Backwater Girls from Backwater Worlds

Chapter 04

She'd been sitting in the ship for over a day, according to her phone. She only used the thing when she couldn't take the darkness any longer. And the smell . . . the bodies had started decomposing and the stench made her nauseous. She'd also had to pee on the ground in a corner and thatlingering odor wasn't helping either. Rey was also hungry. She hadn't eaten much before the party at her loft, and she'd only picked at her meal in Paris. She'd been nibbling on the chocolate bar in her purse, taking a small bite every few hours when the pain was too much.

And she was thirsty. Very thirsty. It wasn't something she'd considered needing to plan for. How long is he going to leave me in here? she wondered. She'd screamed herself hoarse in the first few hours, but it had become painfully clear that even if someone could hear her, no one was going to let her out until the jackass in the mask decided she could come out.

From the look on his face as he'd stormed out, that might be a while. She'd been feeling light headed the last hour or so and her thoughts had been muzzily spinning around her head. Something important kept popping up in her mind but when she tried to grasp it, it slipped away.

The air was warm and moist around her. The air . . .

Rey blinked several times as she latched on to the thought, hunger and thirst forgotten. She—she was running out of air. She was slowly suffocating in there! Rey took several shallow breaths through her mouth as she thought over what she was going to do.

Was that man really going to leave her in there to die? All that pomp and circumstance and he'd just thrown her aside. She was going to die on the floor of a mad alien's shuttle like a trapped rat. He'd seemed pretty set on the look of the girl that he wanted. Maybe he'd go back to Earth at some point, get another who wore Rey's face. Bianca, maybe. Would he or anyone else tell her what had happened to Rey? Would he gloss over the fact that he'd decided to give her a slow death via suffocation in the dark of his ship with nothing but the stench of death and her own morbid thoughts for company?

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she fought them back. A few fell anyway een as she berated herself for wasting precious water crying over her sorry situation. If Black Mask thought she was just going to roll over and die, he had another thing coming. Rey hoisted herself up and turned on the flashlight on her phone. Her battery would drain faster, but she needed the light. She set the phone down on a bulkhead and let the bright light fill the space. There had to be something on the ship she could use. She checked the helmets of the soldiers first, gagging slightly as she met the cold sunken eyes of the dead man. He bled crimson just like she did. Rey looked away from the messy slash across his torso and neck.

She put the helmet on and could instantly hear chatter. Readouts flashed over the helmet's screen, but it was indecipherable, much like the chatter. The helmet wasn't airtight, either, so she discarded it.

She'd walked around the ship multiple times looking for a means of escape but aside from the cockpit--which was sealed--and the ramp-exit that Black Mask had left using, there was only one other door. It didn't have the same kind of lock--it didn't look to be locked at all, really. However there was no power in the ship and the door hadn't budged when she'd given it a cursory pull earlier.

At this point, though, she had to get that door open. It might be her only hope.

Rey looked around the space for anything that could help her. The place looked like a war zone after Black Mask's tantrum. Her eyes scanned the wreckage before spotting a long, thin piece of metal that had once been attached to the wall.

"Maybe . . ."

Rey walked over and picked it up, hefting it in her hand. It was heavy but flat. It might work. "It has to work," she said to herself, taking a breath as she jammed the bar into the side of the door and began using all of her strength to pry the damn thing open.