I go still. I want to take off for the control room, but my comm is broken. I need to rely on Zane or my ship to get in touch with them.
“Are you sure?” Zane asks, quieter this time, wide eyes catching mine.
“No…” she murmurs. A pause. “Damn, yes, it’s cutting through the doors—”
I take off at a dead run for the hangar doors, trying to map out in my mind the quickest route to the control room from here. I remember just enough of this place I think I know the way. Zane’s footsteps follow me, keeping up surprisingly well for his human legs. I can hear him trying to yell something into the comm behind his ear, but I can’t catch the words.
If I could, I’d be calling up Bat and reminding him to go for the paneling on the back of the numbers’ necks with their chips, and to be careful not to get his legs ripped off. But he knows. I’ll just have to hope I’m faster at running than the number is at cutting through the door.
Hopefully, the amount of armed and deadly humans who should be holed up in the control room will make it a deadly situation for even the ForceZero numbers. Or they won’t get involved with the hope the numbers will leave anyone alone who doesn’t have a bounty on their head.
Given my interactions with humans, I’m more inclined to the second option.
I lose Zane’s footsteps behind me as I eventually leave his human legs behind. My temple is still throbbing, making it difficult to see. But I can deal with that later. Even in the dark of the ship, without the numbers’ heat signatures, nothing is going to make their physical bodies disappear. I’ll see them. Hand-to-hand fighting may be difficult, but I’m going to avoid that at all costs.
A scream echoes somewhere in the hallways off to my right. I skid to a halt, trying to listen. Zane’s footsteps catch up, along with his gasping breaths, and he claps a hand over his mouth, trying to listen as well. He taps at his comm and makes a helpless gesture.
Another scream. I’ve been around Anya just long enough to guess it’s her. And there aren’t many others in the ship likely to sound like a terrified ten-year-old girl.
“Dammit.” I take off in the direction of the sound. Zane follows. We can’t split up. He’s going to be less than useless on his own against one of these numbers. He better stay with me—
Anya rounds a corner.
I barely put on the brakes before realizing we’re going to collide. I scoop her up in my arms rather than plow her over in the tight hallway. Still, we both go tumbling to the floor of the ship. I manage to keep my arms around her so she doesn’t knock her head. Zane leaps over us so he doesn’t trip, skidding to a halt.
“You okay?” I ask. “What happened.”
Anya sobs once and clings to me. Her right prosthetic arm is missing. What in the world? This is utter chaos.
“Anya,” I ask, taking her by the tops of her shoulders and holding her up to eye level, still kneeling on the floor. “What. Happened?”
“We went out a back door, but there was another one out there. I think it went after Lalia and Bat. The other one picked both of us up,” she says, taking a shattered breath. “It still has Yvonne.”
“Alright.” I stand, hauling her up. “Zane, try to get your sister or Bat on the comm. Anya, what happened to your arm?”
“It was dragging me along… I used the panel you showed me—” she touches the back of her neck “—to make my arm fall off so I could run away. I think it still has it.”
Smart kid. “Alright, you did good. Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Good. Come on.”
I pick up the rifle that went scattering when I crashed into her, grabbing her other hand. Zane is shaking his head, finger still on the comm behind his ear.
“Try Lee. Never mind, give me your comm.”
He pulls it out of his ear and drops it in my palm. I’m glad it isn’t like mine—implanted in.
“Lee, ya hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear.”
“One’s after Lalia and Bat. The other has Yvonne. Anyone get cameras on either of these things?”
“Just got back to the control room. It’s chaos. No one’s found them yet. It’s like they avoid the cameras.”
“Let me know if you see them.”
I glance at Zane. I know he’s looking to me for instruction, bouncing on his toes, stress lining his expression. One of these things is after his sister. And Bat. They’re much more likely to hurt them. Yvonne is unlikely to get more than a bruise or two. Even these things know they shouldn’t bring Yvonne back to her parents beaten and bloody.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit.
His jaw clenches, but he nods. “You can’t—”
“Zane?” Lalia’s voice crackles over the comm. I jump.
“It’s me. Where are you? Are you hurt?”
“No. Running for the hangar. The one chasing us just stopped. We don’t know where it went.”
“Alright, meet us there. Try to keep hidden.”
I give Zane back his comm. “They’re fine. The other one stopped chasing them.”
“What? Why?”
I glance at Anya. Captain likely wants Zane and Lalia taken in as well. He wants all of us held accountable, to stop this embarrassment. But if these numbers have to choose, they’re going to get the two princesses back to Neyla Ve. They work for Captain, and Captain is under the thumb of the royals. We’ve proven ourselves to be trouble. If they’re going to pick, they’re going to pick the princesses.
Which means us. “Because it’s coming after us. For her.”
Anya clings tighter to my arm, still trying to hiccup down sobs. She releases me in favor of wrapping her arm around my waist, face pressed against my sternum. Can’t be comfortable, but I let her.
“Right,” Zane mutters, still stressed but definite relief in his eyes. “Hangar?”
“Best shot. At least we have our ship guns. Anywhere else here isn’t any more secure.”
I glance at Anya. She evidently ran to me, but she’s not nearly ready to be sprinting on her new legs. Doubly so with the sudden lack of her arm.
“Come on,” I say, wrapping my arm under her and scooping her up like she’s a toddler. She locks her legs around me, arm around my neck, face pressed into my neck. “Hold on,” I tell her, holding her with one hand while I keep the rifle in the other.
I take off back for the hangar, Zane right on my heels.
We nearly crash right into Lalia at the entrance to the hangar, but I’m too relieved to care. Zane bear hugs her quickly while Bat leaps up to my shoulder and bites me on the ear.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“Right.” I ease Anya to the ground, nudging her towards Lalia. “Stay with her, okay?”
“Did you seriously shoot one and it got back up?” Lalia asks, hugging Anya to her.
“It would appear so. All of you try not to get killed. Find a room to hide in.”
Zane opens his mouth, but I smack him upside the head and make a break for the hangar. I do not want him getting in the way of these things, even if he saved my ass before.
This hangar door is closed, and the panel alongside the door does nothing. I squint at it, checking on every hallway that converges where I am. I wish I could use the temperature maps in my eyes—I’d be able to see them on the other sides of walls.
Captain had to go invent something that threw me through a loop even more than usual.
Grabbing the manual handle on the lock, I twist it and open the seal of the door carefully. Nothing happens, which is suspicious as hell. Bat drops from my shoulder to the ground, slinking into the dark of the hangar like a ghost, creeping along the wall.
A burning bright blue shot lights up the hangar, nearly missing Bat. There’s a soft shriek from further in, Yvonne’s familiar voice. Bat scurries behind one of the transport vessels Lee has parked along the walls of the hangar. I take a deep breath to temper the panic. It missed him. He’s fine.
But now I have a good trajectory. Right next to my ship. Wonderful.
Cracking the door open a hair more, I lean against it, using the thick metal as a body shield and peeking in. The number doesn’t have a heat signature, but Yvonne does, and I catch her struggling form wriggling like a fish in the hold of the bigger creature. I only see a faint outline of the number, just a dark shadow now that I’m looking right at it, and it hauls Yvonne right off the ground, holding her in front of it like a shield.
Piece of crap. I wonder what the king and queen will think of the knowledge that Captain’s special number is using their daughter for both bait and a shield.
So, it’s using her as bait. Definitely wants Anya, but me as well, by this little show. The other one is likely still somewhere back in the ship, trying to hunt us down. It won’t take long before I’m dealing with two instead of one. The bigger, male number holding Yvonne has likely already called it’s partner.
Testing, I step out a bit into the hangar. A bright flash of blue, and I yank myself back behind the door as the shot hits the wall where I’d been a split second before.
Great.
We can barely see it, but we can’t sneak around, it definitely has heat seeking sensors in it’s eyes.
Softly, I hear Yvonne swearing at it. I don’t imagine she let it take her easily. She’s a soft target for a cyborg, particularly one as powerful as ForceZero numbers, but it can’t directly hurt her, so I’m certain it’s having to put up with a lot of swearing and struggling and threats. It gives me a grim satisfaction.
How does it know I won’t shoot the princess just to get at it?
I glance back down the hallway. Lalia is peeking her head around the corner, arms around Anya, watching. I see nothing but their shadows and their heat signatures. Everything is deathly quiet. Bat is still crouched behind one of Lee’s small ships.
There’s no good next move and that number knows it. Either I confront it and get shot, or wait it out and its partner will show up. I take a long, deep breath. I think about Audra and how she would react, but being honest with myself, I know she’d never get in a situation like this and wouldn’t have any problems dumping the humans to save herself.
Peeking out the crack in the door, I watch the number calmly holding Yvonne. There’s the heat flash of her arm flailing up as she tries to elbow it in the face. It shakes her a little to throw off her aim easily, keeping its grip.
A heat flash blips along the other side of the hanger. I squint at it. It’s not nearly the shape of the female number. In fact…
It looks a lot like Zane.
I manage not to say idiot out loud, glancing back at Lalia, who’s still watching silently, gun in her hand, Anya tucked under her other arm.
Idiot human is trying to sneak around into his ship while the number watches me. It’s a great plan, if I didn’t hate the idea of the humans getting in the direct line of fire. He’s lucky my comm is broken or he’d be getting an earful right about now.
His shape leans out from one of Lee’s ships parked across the opposite wall. Heading toward his own ship. Out in the open. The number holding Yvonne shifts, starting to turn.
I step out from behind the door, and it’s face snaps back to me.
I go still. I want to take off for the control room, but my comm is broken. I need to rely on Zane or my ship to get in touch with them.
“Are you sure?” Zane asks, quieter this time, wide eyes catching mine.
“No…” she murmurs. A pause. “Damn, yes, it’s cutting through the doors—”
I take off at a dead run for the hangar doors, trying to map out in my mind the quickest route to the control room from here. I remember just enough of this place I think I know the way. Zane’s footsteps follow me, keeping up surprisingly well for his human legs. I can hear him trying to yell something into the comm behind his ear, but I can’t catch the words.
If I could, I’d be calling up Bat and reminding him to go for the paneling on the back of the numbers’ necks with their chips, and to be careful not to get his legs ripped off. But he knows. I’ll just have to hope I’m faster at running than the number is at cutting through the door.
Hopefully, the amount of armed and deadly humans who should be holed up in the control room will make it a deadly situation for even the ForceZero numbers. Or they won’t get involved with the hope the numbers will leave anyone alone who doesn’t have a bounty on their head.
Given my interactions with humans, I’m more inclined to the second option.
I lose Zane’s footsteps behind me as I eventually leave his human legs behind. My temple is still throbbing, making it difficult to see. But I can deal with that later. Even in the dark of the ship, without the numbers’ heat signatures, nothing is going to make their physical bodies disappear. I’ll see them. Hand-to-hand fighting may be difficult, but I’m going to avoid that at all costs.
A scream echoes somewhere in the hallways off to my right. I skid to a halt, trying to listen. Zane’s footsteps catch up, along with his gasping breaths, and he claps a hand over his mouth, trying to listen as well. He taps at his comm and makes a helpless gesture.
Another scream. I’ve been around Anya just long enough to guess it’s her. And there aren’t many others in the ship likely to sound like a terrified ten-year-old girl.
“Dammit.” I take off in the direction of the sound. Zane follows. We can’t split up. He’s going to be less than useless on his own against one of these numbers. He better stay with me—
Anya rounds a corner.
I barely put on the brakes before realizing we’re going to collide. I scoop her up in my arms rather than plow her over in the tight hallway. Still, we both go tumbling to the floor of the ship. I manage to keep my arms around her so she doesn’t knock her head. Zane leaps over us so he doesn’t trip, skidding to a halt.
“You okay?” I ask. “What happened.”
Anya sobs once and clings to me. Her right prosthetic arm is missing. What in the world? This is utter chaos.
“Anya,” I ask, taking her by the tops of her shoulders and holding her up to eye level, still kneeling on the floor. “What. Happened?”
“We went out a back door, but there was another one out there. I think it went after Lalia and Bat. The other one picked both of us up,” she says, taking a shattered breath. “It still has Yvonne.”
“Alright.” I stand, hauling her up. “Zane, try to get your sister or Bat on the comm. Anya, what happened to your arm?”
“It was dragging me along… I used the panel you showed me—” she touches the back of her neck “—to make my arm fall off so I could run away. I think it still has it.”
Smart kid. “Alright, you did good. Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Good. Come on.”
I pick up the rifle that went scattering when I crashed into her, grabbing her other hand. Zane is shaking his head, finger still on the comm behind his ear.
“Try Lee. Never mind, give me your comm.”
He pulls it out of his ear and drops it in my palm. I’m glad it isn’t like mine—implanted in.
“Lee, ya hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear.”
“One’s after Lalia and Bat. The other has Yvonne. Anyone get cameras on either of these things?”
“Just got back to the control room. It’s chaos. No one’s found them yet. It’s like they avoid the cameras.”
“Let me know if you see them.”
I glance at Zane. I know he’s looking to me for instruction, bouncing on his toes, stress lining his expression. One of these things is after his sister. And Bat. They’re much more likely to hurt them. Yvonne is unlikely to get more than a bruise or two. Even these things know they shouldn’t bring Yvonne back to her parents beaten and bloody.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit.
His jaw clenches, but he nods. “You can’t—”
“Zane?” Lalia’s voice crackles over the comm. I jump.
“It’s me. Where are you? Are you hurt?”
“No. Running for the hangar. The one chasing us just stopped. We don’t know where it went.”
“Alright, meet us there. Try to keep hidden.”
I give Zane back his comm. “They’re fine. The other one stopped chasing them.”
“What? Why?”
I glance at Anya. Captain likely wants Zane and Lalia taken in as well. He wants all of us held accountable, to stop this embarrassment. But if these numbers have to choose, they’re going to get the two princesses back to Neyla Ve. They work for Captain, and Captain is under the thumb of the royals. We’ve proven ourselves to be trouble. If they’re going to pick, they’re going to pick the princesses.
Which means us. “Because it’s coming after us. For her.”
Anya clings tighter to my arm, still trying to hiccup down sobs. She releases me in favor of wrapping her arm around my waist, face pressed against my sternum. Can’t be comfortable, but I let her.
“Right,” Zane mutters, still stressed but definite relief in his eyes. “Hangar?”
“Best shot. At least we have our ship guns. Anywhere else here isn’t any more secure.”
I glance at Anya. She evidently ran to me, but she’s not nearly ready to be sprinting on her new legs. Doubly so with the sudden lack of her arm.
“Come on,” I say, wrapping my arm under her and scooping her up like she’s a toddler. She locks her legs around me, arm around my neck, face pressed into my neck. “Hold on,” I tell her, holding her with one hand while I keep the rifle in the other.
I take off back for the hangar, Zane right on my heels.
We nearly crash right into Lalia at the entrance to the hangar, but I’m too relieved to care. Zane bear hugs her quickly while Bat leaps up to my shoulder and bites me on the ear.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“Right.” I ease Anya to the ground, nudging her towards Lalia. “Stay with her, okay?”
“Did you seriously shoot one and it got back up?” Lalia asks, hugging Anya to her.
“It would appear so. All of you try not to get killed. Find a room to hide in.”
Zane opens his mouth, but I smack him upside the head and make a break for the hangar. I do not want him getting in the way of these things, even if he saved my ass before.
This hangar door is closed, and the panel alongside the door does nothing. I squint at it, checking on every hallway that converges where I am. I wish I could use the temperature maps in my eyes—I’d be able to see them on the other sides of walls.
Captain had to go invent something that threw me through a loop even more than usual.
Grabbing the manual handle on the lock, I twist it and open the seal of the door carefully. Nothing happens, which is suspicious as hell. Bat drops from my shoulder to the ground, slinking into the dark of the hangar like a ghost, creeping along the wall.
A burning bright blue shot lights up the hangar, nearly missing Bat. There’s a soft shriek from further in, Yvonne’s familiar voice. Bat scurries behind one of the transport vessels Lee has parked along the walls of the hangar. I take a deep breath to temper the panic. It missed him. He’s fine.
But now I have a good trajectory. Right next to my ship. Wonderful.
Cracking the door open a hair more, I lean against it, using the thick metal as a body shield and peeking in. The number doesn’t have a heat signature, but Yvonne does, and I catch her struggling form wriggling like a fish in the hold of the bigger creature. I only see a faint outline of the number, just a dark shadow now that I’m looking right at it, and it hauls Yvonne right off the ground, holding her in front of it like a shield.
Piece of crap. I wonder what the king and queen will think of the knowledge that Captain’s special number is using their daughter for both bait and a shield.
So, it’s using her as bait. Definitely wants Anya, but me as well, by this little show. The other one is likely still somewhere back in the ship, trying to hunt us down. It won’t take long before I’m dealing with two instead of one. The bigger, male number holding Yvonne has likely already called it’s partner.
Testing, I step out a bit into the hangar. A bright flash of blue, and I yank myself back behind the door as the shot hits the wall where I’d been a split second before.
Great.
We can barely see it, but we can’t sneak around, it definitely has heat seeking sensors in it’s eyes.
Softly, I hear Yvonne swearing at it. I don’t imagine she let it take her easily. She’s a soft target for a cyborg, particularly one as powerful as ForceZero numbers, but it can’t directly hurt her, so I’m certain it’s having to put up with a lot of swearing and struggling and threats. It gives me a grim satisfaction.
How does it know I won’t shoot the princess just to get at it?
I glance back down the hallway. Lalia is peeking her head around the corner, arms around Anya, watching. I see nothing but their shadows and their heat signatures. Everything is deathly quiet. Bat is still crouched behind one of Lee’s small ships.
There’s no good next move and that number knows it. Either I confront it and get shot, or wait it out and its partner will show up. I take a long, deep breath. I think about Audra and how she would react, but being honest with myself, I know she’d never get in a situation like this and wouldn’t have any problems dumping the humans to save herself.
Peeking out the crack in the door, I watch the number calmly holding Yvonne. There’s the heat flash of her arm flailing up as she tries to elbow it in the face. It shakes her a little to throw off her aim easily, keeping its grip.
A heat flash blips along the other side of the hanger. I squint at it. It’s not nearly the shape of the female number. In fact…
It looks a lot like Zane.
I manage not to say idiot out loud, glancing back at Lalia, who’s still watching silently, gun in her hand, Anya tucked under her other arm.
Idiot human is trying to sneak around into his ship while the number watches me. It’s a great plan, if I didn’t hate the idea of the humans getting in the direct line of fire. He’s lucky my comm is broken or he’d be getting an earful right about now.
His shape leans out from one of Lee’s ships parked across the opposite wall. Heading toward his own ship. Out in the open. The number holding Yvonne shifts, starting to turn.
I step out from behind the door, and it’s face snaps back to me.
