Terror suddenly appeared. He scowled as he argued, but she couldn’t tell what was being said. The general got involved and then one of the pilots—Hazard, she thought—jumped into the verbal fray. There were too many moving mouths, too many words being said too quickly.
As she tried to figure out what was happening, the blond with the hood took advantage of the confusing melee and covered her head without warning. She reached up to tear it off, but the cuffs on her wrists were grabbed. A hand on the back of her neck applied pressure in just the right way, and her arms went numb and heavy.
Unable to fight, she had no choice but to follow the rough nudge of the man controlling her like a puppet. Blinded by the hood, she was gripped by the most intense sensation of claustrophobia. She couldn’t hear or see, and every forced step filled her with anxiety. She expected to trip or slam into a wall. Trying to calm her panic, she inhaled deeper breaths and focused on the directions of her escort. Straight. Left. Left. Right. An elevator. Straight. Right. Left. Right. Right. Left. Another elevator. Straight. Right. Straight.
The hand on her neck yanked hard enough to make her stumble. In the next moment, someone grabbed the back of her borrowed jacket and hauled her upright while simultaneously steering her forward and then to the left. She was spun around and then shoved straight down until her bottom slammed into the hard surface of a chair. Her wrists were hooked to something in front of her. A table? The shackles around her ankles were attached to the legs of the chair.
She tried to control her breathing as her anxiety skyrocketed. The room was unnaturally cold compared to the other spaces she had traversed. She assumed she was in some kind of interrogation room. The colder climate made sense. They would want her uncomfortable and afraid. Though, how they expected her to talk with her hands shackled so tightly in front of her was anybody’s guess.
She lost track of time as she sat there, hooded, cuffed and freezing. Willing herself to stop panicking, she reached out until her fingertips brushed the cold metal table. She left them there, barely touching the surface, and closed her eyes. As a child, she had often amused herself by using her fingertips to “hear” things. Her mother had taught her the skill, showing her how to feel the vibrations of sound through metal and other conductive substances.
The background vibration she detected never changed. It was the slow thrum of the ship, the electrical currents racing through the wiring and the rush of air through the vents. If she concentrated hard, she could feel the thud of footsteps and the pulse of voices in the room to her left. It was difficult, especially when her hands were trembling from fear and cold, but she could feel it, just barely, as footsteps moved closer to the room where she sat. They grew stronger under her fingertips until the door opened, and the pressure in the room changed, probably an imperceptible amount to anyone else. There was another set of footsteps, heavier than the first, and then the jagged vibrations of something scraping against the floor. A chair, she decided, as the table moved slightly.
A third set of footsteps entered the room, these eerily similar to Terror’s but not an exact match. That third set of footsteps stopped behind her, and the fine hair on the back of her neck stood on end from the close proximity of the man behind her. With her senses limited to smell and touch, she picked up on the different scents on each man. There was the same crisp, bright soap scent emanating from each of them, but their body chemistries altered it slightly. One man smelled of rain and moss and the slight sweetness of wildflowers. Another like leather and steel. The one behind her smelled of citrus more than anything, as if he had just finished peeling and eating an orange. The scent took her back to that first day in Terror’s cell.
The hood was whisked away, pulling strands of her hair with it, and she winced at the sting in her scalp. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the almost painfully bright light in the cramped interrogation room. The man sitting in front of her at the table wasn’t anyone she had seen on the deck. She didn’t need to know his