A loud cheer pulls me back to the auction, just as her leash is handed off to a giant species I don’t recognize. He pulls her along behind him without bothering to worry about whether her much shorter legs can keep up with his long strides.
When she trips and almost drops to her knees, my heart lurches in my chest, and I start pushing my way through the thick crowd. At the last minute, she gets her feet under her once more and disappears from the stage.
I lift my eyes to the large leaderboard above the stage. The obscene amount of her winning bid flashes next to a smirking image of Madame Athea.
Some of the tension leaves me. The madame is certainly the lesser of the two evils, not that I have any intention of letting her reach Lux. Turning on my heel, I wade back through the crowd and then run for the exit.
Ducking my head down and hunching my shoulders, I manage to sneak past the guards. Then it’s a matter of following the shadows until I reach the rear entrance. My shoulders are back, and my arms are loose at my sides as I keep my step light, preparing for an attack.
“Hurry, Bane,” I hear a female voice echoing off the rock walls surrounding me. “I knew she was hurt, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
My fists and my teeth clench as I watch a Pizat appear from a back door with my female cradled in his arms. There is blood smeared across her cheek, and her body is limp and lifeless. My tongue darts out, tasting the air, just as my nostrils twitch at the faint smell of sickness.
A rattle starts in the back of my throat, and I step out of the shadows, my eyes locked on her too still body and the male who dares touch her.
“Take her straight to the med-bot,” Madame Athea says, hurrying after them. “Message me immediately with her status.”
“Yes, Mistress,” the Pizat says with a nod of his head.
My steps quicken as I focus on getting to her. I take her from the Pizat because it should bemyarms she’s cradled in.
“You!” a gruff voice shouts from behind me. “You shouldn’t be here!”
A quick look over my shoulder reveals one of the guards coming after me, and I push my legs into a run. I need to get to my female before—
I only make it a dozen strides before a crushing weight hits me from behind, knocking me to the ground. The Pizat pauses for a moment to squint into the darkness before hurrying into the madam’s ship, closing the ramp behind him.
Kurva!I pound my fists into the sandy ground just before the guard shoves a shock stick into the back of my skull and everything goes dark.
* * *
Bela
My first thought when I wake suddenly is that I have no idea where I am.
I’m surrounded by smooth glass, trapped inside some kind of tube. My second thought is my head no longer feels like it’s trying to split open. Lifting my hands, I press my palms to the curved glass above my head and push, but nothing happens.
“Hey!” I shout, slapping and pounding on the glass. “Let me out!”
It feels like an eternity before a robed creature finally appears. Without so much as glancing at me, it taps something into a screen and then the lid lifts with a hydraulic hiss.
I roll out of the tube as soon as it opens far enough to allow me to do so. When my feet hit the ground, my knees buckle and I nearly fall. With a hand holding on to the tube, I look down at myself. Great. I’m still naked.
“Where am I?” I ask the creature who is standing motionless beside the tube. “What happened? Where am I?”
It continues to ignore me, and I take a moment to get my bearings. I feel like I’ve woken after a prolonged illness. My muscles are weak, and my legs need a moment to decide if they can remember how to carry me. The room I’m in looks like a cross between a sitting room and an exam room. Except instead of a table, there is the glass tube that reminds me of a hyperbaric chamber.
My fingers go to the place behind my ear where my translator was placed. I can still feel the smooth metal disk, but there is no more inflammation. No more pain.
“Did this thing heal me?” I look from the chamber to the creature who is standing still and facing me. Its hood is pulled low, and no matter how I try, I can’t catch a glimpse at its face. “How long have I been here? Where are the others?”
Instead of answering me, the creature turns and glides out of the room. Geez, I feel like a baby giraffe as I stumble after it, following it into a narrow hallway.
“Where are we going?” I ask, using the smooth wall for balance.
About halfway down the hallway, the creature pauses to touch a panel on the wall, and a doorway slides open. A blue hand appears from inside the wide sleeve of its robe, and it gestures for me to go inside.
“Are the others in here?” I step inside the doorway, but the room is empty. “Where are th—hey!”
