Loyalty scan.
I’m not loyal to my father.My heart rate increases. I have no way to know how such a thing could even be detected. The bar chart rises into the red, dancing higher as a timer ticks down. I want to pull away, protect my hand, but I don’t. I want Elix back. This is how I do it. I can’t run through thirty men and live to talk about it.
It hits zero, and I wince in anticipation of the result.
The door clunks and locks disengage, slowly opening to the cavern. I step backward, rubbing my wrist, grateful I still have my hand and my life.
Cazir’s men fall in line behind my brother.
I watch in disgust as my father’s treasure room opens to someone I once loved who now loves all the gold, tech, and weapons more than me. The men squeeze in closer for a better look.
I wish I was invisible, that I could just vanish and slip through the cracks in their security system. I wish I wasn’t here. I don’t want the gold that they gawk at, the augments, the missiles, any of it.
I need to find Elix.
With the men distracted, I keep my steps silent as the dust-churned air fills the space between us, hiding me, and then I turn and run.
“Hey! Where’d she go?”
Rust-brown clouds swirl behind me as I sprint toward the hangar.
Please be there. Please be alive.
I snatch up a rifle from a downed guard not smart enough to listen to me and duck during the arrow ordeal. As I run, I check the ammo and familiarize myself with the rifle’s three-round burst and safety switch. It’s what Elix would want me to do.
The only treasure I care about now is the one I can lose forever, the one that can’t be replaced.
30: Elix
The men drag me off of the ship and down a long hallway behind Zariah. I can’t move. I’m still processing the cobra’s venom. My gland is on fire, fighting like it does when I’ve picked up a serious illness.
They drop my body in the hallway, and I see Zariah working on the puzzle. I hope she solves it. I hope she’s smart enough to survive. I pray to the stars that she can get out of this place. I’m too weak to speak, though the urge to cry out to her tenses my throat.
“You guys are late,” someone says from down the hallway.
“She gave us some trouble. Venom didn’t kill this one. Hey, you’re not one of—”
Two quiet pops drop my guards. Someone else picks up my body and drags me down the dirt hallway deep into the planet. It feels like an hour passes before I get a sign of something other than tunnel walls, but my perception is likely off because of the venom.
The man lugs me toward the sounds of heavy bass trance music. Colorful lights glint off the metal floor that pulses with the beat. People and aliens dance around us, bouncing and laughing, not one of them noticing me.
I’m dropped in a private room. A door shuts and closes out most of the noise. The floor against my cheek is cold, marble tile. It reeks of bleach. In the grout, I notice stains that carry the faint scent of iron.
Someone else finally walks in. “How is he not dead? Cobra venom?”
“Lazariot, sir.”
“Hmm. Really?” A hand rolls me onto my back.
I barely get a glimpse of his face amid the hazy patches in my vision, but I know exactly who he is the moment I do. There’s no recognition on his pinched face. The hatred that surges in my core fills me with a worse feeling than the venom.
“Get a collar. We’ll make use of his serum. Plenty of junkies will pay top credits down here.”
“He came in with your daughter,” the guard says, snapping a thick metal band around my neck.
“What did you just say?”
“Cazir returned with these two. She made it into the vault.”
