Chapter 22
Nepra’s cold air hit her face, nipping through her jacket like needles.
She dragged in a breath.
The ground underneath her soles wasn’t soil. It was glassy black stone.
This bleak place was Ryker’s world. Audrey had spent the entire night planning how she would hurt him when the man finally stood facing her, which was inevitable now after what she’d heard earlier. It wasn’t a question of if she would have to go through Ryker; it was a question of when.
Fury simmered inside her gut, twisted with loss and anguish.
At least no one had watched her sleep. Small mercy.
The same dull sky greeted her as she walked across the dirt away from the safe house. Nikos jerked his chin at the decayed truck, ordering her inside while the cuffs vibrated around her wrists.
She didn’t obey right away. Instead, she looked up at the Golden Moons, as someone had called them.
Three rocks chained around a brutal star.
With Nepra being the third moon, the sight of the other two in the sky made her lonely and afraid.
She rubbed her forehead, forcing the anxiety away.
How far from home was she? And how many armed men stood between her and Cary?
She hadn’t imagined the psychic leak at the station. Emerson had seen Cary. She was alive. That thought sustained her.
“Keep moving,” Nikos snapped, shoving her.
Audrey shot him a look poisonous enough to curdle blood, then climbed into the covered truck bed.
Inside, the air contained a permanent taint of dirt, smoke, and chemicals.
Not enough to strangle her, but enough to remind her this wasn’t Earth, no matter how much she wanted to lie to herself.
The gravity was close enough, and the oxygen was breathable, but everything else only proved how far away from home she really was.
Shrubs clawed out of the dry ground as if desperate to live.
No trees like Earth’s—only bony, alien things.
Above them, birds cried in brief, mournful bursts.
Tidally-locked planets meant one section was always in the sun, one in the twilight, and one in the dark.
If she was freezing here on the light side, what was it like on the dark side?
She shuddered, imagining the cold there; a winter that never ended.
She shut her eyes, leaning her head against the cold metal, listening to the three men speak Voírían in the cab.
Her improvised weapons, the comb and the toothbrush, sat hidden in her pocket like small, comforting lies.
Little things she’d already used to hurt people in prison.
Little things she could use again. And she would.
She repeated the plan she’d formed last night: if she reached Home Field alive, she would get close to Ryker, hurt him if she could, and escape in the confusion if she couldn’t.
Ryker wasn’t the end of this. He was just the thing standing between Audrey and Cary, and she would use him, go through him, or kill him if she had to.
You’re a monster. You’re a monster. You’re a monster.
If they expected her to be tame, they didn’t know her at all.
The truck growled along a ragged road for hours. Audrey peppered the men with questions, casually hoping to pry open any crack she could use later.
“Where are we going?” Audrey asked.
“Home Field,” Nikos said.
“When will we get there?”
Nassar snorted. “Days. Soon, we’ll abandon the truck since it’s too visible. After that, it’s a long walk.”
Audrey blinked. “You can jump worlds, but you still hike through the mud?”
Basir twisted in his seat. “Teleportation isn’t for poor Voíríans. The Aggregate controls the roads. On foot, we’re shadows.” His tone was oddly pleasant—like he enjoyed teaching her. She didn’t reciprocate.
“Charming. Why control travel? Why not let people go wherever they want?”
Basir tilted his head. “Is everyone on Earth free to go wherever they want?”
Her jaw went rigid at that fact, but she skipped to her next question, “How do you know English?”
“It’s Aggregate Standard,” Nassar said. “Every planet uses it.”
“That makes no sense. English is a newer language.”
“According to your records. But records and history books can be manipulated, especially when you’re the foremost civilization in the galaxy.”
“What’s a Level Zero civilization?”
“Civilization ranking. Earth is a Level Zero world. Ezebeth governs it.”
“That’s one of the Golden Moons?” Audrey asked, already sure. She just wanted him to talk.
Basir smiled. “Ezebeth rules everything. Including you.”
So Emerson hadn’t lied. Ezebethians really were the apex predators here. Her belly hollowed out. What the hell had she been dragged into?
Nikos swerved the wheel, driving them into the brush. “Tracker,” he said. “We’re being followed.” He backed up and took them down a gravelly, dirt road instead.
Audrey’s pulse leaped with an unexpected promise. Emerson? If he was following them, maybe she still had a chance to force his hand.
About an hour later, Nikos muttered, “Oh, fuck. Aggregate security checkpoint.”
Chaos broke out as soon as they were close enough to be seen.
Guns came out of hidden compartments, and Nikos shoved a scarf over his face, then reached for Audrey’s cuffs.
“If they scan you in those, we’re dead,” he snarled, stripping them off.
He grabbed her chin in a firm grip. “Try anything, and security will kill you first. You’re my soon-to-be bonded mate.
We’re traveling to a Magister to confirm the bond. Understand?”
Audrey blinked. “What’s a bonded mate? What’s a Magister?”
“Legal lies to keep them away,” Basir snapped. “Shut up and pretend.”
Armed guards in black armor swarmed their truck, masks reflecting the yellow sky. Weapons were aimed. Warning shots were fired. “Out!” someone called. “Papers!”
Audrey stiffened. She had none, but Nikos flashed a battered tablet displaying official-looking documents.
An Aggregate guard dragged her out by the back of her neck as if she weighed nothing. “Move. Being pretty won’t help you here.”
She almost bit him.
The guard’s helmet tilted as he scanned her face. “Hold on,” he muttered. His grasp tightened, and his eyes narrowed, like he recognized her. Then Nikos barked something in Voírían, and the moment disappeared.
She scanned the cluster of trees behind them. Thin, alien trunks, but cover nonetheless. If she could slip behind them quietly, maybe—
An explosion burst through the air. Audrey ducked and covered her head on instinct.
Was that Emerson? She held her breath, nerves ablaze. If it was him, why show his hand now?
Or maybe she was giving him too much credit. Turmoil had a thousand fathers on this moon.
Smoke billowed from the forest. Birds screamed upward in a cloud of wings. Guards issued orders as they hurried toward the blast. With everyone distracted, Audrey inched backward, step by steady step, toward the trees—
“Hey!” the female guard shouted. “Stop!”
Three armed bodies converged on her.
But Nikos was faster. He kicked a guard in the shin, ripped off the scarf he’d been wearing to hide his face, and raised his hand. Fire exploded from his palm, devouring the man’s face in a flare of blue heat. A cry broke out. The body dropped like a stone.
Basir and Nassar pounced on the remaining guards, all fists and snarled curses. A gunshot rang in the air. The woman guard went down with Nassar twisting her arms behind her.
Audrey didn’t hesitate—she bolted into the trees.
Branches slapped her face. She didn’t breathe and could barely think. She just ran.
“She’s making a run for it!” someone shouted.
Audrey veered right toward the explosion—the only sign that her allies might be close.
Then—
A hand like iron clamped around her shoulder and wrenched her backward. She fell backward into a body, her skull cracking under Nikos’s chin.
“You bitch,” he growled, his breath hot and furious.
With the cuffs off, her telepathy came roaring back—but not enough, not fast enough. Her aura sliced into his, searching for weakness.
Nothing.
Just rapid Voírían, like a vault she couldn’t break. It was impossible for her to translate even a few words when he thought that fast.
Audrey’s body sagged. Exhaustion almost consumed her entirely, and hopelessness pressed into every limb. Without her powers or freedom of movement, she felt threadbare all the way through, fear leaking out past her barriers.
I’m not dead yet, she reminded herself with stubborn pride.
All she had right now, though, was nothing but her crude little weapons and the plan hardening inside her: survive Home Field, get close to Ryker, and use the damage to carve her way toward Cary.
It would have to be enough. Audrey didn’t fear death half as much as she feared meaningless death. If she was going to die here, she’d do it with her hands buried in Ryker’s mind.
Some monsters would chew through chains if left alone long enough.
Back in the truck’s rusted bed, Audrey watched the captured female Aggregate security officer with interest. According to Nikos, the woman would know the layout of a working Field, and they needed that information to get his sister and Mihail back.
Home Field was the Separatists’ base, but the working Fields were something larger.
Exactly what a Field was used for, Audrey didn’t know.
From the scraps she’d picked up from Nikos and Basir, she knew they were places people entered but rarely left—places where powerful Voíríans were processed, tested, and swallowed whole.
She’d heard them called factories and, at other times, prisons.
What did know was that the Fields were wrapped in fear, and every version sounded more terrible than the last.
She and the other captive were shoulder-to-shoulder. Zip-ties gnawed raw rings around the officer’s wrists; Audrey’s burned with the unforgiving cuffs. Bodies jolted in a graceless tandem as the truck battered down the ruts. Dust snaked like uneasy ghosts, unspooling from their graves.