“You did fine. It’s an easy fix,” Ronnie told him, opening herkit.
The ground shook then and we all froze. He was back on themove.
Stepping into the open doorway, I peeked out to see the giant running toward us. About a third of his arm had already grownback.
Holy shit. What kind of nightmare creature can grow back an arm in anhour?
One good thing was that he was too big to fit through the doorway, but he was definitely big enough to rip this building apart. Not such a goodthing.
I was just about to bark orders when I heard a hissing noise behindme.
The hairs on my arms stood as I spun around with my lightscope.
Ohhell.
Standing in the open doorway to the hallway was a female sentry, her belly swollen with undelivered eggs. Her lips peeled back and she launched herself forward before I could even blink. She was headed right for Maxine. Wanting to avoid making too much noise and luring the giant to us, I dropped my gun and pulled my glowing blue blades. Stepping in front of Ronnie and Maxine, I positioned myself to protect them. When the female got within two feet of me, the plasma cuff shot out, creating ashield.
She slammed against it, knocking backward just as Brisk’s bullets tore intoher.
Grunts started to pour out of the hallway and into our room then. New spawn, freshly hatched and hungry. This was obviously a breeding home, containing probably multiple females and hundreds of eggs. It was the absolute worst place we could have soughtshelter.
Nox lit his blowtorch, spraying in a wide arc to keep the new gruntsback.
“Kit Steele,” the female on the ground said, grinning. Her teeth were dripping with saliva. Even as bullets tore into her, an honest-to-God grin still covered her heinousface.
Then she put out her hand and made a fist, raising it into the air. A headache the size of Texas slammed into me and I collapsed to the ground breathless. My senses went crazy in that moment. I couldn’t see normally, my line of sight filled with what looked like only heat vision, and my nose was picking up a dozen scents, the most prominent of which was Maxine’sblood.
Kill, kill, kill.The voice was my own, but the thoughts horrifiedme.
“No!” I whimpered, curling in a ball on the ground. Knowledge slammed into me then, threatening to split my brain wide open. I knew things. Things I shouldn’t know. These females controlled everything. Not the male sentries. We were wrong. The women were in charge. They were the ones who retaliated and sent our bodies back to different beds and countries. They had… gifts. Mental telepathy and projection, heat vision, mass consciousness tampering, reality tampering—the list wenton.
I couldn’t breathe, both from the assault on my senses and from the sudden realization that we were so verymisinformed.
Opening my eyes, I saw my normal vision had returned. The female was staring wide-eyed at me, and everything became clear in that moment. She’d tried to hurt me, to mentally connect with me so she could make me do things against my will, like kill my friends. But she’d encountered my own gift and it had backfired. Now we were stuck,connected.
Kill yourself,my own voice said inside my head, and I started to cry. I didn’t know how to make itstop.
A smell hit me then, the familiar scent of sandalwood incense and lotus blossomtea.
‘MasterAki.’
‘Hello, Kit.’His voice inside my head was like a balm, soothing the frayed edges of myinsanity.
‘Help,’I asked him. I didn’t know where he was or how this was happening, but I needed my master’sguidance.
My mind was suddenly flooded with a bright white light, and Master Aki’s voice was so loud I thought he was there with me inside the room. ‘Your strongest ability is not your muscles or your guns. It’s yourmind.’
Cryptic bastard was going to get mekilled.
I grabbed the sides of my head and screamed, pushing all of that white light outward, into everything andeveryone.
The collective whining of aliens had my eyelids snapping open. Every single grunt was on the floor holding their heads, and my mind was amazingly clear. The headache was gone, along with the voice inside myhead.
“Kill her!” I shouted, and Nox lowered his torch to the injured female. A dull throbbing started at the base of my skull when she tried to fight back, but then it was gone as she burst intoflames.
“We need to get the hell out of here!” I told myteam.
I had no idea what the hell had just happened or how, but I was pretty sure I’d just jumped into that female’s mind, and knowing she could hurt me like that wasterrifying.
