Chapter 21

Harper

My eyes felt gritty like I'd ended up with the entire Sahara desert beneath my eyelids. I blinked them rapidly and fought to get the moisture back and regain my vision. They burned and gave me flashes of stark white light and then nothing. Groaning, because my eyes hurt so much, I tried to lift my hand so I could rub at them. That's when I discovered how much everything else ached, too.

I instantly flashed back to the vault and the endless weakness I'd felt there. Then my mind pulled up the recollection of all that horrible fatigue as I recovered in the med bay aboard Nick's ship. It felt like that, but deeper; like I'd gotten bruised all the way to the bone. My brain couldn't figure out how that had happened. What had happened?

Nick. Where was he? A panic struck me that pushed the pain to the back of my mind and I blinked even more furiously with my eyes. It was dark, I wasn't blinded; it was just dark. My wrist ached and my biceps burned when I lifted a hand and clumsily felt around me. A plastic surface, which crinkled and creaked when I touched it, and beneath it, a barely there excuse of a mattress. So a cheap, strange bed?

"Hello? Anyone there?" I asked. I didn't dare raise my voice beyond a soft whisper, worried about what I might find in the dark. The last thing I remembered was clinging to Nick's shoulders, my legs clenched around his hips, while we plummeted from the sky. I didn't know why that had happened. I hadn't seen any laser fire, and I didn't remember the fall either.

Had we struck sand, the trees, or something else? And how far had we fallen? I wouldn't have survived a fall from several hundred feet in the air. I didn't think Nick would either… My breathing stuttered to a brief, shocked stop as the thought struck me that he'd died. He would have tried to protect me, he would have taken the brunt of that fall. What if? No, I didn't want to contemplate it. He was wearing armor, maybe that had saved him.

"Nick?" I hissed a little more loudly, desperate for him to answer. I wouldn't know what I'd do if Nick was lost to me, but it was starting to feel like the universe was conspiring to keep us apart. There was no answer, but my eyes were starting to feel better, and with that came some definition of the room I was in.

Room? No, this couldn't be called a room exactly. It was a prison cell and not even a fancy one like the brig they'd kept Nick in aboard the Varakartoom. It had bars facing a hallway, and I saw the distant shape of more bars across from my tiny square prison. When I squinted and shifted my head, I could see a vague light in the distance, above what might be a door.

I sat up slowly, fighting the wild spinning and the rising nausea. This had to be a concussion, my head ached so fiercely. When I felt around my skull, it was in one piece, but a large knot sat at the back beneath my sandy hair. So we had hit the ground, a sand dune maybe; the planet had been littered with those. I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

On wobbly legs, I managed to make a circuit of the small room, but there was no sign of Nick. I was definitely alone inside the space. Not just the wall facing the hallway was made of bars, I was sharing a barrier of the same with the neighboring cell on my right. For long minutes, breathing shallowly, I peered into the dark interior and tried to decipher if there was someone on the cot or not.

I thought I saw the shape of a wing dangling over the edge, I hoped it was. If I squinted and pressed my head against the bars, I could also make out what looked like an arm and a hand. Was that Nick? That had to be Nick… And if they threw him in a cell, that meant he was alive, right?

The sound of a door opening behind me had me jerk away from the bars, and my skin broke out in goosebumps. I backed up until my back hit the wall and peered into the hallway. Light spilled from the open doorway and painted a silhouette I couldn't quite make sense of. A tall, broad shape, misshapen with what appeared to be two heads.

The light expanded, flaring up from the floor when the figure started to move. I blinked and wiped at my eyes to force them to adjust. Not one shape, two, and they were dragging a third. I saw the red tips of his feather mohawk and the long drape of his wings behind his back. He was unconscious, and two Krektar with their wart-covered faces and pig-like snouts were dragging him along.

I rushed to scan him for any sign of injury but didn't see anything. No blood, no weirdly crooked limbs, but I didn't like how lifeless he appeared as they dragged him toward me. Were they going to put him in the cell with me? I didn't know if I should call out and draw their attention, or if I should try to remain hidden.

They were almost abreast of my prison when I suddenly remembered the winged shape I thought I'd seen in the cell next to mine. Uneasily, I glanced over my shoulder and drew in a shuddering, surprised breath when I discovered it was some gargoyle alien. He had wings and arms, but it was definitely not Nick.

My Nick was tossed to the floor in front of me, and while one Krektar unlocked the door to my cell, the other kicked him in the stomach. I leaped forward before I could stop myself. "Don't hurt him!" I knew I couldn't do anything against two hulking aliens, but I couldn't sit on my hands when he could not defend himself.

The door slid open, and I launched out of it, throwing myself on top of Nick's prone form. That made the two guards laugh uproariously; at least it ended any further violence. With a few shoves and pushes, I was sprawled over Nick inside the cell, rather than outside. They turned to leave, and I cursed at them for being assholes, for hurting a man while he was down. "Let us go," I demanded of the nearest one, clutching at his belt. "We are no threat. You can have the stupid implants back!"

My wrist felt like he'd snapped it in two when he yanked it off him, but they didn't glance back when they left. Didn't say anything to me, they just laughed when they locked the cell door. Then darkness fell again when they left the cell block, and I was left sitting at Nick's side, furiously blinking to get my eyes used to the dark. I didn't even know if that helped, but I felt so impotent I had to try something.

I ran my hand over his body but felt only the hard black armor he wore. When I located his head, I searched for any injuries and discovered he still wore that curved silver implant around his left ear. The slightest brush of my fingers against it, and the blue, glowing visor slid over his eyes. I blinked against the light and then nearly tumbled ass over teakettle when that light hit a pair of glowing silvery eyes on the other side of the bars. That gargoyle creature was awake.

He was crouched next to his cot, wings spread, and looked like a statue at home on the corner of a church. I didn't expect him to move, let alone speak. "If they interrogated him, he's not going to wake for a while yet, female." His voice was like gravel, like the sound of rock sliding across rock in an avalanche. It made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I expected to crash down around me at any moment.

"Nick is strong," I said firmly, willing myself to believe it. I lifted his head into my lap so he'd be more comfortable and settled in to wait. One fist I didn't open, the one I'd used to accost the guard with. I didn't want the gargoyle to see that I'd taken something, even if I didn't know what it was yet, or if it was useful.

The gargoyle didn't speak anymore, but he watched from his nearby crouch. It did not help my nerves. I tried to focus on Nick's breathing, the slow movement of his chest as it went up and down, and the thump of his heartbeats I could feel in his neck. He was alive, and while I didn't know how we'd both survived the fall, neither of us had broken bones.

Our strange neighbor said it would take a long time before he woke up, and I braced myself for that possibility. Nick stirred much sooner, blinking his lashes, and then the crest on his head rose. With a groan, he flicked open his eyes and raised a hand to his forehead. "Damn, what was in that drink?" he mumbled, "This feels worse than a hangover from Aderian wine…"

Then his eyes latched onto mine and I saw something ease in his features, even if they were a little obscured by the blue glow of his visor. "Nick, are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt anywhere?" The visor winked out and now I could see that his gaze was clear and focused; he seemed completely lucid. I drew a relieved breath when he sat up and raised a wing to curl it around my back and draw me close.

"I'm fine. The headache is already fading," he assured me, while a grin spread across his handsome features; it showed off his sharp canine teeth. "Their interrogation techniques aren't very effective. Don't worry." Those words did not make me feel any less worried. They made me feel a mounting sense of panic and fear. That word didn't mean anything good, and if the first round didn't work, they would try again and again. Of that, I was certain.

Nick hadn't missed much since he opened his eyes. It had seemed like he'd been focused on me, gathering me protectively close to his chest. But he'd seen our company in the next cell over, and now he tilted his head to give the gargoyle a sharp look. "Why are you here, Tarkan?" he demanded to know.

I was pulled into his lap, his arms surrounding me, and I felt better. He was warm and solid, and it made me realize how chilled I'd gotten. They had taken my tablet, and I was no longer wearing that improvised poncho, though I was still in possession of the rest of my clothes. The temperature in the cells was cool enough to sneakily sap my strength, and I hadn't even realized. It had probably already started when I'd been unconscious.

Nick tucked my head beneath his chin, his hands running up and down my spine to warm me with brisk moves. I could only barely see the gargoyle guy now, squatting in the gloom near the bars that separated his cell from ours. He wasn't wearing anything beyond a scrap of cloth over his groin, and I realized his legs weren't shaped quite right. They looked like the legs of a lion, but without any fur, exposing lean muscles and thick gray skin.

"I am a gladiator." The Tarkan, as Nick had called him, declared proudly. His gravely voice didn't carry far this time, but he was obviously drawing some sense of self-worth from the statement. I had a faint recollection that accompanied the word Tarkan. It was his species, and they were one of the more common species in the quadrant. Matriarchal, with dozens of queens that ruled the many inhabitable planets in their solar system.

The gargoyle lifted his chin and for the first time, I spotted the collar that circled his thick neck. It was a thick metal band with a square little box, a row of lights blinking red and green. I didn't know what it was, but it made Nick incline his head. "I see," he said, and then he picked me up and moved us away from the bars and to the crinkly cot against the other wall.

"Do you know where we are?" I asked, my fist clenching around the little trinket I'd stolen. Then I added in a soft whisper close to his ear, "They didn't take your visor… Can you reach the Varakartoom?" I didn't think his captain was all that pleased with this situation, but I also believed that he wouldn't leave Nick and me to our own fates. Even if the scary Asmoded didn't feel like rescuing us, Mandy would make sure we'd get help.

Nick didn't immediately answer, but I saw his visor light up again, his eyes flicking left to right as they read data from the holographically projected screen. "Not yet," he said. "They took my com and your datapad. I need to hack into their systems to direct a call." He grinned, fangs glinting brightly in the darkness, lit up with the blue light from his visor. "Their mistake for not realizing what this is." He tapped the silver crescent that curled around his left ear.

"Will this help?" I asked, and I slowly opened my fist between us to show him what I'd taken from the guard. It couldn't be super important, or they would have already missed it, but I hoped Nick could do something with it. It looked like some kind of device.

Nick took one look at it, then glanced over at the strange gargoyle in the other cell. The male had moved back to the cot and appeared to be sleeping, but I had the feeling that was just a ruse. "Yeah, that's a nice trick to have up our sleeve. Good job, Harper. I'll get us out of this, don't worry." Of course, Nick had a plan, and I listened with rapt attention as he explained what had happened.

I learned the answers to some of my burning questions, like how we'd gotten here and where here was. When Nick and I had almost reached the shuttle after our escape from the skimmer, he'd learned two things in rapid succession. First, the shuttle's computer had drawn his attention because it had finally cracked the encryption of the data we were after. And because he'd been in direct connection with the computer, the explosion that had taken out the shuttle had briefly fried his mind through his implant. He'd lost consciousness and the two of us had taken that terrifying fall.

He'd roused just in time to snap out his wings and slow our descent before we struck a sand dune. The force had knocked both of us out, but he'd slowed us down just enough that we had broken no bones. In that time, Batok's men had surrounded us and taken us captive, then they'd ferried us up to the crimelord's ship and thrown us in a cell. I hadn't woken in time for Nick's first meeting with an interrogator, but they had only given him a truth serum that hadn't worked.

The Tarkan proved to have a good hearing when Nick explained that part to me. I was certain it surprised Nick too when the male casually made his observation. "How can this be? The truth serum works on everyone…"

Nick had been calm so far, but now he growled, the sound low as it rattled through our cell. He shot the gladiator a fierce look that warned the male to back off, to stay out of this, but he still answered. "I am Mithrakon. I am not from this quadrant. It does not work on me and they will not be getting another chance."

He did not speak after that, and I understood why. That Tarkan had overheard all our whispers, and even if he was another prisoner, we could not trust him to be on our side. "I will keep you safe, mate," Nick said after a long, tension-filled pause. His hand slid around the back of my neck and he claimed my mouth with his, a fierce possessive kiss that would leave no doubt to our audience that I was his.

I didn't like sitting around, and I wished I had access to a screen so I could look through the data Nick had uncovered. All I knew was what little Nick dared to tell me with an audience. It was data related to a drug smuggling and production operation that Batok ran. The data had been by Batok because he'd once intended to sell off that section of his network to another crimelord. A crimelord that had taken a big fall from grace, which was what had triggered Batok to lock me up in that vault.

Waiting was not my strong suit, but it was Nick that had to do the work. I was curious to see how he was going to break us out of this cell, something that seemed to be his specialty. I was already swirling with ideas about writing an article, but that wouldn't help us now. I hated that I was sitting in his lap, taking his warmth because I couldn't stay warm on my own, and that was it.

Nick's visor was a glowing beacon in the dark, his body tense beneath me while his mind worked at rapid speeds. I tried not to distract him and keep watch; we didn't want anyone to show up and see his visor in action. They might try to take it away if they saw that it functioned. I was instantly picturing this horrible scene where they ripped it from his head. The outside piece detached, but they might decide to take the entire thing, the section that was surgically embedded in his skull.

"Got it," Nick whispered, just as I tensed, my senses tingling with this feeling of danger. He might have figured something out, but it was too late. I was certain someone was coming, and it wouldn't surprise me if we'd end up dealing with more than a useless interrogator. We were about to face Batok himself, and it tied my stomach in knots when I realized I might soon see the alien responsible for locking me up.

"Hide," I said, "Someone's coming." I couldn't really know for sure, but something was setting off all my alarm bells. With my hand, I tapped the side of Nick's implant and the visor winked out. Maybe it was the way the gargoyle male had gone tense next to us, or maybe it was the faint sound of footsteps that registered just beyond my range of hearing. We were definitely about to have company.