My rage was cooling into something sharp and cold, and I had discovered I’d found another famous path toward the Rummicaron, level-headed, emotionless state. Rage, tempered and forged into a cold blade.When the shuttle landed at our chosen landing site, I felt like a well-oiled machine: strong, confident, powerful.
We secured the site, set up our protective artillery to cover our retreat, and Mitnick launched his drones to scout. All of it was familiar, all of it came easily, and for a while, I forgot I wasn’t entirely whole.
Chapter 4
Danitalin
Six days was a very long time to live under gunpoint, I’d discovered. I’d never been a hostage before, and I was pretty sure I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t good at it. At every turn, I argued, squabbled, objected; I had to be driving D’aron utterly crazy. That I could sense, shivering along my spine like thorns and needles. It was the lack of sleep, I warned everyone.
My empathy gift was so overloaded with pain, fear, and the dreadful anger of our captor that I ached. My scalp throbbed as if my hair were too heavy, and my skin was so sensitive that even the brush of my clothing was too much. It was so bad that I couldn’t sleep, only managing quick naps while waiting for tests to complete. When the others slept, their dreams were so full of nightmaresthat they kept me awake. So I worked, driving myself to the brink to find the answer to the puzzle, but it still kept eluding me.
“Conditions are not ideal,” I told D’aron that morning when he came in to wave his gun around. “I would be able to work much better if I were allowed a nightly walk of the grounds—all of us together.” D’aron didn’t buy that, and I shrugged and turned my back to him to peer into a microscope. My back felt exposed, but I knew he would not kill me.
“Please, sir,” Jeltom tried, “we’re really working as fast as we can, but whoever told you we were days away from completion had faulty information.” He stepped between me and D’aron, and I wished he wouldn’t do that; he was making himself a target. D’aron needed me for this—everyone knew I was the key thinker in this project. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Jeltom if he thought that would get him anything.
I was trying very hard to keep all of my team alive, but I didn’t know how. Once I found the cure and solved the puzzle, the only result I could see was death. D’aron would no longer have any reason to keep us alive. He’d executed Litarun yesterday because the Aderian head of security had begun whining about the cost of his betrayal. The sense of death still burned across my mind like a scar. I couldn’tthink, and thinking was what everyone needed me to do.
“We’re working as hard as we can,” I said again. “You might want to leave us alone so we can get back to it.” D’aron huffed a laugh—my senses screaming in warning—but he turned and stalked away, the door slamming shut behind him. I shared a look with Jeltom, then eyed the other three of my assistants huddled one counter over.
“Is it ready?” I asked the former warrior as I eyed the hint of silver threading through his hair at his left temple, just above the unusual shaved pattern there. He shook his head slowly and pulled the canister from behind the microscope to look at it. The gauge indicated the pressure hadn’t reached the right levels yet, and I swore. “At least another hour. Lunchtime—maybe that’s ideal.” Perhaps empty stomachs would distract the guards.
It never got that far. I carefully collated samples and data and packed it all in a satchel I could carry as we escaped. Jeltom and the others acted busy, but mostly, they huddled and cried. I didn’t want to leave any of them behind, but I certainly wished they had grown a bit more of a spine, like Jeltom. Their fear was driving me crazy, crippling me, and as much as I understood it, it wasn’t serving anyone—least of all me, but definitely not them either.
When D’aron came back a second time later that morning, I knew he was getting to the end of his patience. Or perhaps it wasn’t so much patience as fear that his time keeping us here, working, was running out. With Litarun dead, there was nobody to run interference with the Aderian authorities. Would they send someone for us? If they did, it probably wouldn’t be until weeks from now—I knew how slow Aderian bureaucracy moved.
“I have thought about your attitude, Miss Hiraza,” D’aron said as he leaned his hip against the counter next to my hands. His long, blade-tipped tail swung through the air. Pale purple with hints of black, it was a marbled study of softness and sharpness combined. He pressed the tip of that knife to my chin, so I had no choice but to raise my head and look him in his pale eyes. He was sicklysatisfied, eager, almost turned on by whatever plan he had in mind. Death, pain, more fear... I was sure of it.
The blade nicked my skin, and I saw a red drop run down the blade, along the sleek skin of his tail. He was watching it too, his mouth curved in a smile, his aggression intensifying, heating with arousal that made me sick to my stomach.
“I think you need a lesson about the seriousness of your situation. So you get to pick: Which one of your assistants shall I shoot? Three live, one dies, and you finish your work today.” My breath caught in my throat, horror swelling inside me. Feelings so powerful blasted me from behind that I stumbled and only stayed upright by the skin of my teeth. My fists clenched so tightly around the counter that my nails left dents in the hard surface.
“Don’t do this,” Jeltom tried. “We’re doing everything you want.” D’aron whipped out his laser pistol and aimed it at my one level-headed and calm assistant. Feelings of relief, happiness, and guilt blasted me as the others thought they were escaping death this time. Whether I felt my own relief at not having to make a choice, I could not tell, so overwhelmed was I by the feelings of the others.
“Stay out of it, or I might just pickforMiss Hiraza here,” D’aron snarled. The wave of fear that was crushing my mind grew even more intense, and I blinked as I struggled to find myself in all of that. What was I thinking? What was I feeling? I blinked and stared at the window across from my worktable, certain I was now not only powerless to shield myself from the feelings around me, but also seeing things. It had to be the lack of sleep; there was only so much of that an Aderian brain could take. The silver orb smoothly gliding past the window had to be a figment of my imagination.
My hand fumbled across the desk toward the only weapon we had: the improvised bomb Jeltom had been making. “Why do you even want this cure? Roka pollution doesn’t seem like it should matter to the average thug. Do you have family affected?” I didn’t see the backhanded blow coming—D’aron moved so fast that his hand was a blur. He struck me in the mouth, and my lip split. I fell forward, eyes watering, cry muffled against the worktable’s unforgiving surface.
Jeltom shouted, and from the corner of my eye, I saw the gun swing back to center on his chest. He froze, eyes shimmering black and blazing with fire at the same time. For a moment, I could see, in the warrior stance of his body, the soldier he’d once been. D’aron could see it too, and I knew this was it, Jeltom was a dead man. The killing intent the Kertinal blazed with was so powerful I felt like I was choking on it.
No, I could not let that happen. My hands found the bomb, and I yanked it toward me. “There’s a bomb! They made a bomb! Don’t kill me, and I’ll show you.” That was Hitaryn, the youngest on our team, an intern finishing their botanical degree. She should never have been here. By this point, I should have realized sooner that the dangers were mounting and sent her home while the rest of us tried to finish my cure.
Her fear was almost as strong as the killing urge D’aron felt. I rose, bomb cradled in my arms, and met the Kertinal’s eyes with all the coolness I could muster in the storm of emotions that surrounded me. Breathe. Push it away. Close my shields, ragged and thin as they were. “It’sright here, and I’ll detonate it, D’aron. What are you gonna tell your boss if I’m dead and there is no cure?”
His killing intent wavered, and the gun lowered, then swung from Jeltom to Hitaryn. It jerked toward me. “She won’t blow you up. Take it and bring it to the door, and I’ll let you live.” I swore, because he was right. Jeltom had only managed a small charge, enough for a precision blast to blow up a wall and get us out. Enough to kill me but destroy little else inside the lab. I could not kill the young woman; it was impossible to do so, given my nature.
Hitaryn’s large, black eyes were so soulful and pained as she shuffled over to take the small, pressurized tank from me. When her hand brushed mine, her fear and guilt were so powerful she might as well have struck me. I collapsed with a pained yell and struck the edge of the table with my shoulder on the way down. On the floor—prone, exhausted beyond my limits—I felt the gleeful sense of victory in D’aron. “Finish it, Miss Hiraza, today!”
The pistol in his hand fired, the shot striking Jeltom in the shoulder. “Noooo!” I shouted, but there was nothing I could do to stop any of this. D’aron turned, his hand closing around Hitaryn’s arm, and he began yanking her from the room, along with our only means of escape. For a second, shock blinded me to everything else, but then Jeltom’s pain flooded my senses. All was lost now. I could not do what D’aron wanted; I did not have all the pieces of the puzzle. Jeltom was dying, or would, if he didn’t receive immediate medical aid, and I was certain Hitaryn was going to meet the same fate soon.
Struggling to my knees, I clasped my dislocated shoulder with my good hand. My gaze went blearily around the roomto take stock, to find a last ounce of strength to push back. The remaining two of my team had, to their credit, thrown themselves onto Jeltom when he collapsed. They were working fervently to try to stabilize him. With numb fingers, I pulled myself up on the edge of the table, and my legs shook. I had nothing left to give.
Chapter 5
Jaxin
The clearing was small but easy to defend, and it did not take long for our competent, hard-working crew to set up the artillery. Raukesh had vanished into the canopy with a flick of his leathery wings, then used his claws to climb from one branch to the next, verifying Mitnick’s information with his eyes.
The communication specialist stood just outside one of the two shuttles, head bent low over his datapad. The feathered mohawk that decorated his head stood up straight, like a proud crest. His red and white wings were also a feathered affair, but these he’d tucked tightly against his spine. “Drones indicate activity at the research facility,” he reported to the Sineater at his side. “The protective fence isgiving off a powerful energy signature, but I’m also picking up movement from guards.”
