"Not just yet," she says with a faint smile. "I need to see everything I can. I need to learn everything I can about this place. About all of these places. So I know what to expect."
"What to expect?" I echo, not following her line of thinking.
"When we're done." She puts the necklace down and moves on to the next booth, weaving between a few szzt females.
When we're done. Ah. I'd forgotten that after all this is finished, Ruth is going to leave me. She wants to go back to her friends and find someplace safe for all of them to settle. She's not going to want to stay with a moody pirate whose own mother wants him destroyed.
It's foolish of me to hope otherwise.
54
RUTH
The collar around my neck feels chokingly tight after we leave the brothel. Of course we can't step inside and save everyone that's not there willingly. I can't save the whole universe. I have to pick my battles, and right now I need to focus on getting back to Jade, Helen, and Alice and the people in the cargo bay.
It's so hard to walk away, though. So damn hard. I tell myself that maybe everyone is there willingly. Maybe there are no slaves at all and they come from cultures where sex is fun and having it for money is even funner. I hope if I tell myself that enough times, I'll buy it. I try to focus on the strange pop-up bazaar that sprawls through the humid, smelly halls of the station, but all the excitement and adventure of things has gone away. Shopping distracted me from the fact that this universe is a shithole. Straik and his endearing shyness distracted me from that, too.
I remember now, though. It makes me watch everyone with new suspicion. Every person that passes by and glances at me, I wonder if they own slaves. How they can sleep at night knowing that they're destroying someone else's life. I see the clothes and the necklaces at booths and wonder how many slaves they can buy with those goods. It casts a pall on everything. I force myself to notice my surroundings, though. To make note of the alien races that walk through the station, what they're wearing, what's used for money, and how everyone acts. If I'm going to blend into this society later on, I have to be able to swim with the sharks.
And as far as I'm concerned, everyone's a fucking shark.
We pass by a busy booth near the end of one hall that smells like French fries, and a wave of homesickness stops me in my tracks.
"Are you hungry?" Straik asks, pulling me close. He puts a hand on the back of my neck that makes me bristle at first, but when people glance at me, I remember that I'm the slave here, and I'm supposed to be obedient and downtrodden.
I swallow hard, the collar chokingly tight around my neck. "It just smelled familiar to me."
Straik nods and pushes his way to the front of the booth. I stick close to his side, moving forward with him. "Two fried roots," Straik says, putting a credit chip on the counter.
The alien behind the counter glares at me, swatting at my hands when I try to rest them on the countertop. "No pets here!"
Straik's face flushes an ugly shade, and before I can even think, he reaches across the counter and grabs the frog-looking alien by his tunic and shoves a blaster in his face. "I said, two fried roots," he snarls. "Is there a keffing problem?"
My eyes go wide and I look around. People are discreetly moving away, but no one seems alarmed by the fact that Straik just pulled a gun on a French fry vendor. I don't know if this exactly counts as flying under the radar, but Dopekh doesn't look all that concerned. He just shoulders his weapon and watches our surroundings, as if all of this is totally normal. I discreetly touch Straik's leg. "We can skip it."
"No, we can't," Straik says in that tight voice. "In fact, I want a third fried root for my a'ani friend here. You don't serve those either, do you?" He shoves the blaster hard against the frog's skin, indenting it like a pillow.
"Booth rules," the frog says, even as he places three plas-film carriers full of the fried roots onto a tray.
"I don't like your rules," Straik says dangerously. When the food is put onto the counter, his nostrils flare and he lowers his blaster. "You'd better keffing hope these are the best fried roots in three systems, friend."
"The best," the frog croaks.
I discreetly kick Straik's leg with my new shoes, smiling brightly. "Can we go?"
"You're hungry."
"Not anymore." I don't want to eat those root things now. At all. I just want to get away from here. I can't shake the fact that everyone just ignored Straik's actions. I don't know if that's good or bad. Good in that Straik won't go to space jail, hopefully, but what kind of lawless place is this that he can pull a gun on a fast food worker and no one bats an eye?