“No one but you?” Jex asks, spinning on his heels to face Rune.
They stand face to face glaring at each other.
“Okay, enough,” I say, pushing myself between them and walking to the door. “I’m warmer now, can we please get out of here before that idiot comes back? He wants me to have his little alien babies and I’d rather not, so can we go?”
“This way, Kate,” Tore says, ushering me out of the cell.
I follow him out and to the right, the rest come out right behind us.
“You didn’t have to undermine me like that,” I hear Rune say.
“Undermine you? Rune, you looked as if you were about to pounce on her, and she observed it as well.”
“Can you blame me? For Solar sake, do you see her? All that skin and those, those—”
“Yes, General, of course I do,” Jex hisses. “I am a male, same as you. But it looked like you were frightening her.”
“Frightening her?” Rune’s voice is louder now, sharper. “She has nothing to fear from me. I would rather be extinguished a thousand times before seeing her hurt.” Rune’s footsteps stomp faster down the hallway behind us. “Kate? Kate!”
“What?” I sigh, stopping short and whirling around on him.
Again, his gaze eats up every part of my body. And I’m not sure I completely dislike it.
“What, Rune? What is it?” I step toward him, asking again.
He shakes his head and slowly pulls his faceplate over his hungry eyes. “Nothing, girl. Never mind.” With it on, he looks so otherworldly and foreign, I want to tear it off him. I want it off him and I want his hands on me again. And that thought complicates things and scares me a hell of a lot more than the way he’s looking at me like a man starving.
I kind of like that he’s looking at me like that.
But I have to focus on what’s happening around us. I need to focus on staying away from Pious and getting back to Claire. I can’t think of anything else—none of my human wants or needs—Claire is more important than me right now.
She always was and she always will be. She can’t take care of herself out there alone. Neither can my father.
Suddenly, a high-pitched sound fills the corridors. All of us stagger toward the walls and clap our hands over our ears. About a hundred feet in front of us a thick iron gate slams down from the ceiling to the grates on the floor. Rune lunges for me and pulls me behind him.
“What’s happening?” I scream. The noise rises to a screeching, piercing siren that grinds at my teeth and scratches against the inside of my ears.
I’m yanked to the left and pushed hard into another long hallway. Jex and Tore run ahead of us, but I’m not wearing their Caelum body armor and my legs don’t move fast enough to keep up with them.
Sudden shouts echo out behind us and instantly my feet sweep up off the floor and the wind in the hallways whistles fast over me. “Is this the fourth or fifth time, my lady?” Rune pants as he runs with me in his arms away from the incoming Caelum.
His legs are like machines, pumping and grinding gears, moving as fast as light through the ship. I bounce in his arms like a ragdoll and squeeze my eyes shut tight. The rough ride is making me sick to my stomach but the only thing I can do is keep my mouth shut and hold on for dear life.
“How do they know where we are?” Jex huffs in front of us.
Oh shit. The tracker! “Wait. Wait! Stop moving. He put a tracker in my arm. He knows exactly where I am! He’ll know everywhere we hide.”
“Why did you not think to tell us this in your room?” Jex snaps.
Why wasn’t that the first thing I said? “I-I don’t know. Me freezing to death was really the only thing that was on my mind at the time.”
“Where is it?” he demands.
I lift my forearm up for him to see. There’s a small dark spot just under the skin below the crook of my elbow.
“Do something, Jex!” Rune shouts.
“What would you have me do, General? No one is allowed to touch her, not even lay a finger on her but you!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Can one of you just get it out of me?” I spit.
Tore’s giant hands reach between the three of us and takes ahold of my arm. “This is going to hurt,” he says, right before he slices a sharp blade through my skin and squeezes out the small tracking device. The pain hits sudden and deep and my knees buckle and drop as I watch his actions. I’m seeing stars.
Immediately, Rune pulls off one of his armguards and presses it hard over my bleeding wound. I feel the liquid alloy surge through my skin, pulling it taut and connecting it back together. It burns and sizzles.
Tore holds up the little tracking device and the metal gears along his jaw lift up into a smile. “Where should I put this?”
Rune scoops me up in his arms again and laughs bitterly, “Out an airlock. Let that solar-sucking asshole try to find us out there.”
