Chapters (48)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Copyright
“Of course not without Cage.” I heard the defensive irritation in my voice and cut off the rest of the sentence. It might feel like we’d abandoned him, but he could take care of himself, and he was fine. “We’ll get him first. But that will be easier if Rune can hack the system and make the ship ours.”
As if on cue, Rune stepped back from the panel with a gasp. “I can do it,” she said. “But I’ll need to be in the command center or engineering. Everything is on separate and localized systems.”
Alexei nodded. “It’s not a big ship. We can find engineering easily enough.”
“Let’s go quickly,” I added. We still hadn’t seen the Silver Oni, and it made me nervous.
We retraced our steps with Mia once more in the lead, Alexei and Jasper bringing up the rear, and me shepherding our three more nervous charges. I kept glancing over my shoulder. Where the hell was the Silver Oni? The bounty hunters couldn’t be this incompetent, could they? An unlocked door? One guard left behind, and that guard nowhere to be seen? Not to mention how easily I’d unlocked their cell.
My stomach plummeted into my feet as I took in the ship’s careful organization, its meticulous order.
No. They weren’t this inept.
“Wait!” I said, at the same instant as Mia shouted from ahead.
We broke into a run, rounding a corner to find ourselves facing the Silver Oni and all four of his companions, weapons drawn, arrayed around the airlock. Mia knelt on the floor, breathing heavily, completely visible.
The hunter I’d seen with Priya in the marketplace grinned. “Welcome aboard,” he said. “Hope you enjoy your stay. It’s gonna be a long one.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I RAISED MY HANDS IN the universal gesture of surrender. “Let’s talk about this.”
“Let’s not.” Priya gestured for the others to follow my lead. They did: Rune, Reed, and Imani immediately, Mia, Jasper, and Alexei more slowly. “We figured you’d be here for your friends. How many more of you are there?”
One of the men smirked, revealing a cracked front tooth. “Now that we’ve got this crew, I say we sit back and wait. We’re not gonna run down the speedster. Let him come to us, and any others with him.”
That was . . . exactly what would happen. My heart stuttered. If we let them take us prisoner now, we were finished, all of us. But what options did we have? Alexei couldn’t set fire to an airlock. That was a colossally bad idea, even if we hadn’t been standing in it. Mia might slip away, but the rest of us were pretty much screwed.