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I tensed up and nodded, swallowing hard. I would kill him. I would rip his fucking balls off. “I’m dying, Cade. There’s nothing I can do, right?”
A long pause seemed to make the alarms sound louder and more threatening. “Permanent Black initiated. T-minus eight minutes.”
“Please!” I screamed loud enough for Talis to hear me. It was so loud Cade rolled back and crashed into some loose items. “Just let me go, and you can have me in any position that you want.”
He showed off a wild grin. Lowering his hand, he traced his finger across the curves of my stomach, moving toward my locked hands. In his other hand was the control tablet. All he had to do was press the button, and I’d be free to hit the fire safety.
“How dumb do you think I am?” he asked, holding the tablet near my face.
In that moment, everything slowed down. Everything. For the first time on this journey, time and space had finally collided in the most perfectly imperfect way possible.
Just as he was about to take complete control, I heard the frightening sound of a beast roar from below. Talis wasn’t dead. He was alive!
Cade darted back, furiously frightened. To make matters worse for him, the ship’s magnetization had been shut off, and I had managed to unsew the skin that housed the small magnetic chip. My wrists were no longer a problem for me.
Darting around, I kicked him in the groin, driving forward until I felt his spine hit the wall. Without wasting a second, I pulled on the fire safety and blasts of gas came shooting from the walls and ceiling, along with a mixture of soap and water. A stream sprayed directly into his eyes as the gravity came back on in the shuttle.
Cade and I slammed against the corner of the room with me on top of him. He heaved in breaths of air, but he could hardly move. I had the upper hand. There was more I should have done to him but I didn’t waste any time.
I ran from that room, slamming my palm against the door lock before skidding around the corner. I just barely caught sight of the door sliding shut behind me. “Good night, Cade. Good night Project Onyx. Goodbye, cruel and distant moon. May you all burn in Hell.”
The ship’s energy source was going berserk. Cade’s scream burned in my ears. From my position, I could hear the engines fire up, but it wasn’t enough power. “Talis!” I cried. “It’s okay! I’m alive! Talis!”
“Permanent Black initiated. T-minus five minutes.”
Condensation had drenched the ship. I walked through the cold air, stepping into small puddles along the way. The alarms had turned off, but the occasional light flashed as the last of the ship’s power cells had finally stopped producing.
I reached the control center and typed the failsafe code in. The air was getting thin, and I was having trouble seeing straight.
Error.
There was no time left. I felt short of breath. I smacked the computer and screamed, “Come on!”
I typed the code in again, eyeing each specific letter and number in the combination. I was sure it was the right code.
Error. Error. Error.
I stood up and checked behind the row of computers. Cables twisted and hooked into their respective plugs. Everything looked like it was in place.
I grabbed the keyboard once more and went to the last mode of turning on the emergency power, “Starship T1-95 Pandorum, turn on the emergency engines!” I screamed.
“Invalid command. Intruder alert. Permanent Black has been initiated. T-Minus three minutes until detonation.”
“Fuck. That son of a bitch,” I punched the top of the screen and fell over, clutching my stomach. Something else was happening. As I hunched to try and find a position that didn’t cause me such great discomfort, my water broke.
I felt a quick popping sensation follow a flood of wetness. My eyes widened and my body stiffened, but the pain that followed was like nothing I had ever experienced. I had no idea what I was doing, but I lowered my body to the floor and breathed.
I rolled over onto my back and felt my child move against one side of my womb, claws digging into the membrane. Air caught against the back of my throat, but I let out a choked cry. “Talis!”
She was coming. Our baby was fucking coming, and I had two minutes to get out of this ship. I had achieved a lot of things in my life, but the odds of pulling through this were completely against me.
That wasn’t the only one who was coming either. Dropping down from the vents above, Cade fell to the floor. His breathing was heavy, and there were massive contusions on his flesh. He rose pointing a gun. A few of his fingers were frozen to the core, turned black and ready to be dissected.
“You fucking... whore!”
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “Why can’t you let me go?”
His fingers gripped down the trigger tighter. Tears ran down his sullied face. “Because you brought life into a lifeless place,” he muttered.
