As she wriggled a few more feet, the stench of dirty bodies and stale urine assaulted her senses. She swallowed hard to keep her stomach from protesting the familiar smell. She hated this strange planet. The bright suns that made her eyes hurt. The fast rains that left flooding in their wake. But most of all, she hated the Morgee. The metallic aliens that enslaved children, using them up as though they were nothing more than tools to be replaced when they wore out. The way had used her too. Until she’d escaped. In Janai’s fifteen years, nothing had been so sweet as that day.

And here she was now, right back in the slave camps she’d so desperately run from. Her mind threatened to shut down, her bowels to loosen. Terror put her on the brink of being ill. She took in a long breath and forced her mind to calm in order to concentrate on her task. No point terrorizing herself more than necessary.

The slave cavern was just ahead. This time of night, the children would be asleep and their captors regenerating. She didn’t know exactly how many she’d be rescuing this time, but she knew words in the languages of each of the invaded worlds, so communication wouldn’t be a problem.

One knee scraped across a jagged area of the tunnel and she winced, forcing herself to ignore the sharp pain. Flickering light filtered into the tunnel from an opening ahead – firelight – and the cavern suddenly seemed impossible to reach. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She focused on steadying herself.

She scooted a few more inches, quietly slithered out of the hole, and crouched behind the large boulder that kept the fresh tunnel hidden from view. Her eyes focused into the dim light. She counted five children sleeping around the small fire. The slave groups were getting smaller. Her camp had lost a child seemingly every moons phase. She expected little resistance from the slaves, since they were used to taking orders, and the meager food supplies weakened them.

One of the children began to stir. Janai quickly made her way to a red-haired, Earth boy and cupped a hand over his mouth as he awakened. Pale as he was, her gray skin looked almost white next to his. He started to protest, and she used the weight of her body to hold him down. He was smaller than she was and she had little trouble restraining him.

“Quiet,” she whispered urgently into his ear, as she absently shook a stray, white curl from in front of her eyes. “You want the soldiers to catch us?”

Realization and fear lit the boy’s eyes. Her hand tightened over his mouth as he shook his head in response to her question.

“Wake the others,” she ordered. They had to hurry. “And keep them quiet.”