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The prison compound itself had been built to withstand such natural disasters, and made tunneling or approaching via air virtually impossible.
I’d made valuable connections both inside and outside the compound and I’d come up with a series of plans to get Lily out.
Two plans had already met with failure.
It seemed that no matter what I tried, something always come along to scupper it at the last moment.
And so I returned to the drawing board, to the books at the Galactic Library, to the blueprints I’d managed to scrounge from the black market.
There had to be a way to get her out of there. There just had to be.
I did have one idea… but it was beyond insane, and with the security protocols in place, it was virtually guaranteed to fail. It required a relaxation of the prison’s protocols and that was never going to happen.
Sometimes the despair got the better of me and I lost myself to sheetghat spirits and alcohol and immediately regretted it the day after — not because of the pounding headache but because of the wasted time. I could have used it to find a way to rescue Lily.
It was all a matter of time, I told myself. The harder I worked, the more hours I threw at it, the more likely I was to find a solution.
It just hadn’t come to me. Yet.
I scaled the tall steps to the plastic manufacturing plant with the package tucked under my arm. Five years later and I was still delivering packages for Thillak.
The day I’d almost attacked the guards so an extension could be added to my sentence, Cayggod had given me an alternative idea:
Work for Thillak on the outside and he would protect Lily on the inside. He would ensure she was never chosen as a Prize — under penalty of death at Thillak’s goon’s hands.
It meant Lily would be safe from harm, that she could live her life in relative peace.
With few other ideas, it seemed like the best option. But it meant I couldn’t see her again… or until I figured a way to get her out of there.
Five years later and I still wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision.
Cayggod was right that I couldn’t always be crowned Champion and that eventually I would lose — both the fights and Lily — but sacrificing my ability to see her was a high price to pay.
Very high.
I nodded to the guards outside the back entrance to the plastic factory. They opened the door and let me in.
I hated the stink of the molded plastic as it was warped and folded into different shapes. I didn’t know how the workers could stand it day in and day out. They ignored me, just as I ignored them.
I wound my way up the steps to the main office and let my fantasies of Lily block out the sights and smells of the factory.
The silky smoothness of her skin and the look in her eye when I entered her. They were the only fuel I had to keep me going. Work this crappy job to keep her safe while I worked on a way to get her out of Ikmal.
Those were the only things that mattered.
I needed her, and if I wasn’t with her soon. I didn’t like to think about what state I would be in.
The factory secretary, like the workers, kept her head down and pretended not to see me. I walked straight past her and entered the main office.
Frana was overweight and smoked enough fhisic cigarettes to turn his office into a leptioc sauna. I dumped the package on the corner of his desk and turned to leave. I hated breathing in that poisonous air.
“You were at Ikmal, right?” Frana said, not looking up from his holo-monitor.
He knew I was — he loved asking me about my time there. For some reason, it held a great deal of fascination for him — maybe because it was where he would likely end up if he ever got caught dealing the stuff I delivered each day.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Have you heard the news?” he said.
