What would Shayn think when he made it to the ship? She had no idea how long she’d been in the little speeder, but it might have been long enough that his shuttle had already made it back. He’d tear the place apart looking for her, she knew that to the very depths of her soul. And when he couldn’t find her, he’d blame himself for not protecting her.
A tear threatened to fall, but she wiped her eyes quickly and hoped that if the Oscavian guarding her saw it, he’d think she was tearing up because of the pain of her bruises. And if he thought that, he clearly had no idea what she’d endured the last fourteen years.
There were at least two people besides her on the speeder: the man that was guarding her, sitting across from where she was buckled in with bound hands and feet, and someone piloting the vehicle. It was a tiny speeder and she could make out the back of the pilot’s head. There was probably a bathroom hidden away in the back and a small canteen for food, but otherwise they were in the living quarters. A ship like this had to get incredibly claustrophobic on long journeys, tempers fraying with no way to escape.
Could she use that?
Doubtful. If they were taking her back to Morgyn, the trip would take a few days at the most. And Naomi wasn’t some sort of femme fatale who could turn one person against his friends with just the powers of her feminine wiles.
Gross. No.
“I’m thirsty,” she croaked out. It was true, and there was no use suffering in silence. The worst had already happened.
“Give me some answers and you can have water,” her Oscavian captor replied. He looked to be about her age and spoke with the same refined accent that Morgyn used, suggesting a relatively upper class birth. So how did a guy like that end up chasing after escaped patients in the far reaches of the empire?
“What’s your name?” Naomi asked. Maybe if she humanized herself to this guy he wouldn’t hurt her.
“I’m the one asking questions,” he shot back. “Guess you’re not that thirsty after all.”
“Jesus, Ace, just get her some water!” the pilot yelled from her seat just out of view. Jesus? Was the pilot human? Naomi had never heard an alien use that exclamation, and she’d heard plenty of alien curses.
Ace glared in the pilot’s direction before unhooking his restraint and stomping back towards the canteen. He came back a minute later with a bottle of water that he helped Naomi drink. He even wiped a trickle off her face when she was done.
“All better?” he asked as he chucked the bottle towards the front of the ship. He grinned when the pilot cursed again.
“Thanks,” Naomi replied. The drink helped, but she doubted she could ask either one of them to untie her.
“Now tell me about the boyfriend. My associates stated you were in the company of an unknown alien. I want to know if he’s going to cause any trouble.” He sat back and fastened his harness as if he expected a bumpy ride.
How did he not know about Shayn? Shayn’s brothers had received a call from Sola about his departure, they’d bought their tickets together. It would be easy enough to track that information down. So why wouldn’t this guard know that they were traveling together. “What guy?” Naomi asked, her heart hurting even if denying Shayn’s existence was the only way to protect him.
“The bounty only called for your capture. Some of the other operatives mentioned a guy. I’m not going back for him, if that’s what you’re worried about. And we’re an independent team here, so nothing you say leaves this ship.” He offered her a smile, as if she would actually buy that load of crap.
Though some of it made sense. If he was a bounty hunter, maybe he hadn’t been given all the information. “He was a fling,” Naomi said, her guts roiling with the lie. “He won’t be chasing after me.”
They lapsed into silence after that, and the trip was marked with boredom more than anything else. Ace and his nameless pilot companion were as hospitable as two kidnappers could be, keeping her fed and watered and not roughing her up. If she’d had more time, maybe she could have convinced them not to return her to Oscavia, but two days later they were landing on the planet and Morgyn was there with a crew of burly guards, ready to take her into custody.
They put a hood over Naomi’s head and she felt a prick on her arm before everything went black.
She came to, still bound, though this time to the chair in a familiar examination room. Morgyn was sitting at the desk and entering something into the computer. When she saw that Naomi was awake she straightened. “I’m quite disappointed with you,” the doctor said.
Naomi’s throat was dry from whatever she’d been given and she gave up on trying to speak after a second. What was the use? She was exactly in the last place in the galaxy where she wanted to be.
Shayn. She hoped he was okay. If he was okay, then at least something had gone right.
“Nevertheless,” Morgyn continued when Naomi remained silent. “There are setbacks to all experimentation. I suppose it’s simply time we make you more... amenable.”
Her spine tingled with terror as the words sank in, the same words she’d heard in her vision. She waited for Morgyn to reach into the drawer for whatever drug she’d give her, but the scientist did no such thing. Naomi didn’t let herself believe it was a reprieve. Her visions weren’t always exact replications of the future. Morgyn might drug her later, or the drug could have been a metaphor for something else, something more sinister.
“There’s no need to look so glum, dear,” Morgyn assured her in the same voice she’d used to convince her to come and live at Sola Corp. But Naomi wasn’t a naive twelve-year-old anymore, and she certainly wasn’t going to believe everything the good doctor told her.
“I don’t want to be your experiment anymore.” She forced the words out past the knives in her throat, wanting to make it abundantly clear that Morgyn didn’t have her consent to do any experimentation. She didn’t expect it to matter, but it mattered to her. She needed to know for a fact that the woman who had raised her didn’t care that she didn’t want this.
And a small part of her hoped that Morgyn did care, that she would untie Naomi and call this one big misunderstanding.
That didn’t happen. The doctor merely shook her head again and stood up. “Then I guess I’ll need to change your mind.”
She left Naomi alone and tied up with no way out and no hope of escape.
SHAYN WAS TEETERING on the edge of madness by the time the ship docked at Honora Station. He felt no relief at the sight of the familiar hallways and shops. He’d spent every second of the last three days planning how to get Naomi back, and the outlook was bleak.
By now she was certainly back at the Sola Corp facility, and Morgyn wouldn’t risk losing her a second time. He needed to find a way back to the Oscavian Empire and into a secured building, retrieve his mate, and escape the Oscavian Empire a second time, all while having no element of surprise. It was a suicide mission.
But his mate was there, and he had to get her back.
Shayn was so caught up in his own head that he didn’t see the two young men enthusiastically waving at him as he got off the ship. Brax and Deke were right there, practically jumping in place and ready to see their brother.
They didn’t have any clue what was going on. Some sort of error in the communications system made it impossible to make comm calls for the last leg of the trip, so as far as his brothers knew, everything was fine. At least, they knew that until they got a good look at him.
“What’s wrong?” Deke asked, stepping close and placing a bracing arm on his shoulder. “You look like you haven’t slept for days.”
Had he? Shayn had tried to force himself that first night, but he was too keyed up to get any real rest. All the time after that sort of blurred, and he wasn’t sure if he’d actually remembered to sleep. “They have her,” he said, his voice coming out raspy. There’d been some screaming mixed in with the planning.
“Who?” Brax asked at the same time Deke said, “Her?”
“My denya,”
he said, his hands shaking before he clenched them into fists. “They have my denya. They took her. I have to get her back.”
The twins had never looked more alike than they did in that moment with their shocked expressions. Shayn might have found it funny if he could feel anything except cold determination. People were beginning to swarm around them as more and more passengers got off the ship. Brax threw an arm around Shayn’s shoulders and pulled him away from the center of the aisle, leading him further into Honora Station. Part of him wanted to struggle, wanted to insist that they were going the wrong way, but he couldn’t get Naomi back on his own. He’d need help.
Their rooms were in the residential quarters of Honora Station, an expensive little hovel that barely fit the three of them. Brax and Deke shared a small bedroom which had beds that pulled down from where they were stowed against the walls, while Shayn slept in their living space, his bed collapsing into a small square that could be used as a footrest or additional seat if they ever had visitors.
He didn’t think they’d ever had visitors.
And this was no place to bring a mate.
She might have been a prisoner at Sola Corp, but the gardens alone were the kind of luxury Honora Station couldn’t hope to match. Had he really planned to bring her to these tiny quarters and call it home?
Dekon put a hand on his shoulder and shook him. “Whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t as important as getting your denya back. Now tell us.”
So Shayn did, beginning at the first sight of her and taking them all the way through their adventure on the planet where they stayed the night. And when he got to the part about her getting on the shuttle Shayn wanted to scream. How could he have been so careless?
It didn’t help when Brax asked him that same thing. “She’s your denya, how could you let her do that?” he demanded.
Shayn’s eyes snapped to his younger brother and his claws flashed out, no surer sign that he was at the edge of this cliff and about to jump off. “Let?” he yelled, getting in Brax’s face and itching for a fight. “Let? She’s my denya, not my slave. She makes her own choices. And I kept an eye on the man who attacked us. She should have been safe.”
Dekon, ever the peacekeeper, separated them. “Killing each other won’t help your mate, Shayn. And you,” he looked at his twin and shook his head sadly, not finishing the sentence. He turned back to Shayn. “Do you know where she would have been taken?”
“Right back to Sola Corp,” Shayn answered without hesitation. “Right back where we started. On Oscavia.”
Dekon gave a decisive nod. “Then we’re going to Oscavia. Brax and I can take leave from our jobs, and if we’re going to Earth after this it won’t matter if they fire us.”
Relief flowed through Shayn, the first hint of hope he’d had in days. He’d never doubted that his brothers would help him, but to hear it from them was a burden removed from his mind. “We need to get there as quickly as possible,” he said. “They’ve already had her for three days.”
“And do you know how we’ll get her back from this tightly guarded corporation in the heart of the largest empire in the galaxy?” Brax asked with a bite.
Shayn shrugged. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
APPARENTLY “MAKING her more amenable” meant locking her in an empty closet with nothing but protein sludge for rations and no blanket or pillow. Naomi wasn’t certain how long she’d been locked up. She’d slept in fitful bursts and had been rationing her food in case they tried to starve her.
Orderlies had come in three times to take her to use the facilities and each of those times they’d left her with a few more protein rations. It could have been three days or twelve hours; she had no idea, and no way of checking.
She wouldn’t break, she refused. Morgyn had put her in this terrible place in the hopes it would make her want her old room and old privileges, things she could have if she consented to surgery and testing, but she was done with that. She wanted out, she wanted Shayn, she wanted to be anywhere but here.
Movement was difficult. The closet was wide enough for her to lay down, but she could only manage a few steps in either direction. It was easier to do squats and push ups and crunches, but that only left her muscles burning and her mind racing. She’d never thought she was claustrophobic, but if she was in the closet for long enough she was pretty sure she’d develop an aversion to tight spaces.
Naomi let out a shout, her frustration piled so high inside of her that she couldn’t keep it locked up anymore. She wanted to go home. Morgyn would argue that the facility was home, but that meaning had changed over the last week. Ever since she’d found Shayn her center of gravity had shifted until suddenly he meant more than she’d ever thought possible.
She hadn’t known it was possible to fall in love in a matter of days, let alone at first sight, but the longer they were parted, the more certain of it she was. Whether it was because of the denya bond or something else, she didn’t know, and she didn’t particularly care. She just wanted her man and a way off the planet. Was that so much to ask?
She hadn’t told Morgyn anything about Shayn and the doctor hadn’t asked. Did they really think she’d kidnapped him? Or did they know there was something more between them? Did they care? She hoped he was safe. When she reached deep inside herself she could feel the tug of the bond between them, assuring her that Shayn was still alive, out there somewhere. It was even getting stronger as the days went by. When she’d first arrived on Oscavia it had been weak enough she feared it would dissolve, but minute by minute she could feel it getting thicker, more substantial.
Was it possible for the bond to grow stronger despite the distance? Or was something else making it easier to feel? Naomi was caught between hope and fear at the thought that Shayn was coming closer, that he was coming for her. She’d had no one who thought of her like that since her parents had died. Sure, if something had happened to her over the past fourteen years Morgyn would have seen to her needs. But now Naomi knew that whatever she was doing, it was merely to ensure that her experiment maintained its value. She was nothing more than a possession to Sola Corp.
But she couldn’t put all her hopes in Shayn. Even if he did show up, getting to her was going to be a problem. And she wasn’t just going to sit around and wait to be saved. She had to do as much as she could to save herself first.
In that moment she wished she could call on years of martial training or military discipline, something that would allow her to bust out the locked room she was stuck in and fight her way out of the building. In the fantasy scenario she’d somehow manage to steal a vehicle and be flying off the planet before anyone could manage to slow her down.
She could sit all day coming up with impossible wishes, but they weren’t going to get her one step closer to getting out. All Naomi could count on was herself and what she had within her.
And on her.
The edge of her tablet dug into her leg and she realized that no one had checked her pockets. She still had Aileen, and her own mind. Maybe it would be enough.
She pulled the tablet out of her pocket and powered it up. The battery cell was full so she didn’t need to worry about that, but she had no way of plugging into the network. Then again, Aileen had her own ways of getting into systems.
“What did I say about turning me off like that?” the AI demanded as soon as she loaded up.
“I’m sorry,” Naomi said. “But will it make you happy to know that you were right about all of it?”
“Maybe.” Aileen sounded intrigued. “Why?”
“’Cause now I’m locked up at Sola Corp and I need your help to get me out.” Aileen was better than any ally on the planet and she’d spent years playing around in the computer systems here. If anyone could find a way out, it was her.
“Plug me in and let’s get out of here, then.” Aileen was excited and ready to get to work.
“One problem...” Naomi winced. “I can’t get you in
to the network. Can you get in wirelessly?”
“You don’t like to make it easy,” she grumbled. “Scanning.” The tablet seemed to heat up a bit in Naomi’s hands as Aileen got a feel for her surroundings. “Scan complete. They’ve upgraded their security, but I can probably get us in. It’s going to take some time. Don’t let them find the tablet.”
“I’ll put you away so they don’t find you,” Naomi promised. “Just let me know when you find something.”
“Oh, I will,” the AI promised. “And this time maybe your escape won’t get so screwed up.” With that parting shot, Aileen’s screen went black as she turned all her resources over to getting into the wireless network and finding a way for Naomi to get out.
That was one of Naomi’s tools put to use.
But she had another left.
Naomi nestled herself into the corner of the closet and did her best to get comfortable. The floor was hard and cold and made her shiver at the same time her butt went numb, but this could take awhile and she didn’t want to keep standing. She pulled her arms into the sleeves of her top and tried to preserve her warmth. It was no match for a blanket, but it was her only option.
And then she forgot about her body, turning her focus inward, going past the glowing cord of the denya bond and deeper still into her mind, into the heart of her power.
Back on the planet and the shuttle just afterward, her instincts had gone into high gear when she tried to summon a vision, and she had to believe it was because she’d been trying. She still couldn’t reliably summon a vision, but knew it was her only hope. She had to know what steps she could take to get out of Morgyn’s grasp and find her way back to Shayn.
She breathed deep, stilling her mind until she focused on nothing but her power, until she saw nothing but that extra sense she’d been given. It didn’t matter that she’d been chosen because she was young and vulnerable. It didn’t matter that Morgyn didn’t care about her beyond how she could profit from her.
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