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“Even when the other person protests.” Quinn depressed the needle so a tiny amount of clear liquid sprayed from the tip.

“Wait. No! No. No. No. No.” My voice grew shriller with each repetition of the word. I braced myself for the stab in my arm and pressed my eyes closed. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe everything would work out and the next thing I’d be aware of would be my own rescue.

But the needle never touched me. Had Quinn changed his mind?

“Is she okay?” Travis’s voice.

“Maybe she fainted?” Nicole.

“You stabbed him before he got her, didn’t you?” Travis again.

Warm fingers ran down the inside of my arm. Mason’s scent filled my nostrils. I opened my eyes.

The tension on Mason’s face melted, and he wiped away the moisture on his cheeks. I threw my arms around his neck as he lifted me, and I clung to him. I’d never been so out of control in my life. I hated that everyone watched me, but I couldn’t deny my feelings of relief and joy, seeing Mason and the others alive, or the hope that came with that knowledge.

“You found me,” I whispered into Mason’s shoulder.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

Heat trickled through my blood at the huskiness of his voice.

I pressed my mouth to his, not caring what the others thought. He responded eagerly then pulled back.

“How did you stop them?” I asked, noticing the two bots, heads down, red lights off.

“Your trick from the room,” he said, stroking my face. “We stabbed them behind their necks.”

Travis cleared his throat. “We have to get the others too.”

For the first time, I got a real look around beyond my would-have-been attackers. At least fifty med lab stasis beds were set up in perfectly symmetrical rows all around the central machinery on the catwalk. Many were occupied by unmoving passengers.

I gasped and fought back the surge of nausea in my stomach. People were laid out like corpses, each with eyes closed, if I hadn’t known better, peacefully. But I did know better. I had firsthand knowledge of what they went through to get to that stage: absolute helplessness and terror.

Mason set me down, and I moved toward the closest occupied table. Alyssa’s pale face lay like sleeping beauty, framed by an arc of dark hair. I swallowed and reached a shaky hand through the energy field surrounding her.

Her skin was warm. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “How do we wake her up?” I asked. “We need Dr. Doyle.”

It was Nicole who answered me, pointing to a bed across the way. “Too bad we can’t ask him to wake himself up.”

My stomach dropped as I took in the faces, some familiar, some not, in the occupied chambers. Dr. Doyle, Alyssa, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and…

“Dad, no!” I screamed, running for his side. “We have to get him out of there. Now.” I pressed the back of my hand to his temple and bit my bottom lip hard.

“Get it together,” Nicole said, smacking Mason’s hand away from her arm and sauntering over to me. “You don’t see Mason and I falling apart because our parents are here.”

I sniffed, looking up at the girl before me, her face chalky in the low light. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“You don’t know me,” she spit back. “I’m not a robot. I have feelings. But I also understand this situation is serious and that we have to keep it under control or we’re not going to make it. Right now, you are a liability to our survival. So get it together or I’m putting you back into stasis myself.”

“Nicole!” Mason spun her around, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“No,” I said, wiping at my face. “She’s right.” Our situation was dire, but if I had any hope of making it out alive and saving those we loved, I had to keep it together. Now wasn’t the time to be the damsel in distress. It was time to put my tech brain to use and outsmart the AI and its bots.

Mason released his sister, shocked. The corners of Nicole’s mouth quirked upward with clear approval.

Travis watched us all with intense eyes. “Let’s wake them.”

“No.” I drew a deep breath and let it out. “We need to get out of here. We don’t know how long it will be before more of those things come to see what’s going on. Or worse yet, bring more people down here to drug and put into stasis. If you guys had been a second later, I’d be among them.” I shuddered. “We need to put a stop to this before more people suffer that way.”