“Did they inject you with anything?” I asked. “A GIN? Is it already in you?” There was no hiding anywhere in the galaxy if the Dark Watch had already tagged them with that shit.
“N-No. That’s why they’re holding us—we think. The tech isn’t ready yet. But they drew a lot more blood from us, even the kids.”
A1 blood. I was sure of it. The Overseer would have super soldiers. But so would the rebellion. Loralie Harris was probably lining them up by the dozen. I’d given her thousands of ready-to-go injections, but the Overseer still had to gather A1 blood and engineer the serum again. We were a step ahead of him for once. Could we strike first?
We hadn’t really been at war before. Just…doing what we could. That was all about to change, wasn’t it? The clash of our generation was upon us. The surety of that detonated inside me like a bomb blasting out destruction along with tiny unbreakable kernels of hope.
Fear and something close to excitement ignited in my chest as another hit rattled the hold. People screamed. I lost my position against the wall and free floated.
“Calm down!” I said loud enough to be heard. “They want you alive, which means they won’t blow us up.” And Uncle Nate had his excuse to use less-than-lethal force—assuming he was even supposed to know about this. He must have just found out. Why else would he have demanded my blood on Reaginine?
“But we were escaping.” A sob-heavy female voice rose above the rest. Others followed her straight into her pit of doom. Crying erupted in the cargo hold. Great Powers, don’t these people know anything about morale?
“Are escaping,” I said firmly. I was scared, too. I just wouldn’t show it.
“They’ll blow your people up and take us back.” That teary, half-broken voice sounded like a child’s. Too young not to believe in happy endings.
“They won’t. I have an ace in the hole,” I promised. “You’ll see.”
A softer thud jostled us. It felt like a hip bump from a friend, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“All lined up,” Merrick said.
Thank the Sky Mother.
“Gabe! The vacuum seal!” Merrick barked.
“I’m trying. The accordion won’t extend.” Anxiety carried Gabe’s voice across the com like a poison-coated bullet. “I used the password you gave me. What do I do, Tess?”
Won’t extend? I never had trouble with my air locks. “Try again.”
“It’s not working!” Gabe said.
“Something must have damaged the mechanism, or is blocking the passageway from coming out.” It was an awful feeling, free floating in the dark when I wanted to pace or grind my hands into something. I clenched my fists. “Merrick, try backing off a bit and bumping us again. Maybe it’ll jostle the walkway out.”
“On it,” Merrick said.
A hard thump resonated through the box.
“Gabe?” I asked.
“Shit! No luck.”
What the hell is wrong with my air lock? “Swing around and line us up with the starboard door,” I said.
An explosion shook the cargo hold. We ground against the Endeavor. People freaked out around me, grunting, cursing, crying. I spiraled into someone and shoved off with a gut-reaction push that sent me somersaulting over backward. An alarm shrieked in my com. Fiona made a sound of distress. Purring rolled in my ear like thunder.
My heart flipped over. She had Bonk.
“We don’t have time to come around,” Sanaa said. “How much bad shooting do you think he can do? Gabe, try again. Daraja, figure it out!”
I hit a wall and stopped spiraling. Oof. Blindness was terrifying. No idea where up or down was. Too much noise. I tried to concentrate. “Merrick, is there anything strange on the main console?”
“Other than it blaring about the big hole in your portside storage closet?”
Oh no! There went my tools. Frank better have something. If we got stuck on Nickleback, we’d be spider food!
I shoved that thought out of my head. “It has to be something right at the air lock. The vacuum seal should just pop out and latch on to us when Gabe pushes the button. Bump us again—hard.”
I didn’t bother telling people to brace themselves. No one could see. We were all floating around like particles. The shock came about thirty seconds later, and I pinpointed the noise. It was on my left, which meant the door was over there somewhere. My foot was on something—or maybe someone—and I pushed off, flying in the right direction. For a second, I must have forgotten I had a bullet in my ass. Pain shot down my leg, and I winced, pressing a hand to my throbbing cheek. My pants were sticky with blood. Adrenaline wasn’t enough to keep me warm anymore. I shivered, cold.
“It’s extending!” Gabe shouted.
I hit a wall and clung to the smooth surface, my heart pounding like I’d just run a race.
“We have a lock,” Merrick said.
I whooped. I couldn’t help it. But how would we get out of the cargo hold? Without any power, it would take a saw to break us out. I didn’t have a saw capable of cutting through metal. Did Frank? Would the systems come back on? Oxygen renewal? Gravity? The door panel?
“The seal’s airtight,” Merrick announced. “Ready to go.”
“He’s shooting!” Fiona yelled at the same time.
We rattled hard along with the Endeavor, an extension of her now and not just alongside her. Merrick shut down the new alarm almost before it started. Super-soldier reflexes. More people started crying.
“Just let us go!” someone pleaded from the darkness. “At least they weren’t trying to kill us!”
I turned my head toward the voice, a slow swivel on shocked hinges. No one answered. No one fucking answered. What the hell?
“Well,” I ground out, “I invite you to report back to a Dark Watch security hub to be drained of blood and used indefinitely by a homicidal monster after I rescue the people who have something better to live for!”
I could practically feel the collective blink in the cargo unit, everyone so taken aback they went silent.
I couldn’t feel guilty for my outburst. I couldn’t. There were sides to choose, and you had to either own yours or get the hell out of the way of the people who had the balls to know where they stood.
“The GIN Project is coming for each and every one of us. We need to stop him, or no one will ever be safe. You think he owns the galaxy now? Imagine when he can find any of you with just the click of a button. No one should have that power. He wants you for a reason. You specifically. Your blood. He needs you in order to create super soldiers to solidify his control, to enable more terror and destruction. An unbeatable military. Can you imagine? We have to act before it’s too late.