Kyro - A.G. Wilde Page 0,85

Now he was grown and that made all the difference.

The hatred boiling within him had been boiling for years, and for years he had held it down.

Not any longer.

They’d gone too far this time.

Staring ahead through the shuttle’s gazer, his features set into hard lines.

Polvrak keep her alive, for he was coming to get her, and he was coming with a vengeance.

38

The scene kept playing over and over in her head. As real as the breaths she took, she relived it over and over again.

They kept removing the patch to replace it with a new one and each time, the effect was greater.

It was ripping her apart slowly, the fear of that time when she was lost as a child now so thick in her blood that she was shivering on the floor of the cage.

She wasn’t sure how long they’d been traveling for—there was no night and day she could use to judge. The artificial lights of the cargo hold were always on. But she knew they’d been traveling for a while because it felt like she’d been tortured for days.

She was barely aware of being transported from the cage to another ship and then to another shuttle, the movements coming back to her like instances in a dream.

Yet, she fought.

She fought what they were trying to do to her.

Whatever the patch was, it was affecting her brain by making her relive her most traumatic experience.

Break her.

The words echoed in her mind, pulling her from the illusion they were creating and planting her back in reality for moments before she fell into the illusion again.

They weren’t going to break her.

She was stronger than this.

What they didn’t know was that this traumatic experience was the thing that made her fall in love with her profession. It was being lost that made her find her purpose in life.

Had she not run after that rabbit...had she not gotten lost...had she not spent days in the forest alone, fending for herself, then she’d have never become an ecologist and she’d have never experienced the freedom that doing something she loved brought to her soul.

So no, they wouldn’t break her.

The fear she’d felt back then, it had spurred her to fend for herself.

And she was going to do that now.

She just had to fight it and recall which one was real.

She couldn’t let them win.

Remember, Evren. Remember your reality.

For a moment, her vision cleared, and she spotted two large hands lifting her from the floor.

Yeti hands.

That’s not real.

That’s her imagination.

Yetis weren’t real.

Her vision blacked out and then she was in the forest again.

But that didn’t seem real either.

As her vision cleared once more, she spotted a tentacle and large teeth spread in a grin close by her face.

Tentacles.

That grin.

She should know that’s not real, but it felt real.

It felt real because there was an immediate feeling of disgust and hatred that accompanied the sight of those tentacles.

Real.

That was real!

Grunting, she tried to push away the memory of the forest just as she felt something cool against her temple.

It took a few moments for the thoughts of being lost to subside and then she was blinking up in the face of the one with the grin.

It came back to her quickly.

M’Agunt.

He was grinning down at her, his eyes holding a question as he surveyed her face.

“I hope His Excellence likes how proactive I have been.” He beamed. “He will like you willing to his demands.” He peered down at her before looking at the yeti standing beside him. “The memory-chaser must have worked. The jekin doesn’t look nearly as alive as before.”

“Eat shit,” she snarled and M’Agunt’s grin fell as he pulled back, an unhappy look covering his features.

“Barbaric beast.” The skin over the top of his eyes fell in a frown. “Bring it. His Excellence has arrived.”

With that, what she assumed were the yeti-aliens lifted her, each taking one arm with her hanging between them like a rag doll.

As they stepped out of the cargo ship, she tried to make sense of her whereabouts but everything apart from her direct surroundings looked hazy.

They were walking for just a few meters when M’Agunt stopped suddenly.

In front of him, she could just about see the doors of a large white vessel opening. But her vision was still blurry from the after-effects of the patch. She wasn’t sure what was out there, but she was sure of one thing: M’Agunt had suddenly perked up, his grin widening and his face expectant.

Fuck.

The Tasqal.

It had to be the Tasqal