“No, you don’t understand what she represents to Ryker.”
Ryker.
Everyone in the room shifted their feet slightly when his name was spoken.
Mihail jabbed his thumb toward Audrey. “The Senator and his sympathies don’t outrank necessity.”
For one vicious instant, everyone went silent. And Audrey couldn’t help it; she reached instinctively, touching the emotional edges of everyone in the room all at once.
Alex: fury, fear, urgency.
Nikos: grief packed so tight it felt serrated.
Mihail: certainty. Hunger. A thread of something grimmer underneath.
And beyond the four walls of the holding bay?—
Emerson.
Moving.
When she went to probe Emerson’s mind further, the room’s central console lit blood-red. Emergency lights flicked on, dimming the room to shadows. The Voíríans broke into simultaneous shouts.
“Shit. He was right. Our Si-IDs were flagged. Basir, grab that off the floor,” Nikos growled at the other tattooed man.
“I like the lawyer’s plan. We need to leave for the cargo pods now before they lock down the place,” Basir argued, picking up Alex’s tablet and pocketing it.
“Great,” Mihail snarled at Alex. “Your interference probably slowed things just long enough for the checkpoint system to fully flag our forged transit requests.”
A siren cleaved the air. The clanging alarms came to life in the room. Audrey clamped her hands over her ears.
Basir took out Alex’s tablet and read the notifications lighting up the broken screen. “Security interdiction just triggered,” he said.
Alex remained the picture of calm as he yelled at Mihail over the warning bells. “I’m taking Audrey. I can keep her out of Aggregate custody. If she stays with you, her risk of being captured by a Hunter or a security enforcer goes up—as do her chances of dying. Now, do as I said, and make your way down to the cargo bay.” He pointed to one of the doors.
Before Audrey could speak for herself, a flash of blinding light struck her. She dropped to her knees, clasping her head. White-hot pain ripped through her, but her scream was muffled under the alarms. Some people moved to help, including Alex, but Mihail got there first, standing over her body with sudden, possessive violence.
“Nobody touches her,” he roared over the muttering, whipping out his gun and pointing it at everyone.
Images from Emerson’s memories streamed into her brain.
A woman dragged bodies from a burning building, bright blue flames reaching towards a yellow sky. She turned, showing the scar on her throat.
Cary.
Emerson watched her from a distance he never crossed.
Audrey tore herself out of the psychic flash with a strangled inhale, collapsed onto the floor, coughed on Emerson’s memories—and then passed out cold.
When she woke up,the world rotated.
Nikos and Mihail stood over her, impassive as death. A silent, wary exchange passed between them. The alarms still shrieked, flashing overhead.
Audrey swiveled her head around, looking for Alex’s familiar dark hair and eyes. But he had disappeared from the room. Whether he had run for assistance, been dragged out, or made a choice of his own, she had no way of knowing. Even if he had left to try and sort things out with the checkpoint officers—to save her from Ryker and Nepra—she had little hope it would work. He may have been trying to help, but as Mihail said, he might have triggered the current crisis they all found themselves in, whether inadvertently or not.
And he claimed to be her friend. She felt sick.
Alex didn’t matter now; Cary did, and every move Audrey made from here had to take her toward her sister, not back toward people who had already let her be used.
