“...Kat had her fun first...then Ryker...”
“...gets in their head...they go insane…body shuts down...”
Audrey’s skin crawled. Then a full sentence broke through the language barrier, clear as a scream: “I watched him stare at a Hunter until the man ripped his own eyes out.”
No one laughed.
Ryker. The man they were talking about was Ryker, she was sure of it.
“Did he survive?” Nassar asked.
“He incinerated him.”
Silence. A sick, satisfied sort of silence.
Then: “He must want the pretty little Voírían one real bad...”
“...Simas...”
“...can’t trust her...fucking the Hunter...”
“...they’ll hang that cunt on the wall...”
Audrey pressed both hands over her mouth. She hugged Cary’s jacket around her shoulders. Ryker’s voice still lived in her nightmares. The way he’d slipped into Audrey’s mind like a shadow wearing her skin. It made sense now why her mother had wanted her dead rather than let him have her.
She wasn’t prey or innocent. She wasn’t even human by their standards; she was a weapon. Mihail had called her a monster. It wasn’t the first time she’d been called such a thing.
You’re a monster, the judge had said the day they sentenced her for killing her family.
Monster, monster, monster.
The word soothed her now like a cold hand across a fevered brow. Better monster than victim. Better beast than burned. If Ryker thought he could peel her open like he had those Hunters, he was wrong. She wasn’t going to break. And if Ryker was the monster at the center of this system, then she would go through him to escape it.
A slight grin spread across her face. Let him take her to Home Field. Let him try to break her. She would be waiting, and not to die quietly or to beg—but to hear him scream.
If she couldn’t kill him, she would make him bleed. If she couldn’t make him bleed, she would make him afraid. And in the confusion that followed, she would find Emerson and tear the truth about Cary out of him.
Sure, maybe she would die on Ryker’s wall.
Fine.
But she’d drag him into hell with her. She’d already lived there long enough.
Audrey stared into the dark and pictured her plan.
The Separatists wanted to force her to do their bidding, but she would not die on this moon as a piece of property. She was already gathering what she needed, putting together tools fromscraps and opportunity—her mind mapping out routines and every careless word.
Outside her door, someone paused.
“Move her in eight hours,” a voice said. “Home Field wants to see what she can do before they decide.”
The implications churned inside Audrey’s stomach like a sickness.
But she clenched her fists around her makeshift weapons, steeling herself.
If Home Field was the place they brought people to be sorted and tested, then Audrey would make sure it was also the place where their system finally split open.
22
