He bought this and nodded.
With that the men began dishing out the food. When it reached Bit, Blaine blocked her plate.
“It could be poisoned,” he repeated.
“I’ll test it for her,” Oden offered, taking a large spoonful out of the dish and popping it directly into his mouth.
Blaine watched him chew and swallow. “Wait twenty minutes. If he doesn’t die you can eat that dish, but only that one.”
Bit didn’t complain.
Twenty minutes later, she filled up her plate with cold chili-covered French fries and stuffed her face. When everyone was finished with their meal the conversation continued.
“I suggest we go straight to MGC. By the time we get there it will be afternoon. We’ll get a hotel room around there and wait out the last twenty-four hours before they open. I think going straight to the drop off is the last thing Brighter Futures expects us to do. They’ll expect us to back track and try to throw them off. Maybe the dumb play is actually the smart play,” Randal suggested.
Everyone nodded, even Blaine.
They rose from the table.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Bit said.
“I’ll take you,” Blaine replied, guiding her away from the group.
They followed the signs to a hallway, turning a corner. At the end were three doors—one for the women’s bathroom, one for the men’s, and one for an emergency exit. Bit hoped Blaine wouldn’t insist on following her in when she felt a prick on her neck.
Suddenly her feet disappeared out from under her as the world went black.
Reese groaned. Everything hurt. He was laying across an elevated surface with ridged lines digging into his back and arse. His right foot throbbed with the beat of his heart and his skin felt as though someone had taken a cheese grater to it. Slowly, his consciousness extended past his immediate pain and he realized that he was stretched out across stairs with his wrists cuffed to the railings. Reese tried to think beyond his body to the noise coming from his right, but he couldn’t understand what it might be. Someone was banging on something and calling for someone. The name sounded familiar, but his muddled brain couldn’t place it. As he parsed out the various words he recognized a second voice telling the first to “shut up.”
The first voice quieted and a moment later a door swung open.
“Reese,” a voice cried as crew rushed to his side.
Reese blinked crust from his eyes, four faces coming into focus.
“Forrest, get those cuffs off him,” an old man ordered. “Jer, run down to the infirmary and grab the lift.”
Reese blinked again, slowly recognizing the men around him. Forrest went to work on the cuffs, using the multi-tool he carried with him to pick the locks of the cuffs. As gently as he could, he lowered Reese’s arms. All the same, he groaned as blood rushed back to the starved tissue.
“Let’s get him down the infirmary,” Dirk said as Jeremiah reappeared with a flat board they could use to carry him down.
“I can walk,” he said, his voice barely audible.
His throat felt as though he had swallowed sand paper after so much screaming.
“Shut up, Reese. You just let us take care of you,” Vance said as he pulled a towel out from his habitual apron and pressed it against Reese’s chest.
Reese winced and tried to swat him away, but his arms felt clumsy, as though his muscles and bones were made of lead.
“Reese,” Forrest interjected when he continued to fight them. “You’re hurt. You’re badly hurt. You need to let us take care of you.”
“Just let me walk down. Then you can patch me up. I need to be at the comm. station in case they call in.”
Reese swallowed, his throat too dry to say more. Four faces glared down at him.
“Jer, go up and cover the comm. station. Reese, you do as we say or I’ll knock you out with that drug Debby used on Blaine. Now it’s your choice. You can stay awake in case Jack needs to talk to you or you can be difficult and get your ass drugged. Now, what’s it going to be?” demanded Vance, taking control of the situation.
Reese stared at the steward, too amazed to say anything.
“That’s what I thought. Get going Jer. All right, let’s lift him onto the board…carefully,” Vance ordered.
A moment later he was on the stiff board, happy not to be on the unforgiving stairs. They carried him down to the infirmary, doing their best to keep him level. It was a long and painful process as they carefully sealed each cut made with the dull knife using the ship’s entire stock of flesh-seal—a gelatin poured into cuts of varying sizes that would pull the two seams together, binding the flesh and encouraging the cells to reproduce. All the same, it didn’t promise a lack of scarring, especially when they were having to be skimpy with its use.
Half his body was wrapped in bandages by the time they were done. They left him to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack sat with the other men, fiddling with his pay card. He finally slipped it back into the inside pocket of his jacket, along with his transit card, and jerked the zipper shut. Oden continued to share some further details of their last twenty-four hours. Jack glanced back toward the small corridor leading to the bathrooms as another woman returned. A trickle of a worry began to creep into his mind.
What is taking so long? he wondered to himself as he tried to stay focused on what Oden was saying.
He noticed Calen’s eyes run to the bathrooms a moment later, his brows pulled down in a similar frown.
“Shouldn’t she be back by now?” Randal asked a few minutes later.
“Just what I was thinking,” Jack said as he pushed himself to his feet. “Stay put. I’ll go see what the holdup is.”
He turned the corner and stopped in his tracks. The hallway ended with an emergency exit and two bathrooms, one for men and one for women. A woman went to past him, headed for the women’s bathroom.
“Excuse me, miss,” he called to her. “Could you check in there and see if there’s a girl with blonde dreadlocks? Her name is Bit.”
The girl frown at him, no doubt finding the description strange, but nodded. She ducked into the bathroom and returned within seconds.
“There’s no one in there,” she said from the doorway before going back in.
Jack glanced around the small hallway. He poked his head into the men’s room, but it was clearly empty. They hadn’t gone out the emergency exit. The alarm hadn’t gone off. Jack stopped in his tracks, turning to look at the alarm over the door. Upon closer examination, he found the wires connecting the alarm to the door had been disconnected, turning it into any old door.
“Oh dear,” he sighed, turning away from the door and racing back to the main room of the diner.
The remaining crew went silent as they took in his panicked state.
“They’re gone and the emergency exit’s alarm has been disconnected.”
“You think he took h…?” asked Calen.
“She would have screamed,” said Oden cutting Calen off.
“I don’t know,” countered Randal. “She’s been doing everything she could to keep Blaine calm.”
“Yes, but I don’t think she would actually leave the group with him. She knows he’s drugged or something. She knows he’s not right in the head.”
“We have to find them!” snapped Calen, jumping to his feet.
“Calm down, Calen. I don’t think Blaine will hurt her,” said Jack.
“Hurt her! He’s done nothing but hurt her since they got here,” countered Calen.
“Not on purpose. I don’t think he will really hurt her, damage her,” said Jack.
“Oden?” asked Calen, looking for support.
Oden let out a long sigh. “Cap, while I agree I don’t think Blaine will kill her, we may never regain her trust if we don’t get her back quickly. There is more at stake here than her physical well-being.”
Jack swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “You three go search the immed
iate area. Be back in half an hour. I’m going to the nearest comm.-for-rent. We need to contact the ship. Bit is a cunning girl. If she manages to escape, she may try to call in. They need to have instructions to give her.”
The men nodded and took off.
Jack headed down the street to the nearest comm.-for-rent. He swiped his pay card and dialed in the frequency. To his astonishment, the screen snapped to life and Forrest’s haggard face appeared.
“Forrest? What’s going on? Where’s Reese?”
“We’ve had a problem, Jack. You need to listen carefully because we have to keep this conversation brief. We were attacked.”
“What? By who?”
Forrest held up his hand, stalling further questioning. “This call may be being tracked. It has to be short. Listen, Captain. Reese was tortured. He’s alive, but hurt pretty badly. Nathyn is already on his way up to replace him. But Reese did reveal that you check in at 0800 and 2000. You can’t call at that time anymore. And if you reference times or locations you need to speak in code. Reese is resting right now, but if he feels up to it we’ll get him up to talk to you next time you check in. Is there any info you need to tell us? If not, you need to get off and change locations immediately.”
Jack stared at the screen for a second, shocked at what he was hearing.
Can’t just one thing go right? he thought.
“Blaine is being poisoned with some sort of psychotropic. He’s completely lost it in regards to Bit’s safety and now he’s kidnapped her. If she escapes she may try to contact you. Get a location, if you can. We’ll check in when we can so keep someone at the comm. station. And good luck.”
“Same to you, Captain,” Forrest said before flicking off his end of the line.
Jack let out a long, frustrated sigh before hurrying out of the box. He jogged down the street, wondering where his men could be. He didn’t have time to track them down. They had to make a run for it. He spotted Randal down a side street and called for him.
“Quick. We have to get out of this area. I’ll explain later. Help me search for the others.”
A few minutes later they spotted Oden who put up a little resistance.
“Can’t we just…”
“Now, Pilot,” Jack said, using his station as a reminder.
“Yes, Cap,” Oden said.
It took them longer to find Calen, who had taken the farthest corner of their hastily formed grid work.
“Calen, let’s go. We have to move now!” Jack called.
“It hasn’t been thirty minutes.”
“Circumstances changed. We have to make tracks.”
“But Bit…”
“I’ll explain later. C’mon.”
“We can’t leave her.”
“Move now, dammit. The shit has hit the fan,” Jack snapped, losing what little patience had left. “We have to move locations. NOW!”
“What’s wrong?” asked Calen.
“I’ll tell you on the train. Let’s go.”
They all took off, moving at a slow jog to keep from drawing too much attention. They reached the train station and stopped, waiting for the train to arrive.
“What’s going on?” demanded Calen as they skidded to a stop.
“Wait,” ordered Jack.
“Jack, what is it?” repeated Calen.
“Not now,” Jack said as he scanned the crowd on the platform.
The air around them suddenly gusted in every direction, as though a storm was kicking up. Jack jerked his gaze upward, amazed to see a hover car descending on the platform. The doors swung upward and four men leaned out, their guns trained on Jack and his men.
As if by providence, the high-speed train whooshed into the station as the crowd panicked, running in all directions.
“Onto the train,” Jack ordered.
The doors slid open and they lunged through them as gunfire erupted overhead. The crowd’s screams increased as a woman dropped, blood pouring out of her wound. Jack wanted to turn back, to take the attention away from the innocent, but he knew getting shot himself would not fix the situation, nor would it save the innocent woman’s life.
The train doors closed and a moment later they were in motion.
“Quick, change your shirts,” Randal ordered.
They each pulled their packs off their backs and pulled out different shirts, ignoring the stench coming from them. In moments they were changed.
“If only we had hats,” Randal said. “We’ll change trains in the first underground station.”
Jack nodded.
“What was that about?” Oden asked.
“Sit down,” Jack ordered.
They did, each taking seats where they could see Jack.
“The ship was attacked. I can only assume those were the same men, or men who work for the same men,” he finally said. “I don’t have all the details of the attack, but I do know Reese was tortured.”
Randal’s face turned white with horror. “Is he alive?”
“Yes. But he’s hurt pretty badly. Somehow all the others are fine. Or at least Forrest didn’t mention anyone else being hurt. He said Reese gave up some information. Told the people who attacked that we check in at 0800 and 2000. I can only assume they are after the embryos, too… or are the same people.” Jack ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. If we have to call into the ship we have to keep our calls brief and assume they’re being listened to, and we have to change locations after calling in. Hence why we made the run.”
“What do we do about Bit?” demanded Calen.
“I don’t know, Calen. I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”
After a long ride they came to a station underground, where they changed trains, heading in the opposite direction. The second train took them to a central hub where multiple lines intersected. From there they traveled in one direction for a time before turning and heading back. They zig-zagged across the city until they finally stopped in a ritzy neighborhood tucked into the shadows of Ascraeus Mons, the northernmost of the Three Sisters—a row of three mountains that crowned the enormous city.
They stopped and looked around, taking assessment of their surroundings.
“What do we do now?” asked Oden.
No one responded.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bit slowly became conscious, wondering why she had slept sitting up. Her ribs were on fire despite the grogginess of her mind. She groaned as her head rolled from one shoulder to the other. Something was stuffed in her mouth, tasting faintly of sweat and blood, and wrapped around her head. She slowly opened her eyes, blinking away moisture.
She was in a dark room. A faint light glowed somewhere over her left shoulder, but it hurt too badly to twist and see what was behind her. In front of her was nothing but a blank cinderblock wall with one pipe poking out of it and running down to the floor. Rust stains trailed from the pipe down to the floor—the only imperfection in the otherwise stark, gray wall.
Bit groaned again as she shifted and suddenly realized her hands were bound behind her back, around the hard back of a rickety chair. She swallowed, before trying to work the wad of cloth out of her mouth.
She tried to think back to remember what had happened. They had gone to the bathroom. Had someone jumped them? Was Blaine okay? Panic built in her chest, making it even harder to breathe. Blaine was tough. Wherever they had him, whatever they were doing to him, he would survive. He was a fighter. She blinked again, clearing more haze from her mind.
There hadn’t be a struggle. Everything had been normal. She paused in her struggle to think. There had been a pinch on her neck, then…
Bit gasped, her lungs expanding until her broken ribs stabbed into the organ.
They hadn’t been jumped at all.
A creak from behind alerted her to the presence of another.
“You awake?” came Blaine’s voice.
She nodded, not trying to talk around the cloth wedged into her mouth. Her mind jumped into overdrive. How had he
gotten his hands on something to knock her out? The ketamine? It must have been the ketamine, but he had slept for hours. She didn’t feel as though she had been in the chair for that long. Maybe one or two but no more. Had he just used a small dose? Was there more?
Blaine came around into her line of sight and pulled the wet cloth out of her mouth. She quickly spotted the gun grasped in his other hand. However he had gotten his hands on the illegal weapon, she wasn’t going to be able to overpower him. Now Bit reconsidered her assessment. Even if he hadn’t been armed, she would never have been able to overpower him—not injured with two broken ribs.
Once again, tears pressed against her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked, worry creasing his forehead where his dirty-brown hair flopped into his eyes.
“My ribs hurt sitting like this.”
Blaine glanced around, taking in her position as though he was seeing it for the first time. He reached back and tore her bindings loose. The rope dug into her flesh and she had to work to keep from crying out at the pain. Instead, she flung her arms around his neck, acting like he had saved her.
He hesitated a moment before she felt one arm wrap cautiously around her waist. It hurt like everything else, but she took the pain and used it, letting the tears flow freely.
“Oh, Blaine, I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come!” she said. “They took me and I thought I was done for.”
“Sit back,” he ordered.
Bit did, putting on her best puppy dog face. Blaine stood up and began pacing as he mumbled to himself. Fresh fears began to build in her mind, but she kept them off her features, focusing instead on memories of what he had been.
Blaine was strong, dedicated, focused, she thought to herself. He taught her what little she knew about defending herself. She brought to her mind the memories of him teaching her how to take a gun apart and put it together.
“Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!” he screamed, hitting himself in the head with the gun he held.
Bit flinched, unable to help the instinctual fear that twitched up her spin.
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