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Cover art (c) Jenny Dixon 2004
ISBN 1-58608-479-8
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Reuel CO469 is tall, dark, and infinitely dangerous. His is the face that launched a million flyers. He is the first of his kind, the first cyborg to go rogue, the leader of all who’d come after him, and the only rogue nobody has ever come close to catching. From the moment Dalia first sets eyes on him, she knows she is lost. She can no more resist his dark allure than she can cease to breathe.

Rating: Graphic violence, graphic sex, explicit language, profanity, menage a trois, bondage, self sex, and exhibitionism. This is the story of a woman’s love for two very different men.

ABIOGENESIS

By

Kaitlyn O’Connor

© Copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, May 2004
Cover Art by Jenny Dixon
ISBN 1-58608-479-8
New Concepts Publishing
www.newconceptspublishing.com

Chapter One

Dalia VH570 stared at the bright, white light above her, watching it flicker as she felt her thoughts dissolve into the same nothingness as the whiteness that surrounded her. She had always hated physical examinations. She just wasn’t certain why.

The prick of something sharp jolted Dalia into sudden, crystal clear alertness and the absolute certainty of danger. Opening her eyes, she surveyed her surroundings, searching for the threat she sensed.

She was still in the examination room, but she was bound to the table now. Turning her head, she looked at the man who’d just stabbed a syringe into her arm.

Her movement brought his gaze to hers, and she saw his eyes dilate instantly with fear, guilt, and the certainty that he was looking into the face of death. His reaction forced a healthy shot of adrenaline through her body and her heart leapt into overtime, pumping it through her. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated, tensing every muscle and sinew in her body, and heaved upward, breaking the restraints. The technician was still staring at her stupidly when she gripped his hand. Snatching the syringe from her arm, she drove it into his carotid artery, depressing the plunger.

His eyes rolled back into his head. The saliva in his mouth boiled, foaming, spilling between his gasping lips. She sat up, grasping his throat, half lifting him from the floor. "You tried to kill me. Why?"

His mouth worked. He gagged, coughed up spittle and blood. "Help me," he pleaded.

Dalia shook him. "First tell me why."

"Gestating... you’re gestating. Never supposed to be able...."

She stared at him blankly, trying to understand the word, trying to figure out what it had to do with his attempt to kill her. "What is this word?"

"Reproduction. To bear young," he gasped, clawing at her hand frantically.

She dropped him, staring down at him as he sprawled on the floor beside the gurney she sat on. Tossing the sterile sheet off that had covered her, she slipped to the floor. "A child? A baby? You tried to kill me because I’m ... breeding? It’s only a fifty thousand credit fine!"

He shook his head frantically. "Not human. Not human."

She stared at him uncomprehendingly for several moments but finally lifted her head, realizing at last that the alert was sounding, had been since she’d broken her restraints. She blinked, calculating the time. Anywhere from three to five minutes had passed. The exits would be blocked by now and guarded. A contingent of guards would be racing toward this room.

She glanced down at the technician, but he’d stopped gurgling. His eyes were wide and staring now.

A wave of nausea washed over her. That should have been her. It would have been if she hadn’t awakened when he’d speared her with the needle. She’d never killed another human being before, though, and she couldn’t decide whether she was more horrified at having a hand in his death, revolted by what a human being looked like in their death throes, or because she’d been a hair’s breadth from experiencing rather than witnessing. She didn’t have time to analyze her distress, however. Shelving it for the moment, she glanced around the examination room, but no windows magically appeared. There was still only the one door.

She checked the walls, the floor, the ceiling.

Why had she allowed them to take her into a room with only one exit? Her training had taught her better. It was stupid to have relaxed her guard only because the med lab belonged to the company, the company she killed for.

She’d never trusted the damned company.

Leaping up onto the examination table, she reached up toward the ceiling and realized she was still too short. She could just touch the tiles above her with her fingertips. She went up on her tiptoes, bounced. Finally, she managed to dislodge the panel above her. It was a suspended ceiling, she saw, held aloft by thin wires. She seriously doubted it would hold her weight, but she was out of options.

Leaping up again, she caught the frame that had held the tile. As she’d more than half expected, it buckled, bringing down a rain of tiles around her.

The sound of running feet, many feet, came to her. It must be a full squad.

Good, she decided. The noise they were making would help to cover the noise she made. Leaping down from the examination table, she raced across the room, bent her knees and leapt upward, her arms extended. She crashed through the tile. It hit the floor around her. The wall, she saw went all the way up, approximately ten feet. Metal girders supported the floor above her.

It was the girders or nothing.

Whirling, she raced back toward the examination table, hit it flat footed and leapt upward, catching the bottom of a girder. With an effort, she pulled herself up, but she saw the space was too small for her to walk her way across hanging by her hands. Supporting most of her weight from her arms, she pulled her legs up and swung until she could hook her heels along the girder, as well.

It was dark above the ceiling, particularly since she had only just come from a room blindingly white, but she had excellent night vision. She focused her eyes and looked around. As far as she could see, there was nothing but girders, pipe, electrical wires and ductwork. The ductwork was too small to crawl through, and too light to support her weight.

She closed her eyes, mentally tracing her path through the building and into the examination room. Only a corridor separated her from the closest outer wall of the building, but the guards were racing down that path. She took the opposite direction. It was a good deal further from the outer wall, but it was also less likely that guards would be stationed there.

Moving swiftly now, she crawled, spider like beneath the beam until she’d reached the wall she’d seen on the other side. She turned then, following it until she found an opening. A catwalk ran through it and she dropped down onto it. Looking in first one direction and then the other, she finally decided to continue as she’d begun and crawled through the opening. She’d only just cleared it when she heard the guards pounding on the examination room door. Crouching low, she ran as fast as she could.

It wouldn’t take them long to figure out she was in the overhead ceiling and probably not much more than that to realize that the only way she could traverse it was along the catwalk.

She heard them behind her before she reached the outer wall.

Dropping to her stomach, she reached for the closest ceiling tile and lifted it up just enough to study the room beneath her.

It was occupied. A woman was lying on an examination table, just as Dalia had been only minutes before.

She didn’t have time to be picky.

Rolling off the catwalk, she dropped through the ceiling, landing in a half crouch on the floor. Startled, the woman sat up, opening her mouth to scream. Dalia leapt at her, covering the woman’s mouth with one hand and pinching the woman’s carotid artery with the other. The moment the woman’s eyes rolled back in her head, Dalia released her and looked around, absently checking the woman’s pulse to make certain she hadn’t killed her.

This room had both a window and a door. She moved to the window first, pulled the window covering aside and looked out. She was on the sixtieth floor, about half way up the building, more or less. The outside of the building was as smooth as glass. Windows broke the monotony every ten feet or so, but most likely every one was fixed just as this one was and could not be opened and were probably nearly as impossible to break.

She couldn’t fly, so that was out.

There was no point in trying to go down. They would be waiting for her. Up would only work if there were crafts on the roof.

It was a med lad. There were probably a half a dozen or more on the roof at any time.

There was one slight problem.

She didn’t have a stitch of clothing on and that was bound to draw attention. Shrugging, she helped herself to the tunic and trousers the woman had been wearing. They were too big, but it wouldn’t be nearly as noticeable as being naked. The woman’s shoes were too big, too. It was too risky to wear them, she decided. They would slow her down at the very least. At worst, the shoes could trip her if she needed to run. She slipped the stockings on to cover her bare feet and make them less noticeable, then moved to the door, opening it a crack.

No one seemed terribly excited. She saw a couple of techs strolling along one end of the corridor, notepads in hand. There was a knot of them at one end of the corridor, waiting, she realized, for an elevator or having just gotten off one.

Obviously, security still thought they had the ‘danger’ contained on the other side of the firewall that ran down the building.

Stepping from the room, she walked casually toward the row of elevators and punched the button that would summon one going up. As she stood waiting, several more people joined her, staring up at the display panel above the doors. Turning her head just enough she could examine each of them in her peripheral vision, she relaxed fractionally. There was no sign of security guards ... yet.

Impatience began to gnaw at her. She’d just decided to find the stairs and take them up several flights when the bells on three of the elevators dinged, announcing the arrival of the cubicles. Having already turned away and taken a step down the corridor toward the sign marked ‘exit’, she glanced inside the elevator she’d been standing in front of as the doors slowly began to open.

It was packed with guards ...and the one in front was holding a tracker. He glanced up as she strode away, his eyes locking on her for about two seconds. Shoving anyone aside who lay in her path, she broke into a run as she heard the guards launch themselves against the opening doors, trying to squeeze through all at once and succeeding only in bottlenecking the exit.

The doors on the fourth elevator had already begun to close as she reached it. She leapt through the rapidly narrowing opening. The timing was perfect. She’d barely landed inside when the doors slammed closed. Her last view of the corridor, however, had been of the guards charging the elevator.

They’d spotted her. They would reroute it, she knew.

Ignoring the gasps and protests of the four people already in the elevator when she’d jumped in, she moved to the control panel, studied it a moment and finally speared her fingers through the holes drilled for the buttons, grasped the panel firmly and pulled it out of the wall, exposing the circuits. Almost simultaneously, the elevator lights blinked and the cubicle ground to a halt.

They’d already tied in.

Glancing over the circuits, she saw immediately that there was no way to rewire it. She grasped the panel and wrenched it out, tossing it to one side and evoking a round of screams from the women in the group. Grasping the main feed, she pulled on the wire until she had enough to reach, then stripped the insulation from the end, felt behind her head until she found the jack and plugged directly into the computer.

It took thirty seconds to override their override, and another five to lock them out. As the elevator jolted into motion again, Dalia examined the database and found that there were four crafts on the roof, fueled and prepped to go. One of the elevators was already on the roof. The other two were on the ground level and the tenth floor.

She was about to log out when it occurred to her that now was her opportunity to discover what the computer knew about her situation. The CPU inside her brain began displaying images before her eyes almost instantly.

Gestation was an archaic form of reproduction that had been practiced by the human race until the last century. The fertilized ovum attached itself inside the female’s body, within a cavity known as the womb, and lived off of the female’s body until it reached a state of maturity that would allow it to survive on its own.

Dalia frowned. How is the parasite introduced into the host to begin with?

Male and female each carried an element, the female an egg or ovum, which contained the DNA of the female host. The male donor provided sperm, which contained the male’s DNA and would activate the egg and set off a chain reaction. The male would deliver his DNA via sexual intercourse.

Dalia mulled that over for a moment. She hadn’t engaged in sex, at all. It was prohibited by the company to anyone in her position, an infraction punishable by termination. She’d always assumed they meant termination of employment, however. In the event that the female did not have sexual intercourse with a male, was there another method of delivery? Or was it possible for the female to manipulate the ovum herself and induce it to begin to replicate cells?

This method of reproduction was imprecise. Often the female would become impregnated when reproduction was infeasible or undesirable due to economic, health or social conditions. Occasionally, the male or female who wished to reproduce would be found to be infertile. If the male was infertile, and unable to provide his DNA, a donor would be found who was a desirable substitute and his DNA would be introduced into the female via medical procedure.

It still didn’t make any sense to her. They’d impregnated her and now had decided to terminate both her and the pregnancy? She shook it off. She didn’t have time to study it now. Status?

Passing the 100th floor.

Locate the guards for me.

Ten in elevator number one, passing the 15th floor. Five in elevator number three, passing the 40th floor. Five on elevator number two, egressing onto the roof now. Thirty on the ground floor level.

Chapter Two

Dalia removed the jack and turned to study the other passengers. They were huddled into one corner, staring at her as if she was some sort of monster. She supposed she could see their point, but it irritated the hell out of her anyway.

She had maybe five minutes before they reached the roof. That meant they had five minutes to deploy and be waiting for her. She could stop the elevator and take the stairs, but she wasn’t certain that would give her any advantage. Even though she’d locked them out of the computer system, they would probably be expecting the possibility and have that exit covered too.

There was no cover for them on the roof beyond the craft moored there, but then they must know she was unarmed. There wasn’t any reason for them to take cover except as a precaution in case she’d somehow located a weapon.

She finally decided they would probably assume assault positions anyway. The only thing you could count on about militia was that they always went by the book, and they always followed orders. Obviously, they didn’t want or need to take her alive. They wanted her dead. That meant they would be stationed and ready to catch her in a crossfire.

She glanced at the other passengers speculatively, but she knew they were as expendable as she was. The objective wasn’t to slaughter them, but the security guards weren’t likely to quibble about having to go through them to get her, so using them as a shield was out.

Besides, she didn’t want to be responsible for their deaths.

"They’re waiting for me on the roof. If you don’t want to die today, lie down on the floor as flat as you can and clasp your hands on top of your heads. With any luck, the fire will miss you." They gaped at her uncomprehendingly for several moments, then scrambled to comply, fighting briefly over who would have the position closest to the door. As she felt the elevator decelerating, Dalia jumped up onto the handrail that ran around the cubicle, bracing her hands above her head to balance herself.

The moment the door began to open, laser fire pelted the interior of the cubicle, covering almost every square inch of the walls from about one foot up to the ceiling. The side of the elevator protected Dalia as she’d hoped it would. She held her breath, waiting until she heard some call a cease fire, allowing the seconds to tick off as she envisioned them slowly stepping from their cover, advancing far enough to look into the elevator to see if they’d gotten her.

The bodies on the floor would confuse them, hopefully, for critical moments.

The trick was to time it precisely, move before they realized she wasn’t one of the bodies lying on the floor of the elevator.

She held her breath, focusing on listening and interpreting the sounds she heard since she couldn’t see; cautious, carefully placed footsteps--three pair. Two were still under cover.

Abruptly, she swung into action, landing on the floor of the elevator and bursting through the doors as they began to close once more. As she’d hoped, she caught them completely off guard. The three closest to the elevator opened their eyes and mouths wide in surprise. She hit the first one full tilt, bowling him over. She clotheslined the second with an extended arm, grabbing his weapon from his slackened grip even as he executed a flip. The third man, she took out with the butt of the weapon she’d grabbed. She whirled in a circle then, laying out random fire and catching the remaining two guards even as they finally managed to begin firing on her.

Within moments, five dead or groaning men lay on the flight deck. Gasping for breath, she surveyed them, her hands on her hips. "Never send a man to do a cyborg’s job," she muttered in satisfaction, but then mentally shrugged. She was a rogue hunter, trained and bio-technologically enhanced to bring down rogue cyborgs, and she would’ve still had her hands full if they had sent even two. It was fortunate for her that they’d made an error in judgment and sent men instead.

She frowned. They either hadn’t anticipated having any problem terminating her--which seemed unlikely given her training, or the decision to terminate her was of short standing.

Shaking off her questions and the weariness and apathy in the aftermath of battle, Dalia moved over them, quickly collecting their weapons and then headed for the nearest craft. Tossing the weapons into the patient bay of the ambulance craft, she scrambled into the cockpit, examined the layout to identify the craft and began flipping switches to activate the engines. Even as the craft began to lift off, the doors of one of the other elevators opened and men began to pour out, firing at her.

She punched the craft into hyper acceleration and it shot upwards and away in a sharp slingshot like motion--not, unfortunately, before it caught a dozen hits. The craft almost immediately became unstable and she knew they’d managed to hit something critical. Struggling to keep it level, she allowed it to drop toward the upper level traffic airway forty floors below her.

Bright dots lit up her radar screen both above and below her, looking like a swarm of insects. She glanced up through the viewing bubble and counted two crafts descending fast. They were ambulances like the one she’d taken, and the craft itself had no firepower. As long as she didn’t let them get close enough to catch her in the sights of their handheld weapons, the risk of taking another hit was slim.

She wasn’t certain if the craft needed another hit to bring it down, however. It began bucking and jolting as she hit the airway. The computer failed to adjust to oncoming traffic and she slammed into the protective force field of another craft, bounced off of it and ping ponged against three more before she dropped beneath the airway in a forward gliding descent.

In truth, it wasn’t much of a glide. The craft continued to bounce and drop erratically in a controlled crash, as if it were striking solid objects instead of air currents. She managed to drop through the mid-level airway without incident, mostly because the heavy traffic was on the third level she’d already passed. A layer of greenish-yellow smog lay below her, obscuring her view of the lower airway. She landed on the roof of a passing craft when she reached the lowest level, was repelled by the protective field that surrounded it and nose dived through the airway, free falling for some twenty feet before she managed to kick the ambulance craft in the ass and get it going again.

Androids, cyborgs and pedestrians thronged the walks below her. When they looked up and saw her craft falling toward them, they scattered like fall leaves caught in a strong cross wind--in every direction. Despite that, she managed to set the craft down on the walk without smearing anyone. It’s forward momentum responded sluggishly to her attempts to brake, however, and the craft slid along the walk for nearly a hundred yards before coming to rest against the base of one of the buildings that surrounded the walks like mountains, blocking so much of the light that the ground level lay in perpetual night except for artificial lighting.

The moment the craft finally stopped, Dalia threw off her restraints and struggled to stand. As far as she could tell she had suffered no more than bruises and a few minor cuts, but she knew adrenaline was pushing her now. She could be hurt much worse and not know it right away.

Regardless, she had to put as much distance between herself and the craft as possible before the guards caught up with her. Sorting through the weapons, she grabbed the two that had the fullest charges, slung one on each shoulder and scrambled out of the craft. Gawkers had already begun to converge on the downed craft when she emerged. Ignoring them, she strode purposefully toward the group milling about and pushed through. They parted before her, as if they feared she might be contaminated with something.

When she’d cleared the crowd, she broke into a jog and finally a run, glancing to her left and right each time she passed a narrow alley in search of one that was unoccupied. She’d begun to despair that there was even so much as a square inch of ground level space not inhabited when she raced past a vacant throughway. Stopping abruptly, she reversed directions and raced down it till she came to the first intersection. She began to weave her way back and forth through the narrow alleys until she came at last to the slum area of the city.

It, too, was occupied, but by the denizens of the dark--the ‘subhuman’ culture the upstanding citizens of the city were prone to consider did not exist. Unless the company was offering a reward for her, it was unlikely anyone would be interested enough in her to give the guards searching for her any tips.

Of course, they wouldn’t need any information if she couldn’t get rid of the locator surgically implanted in her hip, but she couldn’t get rid of it until she could shake her pursuit long enough to stop.

Added to that little problem was the fact that she’d had to leave without her uniform--which held a med kit.

Tired now, she slowed to a brisk walk, stopping each time she found a derelict sprawled drunkenly on the walk and checking him for a knife. She found a razor on the second man she checked and studied it doubtfully. It was rusted, and she wasn’t certain it could cut deeply enough, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Straightening, she looked around for a lighted area and moved toward it. She didn’t like the idea of standing in the light, but she didn’t want to butcher her hip either. She needed the light to see what she was doing. After scanning the immediate area for threat and deciding it was minimal, she set her weapons down, shucked the trousers and probed the flesh of her hip until she found the locator.

Without giving herself time to think it over, she sliced the flesh as deeply as the razor would cut. Seconds passed before the pain caught up with her brain. She’d already dug her fingers into the cut, grasped the locator and yanked it free of the bone before fire poured through her. Gasping at the wave of dizziness that washed over her, she dropped the locator to the pavement, picked up one of the weapons and smashed it with the butt.

Blood was gushing from the cut. She studied it for several moments, but she knew there were no major veins in that area. Regardless, she couldn’t allow it to continue to bleed. They’d be able to follow the blood trail almost as easily as the locator. Then, too, she might run out of fluids before she managed to get hold of a medical kit.

She didn’t like it, but she didn’t have any options. Lifting the weapon, she set it on its lowest setting and carefully sited it along the cut, firing off one quick burst.

The pain didn’t take nearly as much time to reach her brain that time. She staggered back and fell to her knees, fighting the blackness that threatened to overwhelm her.

Dimly, she saw she’d attracted some attention from the local lowlifes. Lifting the weapon with an effort, she fired off several warning shots. When they scattered, she grabbed her trousers and the other weapon and began moving again. She wanted nothing so much as to crash somewhere, if only for fifteen or twenty minutes, but she couldn’t afford the luxury until she’d put a lot of distance between herself and the locator she’d just destroyed. Her pursuit would almost certainly have triangulated on that position by now.

The faintness didn’t recede. She had to fight it every step of the way. Finally, she managed to put at least a mile between her and the locator, before she reached a point where she knew she couldn’t go another step without falling on her face.

Pausing, she leaned back against the wall of a building and searched the area. She hadn’t seen anyone in a while, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, watching, waiting for her to let her guard down so that they could steal anything she had of value and probably kill her in the process.

The building she was leaning against was ancient, deserted, crumbling. She climbed through the nearest opening and studied it, moving slowly through, her weapon at the ready. Skittering noises filtered to her from time to time, but she thought it must be some sort of animals. They didn’t make enough noise to be human.

She came upon a partial stair leading upward and debated briefly whether it would be better to find a hiding place on one of the other floors or on the ground floor. Finally, she decided to try the second floor. It would give her a little lead time if she heard anyone coming. She could, if she had to, jump from the second floor without doing too much damage to herself ... as long as she was careful to land correctly.

Shouldering her weapon, she placed her back against the wall and moved carefully from step to step until she reached a gap. Checking the strength of the handrail to see if it would support her if the stair collapsed, she leapt the distance, coming down on her wounded hip. Her knee buckled, but she managed to catch herself with the railing.

When she’d reached the top, she turned to study the stairs and finally pulled one of the weapons from her shoulder and cut a larger section out. It would be far easier, she knew, for her to leap the hole downward than for anyone to leap it coming up. She found another set of stairs near the rear of the building, or rather a stairwell. Those stairs were completely gone.

The place reeked of death. As tempted as she was to just find a corner and collapse, she knew she couldn’t rest until she’d assured herself she had the place to herself. The building had looked like it had at least six floors, even as ancient as it was, but there were only two floors accessible from the floor she was on. The upper floors had begun to slowly collapse down upon each other.

She found a badly decomposed body two floors up, which explained the god-awful smell and the lack of other occupants.

Relieved, she made her way down again, found a comfortable corner that was relatively free of debris, and collapsed. She’d hardly even settled when blackness closed in around her. She was disoriented for several moments when she woke. Sluggishly, her mind kicked in and memory flooded back to her. She had no idea how long she’d slept--there wasn’t enough sunlight filtering so far beneath the city to judge from the sun’s movement. She could’ve been out mere minutes, or hours, or even days--but she struggled to her feet and checked her perimeter.

Satisfied that they hadn’t discovered her and surrounded the building while she rested, she found a corner to relieve herself and then returned to her corner and sat down to figure out what options she might have.

There weren’t a lot. She didn’t know why they wanted her dead, but they seemed pretty damned set on seeing it done.

The tech had seemed to indicate that it was because she was gestating, but that was nearly as inconceivable as the fact that she was gestating at all. No one bore young anymore. It was too unpredictable and too inconvenient. If they happened to want one, they bought a permit and ordered one from the med lab. They hadn’t practiced the ‘natural’ way of doing it in nearly a century. As far as she knew, though, there was no law against it, certainly not a death sentence, anyway.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d arrested her for breeding without a permit. She would’ve expected something like that, if she’d been engaging in sexual activity and stupid enough to do it without protection. But that would’ve been followed by a brief trial, maybe, and then release as soon as she coughed up the fine and bought a permit.

Maybe it was a law that was still on the books, but hadn’t been used in so long that nobody, except the lawmakers and the law enforcers, even knew it was there anymore?

It seemed possible. The morons never got rid of laws. They just made more when the need arose. There were laws still on the books, she knew, from centuries before, laws that people didn’t even understand anymore because nothing they pertained to even existed now.

Briefly, she wondered if there was any way to remove the parasite, but it occurred to her fairly quickly that that wasn’t going to help. If there’d been a way, or if that would’ve made a difference, they would have done that instead of deciding to kill her. She hadn’t come cheap. The company had spent a lot of money training her to be a rogue hunter, and even more bioengineering her for strength, stamina, high pain tolerance, computer assisted mental capabilities, and a broader hearing and sight range.

Anyway, she felt strangely possessive about it. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t really want to examine it at the moment. But she did know she didn’t want to make any kind of decision about, possibly, removing it until she’d had time to think it through and consider every possibility.

Besides, the tech had been dying. How much faith could she place in anything he’d told her? The company’s reasons for trying to terminate her could be something else entirely.

Unfortunately, no amount of carefully reconstructing her actions over the past month, or the month before that, produced any possibilities. She hadn’t failed her last mission and, even if she had, punishment for failure was only a death sentence if the rogue dealt it out. The company was content to fine her all her pay and half her previous paycheck.

Shaking her head, Dalia finally decided she couldn’t waste time trying to figure it out. It was enough to know she was dead if ... when they caught her. The only chance that she could see of turning the ‘when’ to ‘if’ was if she managed to get off world. Sooner or later, if she stayed, they were going to catch her, with or without the locator.

She could die a slow death here without food or water, or risk getting caught going for supplies. One retina scan and she was done for. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to buy anything without having her barcode scanned, even in the black market, and once they had that, they’d have a bead on her location.

They would be expecting her to try to get off planet, though.

Her only chance, as far as she could see, was to locate a smuggler and either take the ship, or bargain a ride, and that meant she was going to have to figure out a way out of the dome.