The one holding her arm found it and clawed it out, catching the skin of her ear with a sharp nail. He looked at it with a strange mix of fear and anger.
“Who's on the other end?”
She was going to refuse to say, when she saw he wasn't asking her.
The other two looked uncomfortable.
“Maybe it's--”
“Doesn't matter.” The soldier put it on the ground and crushed it beneath his boot. “Whoever it was, it doesn't matter any more.”
The other two didn't seem quite as convinced.
A shout from outside seemed to galvanize them.
The one who'd taken out the earpiece grabbed her arm again and shoved her ahead of him out the door.
Four new hovers sat next to the one Bane had stolen for them, and Dray was tied to one, his hands behind his back.
He turned to look at her as they stepped out the house, and she could see the cold light of fury burning in his eyes.
Then she saw who was standing near him.
“Virn.” She tilted back her head. “So I was right about you.”
“What are you talking about?” The security guard from the facility had a sneer on his face.
She noticed from the corner of her eye Dray's surprised reaction to the interaction.
“Did you feel anything when you killed Dr. Cantin and Dr. Rool? Or was it just another day at the office for you?”
“Not a single day in that place was anything other than a very boring means to an end.” Virn gave a hand signal, and the Tecran gripping her arm released her and hauled her hands behind her to secure them.
“Right. You were just waiting for the perfect time to burn it all to the ground.” She remembered the bloom of the explosion as she'd raced the hover along the cliff face.
“That part was a pleasure, that's for sure. But no, I was there to make sure no one got too friendly with you, or decided to let you out.”
“Sorry to tell you this, but if that was your one job, you failed.”
He looked like he was going to strike her, but then reined himself in, waved his hand at her. “This doesn't look like failure to me, Earth girl.”
The soldier finished tying her hands and shoved her forward.
“Sure it does,” she said with a smile. “The UC know I exist now, for a start, and I've had time to talk to some of the good citizens of Fa'allen.” Her smile deepened. “How do you like those street protests?”
The look he shot her promised violence. “You talk a big game for someone whose existence is very inconvenient to me and my friends.”
She scoffed. “Your superior officers, more like. I don't think they're your friends.”
“Baiting me? That's not wise.”
But she saw the look in his eyes, knew her blow had landed a direct hit. He was nothing more than cannon fodder and he knew it.
She shrugged. “Either you'll kill me, or you won't. But it won't be because of anything I've said or done to you.” She flicked her gaze up and down him with disdain. “It'll be because your handlers ordered you to do it.”
She caught Dray's eye, and he gave her a tiny shake of his head, his features grim.
She resisted the urge to shake hers back, because Virn was watching her too closely.
She'd played this game too many times. Backing down, tiptoeing around, hadn't helped her. She'd taken that road when she'd first regained consciousness at the facility, but it hadn't gotten her anywhere. The only way she'd made any progress, had been allowed to play games with the scientists, have more freedom of movement in the windowless rooms and corridors, was because she'd pushed Virn and his sidekicks relentlessly. She created a them versus us dynamic between the guards and the scientists who were studying her. The more unreasonably she'd made Virn and his cohorts behave, the more sympathetic to her the doctors had become.
“So, where have you been ordered to take us?” she asked.
Virn's nostrils, two thin slits beside his beaky mouth, flared. “In case it wasn't obvious to you, you're my prisoner, and I don't answer to you.”
She shrugged again, in an arrogant, dismissive way she hoped drove him batshit crazy.
“Get her on a hover and let's go,” he snapped to the soldier who'd tied her up.
The Tecran shoved her at the nearest hover and then gripped her waist, tried to lift her up, and had to let her drop to the ground. She was no lightweight compared to them.
She debated whether to smirk at him over her shoulder but before she could, she felt the dig of a shockgun in her back.
“Get on.”
She took her time, because with her hands tied behind her she couldn't pull herself up, but eventually she was seated.
Her arms were yanked roughly down and tied to a hoop attached to the back, just like they'd done to Dray.
He was watching her from his seat at the back of one of the hovers, gaze intense.
She sent him a half-smile as a soldier climbed in front of her and started the hover, and as they lifted up, he nodded back in response.
Virn had turned on the hover she and Dray had ridden from Fa'allen and pointed it out to the sea. He stood back as it flew forward and then fell down the cliff.
At a sound of surprise from one of his team, Virn shrugged. “Just in case the UC have a way to track it. They hacked into it to steal it, after all.”
There was silence for a moment, and Lucy felt her interest sharpen at the quick look two of the soldiers shared with each other.
They were scared about who'd been on the other end of her earpiece, scared about who had hacked the hover's systems.
Then Virn got on his hover, started it up and they turned away from the cliffs. Virn's hover was swallowed by the fog, and it seemed as if she and her driver were alone. Even the sound of the engines was gobbled up.
But she wasn't alone. Not this time.
Behind her somewhere was Dray. And above her was Bane.
And that was more than she'd had before.
Much more.
Chapter 22
The place the Tecran took them to was just outside Fa'allen, not on the coast, but high on an inland hill. The facility was built low to the ground, although Dray noticed they couldn't help themselves and had incorporated one three-story tower into the design.
He could tell from the guard set-up as they came in that they didn't have a lot of people here, that they were stretched.
They were either keeping it tight deliberately, or there weren't that many willing to get mixed up in a plan that had to be the far side of desperate.
Whoever was covering their asses had co-opted some people, but those people were clearly underlings, as Lucy had so harshly pointed out to Virn earlier.
The soldiers herding them in to the facility hadn't been the ones who decided to steal her from Earth and keep her locked up and hidden on Tecra.
Those who had that kind of power would be a small, select group.
And he didn't see anyone that looked like they had that kind of clout around.
Maybe he and Lucy would get a visit later, but Dray doubted it.
They'd try to keep their hands clean and stand at as much distance as possible.
Which meant they'd put everything on hold until they either lost their nerve and killed her, or waited it out to see if producing her would somehow mitigate their crimes.