Venturers

by Bella Forrest

  “I only want to speak with you three humans,” she demanded. “Your coldblood friends might be contagious.”

  “Weren’t you listening in? The plague can’t spread from person to person,” Navan insisted.

  Pandora scoffed. “If you believe a word those Draconians say, then you’re more of a fool than I thought. Send the humans aboard—they’re likely immune. You and Bashrik can take twenty paces backward and stay there until I say otherwise.”

  Bashrik looked like he was about to say something in retaliation to the comment about Draconians, but Navan clamped a hand over his mouth. All of us glanced nervously at each other, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of going in there alone, with no Vysanthean strength to back us up. Worried, I sought out Navan’s eyes, sensing his anxiety. Even Bashrik looked uneasy, and he only had half an idea of what was going on.

  No matter our feelings, we had to obey Pandora’s orders. We couldn’t just wait out here in a bizarre stalemate. Nor could we discuss anything among ourselves, thanks to the continual presence of the earpieces. I was beginning to really loathe those little devices.

  “I said twenty paces, coldbloods!” Pandora insisted. “Don’t keep me waiting. My patience is wearing thin!”

  Navan released his hold on Bashrik’s mouth. Slowly, the pair of them stepped backward. They were taking tiny footsteps, their attempt at twenty paces only taking them a short distance from the bay doors, where they could rush in if we needed them. However, I knew it was a fruitless exercise. Pandora was terrified of the virus, and no amount of convincing would make her believe it wasn’t contagious—I doubted she would leave the front door wide open behind us.

  No, if we ended up in trouble, we were going to have to deal with it ourselves. I just wished I could speak to my friends, to get some reassurance and offer some in return. Instead, all we had were determined expressions and worried eyes.

  I wished I at least had a weapon with me, but they were all in storage, stowed away on the Vanquish. Pandora would never allow a detour before we met with her, especially not one that led to the armory. If only we’d landed on a planet that didn’t value pacifism. Then, we could’ve pilfered something to defend ourselves. It was too late to do anything about it now.

  “We’re ready when you are,” I said.

  “You know where to find me,” she remarked, the hiss of the intercom falling silent.

  A second later, the bay doors lifted, the gangplank descending to the ground. The three of us took a few steps back to avoid getting squashed. As soon as it touched the grass, locking into place with a squeal of hydraulics, the three of us headed up into the belly of the ship. Pausing on the threshold, I took one last look back at Navan and Bashrik, before the bay doors began to rise again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pandora?” I called out. The main chamber of the Vanquish was completely empty. I knew she’d be hiding in the cockpit, in case of contagion.

  A screen came down from the ceiling, showing Pandora staring back at us. “Go into the cubicles on the right,” she instructed, as three doors slid open in the chrome walls of the ship.

  I glanced at my friends, my fear mirrored on their faces. It all felt too risky, like we were walking headfirst into a trap. Tiny cubicles weren’t exactly comforting at the best of times, but when they belonged to a woman like Pandora, they were freaking terrifying.

  “Why?” Angie blurted out.

  Pandora sighed through the monitor, her voice crackling. “You need to be decontaminated, just in case. Now, step into the cubicles.”

  “Why do I feel like she’s about to gas us?” I murmured, as we reluctantly made our way over to the three cubicles. For the first time, I could see other hairline indents in the side of the ship’s interior walls, where more of these decontamination chambers must have been kept tucked away.

  “I heard that!” Pandora barked, her sharp voice making me flinch.

  “Do we just get in?” Lauren asked, her back to the screen.

  “Yes, just get in!” Pandora replied impatiently. More and more, this was feeling like a mistake.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped into my chamber, and the other two stepped into theirs. Immediately, the door came down, sealing me into a room. It was barely wider than me, with no windows allowing a view into the main room, the chrome walls closing in, making me feel claustrophobic. It was everything I could do not to scream and bang against the door, but I got the sense that was exactly what she wanted. Pandora wanted to rattle us before she spoke to us.

  I was just taking another breath in, not knowing how much oxygen I had left in the tiny room, when jets of powdery air shot out of the ceiling and up through the floor, blasting me with a chemical-scented haze. I spluttered, closing my mouth, trying to shield my eyes from whatever was pouring through the vents. It tasted poisonous.

  Five minutes of uncomfortable wheezing later, the jets stopped abruptly and the door slid back up, releasing us out into the ship. The chemical scent was almost twice as strong in the main chamber, making me realize she’d probably sprayed that as well, to be on the safe side.

  Staggering out of the next chamber along, Angie emerged, looking deeply affronted. “You could’ve warned us about the jets!” she shouted, some of the powder still clinging to her blond curls.

  “Sorry, must have slipped my mind.” Pandora’s voice cut across the main room of the ship as she exited the cockpit, wearing a smug smile.

  “That stuff could have poisoned us, Pandora. We don’t have the same resilience to chemicals that you coldbloods have,” Lauren remarked, furious in her own, more quiet way.

  Pandora shrugged. “I figured your suffering was better than me contracting a Zaian virus. It was a risk I was willing to take.”

  I thought about throwing in my two cents of irritation, but I held my tongue. Pandora seemed to be in a surprisingly calm mood; there wasn’t much point in ruining that, not for the sake of a comeback.

  “Why did you ask us back to the ship? Did you not get our message?” I asked, focusing on the mission instead. The sooner we were finished here, the sooner we could get back to Cambien and reverse the opaleine corruption.

  She smiled. “I did, and there are one or two things I’m not too happy with, as I’m sure you can imagine. Your plan is not to my taste, but we will get to that in a moment. As for bringing you back here, I felt I needed to discuss matters with you where I can see you.”

  “Haven’t you been listening through our earpieces?” Lauren replied. I did find it strange that Pandora should need to bring us all here, to talk face-to-face. If she had a problem with the reversal process we’d agreed on, why hadn’t she just told us so over the devices? She could have done it at any time, but she’d remained silent on the subject.

  From her blank expression, I still couldn’t figure out whether she knew about the conversation I’d had with Cambien or not. She was giving nothing away, but then, she was good at that. For years, she had managed to masquerade as someone she wasn’t, infiltrating Queen Brisha’s court, pretending to be her right-hand woman. Fooling us was child’s play to her.

  She shrugged. “Here and there, when I haven’t been busy with other things.”

  A creeping sense of doubt crawled through me, twisting my stomach into knots. I’d have felt much safer with Navan and Bashrik here, or a weapon in my hand, so I could at least defend myself against any sneak attack she might try. Discreetly, I glanced around the room for something I could use, but the walls were bare; there wasn’t even a stick to beat her with.

  Pandora, naturally, was armed with a gun on one hip and a knife on the other. She was always ready for a fight.

  “Get me up to speed on what you’ve been doing in my absence. I want to hear it from your own mouths,” she instructed, sitting down on one of the benches that ran through the center of the room. I got the feeling she wasn’t inviting us to sit. It was a power play, her taking the lower ground purely to show us how vulnerable and powerless we were. She co
uld have rolled over on her back, and we wouldn’t have been able to make a move against her.

  Casting a glance at each other, we told her what had happened since the last time we’d spoken, when we’d informed her of our desire to reverse the opaleine corruption and save the Draconians from a genocide led by her guns. We explained about the Pyros, and how we’d seen the reversal with our own eyes, after Bashrik got sick.

  “That explains the mindless babbling,” she mused. “It has addled his mind, no?”

  Angie’s cheeks flushed. “No, it hasn’t ‘addled’ his mind. He’ll be just fine. It’s a temporary side effect,” she insisted, though we had no evidence to prove his confused thoughts would ever go away.

  Probably sensing our friend’s temper was about to flare, Lauren quickly continued to tell Pandora that we had just been about to leave, to begin the process of reversing the corruption, when she had called us back to the ship.

  “Poor timing on my part, I suppose,” Pandora replied sarcastically. “Or, perhaps, my timing was perfect.” A strange expression glittered in her eyes, setting my nerves on edge.

  She must have known what we were about to do when she called us back, wanting to stop us from starting. I mean, she could hear every word we said—it’s why I’d presumed she had no issue with the opaleine reversal, since she hadn’t made her objections known to us, over the earpieces. Now, however, it seemed we might have been wrong. It was exactly her style to wait until the last moment, dragging us right back to square one.

  “You don’t want us to reverse the corruption? Is that why we’re here?” I asked.

  “The Draconians are an odd species, aren’t they?” Pandora asked, ignoring me as she rose from her seat. “I’ve been watching them from the windows of the observation deck. You get quite the view from there—a very clear picture of things.”

  A chill shivered through my every nerve ending as her last words landed. You could have heard a pin drop. The Note. Pandora knew about the Note device hidden down the side of the armchair in the observation deck. That was the only explanation for all of this, and yet she remained remarkably calm, her face a picture of serenity.

  It was a game, to see who would be the first to break.

  “The view in space is better,” I replied, clearing my throat.

  She smiled coolly. “I don’t doubt that, Riley, though I have seen enough of the universe to last me a lifetime,” she said. “Now, if you would all like to join me on the observation deck, I have something to show you.”

  “What is it?” Lauren asked. From her strained expression, I could tell she was having the same thoughts as me. Angie, too.

  “Well, as I said, I’ve been observing the Draconian temple closely, and there are several excellent entrances that we might use,” she began, moving toward the hallway that led to the observation deck. “We should decide which ones we will funnel a portion of the population through. Naturally, we’ll have to take some of them as blood slaves, given what you said earlier. However, once we have enough, we can throw in some poison gas, let that get to work, and destroy the rest of the populace from the air, once we’re far enough away.”

  The three of us stared at Pandora, utterly aghast. How could she do that? How could she stand there, so nonchalant, and talk about murdering an entire race of people?

  “But you said you’d let us try and find another way! We found another way, Pandora,” I argued, venom dripping from my words.

  She smiled icily. “Plans have changed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘plans have changed’? We have a way to uncorrupt the opaleine. Why wouldn’t you choose a path of peace over murdering innocents? That doesn’t make any sense, Pandora!” Lauren fired back, her hands balling into fists.

  “My people are innocents in this! They have been locked up for years, and they are to meet the cold hand of execution upon release? I don’t think so,” she countered. We froze in a stalemate.

  “It might not be the ideal situation, but the genocide of an entire species is not the answer, you murderous psychopath!” Angie yelled, eliciting a cold laugh from Pandora. “Besides, it’s up to the Draconians what they do with your people, and they’ve made their decision!”

  “Regardless, I will not allow it to happen. And I am not a psychopath, Angie. In fact, I’m thinking very logically, though I can understand your disappointment. Peace always seems like the better option, until your enemies come and seek revenge,” she reasoned. “In life, there are winners and losers, and today is not Zai’s lucky day.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I hissed. “Why bring down more suffering on their heads? Haven’t your kind done enough to these people?”

  She shrugged, the action making me want to swipe at her face. “Blame your boyfriend, Riley.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What has Navan got to do with this?”

  “He’s the one who changed my mind. After hearing how eager he was to kill his own kind, I decided not to permit it. I will not allow Vysanthean blood to be spilled on foreign soil, and certainly not at the hand of another Vysanthean,” she replied, her voice carrying a challenge.

  “Why the hell not? That’s like your national sport, isn’t it—killing each other?” Angie retorted.

  Pandora laughed for a moment, before her face morphed into a terrifying mask of anger. “I heard your new friend say what that plague had done to those poor coldbloods. Even we could not manufacture a torture more disgusting,” she spat. “Kill an enemy, by all means, but do not lock them up inside themselves, unable to move, resigned to being nothing more than spectators in their own lives. That is barbaric.”

  “Once we reverse it, they’ll never use the plague again—they won’t have a reason to. Let’s just call it an eye for an eye, and end this stupid conflict,” I said coldly, unable to believe the self-righteous garbage coming out of Pandora’s mouth. Yes, what the Pyros had done was wrong, but they had already been punished enough for that mistake.

  I mean, I didn’t like the idea of killing under any circumstances, but the Draconians had earned the right to decide what to do with the opaleine-encased coldbloods—if they wanted Navan to kill them, that was their decision. He had offered to be the executioner, and it was the only way to stop more death and destruction. As much as it pained me to say it, it was the lesser of two evils.

  “The plan has changed,” Pandora repeated firmly. “Now, join me on the observation deck.” It was not a request.

  Walking down the hallway, my chest still burning with rage and my friends equally furious, I eyed the weapons on either side of Pandora’s hips. I tried to pinpoint the perfect Aksavdo move that would allow me to take her by surprise and obtain one of the weapons. Grabbing both would be too difficult, but I could manage one. The knife was my best bet, since that was where my skills lay, but even that presented a problem. If I took the knife, that would leave Pandora with the gun, which was more effective at long range and would give her a distinct advantage over us. Not to mention the fact that she was stronger than me in almost every way and had the inhuman speed of a coldblood.

  If I took the knife, I’d have something to fight with, but I’d probably have a gunshot wound to the chest, too. Glancing at Angie and Lauren, I saw they were doing the same, exchanging knowing looks with me, then turning their gazes toward the weapons on Pandora’s hips. It seemed we were all on the same page as far as disarming the purple-haired witch. It was just a matter of timing.

  A few minutes later, we arrived at the entrance of the observation deck. Striding into the room after Pandora, expecting to see the familiar sight of the temple, the three of us froze in our tracks. The sight that met us chilled me to the bone.

  Inside the room, the furniture had been torn to shreds, everything upside down and inside out, not a single thing unturned. I’d been right all along. Pandora had found the Note. We had been found out.

  I whirled around, preparing to sprint for the exit, but the door came hurtling down, locking fast, trapping us inside. Pan
dora stood in front of us, silhouetted in the light coming through the windows. In her hand, she held the Note.

  “So you planned to betray me? I can’t say I’m surprised, though I was secretly hoping you might prove me wrong,” she said with menacing softness. “Which plan did you prefer—kicking me out of the airlock? Abandoning me on Zai? Infecting me with that hideous virus? I was surprised to find this, in all honesty. After all, I am the one who holds the key to your return home. Whyever would you risk that?”

  “Pandora, we can—” I began, but she cut me off.

  “What, you can explain?” She flashed me a withering look. “I heard most of what you said to your scaly friend, when you thought I wasn’t listening. It got me thinking—how have they discussed this with one another, without me knowing about it? Then I remembered how frequently you all seemed to come here. My cameras faced the back of your heads, didn’t they? A rookie error on my part, but it made me realize I had created the perfect place for you to communicate in secret,” she continued. “It did not take me long to—”

  “NOW!” I roared, and the three of us surged forward, taking Pandora by surprise mid-speech.

  Reaching down, I yanked the knife from its sheath, just as Pandora’s fist collided with my head, the vicious blow sending me crashing to the ground. Disoriented, I tried to get back up, but my head was dizzy, black spots partially blinding my vision. A ricochet of pain splintered through my skull, making me cry out.

  With me down, Angie seized the gun, but Pandora was one step ahead. She knocked the gun out of Angie’s hand, sending it skittering across the room, where it hit the window pane on the far side. Lauren sprinted after the weapon, but Pandora was way faster, snatching it up before Lauren was even close. My friend tried to turn back around, away from Pandora, but the floor was too slippery. Gripping the gun, Pandora moved forward and caught Lauren in a headlock, twisting her around until she called out in pain. Staring directly at me, the purple-haired coldblood pressed the gun to Lauren’s temple.