“So, is anyone actually controlling what they eat, what they do, what they take?”
“Me?” Dante says, looking confused. “Or at least I’ll deal with any warrior who takes too much or not enough.”
An alarm sounds. The piercing shrill siren seems to get inside my head.
“It would seem that has happened today,” Dante says. “You need to come with me.”
“Why? Chances are your crew are going to want to have nothing to do with me if you punished them for roughhousing in my vicinity.”
“Because I need you, little flame. Being close to you is all which is keeping me from the very edge,” Dante pants.
I’m not entirely sure he is not close to the edge, but I’ll let Dante be the judge of it. He’s obviously not going to move unless I do, so I hold out my hand and find myself scooped into his arms as he takes off at a pace I could not possibly keep up with.
I hear my voice, calling out his name, which is lost to the wind. It would appear I am all in with this Sarkarnii warlord, who has far more secrets than he has ever let on.
DANTE
There is chaos when we arrive at the lab area. Or more chaos than usual. Three of my crew are on the floor, foaming at the mouth, smoke issuing from their nostrils and their wings shifted to almost full Sarkarnii proportions. I gently put Rosalie on her feet, and my crew who are not affected make a break for the nearest exit.
“Nobody move,” I snarl. “Everyone is to stay right where they are.” They all stop dead in their tracks.
My crew have never disobeyed a direct order, and they’re not about to start, even if I might have done some damage earlier today when my mate was injured.
“Shut off the alarms,” I snap at the nearest warrior. “We need to think.” I drop down next to one of the warriors and check him over. He’s hot to the touch, and by the smell coming from him, the foam is unused accelerant. “You’re going to be okay,” I say quietly. “Nothing a dose of paraxio can’t sort out, eh, warrior?”
He groans, his eyes rolling in his head. “Yes, boss.”
I resolve once more to find both a cure and another way of testing it if not on ourselves. This process cannot go on, even if my crew are as desperate to find it as I am.
I look around for Rosalie, but she’s already next to the closest prone warrior, her hand on his head as she speaks rapidly to the warrior next to him.
With another deep growl, I’m by her side.
“Decix says this warrior was trialling a new batch,” Rosalie says to me. “A new batch of what?”
“What we’ve been trying to perfect in order to keep our mutation under control.” I grab the unaffected warrior by his shoulder. “What’s different about this batch?” I snarl.
“It has more LX-Ninety in it than the others, but that’s all I know,” he says, his voice shaking as he looks down at his colleague.
“Give him paraxio. Give them all paraxio,” I order.
“What’s paraxio?” Rosalie asks me.
I wish she would stop touching the other warrior, although the way she handles him reminds me of how Dailiah used to treat us.
“It’s a powerful narcotic for most Sarkarnii, but we have a resistance to it, and generally it reverses the effects of anything we’re testing.”
“So, you test on live subjects and then bring them back from the brink if it all goes wrong?” Rosalie fires at me. “That’s wrong on so many levels.”
“All my warriors are willing subjects,” I say as one of them comes running back with vials of paraxio and they’re administered to the prone Sarkarnii who stop their frothing, and slowly their bodies relax with the dose of the narcotic.
“Take them to their quarters,” I say to the warrior surrounding them. “Nova hourly checks. If they don’t recover, take them to the med bay.”
One by one, the affected warriors are picked up and carried off, their wings trailing behind them.
“They’ll be fine,” I say as Rosalie watches them go. “It happens all the time. Their colleagues will persuade them to shift and they’ll make a complete recovery by the morning.”
She folds her arms, and my stomach does a flip over.
