Free In Enemy Hands by K.S. Augustin

idealist would immediately stop research and refuse to participate in the exploitation of another being, but Moon knew she was not that strong a person. The past three years had been difficult enough. But she had not suffered greatly, compared to some. If she protested now, refused to do further work on her research, the Republic would throw her into detention and discard the key with a careless flick. She knew she would end up in a tighter security prison, maybe even on the notorious prison planet of Bliss itself. All her work, all her lofty goals of bringing dead stars back to life, would be wasted. And the potential for providing new, sun-kissed planets to millions of people would be destroyed.
    “This is not my fight,” she murmured to herself, resting her forehead against the cold transparent pane.
    She had already suffered once for something that was not of her making and had tasted the muted wrath of the Republic. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—put herself in that situation again. Even if that meant abandoning a man who didn’t have any power left to defend himself.
    Her soul would pay for this. Moon knew that. But at least her body and her reputation wouldn’t.

Chapter Five
    How his head hurt. There didn’t seem to be a time when it didn’t. The dull throbbing was an intrinsic part of his existence and usually he was able to ignore it, to function with its uncomfortable rhythm pounding in the background, but this morning it seemed worse than usual.
    Srin opened his eyes and flicked a gaze at the chrono on the opposite wall of his cabin. Ten minutes past three in the morning, ship time.
    Hen told him yesterday that they were aboard a Republic ship called the Differential . He hadn’t heard of the ship before, but something nagged at the back of his head, telling him he should have. With a groan, he sat up, knowing it was useless trying to get to sleep when errant thoughts prodded him.
    Should.
    Should know.
    He shook his head slowly. Trying to capture memories was like reaching into a thick fog, the white mist hiding recollection besides delivering hidden pinpricks of agony whenever he tried to grope towards anything meaningful. Exercising his mind in intellectual questions was much more relaxing. In comparison to his groping for memory, the thinking required was clean and soothing. But he felt like such a coward, preferring the cool satisfaction of a brain puzzle to the suffocating weight and pain of his memories.
    Rising to his feet, he walked to the small bathroom and splashed water on his face. The recessed lighting slowly brightened to a comfortable level for his eyes as it registered his form. He stood motionless, hands clenched against the basin’s smooth curve, staring down at the drops that fell into the sink, watching them as they streaked down the steel, ran silently to ‘the plughole and disappeared into blackness.
    He hated what he somehow knew came next. Nine times out of ten, he was able to avoid it, adroitly moving from the sink to towel without a betraying glance. But this morning was not going to be one of those times.
    With agony spearing behind his eyes, Srin lifted his head and stared at the reflection in the mirror, crushed anew by what he saw.
    What had happened to him?
    The face that looked back at him was surreal, a distortion of his reality. Where had those lines, those wrinkles, come from? He relaxed one set of clenched fingers, lifting them and running them across his cheek, feeling the difference in texture, the decrease in youthful elasticity, as he rubbed against his skin, creasing it. His fingertips moved upwards, tracing the lines that feathered from his eyes, skimming his wiry eyebrows and following the creases in his forehead.
    This was not the face he remembered from only three days ago. That face was unlined, supple, energetic. That face was bright and hopeful.
    This face—
    This face was beaten down, twisted by hurt, the eyes wary and guarded. He knew he should ask Hen