“Your eardrums ruptured from the pressure,” Tamara said beside me, quick and quiet, “which is why you had trouble standing upright. It should be fixed now. God, they weren’t kidding when they said Minister technology was better than ours. No wonder we can’t get any advantage over them in an open fight.”

“More advanced, yes,” Indigo said calmly, “but the first aid machine is almost out of uses.”

“So nobody else get hurt,” I translated. My voice sounded normal to me again, no longer bouncing around weirdly inside my skull.

“If you can stand up straight now, we need to leave,” Tamara said. “We’ve got to get as far from that alarm as possible.”

Indigo’s voice was so low I wouldn’t have been able to hear it before Tamara had fixed my ears. “Get up now,” he said. “We’re out of time.”

Down the hall, the red light had gone dark.

CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR:

Trust Me

PART ONE

Either something was standing between us and the red light, or the Dreamer-bots had arrived and shut down the alarm. Either way, we didn’t want to linger here.

I got back up. Whatever Tamara had done to my ears had worked like a charm. I didn’t exactly feel like running a marathon, but at least I wasn’t going to fall on my face.

Down the hallway, I heard nails scrabbling against metal.

“Okay,” Tamara said, “let’s go this way,” and she took off. I bolted after her, and heard Indigo following.

It was funny; I was almost getting used to running in the dark like this. If I shortened my strides a little bit I’d be more prepared for whatever was on the ground, so I wouldn’t go sprawling; I was more attuned to Tamara, too, and better able to follow her sudden sharp turns in the dark without losing track of her. Not a skill I’d expected to gain when I’d first landed on this ship—

I impacted Tamara’s back with a whumph of breath, getting hair in my face. Being more attuned to her hadn’t stopped me from running straight into her when she’d unexpectedly stopped. “What’s wrong?” I asked, catching her when my impact almost knocked her over.

“Dead end,” Tamara said tersely, starting back the way we had come.

Tamara had never so much as hesitated, much less made a wrong turn. “Dead end?”

“I’ve only been to this part of the ship once, Sean!”

Indigo jogged up to meet us, his sword already drawn. “Don’t stop,” he warned, and far off the way we’d come, I heard nails scratching, metal shrieking against metal.

“Yes,” Tamara agreed, taut, and started off again in a new direction. I followed her, thoughts whirling. She’d only been here once, and then her team had died. This might be the part of the ship where her team had died.

She still knew more about the ship than me or Indigo. I would’ve been lost in seconds down the dark halls.

She stopped again some distance from that dead-end, at a split in the hallways. I jogged to a stop, trying to catch my breath. Indigo glowed behind us, sword upraised, facing the way we’d come. The scratching sounds were louder, quiet but intrusive, more disturbing than a louder noise would have been.