“You will start administering the vaccine to Laccara while they are retrieved then,” Tavar said, somehow making it seem like both a demand and a question.
Po’grak’s slim, almost nonexistent lips thinned. Then he gestured to one of the other Jetutians in the room, who went over to the far wall. The same shimmering veil from the entrance covered a hidden compartment there. When he reached his hand through it, Erin heard a clink and then the Jetutian stepped away, a clear vial between his clawed talons, filled with a black liquid that looked thick like molasses.
Laccara stepped forward as theMeviraxguard went from the room, back down the long hallway, off the ship to presumably retrieve the crystals. Tavar stayed, watching as Laccara sat down on the slab of the metal table in the room. She seemed confused when the Jetutian made her lie down, even more so when he strapped her limbs down tight, but she didn’t seem to be afraid.
“How long will it take?” Tavar asked, his voice rumbling, sounding impatient and annoyed. Erin saw the way his eyes strayed to the shimmering compartment on the far wall when Po’grak was not looking.
Po’grak didn’t answer him. Erin watched the other Jetutian fill a slim black device with the liquid from the vial, the end of which pointed into a thick, shining needle.
Laccara’s anticipation filled the room. Erin could almostfeelher longing as the Jetutian slipped the needle into the softened flesh of her hip.
Then her body jerked, something changed in her face, and Erin went pale as a bloodcurdling scream escaped her throat.
Tavar dropped her arm in shock as Laccara’s body began to tremble and convulse, even as the Jetutian continued to inject more of the thick molasses into her.
“What is this, Po’grak?” Tavar demanded, his brows furrowed in anger, stepping forward.
“It is part of the changing,” Po’grak replied, looking not at all concerned with her screams. He bared grey and sharp teeth when he studied Tavar. “Your own female did the same. It will pass. Eventually.”
It was obvious the Jetutian male delighted in her pain, in her screams. Erin saw Tavar’s fist clench, perhaps the only emotion he showed that made Erin believe he cared for Kossira at least slightly.
Laccara’s screams were getting louder and louder the more the Jetutians flooded her with the vaccine, her body thrashing on the slab of metal, her limbs twisting against the restraints the other Jetutian had put on her. Now Erin understood why they’d been necessary. Horror filled her, freezing her in place.
“Stop this!” Tavar shouted, approaching Po’grak. “This is not—”
“This is exactly what you wanted!”
“Nix!” Laccara screamed when Tavar approached her. She didn’t want Tavar to intervene. “Nix, leave it!”
Suddenly, a loudboomreverberated around the spaceship and Erin lost her balance, stumbling to the floor when it swayed too much.
Po’grak went dangerously still, then his eyes cut to Tavar, fury rising in them. “What did you do?”
For a moment, Tavar looked just as surprised and furious as Po’grak. “I did nothin—”
Another thunderousboomcame, this one so loud and so powerful that Po’grak lost his footing, and vials and equipment rattled and shook from their hidden places.
The Jetutian leader stalked to the door leading to the hallway, throwing it open. Beyond it, Erin saw hordes of Jetutian males racing down the hallways, armed, pouring from the spaceship in all directions, down towards the shimmering entrance they’d come through.
Wherehadthey all come from? she wondered, dizzy with dread, wondering how she would escape now with so many roaming about.
Po’grak yelled something at them and they sped their pace at whatever order he’d given them. When he turned to face Tavar, even Erin could sense his fury.
“You think to betrayme?” he rasped, stalking towards the Luxirian male. “You would benothingwithout me!”
Another explosion came. Erin cried out, lurching forward, her eyes catching on the pattern pressed into the flooring.Follow the hallway until the white door, Kossira said. But was it right or left to the grey door?
The Jetutian hovering over Laccara lost his balance with that last explosion and the device he’d poured the vaccine into tore from her flesh, dark blue blood spraying in its wake, and it skidded across the floor. Erin’s breath went shallow, seeing the black liquid leak from the tip of the needle. She needed to get to it.
Before she knew it, Po’grak lunged for Tavar, who was hurriedly unstrapping an unmoving Laccara from the table as the third Jetutian in the room reached for a blade at his hip.
This is my chance, Erin thought. As a fourth explosion rocked the spaceship, so much so that she thought it lifted from the ground only to thud violently back down, she used the distraction to push herself from the ground, the muscles in her weak arms almost giving out on her with the effort.
She lunged for the vaccine as Po’grak reached for Tavar. She heard a gasp of air and when she looked, Po’grak had a curved blade jutting from his side—right between the plates of his armor—just as the Jetutian lingering in the corner knocked Tavar off his feet.
Erin didn’t wait a moment more. She scrambled across the floor—keeping her grip on the vaccine—towards the door to the left. She threw it open, her heart thundering in her throat, and saw there was a darkened hallway stretching before her, the same circular pattern Kossira had drawn out printed into the floor. At the end of it, she saw Jetutian males racing past, but they didn’t see her. She kept to the shadows.
Without a backwards glance, as piercing, guttural yells and cries and the ringing of blades began to echo throughout the spaceship, Erin bolted down the hallway, the black device pressed tightly in her grip.
