were all acting as if there was nothing abnormal about it. She frowned and opened her mouth to comment, but Ben caught her eye and shook his head.
“No use working yourself up over it. It’s nothing we can control. If the boss says to work through it, that it’s just a bit of dust and a respiratory irritation, then we work. You know how it is. Drop it, Charlie,” he said.
Chastised, she fell silent as Doug got his cough under control. Clearing his throat, he looked around her room and raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t pick a smaller closet to squeeze us all into, Charlie?” Mia slapped his shoulder in reprimand.
“You know very well that siblings sharing bunks and couples are the only ones who get bigger quarters. And after last time, I’m never going in their room again,” Mia said, directing a disgusted look in the twins’ direction. “I had an extra shower rotation just to feel clean again after going into that pigsty.”
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad!” Jace said, his hand pressed against his chest.
Charlie snorted. She remembered exactly what Mia was referring to. She had spent the entire time picking her way over trash and trying to identify anything she sat on or near.
“It was that bad,” she informed him. She turned an apologetic smile to Doug and Mia. “Sorry we have to squeeze in here, but what I have to say can’t be said anywhere public.”
“Spit it out,” Doug said crossly as he settled back against the door.
She had thought that it would be more difficult to get everything out, but with that short command, somehow everything that came spilling out, everything that had been happening over the last two weeks. Her friends’ expressions morphed from wary to incredulous and finally to outright horror. She watched Mia particularly closely, gauging her friend’s reaction. The woman teared up in sympathy.
“Of course we have to help,” Mia stated once she finished her story. Charlie immediately felt a giant weight lifted off her shoulders.
“It’s very illegal,” she cautioned. She didn’t want her to have any regrets. There was no doubt that she would lose everything. Her position, her career, and any chance at citizenship.
“With the way human history has played out, I’m not about to let another sentient being be treated like chattel, to be experimented on, abused, and maybe even enslaved. At the end of my days, I don’t think I could stand proudly before my ancestors if I didn’t try to do something to help,” she retorted, her jaw tightening. “So what if I lose my opportunity to be a citizen? I’ll be gaining a lot more, the way I see it.”
“What she said,” Ben agreed with a short nod that was echoed by Jace at his side.
“We’ll all help,” Doug offered, his expression turning fierce. “This colony has been one melting shit pot from day one. If helping this alien does something—anything—to draw attention to the situation here, then it’s necessary.”
“Thank you,” Charlie sighed.
“What do you need, Charlie?” Mia asked.
“I need access through the gates… and a distraction,” she replied.
“Oh, we can do a distraction,” Jace chortled, the laugh turning into a hacking cough. Then he gave her a wide, careless grin as if nothing had happened. “We can draw half the colony to the tavern, no problem.” He wrapped an arm around Doug and beamed up at him. “What do you say to another round of 234?”
Doug rolled his eyes. “Why do I always have to be the rampaging idiot tearing up the place while the two of you do the easy part?”
“First,” Ben ticked off, “you do it very well. Two, it will be terribly unconvincing from us. We’re built to be lovers, not demolition experts, case in point why we’re doing so pitifully out in the fields. And three—”
“Shut up,” Doug barked.
“And you just proved point three,” Ben finished with a grin. “You, my friend, have a short fuse.”
Mia smiled up at Doug and rubbed his arm. “He’s got you there, baby. Go out there and make me proud. Might as well go out with a bang.”
Doug snorted mirthfully, and Charlie slowly relaxed. This could actually work.
Chapter 15
After many days of observing the routines of the offworlders, Rhyst had a plan. The mists lasted for one thousand and eighty-three standard beats of his primary heart. It would be a strain, but he had been practicing at holding his breath several times a day. Just hours earlier, when his keeper had sedated him at the