AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A shiver rose up my back. Not really siblings? What were they? Cousins? Or did she mean…
No…
I glanced at them out the corner of my eye. They looked the same, exactly as I remembered from when they adopted their Yayora disguises…
Except they seemed smaller and thicker around the chest.
But there was something in the flicker in one of their eyes…
Stari?
WE WILL LEAVE AND ESCAPE. TAKE OUT CONTROL ROOM AND TURN OFF DEFENSES
OKAY
I waited to see if there was anything else she wanted to add. When there wasn’t, I took her by the hand and squeezed it tight.
I’d risked my life to save hers, and now she was doing the same for me. I felt angry at her for throwing her life away, and proud of her all at the same time.
This woman drove me crazy!
Quus pressed a finger to his ear and turned to address the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we sure have an action-packed show for you tonight,” he said. “Right now, we’re getting footage of the destruction in the Yayora base. We’ve got a live feed. We should be getting an image any second now…”
Maddy reached a hand back and placed it on the Changeling siblings’ hands on the sofa headrest. They gripped it so tight, their fingertips turned white. They’d been working on the base their entire lives. It was what was supposed to help them defeat their conquerors and move on with their lives. To see it in the state it was currently in…
Stari stared at the screen without blinking.
The images flicked on and presented a thick cloud of dust. A beam of light switched on and made the cloud grow brighter and even more difficult to see.
“As you can see, folks, the destruction is pretty much complete,” Quus said. “There’s not much chance of any survivors emerging from an explosion like that.”
He provided running commentary as the images shifted through parts of the base I couldn’t identify.
But Stari and her buddy could.
I hoped they could control themselves—at least until we got off the stage. Then they could go haywire and destroy as much of the Control Room as they wanted. I wouldn’t stand in their way.
“Hold up,” Quus said. “What was that back there?”
The camera swept along the debris to a row of dead Yayora bodies.
The audience gasped.
“There, you see, ladies and gentlemen,” Quus said. “That’s what happens when an inferior species thinks they can overpower the might of the Changeling empire.”
“We’ve got a fresh one here,” a voice on the monitor said.
“And here, another,” another worker said.
The camera turned to reveal a group of Changeling excavators working to free a pair of bodies from the soil.
Maddy’s hand tightened painfully around mine. Her eyes boggled.
She’d seen something. When I checked over my shoulder, I saw Stari had tensed too.
I turned back to the screen.
