Chapter 70 #2
He wore a plain brown shirt, tight against his muscular body, and loose military-style pants. Around his neck was a thick metal band, complete with a buckle and a tag. Dozens of scratches marred the shiny black metal, as if someone had tried to break it off.
He threw the bag he carried onto the desk behind him, then turned back to Nora, smiling.
“A quién sea que ese diablito fue a buscar…” The man’s voice was deep and insultingly relaxed. “Desafortunadamente para ustedes dos, ya está muerto.”
Nora jerked back. She didn’t understand most of the words, but she recognized they were in Spanish.
The man tightened his grip on her wrists.
Her head spun, her breathing hard. Nora eyed Airik’s sword at the man’s hip. Was it good that this man had it? Airik would have torn him limb from limb if he’d found him—she’d seen him on the verge of it before. But had the man said…muerto?
The word was practically universal—even she knew what it meant.
Her stomach turned as she tried to keep her eyes on him.
She refused to lose herself in the panic of dark imaginings.
Of why this man had Airik’s sword. Whether he meant to say dead.
Or even why he had a sick human trailing after him, or where he’d taken her from.
The man waited, lowering his head until he was practically bent in half to catch her gaze.
She tried to squirm free, but the man pinched her hard, killing her attempt.
Suddenly Nora felt quite small. A microscopic speck of life in the cold ocean, drifting at the whim of forces far greater than herself.
Worse than a fragile thing, something completely helpless and useless.
Even if she wanted to tell the man to fuck off, she couldn’t, because she lacked the right human words or the strength to force understanding.
Her chin sank against her chest as she stared at the neat stitching on her slippers.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man tilt his head, and a long strand of jet-black slip from his braid.
He groaned, no doubt noticing her tears, then loosened his grip again and rubbed under the collar with his other hand.
“You look like a little doll, with those big, sad eyes,” he lamented, in perfect English and with a hint of a British accent.
Nora inhaled sharply, her gaze snapping to his.
“You understand?” He smiled, then looked down at the other woman. “You all ought to be tagged with relevant information—make, model, languages pre-installed—to make this process easier.”
He tugged Nora’s hands in front of her and started dragging her along with him.
“Stop!” she screamed, pulling back. When he didn’t relent, Nora dropped herself to the floor. She wouldn’t make whatever he had in mind for her easy.
The man simply picked her up, his hands under her arms, like someone holding a baby who wasn’t very thrilled about it.
She kicked out wildly, hoping to hit something vital. “Fuck off, whoever you are,” she spat.
“Did I not introduce myself? How terribly impolite.” He made a dramatic frown. “The name’s Iver. What’s yours?” He abruptly grimaced. “Actually, never mind. The less I know about any of you, the better. I thrive in mystery.”
Spotting one of Airik’s tools—a screwdriver-looking thing, sharpened and sparkling in the sunlight—she reached to grab it.
Just as her fingers grazed the screwdriver, Iver swung her in the opposite direction. The world blurred as he swept everything off the table and out of her reach. Airik’s belongings scattered across the floor.
“I must warn you,” he said, lifting her dizzyingly high, away from any surfaces. “While I adore plucky little things like you, I must insist on some decorum, and I draw the line at bodily harm.”
He roughly dropped her onto the bench against the far wall of the command deck, the same spot where she had sat the first time aboard the ship. Unwilling to let the opportunity slip by, Nora blindly threw a volley of punches and shot back up.
Iver caught her hands, crushing her resistance with a glare and an overly firm grip. Without another word, he shoved her down, snapped cuffs—just like the woman wore—onto her wrists, then pressed her wrists against the bench. They vibrated, then stuck, as if they’d been welded in place.
Gasping and resigned to confusion, Nora could do nothing but watch, struggling against the cuffs, as the man hurried back to the woman to check her pulse. His shoulders relaxed, clearly relieved, and then he picked her up and laid her on the bench beside Nora.
He gathered Airik’s gun and set it on the table, away from the women. Pausing, he tore the sword from his belt, holding the handle in one hand and letting the tip rest against his other. His mouth twisted into a sneer.
Only the wheezing of the woman’s breath sounded in the stillness.
Iver yanked the collar away with vicious intent. He swung the sword toward himself, aiming at the gap between his skin and the collar. His arm tensed as he thrust the blade toward the collar.
It buzzed, and Iver collapsed to the ground as it discharged rapid electric pulses—visible as bluish-white lightning bolts arcing into his throat. He folded forward, clawing at the collar, and dropped the sword.
Nora instinctively tried to escape, to put distance between herself and a terrible danger—a device controlling another with pain. But the cuffs bit sharply against her wrists, making her cry out.
“Fuck.” Iver’s words grated out through clenched teeth. The buzzing stopped, and he slumped against the bench, breathing hard. “Well…” He let out a short, manic laugh, rubbing his throat. “That didn’t go quite as I imagined.”
It took a moment before he caught his breath, stunned by whatever the collar had done to him. But eventually he straightened the collar and then set Airik’s sword beside the gun on the desk.
Nora shrank back as he stood.
He leaned against the table, facing her, making it groan under his weight. His lip curled as he bent forward, reaching out to tip her chin up. “I’m surprised the wild prince left you behind.”
Nora clenched her fists, a surge of pain shooting up her arm from the small cuts in her palm. “You’re with Xallix.”