“And?” That couldn’t be all.
“He shot the Stench at least twice. They’re limping through their jump right now.”
“I heard the explosions.” I sure hoped the damage wasn’t bad enough to ground them on the near-deserted Nickleback. Shade could repair a lot of things, but not without materials.
I rubbed my forehead. “Bridgebane won’t do nothing for long. He can’t risk it.” Even with Sanaa and me in the line of fire, he’d shoot. I knew that.
A jolt went through the cargo unit, throwing me away from the console so hard I fell over. We tilted, and I slid toward the mass of human passengers, slamming into someone sitting on the floor. Two knees hit the back of my rib cage like fists with iron knuckles and drove the air from my lungs. I wheezed in a breath, rolled over, and stared at the woman above me. For a second, she looked just like my mother.
I blinked. A stranger looked back at me.
Lank dark hair curtained forward as she leaned down to help me sit up. Her helpful grip turned into painful clinging when the lights went out in the cargo hold. The darkness was as dense as the Black Widow. Not a single pinpoint of brightness, not a glowing button, not a flashing control panel broke the intense blackness around us.
The woman’s nails dug into my shoulders. Her breath came in scared little shudders. People murmured in fear. The whirring of the air filters stopped abruptly. The gravity shut off, eliminating the universal standard. Up I went, my heart in my throat. Pandemonium erupted in the cargo hold.
“Merrick? Can you hear me?” The coms were independent, right? They’d still function.
“I hear you. DW 12 shot your box with some kind of electrical charge.”
“All the systems are off. No new oxygen. No gravity. Can’t see!” I tried to keep my voice down, but stress made it rise beyond the whisper I’d started with.
Someone grabbed my ankle. The woman still had one of my arms. Something smacked me in the ear, making the com ring. I tore myself free from grasping hands only to ram into the person floating above me. He grunted and clutched my hair like a lifeline, jerking me sideways and into him. I punched his wrist. He let go with a gasp, and I threw myself away from him.
“Merrick!” A shoe hit my nose. It hurt and stank. “I need you!”
We tumbled in the void, spinning, bodies colliding. I hit a wall—or the ceiling—face-first and hissed. Pain flared from my eye to my teeth, my cheekbone throbbing. At least I’d found something solid.
I fumbled for something to hold on to. A cold, smooth surface met my fingers. Children wailed like sirens.
Was it my imagination, or was the temperature in here already dropping? Cold, dark, airless. We were drowning, and there was no up or down or anywhere.
“I’ve almost got you.” Merrick’s even, virtually toneless answer didn’t satisfy me in the least or calm my rising panic. Almost didn’t get the job done. Almost was a mission that went up in smoke. Almost was a hundred people dying when you told them you were here to help.
My pulse beat savagely against my skin. I closed my eyes—it seemed better than staring without sight—and touched my hot cheek with cold fingers. I had to count on my team now. That was part of this—relying on others.
“Come on! Hurry up!” Gabe snapped. “Line us up!”
“Shut up!” Fiona snapped back.
“I concur,” Sanaa said dryly.
A rough exhale scraped across my lips. There was a smile in there somewhere, buried deep. Nothing was funny, but my people were still mine, and I could count on them to be who I thought. Gabe, impatient, his heart in the right place. Fiona not taking any shit. Merrick only speaking when necessary and always calm when he did.
Shade and Jax only freaking out when someone they cared about was in trouble, especially me. Otherwise, they were rocks, and I missed them.
I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to push back the emotion that was stabbing out.
I couldn’t say much about Sanaa yet other than that she impressed the hell out of me, and not only for putting up with my uncle. It was Bridgebane who threw me for a loop. Family. Stranger. Enemy. Friend. I didn’t dare speculate about what came next. He’d either blow my expectations out of the water—or sink them without a second thought.
We jolted hard again. People screamed. My eyes flew open, meeting total darkness. “What was that?” I asked.
“Another blast like the first.” Merrick muttered a curse. “Knocked you off course. I’ll have to readjust.”
“Hurry, Merrick.” How long would it take a hundred people to breathe through the remaining air in here?
“He’s shooting at us!” Fiona sounded more incensed than scared.
Worry gripped my heart in a crushing fist. What if Bridgebane shut them down like he had us?
“Midgrade phaser,” Merrick reported through an alarm that blared on the Endeavor. He shut it off. “Damage. No hole.”
I blew out a tight breath. “Is there room to jump?” Dark Watch fighters could be gathering. Swarming the ship.
“We’ll shove our way out. We’re bigger,” Merrick said.
“But they’re armed.”
“They’re just trying to hold us in place. They’re counting on the warship to shoot.”
“It is shooting!” Fiona said.
“It’s not shooting to kill,” Sanaa clipped out. “Otherwise, we’d be dead, and we’re close enough to take the cargo attachment out with us.”
How could Bridgebane get away with this? This was a very public half-assed effort to catch us. There was no way he could cover this up.
Unless…
“Everyone quiet!” I bellowed.
People shut up. Even kids. Everything stopped.
“Why are you in here?” I asked.
A masculine voice drifted through the dark. “It’s something about our blood. They won’t tell us what. We were part of the early GIN Project. It started almost three weeks ago—before the announcement. They’ve been taking samples from us ever since. Sometimes a lot.”
Almost three weeks ago? Just after I stole the Overseer’s lab?
My lungs suddenly felt shallow and tight. Was this my fault? All these people, caged up?
“From talking to each other, we think they covered several big cities across the Sectors,” he continued. “Said it was for research. Said they’d pay us. I saw people walking out just fine, but when my turn came, they wouldn’t let me back out.”
More voices confirmed his story, and my heart sank, rose, jumped all over the place. Had I found the Mornavail? Were they like me? Did they know more than I did?