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“He was lying!” Lucca called back, turning another corner. Her lungs burned with exertion. “I would never betray any of you!”
“There she is.”
“Shitshitshit,” she hissed before slamming face-first into a silver wall. “Fuuuck—shit,” she whined in a nasal voice, clasping her nose.
Her pursuers scrambled after her so loudly that she practically jumped out of her skin.
Then she was thrown into a bright hallway. She hit the floor hard as Zoramia landed on top of her. Suffocating weight, unforgiving shell, thrashing, violent tail, and those terrifying barbs—Zoramia overwhelmed her, hurting her in the process. This was the same person who’d fought a mob of Ternetzis to save her—and now she’d come to kill her!
Lucca tried to shield her head but Zoramia was brutal as shit.
“How dare you! After we trusted you—after everything—how fuckingdareyou?”
“He was lying,” Lucca gasped.
Something hot and sharp sunk into her thigh. It quickened through her blood like lightning, debilitating her in an instant.
She felt her lungs closing in.
Footsteps pounded over the floor. Humans, aliens… they all came to watch Zoramia demolish her. It was never a contest. The surrounding action turned slow and woozy and Lucca realized she was paralyzed.
Her chest spasmed with the effort required to breathe. She felt herself losing even that function.
One distorted heartbeat passed. Then she blacked out.
CHAPTER27
CALIGHER
“Cal.”
He heard her voice, thrumming through the frame of the dark mothership, calling to him… It kicked his body into action—blood and oxygen circulating with renewed purpose.
Awake.
Was she looking for him? Even after everything?
She’d never find him.
Caligher was a prisoner in a tiny ship hovering somewhere in the distance. She was out of reach.
But hefelther.
His molting was not going smoothly. The old shell had fallen off, chip by chip like pieces of broken glass. It was scattered around him—but the one underneath wasn’t hardening correctly. His skin was currently as soft as a human’s. He wasn’t space-tight and would be useless in even the simplest of fights.
Every worst nightmare combined was happening to him and he knew it was his fault—but at least Lucca was alive. He could sense her moving around in the universe. He could feel her heartbeat and rhythms.
It was a tremendous comfort to know she was there, like everything could go wrong but things would be—he didn’t know how else to describe it—things would beokay.
Caligher was in pieces but he was at peace with the outcome as long as Lucca lived.
And he could do more than lie there and take it.
Lucca was his link to her ship. He felt the environment around her, the flow of spark, the pulses and waves that sent information across the void. He was as connected to that ship as he would have been had they let him on board.
Caligher teetered between lucidity and a trance-like astral slumber. In his waking dreams, he worked his way through the spaceship’s systems. A burst of power here and there went a long way down the line.
I was always listening,he tried to tell her, trusting that she would hear him. Trusting that they spoke one language when it mattered. Even when they couldn’t speak at all.
