Chapter one
Maxx
Stunned,blownapartatthe cellular level, I stared at the luxury cruise spaceship’s bay door as it sealed me off from Nera.My beautiful star.
Gone.
The ship quaked under my feet, and the finality of our separation jolted up through my spine.
I’d tried to tell her.Tried to explain to her that what I’d become hadn’t changed a single thing about me.
But the truth remained.I was a Faid, and now she knew.
I was her worst enemy.The shattered look on her face had proved it.
Somehow even worse than that though was that she was down on Klio-3, the planet that was always trying to kill us, and I was stuck up here on a luxury cruise ship I didn’t fuxxing care about.Supposedly just for the weekend, but still.Any number of things could happen between now and when I saw Nera again, and I couldn’t even talk to her.
“Maxx…”
The plea in the croaked voice next to me barreled into my consciousness.I caught the massive green Killian alien before he crumpled to the floor.Only he wasn’t so green anymore.He was turning a horrific shade of purple.
I glanced down at the bullet wound in his shoulder and gasped.From the center of the ugly torn flesh, pulsing black webs crawled beneath his skin, right over one of his hearts.
“I need to get you to a doctor.”
“No…shit…” he said with a pained groan.
I hauled him to his feet and slung his good arm around my shoulder, both of which were speckled with blood.Bling’s blood.The woman he’d obviously been falling for but who he’d just killed for trying to poison Nera and for attempting to take me back to Earth Space Fleet.
Me, his mortal enemy.He’d killed her for me.
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” he ground out.“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
I nodded, attempting to push through the second door that led inside the cruise ship.The alien was obviously hurting in more ways than one.
“Then I’ll tell you thank you,” I said, trying the immovable door again.“Thank you for what you did back there.”
The door wouldn’t budge, likely because we hadn’t reached cruising altitude yet.Fuxx.We didn’t have time to wait.
“You can thank me a thousand times as long as it gets me to the doctor sooner.”He blinked heavily.“Why does it suddenly feel like my teeth are floating?”
Looks like you missed, the Killian had told Bling shortly after she’d shot him.
Did I?she’d said.
A poisoned bullet.It had to be.
“You’re going to be fine,” I assured him, scanning the door for a clue as to when it would be openable.
A red light blinked above it.Too slow, the same tempo I imagined the Killian’s dying heart was beating.
“Liar,” he croaked.“Since when does floating teeth mean you’re going to be fine?”
I pounded on the door in the hopes that someone was standing near the inside, could open it for us somehow, could shout for help to get us inside sooner.“Since I looked up the poison in my databases.”Something I’d done just then.“The antidote is common.As long as you’re given it before you start having seizures, you’ll be fine.”
He looked at me closely through his half-shuttered green eyes.“You mean your Faid databases?”
