just shouting, "FUCK!" The space port employee was not perturbed. "I know. I know," she continued apathetically. "Remember folks, you do not want to travel through space in a tin can that has failed a safety inspection, right? Just give our crew a little more time to make sure everything is up to code, ok? That's all." She walked back to her desk in the corner, completely ignoring the murmuring mass she left behind.

Amina Sultanova was cold, tired, and hungry. She had been that way for months and still wasn't used to it. But now, at least, she was slightly relieved. While everyone else was becoming increasingly frustrated at the delays, she welcomed them. Or rather, she needed them. Despite having been waiting at the space port at Chandrayaan for the better part of a day, she still hadn't found anyone willing to pay for her ticket home.

She was nearly out of money. This ship was her last chance. Every time the crew did a final safety check, something failed and needed to be fixed. Amina was grateful for the reprieve, and she supposed that she was also grateful that at least they were fixing things. Still, part of her thought it might be better to die quickly out in open space than to slowly starve or freeze to death in this shabby port.

Most of her thoughts had been similarly dark lately. Luna had never been an easy place to live, but when full-scale war broke out after the Shackleton Blow-Out, life there became unbearable.

It was stupid, really. Some members of the extremist group Luna-C had been trying to reroute power from the Shackleton Dome. They weren't doing anything directly violent, but of course, the military just had to react with maximum force. The firefight that followed caused a puncture in the Shackleton Dome, and the resulting loss of life also killed any hope of peaceful reconciliation between the Lunar Government and Luna-C. Anyone with any sense in their head wanted off Luna. Unfortunately, space travel that wasn't government-sponsored didn't come cheap. And if the government didn't like you enough to sponsor you, then you definitely didn't have any money.

The poverty on Luna predated the Lunar War. In fact, many thought of the conflict as a war between rich and poor, with the government representing the rich and Luna-C the poor. As she sat directly on the dusty floor and leaned against the wall, Amina looked at the disgruntled crowd before her. She was just as poor as any of them, but one major thing separated her from them: she had worked for the government. None of them would be able to tell that, of course. She looked as dilapidated as anyone else with her frayed skirt covered in moondust from wiping her hands off on it. But as she sat there surrounded by an angry hoard that was certainly mostly comprised of Luna-C sympathizers and/or members, she felt like she was deep in enemy territory.

She fiddled with the wide red ribbon on her left wrist, partially to distract herself from her misery, but also to advertise her status to any potential takers. Since most people on Luna couldn't afford to return to Earth through usual means, they had to be creative. They turned to all the old stand-bys to get money: Beg, borrow, steal... or in Amina's case, the world's oldest profession.

The first time Amina got a rejection notice after a private sector job application, she was surprised. She didn't think her past association with the government would be a hindrance to doing basic manual labor. The second time, she was angry. She needed to make money somehow. How did they think she was supposed to live like this? After she was kicked out of her apartment for not being able to make rent, each subsequent rejection came with more and more fear.

Now, sitting in the kitchen of Reddy's apartment, she was at such a crisis point that she almost felt numb. It was like her brain was refusing to respond appropriately out of exhaustion. She wished she could just go to sleep and wake up at some unknown time when things were better.

As soon as she heard Reddy stride into the room, Amina closed the notification on her chip display, but Reddy had clearly seen her looking at some kind of message. "Good news?" she asked, though not sounding at all hopeful.

"What do you think?" Amina said flatly.

Reddy sucked her teeth and then sighed deeply. "Look, I know you don't want to hear this right now, but your time's coming. You need to start planning your next move."

"Are you going to kick me out?" Amina asked, bracing herself for the inevitable.

"Not today," Reddy said, with a little too much emphasis on the second word, "But I can't keep being a halfway house for everyone who needs a place to crash."

Amina was incensed. How was that her fault? Hadn't Reddy brought this on herself for agreeing to let displaced government cast-offs stay at her place? She continued by bluntly stating, "I'm stretched too thin as it is, and you've been here the longest."

That was true. Reddy had a decent government stipend, but Lunar apartments only had so much space. Amina silently chided herself for being so ungrateful. She had been living off her former CO's hospitality longer than any of the other strays she had taken in. Well, all except one.

"What about Skell? Didn't she say she was coming back?" Amina asked, knowing full well that it didn't really matter.

Reddy let out a derisive tsch through her teeth and shook her head. "No. Skell's been back on Earth for a few days now."

This was news to Amina. "What? How'd she manage that?" Jealousy welled up in her stomach. How did someone like Skell manage to find her way out of this nightmare?

"She took a flight out of Chandrayaan," Reddy said out of the side of her mouth, as though it was privileged information that she shouldn't really be divulging but really wanted to.

"I meant how did she manage that, money-wise," Amina clarified.

"That's what I mean. You don't need money to get a flight out of Chandrayaan." Reddy was raising her eyebrows like she was alluding to something unspoken between the two of them, but it was only comprehensible to one.

"Explain," Amina demanded.

Reddy simply said, "Someone covered her."

This hardly explained anything to Amina. "But why?" she asked, more confused than before.

"I mean, she became a Cover and got covered," Reddy said, as though this was a sufficient explanation. Amina recognized the look on her face. It was the face Reddy made when she was trying to show someone pity while secretly relishing in their misfortune.

Amina was completely lost as to what that misfortune could be. "You're not making sense," she told her reluctant landlady.

"You do know about the Covers, right?" She replied condescendingly. "Cover my fare and I'll get under the covers with you? Get me off Luna and I'll get you off? You've never heard of this stuff?"

"You're saying Skell became a prostitute?" Amina asked. She didn't care about Reddy's attitude. She was used to her mean-girl bullshit and was just grateful to finally have an explanation that made some kind of sense.

"Basically, but there's more to it than that. I can't believe you're never heard about this. I thought it was common knowledge." Amina was rapidly beginning to care about Reddy's attitude as she continued to condescend. "Covers hang around the port in Chandrayaan. They tie those red ribbons around their wrists trying to catch the eye of anyone wealthy or horny enough to pick them up."

"I've had more important things to worry about than gossip about sex work." Amina grumbled.

"Well, then, allow me to tell you all about it, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes." Reddy clapped back gleefully. She had always loved being more knowledgeable than someone else. "Look, the port at Chandrayaan is the least government-regulated port on Luna, right?"

"If you say so," Amina said, just wanting her to get to the point.

"Ok, so, the ships that go between there and Earth are old cargo ships that have been converted to hold extra passengers. They charge per person, not per room. Each room has one bed." Reddy spoke as though she had devoted a lot of brain space to this topic. "Sometimes you get couples or close friends who want to room together, but most people reserve a whole room for themselves because the alternative is sharing a bed with a stranger or sleeping on the floor. So, the space limit gets reached long before the weight limit, leaving plenty of room for the few people who are willing to squeeze in with a stranger who's willing to pay for them. You following?"

"I think so..." Amina said slowly. She could see how prostitution would flourish in that kind of environment, but she didn't understand what made this situation worthwhile for the crew. "... But why would they modify a freighter like that? Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to just put lots of beds in one giant room or something?"

Reddy smiled wryly. "That's the beautiful part. By filling up rooms with less people than they could hold at max capacity, the ship ends up way below its weight limit when all the passenger rooms are filled." Her smile widened as she ramped up to the big finish, "Then, the crew can fill up the remainder of that weight limit with contraband."

"Ah," Amina said in recognition.

"The crew makes some extra money, most passengers get a little extra room and privacy, and anyone who wants to hitch a ride with a John has a shot at it. Everybody's happy as long as the government doesn't find out," Reddy finished her story looking quite satisfied with herself.

"More like, as long as the government doesn't start caring about it," Amina retorted. "There's no way they don't know about something like that."

"Well, whichever it is, it's the best place to hitch a ride off Luna if you're broke," Reddy replied.

Something in her smile made Amina think she might be hinting at something, but... no. She couldn't be suggesting that Amina do something so drastic herself. "Skell was really that desperate?" she asked.

"Well, you know how she is." Reddy smirked. "I don't think she really cared one way or the other. She might have even had fun with it!"

"Yes, that does sounds like... Skell..." Amina trailed off, lost in thought.

The idea of becoming a Cover had gestated in her brain until her circumstances finally necessitated birthing it into the reality she currently found herself in. The more she had thought about it, the more Amina thought that those words about Skell not caring one way or the other could easily have applied to her.

She wasn't bothered by the idea of squeezing into a tiny room. She had lived in dorm rooms and barracks before, so she was used to the lack of space. As for having sex with a stranger, she wasn't worried about that either. Everyone who comes to Luna is required to pass rigorous health screenings and to have an IUD or a vasectomy. No one wants to deal with pregnancy or kids on Luna.

Sex didn't really have much emotional value to Amina. She wasn't asexual; she very much enjoyed doing sexual things on her own, and she wanted to do it with a partner... It was just that no partner had ever made her feel good during sex. It was always uncomfortable and painful. Maybe she was trying too hard. Maybe her taste in men just sucked. Maybe men just sucked. Unfortunately, she wasn't attracted to anyone else.

Amina certainly wasn't worried about competition at the moment because there was no one to compete with. She hadn't seen that many other Covers to begin with, but in the hours she had been waiting (God, how many was it now? 13? 14?), everyone else had either given up or found a partner... or partners in that one woman's case. Amina appreciated the frugality of all those guys splitting the cost up among them and hoped the Cover could handle them all, but when she spotted the group in the distance, she stopped worrying. The other Cover did not look intimidated by so many men. In fact, if anything, they looked intimidated by her. She was clearly a professional.

Not too long ago, before she was in the exact same position, Amina probably would have judged all of them more harshly. Her parents had taught her that everything in life was either halal or haram. The military had taught her that people were either good guys or bad guys. Though she had thought she knew better than to subscribe to such broad binaries, being immersed in a new world had shown her that such rigid worldviews had shaped her subconscious in ways she never knew. But it was her experiences on Luna... seeing the corruption in the government, the paranoia and violence of the military, the apathy toward human misery from the very people who were supposed to help the helpless... Those were what really blew a hole in that rigid worldview that nothing could fix. She shuddered and turned her mind away from holes getting blown in things.

Her eyes shifted away from the group to scan the room for any change in the crowd. There was still that group of rowdy drunks posturing to each other. The only male Cover she had seen had found an older man who looked like he could afford better than to ride out of this place. Maybe he chose this port specifically to find a Cover. There were lots of single people trying not to make eye contact with anyone, especially her.

And that one guy...

... he was still staring at her.

Amina was embarrassed to admit, even to herself, that she had been calling him Strider in her head. She had always gotten picked on for her fervent love of cheesy old movies. But this shady looking guy reminded her so much of Aragorn when he first showed up in the old Lord of the Rings movies from the beginning of the 21st century that she couldn't help but make the comparison. Just give him a pipe, and we're in the Prancing Pony and I'm Frodo. And just like Frodo, she didn't feel too good about the way he was looking at her.

He had been staring at her on and off for hours now with his lip curled in what she could only read as contempt. Amina's first thought was that he was just a misogynist who hated her for being a dirty whore. But it was also possible that he was just staring wistfully because he was interested but couldn't afford to cover her. The man looked ragged even for Luna, which was saying something. In his beat-up duster and faded cowboy hat, he definitely didn't look like he had a lot of money. Maybe he just couldn't decide whether or not to go for it, but she doubted that. She had seen him talk to several different people since he'd arrived, people he didn't seem to know, so he didn't seem to be the shy type.

Despite her misgivings, he was the most interested in her out of anyone so far today, so Amina tried to subtly preen for him. She wasn't the most confident in her appearance overall, but one thing she was very confident in was the size of her breasts. She was wearing a very low-cut top to show off her cleavage. It was way more skin than she would normally have chosen to show off, but beggars can't be choosers, and she was literally begging. Making sure that he was still looking at her, she turned her chest in his direction and slowly spread her legs apart while taking a deep breath in to cause her chest to rise. She ran one finger down her collar bone and then chanced a glance to see his reaction.

It was impossible to read him from this far away with any kind of accuracy, but she could still see that same sneer on his face. Then, after a few seconds, he stood up with not a small amount of effort and started walking. His gait was stiff, and he moved slowly. Amina soon realized that he wasn't walking towards her. Instead, he moved towards the woman at the desk who had been giving them periodic updates on the ship's status. He didn't look at Amina at all until he was talking to the woman, who also looked at her.

Shit. Does he know about me and Shackleton? No one she had ever tried to get a job from after getting kicked off the force ever did until the background check. She worried that those two could make things very difficult for her if they knew that she had been involved in the Blow-Out.

Then, the woman at the desk started laughing. Now, it seemed like she and Strider were just chatting like old friends. Though they were too far away to hear them over the chatter around her, Amina relaxed a little. She was probably just being paranoid. Even if they were talking about her, they had no way of knowing who she was or what she had done. She was just another Cover trying to hitch a ride in exchange for sex. She wasn't doing anything technically illegal... though when had laws ever mattered to anyone here?

As the ragged man parted ways with the port employee, he looked over at Amina again. She looked away quickly. Funny how after he'd been eyeing her all day, now she was the one trying to make it look like she hadn't been staring. When he got back to where he was sitting before, he activated his telcom and began talking to someone. After a few minutes, he stood up again and walked out of Amina's sight.

Her nerves were starting up again, but speculation wouldn't do her any good right now. She tried to focus on a problem she could actually do something about: hunger. She did still have half a protein bar somewhere on her person... or at least she thought she did. She checked her pockets- Right... She had no pockets in this skin-tight pencil skirt. Maybe it was in her bag? She rummaged through the backpack which contained everything she owned until she remembered: No food past security checkpoints. She had had to wolf down the rest of the protein bar that she had spent some of her precious remaining credits on before she was allowed through.

She hugged herself and dug her nails into her bare arms to distract her from the burning sensation prickling at the corners of her eyes. Focus. Focus. You are strong. You are a survivor. You are not a victim.

A tiny voice piped up deep in the dark recesses of her brain.

You could always tell your parents what happened and ask them for help...

Amina's parents had never really wanted her to leave. They weren't big fans of space. She had tried to convince them she was doing the right thing. She'd be helping to liberate the people of Luna from terrorists. If she asked her parents for help, she would have to admit that she had been wrong... or at least, mostly wrong. She still couldn't forgive Luna-C for their part in the chaos of this stupid Lunar War. She didn't really know what she believed anymore. How could she explain everything to her parents in a way they would accept or even understand?

No. She put that thought out of her mind. There was still time for someone to pick her up. Who knew how much longer it would take to fix the ship, anyway? She wasn't starving. She just needed to calm down.

Amina took a long steadying breath. She closed her eyes and pressed her whole back against the cold wall behind her. She went to the calm place in her memories that she often visited to find a moment of peace. She was riding Qant across the steppes. The sun was hot, but the wind rushing past her was cool and refreshing. There was no one else there but the two of them galloping along under a sky stretching out forever. She was free.

She was letting go.

She is falling.

She is exposed. She looks down and notices that she is naked. Everyone is looking at her. They are disgusted. "NO ONE WANTS TO SEE THAT," they shout at her. She needs to escape, to disappear.

The Ring. She will put on Bilbo's ring. She takes it out of her pocket... but wait. How does she have a pocket if she is naked? That does not matter now.

She puts on the ring, and the judgmental faces around her vanish. The world transforms. Nothing exists but the Eye of Sauron. It is no longer orange and reptilian. It is a human eye open as wide as possible. It is looking at her from behind the pain of glass in the door, silently begging her to open it. If she does not, everyone behind the door is doomed. Her soul will be lost forever.

She needs to open the door.

But she cannot.

It is already too late.

Amina woke up to adrenaline punching her from the inside. She was used to having nightmares about the Eye of Sauron. She'd been having those since she first watched the Lord of the Rings movies as a kid. But ever since the Laika mission, they'd taken new form.

Her mind was jogged out of the dream fragments by the realization that she was warmer than she had been before she fell asleep. A thin blanket was draped over her. It smelled vaguely antiseptic, like rubbing alcohol. It looked somewhat familiar to her, but she couldn't figure out why. When she pulled it off her to get a better look at it, she realized that it wasn't a blanket at all. It was a long coat.

"You looked cold."

Amina's head whipped around in the direction of a gravelly voice coming from beside her. When she fell asleep, no one had been within several meters' radius of her. Now, sitting uncloaked on the floor beside her was Strider.

A couple of things were clear to Amina now that she could see him up close. He had not been smirking at her. He had a vertical scar running from the side of his nose down to his chin. Where it cut into his upper lip, some of the skin was missing, giving the appearance of a sneer. He was neither sneering nor smiling at the moment, but the look on his face seemed softer to her than it had been before. His eyes were only slightly open, like he was tired or bored... or possibly stoned.

Amina could also see why he had been walking so stiffly. His skin was covered in burn scars, and they didn't look very old. They were most noticeable on his bare arms, but from the way they seemed to gather at the edges of his neck and face, she got the impression that there were a lot more on his back than his front. What the fuck happened to this guy? Was he involved in the explosion that caused the Blow-Out? Amina had never heard of anyone inside the dome surviving that. How could anyone have survived that?

She put on a stiff smile, trying her best not to show her nerves. She handed his coat back to him. "Thanks, but I kinda have to show off the goods here." She gestured to the ribbon on her wrist.

"Not anymore." Now he was smiling, just a little. He ignored her offering him his coat back. "Unless you wanna take your chances with one of them." He nodded toward the drunk guys, one of whom had just a moment ago punched another in the stomach causing him to puke all over the floor.

The bottom dropped out of Amina's stomach. Oh, God, is this it?! Now that the moment was here, she wasn't exactly sure how to proceed. So many questions were bouncing around in her head, vying equally for her attention. Was this an even stupider idea than she had thought? Why did this guy want her? Why was he talking to that port employee? Who was he talking to on the telcom? Why was he staring at her all day and just now approaching her? Was he just shy with women he was interested in? Was he worried that she'd reject him for looking the way he did? Could this guy even... perform? Was he just looking for company? Did he just feel sorry for her? What other choice did she have? What was the point of staking everything on this one last chance to get home if she wasn't even going to take it?

She put his coat on. It was too big for her, but it was still warm from her body heat. It felt so nice to be warm again that she momentarily closed her eyes and just luxuriated in the feeling until she became aware of a pressure on her head. The burned man had put his hat on her.

"Here, you gotta have the hat, too. The look's nothing without the hat." Then, he leaned in and spoke quietly in her ear, "You'll want to pull it low to hide your face. People here aren't so kind to government types, Miss Sultanova."

She pulled back like she had been electrocuted. So, he did know who she was. Mother fucker! Her first thought was to reach for her concealed knife, but she had left it behind knowing she wouldn't be able to bring it through security.

"Easy! Easy!" The man held up his hands placatingly. He didn't look threatened or surprised at all. He almost looked like he was trying not to laugh. Now she was more irritated than anything. Amina knew she was not a threatening-looking person, but she had been in the military for God's sake! She knew, though, that he was correct in saying that people around here were not likely to take her side in any conflict if he told them she was ex-military, so she was loathe to make a scene.

She stopped scrambling to stand up and looked hard at the man next to her. She made sure to keep her voice low. "You couldn't have known my name or the fact that I worked for the government just by looking at me. That information was never made publicly available. So, how do you know me, and what are you planning to do with me?"

He stared blankly for a moment before barely stifling a laugh. "You don't recognize me, do you? Huh! That's fucking funny..." He looked genuinely amused. "I guess I do look a little different now that my hair's shorter."

Amina didn't think it was funny at all. "I've met you before?"

"Not formally, but we've seen each other around. It's a small world, Luna even more so than Earth. I suppose it doesn't matter, though. My name's Lock, by the way. Now, as for what I'm planning to do with you..." He held out his hand for hers. She hesitated for a moment, more out of confusion than trepidation, and then took his hand. It felt rough as he slid it up her wrist to the ribbon tied there.

He used both hands to gently tug on the free ends of the ribbon, slowly... very slowly undoing the knot on the bow and letting the strip of fabric fall to the floor undone. This time, Amina really couldn't tell if he was smirking or if it was just the scar. "Well, let's just see where the night takes us, why don't we?" God, she felt warm despite how thin his coat was. To think she was so cold earlier...

They'd seen each other around...? Where did she know him from? Now that the hat was off, she had a better look at his face. It was certainly... memorable. His skin on his face was mottled with scars, though his shaggy greying hair and stubble somewhat hid some of the marred spots. His teeth were crooked and a couple were missing. Deep shadows under sunken eyes... It was hard to tell whether he was middle-aged or had just been through enough shit that he looked a lot older than he was. He wasn't exactly handsome, but the way he was looking at her... knowing what he was thinking... It made her insides squirm in a way that she didn't hate.

Amina could feel herself starting to blush and had to look away, but she heard Lock continue, "Sorry if I came on a bit strong there. Your fare is already paid for, so you're free to tell me to fuck off and find someone else to bunk with. But really, how can you possibly resist a guy who looks like he got scraped off an ungreased griddle?"

A thrill of hope ran through her, and her head snapped back towards him. "You already paid for me?"

"Well, not me," he said, "I'm fucking broke. But I've got some friends who're willing to help us both out, so, yeah, you're good to go."

Her instinct was to be grateful, but her suspicion was aroused. This was too easy. "What kind of friends?"

"Oh, you know. The philanthropic kind." She raised an eyebrow. Lock smiled conspiratorially. "The kind who like to see the number of military personnel on Luna go down."

Ah. So, either ULL or Luna-C. ULL had more money, but was largely ineffectual in cases like these. Luna-C certainly liked to see those numbers go down, but through more violent means. Either way, this was sketchy as hell. Amina had thought that maybe he knew her from work, but if this guy had been involved in the war, they clearly had not been on the same side.

"Look, I know you've got no reason to trust me. You're free to walk away." Lock spoke like he was trying to reassure her. Amina waited, but apparently, he had finished the thought.

When he didn't continue, she asked, "That's it? You're not gonna tell me why I should trust you?"

"Nope," he said, still smiling.

"Well, that's comforting," Amina replied sarcastically.

"Hey, if a man ever tells goes out of his way to tell you how much you should trust him, fucking run," he said shrewdly. "Besides, I got no reason to trust you either." He lowered his voice and asked, "Tell me, what's a government gal like you doing here anyway?"

Ah, fuck. Why'd you have to ask directly? "I'm not a government gal anymore," Amina admitted quietly, "Not after Shackleton."

"No, shit! You were involved in that one, too?" Lock looked mildly surprised. "Fuck, they gave you all the fun jobs, huh?"

Amina was 'lucky' enough to have been monitoring the perimeter of the Shackleton Dome at the time of the explosion for any possible Luna-C reinforcements. In order to save face, the Lunar Government acted like they had had nothing to do with the incident. The official line was that the destruction was just the result of a few bad actors going rogue and that the government had never authorized the use of such excessive force. The few who survived the incident were dishonorably discharged and became pariahs to everyone on Luna, both sides included.

It was surprising to Amina that Luna-C had Shackleton survivors as well, since the perimeter had been secure. So, if this guy did survive the Shackleton Blow-Out, he must have been inside the dome at the time. Holy shit... But, then... Wait, after the explosion, how did he survive the exposure? He would have died from asphyxiation or freezing pretty quickly. It would have been like being spaced, right?

"So, you quit after that?" Lock asked.

Amina's face darkened. "... No."

"Aaahhh... of course." He nodded knowingly. "So, no job, no money, no place to go, and... here you are."

"I wish I had quit... a long time ago. I wish I'd never come to Luna." Amina muttered bitterly.

Lock grinned sardonically. "I've never met anyone here who didn't feel the same."

After a moment's contemplation, Amina asked, "You were at Shackleton, too?"

"Huh?" He looked at her quizzically.

"You said you were there, too," Amina explained. "I mean, you said that I was there, too. Is that where you got hurt?"

"I said... what?" In his confusion, he really did look stoned. Amina realized that he might be high on some kind of pain-reducer. "Oh! I see what happened! Yeah, nah, this happened before that. I meant that you were at the Shackleton Blow-Out and also at-"

"Alright, fuckboy! Prepare to be cock-blocked!" Amina started at a new but familiar voice barking at Lock with friendly condescension. "Come on! Put that joey back in its pouch, Wallaby!"

The old woman who had been giving update announcements had come over. Lock stood up. "Oh, come on, Mercy! You know I'm an upstanding gentleman! I wouldn't fuck a fly!"

"You would if they were big enough, I'd put money on it." Her eyes were narrowed at him, but the slight curl at the edge of her lips gave away that she was just teasing him. "I just got the go ahead to start boarding, but I wanted to come by to see you off before I made the announcement."

Oh, thank God! Now that Amina knew she could board, she was eager to do so, even if she was unsure of what would come next. She got to her feet, too. The woman looked at her and the friendly curl in her lip disappeared. She looked back at Lock and said, "GG's pissed."

"Oh yeah?" He looked disbelieving. "After all the money they sunk into keeping me alive, this is the straw that breaks their back?"

"They just messaged me. They said you can go get fucked." Her slight smile was back.

"Well, now I'm confused, 'cus that makes it sound like they're fine with it." Lock was totally deadpan until the last word, where his serious face broke a little at his own joke.

The other woman leaned in and started whispering to Lock. Amina couldn't hear much, but she was able to make out something about her having seen Amina's file.

"Honey pot for what?" Lock wasn't keeping his voice down like the port employee. He didn't seem to care if Amina heard him. When the woman spoke again, Amina listened hard and caught the last few words:

"... finish you off!"

Lock sighed, gave the woman a pitying smile and a put his hand on her shoulder. "You're a sweet old cunt to care so much about me." He put his other hand on her remaining shoulder. "See you in hell, Mercy!"

She begrudgingly returned a very small smile. "I'm glad you're leaving Luna in one piece. Try to stay that way." She glared at Amina as she walked away.

Amina marveled at the irony. While her trip to Luna had been paid for by the military, her trip home was being bankrolled by the opposition.

This is fucking crazy.

Amina repeated this thought to herself as she walked haltingly beside Lock down the bridge from the space port to the ship. They were surrounded by other passengers doing the same, albeit faster. She was a bundle of nervous energy and kept accidentally outpacing the injured man. Though, judging from the way his lowered gaze flicked back up every time she looked back at him, he didn't seem to mind seeing her from behind. In a desperate attempt to seem calm, she tried making conversation. "So, how do you know her?" she asked.

"Why, you gathering intel?" Lock teased, "Or are you jealous of me talking to other women?"

"Just curious." She was unnerved by how placid he seemed in this ridiculous situation.

He chuckled, "Mercy's an ally. She helped me out when I first got to Luna. We've actually only met a few times, but I think last time she saw me was right after the explosion. I didn't even know she was there; I wasn't conscious yet at that point. She musta thought I wasn't gonna make it."

Amina mulled his words over as they crossed the threshold between the bridge and the ship. He mentioned the explosion... but he wouldn't be talking about the one that caused the Shackleton Blow-Out if he wasn't there for that. Still, it must have happened on Luna. But then... something like that would be a big deal. It would certainly be known to the government, unless Luna-C kept it really secret somehow. The only other major explosion on Luna that she knew of was-

"Oh shit!" Lock exclaimed and suddenly sped up, at least as much as was possible in his state. As they made their way onto the ship proper, they came to a wide window where many passengers had stopped to look outside. Amina wasn't tall enough to see over the crowd, but she could guess what they were looking at. "Here, come on!" Lock waved for Amina to follow him, which was pointless because she already was. The excitement in his voice amused her. It was like he had never seen Earth from Luna before.

Lock sidled up to the edge of the window. When the people next to him looking outside noticed the charred and scarred man standing there, they did a mediocre job of moving away in a manner that didn't make it look like they were uncomfortable being so close to him. Lock seemed to have an aptitude for looking friendly or menacing depending on whatever the situation called for. He claimed the vacated space and gestured for Amina.

She had to admit, it was impressive. She'd seen Earth many times before, but this was a gorgeous view. The glowing blue gibbous covered in swirling white was enough to make anyone pause and stare. She thought she could make out Antarctica reaching for the tip of South America.

"It never gets old, does it?" Amina tore her eyes away from the font of all humanity to see Lock in awe of it. His energy had been low previously, but it seemed that the sight of Earth had invigorated him. Either that or whatever drugs he was on made it look all the more amazing to him. His eyes were wide, the widest she'd ever seen them.

Wait- No...

No, that wasn't true.

She had seen those wide eyes before... or at least one of them.

Oh, fuck.

The sudden realization hit Amina with such force that she almost fell backwards. She knew him. She knew that eye.

She knew why he wanted to be alone with her.

Making sure Lock was still staring out the window, she moved as stealthily backwards as her spasming limbs would allow. She made her way to the other side of the hoard of people by the window and the procession of passengers on their way to their quarters to prepare for takeoff. When she was sure she was out of Lock's line of sight, she started power-walking her way back down the bridge. She had to get off the ship, or at least as far away from that man as possible.

It wasn't the fact that he was part of Luna-C that freaked her out. She had figured that was a possibility ever since he revealed that he knew she had worked for the government.

The problem was Laika.

The Shackleton Blow-Out may have caused all her current problems, but Laika was the mission that Amina had been having nightmares about since it happened. It was the blood on her hands that would never come off. It was the eye that hounded her whenever she closed her own.

This man was not Strider.

He was the Eye of Sauron.

And he was going to kill her.

Chapter 2

Three things were keeping Amina from bursting into a full sprint. First of all, her tight skirt didn't allow for that kind of movement. Second, she was slowed down by constantly having to dodge and weave between the current of passengers that she was swimming against. And third, she couldn't risk drawing that much attention to herself. She had to get off the ship without arousing too much suspicion. So, as quickly as she could, she fumbled her way back through the crowd, which thinned abruptly as she reached the back of the line. After a few minutes, she was at the main gate again-

... only to discover that it was already sealed and secured.

Shit!

There was no way she was getting off the ship until it landed on Earth. She'd have to figure out a way to hide from Lock for the next couple of days. But before she could worry about that, there was a much more pressing problem at hand. While space travel technology had come a long way since the 20th century, launch could still do a number on a body in the wrong position or not properly secured. Amina's top priority right now was to find a safe secluded space to endure the gravitational force as the ship reached escape velocity.

The hallway she was standing in ended several meters away from her and continued around the corner. She could hear footsteps in that direction. She cautiously peered around the corner to see a crew member performing what looked like a security inspection. Amina watched them open a door, look inside, close it, and walk off in the opposite direction from her. Finally, she was getting a lucky break today.

After the crew member turned the corner at the other end of the hall, Amina crept over to the door, praying it wasn't locked. Ha! Another lucky break! When she went inside the room, she realized why it had been left open: It was a bathroom. It was only about a square meter wide, but it could be locked from the inside. Hopefully, since it was just checked by someone doing a security sweep, she was in the clear for at least a few minutes.

The first thing she did was take off Lock's coat and hat and search them for trackers. Those would have gone right down the suction toilet if she had found any, but to her great surprise, she did not. The only thing Amina found was a little crumpled piece of paper with what looked like a crude map of Earth. There were arrows pointing to various locations labeled with names. One arrow pointing to the left side of what she assumed was supposed to be Africa said 'old bitch (aka Mercy)'. She put the paper back in the pocket and shoved both pieces of clothing in her backpack, not wanting to look at them.

Bile was rising to her throat. She was dizzy. What in fuck's name was she going to do? Ok, I'm on the ship. I'm on my way home. All I have to do is avoid a potential murderer for a while. I've done harder things before, right? In her effort to calm herself down, Amina was only barely aware of a muffled announcement being made over a crackly loudspeaker.

Right. Takeoff.

Fuck.

Amina quickly got into as much of a vertical position as she possibly could in the tiny room. Unfortunately, as exhausted and stressed as her body already was, it was not prepared to endure such a g-force. As the ship accelerated and her blood surged in her suddenly heavy body, she lost consciousness and her world went as black as the void outside.

When Amina was recruited to join the Lunar Government's Military Police Force, they had sold her a narrative about dissenters trying to upset the peace on Luna for their own gain. She was going to be part of a noble force for good bringing peace back to Lunar society. It was a long time of doing their dirty work before she slowly began to see how badly she had bought into their propaganda.

The conflict started when the workers of the Lunar Colony decided to unionize. Despite lacking an atmosphere, legality on the moon had always been about as up-in-the-air as the low gravity would make it seem. So, unionization went about as smoothly as one would imagine, which is not at all. The corporations wouldn't recognize United Lunar Labor as legitimate. So, ULL put pressure on the government. The corporations responded in kind by doing the same. The government, of course, sided with the ones with the money.

Then, the government began strengthening their military presence on Luna. There was no bloodshed, but showing that they had that kind of muscle on their side sent a strong message. It wasn't until Luna-C was formed that things really started getting violent. United Lunar Labor always claimed that the two organizations were unaffiliated, but Luna-C shared most of ULL's goals, they just went much farther in their methods. What really differentiated Luna-C from ULL was that their ultimate goal was the abolishment of the current Lunar Government. They weren't above using terrorist tactics to achieve that goal, and the military wasn't above using firepower to stop them.

When word of the conflict got back to Earth, the chaos multiplied exponentially. Soon, there was a population boom on Luna as people on all sides of the conflict flocked there to help sort things out. Resources became very strained, and of course, the poor only got poorer while the rich got richer.

The Shackleton Blow-Out was the point of no return. But, months before that, when various cells of Luna-C were performing strategic raids on government compounds, the government received intelligence on one specific cell.

Commander Sarojini Reddy, the commanding officer of Amina's squad, briefed them all on the mission. "As you all know," she began curtly, "these Luna-C raids are out of control. We've got to show these fuckers that we are the ones in charge.

"There is a cell of about a dozen terrorists living in the old Russian habitat in Mare Crisium. A little background: It was built and abandoned long before modern colonization. Nothing has ever been done with this ancient and remote settlement, mainly because it is so ancient and remote. Also, the security features were encrypted in a way that no one had ever been able to decode. Apparently, someone with Luna-C managed to crack it and break in. This cell moved in and has made it their base. They're calling it Laika.

"Our first few attempts to bring these criminals to justice have failed. Luna-C may be a disorganized band of rebels, but they're a force to be reckoned with, especially on their own turf. If we're gonna fuck around in their own base, then we're going to have to take more drastic measures."

Through a lot of careful planning, Amina's squad had chased Luna-C into a long rectangular room at the center of the habitat. There were multiple exits, but several soldiers on the outside had securely blocked them while Luna-C was distracted with fighting inside. Amina was soldering her door shut while standing on a large piece of undefinable equipment that she and another soldier had shoved at the base. No one was getting out of there.

She had just finished when Reddy came striding up a little too casually for the situation. "North, east, and west are secure," she said. "This the last one?"

"Yes, sir." Amina replied. The rest of the squad was filing in from both sides. They were similarly nonchalant.

"You'll wanna get away from that door, Sultanova." Reddy mispronounced her name by putting the emphasis on the second syllable instead of the third. Amina had corrected her many times already, so she clearly just didn't care. "The window might shatter when the mine goes off."

"Mine?" Amina said in shock, "No one told me about a mine."

"Need to know basis," Reddy replied, not even looking at her.

"An explosive device is something everyone should know about!" Amina yelled.

"It no bother to us anymore. It's in there with those fucks, all sealed up tight as a drum." As Reddy spoke, Amina noticed the detonator in her hand. She looked pleadingly at the rest of her squad and was met with nothing but stone faces. Why were none of them questioning this? Was she the only one who hadn't known about it before? Was she the only one who thought this was insane?

Or was she the only dumbass who heard the order to seal all exits so that no one could get out and hadn't put two and two together?

Amina stood her ground. "What if something ruptures?"

"It's not strong enough to blast through those walls, just strong enough to take out a handful of humans in close proximity. It's perfectly safe... for us, anyway." Reddy chuckled eerily. "It's appropriate that they named this place after Laika, 'cus they're all about to die like dogs."

"What happened to making arrests?" Amina shouted angrily, not caring that she was being wildly insubordinate.

Reddy rolled her eyes. "Don't be so fucking naive. You think they're gonna come quietly?"

Amina was equal parts livid and disgusted. "We don't know! We haven't even tried!"

She jumped at a sudden thud against the door behind her. She whirled around to see blurred movement through the glass panel on the door. The only image she was able to make out was a human eye peering through. It was probably only visible for a few moments, but to Amina it was an eternity. There were people on the other side of that door about to die. Criminals, sure, but still living human beings.

Amina couldn't say for sure what the owner of that eye or anyone else behind that door was feeling in those eternal moments. Horror at their impending death? Rage at the soldiers performing extrajudicial executions on them? Or maybe just struggling to understand what was even happening? She imagined it was all of those and more.

Amina turned back to her CO, whose thumb was on the detonator, ready to press the button that would make them all complicit in murder. All she said in response to the horror on Amina's face was, "Too late!" Amina only had enough time to turn back and see that horrible, doomed eye once more before the world erupted in noise, smoke, and broken glass.

Everything is dark. She can hear voices, but their words do not make sense. She tries to call out to them. She cannot speak, she cannot move, but at least it is over. She can relax now. She can-

Amina remembered where she was and what had happened. It was only dark because her eyes were closed. The voices were not of her squad back at Laika.

No, she could not relax. The Eye was still hunting her.

The first thing Amina saw when she finally managed to open her eyes was a confusing mess of metallic silver and matte black. After a few seconds of her brain parsing background from foreground, she realized that the silver was the metal of the bathroom door, and the black bands interrupting it were strands of her hair. She usually kept it in two tight French braids, but she had worn it down today in an effort to look sexy. Now, freed from its usual confines, it was wavy, wild, and all over the place.

She pulled her hair out of her eyes and got a good look at herself reflected in the door. Ugh. She hated looking at her body. It was simultaneously too fat, too muscular, and too short, making her feel like a stumpy lump of a woman. She focused her attention above the neck, which she held somewhat less malice for. The only thing she really hated about her face was how its roundness and high cheekbones made her look childlike. At least her epicanthic folds made her eyes look smaller, which mitigated the babyface effect a bit.

Her body felt a little weak, but she wasn't nauseous or in any pain. She didn't have the luxury of dwelling on how much damage her fainting spell might have done to her body. She had to find a safer place to hide. As soon as the voices outside faded away, she unlocked the bathroom door and peered out into the corridor. No one was there.

Amina snuck quietly down the hallway in the direction that the crewmate had gone earlier. She risked running into them or other crewmates, but at least she was moving away from the passenger areas.

At the end of the passage was a hatch with a sign above that read 'Cargo Hold' in several languages. Perfect! There should be tons of places to hide down there and maybe even food and water. If not, she would have to sneak back to the passenger areas for those. She'd have to come out to pee every once in a while, anyway. Yes, this could work. The plan was coming together.

But as she turned the crank to open the hatch, she heard a voice yell out, "HEY!"

Amina wheeled around and froze. Two crewmates who looked like they were trying to fill the role of security guards had appeared behind her. One was a big beefy guy who looked like a dog that had just spotted a squirrel.

The other man was small and slight and had a much more serious expression. He was the one addressing Amina. "Excuse me, ma'am. What are you doing here? You know this area is off-limits to passengers, right?"

"Oh, shit! I'm sorry!" Amina tried her best to feign confusion, "I got lost looking for a bathroom. Flights make me nervous, and I felt like I was going to be sick-"

The bigger guard cut her off. "Let me see your chip," he demanded, holding out his scanner.

Amina held out her hand. The two guards looked at the display on the scanner. Then, they looked at each other. The smaller one frowned while the larger one smiled grimly.

"Well, look at that." The big guy said, "A government spy."

Fuck! "What? I'm not a spy," she said, hoping her nerves weren't apparent in her voice, "I'm not even with the government anymore."

"Your chip says you're military," he countered, "And here you are trying to get into the cargo hold."

"Sure does seem suspicious. One might think you were looking for contraband," the smaller guard said.

"My chip should also show that I was dishonorably discharged." Loathe as she was to admit her association with the Shakleton Blow-Out, Amina figured it might just save her in this situation.

"What better way to get back in their good graces than spying on the enemy?" The bigger man was grinning horribly. "They can deny they sent you here because you don't work for them anymore! It's a win-win for them whichever way it plays out!"

"Please, I'm not-" Amina struggled for an explanation that didn't involve discussing Laika or Shackleton. "I'm just lost!"

The big guy turned to his partner. "What do you think? The airlock's right back there."

Amina felt the color drain out of her face. Was this guy threatening to space her?

The smaller guard looked taken aback. "Don't you think that's a little extreme?"

If Amina was scared before, it was nothing compared to this. Her rising blood pressure made her feel like the ship was taking off again. With that kind of automatic leap to violence and a hatred for the Lunar government, he must be with Luna-C.

"You can't be serious! I'm just here for travel!" Then, even in her terror Amina remembered she just might have exactly the proof she needed that she wasn't working for the government. If either of these guys were involved with Luna-C like she suspected, maybe they'd find something on her ticket linking her to them. "Look at my ticket! Look at who paid for me."

The smaller guy pulled up her file again while his partner leaned in to take a look. He raised his eyebrows and looked at the bigger guy, who laughed cruelly. "Oh, young lady, you just sealed your fate. This is such an obvious forgery."

Forgery? Fuck! What kind of bullshit did Luna-C pull? "What are you talking about?" she croaked.

The big guy pointed at the scanner. "The account associated with payment for your ticket is in the name of Lachlan Willowby, and that guy's dead!"

Amina didn't fully understand what was happening, but the name Lachlan Willowby jogged her memory. She had seen that name before on the terrorist watch list back when she was with the government, but it disappeared after...

Laika. Of course.

To Amina's surprise, the smaller guy began arguing with the bigger. "What? No, dude. He's alive. You didn't know?"

"What? No way! Wallaby's fucking dead. He got blown up when the G-men hit Laika." The big guy replied with absolute certainty.

"No, he's alive, man." The smaller one insisted. "He's on this flight! I've seen him."

"Shut the fuck up." The big one was getting angry now.

The small one activated his telcom. "I'm calling him right now."

"Bullshit!" The big guy was still in disbelief.

"Hey, Wallaby? It's Diaz.... Yeah.... Yeah, by the cargo hold." Then, the smaller guard added quietly, "Pelletier's getting antsy. You'd better hurry."

Amina was simultaneously trying to keep from hyperventilating while determining whether she was safer with these two guards who were trying to kill her or with the other guy who was trying to kill her. These guys seemed dumber than Lock, but there were twice as many of them.

Her eyes were flitting between all possible escape routes when the bigger guy, Pelletier, suddenly grabbed her by the arm. "Fucking spy posing as a Cover. You're not fooling anybody. Where does a Cover get biceps like that, huh? You look like you would tear someone's dick off if you touched it."

"Let go of me, or I will test that theory!" Amina was calculating her odds of success in using his body weight to flip him. It wasn't likely to work without momentum or much energy on her part other than adrenaline.

"Come on, man. She's not worth it." Diaz was trying to deescalate. "She's Wallaby's problem."

"She's about to be nobody's problem," Pelletier threatened venomously. Amina caught sight of something moving behind him. Her stomach turned over as a now terrifyingly familiar face came into view.

"Oi! Pelletier! Mercy didn't tell me you were gonna be here!" There was a fierce look in Lock's eyes, but he spoke like he was greeting an old friend. Seeing Lock again caused Amina to remember the picture of him from the watch list. He had really gotten fucked up at Laika. The man in the picture was much younger and had no scars or grey hair. It was hard to believe this was the same person. No wonder she hadn't recognized him.

"You can let go of her." His tone was pleasant, but it was clearly a command.

Pelletier did not relinquish his grip on Amina. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Yeah, nah. I never do what I'm supposed to. It's that oppositional defiant disorder." Lock put his hand on the arm that Pelletier was using to hold Amina. "Looks like you might know something about that, too, huh?"

Pelletier let go of Amina roughly and yanked his arm away from Lock. "You look like you might as well be dead." Pelletier growled. It was clear that these two had some history.

Lock just smirked condescendingly. "So, this is what you're up to now, huh? Just threatening to space anyone you think might be a problem? Seems kinda fucked up if you ask me, but I guess I'm not one to talk." Though Pelletier was taller, Lock looked up at him imposingly. "You remember the raid on the Hadfield Complex? You were there, right? Remind me what I did to that guy with the knife who wouldn't leave me alone, the one who was a lot bigger than you."

"You killed him." Pelletier said like it was obvious.

"Oh, I remember that part. I just can't remember how." Lock was clearly feigning ignorance.

Pelletier slowly pulled his chin into his throat as he realized where Lock was going with this. "You snapped his neck," he admitted, looking pointedly at the ceiling and not at Lock.

"Right! That was it! Thanks, mate! You know, it's a real good thing I showed up before you spaced my lovely companion here." His tone was still light and friendly, but he had a slightly unhinged look about him when he continued, "'Cus if you'd gone through with that, I would have been pretty fucking upset with you."

Pelletier grimaced. "You just stay outta my way, Wallaby." Then he abruptly turned around and sauntered away without so much as looking at Amina.

Diaz, the smaller guard, did look at Amina, but he spoke to Lock. "Try to keep this one out of trouble."

Lock's eyes met Amina's. A chill ran down her spine as he smiled at her. "I'll see what I can do," Lock said to Diaz, not taking his eyes off Amina. She looked back at Diaz, who could clearly tell something weird was going on but seemed to be determined to stay out of whatever personal drama was unfolding between the two and just get back to work.

"Good luck, Wallaby." He followed Pelletier around the corner and out of sight.

Fuck, don't leave me alone with him!

Realizing that her escape plan had failed miserably, Amina knew she needed to come up with a new one. She didn't really have time to think, though. She needed to keep her wits about her to deal with this killer. Now was the time to stand her ground and stay on guard.

When the other two were out of earshot, Lock's smile was replaced with a look of disappointment. "Look, I know we kind of have a loose agreement, but I'm not gonna make you do anything you don't want to. I thought I made it clear that you're a free agent. You can do what you want." If Amina had thought he was being sincere, she would have had a hard time telling whether he was disappointed in her or himself. "Just don't get yourself killed just because you don't want to fuck me, Christ!"

"Don't patronize me!" Amina snapped. "You know this isn't about sex! You're trying to kill me!"

He looked at her confusedly for a second, and then said something in a language that she didn't understand. He shook his head and switched back to Cosmalang. "Sorry, did I not just literally prevent you from getting killed?"

"Because you don't want someone else to do it," Amina told him. "You want to do it yourself... because of what happened at Laika."

His face lit up with recognition, "Ah, so you remember me now!" He folded his arms and cocked his head to the side as a twisted grin spread across his face. She knew they were both thinking about that moment of seeing each other just before the explosion. "Took you long enough! I guess you didn't get as good of a look at me as I got of you."

Amina wouldn't be intimidated. "I remember your profile, too, Mr. Willowby. You were in the top 10 on the terrorist watch list until you supposedly died at Laika. Clearly you didn't, and now, you want revenge."

"That's... actually pretty sound logic." For a second, he looked surprised at not being able to refute her until he shook his head and continued, "Except for the part where this ship is full of witnesses who saw us together, and I'm on record as having covered you! I'd be so easy to trace if anything happened to you."

"Maybe you don't care what happens to you afterwards," she suggested. "Or maybe you're banking on security turning a blind eye, since they clearly don't care if I die. Maybe you're just not thinking very clearly because you're doped up on pain killers. Want me to keep going?"

He held his hands up. "Ok, I get it. You're smart to be on your guard..." He squinted and massaged his temple. "And you're dead on about these meds fucking me up. But I'm not trying to kill you. I've got... reason to want you alive, ok?"

"Like what?" she asked, disbelieving.

He raised an eyebrow and asked, "Would you believe me if I said it's just 'cus I like you?"

Amina's brow furrowed. "Of course not!"

"Good. Whaddid I say? I knew you were smart," he quipped, now smiling again.

If she wasn't so wound up, Amina might have found him charming. Instead, she just stifled a frustrated grunt before barking out, "Just answer the damn question!"

The smile melted away. "Ok, ok, fair enough. Well, first of all, whenever someone who was involved with the Shackleton Blow-Out leaves Luna, that's good PR for Luna-C. It makes it look like we're winning. That's why they were willing to pay your way home."

Amina wasn't swayed by that. "You wouldn't need to keep me alive for that once I got onboard."

"... Right, but there's..." He looked like gears were grinding in his head. He pursed his lips. "There's something else I can't explain now. But I promise, I'll tell you everything when I can be sure we won't be overheard."

Amina forced out a derisive laugh. "Oh, sure, I'd love to go someplace with you where no one can hear us," she replied sarcastically.

Lock was incredulous. "You're really trying to make me the bad guy after I just saved you from getting thrown out an airlock, huh?"

"You are a bad guy!" She was almost shouting. "You were just bragging about killing someone!"

"That wasn't a brag, it was intimidation. And I killed that guy in self-defense. He was also trying to kill me. You were in the military; you would have done the exact same thing." He didn't seem angry, but there was a sharp edge in his voice. "No, you need me to be the bad guy because that makes you the good one, right? It's a classic authoritarian mindset. You never have to think about whether or not what you're doing is actually the right thing. It has to be, because you're the good guy!"

His words cut her. "Don't act like you know me! You think I haven't regretted Laika? Do you really think I wanted that to happen? You think I don't dream about-"

She cut herself off when she started to feel the panic rise. She bit her lip. The two of them stood there, staring each other down. To her surprise, he looked away first. He uttered a frustrated grunt as he grimaced at the floor. Amina took the moment to inhale deeply through her nose and exhale out of her mouth.

"You're right." Lock's tone was more measured after seeing Amina start to crack. "I don't... actually know you. But you can't do what I do without being a good judge of character."

Amina used to think she was one of those. Maybe she still had a bit of that left in her. "Look me in the eye and tell me you don't want revenge," Amina demanded.

Both of them went back to staring at each other gravely until Lock finally sighed exasperatedly and replied, "I really don't."

"Why?" Amina asked.

"Because I'm fucking sick of that shit!" His exasperation was growing into defeated frustration. "I'm tired, ok! I don't want to be doing this anymore. I don't know what that says about me, but I don't really care at this point. Look at me! My whole ass is burned to shit! I'm just done fighting, ok?"

Amina didn't know what to say or how she should feel. She believed he really was tired of fighting. She knew that feeling well. But she was certain there was still something he was keeping from her.

"Look. You have my coat and my hat, right?" Lock turned out his pockets of his sweatpants. "Nothing in here. You wanna search me further, be my guest." Even now, he couldn't help but smile slightly, "Not even trying to flirt with that one, so you know I'm serious. You're not gonna find anything that could be even remotely lethal on me."

"That doesn't matter!" Amina wasn't about to be fooled. "Apparently, you can just snap my neck!"

"Come on, you fell for that bluff?" Lock looked almost disappointed in her again. "That guy's always been scared of me. He was so easy to play, but I thought you'd see right through it. You think I can still do that kind of shit? You see how I walk? I'm not exactly nimble anymore. Do you know how much muscle atrophy you get after a few months of doing nothing but lie on your stomach? You're way more of a threat to me than I am to you! You have fucking military training! Look at the definition in your arms! You could soundly kick my ass! And this time, I might be flirting a little because I can't fucking turn it off, apparently." He finished his rant by rubbing his temple again.

Amina wanted to respond with all the reasons why her body was not in any shape to be kicking asses at the moment either, the most prominent one being that she had just passed out not even an hour ago. But there was no point in getting into a pissing contest over who was weaker. "I can't accept that it's a coincidence that we were both waiting in the same space port for the same ship off Luna at the same time and you just happened to recognize me," she finally said.

"Wow... That is a really big coincidence. Huh," Lock mused lightly, as though it hadn't occurred to him until just now. "Fuck, why do I always fall for women who are way smarter than me?"

"I'm done with this mind fuckery," she said definitively. "Fine. We don't trust each other. And we shouldn't. We're right not to trust each other."

"Too right," Lock added.

"But we're stuck on this ship together, I'm so hungry, let's just..." Amina sighed. "Why don't we go somewhere less private and find something to eat?"

Neither of them had much energy or inclination for talking as they navigated the ship's common area. Not many other passengers were there. It looked like most of them had stayed in their quarters after takeoff, but the ones who were there kept glancing at the two of them. Whether it was more because of Amina's revealing outfit or Lock's burned-up body was hard to say, but it was probably the combination of the two of them together that really made people do double-takes. Amina pulled Lock's duster out of her bag and put it back on in the hopes that it might dissuade their glances. She gave the hat back to Lock.

Since the ship was an old converted cargo freighter and not an actual passenger ship, there wasn't much in the way of food other than flavorless freeze-dried stuff from a dispenser, but Amina was happy just to get something in her stomach. There also wasn't much in the way of seating other than some makeshift benches along the walls. Though her weariness ran deep and wouldn't easily be cured, the effects of passing out had subsided, and she was now warm and fed. Amina's biggest problem now was the man sitting next to her.

Was he telling the truth? Was he not actually planning some kind of revenge and this was all in her head? He was hiding something, but it didn't seem like he could really do anything to harm her if he wanted to. Still, she could only see him as a threat.

After everything she had been through that day, Amina's brain was struggling. It was focusing on all the wrong things, like the one big thing still nagging at her conscience. She wanted to say that she was sorry about Laika, but she knew it would be meaningless. It wouldn't change anything. Plus, she didn't even know if she would have done anything different if she had known about the bomb beforehand. But she'd been living with the guilt for so long. The only consolation had been knowing that no one had survived, meaning she never had to answer to anyone. Now that she knew that wasn't true and was face-to-face with a victim... one of her victims... someone she'd looked in the eye and left for dead...

"I'm sorry," the guilt forced her to blurt out.

"For what?" Lock asked, a bit surprised.

"You know what. Laika." Amina said begrudgingly. Lock just stared at her in mild surprise. "I know it doesn't undo it, but I am sorry for being part of it," she finished, hoping she sounded as sincere as she felt.

It was Amina's turn to be surprised when he gave her a small but genuine smile. "It doesn't undo it, but it's nice to hear."

Somehow, this only made her feel more guilty. "How did you survive?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I was the farthest away from the blast, so I got the least of the impact. I guess everyone in between me and the bomb kind of... softened the blow." He paused for a moment, looking distant. "I know it's a cliché to say it should have been me, but..." He let the thought hang there for another moment before clearing his throat. "The, um... the window got blown out, but trying to crawl through didn't work," he continued, pointing to the scar on his face. "I sent out a distress call and eventually got picked up and patched up."

Amina's blood had turned to ice. Finally, she managed to utter a single word, "Fuck."

"Yeah, well... I knew what I was getting into. I was willing to go out in a blaze of glory. But for some reason I'm still here... still alive... just to end up being a massive drain on Luna-C's resources while they tried to heal me." His lip curled bitterly. "So, it's back to throwing rowdy assholes out of bars and strip clubs back on Earth... if I can even do that anymore."

"If Luna-C invested time and money into keeping you alive, they must value you," Amina reasoned, "I mean, you were one of the biggest enemies of the state."

"Sure, but I'm no use to them now. It's not like I have a degree or any real skills beyond Anarchist Cookbook shit. All I had going for me was physical stuff that I can't do now. Eh, it doesn't matter." Now he really looked dour. "It's not exactly the same organization I thought I joined up with anymore."

It seemed like Amina and Lock had one very big thing in common: disillusionment. "That sounds familiar. Why can't anything just be black and white?" Amina asked, knowing full well that there was no good answer.

"I mean, there's my family, but I don't think that's what you meant." Lock's mood had immediately perked up at being able to make a joke. "Life would be so much less fun if everything wasn't so endlessly complicated, wouldn't it?" He grinned sarcastically.

"I think Luna has been enough fun to last me a lifetime. I'm ready for boredom and wide-open spaces again. I miss the horses," Amina finished wistfully. To her surprise, Lock laughed. "Why is that funny?" she wondered.

"I'm just imagining... trying to bring... horses to Luna!" He was trying to speak, but having trouble suppressing his laughter, "Just thinking about them floating around while artigrav is off... it's really fucking funny!" The more he tried to explain it, the harder he started laughing. "Their little stick legs flailing around..."

"Are you high?" Amina was almost laughing herself.

While still giggling, he held up his index finger a couple millimeters away from his thumb. "Just a little bit!" He smiled wide enough that she could see the tip of his tongue wedged between his fucked-up teeth. His lower eyelids were pushed up high enough that they covered the entire bottom half of his eyes. Honestly, it was kind of endearing. The situation was so absurd, Amina actually did laugh. For a moment, she felt days' worth of tension leave her body.

It didn't last long, though, because when they were both done laughing, he asked, "So, if those horses back home are so great, why did none of them pay for you to come home? Or could they not afford it? Cus, you know... they're horses..." When she didn't reply right away, he added, "You get that I'm not actually talking about horses right?"

Amina's eyes were downcast. "Yeah, I get it. I didn't tell them I was coming home."

Lock's brow furrowed. "Why's that?"

"They don't know I was dishonorably discharged." Amina's voice was monotone. "I couldn't tell them."

"So, you'd rather whore yourself out than tell them?" Lock quickly added, "Not judging- just wondering."

She looked at him sadly. "You wouldn't understand."

Lock must have accepted that as a good enough answer because he didn't follow up. He just let her brood. Amina was lost in thoughts of home and how badly she didn't want to go back. She liked the freedom of being on her own. She had just started to feel like a real person before her whole worldview had been shattered and her life destroyed. What would she become when she went back home? Would she go back to being who she used to be?

Amina just stared at the empty package of flavorless food-like material in her hands. She could feel Lock's eyes burning holes into her and did her best to ignore them until she heard him speak.

"Look, whatever you may think of me, murderer, criminal, terrorist... I get it, and I get why you'd think I'd wanna kill you. But I know what it's like to be on hard times." His tone was as gentle and sympathetic as his gruff voice would allow. "It makes you do stuff you wouldn't normally do. Stuff like fucking strangers for a place to sleep. So, if you do decide to stay with me, I'm not gonna touch you."

"Then why have you been hitting on me this whole time?" Amina asked, almost jokingly.

Lock grinned devilishly. "I said I wasn't going to, not that I don't want to."

Though she would have denied it, his flattery had an effect on her. As she went back to staring at her hands, she thought that if the situation were different, she might have liked to hear more.

Hell, even in the current situation, she wanted to hear more.

After considering his words for a second, she said, "Well, no matter what, if we're sharing a bed, I can't envision a future where you're not touching me." When she looked back at Lock, his eyes were burning again, and so was his face.

Was he... blushing?

"What?" she asked, concerned that she had said something way out of line but had no idea what it was.

"Fffffffucking hell!" Lock sputtered out. He looked impressed. Amina blushed too when she finally realized how suggestive what she had just said actually sounded. "I just mean the beds are small!" she explained. "Unless one of us sleeps on the floor, we're gonna be touching."

"Doesn't sound like you want either of us to sleep on the floor. 'I can't envision a future where you're not touching me.'" Her words sounded filthy coming out of his mouth. "Now who's hitting on who? Goddam, that was fucking hot!"

"Look, I'm not a native Cosmalang speaker," she tried to reason.

He laughed. "Nobody is, babe! Hell, you speak it better than I do!"

The embarrassment was radiating off her like heat. Lock seemed delighted at how flustered she was. She was even more embarrassed to ask, but had to know, "You really thought it was hot?"

"Oh my god!" Lock exclaimed with a look of sudden realization. "I just figured out why you want me to be the bad guy so bad."

Not really an answer to my question. "What are you talking about?" Amina asked, slightly annoyed.

"You're inhibited!" He looked around and lowered his voice. "You wanna get fucked, but you don't want the shame and guilt that comes with being a woman who wants to get fucked. So, you found a loophole." He continued with a tone of sarcastic astonishment, "You're not hooking because you want sex, noooooo. You have to do this! You're a victim of circumstance and some scary, dangerous man from the other side is just taking advantage of that." He dropped the sarcasm. "Never mind that your folks are probably willing and able to send you the money you need for a ticket home if they got horses."

Now Amina was really irritated. "There you go acting like you know me again."

"Yeah, but how close was I?" he asked shrewdly.

She didn't know. In all honesty, even though her parents had told her not to expect any help from them if she left Earth, they definitely would have done all they could to get her home if they knew what dire straits she was in. But telling them that she had been dishonorably discharged after she had argued with them tooth and nail about joining the military and going to Luna, especially after the terms they had parted on, she just couldn't face them. The thought of it turned her stomach.

But was it possible that she really was so sexually inhibited that her desire had subconsciously led her to become a Cover? Did she get off on the thrill of doing something so dangerous and taboo? It wasn't such a crazy concept. Even though Lock was a Luna-C terrorist who looked like death warmed over, she loved how much he was interested in her. It made her feel attractive. It made her feel powerful.

"It's complicated," She spat out. He smiled knowingly. She rolled her eyes at him.

"Well, I can help you with one thing: being more uninhibited... or less inhibited... maybe just hibited... whatever." He shook the silly thought out of his head to focus on the serious one. "If you do want it, you gotta make the first move. Otherwise, you're getting nothing from me, 'cus you clearly have some issues to work out. Either way, I'm ready to get out of here if you are."

Now Amina was more confused than ever. Did this guy actually care about her beyond just being able to fuck her? Or was this all a psy-op to get her alone with him and do her in? How would he do her in, though? How was he a threat? No matter what, this guy was clearly sad and horny, which could make him easy to manipulate. A new plan began forming in Amina's brain.

"Yeah," she said definitively. "Why don't we turn in?"

Chapter 3

If you're in a hostage situation, the best thing you can do to keep yourself alive is make yourself useful to your captor. While she wasn't exactly a hostage, Amina knew how she could be useful. Whether or not Lock ultimately wanted to kill her, she knew one thing he wanted from her first. She was valuable as long as she could provide that. That would buy her time to formulate an escape plan if she needed it.

The room they were sharing was tiny, as expected. Not much space for anything other than a few shelves, some hooks on the wall, and a full-size bed, which Amina noticed Lock's baggage was shoved under. She wondered if there was anything in there she should be worried about. His stuff would have had to have gone through security, but that certainly was no guarantee of anything.

"I guess I've slept in worse places," Amina said, steeling herself for what she was about to do.

"Hell, anywhere without bed bugs or roaches is fucking luxurious to me." Lock hung his hat on one of the wall pegs. While his back was turned as he removed his shoes, Amina stripped off his coat and her shirt.

When Lock turned back, his eyes widened at the sight of her exposed breasts. He breathed out sharply through his nose as he watched her pull off the rest of her clothes. Amina never felt comfortable exposing herself like this to anyone, but she was pleased that he wasn't looking at her with disgust. After a moment of just staring at her naked form, Lock chuckled slightly, almost nervously, and asked, "You normally sleep like that or...?"

Even moving as slowly as she was, it was no time at all before Amina had crossed the small room and was standing in front of him. She reached out and held his face in one hand. The sharp hairs pricked her palm as he leaned slightly into her touch. Desire was beginning to overtake his trepidation. She stood on her toes, leaning in like she was going to kiss him. His lips had barely brushed against hers when Amina deftly slid her other hand down the front of his pants and grabbed him tightly by the balls. He choked out something like a strangled gasp while she held his chin so that he couldn't look away or speak very easily. For the first time since Laika, he actually looked a little scared. Good. She had the advantage.

"Now, I can make your life hell again-" She dug her nails into the soft flesh, causing him to bite his lip, "Or I can be very, very good to you." She relaxed her grip and gently caressed his cock with her index finger. It twitched in response. Amina was facing down those eyes she feared so much and had their full attention. "So, what you want to do is keep me alive, but do not underestimate me, got it?"

Lock's look of shock and fear gradually morphed into a wild kind of grin after Amina released his chin. She couldn't tell whether he was mocking her or was genuinely impressed.

"Cheeky little thing, aren't you?" Amina jumped a little as she felt his hands latch onto her hips and pull her towards him. Her hand in his pants was now smushed between their two pelvises. She could feel his dick getting harder. "I'm glad to see you like to play rough, too."

Fuck. She should have known he'd be totally into that.

"Far be it from me to underestimate a woman who knows what she wants." Did he think she was bluffing? Was he trying to call her out on it? "Well, you seem to know what you're doing. If this is really what you want, then go ahead..." His hands snaked around her further until he was fully groping her naked ass. "... Have your way with me."

Despite having taken the initiative, Amina hadn't really thought about being the one taking the lead. She kind of just assumed his instincts would take over and he'd go feral on her. That's what she was used to. Not a problem, though. She could do this. Screw your courage to... screwing, I guess. Fuck it.

She put her free hand on his shoulder and pushed him down until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. As she crouched down between his legs, she pointedly tried to avoid eye-contact. His fucking grin did something to her that made it hard to think. She needed to focus. She could do this. She had done this plenty of times. Just lie back and think of Middle Earth.

"Fuck, you look good down there." His voice was low and raspy. It reminded her of a snake hissing or maybe a tiger growling... something predatory. Don't think about it. Just focus on getting his pants off.

Amina heard the rustling of Lock pulling his shirt off as he said, "You know, I may not have been able to bring the Lunar government to its knees, but fuck, I'll settle for you." Was he making fun of her? Did he think she was some inexperienced little girl? Oh, I'll show this cocky fucker. She took the edge of his boxers between her teeth and forced herself to look up at him while she yanked them down.

Amina was thoroughly pleased to see her efforts wipe the smug smile off his face. His eyes dilated as he muttered, "Fuck, you do know what you're doing..." Lips slightly parted, he looked mesmerized. Good. She was glad to be able to wrest a bit more control over the situation.

As she released his cock from the fabric, she felt his hand on the back of her head. But, as she braced for him to shove her head down and face-fuck her, he instead just started running his fingers through her hair. While she had to admit it felt nice, it made her uneasy. She had to make sure she didn't get lured into a false sense of security. Was his gentle touch a way of treating her like a child to assert dominance, or was he actually just being nice?

She needed to focus on the task at hand. She was slightly relieved at the size of the penis she was now face-to-face with. It certainly wasn't small, but she'd managed to somehow cram bigger ones inside her and lived to regret it. She took the shaky exhale he let out while she ran her tongue from the base up to the tip as a good sign. The hand in her hair was twitching slightly as she took the tip into her mouth and started circling her tongue around the glans.

"... Mina..." he sighed gently.

She didn't stop, but her brain did for a second. Of course he would know her first name, that wasn't surprising to her. But the fact that he was calling her by name- not just her name, but a pet name- while she blew him was far too intimate.

This was not how she had expected things to go.

She couldn't allow herself to get wrapped up in passionate love-making. This was sex. Just sex. Sex with a stranger. A dangerous stranger.

A dangerous stranger who was being kind and gentle with her like... like...

... like a lover...

Shit, was this part of the power play? She had to stop thinking like this. She redoubled her efforts and pushed her head so far forward that his cock touched the back of her throat. Luckily, Amina was experienced at keeping herself from gagging. The hand in her hair tightened. She heard a grunt that turned in a low moan as she picked up the pace, bobbing her head and sucking hard.

"Fuck... FUCK!" Lock's hand left her hair and started to push back on her head, almost like he was trying to stop her. "Hey, uh... hang on a sec. Seriously." Amina stopped and looked up confusedly at him when she finally registered that he was in fact trying to get her to stop.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

His face was flushed, and he was breathing heavily. "It's just... Take it easy on me, ok?" His grin was now a little more sheepish than cocky. "I haven't been with anyone since all this happened," he gestured to his burns. "If you keep going so hard, I'm not gonna last very long."

"That's ok," she replied, "That just means you'll last longer next time." She had meant this matter-of-factly, thinking it was obvious that they would be having sex multiple times at least during the trip, if not tonight. But apparently this implication was too much for him. As soon as she took his cock into her mouth again, she heard him cry out above her and felt hot cum spurting down her throat. She was so surprised that she would have gone into a coughing fit if not for her quick reflexes. She managed to avoid choking and keep sucking him through his orgasm.

"JeeEEeEesus fuck, you can't just say shit like that! Holy God!" he groaned out, voice distorted in pleasure.

Amina managed to swallow all of it, mostly because she didn't want to have to clean anything up. Lock's legs were shaking and twitching on either side of her head. His hand was clasped over his mouth trying to muffle the sounds of his keening while she milked him dry. When the vulgar noises began to fade, she extricated herself from his still-hard cock and wiped her mouth and chin with the back of her hand. God, she had drooled a lot.

Lock's hand was back on her head stroking her hair as he panted. "Fuck..." he said breathlessly, "Not that I'm disappointed, but in all the times I've imagined doing this with you, I always took longer to come than a goddamn teenager."

...

huh?

HUH?!

What the fuck did he mean by that?! He'd been imagining fucking her...? All the times...? All the times?! Since when?... earlier today? Since... Laika? None of this made sense! Was this guy some kind of stalker? How long had he known her?

He seemed to read her thoughts from her expression and blanched. "Oh, right... You don't know yet." Then, he chuckled in spite of himself, "Heh, I told you I'd tell you everything when we were alone, but you were just so eager to get in my pants." He ruffled her hair a little and then nodded towards to bed. "Come on, get off the floor."

With a little difficulty, since one of her legs had fallen asleep, Amina got up and sat next to him. His smile turned wry and he laughed bitterly. "Aw, fuck. This is gonna be so much harder now after that." He looked at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and sighed.

Amina shifted uncomfortably, partly because her leg was full of pins and needles, but also because she felt guilty. Had she been too forceful? Despite everything she knew about who this man was and what he had been part of, he had been through some nightmarish shit, and right now, he actually looked pretty vulnerable.

He looked like he was about to say something, when he looked down and rolled his eyes. "Fuck, I can't do this with my cock hanging out," he said, pulling his pants back up. Even though it had just been in her mouth, Amina still felt like she should avert her eyes.

For a long moment, they both just sat together silently on that little mattress. Amina noticed how truly quiet it was and was both grateful and concerned that the room seemed to be soundproof.

"There's a reason I keep acting like I know you," Lock began, "And I don't, obviously... not the real you, anyway. But there is a version of you that I know... intimately well."

The hairs on the back of Amina's neck were standing up. She didn't know where he was going with this, but the way he was speaking... his whole manner... had shifted eerily. He spoke slowly and deliberately, but he seemed distant, like he was pulling every thought from somewhere far away.

"Your instincts were right on, you know," he said gravely, "I did want to kill you."

As quickly as she had begun to think she might have misjudged him, her blood ran cold. She couldn't forget the danger she was in. This man had blood on his hands.

But then again... didn't she, too? And why wouldn't he want her dead? Wouldn't she have felt the same if the roles were reversed?

"I've been in pain before. I've gotten beat up, broken some bones, got teeth knocked out... but none of it was like being cooked alive. It..." For a moment, he looked like he was struggling to come up with right words. Eventually, he gave up and just stated the obvious, "It fucking hurt. It really fucking hurt. And it didn't stop. It just kept hurting. All the time. There was no escape from it. Just constant... fucking pain."

Amina felt the guilt slice through her. If she was blaming Lock for the deaths that Luna-C had caused, then she couldn't say she was blameless in burning him alive, or any other deaths that the government she worked for had been responsible for.

"I spent months like that. It drove me more than a little bit mad." He had been staring at the floor since he started reminiscing, but he now turned to look at Amina. His eyes were not the same as the eye of terror from Laika or the cocky grin of the stranger she had decided to get in bed with. Right now, they were hollow. He did indeed look more than a little bit mad.

"Every time the pain was too much to bear, I thought of you and how I would get my revenge on you when I was healed. I fantasized about torturing you, making you feel all the pain that I felt, the pain that you caused me." Amina could feel goosebumps forming on her skin as Lock spoke. "I knew it wasn't all your fault. But you became emblematic of it all. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see you standing there on the other side of the flames watching me burn. There wasn't much else to do or see or hear, so you became my obsession. No matter how much I tried to block you out, thoughts of you consumed me like no fire ever could.

"And here's where it gets fucked up." Really? This is where it gets fucked up? His eyes had gone from hollow to piercingly intense. It was all she could do to keep eye-contact, but she didn't dare look away. She was afraid to let him out of her sight. "Once I had healed a bit, there was pretty much only one thing I could do that would bring me any kind of pleasure, if you catch my meaning.

"But even when I did that, I was still thinking about you."

...

He was thinking about her...

... while he-?

...........

Oh my god.

Amina's stomach lurched strangely. Not with nausea, but... something she couldn't describe as anything other than intense heat. Her face was burning as Lock leaned in slightly and began to speak very quietly. "And do you know what occurred to me?" He gently took a bit of her hair and curled it around his fingers, almost lovingly. She could feel her blush deepening and spreading down to her neck and chest. She was terrified, but something about that terror was exhilarating. The smirk she had come to associate with him was back on his face as he whispered, "You're pretty cute."

Oh.

Oh, fuck-

What was that?!

Amina had just been hit by a one-two punch of an extremely strong physical sensation and then an even stronger emotional reaction to that sensation. It felt like something that had been swelling up inside her gut had suddenly burst and was draining out through her...

Oh, God-

Did she...?

Had she just gotten her period? Or pissed herself? No, it wasn't-

It couldn't be...

Oh, no.

Oh, nooooooooo.

Seriously?!

As soon as she had registered how wet she was, Lock was speaking again. "Suddenly, in my mind, it was your hand instead of mine... and then... other parts of you."

Oh, fuck- More was coming out. What was happening? Why was she getting wet hearing about this guy thinking about her while jerking off? In the past, getting even just wet enough so that sex wasn't painful was always such an arduous process. But now, she was gushing. What was happening to her?

"And just like that," Lock continued, "Instead of fantasizing about getting revenge on you, I was fantasizing about doing every filthy thing you can possibly think of with you."

She was starting to feel a bit dizzy. When had her heart started beating so fast? How was his raspy snake/tiger voice so sexy? Wait, what?! What the fuck was she thinking?! God, he was looking at her like he wanted to devour her and, fuck, why did she want to let him?!

"And when I wasn't doing that..." His eyes had gone a bit hollow again, but with a touch more sadness than before, "When I was just lying on my stomach alone for hours with that constant goddam searing, stinging pain... You were still there in my mind, comforting me. Just talking to me or touching me gently. Just showing me any kind of kindness, really. You were the main thing that got me through that recovery period with my sanity... somewhat intact. Most of the time, I knew you weren't really there. But a lot of times... I was full-on hallucinating."

Amina couldn't believe what she was hearing or feeling. Guilt and fear and arousal were all whirling and crashing together like waves in a tempest raging inside her.

"When I saw you there at the port, I figured I was hallucinating again. No way that gorgeous woman with her tits spilling out of her shirt and begging for someone to fuck her could really be you. It was too perfect, but there you were. I probably looked like such a fucking creep staring at you, but bloody oath, I wasn't sure you were really there." He looked away and let out a small sort of derision at himself. "I don't know why I'm trying to defend myself. You've gotta be fucking revolted."

Amina thought she should be. Maybe a small part of her was. There was a rational part of her brain that knew a man with an obsession with her was someone to be feared. This should only make her more afraid of him. But the feeling of being wanted so badly by someone who had every right to want to kill her... fuck, it was overpowering.

"I know I'm out of my fucking mind. I know the version I have of you in my head isn't real. I just can't help wanting you." In his voice was the same world-weariness as when he spoke about being tired of fighting.

For a moment, Amina was paralyzed with indecision. Lock was looking at her with a sad kind of smile, like he was resigned to the fact that her silence said everything and she was horrified. But, if he was telling the truth... and it sounded like he was... fuck, could she even trust her own judgement anymore? Her mind was foggy. If he really didn't want to kill her and just wanted whatever she was willing to give...

Did she... want... to let him have her?

"I can't ask anything more of you. You've already given me more than I deserve." He sighed deeply and put his hand on her head and ran his fingers through her hair before flashing a familiar cocky grin. "Here's hoping getting me off got you out of my system."

Amina started to speak but faltered. What came out was something like, "Ack!" She forced herself to clear her throat to make it seem like she just had something stuck in there and wasn't just too frazzled to form words. "Actually..."

Lock looked at her curiously. The longer she hesitated while thinking of what to say, the more intense his gaze became. She had to look away, so she looked down at her crossed legs as she unfolded and opened them. His gaze followed hers as she exposed her dripping vagina and the wet spot spreading out on the bed underneath.

His mouth opened slightly as he took a deep breath in. Then his eyes became as wide as they had been when looking at Earth or right before the bomb had gone off at Laika. "Oh... Oh. Oooooooohohoho..." His look of shock was quickly turning into one of crazed shock and delight.

"Fuuuuuuuuhuhuhuck! FUCK!" It was like his body couldn't contain his energy. He got off the bed and started pacing around the tiny room. "Are you for real?! Christ woman! I figured you'd be absolutely disgusted by my tales of being a sick fucking wanker, and here you are getting off on 'em? You might be as much of a freak as I am!" It clearly wasn't meant to be insulting. He was ecstatic.

Amina's whole body was tingling. She couldn't believe she had done that. Sure, she had blown him, but she had done that kind of thing without feeling anything many times. It was routine and mechanical. She was the one in control. But revealing how turned on she was by him? Allowing herself to be so vulnerable might have been a critical mistake, and yet she couldn't bring herself to stop. Her cunt was screaming to be touched so loudly that Lock must have heard it, because he climbed back on the bed and crawled up to her, eyes fixed on her glistening wet pussy. He stopped with his hand hovering over her clit and asked, "... Can I?"

She nodded more forcefully than she meant to. It made her dizzy, but not so much as when his fingers started gently stroking the slippery folds of her labia. A breathy sigh escaped her. How could hands so rough be so gentle?

"Fuck, there's so much of it..." He had that mesmerized look again. "You're fucking soaked! I bet you're a squirter, arenchya?"

"I... I don't know..." Amina said breathlessly.

Lock's hand froze, and he looked up at her. "... You're not- No... you can't be a virgin, can you? Not with the way you just sucked me off!"

"No, I've just..." She looked away in embarrassment. "No one else has ever been able to make me come... I mean, besides myself."

Lock just continued to look at her blankly. Then he smiled in a way that was so devilish that he looked almost sinister. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Amina could easily read that look: challenge accepted!

She felt the muscles in her pussy clenching as she watched him lower himself down so that he was face-to-face with it. But from this angle, she could see the full extent of his injury. His whole backside was completely covered in burn scars. They were a deep pink, almost purple in places. She didn't want to think about how much pain he had gone through because of her.

He was tracing circles around her clit so slowly that she barely noticed. In fact, it barely felt like he was touching her at all. "You... you can go faster, you know," she said.

"Oh, I will... eventually. It's better when you have to wait for it." It was jarring to see Lock's wicked grin juxtaposed with his burned back. Amina closed her eyes to keep from looking at it, not because it repulsed her, but because of the guilt. Without her sense of vision, though, she was keenly aware of the way his fingers were teasing her cunt. She could hear how wet she was. It was obscene... but it felt so good, almost relaxing. Actually, very relaxing. So relaxing that she became startlingly aware of another sound: A high-pitched whining sound.

Oh god, she was moaning.

She quieted herself immediately as a reflex. Why was she so embarrassed, though? Isn't that what she was supposed to be doing? This is what people do when sex is good, right?

Fuck, am I actually enjoying this?

As soon as she thought that, a very warm and wet sensation caused her eyes to fly open again. Only the top half of Lock's face was visible, but the feeling of his tongue lapping between her legs was so vivid she could almost see it. Her whole body was tensing and relaxing in response to the way his tongue was making love to her clit.

Those eyes... that cocky fucking look in his eyes... She had thought he was being condescending before, but this expression held no contempt. He knew he was good at this, and he was relishing in how good it was making her feel. He loved knowing that she was getting off on him. In this way, he was exactly the same as her, wasn't he?

A perfect match.

Her whole lower half was tingling and pulsating. She was almost alarmed at how much her legs were twitching. She wasn't making them do that! Why were they twitching so uncontrollably?! She was making that sound again, almost squealing with pleasure. A deep ache was building inside her, not a painful one but a yearning need for more. She was starting to breathe harder. It was all so much. But it wasn't enough-

And then it was nothing.

"Why did you stop?" Amina's pussy felt cold in Lock's absence.

He was sitting up, breathing slightly hard, "I told you it's better if you have to wait for it."

"Don't tease me!" she whined in frustration.

"Why, did you like it?" he smirked.

Amina would have blushed harder if that was possible, "You know I did," she mumbled.

"Yeah, I just wanted to hear you say it." Amina was irritated at his candor until he continued. "Nah, actually, my neck was protesting. You'd be surprised how easily I forget that I can't move as well as I used to."

"Are you ok?" she asked.

"I'm fine, just maybe a little overconfident. Here, lemme try something." After pulling his pants off again, Lock positioned himself so that he was sitting behind Amina, who felt slightly relieved to no longer have to look him in those piercing eyes. "This way, I can do this."

A shiver went up her spine as he wrapped his arms around her abdomen. Both hands found her pussy again. While one went back to work on her clit, the other slipped a finger inside her. She gasped both at the feeling of being entered and in surprise that it didn't hurt. She was so wet that nothing was catching or burning or stinging. All she could feel was her insides being expertly stroked and pet.

"Where are you, you little bugger?" Lock was muttering. His finger was curling and prodding very gently, exploring every centimeter of the tight passage. Suddenly, he hit a spot that made Amina lurch with a sudden burst of pleasure. She knew what the build up to an orgasm felt like, but this was so much more intense. Weirdly, it kind of felt like she had to pee.

Pleasure during partnered sex had always been a moving target; this elusive thing that was always just beyond reach. On occasion, when she was lubed up enough, she got a glimpse. An orgasm would start to build as she was thrust into, but then her partner would finish and they would be done. No one ever fingered her in a way that felt good. She would try to explain or demonstrate how to do it better, but every guy either got impatient or just couldn't figure out the right place or pressure.

This guy, though... He knew his way around a cunt. For a moment, she almost felt jealous of whoever he had gotten this much experience doing this with. She realized how ridiculous that was when she looked down at their intertwined limbs. Her legs were the ones his were wrapped around. No one else's.

Amina was moaning wantonly now. "That's it, love. Lemme hear that pretty voice of yours," Lock purred in her ear. Much to her embarrassment, she heard herself whimpering as his praise brought her that much closer to coming. Fuck, why did she fall apart when he said she was pretty or cute? She hadn't fallen for flattery like that since she was a kid. That's when she realized...

It's because he says it like he means it.

The heat was pooling in her cunt as Lock fingered her. She could feel his arms around her, his chest pressed against her back, and his lips on her neck. But what pushed her over the edge was his hard cock pressing into the flesh just above her ass.

He wanted her. He wanted to be inside her.

Amina's whole body fell apart. She released everything. A throaty moan escaped her, her muscles went limp, and the damn burst. It wasn't a huge amount, but she definitely felt and saw liquid shooting out of her as she came.

She was, in fact, a squirter.

While she was still in ecstasy, Amina craned her neck to look at the man who had just made her come harder than she had ever come before. Lock looked like he had just had a religious experience. All he could say was, "... Told ya."

Without even thinking about it, Amina smashed her lips against his. She could still feel her pussy throbbing as she kissed him aggressively. As the tide began to ebb, she slowed her wild movements and kissed him tenderly. Lock's movements, though, became all the more passionate. His tongue thrusted into her mouth and wrapped around hers. Amina felt like their mouths were melting into each other as their tongues rolled over one another.

Amina was only mildly aware of Lock pushing her down on the bed and lying on top of her. She was too absorbed in the way he growled as he bit her lower lip. Somehow, even after they had both made each other come, kissing like this felt so much more intimate than all that. If anyone had been observing, they would never say that these were two people just hooking up. No, these were clearly two lovers having a passionate affair.

Amina briefly imagined the shocked reactions that anyone who knew her would have had if they could see her like this with someone from Luna-C. She was similarly shocked at how much the idea thrilled her. But she was pulled back to reality at the sudden pain of something very hard trying to burrow into her pussy.

"Mmmm!" Amina yelped in alarm while her mouth was still occupied. She pushed Lock away. "Wait! Stop!"

He sat up, panting and eyes dilated. "What's wrong?"

"I just came. I'm not ready. Just... give me a minute!" Amina's ears were ringing and everything in her pelvis was hyper-sensitive.

Lock took longer than she expected to process what she was saying. When he seemed to finally understand, he smiled sympathetically and ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry, love. I got caught up in the moment."

God, he looked good looming over her. Amina usually thought naked men looked like weird apes with less hair. That description could easily have applied to Lock, but as he looked down at her like she was the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen, she couldn't help but feel similarly.

"I'm just... itching to be inside you." He placed his hands on her stomach and slowly slid them up her body until he was cupping her breasts. "But I can wait a little longer." He pushed her tits together until they were touching and started kneading them slowly like dough. "There's still so much of you I haven't tasted yet."

It occurred to Amina that one of the many novel things about Lock was how much he used his tongue during sex. Not only was he way more talkative than any guy she had been with before, but he seemed to have an oral fixation at least where her body was concerned. It was like he wanted to explore every part of her with his mouth.

He took one of her nipples gently between his teeth and began flicking his tongue over the sensitive flesh. Amina, still slightly overstimulated, just let her head loll back as she sighed. Little sparks were lighting her up inside like electricity.

Lock was straddling one of her legs. Amina could feel his cock rubbing against it slowly and rhythmically while his hands and tongue roamed over her body. He was clearly doing all he could to keep himself from humping her leg like a dog. She couldn't believe how much the sight of him was turning her on.

Porn was never her thing. It made her feel like she was intruding on something that should be kept private. And forget trying to get off to romantic stories. She found them so trite and contrived. The men in those were too perfect and all in the same, boring way. Sure, a gentleman like Aragorn would treat her like a queen, but Aragorn wasn't real. She wanted something real with someone real.

Amina wasn't naïve or stupid. She knew what was happening wasn't the something real that she was looking for. A traumatized mind is a breeding ground for kinks. Lock's brain must have decided to try fucking his pain away, and by just pure chance, Amina was in the perfect position to become something to fetishize. He wasn't in love with her. But he wanted her, and that changed everything.

She had thought he just wanted someone to fuck, and that it only happened to be her because she was the one offering herself. But he specifically wanted to fuck her. This wounded ex-terrorist who had every reason to want her dead was making her feel things she never thought possible because he wanted to. He wanted her to feel this good. He wanted her.

She wasn't just 'good enough' or 'cute for a fat girl' or 'fuckable if drunk'. The reason why was fucked up beyond all belief, but right now she was the one person in the universe that he wanted. And, fuck, did that feel good.

She wanted more of it.

Badly.

"Please!" she begged.

Lock released Amina's tit from his mouth as he looked up. It jiggled as it flopped back into place.

"Please fuck me," she whispered.

"Oh, say that again." Lock's eyes were dark. His voice was dripping with lust.

Amina swallowed. "Please fuck me, Lock."

He said nothing as he spread her legs and positioned himself between them. He used a hand to line up the head of his cock with her entrance, which was still soaking wet. He tried to guide himself inside her, but it took a few tries as he kept stopping when he met resistance. Finally, he managed to slide all the way inside her.

Amina closed her eyes at the pain of being stretched open.

"You good, love?" Lock asked, though his concern was overshadowed by how good he clearly felt.

"Yeah, it just stings a little." Amina wasn't worried. She had been expecting this.

"No wonder. You're fucking tight! It was all I could do just to get in at all!" He was balls deep in her cunt, but he wasn't moving. Despite the pain, she wanted to feel him moving inside her. She needed him to fuck her.

"Keep going! Please!" she pleaded.

Lock pulled back and thrusted just as deep inside her. Amina yelped. He froze in response.

"Don't stop!" Amina opened her eyes. It was already starting to hurt less. "I can handle it!"

"Yeah, but I want you to enjoy it, not just handle it!" Even as he said this, he started rolling his hips slowly, almost absent mindedly, like it felt so good he couldn't stop himself.

"It'll get better. It always hurts a little at first," she assured him.

"Fuck, you're squeezing me so much!" Lock was continually thrusting at this point, not very fast or hard, but just enough for Amina to get used to the feeling. Even before the pain fully subsided, Amina started to feel the electricity building inside again. It wasn't long before she was moaning.

Lock stopped thrusting for a moment to lift her legs over his shoulders. When he started trusting again, he was reaching even deeper inside her, and Amina's ecstasy deepened further as well. The sounds she was making were wild and involuntary. She had a vague memory of this position being called a mating press. God, she was glad for that IUD right now. Lock was pounding her deeply like he was trying to breed her. Amina was so far-gone that the thought of him getting her pregnant actually turned her on rather than terrified her.

"Want me to come inside you, babe? Yeah? You want me to fill you up?" Lock was growling in her ear when he wasn't biting her earlobe or sucking on her neck. Amina wanted to respond in any way, but she just couldn't keep up. He was doing so much to her, so much more than anyone ever had before.

"Yes! Please! Don't stop!" She was delirious. She was so close again already.

Lock had pulled his head back to look at her. His eyebrows were upturned. He was biting his lip. He was clearly at the breaking point but was holding back. "Look at me when you come, babe. I wanna see your face when you come undone."

Amina yelled as she came. Her back arched. She didn't squirt this time, but she felt her whole body being wracked with pleasure as Lock continued to ram into her. The sounds of flesh slapping against flesh echoed in her brain. It wasn't long before he was gritting his teeth and practically snarling as he reached his limit.

He yelled even louder than Amina had just done. He sounded like some kind of feral animal roaring. His eyes were shut tight. Amina could feel the white-hot fluid filling her deep inside. He kept thrusting, pumping all of his cum into her. A bead of sweat fell off his forehead and onto her chest. He stayed there for a moment hovering over Amina with his eyes squeezed shut and gritting his teeth.

Amina was reveling in the afterglow of her orgasm. She felt like a boneless puddle. She was only brought out of her reverie when she heard Lock say, "Do me a favor, love. Check to see if I'm bleeding."

Amina blinked. "For real?"

Lock nodded.

"Oh, shit!" she swore as she untangled herself from him and jumped up quickly while trying to ignore the weird feeling of cum leaking out of her. "Where does it hurt?" she asked.

"Lower back," Lock said while flattening out to lie on his stomach. Amina saw that several long horizontal red lines had appeared on his lower back where the skin had separated. Apparently, the vigorous pelvic trusting had caused some of the brittle skin to crack open.

"You're bleeding a little. It doesn't look serious, though," Amina told him, hoping her assessment was accurate.

"Worth it. Here-" Lock leaned over and reached under the bed. He pulled out a bag, opened it up, and rummaged around until he found a little first-aid kit and handed it to Amina. "You wanna help me out?"

"Yeah, sure..." She took the kit, pulled out some antiseptic and gauze, and got to work dressing the cuts.

Lock didn't flinch or make any sound at the stinging liquid on his opened flesh. He was obviously used to this. Amina didn't hear anything from him until she was placing the gauze on his cuts and he mumbled, "Jesus, we didn't even do anything kinky and I still need aftercare."

She felt bad for not noticing he was hurting earlier and told him as much. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were in pain. I just thought you had an intense O-face."

He chuckled. "God, what am I, Viggo Mortensen breaking his toe?" He muttered to himself.

...

No fucking way!

He did not just reference The Two Towers, did he?!

Amina was floored. She burst out laughing so hard that she doubled over. Lock looked equally surprised and amused. "You actually got that, huh?" he asked. Amina couldn't stop laughing to reply. "Didn't think it was that funny, but ok..."

"You really are Strider!" She choked out.

Lock was confused but couldn't help laughing at her laughter. "Whatever you say, babe!"

"You still think I'm trying to kill you?" Lock asked.

Amina wasn't sure how much time had passed. After cleaning up and getting settled for the night, she was lying next to him in their tiny bed as the little spoon to his big spoon. His bandaged back was pressed against the wall.

"No," she answered honestly. The tactical part of her brain thought that if he had wanted to trap her, she would be the one sleeping against the wall. But she didn't need practical reasons to believe him. She was already convinced.

"Good, 'cus... I don't know if this helped get you out of my system. It may have done the opposite." His voice was slow and sleepy as he absent-mindedly stroked her thigh. "I know I'm fucked-up in the head, and you're probably never gonna want to see me again after this, but... I know I'm gonna miss you after all this is over with."

"Why would I not want to see you again?" Amina asked, surprising both of them.

Lock's hand on her leg froze. "Do you?"

Amina was thoughtful for a moment. "... Maybe," she replied.

"Careful..." She could hear him grinning as he spoke. "Playing hard to get is only gonna make me want you more."

A pleasant thrill of adrenaline flooded her stomach. Oh god, he was giving her butterflies... She felt like she should be ashamed of herself but was too gleeful to care.

Lock continued, "Well, just in case, I'll give you my info and you can decide whether or not to hit me up on Earth. Even if you never do, at least we'll have good memories. Or at least I hope they'll be good for you."

"I think they will be," she whispered bashfully. Part of her still couldn't believe that she had just had extremely passionate sex with someone she had just met hours earlier. A prudish voice in her head was castigating her until a hand in her head gave that voice the finger.

Amina couldn't see him, but Lock's grin was still audible when he said, "I don't care if this is a hallucination. It's the best one I've ever had."

She wondered if she was hallucinating, too. It was all too surreal. If it was a hallucination, she could do or say anything she wanted without any consequences. It almost made her wish it was one. If she could do anything, she imagined she would stay here in this moment for as long as she could.

Amina found herself thinking of her inevitable arrival back home and, to her surprise, was not filled with total dread. Somehow, returning home to her parents and admitting she had failed them seemed... well, it would still suck, but it didn't seem so insurmountable of a task, especially after... well, everything. She felt centered, like her life had been reset.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be satisfied.

As she listened to Lock's breathing mingling with the hum of the ship, Amina Sultanova fell into a deep sleep and dreamed about absolutely nothing.