Chapter 23
HEX
No one is around to hear our roars of pain. Trembly must have kicked everyone out of the airport before we landed because it’s a ghost town. Braxton and I hold out as long as we can for help, and try to fight him the whole time, but it’s a fruitless effort.
The parasitic energy that lives within the general is vibrating through me as well.
I feel it in my bones, along with the certainty that it wants me to do something terrible.
I want to resist his demands, but the Exxlar forces my thought transmitter to malfunction whenever I defy him, and then it’s like my brain has splintered into pieces, and my spine is burnt to a crisp, leaving both my mind and body broken for several minutes.
When he stops, the pieces always come back together, but they don’t quite fit the same, and I don’t know if they ever will again. I fear it will permanently damage or kill me if I don’t save what resistance I have left in me for the right moment. A moment when we can escape.
I see the same fear, dark in Braxton’s eyes, as we obey Trembly’s next command.
“On your feet, and no funny business, as the humans would say. We are going to the security room in the airport basement. There, you will give the humans a message that will be more to our liking than the one you prepared.”
Shit. They will likely have me say something that will make humanity fear a war, or that a full-scale invasion is coming. Then the humans will panic, evict our people from Earth, and probably do stupid things that could sour the relationship between Earth and Eppo forever.
Braxton and I exchange a grim look, and that makes me wonder if we’re on the same page as we scramble to our feet. There is no other way out of this, if we must choose between an excruciating death or delivering that message. I will die painfully before I’ll say one word of it.
Maybe we will get a chance to end our suffering ourselves, and quicker, before that happens.
We trudge forward with our heads down, the quality of the silence around us like the quiet moment when words and breath are held back before an execution.
We are a mere ten feet from the back entrance of the airport when something rips through the still night air. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard: the sound of the Derecko’s other scoutship. It swoops down and soars straight toward us.
Braxton and I share another look before we both jump away from Trembly, diving down as far as we can from his ugly bald head.
“Foolish Givers,” he grits out through his teeth, raising a hand.
Dammit. He must sense a thought transmitter in the scoutship that he can manipulate. If it’s in the head of the pilot they’re definitely going to crash.
Still mentally in sync, Braxton and I push ourselves off the hard ground as fast as we can. Trembly whips out his other hand in Braxton’s direction and he wails and falls to his knees. The veins in the Exxlar’s neck pop to the surface as I lunge at him, swinging at his jaw.
I hear a crack before I collapse in agony at his feet, but the searing pain doesn’t stretch on unbearably. I come back to myself in seconds, and my heart is spoiled with more wonderful sounds.
“Get the fuck away from him, you barmy bastard!” Jay growls as a dark mist shoots through his maroon aura.
“Or you’re the one who will be twitching on the ground,” Axel warns, his aura all black, all menacing.
I look up and the scoutship is only visible for a fleeting moment, then disappears in the sky, as Jay, Axel, Nox, and Leon straighten from a squatting position. They must have all jumped out of the airlock before the pilot got as far away from Trembly as fast as they could.
“So you did understand my last message,” I say, as relief washes over me.
“Go ahead and kill a human general, you fools,” Trembly taunts. “The humans will never believe your story when you tell them what was inside him. They don’t even know what an Exxlar is.”
“You wish it was going to be that easy,” Jay says, “but we’re not giving you the chance to take over someone else.”