“Did you not even consider—holy shit, you forgot your drugs!” Soren squawked, picking up the context clues of his wide-eyed horror-filled expression mid-sentence.
“REVERSE,” Ender demanded!
“We don’t have time!” the Harpy snapped. “The compound is three hours south of here. If we go back now, we will miss our targeted time.”
Ender was about to scream for them to ‘just fucking do it’, but the words caught in his throat as the pain hit him. The damn threads of fate were clearly threatening him.
“FUCK!” He kicked the base of the table in front of him, and the metal screeched in protest at the assault.
Sagging in his chair, he flipped off the other members of the crew who were side-eying him. “Fine,” Ender groaned. “But if I eat someone, that’s on you all!”
“Or, here me out, we could reverse the ship, let you get off, and leave without you? You can go back home, where you can safely medicate alone?” Soren deadpanned.
“Ain’t a chance in hell that is happening, Toddles.” He smiled as his brother started to glare.
“Ender, why are youreallycoming?”
Ender’s smile didn’t falter. “No reason.”
“Yeah, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I believe that.”
He hummed, unbuckling as they passed the Earth’s atmosphere and the stabilizers kicked in. “Can’t say I have any interest in trying to convince you one way or another, and as your superior, I don’t feel I have to.”
The Harpy let out an angry chirp, his eyes full of the fire he no doubt wanted to unleash on Ender’s ass. “You are such a fucking pain in the rear!”
Benny Jones, a younger member of the engineering crew, laughed as he slipped past. “Uh, oh, mommy and daddy are fighting again!”
While Soren snorted at the comment, Ender turned a chilling smile Benny’s way. “Oh, look at that, I've already picked my first meal for when I lose it. How nice to have future dinner plans.”
His smile only widened when the green-haired little shit paled, and quickly scurried away.
Though he was lying down,Killian’s head spun as his eyes fluttered open weakly, the sound of crying and whimpering reaching his ears with the return of consciousness.
He felt heavy, dry, and disconnected, while his neck, wrists, and ankles were oddly weighted down by something. On feeling a touch to his arm, he slowly looked over, as his mind sluggishly tried to recall what the hell had happened.
When Killian found himself staring into familiar large golden eyes, everything came rushing back. The weight around his neck, wrists, and ankles, seemed to intensify as he finally recognized exactly what they were—Cryptid binding cuffs.
Swallowing hard, Killian gathered Skya into his arms while he sat up and leaned against the wall at his back, his gaze flicking around. The whole room was a dingy, and likely dirty, chrome color. They were in some sort of large capacity cargo hold, one that had been modified and turned into a cage.
The thick, and no doubt tungsten bars were spaced evenly, but close enough that only an arm would fit between them, blocking the way to what appeared to be the only way out. A door had been built into those bars, and it had a small slot at the bottom, which he could only assume was for food.
Sadly, they weren’t alone in their prison. The cell was filled with people, both human and Cryptid alike, children and adults. There had to be at least a hundred, even without including all of the children.
Fucking traffickers…he would never understand why they weren’t a priority to the Grimm family.
Killian winced, barely holding back from swearing when he managed to find a port window that was not blocked by somebody, and found himself looking out into space.
“K-Kill-Kill,” Skya hiccupped.
He glanced down at her. Tears were trailing down her face, and the poor toddler was trembling in his arms.
Smiling weakly at the little girl, he ran a hand over her cyan curls. “Shh, I got you. I’m okay.”
She whimpered and clung tighter.
Sweeping his gaze over her, he noted that while there were some smudges of dirt on her face and her shark onesie, she seemed unharmed. He could only assume they had changed her, as while there was certainly a rank smell in the room, it wasn’t coming from her. Though the thought of them touching Skya in any way twisted his stomach.
Killian did feel a sense of relief on realizing that while he had been bound up tight, they hadn’t put anything on Skya. They likely thought she was too young…or they possibly just hadn’t realized who or fully what she was…
