Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
At that point the elevator-tube finally came to a stop and the door slid open. Outside there was a huge, dark space filled with the deep hum of heavy equipment working. Molly stepped out and Torus was right behind her, carrying the duffle.
“Wow, this is amazing…” Molly looked around at the humming machinery.
“We are in the bowels of the ship,” Commander Torus explained. “This is where the energy collected from the artificial green sun that powers the Mother Ship is turned into other forms of power. And I think the ablation field is this way.”
He turned right and Molly hurried to keep up with him.
“Stay close to me,” Torus rumbled, looking down at her. “I’ve never actually been down here so I’m not sure if it’s completely safe. In fact, maybe you’d better hold my hand.”
He held out one massive hand and Molly slipped her own hand into it at once. Torus entwined their fingers and gave her a comforting squeeze.
“Good, let’s keep going.”
It seemed strange to be holding hands with her boss as they walked through the rows and rows of huge machines, but Molly felt secure with the Giant Kindred. It occurred to her that she wouldn’t have felt safe going into a dark, empty, unknown space with a human guy. She would have been afraid that she might get raped or murdered or both.
But she didn’t feel like Commander Torus was a threat—because he wasn’t. The Kindred were different, she thought. She’d never heard of a Kindred warrior hurting or raping a woman because they didn’t. Lana had told her that they called men who hurt or raped women “Broken Ones” and apparently if any Kindred showed those kinds of tendencies, they were executed or at the very least locked up for life.
Finally they reached a wall that was bisected horizontally by a long metal ledge. There were signs in the Kindred language that took Molly a moment to read. Thanks to the shot of Translation Bacteria she’d been given when she first came aboard the Mother Ship, the alien script soon resolved into English.
“Warning—Ablation Field behind these doors. DO NOT ENTER!” she read aloud. “Wow!” She looked up at Commander Torus. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“As long as you don’t put any part of your body into the field, you’ll be fine,” he told her. “Come on.”
Stepping forward, he pushed a button on the wall beside the warning sign. A loud alarm sounded—beep-beep-beep!—and a moment later the top half of the door slid upwards revealing a brilliant blue-white light inside the enclosed space.
Quickly, Commander Torus reached for a pair of safety goggles hanging on a hook beside the door and handed them to Molly.
“Here—we should have put these on before,” he rumbled, getting another pair for himself.
Molly put on the dark goggles and was able to look at the bright light without being blinded.
“How do we do this?” she asked.
“Like this.” Commander Torus unfastened the silver duffle bag and reached inside. Pulling out a heavy computer tower, he stepped up to the metal shelf and tossed it into the field of blue-white light.
At once, the computer tower was pulverized—it looked to Molly like a giant invisible hand was crushing it. Then abruptly it flew apart into what looked like a million teeny-tiny pieces—no bigger than gnats. A moment after that, all the gnats winked out of existence and there was nothing but the blue-white light again.
“Whoa!” she breathed, her eyes going wide behind the goggles. “That’s amazing! Is it gone completely? I mean, is there nothing left at all?”
“The ablation field destroys anything that enters it and then atomizes the remains,” Commander Torus told her. “So no—there’s nothing left. Would you like to throw something in?”
“Yes, please!” Molly reached into the duffle bag, looking for something small. What she found was Zach’s cell-phone—a golden iPhone with diamonds around the edges—she knew he had paid a pretty penny for it. Also, all his contacts and notes were in here. It was really going to hurt him to lose it permanently, she thought.
Feeling a surge of satisfaction, she hurled the expensive phone into the ablation field and watched it get pulverized and then atomized in a matter of seconds.
Commander Torus threw something else in too and then Molly reached for another piece of tech. Before she knew it, both of them were hurling the expensive gadgets into the brilliant blue-white light with reckless abandon. It surprised and delighted her to see that her big boss seemed to take as much pleasure as she did in destroying Zach’s most precious possessions.
“God, that felt good!” she exclaimed, when the last bit of tech had been pulverized and atomized. “He ruined my life for so many years and I’ve never—not even once—had a chance to get back at him!” She looked up at Commander Torus. “Not until today, and you made it possible.”