Lana was overcome with fear for a moment, and her body froze. But her mind moved like lightning, piecing together the tidbits she had absorbed over the years listening to the myths and legends that the travelers and traders had brought to her homeland: Prateans could not see the same spectrum of light that humans could. The Pratean was fumbling through his uniform, waving his hands blindly in front of him, growling.
The flash of light was coming soon, Lana thought. She was surprised that she had a sense of it, when it would flash. Surprised that she moved stealthily toward the guard, pressing herself against the corridor opposite, in time for him to blindly pass by her, hands flinging in all directions. He missed her by mere inches. And continued forward, grunting angrily when the flash illuminated what must have been total darkness for him, and he could not see Lana.
Lana stepped away, her eyes on him, unable to believe that he couldn’t see her.
He was sniffing the air, turning in her direction.
He would be able to smell her, she knew that.
Lana froze for a millisecond, unsure of what to do.
And then, she turned and ran, not caring about the sound she was making. The Pratean was coming after her, and there was another one, also fumbling about in the dark, speaking his gibberish language into his comms device. But he couldn’t see her.
And one more thing, a brilliant thing she was just realizing she had noticed as the fragments of the events unfolding were put together in her mind: the flash was coming only from her room.
Here, in the corridor, the Prateans were blind as bats, and there was only the briefest flash from a small door to shed any light on their predicament.
She dropped to the floor and froze just before the flash shed a weak, rapid light into the corridor. The beast in front of her looked around wildly, his eyes never dropping to where Lana was crouched. He growled again, bellowed into his comms, and guided himself along the corridor with one hand. Behind her, the first guard was growling and shuffling in their direction.
One thing was clear: they did not know where she was.
Lana afforded herself a smile and felt the rush of resolve flooding her veins. She crouched on one knee, foot tucked beneath her ankle to push her up quickly, her muscles coiled for quick and soundless motion.
She had, after all, been born a refugee, and lived her life as a fugitive. If there was one thing Katalana Scott could do, it was move with stealth and remain undetected. Especially when the odds were so wildly stacked in her favor.
She moved quickly and pressed herself against the wall, then scampered like a ballerina past the guard, turning left at the corridor and scanning the doors as she passed. Behind her, she could hear them grumbling, but she had long ago left the flashing light behind, and they would not find her unless they found some other source of light, one that they could see.
She did not know how to read the languages on the doors and signs—she barely read Anglais—but she knew enough about ships and escaping them to ferret out where the escape pod was. She was running now, becoming used to the strange gravitational pull that let her leap just slightly longer distances and land quietly. A guard was struggling to his feet at the end of the corridor—never mind him.
This was it, this was her chance, she was going to escape.
It was the only thing on her mind as she skipped through the crimson corridors, blissfully invisible to the guards, seeing no one else. Headed to an escape pod. No plans beyond that. It didn’t matter; this was her chance, and this ship had a vibe of impending doom anyway.
It was getting colder, which took her some time to notice. Her breath was visible in front of her as she padded down another corridor, her heartrate growing steady, her old self returning.
She slowed, feeling her fingers aching. Her thoughts started to feel muddled. She wrapped her arms around herself.
Oh, Earth, she thought, as she stopped to read a sign with difficulty, and peer into the small porthole to confirm that it was, indeed, an escape pod. Her hands were shaking so badly as she lifted a hand to the biometric screen that she had to hold one with the other to get it onto the screen.
Frost was clinging to her eyelashes. In the back of her throat, the air was getting sticky and crystallized, scratching as it brushed against her flesh.
She was going to freeze to death.
“Oh, no,” she mumbled quietly, not even sure what she meant by that. The door refused to open.
She stared into the porthole, shivering, feeling herself begin to slide to the floor.
The sound alerted to her to his presence. A growl, not like the growl of a Pratean, more like that of a yahthlal, the big, black mountain lions that prowled her homeland.
She turned her head to the sound, shaking so much already from the cold that no fear could rattle her, or even pierce the dullness that had begun to claim her body.
Her heart, ordinarily, might have stopped from sheer shock. The humanoid in front of her towered to staggering height, full feet above her, and his skin was oily black in the red light, crisscrossed by what looked like elaborate tattoos in a lighter shade. His face was beautiful, wild, and cruel. Muscles rolled beneath the patterning of his skin or tattoos and flexed with power. His body was so warm next to hers that she could feel the heat through the distance. And his eyes were very definitely, very clearly trained on hers. He held a weapon in one hand, and this too was pointed right at her heart.
This alien, whatever he was, could see as well as she could in the red light.
He said something in his language, his voice a low and deep growl. She shook her head, and then brought her fingers to her forehead, to make the sign of incomprehension that was recognized in most worlds. Or so she had been told; she had no idea how she remembered this piece of information, and her head felt thicker with every passing second. Her feet were frozen and numb, the cold creeping up her limbs to her core.
She stopped shivering, practically at that moment, and she could feel herself being taken away by the cold.
