Gravity (Dark Anomaly #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,44

been at stake.

So stupid!

I groaned, hating myself even more than I hated him.

“You would have been dead,” he repeated quietly.

“That’s what you think!” I struggled in his arms. “Your stubbornness, your stupid ignorance has ruined my life.”

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. Keeping an arm around my waist, he shoved me toward the suit.

“Initiate the launch sequence, just like you intended.”

For one tiny moment, I believed he was setting me free. Then I realized, he only wanted me to send the empty suit into space.

“Set a one-minute delay,” he added.

He was getting rid of my only means of escape.

Swallowing the hard lump in my throat, sorrow threating to suffocate me, I did what he said. Except that I also secretly added the coordinates of the starting location. Now, if the suit were found, they would know where it came from. Someone would match its serial number to my mission and, hopefully, figure out I was trapped here.

“Come.” Vrateus dragged me out of the room after I was done.

A group of errocks waited for us in the corridor, along with a few members of other species who were awake. Anything out of the ordinary passed for entertainment around here. Apparently, watching the recapture of the only female on the Dark Anomaly after her failed escape attempt was worth staying up for.

“Watch.” Vrateus pushed me against the door, the glass insert positioned right in front of my face.

The thrusters went off the moment the outside door opened. The empty suit launched toward the dancing lights beyond.

Without me.

It grew smaller and smaller the farther it went—a dark, humanoid silhouette against the vivid light show.

My chest hurt watching it go, taking my last hope with it.

Before going completely out of sight, the suit jerked suddenly, sharply changing its trajectory. Swirling off course, it headed back to us, moving exponentially faster than when it had departed.

That was not in the program I had inputted.

With a strangled noise of shock, I watched it propel through the distance between us. My hands splayed on the door, I sensed the faint vibration of its impact against the outer hull.

“See this?” Vrateus yanked me from the window to the screen by the door. Punching into it, he brought up images of the outer edge of the metal body of the Anomaly that must have come from cameras they had installed outside.

My spacesuit—made using the latest experimental technology, tested in the bottomless ocean of Olphi, proven to withstand the unimaginable—was smashed against the wreckage of a ship. Its arms and legs bent, its torso twisted in a way that allowed for zero doubt, I would have had no chance of survival had I remained inside. The entire thing squished and dented by the unbeatable gravity of the Dark Anomaly.

I stared unblinking at what would have been my death had Vrateus not dragged me out of the suit just minutes earlier.

And I could not accept that all hope was now truly gone.

“My body weight would have made a difference, were I inside,” I kept arguing in my head, knowing that it would not, at least not enough to change the outcome. I might have crashed at a slightly different spot, but I still would have crashed.

And died.

My hands trembled, the shakes spreading to the rest of me, as the realization of what this crash really meant descended on me.

I was truly, completely, inescapably trapped on the Dark Anomaly.

For the rest of my life.

Chapter 14

IN SHOCK AND OVERWHELMED by despair, I was only half-aware of Vrateus dragging me through the corridors of the Anomaly, back to my room.

A group of aliens had gathered in front of it, watching as we approached. They gawked at me and made jokes, mocking my failed escape attempt.

His expression grave, Vrateus hit the panel, opening my door. When he shoved me in, I sensed his hands shake.

“Wine, Captain?” One of his males offered a metal canteen to him.

Vrateus grabbed it from him. Keeping his eyes on me, he took a huge swig from the canteen.

I staggered into the room. The lights of the Anomaly no longer seemed beautiful or mesmerizing. They were mocking me, destined to spend the rest of my life in this inescapable glass prison. I felt like a moth trapped inside a lantern, only with the light being outside of the glass—teasing, enticing, and deadly.

The slam of Vrateus’s hand against the door panel was followed by the swishing sound of the doors closing. I idly wondered if he had discovered that I had disabled