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Then the entourage continues away out the door and down the corridor.
And then I’m alone in the large room, empty except for the Draci left to stand guard.
“You saw First?” I call out to her across the room. “How did he look? Is he okay?”
The Draci looks my direction and away again, which is when I realize I’m speaking English. Crap. I seem to understand Draci now, since my mini-transformation, but I have no clue how to speak it.
“Thraxahenashuash,” I say, impressed that I remembered his full name. It gets the Draci woman’s attention because she looks my way again. I repeat his name but since I can’t say anything else, she grows bored with me and her gaze drifts away.
I slam the bars of my cage in frustration. This is ridiculous. How did First get here? Did he figure out they took me? He had to or else why would he be here? Did he come to rescue me or is this really about challenging Commander X for the leadership of the Resistance—or is it both? But seriously, how did he get here?
And how does he think he’ll beat Commander X? The females are slightly smaller than male Draci—but First is a hybrid human-Draci, and far smaller than Commander X now. Not to mention that when I left him, his wings were all mangled.
But if he’s here, that has to mean he’s been healed. Did he somehow make it to the ridge—? Did he find the medical device?
My head is still spinning with questions when the Draci guarding me seems to take an interest in me again. She abandons her post by the door and walks my way.
Instinctually, I scramble to the back of the cage, getting momentarily snagged on my own wings.
She holds out a hand. “Do not be afraid.”
I can’t help raising an eyebrow.
“Quiet,” she says in her language, even though I didn’t say a thing. I’m absolutely paying attention, a good thing because she continues on rapidly as she bends down with one of the devices used to lock me in this cage.
“I have been thinking,” she says. “Most likely Thraxahenashuash will be defeated, and the Commander will continue on her doomed mission and we will all die.”
“Well, if you think that—”
“I cannot understand your gibberish,” the Draci says, reaching for something in a utility belt she wears.
“Do you see how I am left behind? I am barely above the lowest class. But if I help you and you succeed, you can remember me to King Shak. I am Visaruth, daughter of Glissakikak. Remember me to him.”
She pulls out a small handheld device and holds it up to my cage. Is that a key? She looks me in the eye. “Say my name.”
I blink and nod rapidly. “Yes, yes, I’ll remember you. Visaki—”
“Visaruth,” she corrects.
“Visaruth,” I repeat.
She nods. “I will lead you out.”
If she is willing to not only free me but lead me out of this maze-like spaceship, I will tell Shak all about her. It is fine with me if this Draci’s ambition aligns with my needs. I have no idea if there is anything I can do to help First, but being locked up in a cage is doing me no favors.
“This way. Hurry.” She takes me not through the large door that everyone else had exited through, but out a very small door on the opposite side of the room. I cleared it just fine, but she had to duck down. It was a backdoor to a maintenance room.
If I thought the metal was in bad shape in the room I was in before, it is nothing to this back room. Whatever metal it was didn’t rust per se, but some similar process occurred to it as it flaked and turned a strange black color that seemed a symptom of age. Both Visaruth and I have to scrunch and angle ourselves oddly to fit past the machinery and pipes.
After squeezing past a wall of industrialized alien machinery, we finally come to a ladder that leads to a platform above another large cluster of strange machinery. Visaruth is nimble as she scampers across the platform—not that there are any handrails or anything.
I approach and attempt to be as fearless as her. But as I’m halfway across the platform, I make the terrible mistake of looking down. Machinery hums and spins at incredible speeds below me, an immense engine. If I fell, I would be devoured in an instant in the churning metal.
I let out the slightest squeak, and manage to unfreeze my limbs just enough to drop to my hands and knees. Then I scamper the rest of the way across, my wings out to help with my balance.
Visaruth is waiting impatiently at the bottom of another ladder for me. She opens a latch and we squirm through, only to get to another room that seems like an exact replica of the one we’d just gone through. Up another ladder and more squirming across terrifying platforms, and then another two rooms and more squeezing through spaces barely large enough for Visaruth and me to get by.
