Tamed By the Alien Pirate by Celia Kyle Page 0,22

had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and aren’t allowed to leave the building’s campus.

Zander is a bit bolder than me. He turns to Bruce, a sneer twitching at the edge of his mouth.

“Mr. Bruce, I’m beginning to wonder about the ethical implications of this work.”

“Indeed.” I come up beside him and cross my arms over my chest. “Are we to believe that all of these women are volunteers? And what exactly are they being treated for?”

Bruce looks between the two of us and sighs, rubbing the end of his already reddening nose.

“Look… you’re being compensated very well for a lot of reasons. One of them is your expertise in your respective fields of study. The other reasons are a bit… murkier.”

“I’m not comfortable with this. Does the K’Patel Science Commission know about these experiments?”

Bruce looks me dead in the eye.

“That’s the kind of talk that gets people gone around here.”

Zander arches an eyebrow under his horns.

“You mean fired?”

Bruce turns a cold glare on him.

“I mean gone.”

Zander and I exchange glances. What have we gotten ourselves into?

Chapter Eleven

Zander

“Stay put,” the scowling Kraaj in front of me growls. “I’ll be outside to make sure that happens.”

“Yeah, sure,” I reply, and then step inside the room, closing the door behind me.

It’s only been a couple of hours since we’ve signed our contract, and these cretins are already treating us as if we are their slaves. Sure, they’re cretins who don’t mess around, but they’re still cretins. Unfortunately, their cretinistic tendencies have separated me from Thrase. After we were done with the orientation process, we were both led into a room to sign our contracts and then herded to separate accommodations.

Frowning, I walk around the little room I’ve been given.

Despite the dilapidated appearance of the building, it seems like Starcorp spared no expenses when it came to renovating the floors they were interested in. And that’s a good thing since the contract we’ve just signed with them indicates we’re not to leave the premises under any circumstances. That, of course, was justified with the confidential nature of the work we’ve been hired to do.

Nonetheless, we’re prisoners here.

Despite the modern decoration—sharp and angular lines, a minimalist display of furniture, and a grayish tone everywhere—the room still feels like a prison cell. It doesn’t help that this policy of having to remain in our accommodations whenever we’re not working is being enforced by armed guards. Even now, I’m too painfully aware of the roided up Kraaj standing outside the door.

I try to take my mind out of all that and decide to do it by focusing on dinner. There’s a sumptuous meal on the table by the corner, which must have been placed there by some lowly grunt. I take one bite of the carefully cut steak, but even its flavor feels bland. Any other time, and there’s nothing I would’ve enjoyed more than a good steak straight from one of the many farms on the frontier worlds that border the League. As it is, I can’t even stand to be looking at food.

To make matters worse, even our comms were removed, which prevents me from communicating with Thrase. That, of course, makes it almost impossible for us to plot our next move. Whenever we’re together, we’re supposed to be working on the project, and it’s hard to talk with the other employees and our superior around.

It’s ironic, truly. I pissed off Solair, escaped from the Ancestral Queen, and managed to sign a contract with Starcorp… and all just so I could be near Thrase.

All that effort and now I can’t even see her.

Bored out of my mind, I sit behind the small workstation inside the room. In truth, it’s nothing more than a small terminal with access to limited entertainment. Despite the urgency with which Starcorp wants results, they don’t want us to be fiddling with any kind of work-related documents unsupervised.

I flick through the many holovids on offer, but quickly decide against watching one of them. I bring up the control menu and, with a few quick strokes on the keyboard, I input a command that allows me to bypass the restraints that have been installed on the terminal. It’s child’s play.

I start digging through whatever’s on file, but there’s nothing of interest. Then, I try to push my way deeper into the system, but my knowledge of cyber-security isn’t as eximious as Fiona’s. Still, that doesn’t prevent me from accessing a three-dimensional map of the building. A couple of seconds of looking at