Chapter 21
Hell. Not metaphorical—real hell.
Audrey thought she’d tasted hell before with prison cells, psych evaluations, and the night her world burned. This was deeper.
The container shook in that same familiar way as the turbines turned up again.
She couldn’t breathe. Heat pressed in, swallowing oxygen, shrinking the box more with every inhale. The walls scraped her elbows—too close—and the crates around her pressed inward like fists against her chest.
Raw holes in the metal let in faint air, but not enough of it. The container became a tomb, swallowing sound and sanity.
When the portal jump hit, her body revolted.
Audrey vomited what little she had left, bile burning her throat before the box muffled the sound. Afterward came dry heaving—only pain. Sweat soaked her clothes. The heat turned the container into an oven. Each inhalation felt borrowed.
Time meant nothing. Minutes? Hours? Her throbbing heart was the only measure of existence.
Emerson, former ally and now betrayer, disappeared in the smoke.
Cary, Audrey’s twin, was alive somewhere in the vast Aggregate.
Each mile brought Audrey closer to whatever waited on Nepra.
If the Aggregate had taken Mihail alive, it was because he’d stayed behind for her.
The thought sat ugly inside Audrey. She didn’t know whether to call it a sacrifice or a strategy.
And Ryker.
The name surfaced through the nausea and darkness. The man who had stolen everything from her waited at the end of this route. Beneath the sickness, one thought stayed clear: panic wouldn’t save her. Her next mistake had to count.
Audrey smiled into the dark. She wasn’t afraid of Ryker like everyone else; she was going to devour him alive if he stood in her way of getting to her sister.
A blast of cool air tore across her face. Light burst into her eyes as the lid of the box cracked open. It felt like being dragged out of a grave. Finally, real air rushed into her lungs. A shock of life.
“Move. Final stretch,” Nikos growled, grabbing her arm and pulling her upright.
She staggered, legs trembling so badly she nearly collapsed.
She blinked rapidly, forcing her vision to focus as shadows and moving figures turned into other captives standing around waiting.
They, too, looked dead on their feet, but all shared Audrey’s physical characteristics: dark hair and olive skin. Audrey alone bared her teeth, though.
Wind shoved grit into her eyes while she scanned the landscape. It didn’t smell like Earth. The cold carried dust scorched with smoke, and its sky was a muted, bruised yellow. There were no cities she could see, although they had to exist. All that stood for miles was a shabby relay outpost.
Their minds buzzed, but with the suppression cuffs on her wrists, they muted everything to a frustrating hum.
Without the cuffs, she could sweep minds, pick out memories, and manipulate their feelings.
Before, telepathy made each brain an open book.
Now, she was muzzled—abilities blunted, nearly ordinary.
A hand shoved her. “Walk, Simas,” one of Nikos’ men growled. Audrey almost laughed at the recognition inside his eyes—oh, they did not like her. It seemed gold triads weren’t as revered by everyone as they were by Mihail. Some Voíríans considered her a threat.
Good.
The other captives were already being funneled away into different vehicles and into the hands of new handlers. No one explained where they were going, and no one looked back.
A bald man with a dark beard stepped into her space, his breath warm on her skin.
Tattoos crawled over his throat and arms like vines with writing she couldn’t read.
He was maybe her age. Taller, but not massive.
Someone she could probably take if her powers hadn’t been bound and she wasn’t half-dead.
“Well, well. Even covered in filth, you’re something, aren’t you? Number Two never said you were so pretty. It won’t do you any good. But I bet you’ll look even better when you scream.”
“Nassar,” Nikos snapped, “we need her alive.”
“But not pristine, right?” Nassar flashed his white teeth.
Unease pooled low, deep in her gut.
“Welcome to Nepra, Miss Simas,” Basir said, pushing her with a hand heavy on her neck. “Try not to be too impressed by the safe house.”
Audrey stumbled, anger grinding her teeth. Don’t fucking touch me.
“We’ll be spending a lot of time together,” Nikos murmured. Then, without missing a beat, he snapped orders to Nassar in their alien tongue. Audrey caught the edge of a few words now—finally familiar, almost decipherable after all this time.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, interrupting them.
Nikos ignored her, packing another gun in silence. Then to Nassar, “We keep her here till the route’s clear. Then it’s Home Field.”
“If Number Two survives long enough,” Nassar muttered.
Audrey felt guilt stab her. Mihail was captured—maybe dead, maybe smirking through Aggregate interrogation. With Mihail, both seemed possible.
Nikos’s expression stiffened. “He knew the price.”
Voices ebbed, absorbed by the arid wind, as they marched her to a squat cinderblock building wedged between clusters of strange, spindly trees.
She had overheard someone saying Nepra was tidally locked, with no real day or night. Merely an endless, unchanged sky. Audrey looked up at the yellow and wondered how she’d escape, as promised.
Inside the safehouse was barely better than outside.
Ashen walls. Broken furniture and assorted chairs were scattered, although it was warm, with a fire burning in a shallow pit.
Just as Emerson described, the place was rough, low-tech, and almost backward for people with powers to bend metal and burn cities.
The safe house was clearly temporary. It had to be a relay where they sorted people and moved them on.
Home Field sounded bigger. It carried an air of respect, as if it were the core of the whole operation, somewhere important enough that people lowered their voices when they said it. It had to be the endgame: the place where they took prisoners and significant assets for proper processing.
If they removed the cuffs there, it wouldn’t be for mercy—it’d be to see what happened when they aimed a weapon they wanted to control.
“Basir, Nassar,” Nikos barked, “we’re taking this wild one to Number One and Number Two.” He slapped Basir’s back, leaned in. Basir’s eyes went too wide, raking over Audrey with open hunger. She curled her lip, a snarl flashing.
Basir marched her into the dingy bathroom, looking at her as she began to strip. “Move it.” Rage shot through her blood, hot as acid. “Out,” Audrey snarled, shielding herself with filthy clothes.
“Oh, you’re far too dangerous to leave alone,” he cooed. “A valuable little asset like you? My job is to watch. My pleasure.”
He didn’t remove the cuffs, either. He simply watched her struggle one-handed around them, as if the inconvenience were part of the entertainment. The taunting didn’t stop either as she washed vomit from her skin, not even when she faced away from him.
“One night,” he mused, “maybe Number Two will let me have a go with you. Heard you were a real slut. The whole galaxy knows your face. Girls like you—working on your backs—never last long.”
Something inside Audrey snapped. She stared at the comb and toothbrush they’d given her. They weren’t anything special. Most would say they were harmless.
Then again—so was she, once. Look how that turned out.
When he flung her clean clothes at her, Audrey quickly hid the comb and toothbrush he had given her, stashing them in the pockets before putting the pants and shirt on. They’d do.
She cleaned her sister’s jacket and clutched it, imagining Cary’s arms around her.
Her throat clenched. Emerson saw Cary alive and said nothing, forcing Audrey to dig through his head for the truth.
Alex had stood in the checkpoint room, speaking Cary’s name like a game, always withholding more than he said.
Audrey didn’t know which betrayal hurt more.
After her shower, they tossed dried meat and stale bread at her and locked her in a room with a narrow bed. It was a new prison.
When the footsteps faded, Audrey sat up in the dark and drew her improvised weapons. She worked on them with shaking hands.
Basir would be first. She would carve the grin off his face. Then she’d take the others if she could.
Sleep came in violent fits, her mind drifting in and out of alertness.
A few hours later, their voices dragged her from half-consciousness. Basir and Nassar bellowed in Voírían from the other room. Audrey rolled off the bed, pressed herself against the wall, and listened. With great effort, she managed to catch fragments.
“...caught a few Hunters...”
“...Home Field still has no word from Number Two...”
“...tore them to pieces...”
“...Kat had her fun first...then Ryker...”
“...gets in their head...they go insane…body shuts down...”
Audrey’s skin crawled. Then a full sentence broke through the language barrier, clear as a scream: “I watched him stare at a Hunter until the man ripped his own eyes out.”
No one laughed.
Ryker. The man they were talking about was Ryker, she was sure of it.
“Did he survive?” Nassar asked.
“He incinerated him.”
Silence. A sick, satisfied sort of silence.
Then: “He must want the pretty little Voírían one real bad...”
“...Simas...”
“...can’t trust her...fucking the Hunter...”
“...they’ll hang that cunt on the wall...”
Audrey pressed both hands over her mouth. She hugged Cary’s jacket around her shoulders. Ryker’s voice still lived in her nightmares. The way he’d slipped into Audrey’s mind like a shadow wearing her skin. It made sense now why her mother had wanted her dead rather than let him have her.
She wasn’t prey or innocent. She wasn’t even human by their standards; she was a weapon. Mihail had called her a monster. It wasn’t the first time she’d been called such a thing.
You’re a monster, the judge had said the day they sentenced her for killing her family.
Monster, monster, monster.
The word soothed her now like a cold hand across a fevered brow.
Better monster than victim. Better beast than burned.
If Ryker thought he could peel her open like he had those Hunters, he was wrong.
She wasn’t going to break. And if Ryker was the monster at the center of this system, then she would go through him to escape it.
A slight grin spread across her face. Let him take her to Home Field. Let him try to break her. She would be waiting, and not to die quietly or to beg—but to hear him scream.
If she couldn’t kill him, she would make him bleed. If she couldn’t make him bleed, she would make him afraid. And in the confusion that followed, she would find Emerson and tear the truth about Cary out of him.
Sure, maybe she would die on Ryker’s wall.
Fine.
But she’d drag him into hell with her. She’d already lived there long enough.
Audrey stared into the dark and pictured her plan.
The Separatists wanted to force her to do their bidding, but she would not die on this moon as a piece of property. She was already gathering what she needed, putting together tools from scraps and opportunity—her mind mapping out routines and every careless word.
Outside her door, someone paused.
“Move her in eight hours,” a voice said. “Home Field wants to see what she can do before they decide.”
The implications churned inside Audrey’s stomach like a sickness.
But she clenched her fists around her makeshift weapons, steeling herself.
If Home Field was the place they brought people to be sorted and tested, then Audrey would make sure it was also the place where their system finally split open.