With one more quick check to make sure his communication equipment was working, he turned to Lilah again.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she replied grimly. “Let’s get Jenna’s kids back. And then you can make the bastards pay for what they’ve done.”
27. A Spark of Hope
Jenna’s eyes snapped open, and she took a shuddering breath. That nightmare had been even worse than the ones in the medical capsule. Something had been attacking her, something malevolent she couldn’t see. She could feel the presence pressing against her, while she stumbled among the trees of the forest, shouting for her children. Then it had swooped over her and began to squeeze her out of existence. First, she found it impossible to draw breath. Then it was inside her head. Icy needles of pain burrowed themselves inside her skull, as if trying to gore her brain. Then her skin had burned, burned as if an electric current were traveling from the needles in her head to every nerve ending. She opened her mouth soundlessly; she couldn’t even draw breath to scream. Every second seemed to last an eternity until her mind hadn’t been able to cope anymore, and she jolted into consciousness.
For a moment, all she could do was lie frozen in the semidarkness, blessedly enjoying her freedom from pain of any kind. Her sweat-slicked body trembled, and her back ached from lying on a thin pallet on the floor. As her breathing slowed and the agonizing pain and helplessness and fear from the dream began to fade, Jenna blinked and tried to process her surroundings. She knew exactly where she was—the strange bug researcher’s office. But she must have slept through the rest of the night. The faint light of dawn filtered in through an overhead skylight, making possible to see at least some shapes in the room. Stretching out her arms with a groan, Jenna realized that she was alone on the pallet. She wearily dragged herself into a sitting position, peering around in the dim gloom in search of Kendra. She spotted her instantly, a small silhouette of darkness standing near the door to the kitchen.
“Kendra?” she asked, her voice rough.
“Mommy, something’s wrong,” Kendra said, her high voice strained.
“What is it?” She rubbed at her bleary eyes, trying to make sense of the shadowy shapes around her. She could see Lenata asleep on another pallet against the wall; she was snoring softly, one arm over her head. Nobody else was in the room with them. Jenna couldn’t hear anything unusual either. Just the quiet hum of the electricity, Lenata’s snoring, and Kendra’s rapid breathing.
Suddenly her brain woke up. Her daughter was terrified.
“What is it?” she asked again, forcing her aching legs to stand. Sharp needles pricked at her legs and feet, and she ignored it as she staggered over to her daughter.
“Dina says they’re coming,” Kendra whispered, as if she were afraid she would be overheard.
“They?” Jenna probed. “Who are you . . .”
A sudden, piercing screech broke the air. Kendra screamed, covered her ears, and threw herself at her mother. Lenata bolted upright against the wall, looking around wildly. Jenna clutched at Kendra as she spun toward the sound—an alarm was coming from the desk terminal, whose screen had flared to life. The door on the far side of the room slid open, and Kip pounded into the room, chest bare and hair sticking up wildly.
“Lights!” he commanded urgently. The overhead lights snapped on, temporarily blinding them. Kip roughly shoved past them and slid into the chair in front of the terminal screen. “More visitors,” he grumbled.
“What?” exclaimed Lenata nervously. Kip pulled up a vid feed, streaming from who knew where.
“They’re coming in a crawler on my main access road. Friends of yours?” he growled. Jenna leaned closer, trying to see. The picture was grainy, but she could see it quite clearly. A crawler moved slowly along a narrow dirt road nearly overtaken by the jungle.
Lenata cleared her throat noisily. “The crawler does look familiar,” she admitted, her tone completely devoid of the arrogant confidence Jenna had heard since she’d first met her. She could hear the fear now; it made Lenata seem much younger. It didn’t make Jenna like her better, though.
“Looks like they found you, then,” Kip said. He stared at the screen, deep in thought. “I don’t suppose they’d believe me if I told them you weren’t here?
Lenata didn’t answer. She was staring at the approaching crawler in horrified fascination.
“Great,” Kip said sourly.
“How are you getting that vid?” Jenna asked.
“It’s a drone that monitors my access road. Anything that stays on the road for longer than five meters gets tracked. Sometimes I get animals that way. But usually they are too wary to stay in the clearing for long. Anything that stays on the road for longer than fifteen meters sets off an alarm here,” Kip explained, tapping at his screen. “That way I can lock down if needed.” He stared at the screen again. “Judging by the stretch they just passed, we have about fifteen minutes until they arrive. I should have gotten a warning earlier, but I must have lost some cameras to the storm.”
“Are we safe here?” Kendra piped up nervously.
Kip glanced at her for a second. “That depends on how insistent they are about getting in,” he admitted. “And how much they’d rather have us alive than dead.”
Kendra stifled a squeak of fear, and Jenna glared at Kip, pulling her daughter closer.
“They’ll want them alive,” Lenata stated tonelessly with a jerk of her head toward Jenna and Kendra. “Me, they’ll kill. You too, most likely.”
“Then you’d better get out of my house,” Kip said in return, still staring at his screen.
“And go where?” Jenna demanded angrily. Sneaking off into the jungle didn’t sound any safer. She was exhausted, and she didn’t think she could hike any more through the dense foliage. Kendra probably even less.
Lenata stiffened and seemed to pull herself together. “We need to go to the village,” she said, her voice strong and clear now, all free from doubt. “Even you, Kip. If your house is empty, they might assume we never came here in the first place.”
“I’m not abandoning all my equipment, all my research to them!” Kip was outraged.
Lenata shrugged, all business again. “Suit yourself. I expect they’ll question you, though. Roughly.”
Kip swore loudly. “Grab what supplies you need from the kitchen then,” he muttered. “I have some sensitive data to retrieve.” He headed back through the doorway to his bedroom.
“Get your boots on and then meet me in the kitchen,” Lenata ordered as she scooped up the straps to both the packs they had brought with them from the crawler. Jenna didn’t argue, reaching for the still damp boots set next to her pallet. She pulled them on with a grimace as they chafed her tender ankles. But the second that Lenata disappeared through the doorway that led back into the insect room, Jenna skipped strapping the boots and slid hastily into Kip’s desk chair. When Kip had first switched on the terminal screen, she had seen an icon that she thought she recognized. Hoping desperately she was right, she tapped at the icon eagerly, her chest tight with anticipation.
“What are you doing, Mommy?” asked Kendra nervously, coming up behind her.
“Hoping for a miracle,” breathed Jenna. The window opened on the screen, pulling up an active comm link.
Kip had lied to her about one thing, at least.
28. A Message from Jenna
Jimmy slept right through the high-priority comm. He’d given in to Marian’s nagging and finally tried to get some rest. After tossing and turning, unable to shut his thoughts off, the sheer fatigue of several days of little sleep and cross-continent travel caught up to him. He slept deeply for hours before waking in the middle of the night with a full bladder. Jimmy didn’t even glance at the flipcom before stumbling into his bathroom, still confused and disoriented. It wasn’t until he’d washed his hands and trudged back into his bedroom tha
t he saw the blinking red light on the flipcom he’d left sitting on the nightstand.
The sight made him freeze for a moment.
A high-priority comm. A ransom demand? Or was it from Richard? Maybe the admiral had found them!
He dashed for the nightstand, catching his foot on his forgotten travel bag and pitching forward, landing on his knees by the side of the bed. He ignored the flaring agony in his knees and snatched the flipcom off the stand. “Play message,” he ordered, his voice breathless.
Jenna’s face popped up on the screen.
Jimmy gasped in shock. Her blonde hair hung in tangled locks and her face was thin, as if she’d lost even more weight in just the week she’d been missing. An angry red scratch crossed her right cheek and ran all the way to her jaw. Her bruised left cheek was starting to heal—a blotch of blue and purple and yellow. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. Clearly she’d been crying. Jimmy’s jaw tightened. Once his family was safe, he would personally hunt the kidnappers down and hand them over to Lev Quintan for Red Zone–style revenge without even blinking. Right behind Jenna’s shoulder, he could see half of Kendra’s face. Her eyes were wide and red rimmed, but she looked unharmed. Was this the ransom demand? He turned the volume up, not wanting to miss a single word as Jenna began to speak.
“Jimmy, I don’t know if you will actually get this message in time, but I had to try.” Her voice was rough and hoarse. Jimmy wondered if that was from crying or from something else. Maybe her time in a medical capsule?
“I wish I could tell you where I am, but I have no idea. Somewhere in a Zorian jungle.”
Jimmy choked back a hysterical laugh. Zoria! He’d never even considered Zoria. How were they going to find her in a jungle in Zoria? Were there even any towns out there? He had no idea.
Jenna continued, “I don’t know what happened to Erik and Berry and Mrs. Smitz.” Her voice hitched, and she reached up to tug on a lock of her hair. “I was told Mrs. Smitz was gone, but I couldn’t get any other details. E-Erik and B-B-Berry were with us at first.” She stopped for a second and took a deep shuddering breath. He could see the unshed tears pooling in her eyes. “They were sedated, and then some masked men took them away. I never saw their faces, but one was called Archer.”
Jimmy silently noted the name. A first name without a face wasn’t much to go on, but he would take what he could get.
“A woman called Lenata helped Kendra and I escape from where we were being held. She called it the Ravine. There was a terrible storm, and the bridge was out, and we ended up hiking through the jungle away from the road. I don’t know how long—a couple of hours at most. She took us to the home of this researcher named Kip. That’s where we are right now.”
Her nose scrunched up, and Jimmy could tell that she was on the verge of tears again. Then she took a deep breath. “But we have to leave in just a few minutes. The kidnappers have tracked us here, and we are heading back out into the jungle. I think Lenata is taking us to the Rorans, Jimmy. If you can find the Rorans—there are survivors of the Roran Uprising here in Zoria—you’ll find us. At least I hope so.”
Jenna pressed the tips of two fingers to her lips gently. “I love you,” she whispered. “Now and forever, no matter what.” Then there was a crash offscreen, and Jenna’s head whipped around. The vid suddenly cut out.
Jimmy replayed the message four more times, trying to absorb every word and gesture. Jenna and Kendra were alive! Or at least they had been two hours before, according to the timestamp on the message. His chest tightened. Clearly they were in trouble, though. And what had caused that crash? He cursed himself again for sleeping through the comm. He forwarded the message to both Marian and Richard and then started to watch the vid again.
During his fifth time through the message, he heard hurried footsteps and then frantic knocking at his bedroom door. Jimmy paused the message and turned around. “Come in!” he called.
Marian appeared a moment later, holding her flipcom out before her, her hair sticking up in all directions. “When did you get this?” she asked anxiously.
“It came a couple of hours ago. I never even heard it. I could kick myself. I could have talked to her if I’d just woken up!”
Marian looked down at her screen, biting her lip. “The Rorans!” she said fearfully.
“I know, it’s not great news, but at least we have some idea where to look,” Jimmy said optimistically. Though his lungs tightened at the thought of Erik and Berry. Where were they? Jenna had mentioned a terrible storm—were they safe? Had they been auctioned separately from Jenna and Kendra? Monserrat said he had been too late to win anyone besides Mrs. Smitz. That didn’t mean the other four had been sold as a group. Marian held out her hand for his flipcom, and he handed it over.
“It came from an unusual terminal address,” Marian said, as she studied the original message. “I don’t know if Zoria has locally assigned terminal addresses, though. Richard’s contacts can probably trace it, but if it’s a floating address, that won’t give us the physical location.”
Suddenly Marian frowned. “You have another priority comm, Jimmy. Did you see that?”
“What?” Jimmy exclaimed, taking back his flipcom. She was right; when he checked the queue, there was another high-priority comm. It had arrived only fifteen minutes earlier—it might have been what originally had woken him, though he had been too groggy to realize it. “It’s from my father,” he said softly. What would his father want with him? Jimmy already regretted storming out without another word to his father. Granted, his father seemed to be siding with the Quintans, and clearly Zane was involved in this whole mess somehow. But he had come all the way to Zenith to help, and Jimmy’s conscience pricked him. He should have at least commed his father when he came to Tarentino.
“I’m going to comm Richard, see if he can find out where there might be a Roran settlement in Zoria,” Marian said, heading for the door. “I’ll be outside if you need me.” Jimmy realized that she was tactfully giving him some privacy so he could listen to his father without someone else hanging over his back. Once the door slid shut behind her, he took a deep breath and played the message.
His father’s face appeared on the screen. Jimmy frowned. His father looked almost as worn out as Jenna had. His face was gray and haggard. He hadn’t appeared ill when Jimmy had seen him at the Quintan Edge. Granted, that had been only during a very short meeting where Jimmy had not looked much at his father’s face. Had something happened to him?
“James, there has been a ransom demand for Beryl and Erik. It was sent directly to Quintan Security.”
Jimmy sucked in a breath.
“They are demanding the plans to the gate. The exchange will take place today.” Adrenaline started to course through Jimmy’s body. He shot to his feet, though his eyes were still glued to the flipcom screen.
“You need to be here. Your kids will need you. I have chartered a ship through Allemande Transit. You can find them in the freight wing of the Tarentino Bay Shuttleport.” His father stopped for a moment to cough, a deep, wracking sound that made Jimmy’s chest hurt just watching.
“I’m so sorry about all of this, James. I need you to believe that I am on your side. I know you don’t trust Zane, but I truly believe the Quintans have the best chance of bringing your family home.
“The most important words have always been the hardest for me. I know I haven’t said them enough. Son, I love you. Please let me help you.”
The message finished, and Jimmy closed the flipcom with a snap. His head was a mess of conflicting emotions. There was a chance to get Berry and Erik, but he was going to have to trust the Quintans, and he wasn’t sure he could do that. Something was gravely wrong with his father—he sounded like he could barely draw breath. And his father had said he loved him.
His father hadn’t said that in years.
Jimmy had long ago convinced himself th
at he didn’t care where his father was or what he was doing, but now the truth was staring him starkly in the face. Whatever his father was or wasn’t, he was still Jimmy’s father. It meant something to know he had his father’s love. But could he trust him?
29. Attacks Within and Without
Jenna had just finished her message to Jimmy when a sudden smash from the bug room startled her. She abruptly closed the comlink and shot to her feet, grabbing Kendra by the hand. “What was that?” Kendra whimpered nervously.
The door to the bug room slid open, and Lenata stumbled into the office.
“Get them off me!” she screamed hysterically as she clawed at her face.
“What?” Jenna moved toward her hesitantly. She dropped Kendra’s hand and waved her back.
“Get them off!” Lenata screeched, her voice almost an octave higher than normal. Jenna saw that she had large roach-like insects scurrying up her torso and down her arms. She leaped backward by reflex, eyes darting around the room for something she could use to help.
“Kip!” yelled Kendra. “Kip, help!”
“It burns!” Lenata cried, now ripping her shirt off in an attempt to get the insects away. Jenna spotted a blanket on Lenata’s pallet and snatched it up. She tried to knock as many of the huge roaches off as possible with the blanket, but then they were on the floor and heading toward her. She stomped on one that nearly reached her foot, and the squashy crunch turned her stomach.
Suddenly Kip burst through the door the led to his bedroom. He swore violently when he saw the bugs.
“Get back in the insect room!” he ordered, his voice overtaking Lenata’s weeping. “I need to irradiate you.” He grabbed Lenata’s arm and hauled her back toward the room with the glass cases. “Smash any you find!” he called to Jenna urgently. “Don’t let them get away!”
Jenna didn’t have to search for any of the roaches dislodged from Lenata. A swarm was heading right toward Kendra, though a couple had veered off in her direction. Jenna quickly squashed the two in front of her, her unstrapped boots nearly coming off in the process. Then she dodged in between her daughter and the main swarm, which moved slowly but unerringly toward them. “Kendra, they must sense our body heat or something. Get out of this room, and I’ll deal with them,” she commanded.
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