He’s the Sarkarnii who bit me, then got under my skin. And there’s no way I’m giving him up to anything else, not while I have any fight left in me.
“You do realize this is a terrible plan, one which will get you killed or captured and make Dante have to rescue you, if he’s not already Gonoz food, don’t you?” Maggie says helpfully.
“I know. But what else can I do?”
“What else indeed,” Maggie says. “Death or glory?”
“Hopefully not.”
She shrugs. “I guess we’ll see.”
All I know is, unless I see Dante again, my life won’t be worth living. I’ve fallen for my chaos warlord, and I’ve fallen hard. I have no other choice but to see this through to the end if I want him back.
DANTE
Agroan nearby tells me my crew is waking up. A pair of eyes, pupils wide open, stare at me.
“Boss?”
“Help me get this collar off, will you?” I rasp, my throat raw from the shocks I have received.
A claw comes out, digs into the locking mechanism, and with a swift flick, the collar is over the other side of the room, slamming against the wall and smashing into pieces.
I mean, I did get the dose of paraxio which is inevitable within the anti-removal device on these x-type collars. It’s quite nice.
As the buzz subsides, I see more and more warriors sitting up, shaking themselves awake and looking round.
“Boss?” The warrior who removed my collar, a younger Sarkarnii called Dasik, clutches at his head. “What’s going on? We were boarding the pirate ship.”
“Gonoz,” I growl. “They took you. And when I came to get you back, they got us too.”
He snarls.
“I know. It’s about time we showed them exactly what Sarkarnii are.” I push myself gingerly to my feet as most of my warriors follow suit.
There are some who are still out. I do the rounds, checking each one, finding some of them are heavily asleep, but with a little rousing and a claw or two in the right place, they wake, yawn, and grin at me.
All we need to do is get out of here. Defeat the Gonoz and get back to Vorostor.
Easy enough.
“The door is over there.” I point at the area on the wall where I saw the Gonoz bots enter. “The Gonoz are inhabiting bots, but they want to inhabit us. I suggest we don’t allow that, and we do whatever needs to be done to disabuse the Gonoz of any notion involving Sarkarnii in the future.”
A rousing cheer runs through my crew. But then they always did love a fight. Today they are going to get one.
I’m hit in the back with a tail.
“Who said anyone could shift?” I growl as the room seems a lot smaller with a Sarkarnii in it.
“Sorry, boss,” the culprit says, shifting back as best he can.
There are plenty of tails and wings in evidence. Clearly my warriors have even less self control than usual, most likely because, unlike me, they haven’t had access to any paraxio, and what they did have in their system is wearing off.
Escape is paramount. Destroying the Gonoz can wait, especially if they have any answers to why we are like this.
“Keep your shifting to a minimum,” I snap. “We’ll find weapons soon enough. Now let’s get this door open.”
I indicate to three warriors to join me and set one at either side of where I believe the door to be. Each one sniffs carefully over the area designated to them until one freezes.
