under advisement.”
“You know… threats of dire punishment, torture, that kind of thing,” he continued, not fighting as one of the troopers cuffed him. “Dairy-based threats are so passé.”
Eris closed her eyes for a second. This was it. She was going to get killed because of some smart-fucking-alec ex-con who didn’t know when to keep his freaking mouth shut.
“For krath’s sake. Shut the fuck up, Sparky!” The other trooper hauled her around, yanking rip-cuffs tight around her wrists behind her head.
She tried to pull a fast one, holding her wrists parallel rather than over one another. If he’d fallen for it, it would have given her enough room to slip her hands free. His slight grunt of amusement as he forced her hands palm to palm said he was too long in the tooth to fall for it.
“Hey,” she muttered, looking up as he forced her to her knees. His blue eyes were amused, but that was it. Beyond the amusement was a chilling coldness that said he would put a bullet between someone’s eyes without questioning the order. “Can’t blame a gal for trying. Can you?”
“No talking!” Mills ordered harshly, hauling Eric to his feet. “Now me and your brother will be taking our leave. The powers that be want him alive.”
He grinned as he pulled the smaller man closer, tapping the muzzle of his handgun against Eric’s temple. “Or, rather, they want the knowledge he has in this egghead of his. Kline and Patterson here will be escorting you to your final destination.”
“No! She comes with me!” Eric struggled against Mills’ hold, managing to break free enough to take a step toward Eris. “I won’t give you anything without her.”
Mills’ face hardened and he surged forward to knock Eric to his knees in front of Eris, pressing the gun against the back of his head.
“Now the thing my boss realizes about situations like this,” he said calmly. “Is that accidents happen. Do you want to be an accident, Doctor Archer?”
“It’s fine, Eric.” Eris smiled as she lied. “Do as they say, and no one will get hurt. Isn’t that right, Mills?”
“Your sister is a wise woman, Doctor. Pity things had to go this way...” Mills looked directly at her as he hauled Eric to his feet. Her heart went out to her brother; he was terrified and so out of his depth it was laughable.
“... perhaps in another time and place we could have gone out for that drink… dinner and back to my place. It would have saved me going through hoops to tag that fucking awful takeout coffee.”
She sucked a breath in. “It was me. You had a tracker on me all this time?”
Her stomach dropped, a sour taste in her mouth. All this time, she’d put Zero and the rest of the Warborne in danger. All because of her damn coffee addiction.
Mills chuckled. “Of course. We knew the good doctor here was at risk of turning, and with something as important as Prometheus, we couldn’t afford that. We had contingencies in place in case he went rogue. Good job we did. No way do we want that information to get out. Now it’s all contained, there’s no more threat to the program. Now, if you’ll excuse us, the good doctor and I have a shuttle to catch.”
He turned away, shoving Eric in front of him. The rest of the troop turned to follow, apart from the two behind Eris and Sparky. Kline and Patterson. The fact that Mills had named them was not a good sign. It meant their next “destination” would be their final one. A bullet to the back of the head before being thrown out the nearest airlock… No one would ever find their bodies this far out.
“Oh boy…” Sparky began to chuckle, his face creased with amusement followed by an outright belly laugh. “You really think we were stupid enough to come here alone? That we didn’t have a backup plan.”
Mills froze on the way to the door at the back of the lab, looking over his shoulder. “The shuttle you parked over the rise? Already gone, my friend, along with whoever was in it. Targeted missile strike took care of him as soon as you stepped inside the airlock. We knew you were coming.”
Eris closed her eyes. Of course they did. The tracker. Even though the shuttle itself had some kind of stealth tech, they’d have been able to pick up the tracker on her as soon as she stepped out