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“No,” Threxin snarled for strategic emphasis. “You will obtain these things in a single delivery. I will not have three human ships arriving in this dock. Arrange for a remote handover, then deliver it all in one batch. Do you recognize?”
“Yes, sir. Give me a day to figure out how to get that done… Then I’ll need a comms line to place the order.”
Threxin had no choice. Only a human could arrange supply without drawing suspicion, considering his cohort had no idea how such things worked in terms of logisticsorrealistic human communication.
“I will return tonight for your intended frequency and script. I will review. Do not do anything stupid, human.”
CHAPTER 40
ALINA
It had been a week and she’d heard nothing from Threxin. Worse, Julia said the entrance to their secret passage between the command deck and CRD had been walled off. Alina had felt sick to her stomach when she found out, knowing it was all her fault. How was Julia’s grandmother going to get her medication now, and how many people wouldn’t get the testing they needed? All because she stubbornly put her cards out on the table and all but told Threxin there was a passage to be found.
It seemed like everyone around her was rebelling to help their people—Kaia and Isabelle with their secret communication out to Hydra company, Manda and Julia running supplies and tests to and from the CRD.
And you’ve been sleeping with the enemy and giving him intel to fuck it all up.
Alina had thrown herself back into her work, delivering Kaia’s meals and resuming her duties at the dock. The first couple of days she could barely get through one Ariel before her knee made her stop, but she was quickly finding herself working up to more and longer shifts.
It was on her way back from an early afternoon shift that Alina noticed commotion ahead. She stopped as a row ofpeople in officers’ uniforms rounded the corner from the deck’s elevators. Their way was ushered in by whispers of soft wheels on the floor, and it took Alina a few seconds to register the stretchers nestled between the officers’ bodies. One after one they rounded the corner and were wheeled down the hall away from her, each of them holding one person—some two. At the tail were three human doctors and three uhyre, followed by two more armed uhyre guards following the group with tightened apertures and flattened spikes.
“Manda!” Alina half-jogged to the nurse trailing behind the rushing procession, lugging a heavy medical bag on her shoulder.
Manda didn’t slow down, but neither could her short legs keep up with the pace of the others.
“What’s going on?” Alina fell into step beside her. “Who are those people?”
“Sickest from the CRD, sent by the lower medbay,” Manda said, sounding winded.
“The… How… They got permission?” Alina stuttered.
“They got an order,” she clipped. “Gotta go. There are more coming and we don’t have enough beds set up.”
“Right…” Alina slowed, letting her jog up ahead to catch up with the others.
They got an order.
She walked back to her cabin in a daze, and before she knew it she’d spent ten minutes sitting in bed, mind racing.
An order could have only come from Threxin. He was doing it—was it for her, or did something else happen?
She snapped out of her daydream and rummaged in her bedside nook for the comms bracelet she’d stashed there. If Threxin was doing this for her, he might try to contact her. Maybe they could talk. Maybe they could fix this.
Alina curled up in bed, keeping the bracelet tucked in her fist to ensure she didn’t miss its notification.
CHAPTER 41
THREXIN
Aship week later, Kaia Halena had not developed any signs of exorin poisoning or addiction, and Threxin moved from the mode of verification to one of vaccine synthesis.
He watched his biogineer review test results on a tablet in the medbay laboratory they had confiscated for their initiative. His human equivalent, a rigid woman with brown hair pulled back from her temples, hovered at his side. Kaia and Orion were present, though he’d rather they not be.
“Variant nine-three-seven…” Tetha muttered to his human counterpart without looking up from his tablet. “The RNA spike was much higher with this vaccine variant than the others, indicating a stronger reaction in the cultured cells. You noted an eighty percent dampening effect when a droplet of exorin was introduced to the cells.”
Tetha’s Universal was suspiciously fluent. Threxin would need to find out where he got the occasion to become so competent at it.
“Strongest reaction we’ve had since eighty-twenty,” the human engineer, Priya-something, hummed. “Not sure we can intro it without damage to the host though… Eight-twenty killed the subject.”
