Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
The ache in her wrists woke her. It stung, then burned, then morphed into searing pain. A low hum vibrated from all around her, the sound of a ship traveling quickly.
Wynn’s shoulders ached too, but the pain in her wrists overrode everything. She gasped for breath, trying to get away from it. Her feet flailed while she tried to regain her balance, but she kicked into nothing, then swung back and forth.
It took her a moment to realize what that meant. I’m hanging.
Her pounding head felt heavy on her shoulder, too heavy to lift, but she cracked her eyes open.
The undulating view down her body revealed a grated deck.
She wore her sleepwear and no shoes. The tips of her toes brushed the floor, just enough to make her sway, but not enough to give her grip.
A sheet of plastic beneath her crinkled with her efforts.
She forced her head to look up. Tight bindings encircled her wrists and attached to the overhead beams of the cargo hold. The more she moved, the more they chafed, almost all of her body weight resting on the tight bands. A line of blood trickled down her arm.
The drugs in her system evaporated at the sight of that blood. Her heart pounded in her throat, her eyes attaching to the red with single-minded focus. Panic clawed up her throat and hazed her vision, making the cargo hold spin.
No. She wouldn’t get herself in a more compromising situation by passing out. Wynn inhaled deeply, then exhaled, concentrating on the pain in her wrists like she would a laser scalpel to her flesh, allowing it to settle her. She did it again and again until the room stopped whirling.
Boot steps bounced off the stacked containers. She snapped her head toward the sound. Sawyer rounded the corner. He still wore his full flight-suit, and the closer he neared, the more she saw her distorted reflection in his visor, an elongated white smudge amid gray and black.
“What the fuck?” she croaked, her throat tight with the need to scream.
He stopped in front of her with something held tight in his hand.
She struck out with her feet, trying to kick him, but he was out of reach. Her effort rewarded her with more pain in her wrists and her body twirling in some macabre dance.
“What did you do to me?” she asked when she faced him again.
He paced in front of her, back and forth. “Gave you a sedative.” The mechanical quality of his voice was subdued. “Removed your tracker.”
Her eyes darted down to his hand, and she focused on the objects he held: a laser scalpel and a regenerator. Her rage swelled. She rolled her shoulders, the skin twinging where he’d surgically removed her CORE tracker, and realized the node remained, too.
“What else?” she ground out between clenched teeth. “You took off all my clothes.”
He paused, his head turning her way. “I’m not a psycho.”
“Yes. You. Are,” she gritted.
He cocked his head. “Not that kind of psycho.” He resumed his pacing.
A sob of frustration wanted to escape her mouth, but she swallowed it down. Now that she’d seen what he was capable of, she wouldn’t show weakness. Not if she wanted to survive this. Whatever this was.
She stared at him, the back of her eyes burning.
“We’re going to have a chat,” he declared.
Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. “Fuck you.”
“No thanks,” he said with a shake of his head. “We’re here for business, not pleasure.” Four steps to the left, he spun on his heel, then took the same four steps to the right. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them honestly.”
“Like I said,” she growled, straining against the bindings until more warmth tricked down her arm. “Fuck. You.”
He stopped and turned his body toward her. “It’s easy. I ask a question, you answer, and nothing else needs to happen.”
With a flick of his thumb, he turned on the laser scalpel. Hummmmm.
She jerked back, trying to get away from him even though she was bound in place. A fresh wave of panic crashed over her head.
He turned it off, then resumed his pacing. “It’s just some questions.”
Anger and hate welled inside her. “You destroyed my home. You abducted me. I’m not answering your questions.”
She couldn’t swallow for the toxic emotions clogging her throat. Nothing left. Not one thing left of the outpost. The greenhouse lay in a heap of shattered rubble. Every plant she’d nurtured from a seed that might have survived the blast would have died in the elements.
Her work meant nothing. Pointless.
Her entire life was pointless.
That spinning sensation started in her stomach, though she remained stationary. The cargo hold swirled around her in shades of gray.
“That is unfortunate,” he said in response to her denial, his words focusing her attention. He stopped again, his body squared off in front of her. “That person who was with you, you knew what he was, didn’t you?”
Iax. This was all about him, wasn’t it? Everything started the day he arrived. And Sawyer had left him dying on the surface, his body broken in the snow.
She pushed those images aside to remember him as he was at her outpost. His curiosity. His strange innocence. The way he’d touched her. The way he’d made her feel.
“You know where he came from, right?” Sawyer paced left, then right, his hand tapping the tools against his leg.
She closed her eyes. An image formed of Iax approaching her outpost. How he’d walked across the surface unaided, incurring so many radiation burns his skin had blistered. If he’d healed from that, then a weapon’s blast, he could survive anything.
He’s alive. He’s okay. If she said it enough, maybe she would believe it.
“Why was he at your outpost?”
Her eyes popped open. Sawyer had paused across from her, still tapping his thigh, the image of her stretched arms reflecting in his visor. What remained of the moisture in her mouth evaporated as she remembered what Iax had told her. My blood.
They stayed that way, facing off, the trickle of blood from her wrists trailing down to her elbow. Her heart pounded in her throat.
“Do you know Captain Milo Archibald?”
Her head snapped back at the question. Who? She’d never heard the name before.
“Why does General Cazin want you?”
She shook her head to clear it, not recognizing that name either.
Sawyer resumed his pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. “The Calypson.” He practically spat the word, though his helmet distorted the effect. “How long have you known him?”
The question elicited an involuntary scoff. She’d only known Iax for days, but it had felt like much longer. Why else would she have been contemplating sleeping with him? You did sleep with him. Another scoff, because it was only sleep, though the best sleep of her life.
No monsters had invaded her dreams.
“How did that fucker survive shots to the head?”
The question froze her thoughts while a replay of what this man had done to Iax traveled through her mind’s eye. More reason not to cooperate.
“How was he healing himself?”
Her breath caught in the back of her throat, and the cargo hold spun. The rampant sensation escalated the longer she thought about all Iax had said, how he’d told her even his cells were intelligent.
“What did he want with you?”
Panic swelled in her chest. She hadn’t realized it, her vision hazed in memory, but Sawyer had stopped right in front of her.
The question felt loud and echoed in her head.
It knocked against the truth, rattling her.
Iax had called her Calypson and had encouraged her cells to heal.
If someone correctly analyzed the data from her blood sample, it would prove Iax’s words true.
But it had been destroyed with the rest of the outpost. For the first time since Sawyer had leveled her home, she was glad of it.
He stepped closer and wrapped his hand around her throat. Her heart pounded hard in her head. The room spun faster.
“Answer one of the fucking questions.” He squeezed slightly, restricting her airway. “Pick one.”
“Maybe I’d answer your questions if you took off that stupid helmet.” She spit. The lack of moisture in her mouth diminished the effect, but small dots sprayed across his visor.
His fingers flexed on her throat. A noise escaped Wynn while helplessness swirled inside her chest, her skin feeling tight and itchy. She couldn’t make it stop.
Her legs flailed futilely. She tipped her head back, the only way she could get away from his grip, but it only served in exposing her throat more. The out-of-control feeling intensified until she hung in the middle of a storm as intense as the one ravaging Earth. His other hand grabbed her elbow.
Hummmmm. She barely heard the noise above the sound of blood pumping in her head.
Everything around her stilled as a new pain emerged through the haze. She snapped her chin down, his hand around her throat restricting the movement.
In her peripheral vision, he sliced a line in the flesh of her inner arm with the laser scalpel, red blooming across pale flesh.
The familiar pain overrode everything else, even the ache in her wrists, her entire focus targeting the incision.
Her breath stalled in her throat as the haze obstructing her vision dissipated.
Blood dripped down from the wound to her armpit.
Her breaths accelerated as she breathed through the pain. The cargo hold stopped spinning. Everything cleared.
Sawyer finished the line and paused, waiting. She sucked in a breath, feeling like herself for the first time since he’d landed near her outpost.
With a tilt of his head, he started a second line above the first.
He thought this would make her talk?
A soft breath left her mouth, and the need for pain she’d left in her past returned with full force. She’d gained a small taste of that comfort when she’d added the last line to her trio, but she hadn’t returned to her kit in the washroom until after Iax arrived.
The line scored her flesh, and a breathless inhale expanded her lungs in the wake of the addictive sensation, the allure of control.
Sawyer flicked the laser scalpel off, his hand tightening on her elbow. “What the hell? You’re getting off on this?”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was so damn funny. He’d stripped her, intended on doing harm, and this was how he thought he’d get her to talk?
His chin tilted down, then up, scanning her body, like he was truly looking at her for the first time. Maybe he searched for evidence of past cuts. But he wouldn’t find them. Not after Iax.
Iax had healed her marks out of kindness, and this man returned them to her out of anger and perversion.
She laughed harder.
The fingers flexed around her throat.
His confusion made her heady with power. She knew the feeling was false, a trick because she hung there at his mercy, but it didn’t dampen the boldness that rose inside her.
She jutted out her chin. “Let me see the eyes of the man who wants to kill me.” Her voice rasped the more he squeezed. “Or are you that much of a coward, Sawyer?”
His head jerked back like she’d struck him, his one hand dropping away from her elbow but the other tightening around her neck.
“What did you call me?”
“Sawyer Knox,” she gasped between clenched teeth. “That’s your name, right?” Stars dotted her vision as her airway closed up.
She wouldn’t let him knock her out again.
Using every last bit of strength inside her, she smashed her forehead against his visor.
Smack. Snap. Pain bloomed across her face as he stumbled back. But her effort tripped his helmet to disengage.
She sucked in a breath and held it, her head aching from the hit. She couldn’t regret it. Not when she stared into his shocked brown eyes.
Wynn didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Perhaps a face as grotesque as the beasts of Earth, one to match the state of his soul.
Sawyer Knox was not scary to look at. Some might even call him attractive. His dark, almost black, hair was cut right to his scalp. A dusting of facial hair covered his jaw.
He looked normal. Unimpressive. If he wore the same uniform as her, she would have taken him for a scientist.
Until she stared deeper into his eyes and saw the taint of his soul. This man had done many horrible things in his lifetime. She could taste it in the air as easily as she could smell her blood.