“What is that?” Alarm tore through me. A burn hit my veins from whatever he’d dumped through the needle.
He smiled—wicked. “The final injection.”
Horror crashed over me. “The one that reboots people?”
“It was meant for Merrick Maddox, but you’re the one who jumped on me. I’m not sure what it’ll do to someone who hasn’t had the previous enhancements.” His eyes focused again, the pupils returning to almost normal. “I guess you’re still my guinea pig.”
Snarling, I lifted the Overseer’s head by the neck and slammed his skull against the floor. His mouth slackened and his eyes lost focus. I started choking him. “I’ll float myself before I ever let you control me.” The dark vow settled into me as I gripped his neck harder than I’d ever gripped anything.
His mouth opened, gasping for air. He couldn’t breathe. I wouldn’t let him.
The lift doors opened. I glanced over my shoulder. Goons poured out, a deluge of Dark Watch. They started firing.
I threw myself to the side, taking cover behind the large console. Wheezing and choking down air, the Overseer rolled in the other direction.
Merrick lifted a huge table and threw it at the incoming soldiers. Sanaa grabbed me and carried me under her arm as she dodged bullets. Merrick spun and followed.
I screamed. I wasn’t done! Was there an antidote?
We barreled into the living quarters. Sanaa swung around and closed the doors. She blew the lock with a punch that went halfway through the wall, but I doubted even that would stop super soldiers.
She tossed me to my feet. I landed running, and we crossed rooms that hadn’t changed in decades. Despite the overall drabness, I could see Mom’s touch everywhere, making plain things special. That was my mother. Subversive. A survivor. She’d walked the same bridge as my father.
We reached the master bedroom. Shade stood at the door to the air lock, tense, armed, and looking ready to come back for me. His eyes widened, relief flaring in them. “Come on!” He waved us toward the tunnel.
“You got it open.” I pushed him ahead of me and followed him down the accordion-like passageway. It was a long one, twenty-five feet maybe. I’d thought I’d need my lock magic, but someone had guessed the password.
“It wasn’t hard. ‘Caitrin’ was the code. The man’s obsessed. The others are already on board. Jax is powering up the ship. It turned on to ‘Caitrin’ also.”
I shuddered. My poor mother.
Shouts reached us from somewhere in the living quarters. Goons were catching up to us. We raced onto the escape cruiser. It wasn’t the one I remembered, although it was similar and could probably house a dozen people. We entered through an antechamber stocked with weapons, several of which I recognized.
“Jax!” Shade hollered into the main body of the ship. “They’re on!”
The ship hummed as Jax kicked up the power. Sanaa raced down the hallway and disappeared, but Merrick stumbled. Shade grabbed him. A fat bead of blood fell toward the metal floor between them. My eyes tracked it, seeing details that seemed impossible. Too red. Too slow. Too shattered on impact. The globule hit the floor like a thunderclap, and I stumbled backward.
My heart pounded. I squeezed the sore spot on my thigh where the Overseer injected me, shook my head, and forced away the tunnel vision. My senses widened, and I whipped back into action.
Shelves. Loaded with weapons. I bypassed the guns, pulled a Keeler hand bomb from the rack on the wall, and flicked on the detonator. I turned back to the passageway, counting down the seconds before the weapon exploded.
As the first goons stepped into view, I launched the bomb down the air-lock tunnel. This wasn’t a blinding flash and concussive blast designed for crowd control. This was deadly fire. This was holes in walls with only the vacuum of space outside. This was body parts to pick up, not bodies.
With ice in my veins, I slapped my palm down on the door control. The panels whooshed shut, cutting us off just before the bomb detonated.
We rattled, and I flattened my hand against the wall for balance. Jax would know the second I sealed the ship. The information would flash across the pilot’s console.
We moved almost instantly, banking hard to the side. I scrambled to stay upright. Shade and Merrick slammed into a rack of weapons. Shade winced. Merrick hissed, his pain obvious. Even from inside the ship, the rip of metal was deafening as we tore ourselves from the vacuum seal instead of closing off the tunnel and releasing it. Jax accelerated fast, zooming away from the starbase. He’d jump as soon as he set the coordinates.
Sanaa rounded the corner again at a sprint, looking a little wild until she spotted Merrick. She took him from Shade, lifting him in her arms as though the biggest man I’d ever seen weighed nothing. Merrick looked at her, sheer incredulity flashing across his face before his head lolled, and he lost consciousness.
Next to them, Shade straightened and pulled off the Bridgebane mask, his temporarily blue eyes guarded as he watched me from across the antechamber of the getaway ship. Sanaa did the same, her dark gaze questioning.
I’d just crossed a line. We could have escaped without those deaths. I could have closed the air lock.
Whatever twisted in my chest wasn’t exactly regret. It felt more like loss, mourning for a part of myself I could never get back.
Daraja, Sanaa had called me from the day we met. My bridge was different from hers, from Nathaniel Bridgebane’s, and Caitrin Bishop’s. I didn’t play two sides or pretend, but I had one foot in murder now and one foot in my own good reasons for it. The name fit.
