Hey all, as you know I've been furiously writing One More Step but while that was going I got an idea for another story and have only written the first chapter as I want to wait for responses before deciding if I should go on and continue to write this one as well.

Even if I decide to keep writing this one, it won't mean that I will stop or slow down with One More Step. But please give reactions.

Kayla

Chapter 1: Ater

"Stay close to me." Étienne Faal hissed to his twin as the guards pushed her into his back and they walked through into the room where their captors were meeting with the warden. They just caught the end of the deal that landed them in slam. There was a snarl on Étienne's face and a glint in his eyes that everyone but her would take as anger, she knew it was fear. Étienne had been here before, he knew what to expect and what he was expecting did not thrill him in the least.

She knew that she would be smart to have his kind of fear, she had heard the stories but she wasn't the one with the noble morals, he was, it didn't bother her to kill people, no matter who they were, but even in that she wasn't stupid enough to think that slam would be a walk in the park, even for someone with her training. All she could do was hope that what training she had been given was good enough to get her though the ordeal alive and sane. She knew that the likelihood of that wasn't great but she had more of a chance then most.

"Nice to see you again Étienne." The warden smiled. A look full of false warmth on his face, it was a look that she wanted to snap at. "Welcome back to Ater, we knew you'd be back but we hadn't expected you to bring Eden with you. She really is a lovely thing. You can tell she's your twin. She has your eyes and well, she is rather tall for a girl."

"Made this place any harder to get out of yet?" Her brother snarled, if he had been a dog his hackles would have been raised and his teeth bared. Étienne would have made a good animal.

"We've held one Richard B. Riddick for well over a week now, I'm sure that we can extend the same courtesy to you with less problems. We both know it's harder to escape in pairs then alone. Though, she does look capable enough." The warden gave her another apprising look. "Separate them."

Eden tensed as the guards swooped down on the twins. There wasn't a lot she could do and she knew it, not with her hands cuffed behind her back but that didn't mean she wasn't going to put up some fight. She fought as much as she dared, enough to give out a warning that told them she was a lot stronger then she appeared. She twisted and kicked one man in the groin and another who had come from behind her ended up with a broken nose when the back of her head connected with his face. That was when the shock stick was jammed into her ribs and she fell into waiting arms. They weren't going to put up with her shit!

"We know how fond you are of your sister Étienne, the two of you have quite the reputation for trouble. Tell me, how did she manage a whole sic months without you last time you graced us with your presence Étienne?" The warden talked as he walked around her. "You're something else aren't you Eden? You've been causing problems for the powers that be, not a smart thing to do little girl. Their top operatives keep turning up dead, their plans are always being screwed with and everything points to you. You're brother may have the brains for a plan and the brawn for a good fight but he's not slight enough to have carried off some of those kills. Those in power want you caught and held, safely away from them. I'm sure that we can make them happy and break some of that spirit while we're at it. What do you say?"

Eden tried not to look at the man while he spoke but instead focused on her brother. He was looking murderous and it took four guards to hold him back, they seemed reluctant to give him a good smack with a shock stick but then Étienne could be somewhat of a bear if he thought he needed to be. She shook her head at him trying to get him to relax a little, there was no way that they would be able to gain control at that moment.

"Were you aware that very few women are ever sent to a maximum security slam?" She didn't answer him. "Only the worst of you are ever sent here because the people in power don't tend like a women to end her life as some prisoner's bitch. We house only five women within this slam; you'll bring that number up to six. You'll find that they all sell their bodies for protection, it will be interesting to see who you sell yourself to." Still she said nothing. She knew herself well enough to know that she would choose death first. "Do you think that your brother can protect you? That you won't fall victim to rape? Your brother has quite the reputation inside these walls but I doubt that it will reach far enough to protect you. Women are precious commodities to prisoners inside these walls and there are men in there that are fare more skilled killers then your brother. If you're not careful, you'll end up getting your brother killed."

This is why she was fighting against the establishment she told herself as she listened to his speech. This was why she had killed and masterminded plans to bring down these people. It was to get rid of this that she had gotten her and her brother caught. All she had had to do was kill one man and she had failed. She had failed but she would be given a second chance and then she would not fail. She would not let herself fail.

"You have nothing to say?"

"I try not to speak when I have nothing nice to say." She let her eyes find the warden's face and just looked at him, a semi-blank expression on her face. Her lightly accented voice drifted through the room in an almost soothing way and a frown appeared on the warden's face, he had no more patients left for them and had already been told about her ability to lull people who knew better into a false sense of security. It was one of the things that the resistance liked about her, one of the things that the Company would have used if they had gotten her loyalty first.

"We will be taking you to either end of the facility. We'll release Étienne into Ater first and give him say, forty-five minutes to make his way to the other end. At the end of those forty-five minutes we will then release Eden. It shouldn't take you more then an hour of steady running to get to her." The warden smiled as the twins looked at each other, both wondering if this would be the last time they would see the other. "You never know what might happen in fifteen minutes. You might be spared bitching her out Étienne or you might end up dead. Better yet, she might end up dead."

"Eden-" Étienne said, she was sure that he was about to give her some sort of advice but she wanted none of it and cut him off as she was jerked away.

"Just get to me as quickly as you can. Don't get killed!" She snapped as they were pulled away from each other out of opposite ends of the room.

Eden was half dragged, half carried down a sequence of hallways, each getting darker and londer then the last, the aim of the exercise was to confuse her, disorientate her but she didn't let her mind get stressed out trying to keep track of where they were going, what information her mind retained of her journey down she would process later when she didn't have to worry about Étienne and if he would make it on time or not. When the possibility of her own death wasn't so close.

Étienne might be a whole half an hour older then her but sometimes he didn't had enough brains to use the intellect that they both had been gifted with. He was a little more level headed then her but all that common sense went right out of his head the minute that anyone tried to threaten her. He had spent his life looking after her and it seemed that he wasn't about to stop.

He had always been able to read her mind, he had never let anyone hurt or threaten her. That was why he had joined the resistance after she had told him that she had. He had joined to keep her safe and they had let him. She had the skills that the resistance needed and if he came with her much the better. He was smart and capable and would keep her safe. Mind, she would do what she could to keep him safe too. They were family; they were all each other had.

Damn the resistance! The thought was out and across her mind before she could stop it. She stood for everything that they stood for but did that give her the right to drag her brother into it. She should have realized that Étienne wouldn't have let her go into that line of work alone. She should have known that he would follow her.

"The boss would never know if we fucked her or not." She was brought back into the present by a conversation she did not like the sound of. The guard almost sounded like he was whining. What was it about men, they seemed only to ever think about getting a good fuck.

"Boss said no."

"He'd never know. We wouldn't have to tell him and he wouldn't seriously take the word of the bitch over the word of two of his guards."

The last time she had heard a conversation like this one, it hadn't been over her and three of the four men who had had it died. Her and Kelsey had made a good team. There was no Kelsey here and she knew that killing these men would be hard considering she was weaponless not to mention that fact that it just wasn't smart.

"She's something of a special prisoner as far as the people that employ us are concerned. If the others in there rough her up and rape her, that's alright, that's slam, it's to be expected but the guards aren't meant to have a piece of this one. Guards really aren't meant to have a piece of any of them and he's gotten a little stricter with it recently. The way you shoot your mouth off he'd find out easy. It was you who got us in trouble over Fallon."

"He just doesn't want to give the resistance another martyr. Every time something goes wrong in here or with this system the stupid resistance always ends up getting more martyrs."

"We already have enough. People like you and those that you work for give us enough. Make me one of them and their blood will just get hotter. I'm in leadership remember? Kill one of us and there will be a bloody uprising." She couldn't stop herself from commenting. "Go on, just try it. I dare ya! I can guarantee that they will know about it."

Both of the guards looked at her, taking in the mocking expression on her face as she let them carry a little more of her weight, she was conserving her energy if she was going to have to fight off men with a lot worse intentions then these stupid ass guards. Stop provoking them Eden! A voice she normally listened to in her head yelled at her. The key word was normally, but normally she wasn't being dragged into the deepest bowels of Ater by two big mother-fucking guards who were contemplating raping her. Who had obviously raped other women in the past.

Here was hotheaded Eden, the bitch with too much fight and not enough sense. Since she hit puberty, there had been a small split in her personality, nothing too huge but those who knew her best knew which Eden it was they were talking to by her behavior. One side protected the other side, one side was smart, sensible and loving and the other side was cold, tough and also smart but in a different way. In a cold, heartless, manipulative way.

Eden was just protecting herself, protecting her own sensitive side, the side that could be hurt and that made her vulnerable. There were times when she wished she could just get rid of the side of her that had so often made her want to curl up in a small ball and cry away her life. She hated her weak side almost as much as she protected it.

"Watch it bitch! You're under our jurisdiction now; your resistance buddies can't help you or reach you here. We've scrambled the messages those stupid mercs sent us; they don't even know where you are. How could they? You think that we're all so stupid but we have you in our facility and none of your people know where you are."

Eden started to laugh before she could stop herself and once the laughter had started, there was no turning back. The resistance knew exactly where she was and how it had come about that she had gotten there. These slam people really were as stupid as Étienne had said.

"What the fuck do you have to laugh about?"

"This whole thing just amuses me gents." She answered with a shake of her head. Kane had been right, the implants that both her and Étienne had had put in them when they joined the resistance was untraceable and undetectable. Slam people were stupid pricks!

"I'll give you something to laugh about you dirty little whore!" Eden was backhanded across her face and the metallic flavor of blood filled her mouth. Her own teeth had split the inside of her lip open and blood was a flavor that she did not like.

"I'm not a whore." She spat blood and saliva out of her mouth.

"No, you're just a stupid little bitch." The guard who spoke looked over at the silent one as they stopped in front of an iron grid that when opened would be her passage into Ater. "How much time before we set her loose? Any sign of her idiot brother yet?"

She kept herself from saying anything that time though she thought she was going to blow completely. They could say whatever shit they wanted to about her but when it came to Étienne, they had better keep their mouths shut or she would find them down a dark ally way one day.

"Five minutes and no." The other guard answered.

"Looks like she's attracting some interest too."

She was attracting interest as well. The word had gone out in slam a good forty minutes ago that they were about to be joined by two new people, an old escapee and a new prisoner, a female prisoner. There were already about five men standing looking at her from the other side of the grate. Men, she was sure, would like nothing better then to fuck her senseless. "Women are precious commodities to prisoners inside these walls." The warden's words floated back to her and they were not all that comforting at that moment.

"Come on Eden baby, time to protect yourself." She thought as she stood up to her full five foot eleven height and pulled her shoulders back so she was standing at attention, her eyes scanning the men, trying to work out who would attack first. "Where the hell are you Étienne? No! Don't think about Étienne, worry about him later, he'll be fine; he knows what he's doing and where he's going. Concentrate on getting through this alive."

That was when she saw him, standing back from the rest, muscles obvious but in her eyes not unsightly; she liked a man with a lot of muscle. He had to be about six two, three inches smaller then Étienne, his shined eyes looked in her direction with interest but she could tell that he had already made his assessment of her and was moving on to the guards and the grate that she was standing behind. He was planning something, maybe not something for that moment but the workings of a plan were on his face. But the look changed to one of neutrality so fast that she couldn't help but wonder if she had actually seen it at all.

Guard number one moved behind her and unlocked the handcuffs while guard number two took out his blaster and pointed it through the grate while his friend unlocked the padlock on the door and punched in the codes that would make the grate open.

He was still watching, his silver blue shined eyes looking over her with interest as one of the guards gave her an almost sympathetic look as she had to spit again to get the taste of blood out of her mouth. This was going to get nasty fast, one of the fuckers on the other side was already inching closer to the access, though, he wasn't the fucker that she had expected to come at her first.

"God preserve me and get Étienne here as quick as you can." She prayed slightly, Kelsey crossing her mind one more time, wondering for a moment if this was how she felt before she had been thrown in Crematoria. Kelsey had left that place, a shell of the person that she had been before. She blinked slowly and pulled her focus away from the past, the past could only hurt her now.

The somewhat slighter figure of another female caught her attention out of the corner of her eye but she stared unblinkingly at the men in front of her, the other women around here were just as curious as the men then but she couldn't help but hope that they would cause her hell of a lot less hassle. She cracked her neck quickly as the door in front of her was opened and a heavy metal object was thrust into her hand as she was pushed through it.

"Good luck." The guard who had handed her the length of pipe said as he closed the door behind him, the sound of metal on metal the only sound around her for a moment. The realization that she was in deep shit not far behind the echo of the sound.

"What did you do that for?" His companion whined.

"For a little light entertainment." He was answered as the first man advanced on her and she watched him intently, waiting for him to make a move as she tested the weight of her new weapon. She reminded herself to thank the kind guard in some way later; maybe a shiv to the throat would go down nicely. Her senses went on high alert as he rushed her and she swung out with that pipe as hard as she could, cracking his jaw and sending him flying away from her.

She went with the momentum and kicked one of the men waiting for his shot in the gut, a move that he hadn't been expecting while she jabbed another man in the throat with the pipe. Both went down and more prisoners came out to either join in the fun or enjoy the show. Her head was pounding trying to keep tabs on them all but she forced herself to focus as arms encircled her from behind and she scrapped the thick heal of her boot down his shine as she let the pipe slide through her hand so that she could hit him in the stomach with it at the same time as she let her elbow connect with his ribs and her other leg kicked his feet out from underneath him.

He let go of her with a grunt as two men came at her at the same time. These two were a little more weary of her and their attack was a little less gung-ho and more fluid like they knew what they were up to. Maybe two men after then she was faced with a well built man who had the look of a natural born fighter to him and received a nice cut on her shoulder and a punch to the face before she managed to place the right smack with her pipe. She was getting into the elite of Ater. Shit and she was getting tired, walking around for forty-five minutes and not to mention the less then restful last portion of her journey to the planet that housed Ater and the small fight in the warden's office didn't help the whole situation, her body was pissed at her.

"You'll be more pissed if you're raped and dead." She told herself as her ears reverberated with the cracking sound that her pipe against another man's head made. She wished that they had let her move on down the hall a little more but no such luck, they were keeping her very much in one place and they would know that after fighting full on like that for nearly ten minutes she would be pushing extremely tired if not exhausted.

She dealt with three others before the tide stopped and no one else made to move toward her. The man whom she had noticed earlier was still just watching her, everyone else giving him a wide berth, as he stood there, relaxed as anything and it pissed her off. She didn't waste her time with growling or threatening movements; she just stood there and started to catch her breath, the pipe in her hand her only comfort.

He was still assessing her, she realized but there seemed no intent to do her harm on his face as he watched. But then maybe he was just waiting till she had no more fight left in her. That was a better plan then the pricks who had come at her first had had, but she got the impression that, that particular man could kill anyone he wanted without much hassle at all. Fresh or not, she would be no match for him and that thought scared her slightly.

Another man caught her around her middle as two rushed in at one time, one of the men running toward her dropped like a fly, a small handmade blade sticking out of the side of his neck but the other man kept coming. She kicked her feet off the ground, using the man behind her as leverage to boot the other guy in the face and chest as the man holding her squeezed with his arms trying to force the breath from her lungs, she threw herself backward with all of her might as her feet touched the ground again.

The move had the desired effect and the man behind her went toppling backward as a slight woman rushed out to retrieve the blade and then darted away again, more then likely undetected by the big men around her, only problem was that she toppled backward with him and she didn't roll away fast enough before he had her pinned under him again.

"No!" Her mind screamed, her situation was desperate and a low rumble let out of the back of her throat as she refused to let him get her in a position where he could get underneath her clothes and then there was a roar and he was thrown off her. If she had been anywhere other then Ater and her brother had showed up, with white rage on his face because he had seen her being hurt she would have cried with relief but she was in Ater and there would be no tears. "Étienne?" She whispered breathlessly as she got to her feet and stood beside him.

"Not here, not now." He answered her flatly as he put up a defensive stance and the men around them seemed to look at her now with less eagerness. They started to peal away, one by one until there were only four figures left standing there, the twins, the man built like a tank and the slight women standing in the shadows, unwilling to show herself but her presence was tangible. With a smirk on his face the big man left them to their peace, a low chuckle the only sound he made as he left and it set a chill in Eden's heart. He was a man that she didn't want to meet again, at least not alone. After the man had left the woman showed herself.

"Welcome back to Ater Étienne." She said, looking him up and down and Eden felt her brother tense in a way that she knew well. He had been involved with this woman before, something had happened between them the last time that he had been in there. "You're sister was doing a good job by herself. Got a bit of brawn that one. I hope that her spirit isn't broken easily, you have to get her out of her before that happens."

"Fallon-?" Étienne said as he put a hand on his sister's arm. He needed the contact; she could tell just by his presence that he knew how close he had been to loosing her. She was strong and capable but she couldn't fight forever. The girl's words confirmed that.

"Like I said Étienne, welcome back." Fallon didn't let him say any more to her before she turned away from them and started to walk away before turning slightly. "Your old cell is unused. Might be a good place to keep yourself. And you," She addressed Eden. "Turn into a shadow. That's the best advice I can give you." Then she disappeared, molding into the shadows and becoming invisible.