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“I did!” I protested angrily. “I don’t remember a thing!”
“You may be a very smart person, Doctor,” he said, flipping the tablet to show me a screen where all my vitals were peaking—a portion of my suit was still talking to the system. “But you’re a shitty liar.”
Goddammit! “Only because you’re scaring me.”
“Am I?” He pretended to be surprised, before his expression slid into something more determined and frightening. “That’s good. Because I want you to believe me. The people I am affiliated with will do whatever we have to to get to that technology before Arcus Industrial.”
I thrashed my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I made it inside the ship—but then I blacked out.”
He took two steps forward and ran one hand through my hair, yanking my head up and back, and planted the cold end of his gun’s barrel underneath my chin.
“Fine, then,” he said, and I felt the barrel nudge my jaw. “You may not remember. But I bet your kraken does.”
chapter 53
CEPHARIUS
First the two-legged had tried to shove metal into me, and now Elle was helpless, with one of their guns pointed underneath her chin.
And because we were joined on our ’qa, I could hear everything.
“Does your kraken love you as much as you love him?” the man named Hargrave asked her and it was all I could do not to rip through the window—only the knowledge that breaching her room would kill Elle as well stopped me. “Tell him to acknowledge me.”
“Don’t you dare!” Elle thought out.
I managed not to move, but it almost killed me, as the evil man went on. “He never turned off the cameras in here, you know.” Hargrave jerked his head in Marcus’s direction, while keeping eye-contact with Elle. “And the other night—let’s just say we had a very interesting viewing party, while waiting to see if you’d make it back. Though we were all surprised to find out that you didn’t have breasts.”
I felt Elle’s horror and shame, at both the situation, and the fact that her scars had been so publicly on display—but she gathered herself faster than I would have, if our situations were reversed.
“Whatever he wants, don’t do it Ceph,” she thought back to me. “He won’t shoot me. He knows bullets might damage the building. He’s crazy, but he’s not insane.”
Then Hargrave rose up and looked back. He took his gun away from Elle’s chin, and used it to direct the soldier by Marcus away—then shot him.
I could not believe I was seeing up close what I’d seen so often in Elle’s stories—Marcus was dead. His blood covered half the room; it had spattered onto Donna, and both Donna and Elle were screaming.
Hargrave, however, was not, and he replaced the gun beneath Elle’s chin, where I could feel the heat of its barrel-tip against her skin. “Frangible bullets,” he announced. “Perfectly lethal, but unlikely to travel very far.” He looked to the glass I was swimming behind. “Acknowledge me.”
I could not accommodate Elle’s wishes anymore.
I put a tentacle against the glass, and the man stepped back.
“Two tentacles now,” he demanded.
“Ceph, no!” Elle pleaded—but I slapped another one up, and through her, listened to him laugh.
“So we understand one another,” he said, and I watched him put his gun back into its holder at his waist. “Tell me, kraken—do you remember what happened on the spaceship? One tentacle for yes, two for no.”
“Don’t!” Elle thoughts flew to mine, and I saw her trying to look back—but he caught her chin and wrenched her face around to look his direction, while his eyes stared resolutely out at me.
Daring me to challenge him.
I slowly lowered one tentacle onto the glass.
“Excellent,” he practically purred—and I watched Elle sag. “Then bring me a piece of alien technology, and if it’s good enough, I might let your girlfriend back into the water.”
chapter 54
ELLE
