Chapter 12

TWELVE

T he door swung outward and Felix fell backward, dazed by the sudden awakening and the light in the tunnel. Surely night hadn't already passed? He'd only just closed his eyes. He attempted to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth and managed a vague mumble. His breath tasted awful.

"Get up." Not Andy's voice.

Squinting, Felix rolled over and pushed to his knees. He instinctively batted away the hands reaching for him, not caring if they meant to help him up or simply drag him someplace more terrible than his cell. His will to fight rose sluggishly, hampered by a lingering ache along his jaw and up across the top of his skull. In fact, he hurt all over, and had the feeling he'd been fending off nightmares. He also recognized the sick swirl in his gut. The weird emptiness that was more than just hunger. He'd been drugged. The odd-tasting water had been laced with something.

Someone grabbed his arms and hauled him upright. Felix looked at his new guards without recognizing either of them. "Is it breakfast time?" He knew it wasn't, but asking where they were going would be disingenuous. "I could really use a leak first." Anxiety kept pushing useless questions forward. "What time is it?"

Silently, the guards continued to drag him forward. Felix's feet finally woke up after ten meters or so. Walking would save his boots—because he'd be needing his boots, right? After Preston finished?—

He wasn't any more awake or alert than he'd been last night, but being dragged toward his doom helped him grab hold of his rage and use it. Felix dropped to his knees, hoping to pull his guards off balance. The guy on his right barely grunted. The one on his left huffed and squeezed his arm a little tighter. Rocking backward, Felix tried to tug his arms free. His guards pulled him forward again. He kicked out in an attempt to hook his foot behind the knee of the guy on the right. Might as well have kicked a tree for all the reaction he got. Felix continued to struggle, despite the obvious futility, until his guards' silent and impenetrable will suddenly made sense. They were Preston's soldiers and they were Zoning. Super strong, less than communicative and dedicated to their purpose, they were focused on their mission objective: get him to the lab.

Fuck.

Felix let his fear take him for a minute. Losing his shit in a dim hallway would be less embarrassing than doing it in front of Preston. He swore and bucked and kicked. Tried every trick in his collection. Then his exhausted body betrayed him, sagging under its own weight, arms and legs all loose and floppy and achy, the pounding in his head like the roar of an attitude thruster.

They pulled him through an open hatch into a brighter space, and Felix immediately regretted having wasted so much energy. Blinking against the harsh lighting, he tried to take stock of his surroundings. They'd brought him to Preston's lair, that much was clear. Stark and functional, the space resembled one of the workrooms back at the asteroid—except for the clear plasmix wall running down the center. The opposite side looked familiar too: it was set up like an operating theater. A wall of equipment, auto-docs, monitors and trays of standard tools. In the middle were two beds and one victim. Well, Felix considered the woman strapped to one of the tethered floats a victim. She might think differently.

Preston stood on this side, suited up in white, hands encased in weird, shiny gloves. "Strip him and put him through the decon scan."

Why did he need to be stripped? She was only interested in his arm, wasn't she? Felix pulled against the tight hold of the guards. "Look, just take a finger or something. You don't need to put me in there." What the fuck was he saying? "Where's Zed? Is he here? Is he coming? What have you done with him?"

She hadn't already taken him apart, had she? No. No—he needed to stop thinking that. Preston needed Zed alive and well. She wanted him to train her army, right?

Preston didn't answer any of his questions. Exhausted, Felix put up only a token struggle as he was dragged toward the decon unit in the corner. There, one of the guards held his arms up while the other pulled his boots and pants off. Felix managed to get a couple of head kicks in before they switched places, one guard holding him by the waist while the other pulled his shirt over his head.

Naked, Felix felt more vulnerable—particularly with his new arm fully exposed. Preston seemed more interested in the scars crisscrossing his torso, marking his legs and circling his ankles and right wrist.

"The stin really are a rather barbaric people," she murmured.

"Like you're any better. Experimenting on your own kind? You're a fucking monster." Felix tried to spit, but his mouth was so dry he produced little more than a tsking sound.

His guards thrust him into the scan unit and activated it. Sonic waves scoured the dirt from his body, and an astringent mist killed anything alien on his person. It was almost as unpleasant as a chemical wash station, except he emerged with hair.

They handed him a thin pair of pants and gave him approximately one second to pull them up over his legs before dragging him toward the door in the clear partition. Surely all this manhandling messed with the decon scan. Preston held out a laser scalpel and Felix wilted. Couldn't she have drugged him or something? Saved him some struggle and the indignity of being stripped and examined? He cast a longing look at his crumpled utility pants. He still had most of that pouch of funny-tasting water tucked in one of the pockets.

"Tell me if this hurts." Preston activated the scalpel.

Oh for the love of…He wasn't Zed. There was no way he could pretend the touch of a laser scalpel didn't hurt. "It'll hurt!" he yelled. "It's like a regular arm that way. It'll hurt." He glanced at the woman lying strapped to the other float. Did Preston prod and poke all her people with laser scalpels?

Smiling, Preston flicked off the scalpel and tucked it into her belt and pulled out a hypo. "Can't have you thrashing about while I explore this marvel."

Explore?

"Please don't do this. It's wrong." Felix turned to appeal to the men holding him. "Can't you see this is wrong? Hasn't she already put you through enough?"

The expression of one of his guards might have flickered—or the light in the lab might have wavered briefly. The other had the beginnings of a familiar crease between his brows. Either way, it was like talking to a wall. Preston pressed the hypo to his neck and triggered it. "I can't promise this procedure won't hurt, but you can rest assured I will do everything to make you comfortable. You're a very important component of this program, Felix."

"Fuck you."

The world spun and danced away.

Zed stared at the men and women lined up before him in the makeshift gym carved out of one of the larger caverns under the cliff. Training people was something he usually enjoyed doing, watching their confusion lift as they grasped a concept or seeing their eyes light up with success.

Right now, he couldn't give a fuck if the people in front of him got what he was showing them or not.

After waking up with a mild headache and a fuzzy mouth on the cell floor, it hadn't taken Zed long to figure out he'd been drugged. He'd had a couple of sips of water from a pouch as he spoke with Flick—but he couldn't remember falling asleep. He should've known Preston would enforce her "rest" command.

So now he was stuck teaching a group of ten ragtag wannabe soldiers. A handful of them might have been former AEF—they had the stance of guys who'd been through combat, but for all Zed knew, they might have been from colonies that had seen battles during the war. The others, though—Christ, where did Preston find them? They were so fucking young . He'd bet nearly anything that four of them were university students or recent grads. They had that wide-eyed must-learn-everything look that privileged kids fresh from education often had. The other three—he had no doubt they were station rats. They weren't any older than the university crew, but their eyes held anything but innocence. These would be Preston's unseen soldiers—the ones who got in, did the dirty work and got out, before anyone even knew they were there.

Hell of a life.

Dwelling on what these kids were and weren't was just a way for him to distract himself from the fact that he hadn't seen a hint of Flick. When he'd asked about him, he'd been told to teach for an hour, then his guards would take him to Flick.

It had been an hour and a half.

Assholes. Zed walked around the floor, eyeing the kids as they sparred with each other. He looked like he was engaged—but he wasn't, not fully. Plans for escape flowed through his mind, along with an inventory of weapons and potential enemies. There was an arms locker at the rear of the training room, but with the doors closed, he couldn't see inside. What was the likelihood of Preston keeping larger weapons that weren't bio-locked? Her guards only carried stunners. It was possible she refused to equip them with anything more deadly so that they'd go to their training first. The soldiers, themselves, were to be weapons, after all.

As for enemies, he wasn't sure if he could count every colonist in that column or not, but the men and women he was training definitely were. Even so, the plans couldn't develop very far without one key piece of data.

Where was Flick? And what shape was he in?

"Again!" Zed barked. He didn't care that his "students" dripped with sweat. He'd work them until they took him to Flick—or the kids passed out, whichever came first.

Of the ten men and women in front of him, only five could Zone—two of the soldiers, one of the university crew and two of the station rats. Maybe Preston was applying her poison in stages. Whatever the case, Zed hoped like hell that the kids who couldn't Zone yet were watching the ones who could and seeing the signs of destabilization. The rapid blinking as they struggled to hold the Zone, the permanently etched furrows in their foreheads.

Please, God, let them have second thoughts.

One of the station rats—a girl whose arms and legs looked more like twigs than actual limbs—staggered, bumping into one of the maybe-AEF guys, one who showed no signs of being able to Zone. He caught and steadied her, then shot a glare at Zed. "You want to ease up?" he growled.

Zed stepped into the group, right up into the guy's space. He was about an inch taller than Zed, his shoulders nearly as wide, but Zed had almost a decade on him, if the baby face was any indication. "You got something to say to me?"

Baby Face stared straight ahead—definitely former AEF. "I—I just?—"

"Why are you here?" Zed demanded.

The guy opened his mouth, then closed it. Then, "To make a difference, sir!"

"Then why the fuck didn't you stay in the AEF?"

"I…" Baby Face's eyes flicked to Zed's, then straight again, and it was clear he didn't have a good answer.

Zed turned to one of the university crew, a guy whose squint proclaimed he needed vision surgery or glasses. "How about you? Why are you here?"

He swallowed and fidgeted. "Dr. Preston promised to pay my tuition—like the AEF does if you enlist at eighteen. 'Cept the AEF wouldn't take me and…" He shrugged.

Jesus Christ. Zed pointed to the station rat who'd stumbled earlier. "And you?"

She grinned, showing off one of her crooked and broken front teeth. "The money's awesome."

Baby Face's shoulders stiffened. "Dr. Preston has a vision?—"

"Dr. Preston is fucking sick." Zed grabbed Baby Face's wrist and guided the man's fingers to the back of his neck. He didn't like being touched there, but he wanted to prove a point. Baby Face sucked in a breath as he felt the puckered scars from the stin talons that had injected Zed with venom over and over again.

"Feel that? A stin POW grabbed me by the neck and injected his venom. Four times. Preston arranged it. Fuck, we all signed up for it. We wanted it, we wanted to make a difference, just like you. But it killed my team." He looked pointedly at the trainees who could Zone. "And it's going to?—"

"That's enough, Major."

Zed glanced over his shoulder. "Scared of the truth?"

Preston smiled at him, cold and calculating, and leaned against the doorframe. "The truth is that the AEF doesn't know what to do with itself, and you're well aware of that fact. Even Central doesn't know what actions to take in a galaxy that isn't at war. We need to be prepared for the inevitable future."

"War isn't inevitable."

"Come now, Zander. You can't possibly be that na?ve." She waved a hand at the students. "Go shower. We'll have lunch soon."

The students filed out of the chamber, with Baby Face bringing up the rear. He looked as if he wanted to say something to Zed—to curse him out, maybe, now that the all-powerful Preston was in attendance—but after a short hesitation, he continued on.

"War is the one constant in humanity's existence," Preston said after Baby Face had disappeared into the hall. "You can't argue that."

Zed clenched his jaw. "Maybe," he agreed reluctantly. "But that doesn't mean it can't change."

Preston snorted, a surprisingly elegant sound. "The best predictor of future action is past action. Humanity will go to war again—with itself, or with the stin. Perhaps even the resonance or the ashushk…though the latter is not likely, I admit," she amended with a shrug. "But war will happen. I intend to be in a position to capitalize on it."

Zed froze. "This is about money ?"

Preston stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. "You should see your face. Yes, of course it's about money. Did you think I was doing this for some altruistic purpose? Really, Zander, after all these years?" She shook her head, still chuckling. "The intellectual and scientific challenge of perfecting the Dreamweaver formula and training—molding it into Dreamcatcher—is fulfilling, yes. But my primary goal is the mountains of credits I'll be able to name for allowing the AEF to borrow my soldiers. Or, if the AEF won't pay, others will, I'm sure."

Holy shit. If this operation had been headed by anyone else, Zed wouldn't have been surprised that money was the motivation. But he'd assumed Preston was doing it simply for the bragging rights of being able to say she was the one who'd made it work for humanity.

The idea of Preston being in charge of an army—even a small one—and selling them to the highest bidder was chilling. She didn't care about right and wrong. She wouldn't give a shit if any of these kids died while on assignment—except for the fact that it would cost her time and money to replace them. And what if the people Preston sold their services to were the ones who wanted to see war come to the galaxy again?

"Jesus fucking Christ," Zed breathed.

Preston pushed off the wall and gestured for Zed to join her. "Come, Felix is just about to come around. He'll want to see you."

Cold flashed through him. "What do you mean, ‘come around'?"

"I wouldn't operate on him while he was aware, Zander." Preston smiled. "There are limits to what I want to experience. Besides, when you hear one man scream himself hoarse, you've heard them all."

Numb with the idea that he hadn't protected Flick at all, Zed allowed Preston to lead him deeper into her complex. He kept track of the turns to try to maintain a mental map in preparation for their eventual escape, and compiled a list of all the things they'd need to survive on this rock until rescue—not the least of which was some way of getting a message to the Chaos or his brothers. But all the planning and thinking in the galaxy wouldn't help until he had all the relevant data about Flick's condition. They had to get out of here—there was literally no other option. Eventually, one or both of them would outlive their usefulness, and then…

After all the shit they'd been through—both together and during the war—they deserved more than dying in this fucking hellhole of a planet with a she-devil playing with them. Once she brought him to Flick, Zed would have a better idea of what actions to take. Zed flexed his broken wrist, trying to get a sense of how well the Mendo had set. It was vaguely achy, but no longer sore. The enforced rest overnight had been good for his head too. He felt…better. Not one hundred percent, but better.

Good .

"Where are you holding him?" Zed asked, keeping his voice subdued. As though the thought of Flick being operated on had broken him. Too close to the truth .

"You'd be surprised by the amount of useable space we have under this mountain."

Yeah, he could see that. Preston didn't volunteer anything more as they made their way through a series of winding tunnels, some lit, some not. He spotted a comm unit set into the wall, similar to the shipboard communications on the Chaos , and a plan started to form. Classic. Simple.

Please let Flick be mostly coherent. And mobile.

They passed a large operating theater, then moved into an adjacent room with one hospital bed and one chair. A couple of colonists—a guard and a nurse—puttered around the room, monitoring readouts. Flick lay on the bed, shirtless, his left shoulder wrapped in bandages. Had Preston been exploring the connection between crystal and tissue? Flick's eyes were heavy, and he was obviously groggy, but awake. Sort of. The sort of vanished as Flick spotted Preston. His eyes widened and he struggled to sit up, scramble away.

Zed darted forward. Preston let him go, obviously thinking he was going to comfort Flick. And he was. Just not the way she was thinking.

"Shh, I'm here." He grabbed Flick's wrist, sighing inaudibly as their connection reestablished itself. Thank God. Whatever she'd done to him, it hadn't damaged that.

"You okay?" Flick's voice was rough and his eyes kept darting from Zed to Preston and back, but he was lucid.

"Was about to ask the same of you." Leaning over Flick, Zed eyed his crystalline arm. Below the bandage, it looked intact, though the hand seemed off. Misshapen. He tilted his head to get a better look—and sucked in a breath.

"What?" Flick frowned at the bandage wrapping his shoulder, then looked lower and growled. "She took my fucking pinky finger!"

Zed couldn't stop the rage that cascaded from him to Flick. Flick's eyes widened—yeah, Zed normally had a better control on his emotions than that, but damn it. Flick had worked fucking hard for that arm, concentrating for ten straight hours to grow it from a seed the resonance had given him in gratitude. For Preston to take even a sliver of it?—

He wanted to kill her.

But first, they had to get out of here. Regroup. Plan.

Zed took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. "Distraction," he sent across their link. "Be ready."

Flick nodded. No hesitation. No questions. God, he was such a perfect partner, in everything.

Zed leaned close, as though he was sharing some intimate words with his lover, but instead focused on his Guardian cuff. With the weirdness of the atmosphere, he hadn't tried to send a signal off-planet—he wasn't even sure the cuff could reach that far. He'd once hijacked comms for a wide radius near Hemera Station at the Hub—a few hundred thousand kilometers—but even triple that wouldn't get him to the nearest shipping lane, and there were no other colonies in this system. He could try calling in the Guardians, but that was a bit like launching a nuclear bomb to take out a single spider.

Besides, he wasn't sure if they'd transport Flick—or even if they'd welcome Zed aboard one of their ships while he was awake and aware.

At any rate, his plan didn't need off-planet comms to work. On-planet ones would do just fine. Making sure his cuff was hidden from Preston's view, he accessed its wide-range comms capabilities.

Instantly, Flick's bracelet lit up, and Zed's wallet, and Preston's wallet, and those of the guard and nurse. The comm unit on the wall blinked. Zed allowed himself a small smile, knowing that every comm device in the colony was receiving a mystery signal—one no one would be able to trace. Given their isolation, he was counting on it to thoroughly freak Preston out.

"What the hell?" Preston grabbed at her wallet, as did the guard and nurse. Expressions of puzzlement crossed all their faces.

"What's going on?" Flick asked. His tone was concerned, but his eyes twinkled. A strong sense of approval came across their link.

"Nothing," Preston said, her voice firm. "It's nothing. A communications error." The surety in her voice wavered at the last. "Keith, with me," she said to the guard. The man nodded and joined her as Preston started back to the hall. She paused to glare at Zed and Flick. "Stay here. You so much as think about leaving this room, and Tamara will take you out."

Zed looked over at the nurse to see she'd pulled a stunner from somewhere and was holding it on them. Okay…minor complication, but nothing he couldn't handle.

"I'm not leaving Flick," he said. Let Preston think that was meant to be a reassurance. Clearly she did, since she headed into the hall with the guard with no further hesitation.

Truth was, one woman with one stunner was not going to keep him contained.