Cadence rushes inside and kneels, reaching through the bars to touch one of the women. “She’s alive.”
“They will all be alive,” Shadow says.
Light steps into the ship. He sets Mikhail down and closes the door so no one can see what we are doing.
It’s Light who breaks the lock on the cage with a burst of heat, but Cadence who scrambles inside to check on the three women inside
“How can we wake them?”
“It will take time for the stasis drug to wear off. When it does, they will have a bit of a hangover, but they will be fine.”
“How long?”
“They have only just been placed here. Launch is in two days, so at least that long.” Probably not much longer as he would want them awake and alert when handed over to the seller. “There are empty cages, so he didn’t gather them all.”
“That doesn’t help these women. We need to take them home. So they can wake up in their own bed.” She’s already dragging a woman out of a cage.
We help, carrying the women out before shoving Mikhail into the cage. It is satisfying but unproductive. We are not rescuers. We grab criminals and deliver them to face charges.
“Let’s get the rest of them out.” Cadence is already moving to the next cage. “Is there no drug to reverse the effects?”
“There is, but there may not be any here. And waking the women up on a ship is not a good idea.” Because then they will learn about aliens.
She stands in the cage's door, and we know that if it was her in there, we’d be ripping the ship apart to save her. But these women were selected because there was no one to miss them.
“We can identify them, but to take them home will take time. We’d have to take each one to the car and take them home, get them inside, and then return. There are fifteen women,” Light says.
“Every time we open and close the ship, we are risking discovery,” Shadow adds.
Cadence bites her lip. “And you can’t leave the ship here either.”
“No. We will have to fly it, and our ship, off world.”
“Okay. Can you fly the ship out of here and land it somewhere to let the women out?”
“That is possible, but it means waiting until they are ready to wake up. And we need to clean the apartment of tech and biological traces.” One of us will need to stay here and the other will need to clean. Light reaches out his hand. “Come, Shadow will deal with this.”
“Where will he land?”
“There is a park near the river. I will put them there before they wake and make sure that they are untouched until they do wake.” We do not like it. But we cannot leave them to wake up on their own and we can’t leave the ship for humans to find. Besides that, the ship will fetch a good price.
Shadow walks over and kisses her. We like the feel of her lips on ours, the way they move, then open. The touch of her tongue on our lips almost makes us draw back, but humans like to touch tongues, so we allow it.
It is sort of pleasant.
Though we are still not sure of the point. We have learned nothing new from her saliva that we didn’t learn from her blood and sweat and nectar.
Cadence cups his jaw. “That wasn’t horrible, was it?”
“No. We liked it. Meet me at the river when you are done cleaning and packing.”
Light takes her hand.
Once again, we are separated.
CHAPTER11
CADENCE
