She swallowed hard.Her throat was dry, her heart still racing.But something in his certainty sparked a tiny ember of defiance in her chest.
She was Emily freaking Evans.She'd survived twenty-eight years of Miranda Evans.
She could certainly handle a room full of fussy alien beauticians.
"Everyone," she said.
Her voice came out thin and wispy.The attendants didn't even look up.
"Everyone," she tried again, louder this time."I need you to?—"
Nothing.They kept adjusting, smoothing, pinning.
The panic clawed at her again, and this time her voice cracked entirely."Please, I just need a minute, I?—"
Raaevik moved.
He straightened to his full height, all seven feet of hard muscle and violence, and his voice snapped through the room like a thunderclap.
"OUT."
The word wasn't loud.It didn't need to be.Every attendant in the room froze.
"Now," Raaevik added, his tone deadly soft.
They scattered, brushes clattering to the floor.The door hissed open, and they poured through it, moving with the speed of people who had just realized they were in the presence of a predator.
In five seconds, the room was empty.
The silence was deafening.
Standing in the center of the space, wrapped in silk worth a fortune, she stared at the closed door.Her ears rang, and her hands trembled, but she could breathe.
She rubbed at her upper arm absently.The skin where the patches had been felt normal.No mark, no residue.Nothing to show that anything had been there at all, which somehow made it worse.
"What did they put on me?"
Raaevik's gaze dropped to where her fingers were pressing into her arm."A biotic.Standard immunization against anything aboard the station that your body hasn't encountered.And a neuro-translator."
"A what?"
"It will allow you to understand Latharian common speech.And most other languages used aboard."
She stared at him."They put something in my brain.Without asking."
He didn't flinch."Yes."
"And you didn't stop them."
"It is standard procedure for all?—"
"Standard procedure."She laughed, and it came out high and brittle."Someone put something in my brain that will change how I think, and it's standard procedure."
"It changes how you hear.Not how you think."
She opened her mouth to fire back, but the correction was so matter-of-fact, so devoid of condescension, that it took the wind out of her sails.She rubbed at her arm again.The skin was smooth.Unmarked.As though nothing had happened.
Story of her life today.
