Taking another deep breath, he turned back around and continued down the hall. The automatic door didn’t open when they reached it, but he wasn’t surprised, as none of the others had. Prying the electric lock panel open, as Killian had done with all of the others he’d come across, he manually hacked the system and unlocked it. When the doors slid upward, he paused briefly, listening for people before cautiously stepping through.
As he eyed what appeared to be a ballroom-sized cafeteria, shaped like a half circle, with chrome floors, ceiling, chairs, tables, benches, and a food serving line against the only flat wall, he had to say, he was seriously tired of chrome. Because aside from the clothes people were wearing, it was apparently the only damn color to see on the entire ship.
Inside the room, there were two doors on either side of the food line; one door was to the far left, and the other was on the curved right wall, along with an open doorless hallway.
Killian’s gaze flicked around to the five possible ways he could go, and he sighed, before deciding to go for the door to the left. Mainly as it was the only one that appeared to be unlocked already, and he feared the hallway would take him back the way he came.
“Stay close, stay quiet as can be, and hug the wall,” he ordered.
They nodded, some sniffling as they bravely gathered against the wall, determination on their little faces.
“We’ve got this.” He smiled and winked at Skya, who briefly hugged his leg before getting with the others. But he frowned on noticing that Zenny was still standing close to him. The kid was shifting back and forth on his feet, biting his lip.
Crouching slightly, he hesitantly and very lightly gripped the kid’s shoulders, who he had recently learned was, beyond belief, a Cupid. “Zenny, it’s going to be okay, but you need to join the others.”
Zenny suddenly hugged him. Killian’s eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t have time to react beyond that as the little Cupid had already rushed away to join the other kids.
Clearing his throat, he took a deep calming breath as he straightened up. His ears openly listening for danger, Killian started skirting around the room towards the left doorway, his little pod of fish following behind him.
Killian spun at the sound of Skya screaming, his eyes widening when he saw the toddler floating. It looked as if part of the wall had reached out and grabbed her, but only seconds later, the disguise folded back to reveal the man holding her, with a gun pressed against her head.
“Riker,” he hissed, his eyes boring into the Skinwalker. He hadn’t realized the man was so skilled that he could take on the appearance of more than just living beings.
Killian didn’t even take the time to think, he just felt the world around him and let his anger be his guide. For Sirens, besides their voice, the weather, and more specifically, the unforgiving ways of the ocean—or in this case, the water—was his to command, and even stunted by the collar, it would answer!
Feeling the life-giving liquid in the pipes below the floor, he pulled it upward. Luckily, unlike Water Nymphs, his powers didn’t come with all the fanfare. Right as the pipe burst openbeneath Riker, he used the man’s brief distraction to lunge for him.
With one hand, he clamped down on the wrist holding the gun, yanking it upward, while he transformed his nails into claws and dug his other into the Skinwalker’s neck. Riker screamed, and did just what he wanted him to—he dropped Skya. He had to forcefully ignore it when the toddler yelped as she hit the floor.
“RUN, CHILDREN!” Killian bellowed, using all of the power he could reach to command them to move. Even though his words were partially choked off when Riker tried to wrap his hand around his neck, it worked.
There was the sound of many tiny feet as they ran past him, heading towards the door they’d been going for. His relief was almost instant as he spotted Zenny carrying a bawling Skya away, the Cupid somehow managing to carry her despite being so small himself.
Zenny ran,holding tight to the squirming, screaming toddler trying to break free from his hold, as he struggled to shove back his own rising panic at leaving behind someone who in a short time had become everything to him.
Seemingly on their own, lines started to fill his vision, his eyes going wide in shock when instead of a single line spouting from his chest there were now two. The new line was red and as light as the one between him and Killian had been when he’d first spotted it.
Zenny’s heart sped up in hope, on realizing that the new line was going off down the hall he was running in. Knowing for it to have appeared at all meant that whoever it connected to had to be close by, he sped up weaving through the rest of the children with the hope that whoever it was would stop the line connecting him to the Siren from being severed.
Killian metRiker’s gaze as soon as the door shut behind the last child, and he smiled. He found it rather hilarious that the collar, now pressing uncomfortably on his neck, suppressed him, yet stopped the man from silencing him completely.
“You tried to quiet my voice, Riker. But you failed. Let go!” He chuckled in delight when the man did in fact release him, even if only briefly before the pressure returned.
It turned out, him constantly pushing against his bindings since waking up in them had made the collar less effective.
“THIS IS ALL YOU AND THAT BRAT’S FAULT!” Riker roared.
Killian scoffed, and just dug his claws into the wrist in his hold, drawing blood, while at the same time, trying to gouge deeper into the man’s neck. He didn’t get much further as Skinwalker’s had notoriously thick skin.
Riker fought against his hold. The man’s hand pressed harder on the collar, and began to restrict his air flow, yet it failed to cut it off completely due to Killian’s usually hidden gills. The longer they stood locked together, the more Killian felt the strain. His arms soon started to shake with the effort it took just to hold on, let alone do further damage. Unfortunately, asa species, Skinwalkers were generally considered to be stronger than Sirens.
At least, this particular Skinwalker certainly was, compared to a Siren who had been seriously lax on training in the last ten…twenty or so years. Yeah, Killian was having some major regrets at the moment.
“Losing strength already, Siren? Pity for you. But for fun, why don’t I tell you my plan for those children, hmm?” Riker sneered. “You see, after I put a bullet in your brain, one by one, I’m going to hunt them down, starting with that Water Nymph brat. Until I just have a pile of little bodies.”
Killian cocked his head, his brow slowly rising. “I watched my kind, my very own brothers and father, breed those like me to death. I watched them heartlessly discard the bodies, adult and stillborn alike, as if they were nothing more than trash. So they could be eaten by the other creatures in the ocean, because they didn’t view them as worthy of a proper burial. Did you really think the mere mention of a non-existent pile of dead children would make me react?”
Riker jerked slightly in his hold, the man blinking rapidly. While the Skinwalker was still shocked, Killian took his chance. He shoved the Cryptid back as hard as he could, and flinging himself away when Riker lost his balance, he booked it. Killian ran away, bursting more pipes as he went, trying to obscure the path behind him. Because the fact was, he wasn’t strong enough to fight Riker, at least not while he was collared.
