“Something approaches.”
Iax’s gravelly words snapped her attention back to him. His gaze remained on the storm, but a thoughtful furrow puckered his brow.
Her heart thumped twice as hard. “What do you mean by ‘something’?” A surface vehicle? Or a ship? Was someone here to take her away from this bizarre waiting period?
The thought created a dual sensation in her chest, one that both rejoiced at being rescued and another that tugged her insides, rebelling that Iax might get in trouble for being here.
Trouble. What would that even entail? What would the CORE government do to a rogue Calypson?
Her throat clicked in a dry swallow.
“They are primitive creatures,” he finally replied.
A swooping sensation took over her insides, making the floor feel like it disappeared from beneath her feet. Only one type of primitive creature survived in this area.
Her vision blurred as she focused on where he stared. He couldn’t mean the beasts because they’d been captured and taken far away, to one of the wildlife reserves on the coast of New Asia. Scientists had either kept them alive for study or put them down. She hadn’t cared which.
But two dark shadows formed in the distance. The smudges solidified into slender shapes as they neared, contrasting against the white of the snow.
Terror weakened her arms and legs. “No,” she whispered. “Not possible.”
The beasts were back.
The urge to scream welled in her throat. Why were they back?
They prowled forward, their shoulders as tall as her chest, snow coating their spines. Tongues lolled out of their mouths, dripping strings of saliva into the wind.
Her breaths shortened; her heart pounded between her ears.
The view tilted. Wynn braced her hands against the terminal to remain upright and focused on the readout in front of her. There were two of them instead of four. Why were there only two of them? She tried to take a deeper breath so she wouldn’t pass out.
Out of the corner of her eye, Iax stepped toward her, his arms lifting like he thought he might need to catch her. She shook her head, then met his gaze.
“Why?” she whispered, not even understanding what she was asking.
His arms lowered. “These creatures distress you?”
Distress. She almost laughed at the word, but nodded over and over again. There was nothing more terrifying than those beasts, even being locked up with a Calypson for days. She’d seen what those beasts could do, up close and personal.
All the images she’d tried to erase since Foster’s death resurfaced: The four beasts circling them while they were in the field, of Foster sacrificing himself so she could make it back to the outpost, of how they’d dragged his body to the door like some sort of sick sacrifice, then ate him in frontof her like they’d known how much that would disturb her, how much it would fuck her up.
She could hear his screams when she closed her eyes at night.
Iax turned his body toward the window. “I will converse with them.” He grabbed his glasses and jacket, then shrugged the garment over his shoulders as he left the lab.
What?
Her lungs froze. His words didn’t settle fully in her mind until the decontamination door opened and closed.
She blinked once, then twice, then ran after him in time to see the back of his jacket disappear around the edge of the building.
“No,” she choked, a new well of panic rising in her chest to strangle her throat.
On soupy legs, she stumbled back toward the lab until she fell against the terminal. Her eyes scanned the horizon for any signs of the beasts, but in the time it had taken her to follow Iax, they’d disappeared.
Her hands flexed and clenched against the slick surface of the terminal while the landscape stayed disturbingly empty, filled only with blowing snow.
Iax rounded the corner of the building, boots crunching in the ice that had formed over the mud. Snow covered his head, and his jacket whipped about his legs.No UV-suit. His first bout of radiation sickness hadn’t been enough? He’d almost died, his skin trying to melt away from his body, and he wanted to repeat the experience?
