“They’re a new prototype,” the woman said dispassionately, ignoring her colleague E2, who was lying on the floor, gasping like a fish. A medic rushed to his side and began applying coag-gel to his wounds. “Compact nuclear missiles with a controlled blast radius. Effective in close-quarters combat. As you know, nuclear is one of the few things that can cause a suitably effective explosion in the vacuum of space. There are three more missiles to deploy in this weapons test.”
“No!” Arin squirmed, trying to break free. E1 was so close, and all she could think about was wrapping her hands around her neck and strangling her until the very last drop of life was squeezed from her.
Rykal was inhuman and near-invincible, but there was no way he could have survivedthat.
A choked sob escaped Arin’s lips.
“Judging from your reaction, it must have beengood,” E1 whispered, her red lips curving slightly.
An emotionless voice reached her ears. “Missiles two, three, and four, successfully launched.”
Helpless and seething, Arin strained against her bonds, giving in to hatred and despair. “I’m going to kill you,” she snarled, before someone clapped a gloved hand over her mouth.
“I don’t think so. Sedate her.” E1 rose as something sharp and painful dug into Arin’s neck. She struggled, but her power was quickly washed away as the sedative took hold and the world faded to black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
She opened her eyes and quickly closed them again as harsh light flooded her vision, blinding her.
Her head pounded.
Where the hell was she?
Faint voices drifted to her through a haze of clouded thoughts, and in her half-consciousness, she thought she was dreaming.
So why were tears leaking from her eyes?
“Has the corpse been decontaminated?” someone asked, and Arin struggled to process the words. For all she knew, they could have been speaking Kordolian.
“It’s been cleared,” another person said. “Radiation count is down to background levels. We can go ahead and extract some samples.”
“They’ll want to do a full autopsy.”
“That will happen after the specimen is transported to Earth, but we can do the preliminary tests here.”
“I can’t wait to get stuck into this one. It’s not every day you get your hands on fresh meat from the other side of the Universe.”
“Yeah. It’s surprisingly well preserved considering it’s hadall that firepower thrown at it. It’s impressive, really. The escape pod disintegrated completely. We were lucky to find the body.”
“Careening off into space like a goddamn asteroid.” A mirthless laugh punctuated the stillness. “But we’ve got the most advanced detection equipment known to man. We could find a needle in a proverbial galactic haystack.”
“I want to take a closer look. It’s not every day you see one of those things up close. Let’s extract some tissue samples.”
Arin choked back a sob as the memories came crashing back, underscored by the dispassionate conversation between the two humans. They’d spoken about Rykal as if he were nothing more than an insect; a lab specimen to be dissected and experimented on.
It was over. The beautiful dream she’d grasped for a few brief, exhilarating moments was gone, ripped to shreds and transformed into a waking nightmare.
Arin forced herself to open her eyes, willing her tears to stop. At first, the light was searing, but as she blinked furiously, her surroundings came into sharp focus.
She tried to sit up, but her arms and legs were restrained. Something hard and cold was beneath her; a bench of some sort. She turned her head to one side and saw white walls. A harsh chemical scent filled the air, reminding her of the strong, cheap disinfectant they used to clean the shower stalls on Fortuna Tau.
She turned to the other side and saw a glass window. Beyond the window was a sight that branded itself into her mind and stilled her heart.
“No,” she whispered, her voice cracking. Her heart was being squeezed in a vise. She couldn’t breathe. Nausea rose in her throat, and the walls threatened to close in on her.
Thespecimenthat those two humans had been talking about was Rykal. He was almost unrecognizable, but Arin would know him anywhere.
She knew his features, even when his skin had been burned away, revealing charred flesh underneath. She knew the elegant lines of his jaw, the noble slant of his forehead, the sharp slash of his cheekbones, even though the flesh covering his bare bones had become twisted beyond all recognition.
