Chapter 35 #2
A disturbing tranquility, an expectation, froze all sense of time. A shout rang out, cutting the silence like a blade. Another followed. The tortured sounds punched Wynn in the gut, making her flinch.
The shouts turned to screams. Someone dropped to their knees. Two more did the same. Wynn covered her ears, needing to block out the wretched sounds, but they seeped through her fingers and into the parts of her mind where she hid from beasts. Her skin crawled as the sounds crescendoed.
Then the corridor quieted as abruptly as the noise began.
Wynn lifted her head. “Are they...?” She didn’t know if she could bear to see the bodies.
But the soldiers weren’t lying dead on the floor. They stood with their weapons dangling from their fingers and their heads tipped to the side in question. All of them. In the same way.
Iax had done this. The person who could be so sweet to her had caused pain—transformations none of them had asked for. And she understood he would continue to do it. For her.
Her stomach swam with dread and doubt while his arm continued to guide her forward. They found a bank of lifts and separated into smaller groups to travel downward. The door opened, and they all poured out onto a hangar level.
With his body so close, she felt Iax stumble before his feet hitched in an uneven gait.
She reached for him instinctively, supporting his weight to help him.
“What’s happening?” She scanned his face, not liking what she saw there. “Why do you look ill?” Not only were his cheeks flushed, but his entire head had taken on a pink hue.
They continued down the corridor, but his eyes flicked to hers. “I have coalesced with too many and spread my essence too thin in a short period of time.”
Her fingers flexed on his flight-suit. “You mean when you change them?”
“Yes.”
Her feet halted in place. “Then stop it!” She smacked his hard chest. “Stop doing it.”
He shook his head once, then urged her forward. “I require more than myself for the success of this mission.”
Her fingernails curled into the material of his flight-suit. That may be true, but her stomach swirled with anxiety every time she caught sight of their glinting eyes. For Iax, it felt like who he was, but everyone else? They hadn’t been this way before he’d arrived on the ship.
The door ahead opened, revealing a massive hangar.
A shimmer of recognition went through her when she saw the administrator’s yacht through the opening.
The section of defenders ahead of them filed through first, then she, Iax, and Sawyer before the rest. Some bodies lay on the deck, prone, and she wasn’t sure if they were alive or dead.
The group’s footfalls echoed in the quiet of the hangar, a contrast to the shouting and chaos she’d experienced when she’d arrived. A pop resounded, and she tossed a glance over her shoulder, noting that one of the changed defenders sealed the door shut with a blast of his weapon.
Squeezed between Iax and Sawyer, they headed to the stolen yacht. She braced her heels against the smooth deck, pulling on Iax’s arm to stop their progress.
“What are we doing?” she asked when Iax acknowledged her resistance. “What will happen to them?”
The unit halted. Everyone stared at her with blank, glinting eyes.
“The ship is big enough to carry them all home,” Iax replied, voice level.
She shook her head, words stalling on her tongue.
“It is where they want to go,” he added.
A strangled sound left her throat at his certainty. “Maybe now. But not before you arrived.” If she didn’t want to go to Sector Ten, none of these defenders would. “I bet none of them would have consented to this.” Especially Sawyer. His loathing had been clear.
Her fingers flexed on Iax’s arm. “Can you change them back? Free them?”
His brow furrowed slightly, as big a frown as she’d ever seen on him.
“Change them all back, Iax.” She squeezed his forearm for emphasis. “I demand it. Now.” If she had any sway with him, and she believed she did, then he must listen to her. “I won’t go willingly otherwise.”
And still he hesitated.
“Please, Iax.” How to get through to him? “You touched them without their permission.”
He straightened with a nod, then stepped away from her to face the expressionless group. None of them moved, but was that fear she saw in Sawyer’s eyes?
She swallowed her growing uncertainty. “Have you changed anyone back before?”
“No.” He took another step away from her.
Her stomach twisted. “Will it be safe?” She licked her cracked lips.
“Uncertain.” He lifted his hands out to his sides.
“Then maybe we shouldn’t—”
That creepy-crawly sensation returned to her skin when Iax stopped in the center of the group. Dozens of eyes glinted as they focused on him.
A primal roar came out of nowhere, sounding as though a large animal had taken over the hangar.
But there was no animal. No beast. It was all their voices crying out in pain, like Iax ripped something vital from their bodies.
Or that a mutual terror had taken hold. Terror and something even worse: devastation.
Her eyes went to Sawyer a second before they all dropped to their knees, hands grabbing at their chests like they tried to stop their innards from spilling out. Blood seeped out of the corner of Sawyer’s nose.
Wynn’s breaths turned into rapid pants. Her fingernails dug into her arms. What have I done? She’d thought she was helping, and instead these people looked like they were dying.
They flopped forward, backward, sideways. Each of them fell to the deck and lay unmoving. The sounds of their shouts echoed throughout the hangar, then silence.
She couldn’t catch her breath.
The tableau froze in her mind, Iax standing at the center of the circle of bodies, his hands lifted from his sides, palms forward. The scene would forever be etched in her memory.
He turned around, then headed toward her. “We must go,” he said with an edge to his voice that she had not heard before, and his face more flushed. He took hold of her elbow and steered her toward the cruiser. “There is no need to take the larger ship.”
Heart in her throat, she looked over her shoulder at the lumps of motionless bodies.
“Are they dead?”
“No,” he gritted, his teeth clenched.
Her focus shifted to him. He looked to be in pain, but was fighting it. What had it done to him? A cold sweat broke out across her skin.
She barely felt Iax’s hands on her waist as he lifted her into the cruiser. She didn’t remember how she had arrived in the co-pilot’s seat. No one else entered the hangar before the engine started and the ship hovered above the landing platform.
Shields rippled around them, and they punched through the SNAP shielding. The cruiser hummed as it shot forward, fleeing that awful place. Then stars upon stars extended before her.
Wynn couldn’t see them through the tears blurring her vision.