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I turned down another gangway and another, each lined with infinite rows of pods.
I couldn’t keep running, especially not around this area. The gangways were too long and it would be too easy for the Changelings to see me. They could block off one exit after another, locking me in like a rat trap.
I took the stairs and headed down.
If this ship was built like a regular airplane back home, the cargo hold would be in the belly of the ship.
There would be cargo in there.
Food. Drink.
Supplies could keep me alive.
Maybe even weapons.
Maybe even a device that would help me escape.
Maybe an experimental teleporter that could beam me across the universe to any location I chose.
Okay, so that was a bit of a leap, but a girl could hope, couldn’t she?
“Stop! Or I will shoot!”
Shoot away, asshole. I’m not stopping.
I hurried down another set of stairs and was relieved to find it wasn’t another endless series of pods.
Oh no.
I came to a stop.
I was perched on the edge of what appeared to be the engine room. A tall egg-shaped machine hummed and pulsed like a heartbeat. It was ten stories high and was filled with some kind of bright liquid. There were half a dozen of the things in this room alone.
Linking them was a series of girders in a cross pattern. Each was no more than a foot wide. In the center was each engine’s tip. It glowed brighter than the rest of the liquid, with white ripples that danced on its surface.
The ground stretched away from me.
Terrifying. Endless.
I clutched the railing, my vertigo striking hard with a vengeance.
“Not now!” I told myself. “Of all times, why now?”
The Changeling soldiers’ boots echoed off the gangway walls behind me, the ripples vibrating up the soles of my feet and into my legs.
They were going to find me.
Standing there, cornered, I would be all too easy to catch.
I jogged along the gangway, my hand sliding over the railing’s smooth surface in case I needed to grab it suddenly.
I headed for another doorway. Maybe if I reached it, I could escape to another part of the ship…
“She’s in the engine bay!”
The voices echoed up from the doorway I was heading toward.
I paused, at the corner now. Two Changeling soldiers entered. One from the doorway behind me, the other ahead of me.
