The burlap sack scratched Cora's face and made it hard to breathe. At her side Ashton whimpered, but did not cry.

"It's okay," she whispered, over and over, comforting herself as much as her son. The barrel of a gun pressed into her back. Sometimes it left, but it returned every time she shifted.

She didn't know where she was. They had not taken her far. Still inside New Oklahoma. Nor did she know why they'd taken her. But she could surmise. Not a day after that marshal came to her, seeking her help to capture Roy, and now this.

It did not surprise her to learn Roy was a fugitive. His strangeness struck her the first moment they met, and not just because he fancied her. It was in the way the town's folk flocked to him, hung on his every word. Sure he was handsome, and charming in his own way. But not any more than any other handsome and charming man. He held a certain sway over them, and she could not put her finger on it.

But was he responsible for taking her and her son hostage? Coldness and darkness surrounded them. Even if she were to remove the mask, she suspected they were being kept in a room of near pitch black. It meant they were underground. Some buildings in New Oklahoma had underground tunnels and chambers. They'd been designed that way during the early colonization because of the severe windstorms, to her understanding, places of refuge against the onslaught of unforgiving dust torrents.

She sweat in spite of the cold, loathing her clammy palms. Ashton did not know why they were there. His only comfort aside from his mother's hand lay in the cast miniature model dropship he carried with him everywhere, a source of constant imagination. He did not make vroom sounds now, but he clutched it within his hand tight.

Her knees hurt, but when she moved the gun pressed into her back.

"Easy. Don't get smart now," the voice would say. The gruff voice grated on her ears. The man sounded like he was speaking to a filthy stray dog and not a woman and her child. She knew he'd be true to his word and lose no sleep after blasting a hole right in her.

But why? Their captor had offered no explanation other than the gun barrel motivation and the calloused hand covering her mouth and a hiss of a whisper. "Quiet. No sudden screams. Come with me or I blast the boy."

She almost couldn't believe this was Roy's doing. But the fact that it happened immediately after the marshal and her formed a plan to lure Roy to her rented room. Her captor appeared in the dead dark, the stillness before dawn.

How long did they sit, held hostage in the dark? She did not know. Long enough for Ashton to need to pee. The captor groaned, but tugged them along in the dark, leading them to a sour smelling room that echoed his terse directions to Ashton from its tiled walls. He did not know how to speak to children. He'd gotten furious when she slipped on a loose piece of tile when leaving the restroom.

"What do you want with me?" she asked. But the captor remained silent. Her voice quivered with both rage and fear. Thoughts raced through her mind, trying to formulate an escape plan. But her ignorance of her surroundings and the stuffy bag over her head made thinking and planning all but impossible. She had no weapons, not anything she could fashion into a sharp edge or utilize its blunt force. Nothing but the dulled flat edge of the toy dropship's wings. But being a toy intended for children, every possible harmful edge had been softened.

Roy must have learned of her plan. There was no other explanation. That meant they were being held hostage as leverage against the U.S. Marshal. Would he even care? He was a long way from home. To her understanding, all he had to do was retrieve Roy. If he let her and her son die, no one back on Earth would know. She pondered his face, replaying their meeting in her mind a hundred times.

No. He was an honest man. A good man. His hardened exterior guarded a gentleman underneath. She remembered his face when she mentioned she'd do anything for her son, when she had leveled the gun at him. His eyes told a silent story, a buried pain, one that had to do with a child in his own past. Perhaps he'd lost a child, or had a loved one back home that he longed to get back to. He seemed to understand her desperation, her drive to protect Ashton above all else.

He would come for her. If he could find her. If tragedy had not befallen him already. It could not have, now that she considered it. Otherwise she would not still be a captive.

Time eluded her. All sense of its passage evaded her senses. Each second with her captor lingering behind her pointing a lethal weapon at her vitals felt like an eternity. Ashton's small hand comforted her, and hers comforted him.

The thick fingers that clenched her arm stopped her from trying anything foolhardy. They belonged to a big, strong arm corded with thick muscles. In the dark, blinded, her other senses latched onto any tidbit of information she could glean. She knew her captor's hand stretched big enough to hold her down and choke her if she resisted or tried to escape, and the other hand's twin would still be free to pull the trigger of the blaster it held, ending Ashton's life in a moment.

She'd fled Earth to escape situations like this. In a way this man reflected her ex, Bron. He was the natural extension, the evolution of what Bron would have become, had she and Ashton stayed. Ash , she heard Bron's correcting tone in her head. She fought so hard to forget it. But here in the dark with her and her son's lives hanging by a thread, Bron's overbearing voice filled her mind.

"His name's Ash."

"I don't like that name."

"Why not? It's a good name."

"It suggests the charred ruins of things destroyed by fire. It's what you call a dead person's remains. It's those toxic burned butts that you smoke and leave in the tray on the porch when you're stressed."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Cora. You know what your problem is? You think too much. Read too much. Why can't you be like every other pretty wife and binge the stream? Every time we fight, I find out later it's because you read something somewhere and got some idiotic idea planted in your head."

"Ashton is a nice name," she continued, refocusing the argument. "And that's what we agreed to name him. You signed the birth certificate."

"Yeah, well I hated the name. I always wanted to call him Ash. And I didn't think anything of it because it's not a big deal."

"Well it matters to me. Our son is a living, breathing little person, not charred debris scattered in the wind."

"Why are you so hung up on some stupid old name? You know what happens when he goes to school right? He'll get to know the other kids and he'll earn a nickname. And guess a million creds what they're going to call him? Take a wild guess."

Ashton was the type of tree her and her father planted in their backyard when she was a little girl. Her memory delved further into the past, hearing her father's voice.

"This tree will grow with you, you know. One day when you have kids of your own, you can bring them back to this tree and tell them you planted it with your old man. I'll be a grandpa then."

It was one of the stronger memories of her father. Before the fire burned down her childhood house and took the sapling Ashton tree with it. In a way Ashton's name was a nod to her father, and the pain she felt that he'd never know his grandson. In a sad sense, she was glad. He'd have been ashamed that his daughter had a kid with a man like Bron. He'd be ashamed at the predicament she landed herself in now too.

"Mommy," said Ashton, breaking her guilty thoughts.

"Yes, honey?"

"I've got to go pee."

The captor barked at them. "Again? Stupid kid just went."

"Don't call my son stupid, unless you want to clean up a puddle on the floor."

A backhanded blow struck her across the face, dropping her to the ground. Ashton's hand still gripped hers. She accidentally tugged her small son to the ground with her as she had no way to anticipate the blow.

Pain and rage flooded her. The man could have caused her to hurt Ashton. He might be injured.

Forsaking her own pain, she sat up and reached out and pulled Ashton close, cradling him against her breast. Her mind repeated the phrase she'd said over and over during those days she'd endured Bron's mistreatment and abuse while saving up for the one-way trip for Mars in secret. I will not die. I cannot die. Ashton needs me. If I die, Ashton dies too.

"Don't you ever," snarled the man, "ever tell me what to do, you little slut."

She wanted to give up then and there. But in the back of her mind, she held onto a foolish hope. If she could just survive long enough to get Ashton out of this situation, then the lawman would eventually find her. He had to. And then she'd get the creds. Even more now because she'd demand more for her life being put in danger. Creds meant a real future for Ashton, and a home.

Oh, she could see it, exactly what it looked like in her mind's eye. They'd have their own rooms, and the home was surrounded by a barbed wire fence to keep in the livestock. And Ashton would run and play with the animals and in time learn to care for them. All of that waited for her and Ashton on the other side of this nightmare. All she had to do was endure.

After a time Ashton quieted.

"Do you still have to go?"

She felt him shake his head, "No."

"Yes you do. It's okay," she lied. "Come on. Lead us to the restroom please."

The man sighed at the inconvenience she caused.

The anger inside her sparked an idea, one that fear would not have considered.

As she came to the restroom again, she pretended to slip again on the loose tile, this time letting go of Ashton to fall.

He began to cry.

The man laughed.

"I'm okay," she said in hushed tones to her son, as she scoured the ground with her hand until—aha—she found it. A shard of tile. She palmed the sharpened triangular splinter.

She only had one shot at this. If she messed up her chance, her captor had seven gunshots.

I will not die.

"Get up you clumsy bi—"

"I can't." She cradled her ankle with a groan, hiding the shard. "I think my ankle is sprained."

I cannot die.

"Mommy?"

Ashton needs me.

"I'll be okay, Ashton. If the man gives me a hand up."

The man grumbled, but did not object.

Now was her chance. Her heartbeat accelerated, hurting her chest. She offered her empty hand.

His sausage sized fingers closed around her wrist.

If I die, Ashton dies too.

With the speed of a king cobra she stung, plunging the shard deep into the hand that held her.

The man bellowed a wordless scream, yanking away from her. Cora ripped the bag from her head. Her vision need not adjust much. The room basked in low light.

Just a few feet from her the captor stumbled back.

She imagined he stood tall. Her imagination did not do the man justice. He towered over her. But at the moment his free hand clasped his injured one.

Where did his gun fall?

A metal object gleamed on the floor between them.

They both eyed the gun, then lunged for it at the same time.

Her hands wrapped around the gun first, but it was upside down. As she tried to spin it, the man's bear claws crushed hers, trying to wrestle the gun out of her grip.

She was vaguely aware that Ashton was crying. But she couldn't comfort him now. Not until she was free from this kidnapping bulk of muscle.

No matter what, Cora was not going to let go. She knew the odds were against her. The man had to have at least three hundred pounds on her, and not an ounce of it was fat.

"Ashton, run!"

Confused, unsure of what to do, Ashton wailed.

The man yanked hard, but Cora bit down on his good hand. He yelled again.

She used the opportunity to turn over. Using all of her weight to snatch the gun away from him was her only chance. She rolled over, but his arms came with her, so that he lay on top of her, holding her in a bear hug.

But she had the gun.

He pinned her arms under her, smashed by their combined weight.

Ashton's screams climbed octaves and became eardrum shattering.

"Shut up, you stupid Terran brat."

Cora strained with everything in her, but she felt her veins in her neck and head bulging. If she fought any harder against him, she'd black out.

The man squeezed her like a chiropractor, then squeezed tighter still. Her spine popped, then a rib broke. All the air rushed out of her lungs. She didn't even have the breath to scream.

A dizzy spell overtook her. She collapsed.

It seemed like only a second, but when she turned over on her back, the man stood, legs spread on either side of her. The barrel of the gun pointed straight at her head.

Ashton threw himself at the man.

Both Cora and the captor paused, stunned that a child so young would have any other reaction than hysteria. Using the only weapon he had, he followed his mother's lead, chomping the man's hand.

The gun went off, deafening everyone, but hitting no one.

The man swore, shoving the kid. Aston fell into his mother's arms. She cradled him. Stroking his hair.

The man's eyes burned with rage.

"Please, don't."

The man snarled and raised the gun.

A door burst open, and light spilled in, basking the captor, blinding him for the moment.

Another gun barrel erupted.

A wet hole opened up in the muscled maniac. He peered at the hole in disbelief before crashing to the hard floor, dead.

Cora sighed with relief. Tears streamed down her face. She didn't know how he did it, but the marshal found her and saved them both. She'd done it. She'd survived long enough. She'd saved herself and her son.

He walked into the dark room, his attention on the corpse. "You ask a guy to hold hostage one harmless woman and child for you, and he can't even get that right. He deserved to die. Right, sonny boy?"

That voice? It wasn't the marshal.

Roy spun and faced mother and child.

His saffron blazer hung in tatters from his frame, covered in dust, like he'd burst through a stone wall. A pair of broken handcuffs hung from each wrist, a devilish grin strung across his face.

"Cora, girl. We're going for a ride. And I guess we can bring the nuisance third wheel along too."