Expiration Date reached #3 in Science Fiction. I screamed when I found out. <3

Have you ever felt your world crash down on you? Like really truly crash down on you? My false confession will sentence a man to death. I want to save not destroy.

"Come," my father says. "We're leaving immediately."

I follow him out of the tent to a transport vehicle that hovers over the ground. It's a single compartment, the door slid back for us to climb inside. Three soldiers are already boarded. 

I stop, grimacing at the pain coming from below my stomach. "Wait."

My father's sharp gaze turns on me. "What?"

I bite my lip. "I have to do something."

"Can it wait?"

"No, not really."

"What is it?"

My cheeks flush. "Something."

"If you don't speak up and tell me, you aren't doing it."

"I have to use the bathroom." I say bathroom loosely. There are no bathrooms out here.

The men inside laugh.

"Can it wait?" he snaps.

"I haven't exactly gotten a chance since before I left last night." And I'm not going to board a vehicle for who knows how long without taking care of this.

"Very well. But hurry."

I quickly walk through the camp and into the woods.

All of the soldiers use the woods. My father has his special bathroom, but it's more like a glorified outhouse. That is only for him though and not his child.

Once I'm far enough into the woods that I can't see the camp, I gather the largest and smoothest leaves I can find.

This is ridiculous. I let out a huff. I don't mean going to the bathroom in the woods. I'm used to it. No. Nate's going to die because of me, and I have to save him because I still owe him. 

As an extra precaution I squat behind a tree. I relax my shoulders and zero my hearing in on the silence.

After I've relieved myself I remain squatting. I'm not in any hurry to go back and have my hands tied or cuffed and thrown inside a metal vehicle. It's happened before as part of a training exercise to escape abductions. I could try to escape but it won't end well for me.

"Princess Raksana, are you done?"

I cringe. That was a man's, or as I like to call most of them, a boy's voice. "No, not quite."

"Your father sent me because he said you had been gone a while. Is everything all right?" You mean is everything coming out all right? This can't get any worse. "Do you. . . erm. . . need help?"

My eyes bulge. "No. I umm. . ."

"Would you like me to get a female soldier to help you?"

And what would she do? Massage my shoulders?

"No." I pull my pants up and step around the tree, holding up my hands. I wasn't expecting him to be only twenty feet away.

He holds out a wet cloth, and I wipe my hands on it, dropping it in a basket when we get back to camp. Needless to say that trek through the woods was silent.

When I reach the vehicle, a blond man in our party turns his nose toward the sky. It's a little comical. "About time."

"I'm sorry. It's just every time I thought I had gone far enough I could hear your contemptuous comments about me."

Their reddening cheeks and averting eyes tell me I hit the nail even though I was lying.

I hold out my hands to my father. "So are we going to get this parade started?"

"I'm not handcuffing you. Just get in."

I hop inside, the vehicle swaying underneath me. Along the wall that's across from the door there's a bench which I sit down on.

Our base in Koi is far. We should be there before eight tonight, making it a roughly eight hour ride.

I try thinking about Nate and how I can help him, but I reach dead ends in any plan I create. After three hours of this, I decide to try talking to a scrawny boy with brown hair who sits on my left. He's shorter than me. I'm not sure why out of only three men my father chose to bring, he's one of them. "What made you join the army?"

He turns his head less than an inch to look at me. He holds his head high. "Like I have to answer to a slut." 

I grind my teeth and glance at my father on my other side. I know he heard the whole short exchange--probably saw it as well, but no punishment is doled out. What did I do to make them believe this of me? It couldn't have been. . . no. No one knows about that. 

Maybe they do though.

An hour or two later I decide to try once more. I don't see much of a chance with blondie but maybe the other brown haired man. He has dark skin and is well built. His lips are in a flat line. Serious. Now, I can see why my father chose him.

"How are you?" Might as well try to be polite.

His eyes narrow at me. At least he didn't shove his fat, crooked nose in the air. "I don't associate myself with your kind."

My kind? "And please enlighten me on what I am."

"You lured Griffith to us."