"But the boss says he's got the biolock from Webb. Her blood's just as good as his."
Krix snorted. "If she's really his kid."
"We tested it. It's a match."
He whistled, low and appreciative. "No shit. Nice."
Her hands started shaking. They'd tested her blood. Really? The thought of them taking samples while she was unconscious, analyzing her DNA without her knowledge, cataloging her genetic markers like she was livestock made bile rise in her throat.
"And she squealed. We're going to unlock the biolock when we get back to base. Three more days until we're millionaires."
"Isn't it a dead-man's lock?" Stevn asked.
"Do you care?"
The cruelty in Krix's voice made her blood run cold. Everyone knew exactly what extracting a dead-man's biolock meant. It wasn't called that because you needed to be dead to set it up.
It was called that because you had to be dead to open it.
Every drop of blood in her body would be used as a key, drained out slowly while machines analyzed each cell for the genetic markers hidden inside. The process took hours. Sometimes days, if the biolock was particularly complex. You were alive for most of it.
They were going to kill her to try and find her father's treasure.
Someone called their names from farther down the corridor. Their footsteps faded, leaving her alone with the terrible knowledge that she had three days to live.
The rag fell from nerveless fingers. She pressed her back against the wall, legs suddenly unable to hold her weight. Her vision tunneled, black spots dancing at the edges.
Rage replaced fear. Pure, incandescent fury at the universe for this cosmic joke. At her father for making her useful in death when he'd never bothered to make her useful in life. At Horris and his crew for their greed, for treating murder like a minor inconvenience on the path to profit.
But most of all at Zane and his tactical training and his patient waiting for the perfect moment.
She'd followed his plan, all right. She'd been good and obedient and played the broken prisoner. She'd waited for her moment.
And when they were draining her blood out drop by drop, when she was dying slowly on some filthy med table in a pirate base, she'd make sure he knew exactly how brilliant his advice had been.
8
Zane sat on the narrow bench, counting his breaths to keep the neuro-cuffs from detecting his mounting fury. Each inhale brought the stale recycled air that tasted of desperation and decay. Each exhale carried away another fragment of his carefully maintained control.
Mercy had been gone for hours. Cleaning. On her knees, scrubbing floors for pirates who were probably going to murder them.
The cuffs buzzed against his wrists, sensors tracking his neural patterns. One spike of aggression, one moment of lost control, and they'd scramble his brain into soup. He needed to keep his head clear.
He heard footsteps in the corridor, and his head snapped up. Too light for the guards. Too quick for casual patrol.
Mercy stumbled through the energy field when it dropped, and he took in every new injury in an instant. Scraped knees. Chemical burns on her fingers. Fresh bruises layering over old ones. But it was the expression on her face that made his dragon snarl against its chains.
She was pissed.
"These motherfuckers. Fucking assholes!" She whirled on him, green eyes blazing. "And you!"
"Me?" The word came out steadier than he felt. Already, the cuffs were warming, responding to his elevated heartrate.
"Just bide our time, just wait it out." Her voice cracked with bitter fury. "Guess what, Zane, we don't have time."
He forced his breathing to slow, forced his muscles to relax. The dragon wanted to grab her, shake answers from her, then burn the entire ship to ash for whatever had put that look in her eyes. But the cuffs would kill him before he could take a single step.
"What are you talking about?" He kept his voice level, conversational. Like discussing navigation routes over morning coffee. "What's changed?"
