More than enough time.
I thrust myself over the railing and landed amid the force fields. Each computer console controlled the power of six surrounding force fields. I needed to depower only one panel to free the animals in six pens. They’d been born and bred to kill. Devineé stood no chance.
I fastened my ears on the sound of Devineé’s humming service bot, strode over to the nearest console in her path, and waited.
Then I hooked my heel in the web of wiring, and thrust my leg down to snap it.
The console blinked out.
The opaque fields about me faded away, revealing a pair of empty cells, a serpentine creature coiled in sleep. Then a promising one in the fourth—a horned bull with snake eyes that lifted its head to sniff the air.
A series of clicks from the fifth one as a hybrid of bear and reptile, befuddled by liberty, began to paw at the dropped force field. Movement out of the corner of my eye from the sixth.
I looked sharply toward it.
Nothing.
That gave me pause. I could sense something watching me. The humming of the service bot was nearing me now, so I backed away slowly, knowing something, something would set these predators astir, and it was best to be clear of them before that. . . .
Then my back collided with a broad chest, and I whipped about to see the largest man I’d ever beheld, glaring down at me with black eyes and a faint smile, and I knew him. I knew him.
Cygna’s Diabolic, Anguish dan Domitrian.
“You didn’t expect me, I see,” he said.
Oh no, I had not.
My fist flew at his face. He caught it and shoved me back so hard, I hurtled to the ground. I rolled in the same movement to my feet, terror and a swell of malice propelling my muscles. The first instinct I always had, the first one, was to attack—and so I did.
But I was smaller. Weaker. I’d been made weaker still to pass as Sidonia. . . .
And the power of the fist that met my face jolted my skull, knocking me back. He charged as I caught my balance, and this time I dodged the fist. Then I vaulted toward him and delivered a cruel kick to his groin . . . that weakness of male Diabolics.
He grunted with the pain of my blow, but his great hands snagged my leg and I kicked and twisted to escape his grasp. His hands anchored about my head. I knew then that it was coming, I knew it, oh stars no. . . .
Anguish snapped my neck.
6
“IS THAT ONE DEAD?”
The voice, familiar but not, swam through my head, and I roused slowly, certain I was dreaming, for I didn’t feel real.
Hazard dan Domitrian leaned in above me.
For a moment I stared up at the face that couldn’t be there looming above me. Cygna’s Diabolic. Another face appeared in my sight. Anguish.
Then I remembered.
Then I noticed what was so wrong and why the world was off.
All I could feel was my face. My neck. . . . My neck!
Horror swamped me in a great sickening crash and I was suffocating, for I couldn’t feel my own breathing and the Diabolics were above me and free and this was it, the end, my fatal mistake.
Oh. Oh no, I’d freed Anguish, so he’d freed Hazard. . . . And now I was as good as dead. Hazard stared down at me, and Anguish told him: “I severed below the fifth vertebrae.”
“You did not paralyze her respiration?”
“Not yet.”
Raw panic flickered through me, clawed at me, and there was nothing I could do as the world swam above me, and even the scream I fought to voice wasn’t rising, and it was a nightmare come to life. How were they even here? How were they alive? How was this happening? The thought came to me. Cut through the storm of terror. Tyrus spared them. He spared them. But he didn’t tell me.
I had just freed them.
I was dead. I was dead, I was dead—and Tyrus. Helios, Tyrus. . . . What would happen to Tyrus? The air was too thin. Anguish’s heavy footfalls moved him out of my sight, and then I heard a voice in the distance. . . .
“Not another word after this,” Tyrus said. “You have your instructions. Not one word more.”
He knew how good their hearing was. He still underestimated it. And the silence was thick and terrible and how I wished I were already dead, for anything would be better than bearing helpless witness to what was to come.
“Go outside the force field,” Anguish rasped, “and close it about us. Security bots won’t be able to fire on us.”
They didn’t know Tyrus had none to command. Tyrus had no scepter.
Hazard’s boots thumped away.
Then Anguish was above me. He reached down, gripped the back of my neck, and sat me up. He kept my neck steady in place, though it was already broken.
A futile voice of hope within me pointed it out—it can be fixed if I am treated soon.. . .
But oh, I had to survive and Tyrus had to survive. I strained my eyes to the side, searching his face desperately for some hint of his plan. His dark features were set with a cold, lethal resolve. I wish I’d been conscious to hear whatever he’d said to Hazard.
Now that I could see, I ascertained that we were within an animal pen. And then Hazard flipped up the force field to surround us, locking the two of us in the cell while he remained outside it.
A humming mounted on the air, and then, above us, a platform slid into view.
And standing alone on top of it was Tyrus.
Just Tyrus.
Sickness churned through me. Sickness and dread. He was too close. Eight meters above us at most.
“Your Supreme Reverence.” Anguish’s voice flared out.
“Hello, Anguish.” Tyrus entered my line of sight. With his light blue eyes and hair, his lashes pale, his skin perfect for the coronation, he appeared almost a creature of ice. No emotion touched his face or colored his tone as he said, “She is still alive. You spared my cousin as well.”
“We had no use for her. We drove your pets back to their pens. This one is another matter.”
Devineé is still alive, I thought with despair. I should have risked the opprobrium of murdering her outright.
“They told me you were holding Nemesis. What is it you want?” He spoke with a preternatural calm, and folded his arms so he might exhibit the Imperial Scepter, loosely grasped in his hand.
Although Hazard gave a growl at the mere sight, Anguish remained calculating, calm. He tilted his head, assessing the foe above him. “You remind me that you spared us as though you expect gratitude. Surely you know better, Your Supremacy.”
“Tell us of our master!” Hazard roared.
He was not so calm as Anguish. He jerked back and forth in restless steps, as though desperate to rip something apart. The one stroke of good fortune for me was the fact that Anguish was in here with me, not out there with Tyrus. . . .
Leave here, Tyrus. Please!
“You know exactly what happened to my grandmother,” Tyrus said, eyes on Anguish.
“You killed her!” rasped Hazard. “And we will tear you limb from limb—”
“Quiet,” said Anguish.
Hazard fell silent.
Anguish gathered me closer to him, keeping my neck carefully steady as he angled me into Tyrus’s sight. The indignity of this! Why hadn’t he simply killed me?
“Strange,” noted Anguish, “how no security bots are mobilized.”
“I have no wish to escalate this situation,” Tyrus said calmly, in such a fine show of confidence, I began to think there had to be a reason. . . . Or was he simply so skilled at faking it?