Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Neverending dirt stretched before her. Wynn pumped her arms and legs, trying to run faster.
He’d told her to run, but betrayal slashed through her chest. She shouldn’t have left him.
Don’t look back.
Don’t stop.
Her heart pounded in her ears. Her visor fogged from her breath, making it almost impossible to see.
She tripped on a clump of dirt and stumbled. Unable to catch her balance, she landed face first in a row of seeds.
The visor cracked, then shattered, the sound so loud it felt like her ears bled.
Then she wasn’t wearing a UV-suit at all. She lay in the dirt in her underwear, her skin exposed to Earth’s radiation.
She tried to scream, but her lungs were already burning, her throat closing. Ugly burns spread across her hands, and arms, and face. She clawed at her skin, ripping the pain away. Then something howled in the distance.
Wynn’s eyes flew open. She closed them again when bright lights stabbed at her from the overhead. Sweat coated her body from her forehead to her knees. She lurched forward and found her arms and legs held down by restraints.
Panic speared through her chest. She opened her eyes again and looked down at herself, realizing she wore a patient’s two-piece garb. A sense of violation swept away her panic, replacing it with rage.
Clenching her jaw, she turned her head. She was in a lab. Terminals lined the wall, interrupted by analyzers similar to what she’d used at her outpost. A movable machine sat close to the bed, one arm extending over and blocking some of the light from above.
She turned her head the other way and found a one-way window glaring her reflection back at her. No doubt there were people on the other side.
That rage turned white hot.
“Hey!” she shouted, flexing against the restraints. “Let me out of here!”
Schzzzz. From the corner of her eye, a metal band extended from the table by her ear and rose upward. She struggled against the restraints around her wrists, then twisted her head back and forth. The band lowered over her forehead, keeping her skull in place.
“Stop it! Let me go!”
She couldn’t move with this new restraint in place, forced to stare up at the overhead.
“You’re going to regret—”
Another buzzing sound drew her eyes to the side. A dermal syringe extended from the bed, aimed at her throat.
“No! Stop it! Just let me talk to someone.”
She fought to remember the names Sawyer had told her, but came up empty as the syringe neared. It pressed against her neck and hissed as it injected fluid into her bloodstream.
I’m so done with being knocked out.
Then all went dark.
Cool air whispered against hot cheeks. Wynn tensed, then opened her eyes to find white upon white stretching before her. Pain pulsed through her temple, and she winced when she tried to sit up. Her hands connected with a padded floor.
She froze. A brief memory of being restrained slammed into her head. She pushed herself up, the steady breaths of slumber morphing into sharp inhales. Her feet propelled her backward, scrambling, until smack.
Her spine hit something firm. She turned to find more white. It extended upward and over her head. Nothing but white.
She braced her hands beside her hips and faced forward. Her impression of endlessness shifted, the white in front of her forming into another wall, four of them becoming a room smaller than her quarters, the ceiling barely high enough to allow her to stand.
“What is this place?” Her words croaked out of her, then disappeared abruptly into the walls, muffled.
No one answered.
Her mind raced with memories. She and Sawyer had landed on a Guardian, a warship. They’d removed her uniform, she remembered that, and she wore the white garb of someone awaiting surgery—a loose-fitting long sleeve top that opened in the back, and baggy pants, but bare beneath.
Bile welled in her throat. What had they done to her while unconscious? Heart thundering, she ran her hands down her body, assessing, then back up again. Her hand shook as she touched her neck and felt where the dermal syringe had injected her.
“Where am I?” The question rasped between dry lips. She licked them, needing a drink of water.
How long had she been unconscious?
Wynn pressed her hand against her stomach. It clenched and churned. She felt empty, like she hadn’t eaten in days, but hunger was a long way off.
“State your name and ID number.” The robotic voice came from all around her, assaulting her senses.
She shook her head and picked a point to stare at in the white nothing. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Why am I imprisoned?”
“State your name and ID number.”
She fisted her hands. “No. Let me out of here.”
The soulless instruction repeated, and she shook her head again. “I won’t participate in whatever this is until I have some answers.”
“State your name and ID number.”
“Where is Sawyer? Did you put him in a box too?”
Stupid question. It had been his job to bring her here.
The voice from above didn’t speak, and a gaping silence ricocheted around the small space in the wake of her question.
She felt the wall behind her, searching. They had to have gotten her in here somehow, through a door or hatch. The rubbery material passed seamlessly beneath her fingers until she arrived at the corner, turned, and explored more.
The voice echoed again, this time louder. She flinched, pausing in her search when it repeated the same command. “State your name and ID number.”
Swallowing, she searched her memories for the name Sawyer had given her, the person who had given the orders. “Where is General Cazin? I need to speak with him.”
The voice only repeated the order.
Wynn opened her mouth to tell it to fuck off when the walls rippled with color. She pushed away, not wanting to touch them. Heart pounding, she watched as the cube morphed into an orb, no longer solid, but liquid, like she stood inside a room-sized bubble.
Wynn. Wynn. Wynn. Wynn.
Her name vibrated from the walls, attacking, then retreating. She hadn’t spoken, but it came from everywhere.
Then, faces formed in the warped surface of the bubble, emerging like ghosts.
Wynn gasped, trying to get away, but they solidified into people.
People she recognized. People who had been a part of her life enough to imprint on her soul.
Her childhood best friend. Her mother. Her father.
Foster. Her heart ached as each face formed then vanished, speaking her name like they’d snatched it directly from her memory.
“Wynn! Wynn. Wyyyyyynn. Wynnie!”
Fragmented voices echoed. Her old teachers, fellow students, they all shouted her name until she covered her ears.
“What is this?” she whispered, horrified. How was it possible?
The bubble burst around her, replaced by a fully formed setting. She sat in the cockpit of the stolen yacht, her arms wrapped around her knees, with Sawyer beside her. A glint of the Guardian sparkled in the distance.
Her mind revolted, rejecting what her eyes told her. This couldn’t be happening, not exactly how it once was.
Was she lying on the med bed, connected to something? Or was she actually standing inside a sphere? Or a cube?
The image froze, then reversed. She was stumbling through the ship. She showered. She walked backward to the cargo hold. She hung from her wrists while Sawyer interrogated her.
Everything slowed again, then went forward.
“What did he want with you?”
Sawyer’s distorted voice came from right in front of her, the reflection in his helmet revealing her pale face.
Panic surged in her memory and her present, the things Iax had said to her surfacing too fast to stop. They can’t know. She couldn’t reveal what he’d told her, or they would dissect her piece by piece.
She glanced downward and noted the medical garb covering her body.
None of this is real.
Heart in her throat, she extended her hand behind her and took a step backward. Her fingers met the padded material of the cell, even though she couldn’t see it. Swallowing, she continued her search of the walls, looking for an escape.
Everything went in reverse again. Sawyer stole the administrator’s yacht, they walked backward through the orbital station, and onto the tether cabin.
Panic made the surrounding images swirl.
The world became a cyclone as she lost control of her calm, her skin feeling too tight.
Desperate, she lifted her right hand to her left forearm and found the space beneath the sleeve of her medical garb.
For a moment, the smooth flesh there confused her, stalling her erratic breaths.
She dug her fingernails into her skin, trying to control the chaos enveloping her head and body.
Everything went black for a moment. She blinked against the change in lighting, hope swelling that this was the end, that giving herself pain tempered her memories, but then she saw her outpost in ruins, her rage surging as she fought to stop Sawyer.
The scene shifted, then jumped backward to a point before Sawyer had landed his ship. Before she’d known Iax as gentle and considerate. She stood in her kitchen, and the storm raged around the outpost.
She froze, still as a statue. The cutting board lay before her, surrounded by vegetables. She held a kitchen knife in her hand. It felt as real as any knife, and she knew that couldn’t be possible.
I’m in a white room.
But she wasn’t, and watched as the knife slid into the potato, slicing it in half before chopping it into cubes.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Each stroke was sure and precise. She lifted the small pieces with the flat of the knife and slid them into the boiling water. She tried to resist the movements, but the need to do something with her hands overtook her, along with the need for a distraction from… something.
No. Someone.
“What is it you do?” Iax stood in front of her, his reflective eyes glinting in the overhead lights.
Her heart pounded. She shouldn’t be here. She needed to keep this part of her life a secret because… because…