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I looked up and down the bay of doors, hiding other humans behind them. When I tiptoed into the hallway, I touched one of those panels. Each was lit with a purple light. It didn’t open for me, but when I knocked, it opened from the inside.
There, in the room beside mine, Kenosi blinked. “It opens?”
I nodded, every bit as shocked as he was. Normally, when you kidnapped people, you didn’t let them have free rein to explore their cage.
Of course, where the fuck were we going to go? We were on an alien planet with no help and no way off. We could take off running into the jungle, sure, but that seemed like a profoundly bad idea before we got our bearings.
Kenosi frowned, stepping out into the hall, then back into his room, like he expected someone to shove him back in. When he looked at me again, he shrugged, moving over to try and get the others out, banging on doors when they didn’t seem to hear us talking.
As the rest of the humans joined us, I wandered down the hall on the balls of my feet. There was what looked like another set of showers. Maybe even a bathroom, by god! Though nothing like any I’d ever seen.
When I crept to the edge of the hall, down toward where I’d seen the glowing lights earlier, I froze.
This was where all the big blue guys had gone, fiddling with tubes and panels and boards that I didn’t understand. One looked up at me, his eyes narrowed under the sharp line of his black brows, but he dismissed me just as soon as he’d seen me and got back to work.
On the far side of the room, it looked like there were windows. And if big blue didn’t give a shit where I was, I wanted to see what was out there.
Only a hand caught me from behind, and I stumbled back into the marble form of a seven-foot-tall alien.
“Where are you going?” he demanded, his low voice sending a shiver right down my spine as I flinched under his grip.
Staring forward, I swallowed hard, and chanced a look at him over my shoulder. It was the alien from before, the one who looked more human than the rest, but stood behind Crux’s shoulder as often as not. Shit, I was in trouble.
“I—I just wanted a look around.”
CHAPTER4
VORIAN
Look around?
The tiny human had been taken from his home planet, shoved in a cargo ship, and now given a cell that could generously be called a box. The cells were smaller than my own quarters—I couldn’t even lie down in one without bending either my neck or my knees.
And he just wanted to “look around.”
I squinted at him. Perhaps he was trying to lie. But those bright green eyes either hid a skilled liar, or the human was as innocent as a child.
I sized him up. Perhaps Crux had chosen wrongly, and hewasa child. “Are you considered an adult human?”
This, finally, got a true reaction from him. He scowled at me. “Y’all keep talking about us having babies, and you think I’m a kid? What kind of dog and pony show are you running here?”
“He runs nothing,” Crux snarled, offended by what was clearly a misunderstood colloquialism. “Remove him from the lab, Vorian, until he can cease his whining.”
The young man cringed away from Crux’s anger, and there, at last, was a sensible reaction. I stepped neatly between them, and with a hand on the human’s arm, led him away from the lab, down the hall, past the cells of his brethren where the humans had figured out how to work the doors and sent us unsure, narrow-eyed looks as we passed.
“If you wish to see the jungle, there is a more peaceful way.”
“I’d be okay with any ‘way’ that doesn’t have him in it just now,” he muttered, a little annoyed and a little embarrassed.
I could have informed him that neither was necessary, but it wouldn’t help. I had been snarled at and cowed by Crux enough times to know how it stung the pride to have it pointed out, even with the best of intentions.
No one liked having people poke at their weaknesses.
But then, my people thought humans nothing but weak. Looking back over at the small, slender human, who seemed so slight that he might blow away in one of Thorzan’s wicked storms, it was easy to see why.
But the Thorzi thought me weak as well, and for the same reasons. Because I was small and pink and unarmored, I must be a weakling, worthy of little more than disdain. They were a bunch of hypocritical bastards, with their conviction that only strength had the right to exist, even as they leaned on these soft humans and looked down on them, both at once.
The human turned toward the door to his cell when we reached it, but I put an arm around his shoulder and continued down the hall. “This way.”
