ToxicHaven Read Free

mean you work in the station.”
    She decided to be honest. If they wanted to kill her, here in her quarters, it would be a welcome relief. “I mean, I man the gun.”
    The horror on their faces was unmistakable. Since her arrival, she’d destroyed three vessels that were either attacking or about to make an escape attempt. She was good at what she did. Her incarceration and subsequent job assignment had created a security the mining station had never known before. But, twenty lives were laid at her door. Twenty souls who wanted to take down a portion of the corporation. She had warned them then she had killed them.
    “I understand if you wish to leave these quarters. Bunking with a murderess isn’t something you should be expected to put up with, much less share a bed.” She picked up her tray and slid it into the disposal slot. Turning back, she faced the men, then glanced dubiously at the lone bed in the room.
    Josias stood with his fists clenched. Isan kept his gaze fixed on her face.
    “If you two want to keep staring, you’re welcome to do so. I have to get some sleep. I have to work in the morning. As it is, I don’t even have time for the bath I longed for. They kept me in there too long.”
    There was the distinct possibility the men would kill her in her sleep, but she went to bed anyway. She removed her cap, buckled down her emotions, which allowed her to strip to her skin, folded her clothing carefully and set the pile next to the bed. Without looking up, she scooted between the sheets and pulled them up to her chin.
    Pretending she was alone enabled her to forget there were two ex-security officers looking at her as if she had a second head.
    Her internal clock was accurate. Less than three minutes after she’d tucked herself into bed, the room’s lights went out.
    She heard them moving in the darkness. Their almost soundless movements woke every nerve in her body. She wondered when the attack would come.
    She felt one of them climb in on each side of the bed but nothing else happened. She waited, her body taut until her muscles ached, but the strangling hands she’d expected, never wrapped around her neck.
    Exhausted, she eventually succumbed to sleep, but her mind stayed alert the whole night through.
    When a pounding on the door woke her, she jumped out of bed. A voice came through the speaker. “One-zero-one-six-seven and six-eight. You’re going to be late for your shift.”
    Light flooded the room. She was still alive! Maybe they’d told her the truth, after all. Haven covered her eyes and waited for the men to get up.
    Her roommates casually stood, stretched, and after each paid the bathroom a visit, pulled on their uniforms.
    She watched their nakedness disappear, her shocked sensibilities overloaded as the bodysuits covered their muscles and sinew. She knew the image of muscular backs and buttocks would surface in her mind later in the day when she’d least expect it. For the moment, she pushed any lascivious thoughts away while watching them leave her very plush cell.
    She looked down at her body and noticed the faint red marks of an arm banded across her abdomen where one of the men had held her. She inhaled, smelling something that wasn’t her shampoo. Masculine and enticingly warm, the scent faded quickly. She knew one of her new roommates was a cuddler.
    She was ready and waiting when the guards hauled her off for her shift. She didn’t talk to them. They didn’t talk to her. She calmly slid into her station and put on her headset. Within moments, she was watching for the first incoming traffic while programming the drones for their trips to contaminate the unsuspecting with toxic fertilizer.
    This was the part of her imprisonment that ate at her soul. Defending the mine from armed insurgents was one thing, but the systematic poisoning of untold generations was something else altogether. She was participating in the very situation she wanted to blow the whistle on.
    Her name was