Page 120 of Stripped By the Alien

"We can't leave," I say, before he can suggest it, before I can even let myself feel the pull to. "Sophia. The others. This room…" I don't finish the sentence. I don't need to.

"Yes, I can guess the purpose of this room." His voice has gone hard again, that same fury I felt carrying him through the wall a minute ago. "There are others like it. I have no intention of leaving this place intact."

"Lucius," I say. "Can we do anything about that? Easily?"

I can feel him thinking even through the strain in his voice. "Possibly. This station is almost entirely automated. The guards you've fought are a large chunk of what actually runs this place. Drones, restraint fields, the locking mechanisms on every cell — all of it is centrally controlled. If I can reach the core system, I believe I can disable the whole apparatus at once. But not from here. I'll need direct access. A control node, not a maintenance panel. There won't be many of those. Maybe only one."

"Then let's find it," Krix'vorr says, already moving.

“But Sophia first,” I insist. “The robots took her out that way.”

Two corridors later I see a nightmarish monster clinging to pipes on the ceiling. For a moment I think we're done for - if that's a guard, we'll struggle to leave this station.

Then the monster taps on the pipes, making them ring with dissonant tones.

“I think it's Deeg,” I whisper. His tentacles are faintly stained dark, watching the corridor below as if he's already finished his work and is only waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

Then I see her. Sophia is on her feet, steadied by Inquisitor Brax'tok, and for one long second I don't trust my own eyes.

"Nora." My name comes out of her like something she's been holding underwater for days. "You absolute—" She doesn't finish it. She tries to come towards me, but the Inquisitor is holding her back. Her wrists are still bound in front of her with some kind of leather-like strap, which to me looks more locust-like than Gzet.

"Why are you bound?" I ask, puzzled. Then I raise my voice. “Inquisitor! Why is Sophia bound?” My voice echoes from the alien walls.

“Simply a safety precaution,” Brax'tok says smoothly. He unties her and puts the straps in a utility pouch strapped to his belt. “My safety. She's a fighter, this one.”

Then Sophia staggers towards me and I hurry to meet her.

"You came for me again," she says, and her voice breaks as she grips my arms, checking me over with quick, clinical eyes before she lets herself actually look at my face.

"Of course," I manage, throat too tight for anything more.

She looks past me, at Krix'vorr. She takes in his size, the blood dripping from him, the fury still radiating off him in waves. Something in her expression sharpens with recognition rather than fear. "These appear to be Space Locusts."

"They absolutely are," I confirm. “And they are just the way you think. Except… actually, it's a long story.”

"Uh-huh," she says. “Have we gone from one captivity to another?”

“I don't think so,” I tell her, because I actually can't be entirely sure. “I think these guys mean to set us free.”

"We can't stay here,” Krix'vorr says. “Inquisitor, we're looking for a control node. A control chamber, I assume.”

"Ah,” Brax'tok says. “Then Deeg might come in handy again. He dealt with Sophia's handlers before I could stop him. Enthusiastically, I'm afraid. I haven't seen a control room, but looking at the station from the outside, there's a command spire near the station's core. Heavily defended, I assume, but nothing Deeg and I can't manage."

Krix'vorr doesn't look pleased at the arrangement, but he doesn't argue either. There isn't time.

"Then we should move," he growls, and for once, the two of them don't argue about who leads the way.

The push to the spire is fast and brutal and entirely without grace. Krix'vorr and Deeg rampage ahead of us, one flying and the other moving fast on his tentacles. They clear corridor after corridor of drones and the scattered, disorganized Gzet guards who never expected anything like this and clearly have no routine for it.

Brax'tok saunters behind us and deals with ambushes from that side, showing a ferocity that I never expected from the icy courtier.

Sophia is at my shoulder the whole way, silent and steady, watching my back the way she must have learned to watch her own for however many weeks this place had her.

We reach the spire's core chamber with alarms shrieking around us and Lucius practically vibrating with impatience against my chest.

"There," he says, the moment I set him down in front of a wide, glowing console unlike anything else we've seen on the station. "Yes. This will do very well."

He extends what's left of his thin manipulator arm. It's bent and scratched, but he still presses it to the console's surface.