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The doors were all closed, little blue lights flashing every now and then on their keypads, all except one nearest us, which flashed purple. Jax went to it and pressed his hand to a smooth metal panel under the keypad, and it slid open to reveal—well, Ree hadn’t exaggerated.
It was a cell.
A cell made for a human, too, not a Thorzi. The cot was six feet long, and the room itself was tall enough for Thorzi, but anyone locked into it for more than a second would doubtless find himself feeling quite closed in.
Hell, I already did, and I hadn’t set foot past the threshold.
Kaelum leaned in and took a sniff, then nodded. “It smells of Ree.”
It did smell like sweat and unwashed human—I noted that unlike the ship, this room didn’t have a shower—but I couldn’t have picked out a scent that was specifically Ree. Were their noses so much better than mine?
From the raised eyebrow Jax shot Kaelum, maybe not.
Kaelum didn’t say anything on it, just waved him forward. “The next, then. They must be in the locked cells.”
So purple meant unlocked, and blue meant locked. Good to know for the future.
Smoothly, Jax turned and headed for the next door. For this one, he pulled what looked like a really big smart phone out of his pocket—if smart phones were made entirely of glass—and held it up in front of the keypad. He inspected it a moment through the glass, tapping it as glowing characters scrolled across the section below the keypad. After a moment, without even touching the actual pad, the blue light slipped to purple and the door made a clicking noise.
Kaelum didn’t even wait for him, just pulled the door open and whispered, “Go get the next door. We’ll talk to this human. We need to hurry.”
Jax grinned wide, reminding me of why I’d nicknamed him Smirky in my head when we met, and sauntered down the hall to the next door.
Kaelum turned back to the door Jax had unlocked and pressed his hand to the panel. It slid open to reveal a fascinated-looking Kenosi. He smiled wide to see us and took a half-step forward. “Is it a jailbreak, then?”
“Yup,” I agreed. “Turns out Crux is breaking the law, but he doesn’t seem to care too much. So we’re going back to Earth, whether he likes it or not.”
At that, Kenosi looked a bit sad. He bit his lip and gave me a hopeful expression. “We can’t stay? I don’t... I don’t want to be a prisoner, but there’s nothing for me back home but a dead-end job and an apartment barely bigger than a footprint. They seemed to want us here.”
And that, well... it was hard to argue it.
“Me too,” Wesley agreed, coming up behind us, followed by Jax. “I want to stay. I just don’t want to be locked in a cell. Isn’t there a choice to explore an alien world without being a prisoner?”
Kaelum drew himself up, shoulders straight. “There is.”
“Well, maybe not explore,” I hedged. “Everything’s poisonous and man-eating out there. But really interesting too! And the Thorzi want us here. The king is married to a human, and the tailor who made my clothes is human.”
“They can come back to the palace,” Jax interjected.
Kenosi perked up at the mention of a palace, but Wesley budged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “And miss out on the action?”
Jax looked as skeptical as any big blue Thorzi warrior at the idea of a soft human in the middle of danger, but Kaelum made that soft, growling sound, and all attention returned to him.
“If this one desires to see action for himself, he can help you distract Crux from my ship and lead him off when he realizes the humans are missing. If you are attacked, you may need assistance on the bridge, Jax.”
“I don’t know how to run a ship,” Wesley pointed out with a grimace. “I won’t be very helpful.”
Jax considered him for a moment, then, deciding it was worth indulging a human’s bravery, he waved him off, then shot him a salacious wink. “I can teach you a thing or two.”
Maybe it was my imagination, but Wes didn’t seem to mind the idea too much. We went from door to door, freeing humans and bringing them along, telling them what the plan was as we went.
The number who were interested in staying shocked me, after how they’d been treated, but well, Kaelum had told me that Crux could read minds. Maybe most of us really had been at the end of our ropes, and ready for a new adventure.
But no one wants to be imprisoned, do they?
Well, I firmly believed that right up until we opened the last cell and found Beau sitting there in his beige hospital gown, one hand wrapped around his knees and the other holding one of Ree’s despised Styrofoam squares, nibbling on a corner of it.
He looked up at us, wide-eyed and shocked.
