The white figure stops outside a heavy sealed door, turns to the figures behind me. There’s a short, uncomfortable pause and then, though no words were spoken, two of the agents nod and walk back the way we came. My head is aching, my eye is still burning. And looking at my dull reflection in that featureless helmet, I can see my right iris has gone completely white.
I want my mom. I want my dad. I want to run as far and as fast as I can, and hide somewhere safe, and never come out.
“Please,” I whisper. “P … Pri …”
“Princeps,” the one in white replies, brushing imaginary dust off its lapel.
I can feel tears burning my eyes. “I w-want to go home.”
“You are going home, Aurora. I am about to report that you are on your way.” Princeps waves one spotless gloved hand at the agents behind me. “My colleagues will see to your needs until I return.”
The white figure turns and marches down the hallway. One of the gray suits behind me touches a panel, and the heavy door beside us slides open with a whisper.
I begin to follow the agent through the doorway, then jerk to a halt two steps in, so suddenly that the faceless agent behind me nearly collides with me.
That stumble is the first truly human moment I’ve had from any of them.
I’ve seen this room before, and the shock of recognition was so strong, it stopped me in my tracks. An image of it flashed into my mind back in the cargo bay, the moment I heard the words Terran Defense Force. Another vision, arriving with a terror that completely displaced my panic about having thrown that Syldrathi girl into a wall with what I’m pretty sure was the power of my mind.
What the hell is happening to me?
I saw the same steel-gray walls I’m seeing now, the same burning lights, the same single chair in the exact center of the floor, and me seated on it. My hands were bound in front of me with gray cuffs the same shade as my interrogators’ suits, and the pain that was coming from those cuffs—the very memory of it has me trembling. It was melt-your-flesh-off-your-bones pain, cut-off-your-hands-to-escape pain, and on pure instinct I try to back up, bumping into my captor.
Two gray-gauntleted hands land on my shoulders, squeezing until my bones are fit to crack and fuse together, and my knees give, my vision swimming.
Those same hands grab my biceps and steer me, stumbling, toward the chair, twisting me around and dumping me in it. I remember that Syldrathi girl, remember throwing up my hands and pushing her away without ever touching her, and I stare up at my captors, half-blinded by pain and tears, desperately probing my mind for the part that knows how to throw them across a room, scrambling for anything that might help, and coming up short.
This was my vision. The cuffs, the pain, and the same words screamed over and over in a voice so hoarse I could barely recognize it as my own.
“I don’t know. Please, I don’t know.”
It’s only when two helmets tilt to look down at me that I realize I’m already whispering my reply. I’m already pleading, and they haven’t even asked me the first of their impossible questions yet.
“Ms. O’Malley,” one says quietly, voice perfectly even, perfectly neutral, cold as the vacuum outside the thin walls of this ship. “Believe us when we say we’d prefer to do this the easy way.”
12
Tyler
“Well, isn’t this cozy.”
I glance up at Finian. He’s leaning against the burnished steel wall, black eyes fixed on me. His exosuit gleams silver in the light of the fluorescents overhead, humming softly as he reaches down to the water cooler beside him.
“The decor’s a little sparse for a meeting room, though,” he continues, sipping from a disposable cup and looking around. “I know you Terrans aren’t the most stylish race in the Milky Way, but I swear this looks more like a holding cell.”
“Oh, do go on,” Scarlett says, leaning forward on our bench and batting her eyelashes. “Honestly, I could just listen to you bitch and moan all day, Finian.”
Finian takes a bench and sighs. “I’m too old for this crap.”
Zila tilts her head. “You are barely nineteen, Legionnaire de Seel.”