me in his arms. His body is rigid. He takes me up the stairs to the deck and lays me on a soft-cushioned, legless lounge chair. From a nearby recessed shelf, he grasps a big, white towel, which he lays over me. I’m grateful for it and the fact that it has stopped raining.
Closing my eyes, I intend to rest for just a second. When I open them again, the sun is out. There’s a vermillion-colored, kitelike umbrella flying over me. It’s blocking the worst of the sun’s powerful midday rays. Kyon lounges on another legless deck chair with a whole command center of electronics surrounding him on hovering modules. He’s watching something on one screen and making lists on another at the same time. I can’t hear what he’s listening to, though, because he’s using an earpiece.
My deck chair is all the way reclined, but when I sit up, the back of it comes up to support me. Kyon looks my way. “Your lunch is ready.” He gestures to the floating tray beside me.
“Thank you,” I reply before I begin to eat.
Kyon watches me for a moment, and then he glances back at his screens. “You’ve been monitoring the future—often, haven’t you?”
I don’t see a point in lying, so I reply, “I see things.”
“Did you see anything else last night?”
“And if I did?”
“Then I want to know about it.”
“Because we’ve established a circle of trust?” I reply sarcastically.
He shakes his head. “Your loyalty is so misplaced, Kricket.” He turns one of the hovering monitors to face me. It shows surveillance footage with a time stamp running at the bottom of the screen. My pulse quickens when I see myself on it. I’m strapped to a metal chair in a desolate cell, being brutally beaten by a Rafian soldier—a Brigadet. He punches me in the stomach, and then he follows it with an uppercut. It’s clear that he has knocked me unconscious, but it doesn’t stop him from hitting me until another soldier forcefully pulls him away from me. He spits on me as I sag motionless in the chair, dripping blood from a multitude of open wounds.
Adrenaline surges into my bloodstream and I’m no longer hungry. I have to turn away. “I don’t want to see anymore.”
“It’s footage from the Ship of Skye,” Kyon says with anger he can’t hide. “This is what happened to you before I found you shackled to a pole.”
“I know where it’s from,” I murmur. It’s the interrogation that Trey told me about—it happened. Even if I can’t remember it, it was real.
“Nice friends you had, Kricket. They did this to you,” he says with contempt.
Looking at the monitor again, I watch as I’m struck again and again. “It wasn’t my friends.”
“They’re all part of Skye. They brought you there and allowed this to happen to you.”
I turn away from the gruesome scene playing out on the monitor. Swinging my legs off the lounger, I get up from the chair. The towel on my lap slips to the ground as I bump into the hovering tray, knocking my plate off of it. It shatters on the deck as I hurry down the stairs to the sand. I turn up the beach and run blindly away from him. I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t care, as long as I can get as far from Kyon and the interrogation on his monitor as possible.
When I’m no longer able to run, I slow and walk along the shore, panting and clutching at the stitch in my side. To my left, a wide, grassy path comes into view. Wanting to get off the beach and out of the blistering sun, I turn onto it. It takes me into a grove of palm trees. The trail is lined with conch shells and tropical flowers, which I avoid, because one never knows about the flowers on this ridiculous planet. The path becomes steeper as it wraps around a hill. The trees become thinner. I notice I’m above the beach. There’s a waterfall coming off the cliff face in the distance; it pours into the sea below. Nestled on the cliff near the waterfall is the hangar that I saw on the satellite maps in Kyon’s office.
Continuing to follow the grassy path, I eventually come to the hanger. It’s made almost entirely of glass, with enormous wood beams supporting a metal roof. It reminds me of a longhouse, but on a much grander scale. I walk up to