Page 104 of In Your Light

Ciaran still hadn’t moved, and Hadeom glowered at him. “Now! He doesn’t have much time.”

Ciaran shot into action, helping Fyn. He picked up one of the small plastic-metal things. “This is a hard drive?” Ciaran asked. “It looks like a weird piece of Lego.”

Fyn shrugged. “I don’t know what Lego is. Or a hard drive.”

But they got them all into the case, while Hadeom loaded another case with what looked like strange guns and gadgets, then filled another case with dozens of small glass bottles.

Ciaran stopped to look at them. “I don’t wanna know what’s in those vials, do I?”

“Probably not,” Hadeom replied.

Then Sawyer made a strange, weak sound, half gasp, half groan.

Ciaran dropped what he was doing and rushed over to touch his chest, his neck. “Hadeom! Hadeom, he’s dying!”

“I know,” Hadeom said, pulling out another small silver box.

“Then do something!” Ciaran screamed. “Now!” He tapped Sawyer’s face. “Stay with me, Sawyer. Please, baby, stay with me. Open your eyes.”

Fyn couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

He couldn’t believe what was happening. What Cern and Hadeom knew would happen?

I need you to trust me. Trust me. Trust Cern.

Fyn clung to that trust. He had no other choice.

“He’s human,” Hadeom said, opening the silver box. He pulled out a frightening metal instrument. He took one of the glass tubes that Ciaran had called a vial, and slotted it into the metal instrument. “Humans aren’t meant to travel with me and survive.”

Ciaran looked up at Hadeom in a rage, and he roared, a bellow so painful, it made Fyn’s eyes water.

But then Ciaran noticed what Hadeom was holding, and he recoiled. “What are you doing?”

Hadeom strode over, holding the metal instrument. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

Then he thumped the metal instrument to Sawyer’s chest, and the contents of the vial emptied into Sawyer’s heart.

“Pick him up,” he said to Ciaran. “And do every single thing I say.”

Then Hadeom rushed back to Fyn and handed him the cases to hold. “We must hurry. And, Fyn?”

Fyn was almost too shocked to speak. “Yes?”

“Trust me, and trust that I love you.”

Fyn nodded. “Always.”

And then they were gone.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

FRAY

One minute, Ciaran, Sawyer, Hadeom, and Fyn were standing there, and the next they were gone.

The air had sucked in to a single point, Fray’s ears popped, and in the blink of an eye, they were just fucking gone.