“So you wore them out?” The captain sounded unconcerned.
“Maybe. I used the same ones each time, so given the results this morning, it looks like it. I’ve just given them a second one each.”
“Given what happened before, that sounds dangerous.” The captain’s voice rose a little.
“Not if the first ones are useless now. It’ll be the same as before.” Ritter didn’t sound like he cared what the captain thought.
“Fine. We’re heading for a position off Aponi, waiting for someone they’ve managed to rescue from a military prison in Demeter, and then we’re going to pinch to the black immediately.” The captain stepped out of the dispensary.
“How long until that happens?” Ritter asked. “I can’t work when we pinch.”
“Hopefully in a few hours, so be done by then.” The captain walked past the beds and out the door into the passageway.
“You’re quiet,” Ritter said, and Ethan could only guess he was speaking to him and Velda.
Neither of them answered him, and he was silent and still for a moment, then Ethan heard him wheeling the black box back into the dispensary and then stepping back into the med bay.
He called the guards back in, removed their blindfolds, and took their vitals again.
Ritter frowned in concern at the readings, and then had them taken back to the cell.
“Talk to me.” Ethan rubbed his wrists, and then pulled Velda into his arms, bending his head so his lips were near her ear. He was sure they were being monitored and he didn’t want to give Ritter anything he didn’t have to.
“I feel like I could maybe smash my way through the door,” she whispered to him. “Except I also really don’t want to be hit with laz fire.”
“Yeah.” He was feeling pretty much the same. “Whatever they’ve given us, it’s made me very allergic to getting shot.”
Not that he had ever been keen about taking a hit, but he hadn’t worried about it to this extent before.
“The first dose wasn’t worn out,” Velda whispered. “It was only pretending to be.”
Her words sent a chill down his spine. “Pretending?” That gave whatever it was some agency. Some intelligence.
“That’s what it feels like,” she said.
That’s what it felt like to him, too.
And that frightened him.
13
Ritter had sentthem back to their cell around mid morning, and no one came to get them or give them food for the rest of the day.
Velda wanted to do something, but the space was too small to exercise, so she showered out of sheer boredom, then she and Ethan lay back down on the narrow bed.
He was quiet and thoughtful, and she let her eyes close and snuggled in, enjoying the feel of his arm around her, the sound of his heart beating in his chest.
If she wasn’t sure they were being watched by the black lens in the top corner of the cell, she knew they’d have found some creative ways to pass the time, but there was no way she was putting on a show for Ritter and the guards.
Ethan nuzzled her ear, and she smiled against his neck, sure his thoughts were running along the same track as hers.
“Damn lens,” he murmured.
The ship suddenly pinched to the black, the strange feeling of pressure holding her down was unmistakeable, and she recalled the captain telling Ritter it was going to happen later while they were still tied to the gurneys this morning.
Something about picking up a prisoner who’d escaped.
She’d wondered which prisoner, or if it was someone new who’d been imprisoned while she and Ethan had been making their way through the mountains.
