Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 45266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 226(@200wpm)___ 181(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
“You weren’t a prisoner?” he asks.
Slowly, as though I’m moving through gel, I lower the tablet from where I’ve been studying it. “What makes you say that?” I hedge.
“You speak as though you weren’t one of them. Aria, Emery, and Molly were all prisoners on the transport. You weren’t.” He says it as though it’s a fact, not a question. My expression must confirm his thoughts, because a coolness comes over his. “What were you doing on the carrier?” he asks.
I consider lying. I don’t owe them anything and my position here is precarious as it is. I still don’t fully trust them after what they did to me, but I can already tell he wouldn’t believe me even if I was as convincing an actress as Aria had been. “I was, I am, a scientist. I was sent to Earth—er, Mortuus, to Exilium Penitentiary, to study the effects of the environment on a select group of test subjects. Or I would have, if I’d actually gotten to my destination.” Though, I don’t know how long ago exactly I was sent, how much time has passed, and why I got stuck in one of those cryotubes. I was supposed to go to the prison to do a job, not end up in the same predicament as them.
“You did this to us?”
The devastation and horror in the question has me spinning. Molly’s face is pure white and slack with shock. One of her hands grips the doorframe as though it’s the only thing keeping her upright.
“Molly—” I begin, but she holds up her other hand, which trembles.
“You were on the ship. You knew what was happening to us. You weren’t a prisoner and you were sent to experiment on us and you act like what happened to you”—she waves at my pregnant belly and shakes her head, scoffing—“wasn’t the same. What a hypocrite. My daughter was going to the prison to find me. Would you have experimented on her, too?”
Before I can make an argument—not that I can come up with one—Molly spins on her heel and races away.
I turn to Avrell and press a hand to my heated face. How had everything devolved so suddenly? “Did you know she was there?”
He doesn’t deny it. I’d underestimated him and I didn’t have a very high opinion of him in the first place. “She needs to know. What you don’t seem to understand—and I hope you do someday, truly—is that we’re a family here. We aren’t perfect. We make bad decisions, like anyone else, but we’d die for each other. We’d hurt for each other. We’d kill for each other. You’re a mother to one of our own and that deserves a certain amount of respect, but so did Molly. The information you have could help find her daughter.”
I simply shut down. After the night with Sayer and Jareth and now this with Molly, it’s too much. I let Avrell take my arm and lead me away like one of the prisoners I was supposed to study. Maybe a part of me even feels like I deserve it. Had I become so blind to the consequences of my work that I was willing to do whatever it took to be the best in my field? At the time it had felt like such an honor to be chosen. To be revered and touted as a savior of humankind, but at what cost?
If saving billions meant the life of one, was it still worth it?
Was that how these aliens had felt when they stole us from the ship?
They didn’t have any other choice.
At the time, it seemed like I didn’t either.
Did I?
Do I?
The dread grows as we near a door at the end of a hallway, but instead of lodging in my gut, it takes place in my heart.
Jareth and Sayer are going to be so disappointed.
They deserve so much better than me.
10
Sayer
“Uvie, check it again.”
She rattles off some numbers that has my spine straightening.
“Again, Uvie.”
The same.
Twenty-seven times and it’s all the same.
“Uvie, I need the commander and Theron. Now.”
She goes silent as I stare at my computer screen. The transmission pings to Mortuus. That means Willow is here. On Mortuus. It’s what we’d hoped for and now it’s confirmed. It’s not a close journey—one we wouldn’t be able to take by a terrainster—but close enough via the Mayvina and a few solars’ travel.
Sitting back in my chair, I stretch and sniff the air. I swear I can still scent her, clinging to the air wherever I go. It’s tempting and seriously wrecks my concentration. I close my eyes for a moment and reflect back to the crazed way we’d mated. In the back of my mind, my heart was ripping from my chest. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Jare.