The hole was too well-hidden to be found, it had to be. Someone had ratted us out.

The pirates had taken everything. Our food, our Memories, but worst of all, Bag Man’s whole collection: everything we’d worked so hard to keep safe. What was too big to carry off, those cripples ransacked and melted with thermalloy charges.

I didn’t find the scene until Saturnday when I came with my usual spice deposit. From 100 yards I could see the holocover was powered down, or gone completely. Bag Man wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I stepped down into the hole to find it razed to the floorboards. A gleam of red liquid on the wood caught my eye, a trail of blood smeared in a path toward… it ended abruptly. I looked closer.

A trapdoor.

I’d never known there was anything under the hole. I carefully lifted the door and found myself face-to-face with Bag Man. My love. His belly was slashed wide open, spilling his insides throughout the secret compartment.

But that’s not where the story ends. It’s where it all begins.