Page 66 of The Red Woman on Mars

Vivian tested the handle.

Locked.

Of course it was locked.

Nothing had gone right all day. She was alone with an injured man in a strange place. Her sister was in the hands of a sadist. Tears stung her eyes. She had failed.

“We’re at the outskirts of a Martian separatist dome,” Xavier panted. “That door was built to keep out Martians, not Earthers. You can break it down, Vivian.”

She pushed her shoulder against the door uncertainly. It rattled. She tried again. It shook and held. Remembering Shiloh’s lessons, Vivian shifted her weight to the ball of her left foot, pulled her right foot toward her shoulder, and extended her leg straight out to the door.

The lock broke, and the door crashed open.

Vivian turned triumphantly to Xavier only to find him swaying on his feet with a glassy-eyed expression. She wrapped her arms around his waist and helped him into the dark room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

3 Sols to Presentation Day

The room was spacious and dimly lit by high, narrow windows. Lumpy sacks covered the dirty cement floors. Vivian lowered Xavier to prop against one of the sacks and placed the medical bag next to him. She’d left their duffel with Silas, she realized suddenly. They had no identification, food, or extra clothing.A problem for tomorrow.

“Is this a bakery?” Vivian asked.

“Smuggling ring, I’d venture,” Xavier gasped from his position on the ground. His face was covered in sweat, and his eyes were stretched wide.

She could feel exhaustion threatening to overtake her as the adrenaline drained out of her body.Not yet.She dragged herself through the dark room until she located a handheld solar light and switched it on. Returning to Xavier, she put the light beside him before kneeling to open the medical bag. At least it was better stocked than the medical equipment she’d had access to at the refugee camp. She disinfected her shaking hands as best she could and popped the seal on a small bottle of surgical glue.

“Take off your shirt.”

Xavier obeyed without comment. The shirt stuck to his skin, and he let out a yelp as he forced it over his head. An ugly mess of clotted brown blood covered his torso.

Upon seeing his injuries, Vivian’s hands stopped shaking and a sudden calm settled over her. She had to be strong. For Xavier. “I need to clean it,” she murmured. “I think it’s going to hurt.”

“Do what you must. Only … give me another painkiller first.”

Vivian found the bottle of painkillers and handed him another pill. “He must hate you,” she remarked as she dabbed the wounds with an antiseptic cloth.

“I certainly underestimated the depths of his feelings.” Xavier looked down at himself. “I know it looks awful, but I don’t think any of the cuts are that deep. He was toying with me. Going for pain, not permanent injury.” He took her free hand in his. “You saved me before it could get any worse.”

“Xavier—I don’t understand what happened back there. You were going to offer him access to more of your father’s inheritance. Why would he throw it away for … whatever that was?”

“I miscalculated.” Xavier ran a hand over his hair and grimaced as the movement stretched the skin on his chest. “I thought after five years we’d moved on from our past. I was mistaken.”

“I feel like I’m missing something.”

“I—forgive me. Silas and I—we—” He was trembling.

“It’s alright,” Vivian murmured. “Let’s just focus on patching you up.” She went back to the task at hand. She’d tended minor ailments at Sumter before but never a deliberate act of violence. As she worked, she counted the number of shallow cuts.

Ten.

Twenty.

She stopped when she reached thirty, her stomach churning. Whatever lay in Xavier’s history with Silas, it was ugly.

When he was reasonably clean, she applied the glue carefully to the open gaps of skin with the applicator. As she worked, his body gradually grew still. When she was finished, she sprayed his chest with a topical antiseptic and anesthetic.

“What a relief!” he gasped. “Whatever you just did made the skin on my chest go numb.”