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“I think peace in your language is one of the words that transforms you into a GJW robot.”
“Dobruk—”
I clapped my hand over his mouth to stifle the word, but I wasn’t fast enough. He jerked his head away and shoved me so hard I slammed into the wall, my head smacking hard. I fell to the floor. He whipped the blaster from his holster.
“Ghadt! Ghadt!” I choked out.
Lomax froze. He shook his head, his face crumpling with shock and horror. He dropped to his knees beside me. “I did this. I did this, didn’t I? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He cupped my face. “Are you all right?”
I gave a little chuckle. “Remind me the next time I conduct an experiment not to use myself as the test subject.” I rubbed my skull. My hand came away bloody.
“Let me see.” He examined me. “You’re bleeding. I am so very sorry.” With his claws, he sliced off a small section from the bedcover and pressed it to my head. “I can’t believe I did this. Tell me what happened.”
“We were discussing possible triggers. I said a word in my language; you repeated it in yours and flipped yourself.” I stared into his stricken eyes. “We have to get back to Araset, away from Seeher, so you can be deprogrammed for real this time. You’re going to have to fake it—pretend you’re still her robot.” I lifted my hands from his chest. I’d smeared blood on his uniform.
“I can try sending a communique.” He glanced at the shattered screen. “I guess I did that, too.”
“Yes.”
“On the positive side, no one can spy on us in here through its camera.” He helped me to my feet. “But if I try to use another monitor, I can be seen and the communique intercepted. I’ll have to time it for when Seeher is distracted.”
“Can you redirect the ship?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have the skills to hack the security, so the AI won’t respond to me—and Seeher would notice if we changed course.”
“Do you have any idea where we’re headed?”
He shook his head. “No. I would guess—and it’s only a guess—she’ll take me to a GJW stronghold.”
His gaze dropped to the bloody splotch on his chest then the patch on the wall, the shattered screen, his blaster on the floor. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his gaze was bleak. “When I leave your cabin, Seeher will say something to trigger me. If she ordered me to kill you, she’ll send me to finish the job. You may not be quick enough to stop me the next time.”
“Then you need to finish the job,” I said. “You have to kill me now.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lomax
I wended toward the bridge, assuming Seeher would be there. Trepidation knotted my gut. Could I pull this off? Could I fool an alien with powerful mind-control skills?
The cunning and planning it had taken for a GJW operative to sneak into the palace, present herself as an LOP official with the blessing and cooperation of the king and queen seemed near-impossible. But the scenario offered the best explanation for my behavior and memory lapses. There had been a celebration banquet at the palace—and then I found myself in a cabin on a spaceship, aiming a blaster at Kat. I had no recollection of anything in between.
I shuddered.
What if no one could undo what Seeher had done to me? Would I forever be one word away from flipping out? If I couldn’t be fixed, for her safety, Kat had to return to New Terra.
Taking a deep breath, I exhaled and let the muscles in my face go slack. Kat had said when I was a “zombie,” I often had no expression.
I stepped onto the bridge.
A wide view screen revealed the expanse of outer space. Seeher sat in the captain’s seat like she owned the ship, giving off an entirely different vibe than she had at the palace. Congeniality and concern had vanished. Instead, she appeared hard, cold, ruthless, not a woman to be crossed. Having taken enormous risks to pull off what she had, she would not easily be deterred from her goal—whatever it was. She would kill to achieve her aims.
I slipped into the adjacent seat. “Mission accomplished,” I deadpanned.
Her antenna-eyes swept over the bloodstains on my jumpsuit. “Looks like you encountered some trouble.”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“Excellent,” she replied. “Peace through chaos.”
