I glanced at my navigator. Miko’s glossy black hair, fine-boned features, and delicate-seeming beauty had landed her in a position she didn’t want to be in when she was nineteen years old. I could only guess at the details, but Miko’s sporadic comments about the violent appetites of powerful men spoke volumes. And Miko’s death sentence spoke volumes about her violent response. She’d escaped with her grandmother’s help the day before she was slated to die. Shiori went where Miko went, even if that was a galactic prison—or a cargo cruiser that looked like a good place to hide.
Five years together now—Jax, Fiona, Miko, Shiori, and me—and my obsession with kids and their health was about to get my loyal band of misfits killed. If I hadn’t taken the lab, no galactic warships would have been out looking for us. There wouldn’t have been a Dark Watch frigate in Sector 14. Nathaniel Bridgebane would have been stalking someone else.
I looked out the front and portside windows at the looming Black Widow and curled my hands into fists. Almost the entire view outside the ship was darkness, the stars that edged the rim of the black sphere so startlingly bright in comparison. I wondered how long it would take before they were swallowed up, and then the whole Sector, and then the neighboring ones, too. How far could oblivion expand? Such nothingness was terrifying. I could almost feel its unholy pull.
I should have stayed away from the vaccines—thesuper soldier serum. I should have known the almighty Galactic Overseer could never produce anything good or pure. But I’d been so set on giving the orphans on Starway 8 a defense against some of the things that killed in silence, since I could do very little about those that did it loudly.
The ship lurched—the Dark Watch’s boarding cruiser latching on again with new equipment. Probably insulated this time. My tricks never worked twice.
“I’m getting some of those vials before it’s too late,” Fiona said, racing for the door. “I can work backward and figure out the organics, I’m sure!”
“Stay put.” My voice rang out loudly over the bridge. “I’ll get the samples. And the big guy.”
Fiona pulled up short. At least everyone here listened to me. When I said stop, they stopped. When I said move, they moved. My father might have stripped me of my identity and tried to get rid of me when he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, but I’d obviously inherited his imperial vibe and knew how to use it, despite eighteen years of abandonment and four Sectors of separation.
I looked at my crew one by one. At my friends. My real family. “Anyone preparing an escape pod when I get back can take their chances with the authorities. If you choose to stay on the ship, you’re dying today with theEndeavor, me, and a hell of a lot of super soldier serum. You have five minutes to decide.”
Chapter 2
I quickly worked my waythrough the air lock and vacuum seal at the back of the ship and then strode into the stolen lab, spying the massive man immediately. He was a head taller than anything else in the room, including the dozens of refrigerated shelving units jam-packed withvaccines.
I took him in, surprised all over again. Not many people were naturally that big. Considering I’d found him with the lab, there was a good chance he’d been shot up with the super soldier mixture, and this was the result.
He looked over at my entrance, his dark eyes seeming to swiftly scan for threats. Probably in his midforties, he was a ruggedly handsome black man. Short, curling hair was barely graying at his temples, but the grizzled streaks became more pronounced as they trailed down his thick, somewhat shaggy beard. The beard seemed neglected. It wasn’t neat and trim, as though he wanted it. It was bushy, as if it didn’t belong.
Just like the previous times I’d come into the lab, he watched me with neither hostility nor apprehension, but I couldn’t say he looked exactly friendly, either. More like he was reserving judgment.
Slowly, he lowered the vial he’d been inspecting, the movement drawing my eyes to the capped test tube in his hand. The liquid inside looked like blood.
“Where did you find that?” I asked. Between jumps, I’d searched the lab and seen nothing of interest besides the false vaccines in their prepared syringes.
He tilted his head toward one of the refrigerated units. “I just uncovered a whole tray of identical blood samples in there—under a false bottom.”
I wanted to blame the sudden dread surging inside me on the frantically wailing alarms, but it felt more like the panic of being forcibly strapped down, pricked with needles, andexamined, inside and out.
My gaze darted back to the test tube. That label couldn’t possibly look familiar.Could it?
Swallowing, I held out my hand. “May I?”
He handed over the vial, and I turned it so that I could read the label. The bold-printQ.N.lunged out at me like a punch to the solar plexus.
“This was part of the lab?” My breathing shortened as I tore my eyes away from my own initials and Sector 12 citizen matriculation number.
The man crossed his arms over his massive chest. “An important part, considering how well it was hidden. Not many samples left.”
“You just said there was a whole tray.” I felt light-headed. My heart hammered.
“Ten vials, all labeled the same way. I didn’t find more of that same thinganywhereelse.”
From his tone, I knew he’d looked hard—and maybe not just here in this lab.
Horror scraped through me as the wordcomponentstumbled out from somewhere deep in my memories of blurry-headed days in the Overseer’s lab—along with whispers of an enhancer. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I let my thoughts dive right into my childhood nightmare.
My blood. Component. Enhancer.
Terrible understanding clicked into place. They’d used one abomination to create another.
I couldn’t stop the slight tremor in my fingers as I set the stolen piece of myself down on the table next to me, my pulse booming like the noises echoing around the cargo areas as Bridgebane’s lackeys worked on breaking into theEndeavor.
