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The trip to the Colony ship is devastatingly short. Five minutes is not enough time to express a lifetime of devotion. I would do anything for even thirty more seconds as the exterior of the Elite ship opens to allow us to dock. I am now in the belly of the beast, swallowed up by the evil I have spent my life fighting and undermining. They’ve won in the end. How strangely, sadly poetic.
Several guards are waiting for us. They take Dreamy immediately, snatching her out of my hands. It goes against every instinct I have to let her be taken from me, but I cannot ask my people to die for her, even if I would die a thousand times over.
The last view I have of her is her face turned back toward me. She is so serene, so peaceful. She always did know how to surrender to powers greater than herself.
“That’s it, is it?” I ask the Elite supervisor who has overseen the exchange. I’d like to break his neck, but not while the necks of my crew remain in a noose.
“We have an exchange,” the Elite tells me. “Someone who wishes to return to your ship.”
I am confused. Grief has made me stupid.
A door slides open, and the last person I ever expected to see walks out, a malicious little troll who has the nerve to smile at me.
“Zeki.”
I am emotionally jarred by the most painful loss of my life, and shocked to see this woman alive. There is a brief impulse to rejoice, but the circumstances are too suspicious, the look in her eye too malevolent. She’s dyed her hair brown. Is she trying to look more like Dreamy?
The Colony authority bows out. “We will leave you to your greetings. Depart as you will.”
“Thank you, Shans,” Zeki says. She speaks to him like an old friend. Like an ally. The Elite disappears, taking his soldiers with him, leaving Zeki and I alone in the transport bay.
“Zeki. You’re dead.”
I sound stupid.
“Of course, I’m not dead,” Zeki laughs. “I had to get off the ship to turn you in.”
“Why? What?”
The questions are so dull and simple, but that is because my mind is racing. Is it too late to get Dreamy back? Yes. This ship still has mine in its sights. This is Zeki’s fault. I don’t know how, but it is definitely her fucking fault.
Fortunately, like all assholes, she wants me to appreciate her brilliance, so she makes a full confession in the form of a brag.
“I’ve been working on this plan since you turned me down after our one-night stand. You got me out of your system quick, Shah. But I didn’t forget about being used. So yes, I had authorities waiting for us after you forced my hand by bringing that drone slut on board, and yes, I got shot. I had a pill in my tooth that sedated me almost immediately and mimicked death. You took me to the hospital, and from there I escaped the morgue.”
She lays her treachery out rapid fire, as if it is something she’s been dying to say to me for a long time. The self-satisfied smirk on her face is unbelievable.
“But we buried a body.”
“One meat sack flung into the sun is much like another,” Zeki says bitterly. “I really thought they’d kill you at the station, Shah. You run faster than I thought. I guess love gave you wings. You do love her, don’t you? The drone? You should know she’s being erased again. She won’t remember you. She’ll wake up back in her room, and she’ll go back to work.”
“What are you talking about, Zeki?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve made sure she was re-educated. The first time you met, I saw the way you looked at her when she brought you through to the rendezvous. I reported her then.”
“But she still found her way back to me.”
“It won’t happen again,” Zeki says. “And now that I’m miraculously alive, everyone will want you to be with me. Like it was supposed to be.”
I thought Zeki was high-spirited and intense. I did not know that she was outright crazy. She has been plotting against me for years, and if she was prepared to go out of her way to have Dreamy re-educated simply for looking at me, no wonder my other relationships have been fraught. This absolute psychopath has been doing her best to alienate me from every other female in the universe.
“Let me explain,” she says. “Because that stupid expression on your face is making you look about a thousand times less sexy than you are. I’ve been turning criminals in for years. I allowed you to become strong, Shah, because I needed a cover with true dominance. I was able to save my brother and keep you alive. You never appreciated what I did for you. You were arrogant and assumed all your victories were your own. You barely noticed the rest of us and what we brought to you.”
Her accusations are hurtful, but very possibly true. I did not see her betrayal coming. I did not feel it in my gut the way I should have. I was blinded by her relation to Malik and her desire for me. I assumed anybody who wanted me could be trusted. It was a foolish assumption.
Zeki has been playing at being an outlaw all this time, but she’s not really an outlaw. She’s a spy. She’s the darkness the Seer warned me about. I should kill her.
“What are you going to do, Shah? Malik will be so happy to see me. You’re not going to take his baby sister from him, are you?”
