Chapter 3: Weightless Prey
The escape pod hit the atmosphere like a skipping stone, shuddering violently as flames licked the viewport. Marley gripped the edges of the console, her knuckles bone-white. Next to her, Hayes was praying, the words a frantic, breathless stream.
“—get us down in one piece, sweet Jesus, just get us down—”
“Shut up and hold on,” Marley snarled.
The planet swelled beneath them—a bruised palette of grays and greens, the scar of the abandoned base a dark smudge to the east. The pod’s retro-thrusters fired in a jarring sequence, slamming them into their harnesses. The world outside became a violent blur of rushing treetops and screaming metal.
Impact.
The world slammed up to meet them. A deafening crunch, the shriek of tearing alloy. Marley’s head snapped forward, then back. Darkness nibbled at the edges of her vision, held at bay only by the raw surge of adrenaline. Silence, thick and sudden, broken only by the ping of cooling metal and the ragged sound of their breathing.
Hayes coughed, a wet, ugly sound. “Fuck. That was…”
“Close.” Marley unbuckled herself, her body protesting every movement. The pod was canted at a steep angle, wedged between two pines. Through the cracked viewport, she saw familiar skeletal structures against the twilight sky. The base. They’d come home.
Or what was left of it.
She kicked the emergency release. The hatch blew open with a hiss, letting in a gust of cold, damp air that smelled of pine needles and ozone. She climbed out, her boots sinking into soft earth. Hayes followed, stumbling, one hand clutching his ribs.
The base was a tomb. The mess hall where her name had been called was just a shell now, its roof collapsed. Alien scorch marks blackened the concrete walls. The ever-present hum of their ships was a distant whisper here, but it was still there. A constant reminder.
“We can’t stay,” Hayes said, his eyes darting across the ruins.
“No shit.” Marley’s mind was already working, slipping back into the survival rhythms of the past two years. “We need supplies. Weapons. Then we get to the mountains.”
“The mountains? What’s in the mountains?”
“Less of them.”
They moved through the graveyard of their old world, shadows among shadows. The armory was a burnt-out husk, but Marley remembered the cache Vasquez had shown her—a hidden stash in the motor pool, for a last stand that never came.
The motor pool was a canyon of dead vehicles. A gutted Humvee. A tank with its turret blown off. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the scuttle of something in the dark.
Marley found the hidden panel under a workbench, her fingers numb with cold. It opened with a reluctant squeal. Inside: two M4 carbines, mags, a Beretta M9, protein bars, and a half-empty medical kit. It wasn’t much. It was everything.
She tossed Hayes a rifle. He caught it, the weight seeming to steady him.
Back in the relative cover of the shattered commissary, they devoured the protein bars, the taste chalky and familiar. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a hollow, shaking exhaustion in its wake. Hayes kept looking at her, his gaze a physical weight.
“What?” she finally said, her voice rough.
“You killed one of them. Back in the hangar. You stabbed it and it bled.”
She remembered the feel of the metal shard sinking into that strange, rubbery flesh. The spray of silver blood. “It didn’t die.”
“Close enough.” He shook his head. “After they took you… I thought that was it. I thought you were just another bride.”
The word hung in the cold air between them. Bride. It felt obscene.
“I’m not anything,” Marley said, but the words lacked force.
The night deepened. The temperature plummeted. They huddled in a corner, sharing body heat beneath a musty tarp they’d scavenged. Every creak of metal, every sigh of the wind, was a potential threat. The fear was a live wire in Marley’s chest, humming just beneath her skin.
Hayes was shivering beside her. She could feel the tremors running through his body. Or maybe they were hers.
“Marley,” he whispered, his voice raw.
She turned her head. His face was inches from hers, pale in the weak moonlight filtering through the broken roof. His eyes were wide, dark pools of shared terror and a desperate, clawing need for proof of life. She understood it. It wasn’t desire, not the clean kind. It was the opposite of the void that had tried to claim them. A crude, vital spit in the eye of death.
His hand found hers under the tarp, their cold fingers threading together, gripping tight enough to hurt.
Then his mouth was on hers. It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision—dry lips, the taste of blood and dust and fear. A groan ripped from his throat, a sound of pure relief. She answered it, biting his lip, her hands coming up to claw at the back of his jacket, dragging him into her.
They rolled, the tarp tangling around their legs. There was no romance, no slow undressing. It was a frantic shedding of barriers. Zippers tore. Fabric ripped. His cold hands pushed under her shirt, palming her breast, his thumb rough over her nipple. She arched into the touch, a sharp gasp escaping her. It was pain and sensation, a bright, clarifying burn.
“Fuck,” he panted against her neck, his hips grinding against hers. “Christ, Marley.”
She didn’t want words. She shoved at his pants, her fingers clumsy. He kicked them down, freeing his cock, already hard and thick in the chill air. She hooked her fingers in the waistband of her own trousers and underwear, shoving them down over her hips just enough.
He didn’t ask. She didn’t guide him. He just surged into her, one brutal, claiming thrust that stole the breath from her lungs.
She was tight, unprepared, but the sheer physicality of it—the fullness, the heat, the proof—unraveled her. A ragged cry was torn from her throat. He stilled for a second, buried to the hilt, his body trembling.
“Okay?” he rasped.
“Don’t stop.” The words were a guttural command. “Just fuck me. Hard.”
He obeyed. He pulled out and drove back into her, setting a punishing, desperate rhythm. The cot beneath them screeched in protest. Each thrust was a jolt that chased the cold away, replacing it with a spreading wildfire. Her legs locked around his hips, pulling him deeper, taking everything he gave. The air filled with the sounds of their bodies slapping together, their harsh, shared breaths, the raw, filthy noises of their coupling.
She clawed at his back, her nails digging through his shirt. He groaned, his pace becoming more erratic, more frantic. One of his hands slid between them, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, urgent circles. The dual assault was too much—the deep, filling stretch of him and the sharp, bright friction on her most sensitive nerve.
Her orgasm hit her like a sucker punch, a violent, silent convulsion that arched her off the cot. Her cunt clamped around him, milking his length in rhythmic pulses. He swore, a filthy, beautiful word, and followed her over the edge, slamming into her one last, deep time as he came inside her with a choked-off groan.
They collapsed, a tangled heap of sweat-slicked limbs and ragged breath. The cold air rushed back to claim their exposed skin. Hayes’ weight was a solid, anchoring pressure on top of her. For a long minute, there was only the sound of their heartbeats slowing.
He rolled off, wordlessly pulling the tarp back over them. They lay side by side, not looking at each other. The act had been necessary, a primal reset, but it left a new kind of silence in its wake.
Hayes finally spoke, his voice soft. “We should sleep in shifts.”
Marley nodded, staring up at the stars through the shattered roof. “I’ll take first watch.”
As Hayes’ breathing evened out into sleep beside her, Marley clutched the Beretta against her chest. The alien hum in the distance seemed to have grown closer. Or maybe it was just in her head now. She felt the sticky dampness between her thighs, the soreness in her muscles, the ghost of Hayes’ touch on her skin.
They were alive. They were human. For a few stolen minutes, they had felt it.
But outside the ruins, the darkness watched. And it was never satisfied.