A loud scream cut him off and he frowned, moving out of the room. “What was that?”
“They just encountered Rok.”
“Oh,vekt.” Tanin groaned as he heard a roar of fear. They’d scared him. And almost certainly scared themselves in the process. Tanin’s head rolled back in annoyance. Rokwol would be the last of his crew he’d want them to run into. Not so much for them, but for Rok. “The others?”
“They’re coming. They’ll try to calm them down.”
Tanin thought about his crew. Rokwol, Sorbet, Tebros, Trove. Vytln! Probably the worst person they could come across would be Vytln. His crew didn’t scare him, but he also wasn’t a helpless female suddenly waking up in a new, strange environment unable to communicate.
“Alred, tell the others to-”
Twin screams rang out this time.
“They’ve met Vytln.”
“Of course, they did.”
“He’s unhappy about it.”
“Shocker.”
“Language download successfully installed.”
“Good. Try to calm them down. I’ll catch up to them myself. Where are they?”
“Head down the main corridor. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Tanin took off at a jog. This was not how he hoped this job would go. And now, he definitely wasn’t getting the other half of this payment.
Chapter 4
Garnet
This was a spaceship. They were in a spaceship, and she had no idea what to do! She couldn’t get away in a spaceship!
The panicked thoughts hounded Garnet as she escaped the small casket room, pulling Goldie behind her, only to end up in a big storage room. It was empty at the moment, but it was big enough to store a house inside. Her footsteps didn’t even echo as she ran through the open space, past a set of steep steps that led to a second level, towards the door she could see off to the side away from the others.
Which probably only led deeper into this place because this was definitely a spaceship, and she had no idea how she was supposed to escape from here.
Lifeboats? Did spaceships have lifeboats?! Did it even matter? Maybe they were still close to Earth. Maybe they could send out a distress signal or something. But she had no idea how to read alien, so how could she possibly?!
“Garnet,” Goldie called to her weakly.
“I know!” Garnet yelled back. Not upset with her, just freaking out. She saw a turn coming up at random and took it just because it was there.
Only to slam,hard, into a solid wall.
She bounced off with a gruntedumph!She fell back into Goldie and her sister caught her, barely keeping them both from hitting the ground.
Then, the wall moved.
Garnet and Goldie both froze. Garnet’s breath caught in her throat as an absolutely huge, mountain of a man – alien – turned. And turned. And turned.
There was just somuchof him. Muscles on muscles. And arms. So many arms. Four of them, all stacked with muscles as big as her thighs. Bigger. And tall. Garnet had to drop her head back to look up at his face. At the huge horn coming off his forehead before swooping over his head, the point angled backwards. He had beige skin, but it was covered in so many patches of teal and black scales.
They stood in his shadow, staring up at a pair of yellow eyes – all yellow, no white or black at all. He grunted something and his voice was rough, like the mashing of rocks. He lifted one of his four, enormous hands.
Goldie let out a scream of terror.
